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The Souls of Mixed Folks: Race, Politics, and Aesthetics in the New Millennium

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The Souls of Mixed Folks: Race, Politics, and Aesthetics in the New Millennium

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E-Book

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Pew Research Center’s Social & Demographic Trends Project

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The U.S. Black population is growing. At the same time, how Black people self-identify is changing, with increasing shares considering themselves multiracial or Hispanic.

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Print Book in Buley Library

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Print Book in Buley Library

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Red & Yellow, Black & Brown: Decentering Whiteness in Mixed Race Studies

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Red & Yellow, Black & Brown: Decentering Whiteness in Mixed Race Studies

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E-Book

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The curse of caste, or, The slave bride : a rediscovered African American novel

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The curse of caste, or, The slave bride : a rediscovered African American novel

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Print Book in Buley Library

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Growing Up with the Country: Family, Race, and Nation after the Civil War

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Growing Up with the Country: Family, Race, and Nation after the Civil War

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E-Book

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More than Black? : multiracial identity and the new racial order

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More than Black? : multiracial identity and the new racial order

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Print Book in Buley Library

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Black Mixed Race Men: Tranatlanticity, Hybridity and "Post-Racial" Resilience

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Black Mixed Race Men: Tranatlanticity, Hybridity and "Post-Racial" Resilience

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E-Book

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Politics Beyond Black and White: Biracial Identity and Attitudes in America

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Politics Beyond Black and White: Biracial Identity and Attitudes in America

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Print Book at Buley Library

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Celebrating Black History Month While Mixed-Ish

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Celebrating Black History Month While Mixed-Ish

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Celebrating Black History Month While Mixed-Ish

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Being biracial means sometimes hanging in the balance while finding your own place to belong - even during Black History Month.

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Multiracial Residents Are Changing the Face of the US

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Multiracial Residents Are Changing the Face of the US

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Source: Census data, Stateline analysis. Note: People who identified as White or Black along with "Some other race" are not tallied separately, because new census rules made that category's meaning unclear.

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Multiracial Residents Are Changing the Face of the US

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Source: Census data, Stateline analysis. Note: People who identified as White or Black along with "Some other race" are not tallied separately, because new census rules made that category's meaning unclear. Stateline Daily Daily update - original reporting on state policy, plus the day's five top reads from around the web.

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The Census Has Revealed A More Multiracial U.S. One Reason? Cheaper DNA Tests

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The Census Has Revealed A More Multiracial U.S. One Reason? Cheaper DNA Tests

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For about 1 in 10 people counted for last year's U.S. census, a single check box was not enough to report their racial identities.

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For about 1 in 10 people counted for last year's U.S. census, a single check box was not enough to report their racial identities.

Their multifaceted responses to the race question for the 2020 head count helped produce the data released this month for redrawing voting maps, enforcing civil rights laws and guiding federal funds to local communities.

Now, demographers and other researchers are trying to figure out what caused the number of people who identified with more than one racial group to jump over the past decade by an eye-popping 276%.

Kids, census changes and DNA tests

As experts look at the changing numbers, three main factors have emerged as drivers of this boom.

A growing share of children in the U.S. have been born to parents who identify with racial groups that are different from one another.

For the 2020 count, the Census Bureau changed how it asked about race and how it categorized the answers. (If you wrote in a response that federal standards consider to be "Hispanic or Latino," for example, that answer was sorted into the "Some Other Race" category.)

And more people may be rethinking what they tell the government about their identities. Some demographers are wondering how much a relatively new trend may have contributed to that growth - the rise of at-home DNA ancestry testing.

Exactly how big of an effect these tests had on census results is difficult to pin down. But many researchers agree that as the cost of at-home kits fell in recent years, they have helped shape an increasing share of the country's ever-changing ideas about the social construct that is race.

Genetic markers vs. social experience

Although DNA ancestry test takers likely make up a sliver of the U.S. population - 16%, according to a 2019 estimate by the Pew Research Center - the wide reach of the marketing efforts of companies such as 23andMe and Ancestry.com, which operates the AncestryDNA service, should not be underestimated, warns Jenifer Bratter, a sociologist at Rice University who studies multiracial identity.

"The public has kind of taken in the notion that you can find out 'who you are' with a test that's supposed to analyze your genes," Bratter says. "What that does for anyone who does work in racial identity and racial demography is cause us to think through how genetic ideas of race are in public circulation."

"These genetic ancestry tests may be pushing the concept of race to match genetic ancestry more, including information about very distant ancestors, rather than sort of the more contemporary family history or personal social experience," says Sasha Shen Johfre, a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at Stanford University who co-authored a study recently published in the academic journal Demography.

Its findings suggest adults 50 and up are most likely to self-identify as multiracial on surveys after receiving a report about the potential roots of their family tree based on a DNA analysis of their saliva. The study of more than 100,000 adults registered as potential bone marrow donors in the U.S. also found that DNA test takers were especially likely to identify with three or more racial groups.

Many people who identify as white but not Latino often buy these test kits for themselves wanting to claim a different identity and use the results as proof of a specific ancestry, according to research by Wendy Roth, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania who has looked into how genetic ancestry testing influences the identities of different racial and ethnic groups in the U.S.

"Native American was the one identity people really wanted to have and really wanted to prove," Roth says, adding that she has also found that some people stopped claiming Native American identity after the results of a test did not show any genetic ancestry.

"In and of itself, it doesn't tell you your race or ethnicity," Roth says. "What these companies are telling you is that you have a likelihood of having a certain amount of your genetic markers associated with certain populations more often than others."

Roth is concerned about the potential implications of genetic ancestry test results shaping how some people report their race for the census, which produces data the government relies on to enforce civil rights protections and researchers use to measure the racial disparities in health care, housing access and education.

"You're going to have a lot more people who are not part of marginalized groups in terms of their social experiences claiming to be part of marginalized groups," Roth says about a likely effect of ancestry tests on the census. "When it comes to understanding discrimination or inequality, we're going to have very inaccurate estimates."

From a DNA swab to the census form

Still, some people who participated in last year's census say DNA ancestry tests were a useful tool for better understanding the complexities of their family histories and how they have shaped their racial identities.

With grandparents from Barbados, Spain and the U.K., Jonathan Marshall of Fort Myers, Fla., says he grew up in Trinidad never "singularly" identifying with one racial group.

"I'm just a product of all of that mixing. From a very young age, we were always taught this is what makes you," Marshall says. "My mom's mom, she's of Asian descent, which previously I thought was Japanese."

But after taking a genetic ancestry test, Marshall says he now thinks his family's Asian heritage stems from China. On the 2020 census form (which did not include an "Asian" box but provided options for specific Asian groups), his wife checked off for him the "Black," "White" and "Chinese" boxes. Without the test results, Marshall says, "I would have probably gone with another Asian country."

At Jelmarie Maldonado's home in Manchester, Conn., DNA test results helped fuel a family fight last year.

Both Maldonado and her mother agreed on checking the "Puerto Rican" box to answer the census question about "Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin." But there was no consensus on how to respond to the race question at first.

"When I was growing up, we were all white," says Maribel Rodríguez, Maldonado's mother.

"I refused to just check the 'White' box," says Maldonado, whose test results, like her mother's, showed an "ethnicity estimate" that included percentages for "Indigenous Puerto Rico" as well as regions in Europe and Africa. "It would deny that culture, that ancestry, those people that came here to the island and survived all the odds against them for me to be here."

Maldonado says she might have checked off just the "Some Other Race" box, but based on the DNA test results, marked the categories for "White," "Black" and "American Indian or Alaska Native," in addition to writing in "Taíno" for the Indigenous people of Puerto Rico.

And Maldonado did the same for Rodríguez, who says she eventually came to share her daughter's perspective after reflecting on the test results and conversations about racial inequity in the U.S. that the Black Lives Matter movement has sparked in recent years.

"The fact that people are really embracing who they are," says Maldonado, who works as a digital strategist for Define American, an immigrant advocacy group, "I think it's a bigger sign of the awakening that's happening in society and that we're moving towards not race utopia, but a society that actually takes in consideration the differences and celebrates them, rather than judge them or oppress them."

The limits of DNA tests and race data

While the rise in the numbers of people reporting multiracial identities for the 2020 census may help paint a more thorough portrait of the country's diversity, there's also a lot this new race data does not reveal.

"Five people who tick the same two or three boxes on the census can have very, very different lives," says Miri Song, a sociologist at the University of Kent who is co-writing a book about multiracial people of white ancestry in the U.S. "Some of them may have white spouses. Some of them may have non-white spouses. Some may have co-ethnic spouses with whom they share an ethnic heritage. Some may be racially politicized. Others may not."

For Aliya Saperstein, a sociologist and demographer at Stanford University who co-authored the study recently published in Demography, it all underscores the ongoing challenge of how to measure race with an ancestry-test effect joining the list of complications.

"There is no question this is a development that demographers will be following closely over the next decade," Saperstein says.
Editor's note: Ancestry.com is one of NPR's financial supporters.

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The Census Has Revealed A More Multiracial U.S. One Reason? Cheaper DNA Tests

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
For about 1 in 10 people counted for last year's U.S. census, a single check box was not enough to report their racial identities. Their multifaceted responses to the race question for the 2020 head count helped produce the data released this month for redrawing voting maps, enforcing civil rights laws and guiding federal funds to local communities.

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Improved Race and Ethnicity Measures Reveal U.S. Population Is Much More Multiracial

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Improved Race and Ethnicity Measures Reveal U.S. Population Is Much More Multiracial

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"The Multiracial population has changed considerably since 2010. It was measured at 9 million people in 2010 and is now [in 2020] 33.8 million people in 2020, a 276% increase."

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2020 Census Illuminates Racial and Ethnic Composition of the Country

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Today's release of 2020 Census data provides a new snapshot of the racial and ethnic composition of the country.

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Youthful minorities are the engine of future growth

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Youthful minorities are the engine of future growth

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"Among the minority populations, the greatest growth is projected for multiracial populations, Asians and Hispanics with 2018–2060 growth rates of 176, 93, and 86 percent, respectively."

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The US will become 'minority white' in 2045, Census projects

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Demographer William Frey discusses why youthful minorities are the engine of future growth.

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Shades of gray : writing the new American multiracialism

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Shades of gray : writing the new American multiracialism

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Print Book in Buley Library

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Meaning-making, internalized racism, and African American identity

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Meaning-making, internalized racism, and African American identity

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E-Book

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Biracial in America: Forming and Performing Racial Identity

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Biracial in America: Forming and Performing Racial Identity

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E-Book

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James McCune Smith: The First African American Physician

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James McCune Smith: The First African American Physician

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"

Freedom and Liberty are [not] synonymes. . . . Freedom is the gift of God; Liberty, the creature of society. Liberty may be taken away from a man; but, on whatsoever soul Freedom may alight, the course of that soul is thenceforth onward and upward . . . .

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Skip to Content " Freedom and Liberty are [not] synonymes. . . . Freedom is the gift of God; Liberty, the creature of society. Liberty may be taken away from a man; but, on whatsoever soul Freedom may alight, the course of that soul is thenceforth onward and upward .

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The Great Escape From Slavery of Ellen and William Craft

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The Great Escape From Slavery of Ellen and William Craft

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Passing as a white man traveling with his servant, two slaves fled their masters in a thrilling tale of deception and intrigue.

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The Great Escape From Slavery of Ellen and William Craft

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Passing as a white man traveling with his servant, two slaves fled their masters in a thrilling tale of deception and intrigue

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Re-framing the National Family: Race Mixing and Re-telling American History

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Re-framing the National Family: Race Mixing and Re-telling American History

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Mixed Race America - Who Is Black? One Nation's Definition

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Mixed Race America - Who Is Black? One Nation's Definition

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To be considered black in the United States not even half of one's ancestry must be African black. But will one-fourth do, or one-eighth, or less? The nation's answer to the question 'Who is black?" has long been that a black is any person with any known African black ancestry. This definition reflects the long experience with slavery and later with Jim Crow segregation. In the South it became known as the "one-drop rule,'' meaning that a single drop of "black blood" makes a person a black. It is also known as the "one black ancestor rule," some courts have called it the "traceable amount rule," and anthropologists call it the "hypo-descent rule," meaning that racially mixed persons are assigned the status of the subordinate group. This definition emerged from the American South to become the nation's definition, generally accepted by whites and blacks. Blacks had no other choice. As we shall see, this American cultural definition of blacks is taken for granted as readily by judges, affirmative action officers, and black protesters as it is by Ku Klux Klansmen.

Let us not he confused by terminology. At present the usual statement of the one-drop rule is in terms of "black blood" or black ancestry, while not so long ago it referred to "Negro blood" or ancestry. The term "black" rapidly replaced "Negro" in general usage in the United States as the black power movement peaked at the end of the 1960s, but the black and Negro populations are the same. The term "black" is used in this book for persons with any black African lineage, not just for unmixed members of populations from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "Negro," which is used in certain historical contexts, means the same thing. Terms such as "African black," "unmixed Negro," and "all black" are used here to refer to unmixed blacks descended from African populations.

We must also pay attention to the terms "mulatto" and "colored." The term "mulatto" was originally used to mean the offspring of a "pure African Negro" and a "pure white." Although the root meaning of mulatto, in Spanish, is "hybrid," "mulatto" came to include the children of unions between whites and so-called "mixed Negroes." For example, Booker T. Washington and Frederick Douglass, with slave mothers and white fathers, were referred to as mulattoes. To whatever extent their mothers were part white, these men were more than half white. Douglass was evidently part Indian as well, and he looked it. Washington had reddish hair and gray eyes. At the time of the American Revolution, many of the founding fathers had some very light slaves, including some who appeared to be white. The term "colored" seemed for a time to refer only to mulattoes, especially lighter ones, but later it became a euphemism for darker Negroes, even including unmixed blacks. With widespread racial mixture, "Negro" came to mean any slave or descendant of a slave, no matter how much mixed. Eventually in the United States, the terms mulatto, colored, Negro, black, and African American all came to mean people with any known black African ancestry. Mulattoes are racially mixed, to whatever degree, while the terms black, Negro, African American, and colored include both mulattoes and unmixed blacks. As we shall see, these terms have quite different meanings in other countries.

Whites in the United States need some help envisioning the American black experience with ancestral fractions. At the beginning of miscegenation between two populations presumed to be racially pure, quadroons appear in the second generation of continuing mixing with whites, and octoroons in the third. A quadroon is one-fourth African black and thus easily classed as black in the United States, yet three of this person's four grandparents are white. An octoroon has seven white great-grandparents out of eight and usually looks white or almost so. Most parents of black American children in recent decades have themselves been racially mixed, but often the fractions get complicated because the earlier details of the mixing were obscured generations ago. Like so many white Americans, black people are forced to speculate about some of the fractions-- one-eighth this, three-sixteenths that, and so on....

Not only does the one-drop rule apply to no other group than American blacks, but apparently the rule is unique in that it is found only in the United States and not in any other nation in the world. In fact, definitions of who is black vary quite sharply from country to country, and for this reason people in other countries often express consternation about our definition. James Baldwin relates a revealing incident that occurred in 1956 at the Conference of Negro-African Writers and Artists held in Paris. The head of the delegation of writers and artists from the United States was John Davis. The French chairperson introduced Davis and then asked him why he considered himself Negro, since he certainly did not look like one. Baldwin wrote, "He is a Negro, of course, from the remarkable legal point of view which obtains in the United States, but more importantly, as he tried to make clear to his interlocutor, he was a Negro by choice and by depth of involvement--by experience, in fact."

The phenomenon known as "passing as white" is difficult to explain in other countries or to foreign students. Typical questions are: "Shouldn't Americans say that a person who is passing as white is white, or nearly all white, and has previously been passing as black?" or "To be consistent, shouldn't you say that someone who is one-eighth white is passing as black?" or "Why is there so much concern, since the so-called blacks who pass take so little negroid ancestry with them?" Those who ask such questions need to realize that "passing" is much more a social phenomenon than a biological one, reflecting the nation's unique definition of what makes a person black. The concept of "passing" rests on the one-drop rule and on folk beliefs about race and miscegenation, not on biological or historical fact.

The black experience with passing as white in the United States contrasts with the experience of other ethnic minorities that have features that are clearly non-caucasoid. The concept of passing applies only to blacks--consistent with the nation's unique definition of the group. A person who is one-fourth or less American Indian or Korean or Filipino is not regarded as passing if he or she intermarries and joins fully the life of the dominant community, so the minority ancestry need not be hidden. It is often suggested that the key reason for this is that the physical differences between these other groups and whites are less pronounced than the physical differences between African blacks and whites, and therefore are less threatening to whites. However, keep in mind that the one-drop rule and anxiety about passing originated during slavery and later received powerful reinforcement under the Jim Crow system.

For the physically visible groups other than blacks, miscegenation promotes assimilation, despite barriers of prejudice and discrimination during two or more generations of racial mixing. As noted above, when ancestry in one of these racial minority groups does not exceed one-fourth, a person is not defined solely as a member of that group. Masses of white European immigrants have climbed the class ladder not only through education but also with the help of close personal relationships in the dominant community, intermarriage, and ultimately full cultural and social assimilation. Young people tend to marry people they meet in the same informal social circles. For visibly non-caucasoid minorities other than blacks in the United States, this entire route to full assimilation is slow but possible.

For all persons of any known black lineage, however, assimilation is blocked and is not promoted by miscegenation. Barriers to full opportunity and participation for blacks are still formidable, and a fractionally black person cannot escape these obstacles without passing as white and cutting off all ties to the black family and community. The pain of this separation, and condemnation by the black family and community, are major reasons why many or most of those who could pass as white choose not to. Loss of security within the minority community, and fear and distrust of the white world are also factors.

It should now be apparent that the definition of a black person as one with any trace at all of black African ancestry is inextricably woven into the history of the United States. It incorporates beliefs once used to justify slavery and later used to buttress the castelike Jim Crow system of segregation. Developed in the South, the definition of "Negro" (now black) spread and became the nation's social and legal definition. Because blacks are defined according to the one-drop rule, they are a socially constructed category in which there is wide variation in racial traits and therefore not a race group in the scientific sense. However, because that category has a definite status position in the society it has become a self-conscious social group with an ethnic identity.

The one-drop rule has long been taken for granted throughout the United States by whites and blacks alike, and the federal courts have taken "judicial notice" of it as being a matter of common knowledge. State courts have generally upheld the one-drop rule, but some have limited the definition to one thirty-second or one-sixteenth or one-eighth black ancestry, or made other limited exceptions for persons with both Indian and black ancestry. Most Americans seem unaware that this definition of blacks is extremely unusual in other countries, perhaps even unique to the United States, and that Americans define no other minority group in a similar way. . . .

We must first distinguish racial traits from cultural traits, since they are so often confused with each other. As defined in physical anthropology and biology, races are categories of human beings based on average differences in physical traits that are transmitted by the genes not by blood. Culture is a shared pattern of behavior and beliefs that are learned and transmitted through social communication. An ethnic group is a group with a sense of cultural identity, such as Czech or Jewish Americans, but it may also be a racially distinctive group. A group that is racially distinctive in society may be an ethnic group as well, but not necessarily. Although racially mixed, most blacks in the United States are physically distinguishable from whites, but they are also an ethnic group because of the distinctive culture they have developed within the general American framework.

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Mixed Race America - Who Is Black? One Nation's Definition | Jefferson's Blood | FRONTLINE | PBS

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To be considered black in the United States not even half of one's ancestry must be African black. But will one-fourth do, or one-eighth, or less? The nation's answer to the question 'Who is black?" has long been that a black is any person with any known African black ancestry.

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National Museum of African American History & Culture's Searchable Museum

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National Museum of African American History & Culture's Searchable Museum

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A place to explore history and culture through an African American lens

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"The Searchable Museum is transforming the museum experience, reaching beyond our walls to provide a rich digital experience and bringing the museum's evocative content and immersive in-person visitor experience into homes around the world. "

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A museum that seeks to understand American history through the lens of the African American experience.

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Blurring the Lines of Race and Freedom: Mulattoes and Mixed Bloods in English Colonial America

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Blurring the Lines of Race and Freedom: Mulattoes and Mixed Bloods in English Colonial America

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E-Book

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The Allure of Blackness among Mixed-Race Americans, 1862-1916

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The Allure of Blackness among Mixed-Race Americans, 1862-1916

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E-Book

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The Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum join in paying tribute to the generations of African Americans who struggled with adversity to achieve full citizenship in American society.

As a Harvard-trained historian, Carter G. Woodson, like W. E. B. Du Bois before him, believed that truth could not be denied and that reason would prevail over prejudice. His hopes to raise awareness of African American's contributions to civilization was realized when he and the organization he founded, the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH), conceived and announced Negro History Week in 1925. The event was first celebrated during a week in February 1926 that encompassed the birthdays of both Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. The response was overwhelming: Black history clubs sprang up; teachers demanded materials to instruct their pupils; and progressive whites, not simply white scholars and philanthropists, stepped forward to endorse the effort.

By the time of Woodson's death in 1950, Negro History Week had become a central part of African American life and substantial progress had been made in bringing more Americans to appreciate the celebration. At mid–century, mayors of cities nationwide issued proclamations noting Negro History Week. The Black Awakening of the 1960s dramatically expanded the consciousness of African Americans about the importance of black history, and the Civil Rights movement focused Americans of all colors on the subject of the contributions of African Americans to our history and culture.

The celebration was expanded to a month in 1976, the nation's bicentennial. President Gerald R. Ford urged Americans to “seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history.” That year, fifty years after the first celebration, the association held the first Black History Month. By this time, the entire nation had come to recognize the importance of Black history in the drama of the American story. Since then each American president has issued Black History Month proclamations. And the association—now the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH)—continues to promote the study of Black history all year.

(Excerpt from an essay by Daryl Michael Scott, Howard University, for the Association for the Study of African American Life and History)

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February is Black History Month. Paying tribute to the generations of African Americans who struggled with adversity to achieve full citizenship in American society.