All in the (mixed-race) family: a US trend

It's worth noting that unlike most census analysts, Frey treated Latinos as a racial group, and nearly half of the 3.7 million interracial marriages he counts include a Latino.

Frey calls some of the states with the highest percentages of mixed-race marriages - such as New Mexico, California, and Hawaii - "melting pot" states: All have several significant minority groups, not just one.

That's something Brigitte Ball can attest to. A corporate librarian in Boston, Ms. Ball has been married for two years. She is African-American; her husband, Jeff, is white. They met in Seattle, Brigitte's hometown. There, she says, she grew up with far less segregation by neighborhood than she sees in cities like Boston. Her best friends include women who are biracial, Jewish, and Latina.

"We're like a United Nations bunch," she laughs.

Recently, Brigitte has been reading "Interracial Intimacies" by Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy, which examines America's long and troubled history with both marriage and adoption across racial lines.

"Some of the stories he brings up - you can't look at the way things are today and not think there hasn't been progress," she says. Still, she and Jeff are thinking of moving back to Seattle when they decide to have children. "I would never want my kid to be in a situation where he's one child surrounded by only black, or only white," she explains.

That segregation by neighborhood, which still exists in many American cities, may help explain another of Frey's findings: that blacks are far less likely than other groups to marry across racial lines. While nearly 30 percent of marriages involving a Latino or Asian is interracial, only about 12 percent of marriages involving an African-American is.

America's two major racial barriers, he says, are more intimate ones: living next door to someone of a different race and marrying someone of a different race. "And those are the areas where black segregation has continued to remain high."

Still, Frey found that even states with the lowest percentages of interracial marriages have seen substantial growth. They increased in Tennessee by 133 percent since 1990, and doubled in West Virginia and Vermont. "It's a trend on the rise in every place," Frey says. "But it will be a long time before West Virginia or Vermont or North Dakota will be in the 'postracial America' kind of scenario."

In the end, both adoption and marriage may help break down some racial barriers that persist. With adoption in particular, Pertman finds that it's tough for people to hang onto prejudices.

"We're a polyglot nation. Adoption just makes that more intimate, within a family. So a racist who doesn't think black and white people should marry suddenly has a Chinese niece. Suddenly it's their family, suddenly it's hard to argue with."

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