• According to a new report, single moms on welfare are more likely to suffer from untreated psychiatric disorders than women in the general population. • A survey conducted by a popular Chinese website found that many men would be willing to wear heels in order to feel the pain of their significant others. • Whiskey-drinkers rejoice (?): Jim Beam is releasing a black cherry version of its bourbon. • A recent poll in Britain found that one in five people approve of men slapping their wives or girlfriends for wearing revealing clothing in public. In response to the abysmal attitude on domestic violence, the government has launched a new campaign that aims to reduce rates of intimate-partner assault. • Although the Oxford English Dictionary has not yet embraced moobs, plastic surgeons certainly have. • A series of love letters by George Orwell will be auctioned off by the Bonhams auction service. They are expected to sell for more than $50,000. • Fanchon O'Donoghue, beloved "cookie lady," has died at the age of 77. O'Donoghue got her nickname from her annual Christmas cookie bake-a-thon. • A new documentary Addicted to Surrogacy aims to "sidestep prejudice and present surrogates as regular women who have chosen an exceptional way to help other people." • Scientists from Tel Aviv University have discovered that the uterus performs a "welcome dance" for sperm. • This March, New York City will see its first season of competitive double-dutch in public high schools, as part of an initiative to involve more girls in organized sports. • While interracial marriages have increased overall, rates of Hispanic and Asian Americans marrying outside their race has declined. • Colleen Howe, one of the first female sports agents, has passed away. She was 76. •  This article from the Times details the relationship between a high school boy and Traci Tapp, his predatory gym teacher. • Despite reform laws from 2004, Moroccan woman still face legal discrimination from judges, who can override laws and allow marriage to minors. • Sociological Images critiques a subway ad from NYC that advises victims to speak out about sexual harassment, but says nothing to possible assailants. • Women in India are receiving much-needed economic support from the Self-Employed Women's Association, or Sewa, which offers loans, retirement accounts, and health insurance to enterprising women. • A recent study indicates that college-aged women overestimate the number of drinks men would like to see them imbibe. Researchers believe that this disconnect may be causing young women to binge drink in a misguided attempt to impress boys. • We may be approaching our Barbie saturation point, but apparently we're the only ones: Mattel has announced that it plans to launch a Barbie Bridal collection in Japan this June. On the bright side, it can't be any worse than the Hello Kitty gowns! • 

black is brown is tan
is girl is boy
is nose is face
is all the colors
of the race

For those who have never heard of her, Mildred Loving was an African-American woman who, with her white husband Richard, changed the United States' miscegenation laws by taking the state of Virginia — which regarded their union as illegal — to court and, with a June 12, 1967 decision in her and her husband's favor, effectively dismantled the laws in that state and 15 others that prohibited intermarriage between the races. Mildred Loving, as you also may or may have have heard, has just died at the age of 68 of undisclosed causes. (Richard Loving was killed in a car accident in 1975.)

Mildred and Richard had some formidable foes. Although some states' anti-miscegenation laws came to include other ethnic groups, as Werner Sollors says in his book Interracialism, "all such laws restricted marriage choices of blacks and whites, making the black-white divide the deepest and historically most pervasive of all American color lines." Certainly, Loving vs. Virginia was not the only factor in the rapidly growing number of black/white unions and marriages during '60s and '70s, but it was an important one, and a strong indicator that something new was happening between blacks and whites in the second half of the 20th century, something more concerned with love than hate. (Those who are better schooled in these matters than I am, please elaborate in the comments.)

What I find both fascinating and inspiring is that the generation of biracial (a term I am using here to describe those with one black parent and one white parent) Americans born in the fifteen years after Loving vs. Virginia, is a generation that has, in recent years come of age both in the public and private spheres. All over the airwaves, bookshelves and movie screens one can see representatives of this generation, from athletes (Derek Jeter, Jason Kidd, James Blake) to entertainers (Halle Berry, Lisa Bonet, Mariah Carey) to writers and thinkers (Rebecca Walker, Danzy Senna and Zadie Smith). This is no coincidence: According to figures made available by Race Branch of the United States Census Bureau, the number of interracial (black/white) couples in the United States in 1960 numbered 51,000. Ten years later (almost three years after Loving), the number had risen 27.4% to 65,000 and by 1980 that number had almost doubled, coming in at 121,000. The numbers of children borne from such unions grew just as quickly: the 2000 Census states that there were 4,850 biracial Americans born in 1967; the same census puts the number born in 1977 at 9,261, almost double the number born ten years earlier, and five years later, in 1982, 14,125 biracial children came into the world in the United States. And we are better for it. As the AP reports today, "In a rare interview... last June, Loving said she wasn't trying to change history — she was just a girl who once fell in love with a boy. 'It wasn't my doing,' Loving said. 'It was God's work.'"

Mildred Loving, Matriarch Of Interracial Marriage, Dies
Related: Who Are We Now? New Dialogue On Mixed Race [NY Times]
Black Is Brown Is Tan [Amazon]
Loving Vs. Virginia [Wikipedia]