{"id":41557,"date":"2015-06-25T20:38:10","date_gmt":"2015-06-25T20:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=41557"},"modified":"2015-06-25T20:38:10","modified_gmt":"2015-06-25T20:38:10","slug":"as-a-kid-i-was-biracial-and-black-today-im-black-and-biracial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=41557","title":{"rendered":"As a kid, I was biracial (and black). Today, I\u2019m black (and biracial)."},"content":{"rendered":"

As a kid, I was biracial (and black). Today, I\u2019m black (and biracial).<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The Washington Post<\/a>
\n2015-06-24<\/p>\n

Kristal Brent Zook<\/strong><\/a>, Professor of Journalism, Media Studies, and Public Relations
\nHofstra University, Hempstead, New York<\/em><\/p>\n

The box we check on census forms is only half the story.<\/em><\/p>\n

A recent Pew study, \u201cMultiracial in America: Proud, Diverse and Growing in Numbers<\/a>,\u201d has unleashed a flurry of new commentary about a group that\u2019s now growing at a rate three times as fast as the population as a whole. Pew says its numbers have been seriously underestimated by the U.S. Census, which only began offering a box for those of more than one race in 2000. In 2010, those who checked it were 2.9 percent of the population, but Pew now places the number as high as 6.9 percent, with a serious caveat: Fully 61 percent of those with a mixed racial background don\u2019t consider themselves to be part of this \u201cmixed race or multiracial group.\u201d<\/p>\n

I can relate.<\/p>\n

Although my mother is African American and my father is Caucasian \u2014 which I\u2019ve readily acknowledged to anyone who wants to know \u2014 the census box I\u2019ve always chosen is African American. To officially consider myself \u201cmultiracial\u201d rather than black would be a complicated and, for me, uncomfortable undertaking, fraught with emotional, social, political and cultural minefields.<\/p>\n

The box we check, after all, is only half the story. What struck me most about the Pew study was what it called an \u201cadded layer of complexity.\u201d No matter which box one chooses, the study found that \u201cracial identity can be fluid and may change over the course of one\u2019s life, or even from one situation to another. About three in ten adults with a multiracial background say they have changed the way they describe their race over the years, it went on to note, \u201cwith some saying they once thought of themselves as only one race and now think of themselves as more than one race, and others saying just the opposite.\u201d<\/p>\n

Once again, I can relate…<\/p>\n

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

As a kid, I was biracial (and black). Today, I\u2019m black (and biracial). The Washington Post 2015-06-24 Kristal Brent Zook, Professor of Journalism, Media Studies, and Public Relations Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York The box we check on census forms is only half the story. A recent Pew study, \u201cMultiracial in America: Proud, Diverse and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,395,33,8,20],"tags":[20320,2875,2581],"class_list":["post-41557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-autobiography","category-census","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-kristal-brent-zook","tag-the-washington-post","tag-washington-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41557","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=41557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41557\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}