Inter-racial marriage should not be a ticket to success, nor should it be something discouraged. Ideally, it should have no racial connotations and simply reflect the fact that two people love one another, share common values, and have compatible dreams and so want to spend their lives together.

My wife is Chinese and from Indonesia (not China). I do think I won the lottery with her, but it has nothing to do with her skin color and everything to do with who she is as a person. We have been together for over 35 years and it's still great. That is all you can hope for from a marriage.

This is my second marriage. My first was to an American white woman. I learned a lot about marriage including what was important and not important in that first marriage.

The most important things about who you marry is that you share values and compatible dreams. Love is not unimportant, but while most people love the person they marry, that does not prevent 50% of them from divorcing down the road.

Now the interesting thing about values and dreams is that for many people they are not skin color dependent. My dream was to have someone I enjoyed doing things with and living with. Someone who shared by religious beliefs and my family values. Someone who loved me for me and wanted to share a life with me. None of those things are skin color dependent.

I do think the fact that my wife was an immigrant was a positive. My mom was an immigrant and whether immigrants come from Europe or Asia, they bring with them some common family values that are less common in Americans. Funny, her values not only clicked with me, but after my mom met her over a weekend, she said if you don't marry her, you are crazy.

In addition, I was exposed to different cultures growing up and so having a wife that loves to travel and eat a wide array of ethnic cuisine is a huge plus. I know people that don't eat anything other than 1960s style American food (boring for me, but it works for them).

Our children were raised in the church. That was important to me. I don't judge how others raise their children, but my faith is important to me. When I first met my wife, I thought this will never work with her from Asia. I thought her faith and mine would be incompatible, turns out she had almost the same beliefs as me, since her native country was Indonesia and many Chinese there are Reformed Protestants like me (her country was a Dutch colony and so the Reformed Protestant faith is pretty common among ethnic Chinese).

My point is finding a partner to share your life with means finding points of commonality on things that are important to you. Skin color, nationality, ethnicity, and other superficial external things simply were not important to me. My wife is very talented and assertive, that can be a turn off among the men in her country. I loved it about her, I was no looking for someone who was a co-dependent.

So, to your headline, if a black woman marrying a white man is doing so for the superficial external things like his skin color, she is likely to end up disappointed. But a black woman marrying a white man because they share important dreams and values is likely to end up very happy.

I have met a number of educated successful black women, who have married white men over the years, that said, they did not go looking for white men, but there simply were not enough black men, who shared their values and dreams.

I am not a psychologist, but that seems to be a problem not just with respect to black women, but women in general. A number of studies suggest that as women have been more educated and successful, the number of men they are willing to consider as partners falls short leaving many to decide not to marry.

So, my advice is women cast as wide a net as possible if they want the chance to meet "the jackpot". Don't let skin color limit your choices and that applies to me also.