The folks at the New York Times comment on the phenomenon – but they don’t seem to really get to the real change that has happened in this part of the country.

For generations here in the deepest South, there had been a great taboo: publicly crossing the color line for love. Less than 45 years ago, marriage between blacks and whites was illegal, and it has been frowned upon for much of the time since. * * *

“Racial attitudes are changing,” said Marvin King, a professor of political science at the University of Mississippi who is black, married to a white woman, and the father of a 2-year-old biracial daughter. “Day in, day out, there is certainly not the hostility there was years ago, and I think you see that in that there are more interracial relationships, and people don’t fear those relationships. They don’t have to hide those relationships anymore.”

What is it that has happened in the time since law and custom forbade the mixing of races? What change occurred in the South that might account for the difference in attitude?

Might I suggest that it is the rise of a philosophical and political point of view that embraces racial equality and civil rights for all? You know – the once solidly Democrat South became the bastion of REPUBLICANISM.

After all, it was the GOP that freed the slaves. It was the GOP that pushed for anti-lynching and civil rights laws. It was the GOP that supported inclusion of racial minorities as equals, not as wards of the state. Is it any wonder that as the GOP became the party of the South, that attitude and heritage of tolerance came with it?