Multiracial and Proud: Meet the Americans Who Check More Than One Box

Posted in Articles, Census/Demographics, Media Archive, United States on 2015-09-11 01:12Z by Steven

Multiracial and Proud: Meet the Americans Who Check More Than One Box

The Daily Good
2015-09-10

Demetria Irwin

Millennials are the largest, most educated, and most diverse generation to date: 58 percent are white, 21 percent are Hispanic, 14 percent are Black, and 6 percent identify as Asian/Pacific Islander. They’re also the most multiracial. The median age of multiracial Americans is 19, compared with 38 for single-race Americans.

Yet, America’s most open-minded generation isn’t the only one whose racial makeup is in a state of transformation. Since the Census Bureau first started allowing people to check multiple boxes for race in the year 2000, the number of Americans who self-identify as being of two or more races has doubled. America’s multiracial population is growing at a rate three times faster than the overall population, according to a Pew Research Center study released this summer. The study also found that 60 percent of multiracial Americans are “proud of their heritage.”

Yet nearly as many—55 percent—have also admitted to being the subject of racial slurs or jokes. Nearly a quarter have expressed annoyance that people make assumptions about them based on their presumed ethnicity. Human beings are much more complicated than any checklist or survey could capture. What is it really like being multiracial in America today?…

Read the entire article here.

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