EthnicMajority

(Washington Post) A study released Monday of the 70 Football Bowl Subdivision schools that will participate in the upcoming college football bowl season showed continued academic progress, but that the gap between white and African-American players continues to persist.

The report by the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport notes an overall Graduation Success Rate improvement from 67 percent to 68 percent for students on the 70 bowl teams.

A total of 97 percent of schools had at least a 50 percent GSR for football teams, up 6 percent from 2010.

Also, for the second straight year 99 percent of schools received a score higher than the target 925 on the NCAA’s four-year Academic Progress Rate. Teams with a four-year APR of 925 or below face penalties including loss of scholarships.

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(AP) WASHINGTON — Melting pot or racial divide? The growth of interracial marriages is slowing among U.S.-born Hispanics and Asians. Still, blacks are substantially more likely than before to marry whites.

The number of interracial marriages in the U.S. has risen 20 percent since 2000 to about 4.5 million, according to the latest census figures. While still growing, that number is a marked drop-off from the 65 percent increase between 1990 and 2000.

About 8 percent of U.S. marriages are mixed-race, up from 7 percent in 2000.

The latest trend belies notions of the U.S. as a post-racial, assimilated society. Demographers cite a steady flow of recent immigration that has given Hispanics and Asians more ethnically similar partners to choose from while creating some social distance from whites due to cultural and language differences.

White wariness toward a rapidly growing U.S. minority population also may be contributing to racial divisions, experts said.

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