"THE ghettos may be churning and racial tensions rising, but at the same time a social phenomenon is on the rise: the black and white date. The barriers that once stopped black and white youngsters from socializing are coming down fast in many parts of the land. On weekends, mixed couples by the dozens stroll in Manhattan's Central Park, through Chicago's Old Town and Hyde Park areas, in San Francisco's North Beach. The strongest enclave for interracial dating is the school or college campus. A poll taken recently at Detroit's Wayne State University showed that 279 out of 365 students had dated, or intended to date, members of another race. Says Jim Nabors, vice chairman of the Afro-American Student Union at Berkeley: "It's no longer avantgarde. It's just a little avant-garde."
Campus Leaders. What has made the difference? Some highly publicized interracial marriages have helped pave the way. The civil rights movement has recast the Negro in a heroic image. As one university counselor put it, with a measure of euphoria : "Discrimination is out of vogue. Black is no longer a color—it's a choice." It is easy to exaggerate the picture. Mixed dating is still practiced only by a small minority of the student population, and by no means on all campuses (though it is generally accepted at the biggest ones). It is virtually out in the South. Most parents almost anywhere are still deeply troubled if not outraged by it, and "Guess who's coming to dinner, Mom?" is a line to frighten not a few households. But compared with a few years ago, the custom has increased dramatically. "It's no big thing any more," says a blonde 17-year-old who graduated from California's El Cerrito High School. Nor need mixed couples date furtively and clandestinely. Today they do it openly, and often they are the campus elite.
Two such young people are Robert Hall, a 20-year-old Seattle Negro whose skin is so black it is bluish, and his strawberry blonde fiancée Nancy Mitton, also 20. Inseparable since grade school, both were honor students in high school and won scholarships to Western Washington State College. There, both have become campus leaders—and Hall, who intends to become a chemical engineer, finished the school's four-year chemistry curriculum before the end of his sophomore year. The couple plan to be married in September, then enter the University of Washington to begin their junior year. They have the complete approval of his father, an Alabama-born Seattle longshoreman, and her widowed mother, a Boeing Co. stenographer.
No Spook Chicks. The overwhelmingly prevalent pattern in interracial dating, TIME correspondents report, is black boy with white girl. To many Negro men, going out with a white girl is a symbol of success and achievement. Says a University of California Negro student: "Black cats consciously play with white chicks. It's a challenge. For him, the white woman is shrouded in mystery. She is revered, you dig?" Adds Mrs. Anita Jones of Seattle's Urban League: "Oh, there's pride in it, all right. Dating Caucasians is part of the Negro's establishment of his identity as a man, and an attractive white girl is the last citadel."