Only 27% of people polled said President Obama was black. Yet on the 2010 census he identified himself as black.
The following chart shows the increase in mixed marriages over the past several decades:
According to Paul Taylor of the Pew Institute:
More than a quarter of Hispanic and Asian newlyweds “marry out,” as do one-in six-blacks and one-in-ten whites. Whites are still the largest race group, so even though they “marry out” at lower rates, they still account for 70% of all interracial marriages.
By mid-century, what will we call the children of interracial marriages? Today we aren’t even sure what to call our president. We do know this: In many cultures and societies through history, being mixed race — being a “mutt” as Obama sometimes calls himself — has meant being an outcast. In today’s America, judging by those Super Bowl ads or today’s celebrities, the norms are changing and the stigma receding.
We have all sorts of words for people of mixed heritage. Many of them are not meant to be flattering. Expressions like “high yellow” and mulatto have become increasingly unacceptable in polite society. “Mixed” is vague. President Obama has referred to himself as a mutt. That’s one of those words you can say about yourself but don’t say it about others. Hybrid isn’t much better.
Who remembers George Jefferson referring to his son’s girlfriend, the offspring of a mixed marriage, as a zebra? George was not flattering her. Some kids today think the mere mention of someone’s race is racist.
So what will be call bi-racial children in the future? We have to do better than we are doing now.
It’s less and less of an issue. Obviously. Kids adapt to the world they’re in. Of course they have less racial hangups than we do/did.
It’s long past the point where it’s hard to pigeonhole many of the people around us. The census is outdated; the concept of Affirmative Action is also outdated.
When my children started school the registration form required us to racially identify in one of 5 categories. I wrote in “Other – human”. The speech teacher asked us to bring in our child to be tested for English literacy because our caregiver spoke Spanish. Several years later there was a big fight over school boundaries for our school and the SB member published a list of children’s test scores and their race to address the question of whether a proposed boundary would affect diversification and school performance. I looked for “Other” and couldn’t find any entries. The next day I went to the school office to figure out my children’s “race” because clearly there were no longer “human”. I discovered they had been assigned “white.” I went up the chain from principal to district to Richmond to Washington. Everyone sympathized with the limitations of forcing every child from parents of different races into one of 5 categories, but said that the wheels of change turns slowly and Virginia’s prior slave state status plus the legacy of opposition to school desegregation meant the federal government wouldn’t allow race to be blank. They did promise that eventually multiple selections would be allowed.
Indeed, by middle school we were allowed to select multiple selections. I checked every box thinking that at least that way everyone in our family could share the same race. In high school were invited to all the first generation college fairs. When I asked for my child’s educational records I discovered that the school condensed my multiple selections down into one category: Hispanic. Aah, multiple selections meet lazy programmer.
To answer the question: I don’t want my children to be classified racially. There are enough other pigeonholes to place kids into (IEP, for example) that race is simply not important. I never identify another person by race. I try to eliminate racial classification from all comments about people. I realize others care about race but I hope that with more inter-marriage we can make race as insignificant in public policy as one’s national origin after a few generations of mixing.
I think that we are clumsily stumbling towards that post-racial America. I don;t think it’s going to take a few generations – I think maybe one more.
I thought the election of Mr. Obama was the dawn of post-racial America? 🙂
In all seriousness, my original thought on this, from many years ago, was that with each new generation the racial barriers fall a little bit more. I was born in 66 so my parents were in their prime (they might take issue with this) during the civil rights era. Other people being other colors never rally mattered to me. When the “boat people” showed up from SE Asia it caused an uproar in town but those kids were my friends.
We had a major upheaval when we went through the latino immigration event. It mattered to a lot of adults but my daughter never really saw those kids as any different. Another reduction in the size of the barrier!
Now I’m not so sure. As I reflect on all of this the reality is that we all arrive at these different checkpoints at different times. More troubling is that I don’t think the reduction in the “barrier” is permanent and it goes up much faster than it goes down. Progress is a fragile thing.
Very insightful, Andy. Progress is very fragile.
There also prejudice from all sides too. The TV show Glee has been addressing this issue also. It definitely isn’t just white against everyone else. One of the things I read about a year ago is that people have friends of other races at work but that seems to be the boundary for many people. The friendships don’t really transpire over to non-work time. That isn’t true of everyone but it does seem to be true for many.
I never had black kids as playmates. I didn’t live near black children and I didn’t go to school with any. I grew up in the segregated south. When I lived in NJ, there were only one or two blacks in the entire school. I knew grown ups but not kids. Many black people of my generation probably could say the same thing in reverse. As for Hispanics, I don’t think any lived in Charlottesville and I can’t remember any in Atlanta. (actually DeKalb County) There was a Japanese boy who lived up the street named Constant Yang. Who would forget a name like that.
@ed myers
Well done.
I do not, sincerely, understand the finesse of sorting children.
They should be able to enter school without ANY label.
To the best of my knowledge, the labeling is for satisfying equal opportunity. It is also used now for special subgroups to zap schools if minority test scores aren’t high enough.
Not saying its good, just is. One thing, you get to say your kid is anything you want him or her to be when enrolled.
Another case in point would be Tiger Woods–according to Wikipedia his racial make up is: His Father is mostly African American, as well as Caucasian, and possible Native American and Chinese, ancestry. His mother is of Thai, Chinese, and Dutch ancestry. He says he is “Cablinasian” (a syllabic abbreviation he coined from Caucasian, Black, American Indian, and Asian). This might well be said of all of us. If you have done any DNA checking, we all came out of Africa tens of thousands of years ago and we have hints of many “races” after that. We are forced to identify based on what we and others perceive us to be. Perhaps when we are all the color of coffee with cream we will get closer to being uni-racial but you can bet we will find another way to discriminate. How many remember Jane Elliott’s “Brown eye-Blue eye” experiment in Riceville, Iowa?
Right. The “races” actually mixed long ago, rather thoroughly.
What is “race”, scientifically? It’s a correlation of your genes to patterns associated with a particular abstract “race” category … nobody’s a match all the way. You are compared against an abstraction of what a “caucasian” or other race is, based on the way a particular genome appears to be for the majority of “caucasians”. But we all have a genetic jumble inside of us from the “race” mixing that’s occurred through human history.
Too scientific, Rick. What was it to people before the days of genes and DNA? Seems like it was more “other” than anything else.
Skin colors and tones and different physical characteristics.
I am thinking of Clan of the Cave Bear and the emergence of modern man.
I think what Rick has said, I said in a simpler way. We are all polygots, but we are what people perceive us to be or we self-identify with whatever group we feel most comfortable around.
I’ve told the story before about my granddaughter who is a mixed race person. When she was much younger, someone asked her if she was black or white, to which she replied, “I don’t know about that, I’m just Winona.”
My ethnic profile:
Africa < 1%
Trace Regions< 1%
Asia < 1%
Trace Regions< 1%
Europe 96%
Great Britain 44%
Ireland 29%
Europe West 11%
Scandinavia 5%
Trace Regions 7%
Pacific Islander < 1%
Trace Regions< 1%
West Asia 1%
Trace Regions 1%
Interesting. If I may ask, why did you get that test done? I’d be interested to know mine, but probably wouldn’t pay to do so.
Most people’s profiles are significantly more jumbled up than that.
Wouldn’t be surprised at anything mine said … I appear “white” and have lineage from European countries but have heard rumors that someone in my family tree “passed” from “black” or “native american” about 100 years ago. It’s less obvious with me than with Bob Barr.
I rode in on my brother’s coattails. Actually it didnt make a lot of sense to me. I think he did the national geographic test.
“What was it to people before the days of genes and DNA? ”
Well the roots of it are in tribes. Different tribes walked the Earth on different continents and each evolved towards their environment, while rarely crossing continents or mixing. So Europeans evolved lighter skin, so that the skin could absorb Vitamin D more easily, given that there was less sunlight in abundance. Those in the Middle East did something similar I presume for some reason, though not as far into light skin.
There is presumably some evolutionary reason for physical characteristics associated with race – big or small lips or noses, wider or smaller larynxes for different tones in voice, straight or kinky hair, etc. I don’t know what they are offhand but I’m sure that’s how they came about. Googling on hair … it presumably is because straight hair warms quicker. better in a hot climate for hair to retain moisture, better in a cold one to dry quickly.
And then the physical characteristics got associated with the extreme cultural bias that was in effect when these cultures started to mingle, and there’s the concept of race in vogue up to the start of our lives. And now we can all traverse continents and intermingle – legal in Virgina since the 1960’s! – and the idea of categorizing people is starting to break down.
@ Rick–I did it to find out more about who I am, particularly regarding the paternal side of my family that I know almost nothing about. Because my father’s family was not very religious and because birth records were spotty at best, there simply are no records I can find. Particularly so since I have a very common name. I plan to do some more testing for that very reason and perhaps find relatives I suspect I may have but have never been able to find. Call me curious I guess.
George, 2 suggestions. 1. Go with the Mormons. Their records are the best in the world. (I don’t particularly approve of why they do it but their records are invaluable.)
2. Wolverine is an expert genealogist from what I am told. Ask him for his help. I found out all sorts of information on my paternal history from a man online who I haven’t heard from in a long time. I wish he would check in.
TheMormon information is only as good as the input. Have been there many times and have found their information to be of little value.
“What will we call the children by mid-century?”
Presumably “children”.