Mixed Race Studies

Multiracial no longer boxed in by the Census

USA Today
2010-03-02

Haya El Nasser

Jennifer Harvey was raised by her white mother and white stepfather in what she calls “a Caucasian world.” Harvey never met her father but she knew he was black and Cuban. That made her Hispanic, white and black.

“Blacks think I’m black,” she says. “Hispanics think I’m Hispanic. Honestly, I don’t identify with either bucket wholeheartedly — Caucasian, black or Hispanic.”…

…When Barack Obama was elected the nation’s first black president in 2008, some academics and political analysts suggested the watershed event could represent the dawning of a post-racial era in a land that has struggled over race relations for four centuries.

At the same time, growing ethnic and racial diversity fueled by record immigration and rates of interracial marriages have made the USA’s demographics far more complex. By 2050, there will be no racial or ethnic majority as the share of non-Hispanic whites slips below 50%, according to Census projections.

“It’s showing that tomorrow’s children and their children will in fact be multiracial, leading to a potential post-racial society,” says William Frey, demographer at the Brookings Institution.

“The issue isn’t just multirace,” says Census historian Margo Anderson, professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. “It’s the blurring of the very traditional black vs. white. Categories that held until about 1980 are shifting in large numbers. … The clarity is breaking down.”…

…Why does the government ask about race and ethnicity?

Federal agencies need the information to monitor compliance with anti-discrimination laws such as the Voting Right Act and the Civil Rights Act, fair employment practices and affirmative action mandates…

…”For some, the multirace response option represented an opportunity to acknowledge both parents,” says Roderick Harrison, a demographer at Howard University and the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington. “But for a lot of others, it’s like, ‘OK, are you going to turn your back on the rest of us?’ … A lot of the racial and ethnic politics of the Census are that we want the biggest numbers possible for our groups.”..

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Mixed Race Marriages

The Milken Institute Review
Second Quarter 2009

William “Bill” H. Frey, Senior Fellow in Demography/Senior Fellow in Metropolitan Policy
Milken Institute
Brookings Institution in Washington

While Barack Obama’s election was a signal event for many reasons, the fact that Americans chose someone of mixed race isn’t quite as startling as it first appears. New Census data show that 7.7 percent of marriages in 2007 were of mixed race – nearly twice as many as in 1990. The ongoing infusion of immigrants combined with more tolerant public attitudes have taken us a long way since 1967, when the Supreme Court finally barred race-based restrictions on marriage…

…Variance across states is striking. Hawaii, where three in 10 marriages are interracial, leads; New Mexico and other intermountain West states follow. At the other end of the spectrum: Mississippi, along with Vermont and Maine – two states with very small minority populations. Note, however, that many of the states with a low incidence of intermarriage are now experiencing surges, suggesting that intermarriage is leaping regional barriers…

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