Mixed Race Studies

Blurring the “Color-Line”?: Reflections on Interracial and Multiracial America

49th Parallel: An Interdisciplinary Journal of North American Studies
Issue 6: Special Issue – Race and Ethnicity (Fall 2000)
ISSN: 1753-5794

Yasuhiro Katagiri, Ph.D., Associate Professor of American History and Government,
Tokai University, Kanagawa, Japan

“[N]o matter how we articulate this [case] [and] no matter which theory of the due process clause . . . we attach to it, no one can articulate it better than Richard Loving, when he said to me: ‘Mr. Cohen, tell the Court I love my wife, and it is just unfair that I can’t live with her in Virginia.’” —Bernard S. Cohen, Counsel for Appellants, Oral Argument, Loving v. Virginia, United States Supreme Court, April 10, 1967

“We basically accept that there are three races–Caucasians, Negroes and Orientals.  Caucasians can’t date Orientals, Orientals can’t date Caucasians, and neither of them can date Negroes.” —Bob Jones III, President, Bob Jones University

On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr., eloquently delivered his “dream” to the American people on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.  “I have a dream,” King’s voice reverberated to “let freedom ring” from the nation’s capital, “that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”  However, in the years since one of America’s foremost civil rights crusaders spoke these noble words during the March on Washington, divisions between races have refused to go away, and the American society, as if to punctuate the words “E Pluribus” rather than the word “Unum,” still splinters into “disparate factions” divided by race and ethnicity.

Almost four decades after his father challenged the conscience of America, Martin Luther King III stood before the Lincoln Memorial on a hot and steamy day in August 2000.  Speaking before several thousand people at a rally billed as  “Redeem the Dream,” which was organized to protest police brutality and its racial profiling, King—one of those “four little children”—told the gathered crowd: “I dare you to fulfill the dream.”  Though race of course has something to do with “biological makeup,” as Jon M. Spencer argues in his book on what he terms America’s “mixed-race movement,” it also is “a sociopolitical construct,”  which “was created and has been maintained and modified by the powerful” to perpetuate themselves as a privileged group.  And the United States, in this regard, has been no stranger.

But on the verge of a new millennium, while the underpinnings of the nation’s affirmative action seem to be somewhat crumbling, an accelerating social trend—the increase of interracial marriages and the growing number of multiracial citizens—is beginning to engulf American society, which might well contribute to bringing about a long-hoped-for “color-blind” society.  And this  important, but heretofore imperceptible, social and demographic trend has been in evidence during the 2000 presidential election year, which is also a decennial census-taking year in the United States.  As an illustration, the embracement of, or at least the recognition of, the nation’s multiracial citizens could be manifestly observed during the national convention of the Republican Party, which has been recognized for some time as the party of, by, and for “the powerful.”  One of the keynote speakers on the final day of the Philadelphia convention was Republican Nominee George W. Bush’s nephew—George P. Bush.  He is not only the son of Florida Governor Jeb Bush and a descendant of a new political dynasty, but also the son of Columba, his Mexican-born mother.  “I am an American, but like many, I come from a diverse background,”  the youth chairman of the Republican National Convention proudly proclaimed, “[a]nd I respect leaders who respect my [multiracial and multicultural] heritage.”…

Read the entire article here.