Notes From D.R. | Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene

Almost a year into their marriage, no one really cares that Seal and Heidi Klum are husband and wife. And that’s a good thing.

After a year of dating, the British singer and the German model/actress were joined in holy matrimony last May; Klum was pregnant with a child fathered by Seal at the time. (Seal had already taken over paternal duties for Klum’s first child, Leni.) Since their marriage, Seal and Klum have become just another celebrity couple. They don’t receive the sort of sensationalistic coverage accorded Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes or Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Their relationship is not depicted as some sort of exotic freakshow. They are simply, for all intents and purposes, two married celebrities, nothing more and nothing less.

This is nothing short of amazing, and demonstrates how deeply racial attitudes have changed over the decades.

It’s hard to believe that only fifty years ago, Sammy Davis Jr. was besieged by death threats–some from the Mafia!–because he dated Kim Novak and later married May Britt. The Hays Production Code forbade depictions of interracial relationships in Hollywood movies. Alan Freed’s variety show was famously canceled in 1957 after numerous complaints about singer Frankie Lymon being shown dancing with a white female teenager during a broadcast. In a still-shocking 1955 incident, a fourteen-year-old black teenager, Emmett Till, was beaten to death in Mississippi after supposedly whistling at a white cashier in a convenience store.

Now, five decades later, Seal marries Heidi Klum…and no one bats an eye. Same with David Bowie and Iman.

We often don’t think about how much things have fundamentally changed when it comes to race, so focused are we on present-day race-related problems that seem so stubborn. It’s as if we’ve been conditioned to always see the race-relations glass as near-empty, instead of half-full with more water being poured in.

The fact that the Seal-Klum marriage did not face any racial controversy of significance is evidence that, while race relations are far from harmonious in the 2000s, they are also far from horrendous. I’d say that’s something to sing about.