Mixed-race families

The New York Times has a fascinating piece today on the Obama's family lineage -- one that goes deep into great-great grandparents.

It's a diverse family but that is not as unusual anymore as one might think ... Here is The New York Times:

As many as a quarter of white Americans and nearly half of black Americans belong to a multiracial family, estimates Joshua R. Goldstein of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research.

Diversity inside families, said Michael J. Rosenfeld, a sociologist at Stanford University, is “the most interesting kind of diversity there is, because it brings people together cheek by jowl in a way that they never were before.”

“There’s nothing as powerful as family relationships,” Mr. Rosenfeld said, “and that’s why interracial marriage was illegal for so long in the U.S.”