Multiracial Residents Are Changing the Face of the USPosted in Articles, Census/Demographics, Media Archive, United States on 2022-05-19 20:16Z by Steven |
Multiracial Residents Are Changing the Face of the US
Stateline
Pew Charitable Trusts
2022-05-13
Tim Henderson, Staff Writer
John Minchillo / The Associated Press
The number of Americans who identified as more than one race nearly doubled to 13.5 million people between 2010 and 2020, and did double or more in 34 states and the District of Columbia, a Stateline analysis of census figures shows.
To some observers, the increase in the number of Americans identifying as more than one race shows that barriers are breaking down. But the increase also may reflect changes to census questions designed to tease out the heritage of multiracial people.
The increases contributed to a first-ever decline in the population identifying solely as non-Hispanic White. The number of people identifying as White who also identified as Hispanic or another race did grow, however.
“It’s not unreasonable to imagine that if people keep intermarrying, if they define themselves as White and they are accepted as White, the definition of White in 2052 could be much different than it is in 2022,” said Ellis Monk, an associate sociology professor at Harvard University who has studied the way official racial categories can be misleading.
But Monk emphasized that he and other people with dark skin or other distinctive racial features continue to face discrimination and reduced opportunities, even if they identify as more than one race. Monk is Black, and like most African Americans he has White forebears, but he doesn’t consider himself to be biracial…
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