Mixed Race Studies

An American Puzzle: Fitting Race in a Box

The New York Times
2023-10-16

K.K. Rebecca Lai and Jennifer Medina

Census categories for race and ethnicity have shaped how the nation sees itself. Here’s how they have changed over the last 230 years.

Since 1790, the decennial census has played a crucial role in creating and reshaping the ever-changing views of racial and ethnic identity in the United States.

Over the centuries, the census has evolved from one that specified broad categories — primarily “free white” people and “slaves” — to one that attempts to encapsulate the country’s increasingly complex demographics. The latest adaptation proposed by the Biden administration in January seeks to allow even more race and ethnicity options for people to describe themselves than the 2020 census did.

If approved, the proposed overhaul would most likely be adopted across all surveys in the country about health, education and the economy. Here’s what the next census could look like…

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‘We Are Not Unusual Anymore’: 50 Years of Mixed-Race Marriage in U.S.

The New York Times
2017-06-11

Jennifer Medina, National Correspondent
Los Angeles, California

Rosina and Leon Watson last week in St. Elizabeth Catholic Church in Oakland, Calif. They were married in the church in 1950, 17 years before Loving v. Virginia, the United States Supreme Court case allowing interracial marriage. Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times

OAKLAND, Calif. — For their first date, in 1949, Leon Watson and Rosina Rodriquez headed to the movie theater. But each entered separately. First went Ms. Rodriquez, a fair-skinned woman who traces her roots to Mexico. Mr. Watson, who is black, waited several minutes before going in and sitting next to her.

“We always did it,” Mr. Watson said one recent afternoon. “They looked at you like you were in a zoo. We just held our heads high and kept going. If we knew there would be a problem, we stayed away from it.”

When they married in Oakland in 1950, mixed-race marriage had just become legal in California, the result of a lawsuit that reached the State Supreme Court. They are among the oldest living interracial couples legally married in the United States. It would be nearly two decades before all couples like them across the country were allowed to marry.

On Monday, they will mark the 50th anniversary of Loving v. Virginia, the United States Supreme Court case that overturned antimiscegenation laws nationwide. Mildred and Richard Loving, a black woman and a white man, had been sentenced to a year in a Virginia prison for marrying each other. The case would serve as a basis for the Supreme Court decision allowing same-sex marriage…

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Garcetti, New Los Angeles Mayor, Reflects Changing City

The New York Times
2013-10-07

Jennifer Medina

LOS ANGELES — He is Jewish. He is Latino. He can break dance and play jazz piano. He speaks nearly impeccable Spanish. He has talked longingly about growing his own vegetables and maybe even raising his own chickens. He lives on this city’s hip east side.

Three months into office, Mayor Eric Garcetti seems to embody a host of ethnic, ideological and cultural strains that are transforming Los Angeles. At the same time, he is avoiding any temptation of red carpet glamour here, a striking change from his predecessor, Antonio Villaraigosa, who came in as mayor riding a powerful wave of popularity but left with decidedly less regard.

“In some ways everything I have done has prepared me for this job,” Mr. Garcetti said recently in his still mostly barren City Hall office, which he plans to decorate with local historical memorabilia. “Governing Los Angeles is all about cultural literacy — nobody can be completely literate across the board here, but if you don’t have some understanding of many of those cultures, you will be left behind.”…

…But while many of the city’s most powerful Latino politicians, including Mr. Villaraigosa, were raised in such immigrant enclaves, Mr. Garcetti grew up in the well-heeled San Fernando Valley. Early in the campaign, he faced pointed comments from other elected officials, including the speaker of the State Assembly, that questioned his Latino credentials. Even now, without the pressure of campaigning, he is not given to wax philosophical about his identity. “There was all this craziness about, ‘What are you?’ ” he said. “I am what I am, as Popeye would say. I think we are all tired of that conversation.”…

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