Multiracial identity

SIGNIFICANCE: In the United States, racial boundaries have historically been drawn so that racial groups and identities are viewed as mutually exclusive, or “monoracial,” categories of experience, forcing the children of interracial unions to identify with only one of their backgrounds. During the 1990s, however, growing numbers of individuals began to view themselves as “multiracial,” or belonging to more than one racial group.

The growth in the multiracial population can be traced back to changes that took place since the dismantling of Jim Crow laws, particularly the 1967 removal of the last laws against miscegenation in Loving v. Virginia, and the implementation of civil rights legislation during the 1950s and 1960s. The comparatively more fluid intergroup relations led to increased interracial marriage. Census data indicate that the number of children born of interracial marriages grew from less than 500,000 in 1970 to about 2 million in 1990. The majority of these children have one parent who is White. Interracial couples have used various terms to describe their offspring, including “rainbow,” “brown,” “melange,” “blended,” “mixed,” “mixed-race,” “biracial,” “interracial,” and “multiracial.” The 2010 US Census showed that between 2000 and 2010 the multiracial population in the United States grew from about 6.8 million to 9.0 million people. During the same time period, the multiracial population growth rate was 32.0 percent, while the growth rate of the single-race population was 9.2 percent. By 2020, the multiracial population had grown even more substantially, with 32 million people reporting multiple races on the US Census, an increase of 276 percent from 2010. Part of this increase was due to changes that were made to the race and ethnicity questions asked by the Census to better reflect how citizens self-identify, as well as improvements to the way in which the data was processed and coded. These changes revealed a much more multiracial population in the US than what had been measured in past years.

The Multiracial Identity Paradigm

A multiracial identity is not, however, indicative of someone who simply acknowledges the presence of various ancestries in his or her background. This identity, therefore, differs from that of other racial groups that may have multiple racial backgrounds but have monoracial identities, such as African Americans and Latino Americans. Multiracial individuals seek to replace these one-dimensional identities with multidimensional configurations. A multiracial identity is similar to, yet not synonymous with, an identity that is multiethnic in nature. A multiethnic identity is displayed by individuals who consider themselves to be members of several groups that are thought to be racially similar but culturally different, for example, individuals who are English and German American or Chinese and Japanese American. Social inequality in the United States has been determined more by notions of racial difference than by differences that are cultural in nature.

A multiracial (or multiethnic) identity is not the same as a multicultural identity. A multicultural identity is applicable to any individual who, irrespective of genealogy or ancestry, displays a general temperamental openness and sensitivity to racial and cultural differences. These individuals have an affinity with the values, beliefs, and customs of more than one racial or cultural group because of exposure to multiple racial and cultural groups. Multiethnic individuals feel a sense of kinship with several groups in direct response to the multiple cultural backgrounds in their genealogy. Similarly, multiracial individuals feel a sense of kinship with those groups directly in response to the multiple racial backgrounds in their genealogy. Exposure to these backgrounds enhances this feeling of kinship. Simple awareness of those backgrounds, however, can also bring about this sentiment. A lack of contact does not prevent it from being present.

Impact on Theories of Marginality

Because of the multidimensional nature of their identity, multiracial individuals operate on the margins of several racial groups. However, this marginality, or sense of being “betwixt and between,” does not necessarily result in the personal alienation traditionally ascribed to this phenomenon. Those traditional frameworks, particularly misinterpretations of sociologist Robert Ezra Park’s theories, were formulated before the 1970s. They argued that marginality itself is necessarily pathological and the source of lifelong personal conflict. Consequently, multiracial individuals supposedly felt divided and ambivalent about their group loyalties. This interpretation is largely a result of the mutually exclusive nature of United States racial identities and a society that historically has been hostile to the idea of a multiracial identity. These theorists paid little attention to the sociological forces that made psychological functioning difficult for multiracial individuals and instead characterized them as “psychologically dysfunctional” because this image was acceptable to then current beliefs that sought to discourage miscegenation. These theorists thus distorted, or at least misinterpreted, Park’s theory of marginality. They also overshadowed other contemporary theorists who argued that marginality could provide individuals with a broader vision and wider range of sympathies because of their ability to identify with more than one racial or cultural group.

The traditional theories of marginality were further challenged by data collected beginning in the 1980s. A consensus was developing that multiracial-identified individuals, in their journey to reach racial and cultural wholeness, may experience various ambiguities, strains, and conflicts. These phenomena come “naturally” with marginality in a society that views racial identities as mutually exclusive categories of experience. However, the negative feelings associated with marginality can be counterbalanced by an increased sensitivity to commonalities and appreciation of racial and cultural differences in interpersonal and intergroup situations.

Impact on Intergroup Relations

The models of multiracial identity that have emerged since the dismantling of segregation laws in the 1950s and 1960s challenge traditional US racial boundaries and categories in much the same way that their historical predecessors did. These historical manifestations of multiracial identity include integration through “passing” for a White person and the formation of rural enclaves and pluralistic urban elites, such as blue-vein societies and Louisiana Creoles of color. However, those identities were motivated by the legal system of segregation, which sought to control the potential “threat” to White dominance posed by individuals of color. Consequently, they were not so much a response to the forced denial of European ancestry or cultural orientation as they were a reaction to being subordinated and to being denied the privileges that these criteria implied. These traditional identities also maintained the hierarchical value attached to racial differences by the larger society. Such attitudes were the products of Eurocentrism and were responsible for colorism among Americans of color. Colorism involves the preferential treatment of individuals who more closely approximate White people in terms of consciousness, behavior, and phenotype within the various communities of color as well as the larger society.

The “new” multiracial identity is not premised on the desire to gain privileges that would be precluded by identifying as a person of color and therefore is not synonymous with the psychosocial pathology of colorism. This identity instead contests the mutually exclusive nature of American racial boundaries and challenges the hierarchical valuation of racial (and cultural) differences. A multiracial identity thus recognizes the commonalities among various communities (integration) and, at the same time, appreciates the differences (pluralism). More important, this identity is premised on an egalitarian dynamic between pluralism and integration, which are viewed as relative, rather than absolute extremes, on a continuum of grays.

Data showed that in the twenty-first century the United States, similarly to many developed countries throughout the world, was undergoing fundamental change in its demographic composition where native-born populations experienced declining birth rates and longer life expectancies. Older demographics grew in numbers while those in younger age segments contracted. These countries met labor shortfalls by encouraging large numbers of immigrant workers. For example, in 2022, the US state of Texas enjoyed the world's eighth-largest economy, ahead of entire developed nations such as Canada. An increasingly larger labor force was needed to sustain this economic growth and was supplied by immigrants. Beginning in 2023, Hispanics overtook the White population as the state's largest demographic.

The influx of immigrants over several generations had significant impacts on the cultural makeup of the United States and other countries. This included more diverse, multiracial societies. Many in these countries, nonetheless, came to feel their native cultures to be at risk by the presence of newcomers. Ironically, many of these Western countries had culturally transformed societies outside their borders as colonizers in previous centuries. This situation had reversed itself in the twenty-first century. Right-wing nativist movements emerged across the globe and threatened to become the popular ruling party of many Western governments, a situation not experienced in Europe since the end of World War II in 1945. Countries demonstrating these trends included France, Germany, Norway, and the Netherlands. An example of this trend in the United States is the proclamations by Republican candidate Donald Trump during the 2024 presidential election that immigrants were "poisoning the blood" of the country.

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