White mayor, black wife: NYC’s new image

NEW YORK: Another milestone is passing in America’s racial journey: The next mayor of New York City is a white man with a black wife.
Even in a nation with a biracial president, where interracial marriage is more accepted than ever, Bill de Blasio’s marriage to Chirlane McCray is remarkable: He is apparently the first white politician in US history elected to a major office with a black spouse by his side.
De Blasio is preparing to take office on Jan. 1, with McCray playing a major role in his administration.
“It reflects the American values of embracing different races, ethnicities, religions. I think it’s just a great symbol,” said William Cohen, the former US Secretary of Defense, who is married to a black woman.
Cohen was already a senator when he started dating Janet Langhart, a black television journalist. He proposed several times, but she feared that her race would hurt his political future. They married in 1996, a few weeks after Cohen announced he would not seek a fourth term.
“There has been that fear (of interracial marriage) on the part of politicians. I didn’t have it,” Cohen said. There have been black men in politics who have been married to white women, such as Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. And high-profile women such as South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, whose parents are from India, are married to white men.
Yet unions of white men and black women have retained a forbidden aura, Cohen said.
The taboo is declining, polls show.
In July, a Gallup poll found that 87 percent of Americans approved of interracial marriage — the highest rate ever — compared with 4 percent in 1958. In 2010, more than 15 percent of all new marriages were interracial, according to the Pew Research Center.
Yet statistics also indicate why de Blasio and McCray are such a rarity. The Gallup poll showed that white men are the least likely to marry outside of their race.
More than 97 percent of white men are married to white women, while 82 percent of black men, 65 percent of Hispanics and 48 percent of Asians marry within their own group.