Mixing It Up: Students, professors reflect on the definition of mixed race in modern societyPosted in Articles, Campus Life, Census/Demographics, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, United States on 2017-01-08 02:23Z by Steven |
Mixing It Up: Students, professors reflect on the definition of mixed race in modern society
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Carmel High School, Carmel, Indiana
2016-12-12
Allison Li, Calendar/Beats Editor, Feature Reporter
Junior Kiki Koniaris is Korean, Pennsylvanian Dutch and Grecian. Despite being of mixed race, Koniaris said she believes race should not define a person.
“I feel like (how you define yourself) should be based off of personal attributes in general,” Koniaris said. “Because if you start defining everyone by race, then at a certain point, it becomes this idea that we separate ourselves based on race, and I think history has shown us that that’s not the best idea. But with that being said, sometimes you want to say, ‘I’m different from everyone else because this is how my culture worked out.’”
But while Koniaris said race shouldn’t define people, the very recognition of people of mixed races is still relatively new in this country. In the 1967 Loving v. Virginia case, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down previous laws prohibiting interracial marriage. In 2000, the U.S. Census Bureau first allowed people to identify themselves. With those statistics in mind, in the just last 50 years, the population of people of mixed races has increased exponentially. According to a 2015 Pew Research study, between 2000 and 2010, the number of white and black biracial Americans has more than doubled, while people of white and Asian backgrounds have increased by 87 percent.
This inclusion of mixed races has led to societal changes, as well as some discomfort form those who discuss those changes. According to Matthew Hayes, assistant professor of political science at IU, when identifying people of mixed race, there has been a general accompaniment of ‘politically correct’ terminologies. That language comes both from those who are not of mixed backgrounds, as well as from those who are…
Read the article here.