Cheerios ad is a reminder of how far we haven't come

By now, you've heard about the brouhaha over that Cheerios commercial depicting a mixed-race family.

In the ad, a little biracial girl asks her white mother about the health benefits of Cheerios. After her mother assures her that Cheerios are good for the heart, the daughter dumps a box of cereal on the chest of her sleeping dad. He happens to be a dark-skinned black male, which is what has folks worked up.

After General Mills placed the commercial on YouTube, the comments were so disgusting that officials were forced to disable them.

Excuse me while I check my time machine to make sure we haven't slipped back to 1955....

It may make people uncomfortable, but a whole lot of families look like the one in that Cheerios commercial. Interracial marriage is on the rise. Roughly, 15 percent of all marriages are between mixed-race couples. That's nearly double what it was in 1980, according to Pew Research.

Still, ads depicting mixed-race families such as the one in the Cheerios commercial aren't that common. Now, we're reminded as to why that is.

UPDATE: General Mills stands by the ad and has no plans to pull it.  Camille Gibson, vice president of marketing for Cheerios, earlier this week told Gawker in a statement, "Consumers have responded positively to our new Cheerios ad. At Cheerios, we know there are many kinds of families and we celebrate them all."