INTERRACIAL MARRIAGE UPDATE: Boy, the email’s just pouring in on this one. Charles Oliver responds to an earlier emailer:

The writer who said he can’t think of any famous couples consisting of a white man and a black woman has to be blind or he just refuses to see things that don’t fit his worldview.: David Bowie-Iman, Diahann Carroll-Vic Damone, Lena Horne-Lennie Hayton, William Cohen-Janet Langhart, Mariah Carey-Tommy Mottola, Robert DeNiro and every woman he’s has every dated, Naomi Campbell and most of the men she has dated. Matthew McCougnehey-Janet Jackson, Robin Givens-Svetozar Marinkovic, Roxie Roker-sy Krazitz (she was on The Jeffersons and they are the parents of Lenny Kravitz), Whoopi Goldberg and Ted Danson and Frank Langella, Diana Ross-Gene Simmons (I believe both of her husbands were white as well), Traci (first black on Baywatch) Bingham and her husband.

There’s certainly a lot more. Those are just the ones I thought of off the top of my head.

Yeah, though I have a few quibbles: David Bowie (as another reader noted) might plausibly be considered a “white alien” — and as for Mariah Carey, well, she’s black only by courtesy of a rather strict application of the “one drop” rule. Which brings me to a story:

My brother, who looks like a taller, skinnier version of me, was once asked by a Nigerian on a bus in Nigeria if he was black. Uh, no, my brother replied, looking surprised. Well, the Nigerian replied, we can’t tell — all these Americans come over here and say they’re black, but they look white to us.