A New Pew report out shows a record one in seven marriages today is interracial or interethnic.

Coming not long after reports showing that the US is becoming a multi cultural society, Friday's report from Pew Research shows a record 14.6% of all new marriages in the United States in 2008 were between spouses of a different race or ethnicity from one another. This includes marriages between a Hispanic and non-Hispanic as well as marriages between spouses of different races -- be they white, black, Asian, American Indian or those who identify as being of multiple races or "some other" race.

The change has come because of the weakening of long standing cultural taboos, primarily because of the wave of Hispanic and Asian immigrants settling in the US.

Today's attitudes and behaviors regarding intermarriage represent a sharp break from the not-too-distant past. For most of this nation's history, a majority of states had laws that made it illegal for whites and nonwhites to marry. Many states repealed these laws after World War II

Although the laws changed, it's taken decades for attitudes to change. As recent as 1987, just 48% of people thought it was OK for blacks and whites to date each other, by 2009, that had grown to 83%