Multiracial American

Multiracial Americans, US residents who identify themselves as of "two or more races", were numbered at around 9 million, or 2.9% of the population, in the census of 2010. However there is considerable evidence that the real number is far higher. Prior to the mid-20th century many people hid their multiracial heritage. Consequently many Americans today are multi-racial without knowing it.

Since the 1967 Supreme Court decision that deemed anti-miscegenation laws unconstitutional, there has been a considerable increase in the number of interracial couples and mixed-race children. Until 1989, children continued to be classified as belonging to the race of the non-white parent, reflecting historical hypodescent laws. Since the 1980s, the United States has had a growing multiracial identity movement, culminating in the 2000 census, which for the first time presented the opportunity to self-identify as multiracial, and the election of Barack Obama, the first President of the United States with an acknowledged multiracial background, in November 2008.

Identity

Given the variety of the familial and general social environments in which multiracial children are raised, along with the diversity of their appearance (vis-a-vis their component races and their family members), it can be difficult to make generalizations about multiracial children's challenges or opportunities.

The racial social identity of children and that of their parents in the same multiracial family may vary or be the same. Some multiracial children feel pressure from various sources to "choose" or to assimilate into a single racial identity, while others whose identity or lifestyle is perceived to be closer to some of their component races than others may feel pressure not to abandon one or more of their ethnicities. Many other have chosen to create a whole new type of racial category as in the case of Tiger Woods, who has claimed this he is not just an African American but "Cablinasian," a mixture of Caucasian, African American, Native American, and Asian.

Still other children grow up without race being a significant issue in their lives.

eing multiracial can still be problematic. Most constructions of race in America revolve around a peculiar institution known as the 'one-drop rule' ... The one-drop conceit shapes both racism—creating an arbitrary 'caste'—and the collective response against it. To identify as multiracial is to challenge this logic, and consequently, to fall outside both camps.

[M]any monoracials do view a multiracial identity as a choice that denies loyalty to the oppressed racial group. We can see this issue enacted currently over the debate of the U.S. census to include a multiracial category— some oppressed monoracial groups believe this category would decrease their numbers and 'benefits.

Many students who called themselves 'half-Asian/Black/etc.' came to college in search of cultural knowledge but found themselves unwelcome in groups of peers that were 'whole' ethnicities.' (Renn, 1998) She found that as a result of this exclusion on campuses designed to accommodate monoracial individuals, many multiracial students expressed the need to create and maintain a self-identified multiracial community on campus. This is due in part to the fact that multiracial people may identify more with each other, because "they share the experience of navigating campus life as multiracial people," (Renn, 1998) than with their own ethnic groups. This is true in spite of the fact that these multiracial individuals may all have completely different heritages.

Although by the late 20th century, multi-racialism was becoming more acknowledged in the U.S., it was not until 1967 that miscegenation laws were ruled unconstitutional, most famously in the Supreme Court case, Loving v. Virginia.

Until a change in policy in 1989, biracial babies with a white parents were assigned the racial status of the nonwhite parent... Before 1989 biracial children faced hypodescent laws that positioned them in the non-white racial group, thus barring their entrance into the white race, though they may not necessarily have been welcomed within the other racial/ethnic group with open arms.

The National Association of Black Social Workers has influenced the American court system by arguing that biracial children should be treated as completely black. Consistent with this view, courts and adoption agencies usually categorize biracial children as black when considering placement. The primary justification for this treatment is that, in the eyes of American society, a biracial child is black and, therefore, must identify positively with being black and must be able to cope with discrimination toward her as a black person. ... As a result, the NABSW concludes that when an adoption or custody proceeding concerns a biracial child, a court or adoption agency should favor placing the child with Black parents.

By 1990, there were more than a dozen more ethnic/racial categories on the census, reflecting not only changing social ideas about ethnicity, but the expanded regions of the world from which immigrants were arriving after changes to immigration laws in the 1960s. In a United States in which racial mixing has been increasingly acknowledged and society is becoming more diverse, identifying oneself by just one category has been difficult. The Census Bureau changed its data collection by allowing people to check off more than one classification when identifying their ancestry.

The proportion of multiracial children in the United States is growing. Interracial partnerships are on the rise, as are transracial adoptions. In 1990, about 14% of 18- to 19-year-olds, 12% of 20- to 21-year-olds and 7% of 34- to 35-year-olds were involved in interracial relationships (Joyner and Kao, 2005).