Mixed Race Studies

Defining multiracial citizens

The Boston Globe
2011-06-12

Brittany Danielson, Globe Correspondent

Evolving ideas about identity mean mixed-race people don’t have to settle for ‘other’

n a suburban Massachusetts classroom in 1985, a 7-year-old Chris Olds raised his hand to grab his teacher’s attention; he wasn’t sure which bubble to fill in for race on a standardized test.

“I don’t know what I am,’’ he told the teacher, while other students in the class laughed in the background.

Olds — who has white, black, and Native American roots — wanted to fill in more than one bubble, but was told to pick one. “The problem wasn’t that I didn’t know what I am,’’ said Olds, who is now a 33-year-old Cambridge resident. “The problem was that I knew exactly what I am, but that I wasn’t presented with an option for it.’’

Today, millions of multiracial US citizens like Olds have an option when defining their race through the census, which has helped to paint a clearer picture of one of the country’s fastest growing demographic groups. Since 2000, when people were first allowed to check more than one box when describing their races on census forms, the multiracial population has increased by about 35 percent to 9 million in 2010, representing 2.9 percent of the overall population.

How the nation defines and counts the multiracial population has evolved. Between 1850 and 1920, the census included a range of categories for individuals of black and white parentage — which included terms like “mulatto,’’ “quadroon,’’ and “octoroon’’ to describe percentages of black ancestry. That ended by 1930, when those classifications gave way to the “one drop rule,’’ which stated that any traceable minority heritage — even one drop of blood — made that person, by default, a minority…

…John Tawa, a doctoral student at University of Massachusetts Boston who teaches a course about the multiracial experience and is himself of Japanese and European heritage, said multiracial people do have some positive experiences. For example, he said they have an ability to relate in a variety of racial contexts. But multiracial US citizens also can feel marginalized by the racial groups in which they are members, can be constantly questioned about their racial identity, and can sometimes be misidentified by others, he said.

“Multiracial people get used as a marker of being in a postracial society. People say soon everyone will be the same, so we don’t need to pay attention to racism anymore,’’ Tawa said. “That kind of ideology can obscure the reality of racism today, and the challenges that multiracial people face.’’…

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