{"id":22732,"date":"2012-04-27T04:30:31","date_gmt":"2012-04-27T04:30:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=22732"},"modified":"2014-09-19T20:46:58","modified_gmt":"2014-09-19T20:46:58","slug":"more-children-identify-as-%e2%80%98biracial%e2%80%99-just-a-choice-or-a-good-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=22732","title":{"rendered":"More children identify as \u2018biracial\u2019: just a choice or a good thing?"},"content":{"rendered":"

More children identify as \u2018biracial\u2019: just a choice or a good thing?<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Washington Post<\/a>
\n2012-04-26<\/p>\n

Mary C. Curtis<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s been happening for a while \u2014 census data show it. The number of mixed-race babies has quickly grown in the last decade, a trend that\u2019s no surprise in an increasingly diverse country. Men and women are choosing partners of different races and identifying their children using the array of hyphenated options now available on forms that still ask the question.<\/p>\n

More than 7 percent of the 3.5 million children born in the year before the 2010 Census were of two or more races, up from 5 percent a decade earlier, the Washington Post<\/em> reports<\/a>. In the story, William H. Frey<\/a>, a Brookings Institution demographer who analyzed the information, said, \u201cI think people are more comfortable in identifying themselves, and their children, as mixed race.\u201d He added, \u201cIt\u2019s much more socially acceptable, more mainstream, to say, \u2018That\u2019s what we want to identify them as.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

What is come down to is choice, and if it remained just that, it would be fine. But Frey goes on to assign value to this particular choice. \u201cThis is a huge leap,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is a ray of hope that we\u2019re finally moving into an era where this very sharp black-white divide is breaking apart.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s where he makes a leap, that it\u2019s a matter of, well, black and white. Identifying as biracial is a choice now, but does it have to be better? Is Tiger Woods\u2019<\/a> \u201cCablinasian\u201d option more enlightened than Halle Berry\u2019s<\/a> decision to self-identify as black?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Frey isn\u2019t the only one who judges the trend as a \u201cray of hope,\u201d a necessary step forward in relationships between races. When President Barack Obama<\/a> checked off one race, black, on his census form<\/a>, he was criticized by some, accused of somehow denying his white mother. It may have marked the first time such indignation over the issue reached a fever pitch, though if it were Barack the bank robber I hardly think whites would be clamoring to claim him.<\/p>\n

At the time, a white woman married to a black man told me she was angry and disappointed for her two children\u2019s sake.<\/a> \u201cHe’s president. He could have been an example,” she told me. That we were walking through a Charlotte science museum exhibit \u201cRace: Are We So Different?\u201d that proved the many ways humans are more alike than any other species made our discussion both fraught and beside the point. Since she wanted freedom to choose, how could she criticize the president for his? I asked her. He would certainly know his motives better than a stranger whose reaction might have more to do with her own…<\/p>\n

…My grown-up son fills out his own census form now, a black man with a white father and a special relationship with a white grandmother he loves with all his heart. It\u2019s not confusing at all…<\/strong><\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More children identify as \u2018biracial\u2019: just a choice or a good thing? The Washington Post 2012-04-26 Mary C. Curtis It\u2019s been happening for a while \u2014 census data show it. The number of mixed-race babies has quickly grown in the last decade, a trend that\u2019s no surprise in an increasingly diverse country. Men and women […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,63,33,8,20],"tags":[6165,6166,2875,2581,974,973],"class_list":["post-22732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-barack-obama","category-census","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-mary-c-curtis","tag-mary-curtis","tag-the-washington-post","tag-washington-post","tag-william-frey","tag-william-h-frey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22732\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}