According to a recent analysis by Draft FCB, over 80% of today’s most popular US albums are produced by minority or multicultural musical groups.

The agency looked at Billboard’s Top 10 artist’s race and ethnicity from 1950-2009.

The Pew analysis found that among newly married couples, 14.6 percent were mixed in 2008, compared with 11.2 percent in 2000 and 8.3 percent in 1990. (Among all people currently married, 8 percent of marriages were mixed in 2008, compared with 6.8 percent in 2000 and 4.5 percent in 1990.)

Of all 3.8 million adults who married in 2008, 31 percent of Asians, 26 percent of Hispanic people, 16 percent of blacks and 9 percent of whites married a person whose race or ethnicity was different from their own. Those were all record highs.

The link below is to a pdf of the full report.

Multiracial youth that identify with two or more of their ethnicities are happier than those who only identify with one, according to a study published by the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
In the study, “The Interpretation of Multiracial Status and Its Relation to Social Engagement and Psychological Well-Being,” multiracial high school students were asked which groups they primarily identified with. Those who identified with multiple groups reported either equal or higher psychological wellbeing and social engagement than those who identified primarily with a single group.

According to the researchers, the ability to claim different ethnicities indicates resiliency; youth who identify with multiple groups can also adapt to different racial environments more easily.

More great data and pretty charts from the kids at OKCupid (yes the dating website!) proving that what we say and what we do are often very different animals. The website’s blog often dissects the crates and crates of data generated by all its users. It’s a fun stop if you are looking for insights into the dating pool of today.

Follow the link here to read the full posting I mentioned above and check out the list of recent analysis that the OK Cupid nerd team has engaged in. A lot of them are very interesting – the comments run the gamut and fair warning, sometimes people use their naughty words.

We’ve processed the messaging habits of almost a million people and are about to basically prove that, despite what you might’ve heard from the Obama campaign and organic cereal commercials, racism is alive and well. It would be awesome if the other major online dating players would go out on a limb and release their own race data, too. I can’t imagine they will: multi-million dollar enterprises rarely like to admit that the people paying them those millions act like turds. But being poor gives us a certain freedom. To alienate all our users. So there.

When I first started looking at first-contact attempts and who was writing who back, it was immediately obvious that the sender’s race was a huge factor. The takeaway here is that although race shouldn’t matter in messaging, it does. A lot.

An excerpt from the book NurtureShock was published in Newsweek last month. (Link to the book here.) One of the many topics the authors studied in the book is how and when we humans become aware of race and how societies’ efforts to be colorblind have many unintended consequences.

A quick summary on how scientists think about race and children has changed:

Then: We assumed children didn’t notice race until we pointed it out to them.

Now: Evidence shows children identify racial differences much like they see the differences between pink and baby blue—two colors often used to distinguish girls from boys.

Then: Like me, many parents figured children would get the “diversity” point after we exposed them to different races and cultures.

Now: Researchers have found the more diverse the environment, the more likely children are to self-segregate.

Then: Children often told about discrimination were less likely to see the relationship between working hard and achieving goals.

Now: Black children who repeatedly hear messages of black pride are more interested in school and more likely to connect their success to their hard work and persistence.

The website WireTap is new-found favorite of mine. Heavy on advisers from Current TV, The Nation, and AlterNet, the site is a great platform for young (appears to be mostly college age) writers / content creators from the most diverse backgrounds I have ever seen in a single site. If you need to understand what young adults care about about, how they define their worlds, this site should be a regular stop in your information gathering missions.

Below is an excerpt from a recent perspective piece I enjoyed. Topics often include reactions to current events around the globe, stories about race, gender and identity. I also like that the students are paid for their submissions.

The 1996 launch of “Sex on Tuesday” at the University of California, Berkeley– birthplace of the 1960s national student activist movement — triggered the campus newspaper sex column phenomenon.

Within a few years, the sex column had spread to campuses across the country, becoming the “most publicized, electrifying, and divisive phenomena in student journalism,” in the words of Dan Reimold, leading expert on the student newspaper sex column.

Reimold estimates that “during any given semester more than 200 sex and dating columns are being published in U.S. student newspapers, magazines, and online outlets…. What’s most important here is perspective. In the mid-nineties, the number of student sex columns: zero.” In addition to increasing student readership, the proliferation of student sex columns has drawn national attention.

Entertainment is usually a key reason behind the publication of sex columns, but the writing is not all about fun. These controversial pieces have proved battlegrounds for the rights of the student press and “appropriate” subjects for publication (ironically, only increasing their popularity and fueling the movement).

Any of you that know me personally, know how I love to rave about this show. I, who have never been an art director, music director, set director – any of those things, cannot stop running at the mouth about how amazing it must be to do any of those functions for this show. I think I can smell Bon Temps and that’s because of the perfect, perfect way each episode comes together, from the slightly overgrown grass to the dust-particle haze inside Bill’s house, to Sookie burying her face in Gran’s things.

There is certainly a larger “fangbang” moment happening in popular culture right now, and part of this show’s success must be duly credited there. However, I also think there is a huge audience of Americans, particularly younger ones, who are hungry to experience content that examines fundamental issues of race and sex and personal identity in a fresh, fun, thought-provoking way.

I’m glad to see I’m not the only one!

In “True Blood,” the pay cable giant has its first hit since “Rome,” and the numbers indicate it may be the biggest thing on the channel since “The Sopranos.” If that sounds surprising, it may be because few saw it coming — inside HBO or out.

In the three episodes measured so far this, its second, season, “True Blood” has amassed viewer totals that any network, including broadcast networks, would be excited to own: 12.1 million, 10 million and 10.3 million. And HBO has attracted those viewers from an audience base about a third the size of fully distributed networks.