Amid all the scrutiny that Malia Obama has been subjected to in her first months at Harvard University, nothing has attracted as much press attention as her being snapped by eager paparazzi kissing a white guy.

The guy—identified by enterprising journalists as 19-year-old Rory Farquharson—is a British-born Harvard sophomore. The kiss, outside last week’s Harvard-Yale football game, suggests that the 19-year-old former first daughter is boldly asserting her independence after eight sheltered years in the White House.

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Among all demographics, African American women are the least likely to date outside their race—with barely 12% marrying non-black spouses. The reasons behind this trend are as disturbing as they are depressing. For one thing, black women are America’s least-desired ethnic group by men of all races, according to ongoing research by dating site OK Cupid. On a community level, explained Stanford law professor Ralph Richard Banks in his book Is Marriage for White People?, black women often face a type of pressure to marry within the race that white women simply do not experience.

“There is still enormous social pressure on black women to only marry black men—to ‘sustain’ the race and build strong black families,” Banks told me in an interview in 2011. “In short, no matter the personal cost,” Banks said, “black women are encouraged to marry ‘down’ before they marry ‘out.’”