Captured_by_Becca / Flickr

The numbers show that D.C. is above national rates when it comes to interracial marriage and dating. Another stand-out point: interracial coupling is more prevalent among same-sex partners than opposite-sex partners in D.C. Check out the numbers below:

Percentage of interracial couples living together:

*Source: U.S. Census Bureau

At first glance, it may appear that people are more likely to date and live with someone of another race than marry interracially. But we should also point out that interracial marriage is on the rise, around the country and in D.C., where 20 percent of people who got married between 2008 and 2010 married someone of another race. Compare that to the percentage of all married couples in D.C., 10.2 percent. So the unmarried, interracial couples living together in D.C. may just be newer pairs. More interracial cohabitating appears to be leading to more interracial marriage.

Aside from interracial marriage, the census data also showed that D.C. and Alexandria, Va. lead the nation’s large cities in the percentage of people living alone. In both cities, 44 percent of households consist of just one person. These individuals in D.C. are typically young and rich, and are the ones largely responsible for the District’s growing population.

Matt Radick / Flickr

Last week, we wrote about the rise of interracial marriage and asked how tolerant D.C. is of mixed-race couples. Many of you responded that you sometimes receive stares or negative comments, while others wrote their experiences have been mostly positive.

Admittedly, these stories can’t fully capture every experience, but they do provide some insights into what life is like for interracial couples in D.C. If you’d like to share your story, contribute by posting a comment below.

Luis writes that “the more interracial couples feel comfortable out in the world, the better chances we have of building a world defined by our common humanity rather than our race:”

When I mentioned this article to my wife, she asked if I was going to comment on it. “Wait, we’re interracial, right?” she had to double-check. We often forget. When it comes to our relationship I don’t really see race. We haven’t been in DC that long, but most places we’ve been, we are pretty comfortable in public…

Commenter NotSquare, a white woman in D.C. dating a black man, writes that she’s learned to “tune out” the stares she receives, “but I find anywhere I go people, even people close to me make the ‘color’ jokes in regards to my relationship.”

Riotsnotdiets writes that she still gets plenty of odd looks from passersby:

I lived in Ohio for several years with an ex (who is black and Arab), and we lived here for about 2 years, we never had any negative experiences in DC like we did in ohio. particularly in restaurants, in Ohio, we’d often get stares and sometimes comments from entire tables but here no one seemed to give a crap. It was pretty awesome.

… a couple of years ago I was at a restaurant in NJ where my girl friend and I actually had trouble getting a table – they actually tried to refuse us. Both of us being stubborn we stayed and they eventually served us. I would never expect anything like that to happen in DC.

I refuse to allow my relationship to become a political statement. I am far more concerned with the harassment we receive then [sic] what people think they know about our relationship based solely on skin color.

Adele Booysen / Flickr

The changing attitude surrounding interracial marriages, which now make up 7.4 percent of all American marriages, was the subject of a recent NPR  piece that aired on All Things Considered.

• Interracial Marriage: The Changing Face Of Seeing RaceDownload

According to recent data, the least common pairing is between black women and white men, followed by white women and black men. The most likely interracial marriage is between Hispanics and non-Hispanics, followed by those between white men and Asian American women. So what does that tell us about race in America? From NPR:

“It reflects the status hierarchy,” says Roderick J. Harrison, a demographer at Howard University. “If you’re trying to marry up, clearly whites are it. If you’re trying to avoid marrying down, it would still look like blacks might be the least preferred.”

But even though a relatively small percentage of all American marriages are interracial, attitudes have changed much more rapidly in recent years. In 1987, 48 percent of Americans felt it was okay for whites and blacks to date. By 2009, it jumped to 80 percent. And in 2008, almost 15 percent of all new marriages were interracial, a record number according to the Pew Center.

D.C. is a diverse, vibrant city, and the number of multiracial people living here has increased by about 2 percent over the past decade. By 2010, about 17,316 D.C. residents were multiracial, about 7,000 of whom reported to be black and some other race.

What do you think: do attitudes in D.C. reflect the national increase in interracial marriages? Is it more accepted in D.C. than in other places or is there still a taboo? What have been your experiences with interracial dating and marriage?

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Albert Haynesworth

Washington Redskins player Albert Haynesworth has been indicted on one charge of sexual abuse after a Feb. 13 incident at the W Hotel, in which he allegedly fondled a cocktail waitress’ breast. According to the indictment, Haynesworth told a security guard, “I didn’t touch her” and that the waitress was “a little black girl” and he “doesn’t even like black girls.” Later, according to the indictment, Hanyesworth told detectives “I know what this is about, she is just upset I have a white girlfriend. I couldn’t tell you the last time I dated a black girl. She was trying to get with me.”

Oh my. Despite obvious problems with such a “victim-blaming” defense, Haynesworth’s remarks touch upon a sensitive topic: interracial dating and black athletes dating white women.

This really came to the fore nationally at the height of the Kardashians’ fame, when two of famous sisters were dating black athletes. The women, who although aren’t technically white, were still viewed by many as fitting the stereotype of black athletes preferring white women to black women, spurring plenty of nasty comments.

But these are high-profile individuals. If you look at the country as a whole, interracial dating and marriage is becoming more acceptable: a record 14.6 percent of new marriages in 2008 were interracial. But, 22 percent of black men married someone outside of their race, compared to 9 percent of black women who did so. And white-black pairings overall only made up 11 percent of those 2008 interracial marriages.

Attitudes of people are changing, though. The Pew Center found that almost all millennials — 18 to 29-year-olds — are accepting of interracial dating and marriage, and this trend holds true of almost every racial group with no significant difference between them.

Analyzing individual relationships to make a broader political point can be tricky, as Ta-Nehisi Coates notes. He wrote last year that one big problem when talking about black men dating white women is the “kind of collectivist approach toward something as individual and private as marriage.” He continues:

I’m a black dude hooked up with a black woman–but I don’t sleep with ‘black people.’ ‘Black people’ don’t pay half of my rent. ‘Black people’ didn’t take my son to tennis lessons this week. ‘Black people’ didn’t support me while I was trying to make it a writer. An individual, with her own specific hopes, dreams and problems, did those things. Now it’s true that she’s black. But the qualities that allowed her to do those things–compassion, commitment, vision–are not ‘black’ qualities.

Again, I’m not trying to demean my folks. But we often take this abstract, hazy view of an institution that, like anything else worthwhile, is mostly about dirt, work and tedium. Relationships are not (anymore, at least) a collectivist act. They really come down to two individuals doing business in ways that we will never be privy to.