Mixed Race Studies

Into the melting pot

The Economist
2014-02-08

The rapid rise of mixed-race Britain is changing neighbourhoods—and perplexing the authorities

ZADIE SMITH, a novelist born to a black Jamaican mother and a white British father, recently recalled that when she was growing up in Willesden Green, a London district with a large immigrant population, “nothing could be more normal than a mixed-race girl”. The surprise, she said, was entering publishing and finding that people thought it unusual. Nobody could get that impression now: Britons are mixing at extraordinary speed.

The 2011 census revealed a country that is decreasingly white and British: England’s ethnic-minority population grew from 9% of the total in 2001 to 14%. But the biggest single increase was in the number of people claiming a mixed-ethnic background. This almost doubled, to around 1.2m. Among children under the age of five, 6% had a mixed background—more than belonged to any other minority group (see chart). Mixed-race children are now about as common in Britain as in America—a country with many more non-whites and a longer history of mass immigration.

As Britain’s mixed-race population swells, another group appears destined to shrink. The Labour Force Survey reveals that 48% of black Caribbean men and 34% of black Caribbean women in couples are with partners of a different ethnic group—with higher proportions still among younger cohorts. Black Caribbean children under ten years old are outnumbered two-to-one by children who are a mixture of white and black Caribbean.

Rob Ford of Manchester University points out that Caribbean folk are following an Irish pattern of integration, in that their partners are often working-class. The Irish parallel also suggests they will eventually be fully absorbed into the British population. Polls show that adults who are a mixture of white and black Caribbean tend to see themselves not so much as black, Caribbean or even as British, but rather as English—the identity of the comfortably assimilated.

Indians, who began arriving in large numbers in the 1960s, were slower to mix. They are now doing so—but along Jewish, rather than Irish, lines. For them, assimilation follows education: according to research by Raya Muttarak and Anthony Heath, Indians with degrees are far more likely to marry whites. Indians are not so much marrying into the white majority as into its suburban middle class, says Shamit Saggar at the University of Essex…

Read the entire article here.

Although mixed marriages, and mixed racial identities, are also rising rapidly in the United States, they are still infrequent by British standards: around 10% of African Americans are in mixed marriages, compared to “over 25%” for black Caribbean Britons and “over 40%” for British born black Caribbeans. Traditionally, American racial identity has been defined by the “one drop” rule: those with any black heritage are seen by others—and come to see themselves—as black. Some of America’s most prominent black figures fit this pattern: both Barack Obama and Colin Powell are children of mixed relationships between a black immigrant husband and a white American wife. Both have defined themselves as black, and married black partners. This may be changing—self-identification as mixed is rising in the United States, whose Census bureau also now officially acknowledges it—but contrary to popular perceptions America lags behind Britain in rates of mixing and, arguably, in acknowledging and discussing mixed identity.

Rob Ford, “The melting pot generation: How Britain became more relaxed on race,” Brisith Future, (December 12, 2012): 6. http://www.britishfuture.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/The-melting-pot-generation.pdf.

The melting pot generation: How Britain became more relaxed on race

British Future
2012-12-12
26 pages

Rob Ford, Lecturer in Politics
University of Manchester

Rachael Jolley, Editorial Director and Director of Communications
British Future

Sunder Katwala, Director
British Future

Binita Mehta, Intern
British Future

As the 2011 census results show an ever larger number of Britons from mixed race backgrounds, this new British Future report The Melting Pot Generation: How Britain became more relaxed about race examines how these changes might affect the way that we think about race and identity.

When the parents of Olympic champion Jessica Ennis, who are from Jamaica and Derbyshire, met in Sheffield in the 1980s, a majority of the public expressed opposition to mixed race relationships. In 2012, concern has fallen to 15%—and just one in twenty of those aged 18–24. Jessica Ennis is from a generation that worry less about race and mixing than their parents did, and who mostly see mixed Britain as the everyday norm that they grew up with.

Inside this report…

• Rob Ford of the University of Manchester traces how the rise of mixed Britain changed attitudes over recent decades;
• Rachael Jolley explores new Britain Thinks polling on what we think about race and relationships today.
• New Oxford University research reports how media coverage of Olympic medal winners Jessica Ennis and Mo Farah balanced their ethnic origins and local identities.
• Binita Mehta selects ten twenty-something stars who reflect the changing face of their generation.
• Andrew Gimson talks to young Britons about how far being mixed race mattered to their experience of growing up.
• Leading thinkers assess the opportunities and pitfalls of changing how we talk about race.
• Sunder Katwala wonders if his children’s generation will see racial identity as increasingly a matter of choice.

Read the entire report here.