Los estadounidenses multirraciales , también conocidos como estadounidenses mixtos , son estadounidenses que tienen ascendencia mixta de dos o más razas . El término también puede incluir a los estadounidenses de ascendencia mixta que se autoidentifican con un solo grupo cultural y socialmente (cf. la regla de una gota ). En el censo de los Estados Unidos de 2020 , 33,8 millones de personas o el 10,2% de la población, se autoidentificaron como multirraciales. [2] Hay evidencia de que una contabilidad por ascendencia genética produciría un número mayor.
La población multirracial es el grupo demográfico de más rápido crecimiento en los Estados Unidos, aumentando un 276% entre 2010 y 2020. [3] Este crecimiento fue impulsado en gran medida por los estadounidenses hispanos o latinos que se identificaron como multirraciales, y este grupo aumentó de 3 millones en 2010 a más de 20 millones en 2020, lo que representa casi dos tercios de la población multirracial. [4] La mayoría de los hispanos multirraciales se identificaron como blancos y " alguna otra raza " en combinación, y este grupo aumentó de 1,6 millones a 24 millones entre 2010 y 2021, una tendencia que se ha atribuido a los cambios en la metodología de la Oficina del Censo para contar las respuestas de ascendencia por escrito, así como a la creciente diversidad racial entre la población hispana. [5]
El impacto de los sistemas raciales históricos, como el creado por la mezcla entre los colonos europeos blancos y los nativos americanos, ha llevado a menudo a las personas a identificarse o ser clasificadas por una sola etnia, generalmente la de la cultura en la que fueron criados. [6] Antes de mediados del siglo XX, muchas personas ocultaban su herencia multirracial debido a la discriminación racial contra las minorías. [6] Si bien muchos estadounidenses pueden ser considerados multirraciales, a menudo no lo saben o no se identifican culturalmente como tales, al igual que no mantienen todas las diferentes tradiciones de una variedad de ancestros nacionales. [6]
Después de un largo período de segregación racial formal en la antigua Confederación después de la Era de la Reconstrucción y la prohibición del matrimonio interracial en varias partes del país , más personas están formando uniones interraciales abiertamente. Además, las condiciones sociales han cambiado y muchas personas multirraciales no creen que sea socialmente ventajoso tratar de " pasar " como blanco . La inmigración diversa ha traído más personas de raza mixta a los Estados Unidos, como una población significativa de hispanos . Desde la década de 1980, Estados Unidos ha tenido un creciente movimiento de identidad multirracial (cf. Loving Day ). [7] Debido a que más estadounidenses han insistido en que se les permita reconocer sus orígenes raciales mixtos, el censo de 2000 permitió por primera vez a los residentes marcar más de una identidad etnoracial y, por lo tanto, identificarse como multirraciales. En 2008, Barack Obama fue elegido como el primer presidente birracial de los Estados Unidos; reconoce ambos lados de su familia y se identifica como afroamericano. [8]
En la actualidad, se encuentran individuos multirraciales en cada rincón del país. Los grupos multirraciales en los Estados Unidos incluyen a muchos afroamericanos, hispanoamericanos , métis estadounidenses , criollos de Luisiana , hapas , melungeons y varias otras comunidades que se encuentran principalmente en el este de los EE. UU . Muchos nativos americanos son multirraciales en su ascendencia, aunque se identifican plenamente como miembros de tribus reconocidas por el gobierno federal.
El pueblo estadounidense está compuesto en su mayoría por descendientes multiétnicos de diversos grupos inmigrantes culturalmente distintos, muchos de los cuales hoy son naciones desarrolladas. Algunos se consideran multirraciales, aunque reconocen la raza como una construcción social. La criollización , la asimilación y la integración han sido procesos continuos. El Movimiento por los Derechos Civiles y otros movimientos sociales desde mediados del siglo XX trabajaron para lograr la justicia social y la aplicación igualitaria de los derechos civiles bajo la constitución para todas las etnias. En la década de 2000, menos del 5% de la población se identificaba como multirracial. En muchos casos, la ascendencia racial mixta se encuentra tan atrás en la historia familiar de un individuo (por ejemplo, antes de la Guerra Civil o antes), que no afecta la identificación étnica y cultural más reciente.
Las relaciones interraciales, los matrimonios de hecho y los casamientos se dieron desde los primeros años coloniales , especialmente antes de que la esclavitud se endureciera como una casta racial asociada con las personas de ascendencia africana en la América colonial. Varias de las Trece Colonias aprobaron leyes en el siglo XVII que otorgaban a los niños el estatus social de su madre, según el principio de partus sequitur ventrem , independientemente de la raza o ciudadanía del padre. Esto anuló el precedente del derecho consuetudinario por el cual un hombre otorgaba su estatus a sus hijos; esto había permitido a las comunidades exigir que los padres mantuvieran a sus hijos, fueran legítimos o no. El cambio aumentó la capacidad de los hombres blancos para utilizar sexualmente a las esclavas, ya que no tenían ninguna responsabilidad por los niños. Como amos y padres de niños mestizos nacidos en la esclavitud, los hombres podían utilizar a estas personas como sirvientes o trabajadores o venderlos como esclavos. En algunos casos, los padres blancos cuidaban de sus hijos multirraciales, pagando u organizando la educación o los aprendizajes y liberándolos, particularmente durante las dos décadas posteriores a la Guerra de la Independencia . (La práctica de proveer para los niños era más común en las colonias francesas y españolas , donde se desarrolló una clase de personas libres de color que se educaron y se convirtieron en propietarios). Muchos otros padres blancos abandonaron a los niños mestizos y a sus madres a la esclavitud.
El investigador Paul Heinegg descubrió que la mayoría de las familias de personas de color libres en la época colonial se fundaron a partir de uniones de mujeres blancas, ya fueran sirvientas libres o contratadas, y hombres africanos, esclavos, contratados o libres. [9] En los primeros años, los pueblos de clase trabajadora vivían y trabajaban juntos. Sus hijos eran libres debido al estatus de las mujeres blancas. Esto contrastaba con el patrón de la era posrevolucionaria, en la que la mayoría de los niños mestizos tenían padres blancos y madres negras. [9]
En la mayoría de los estados se aprobaron leyes contra el mestizaje durante los siglos XVIII, XIX y principios del XX, pero esto no impidió que los esclavistas blancos, sus hijos u otros hombres blancos poderosos tomaran a mujeres esclavas como concubinas y tuvieran hijos multirraciales con ellas. En California y el resto del oeste americano , había un mayor número de residentes latinoamericanos y asiáticos. A estos se les prohibió tener relaciones oficiales con blancos. Los legisladores blancos aprobaron leyes que prohibían el matrimonio entre estadounidenses europeos y asiáticos hasta la década de 1950.
Las relaciones interraciales tienen una larga historia en América del Norte y los Estados Unidos, que comenzó con la mezcla de exploradores y soldados europeos, que tomaron mujeres nativas como compañeras. Después de que aumentara la colonización europea, los comerciantes y tramperos de pieles a menudo se casaban o tenían uniones con mujeres de tribus nativas. En el siglo XVII, ante una escasez de mano de obra crítica y continua, los colonos, principalmente en la Colonia de la Bahía de Chesapeake, importaron africanos como trabajadores, a veces como sirvientes contratados y, cada vez más, como esclavos. Los colonos europeos también importaron esclavos africanos a Nueva York y otros puertos del norte. Algunos esclavos africanos fueron liberados por sus amos durante estos primeros años.
En los años coloniales, cuando las condiciones eran más fluidas, las mujeres blancas, sirvientas o libres, y los hombres africanos, sirvientes, esclavos o libres, formaban uniones. Como las mujeres eran libres, sus hijos mestizos nacían libres; ellos y sus descendientes formaban la mayoría de las familias de personas de color libres durante el período colonial en Virginia . El erudito Paul Heinegg descubrió que el ochenta por ciento de las personas de color libres en Carolina del Norte en los censos de 1790 a 1810 podían rastrearse hasta familias libres en Virginia en los años coloniales. [10]
En 1789, Olaudah Equiano , un ex esclavo de la actual Nigeria que estuvo esclavizado en América del Norte, publicó su autobiografía. Abogó por el matrimonio interracial entre blancos y negros. [11] A finales del siglo XVIII, los visitantes del Alto Sur notaron la alta proporción de esclavos mestizos, evidencia del mestizaje por parte de hombres blancos.
En 1790 se realizó el primer censo federal de población en los Estados Unidos. Se dio instrucciones a los enumeradores para que clasificaran a los residentes libres como blancos u "otros". Hasta 1850, solo los jefes de familia fueron identificados por su nombre en el censo federal. Los nativos americanos fueron incluidos entre "Otros"; en censos posteriores, se los incluyó como " Personas libres de color " si no vivían en reservas indígenas . Los esclavos fueron contabilizados por separado de las personas libres en todos los censos hasta la Guerra Civil y el fin de la esclavitud. En censos posteriores, las personas de ascendencia africana fueron clasificadas por su apariencia como mulatos (que reconocía la ascendencia europea visible además de la africana) o negros.
Después de la Guerra de la Independencia de los Estados Unidos , el número y la proporción de personas de color libres aumentaron notablemente en el Norte y el Sur a medida que se liberaban los esclavos. La mayoría de los estados del norte abolieron la esclavitud, a veces, como Nueva York, en programas de emancipación gradual que tardaron más de dos décadas en completarse. Los últimos esclavos de Nueva York no fueron liberados hasta 1827. En relación con el Segundo Gran Despertar , los predicadores cuáqueros y metodistas del Sur instaron a los propietarios de esclavos a liberar a sus esclavos. Los ideales revolucionarios llevaron a muchos hombres a liberar a sus esclavos, algunos por escritura y otros por testamento, de modo que entre 1782 y 1810, el porcentaje de personas de color libres aumentó de menos del uno por ciento a casi el 10 por ciento de los negros en el Sur. [12]
De las numerosas relaciones entre los esclavistas, capataces o hijos de los amos y las esclavas, la más notable es probablemente la del presidente Thomas Jefferson con su esclava Sally Hemings . Como se señala en la exposición colaborativa de 2012 del Smithsonian y Monticello , La esclavitud en Monticello: la paradoja de la libertad , Jefferson, entonces viudo, tomó a Hemings como su concubina durante casi 40 años. Tuvieron seis hijos registrados; cuatro de los hijos de Hemings sobrevivieron hasta la edad adulta, y él los liberó a todos, entre los muy pocos esclavos que liberó. A dos se les permitió "escapar" al norte en 1822, y a dos se les concedió la libertad por testamento tras su muerte en 1826. Con siete octavos de ascendencia blanca, los cuatro hijos de Hemings se mudaron a los estados del norte cuando eran adultos; tres de los cuatro ingresaron a la comunidad blanca, y todos sus descendientes se identificaron como blancos. De los descendientes de Madison Hemings que continuaron identificándose como negros, algunos de ellos en generaciones posteriores terminaron identificándose como blancos y se "casaron fuera de su raza", mientras que otros continuaron identificándose como afroamericanos. Para los hijos de los Hemings era socialmente ventajoso identificarse como blancos, en consonancia con su apariencia y la proporción mayoritaria de su ascendencia. Aunque nacieron esclavos, los hijos de los Hemings eran legalmente blancos según la ley de Virginia de la época.
La discriminación racial siguió aplicándose en nuevas leyes en el siglo XX; por ejemplo, la regla de una gota se promulgó en la Ley de Integridad Racial de Virginia de 1924 y en otros estados del sur, en parte influenciada por la popularidad de la eugenesia y las ideas de pureza racial. La gente enterró los recuerdos desvanecidos de que muchos blancos tenían ascendencia multirracial. Muchas familias eran multirraciales. Se habían propuesto leyes similares, pero no se aprobaron, a fines del siglo XIX en Carolina del Sur y Virginia, por ejemplo. Después de recuperar el poder político en los estados del sur al privar de derechos a los negros , los demócratas blancos aprobaron leyes para imponer las leyes de Jim Crow y la segregación racial para restaurar la supremacía blanca . Mantuvieron estas leyes hasta que se vieron obligados a cambiar en la década de 1960 y después mediante la aplicación de la legislación federal que autorizaba la supervisión de las prácticas para proteger los derechos constitucionales de los afroamericanos y otros ciudadanos minoritarios.
En 1967, el Tribunal Supremo de los Estados Unidos , en el caso Loving v. Virginia, dictaminó que las leyes contra el mestizaje eran inconstitucionales. [13]
En el siglo XX y hasta 1989, las organizaciones de servicios sociales generalmente asignaban a los niños multirraciales la identidad racial del padre minoritario, lo que reflejaba prácticas sociales de hipodescendencia . [14] Los trabajadores sociales negros habían influido en las decisiones judiciales sobre las regulaciones relacionadas con la identidad; argumentaron que, como el niño birracial era considerado socialmente negro, debería ser clasificado de esa manera para identificarse con el grupo y aprender a lidiar con la discriminación. [15]
En 1990, la Oficina del Censo incluyó más de una docena de categorías étnicas/raciales en el censo, lo que refleja no sólo el cambio de las ideas sociales sobre la etnicidad, sino también la amplia variedad de inmigrantes que habían llegado a residir en los Estados Unidos debido a las fuerzas históricas cambiantes y las nuevas leyes de inmigración en la década de 1960. Con una sociedad cambiante, más ciudadanos han comenzado a presionar para que se reconozca la ascendencia multirracial. La Oficina del Censo cambió su recopilación de datos al permitir que las personas se identifiquen a sí mismas como de más de una etnia. Algunos grupos étnicos están preocupados por los posibles efectos políticos y económicos, ya que la asistencia federal a los grupos históricamente desatendidos ha dependido de los datos del censo. Según la Oficina del Censo, en 2002, el 75% de todos los afroamericanos tenían ascendencia multirracial. [16]
En Estados Unidos, la proporción de niños multirraciales reconocidos está aumentando. Las parejas interraciales están aumentando, al igual que las adopciones transraciales. En 1990, alrededor del 14% de los jóvenes de 18 a 19 años, el 12% de los de 20 a 21 años y el 7% de los de 34 a 35 años estaban involucrados en relaciones interraciales (Joyner y Kao, 2005). [17] La cantidad de matrimonios interraciales como proporción de los nuevos matrimonios ha aumentado del 11% en 2010 al 19% en 2019. [18]
Según las estimaciones de la Encuesta sobre la comunidad estadounidense de 2022, en Estados Unidos hay 41 782 288 personas que se identifican como de varias razas, lo que representa el 12,5 % de la población. Si se excluyen las respuestas de " alguna otra raza " en combinación con una única categoría reconocida, esta cifra se reduce a 13 658 099, o el 4,1 % de la población. [19] Casi el 90 % de los estadounidenses que se identificaron como " alguna otra raza " en combinación eran hispanos/latinos en 2022, lo que representa más del 90 % de la población hispana multirracial y más de la mitad de la población multirracial total de Estados Unidos. [20] Los grupos multirraciales más numerosos en Estados Unidos en 2022 son: [21]
Las personas multirraciales que querían reconocer su herencia completa obtuvieron una especie de victoria en 1997, cuando la Oficina de Administración y Presupuesto (OMB) cambió la regulación federal de las categorías raciales para permitir respuestas múltiples. Esto resultó en un cambio en el Censo de los Estados Unidos de 2000 , que permitió a los participantes seleccionar más de una de las seis categorías disponibles, que eran, en resumen: " Blanco ", " Negro o afroamericano ", " Asiático ", " Indio americano o nativo de Alaska ", " Nativo de Hawái u otra isla del Pacífico " y "Otro". Se dan más detalles en el artículo: Raza y etnicidad en el Censo de los Estados Unidos . La OMB hizo que su directiva fuera obligatoria para todos los formularios gubernamentales en 2003.
En 2000, Cindy Rodríguez informó sobre las reacciones al nuevo censo: [22]
Para muchos de los principales grupos de derechos civiles, el nuevo censo es parte de una pesadilla multirracial. Después de décadas de plantear las cuestiones raciales en términos claramente blancos y negros, temen que el movimiento multirracial rompa alianzas de larga data y debilite a las personas de color al dividirlas en nuevos subgrupos.
Algunas personas multirraciales se sienten marginadas por la sociedad estadounidense. Por ejemplo, cuando se postulan para una escuela o un trabajo o cuando realizan exámenes estandarizados, a veces se les pide a los estadounidenses que marquen casillas correspondientes a su raza o etnia. Por lo general, se dan alrededor de cinco opciones de raza, con la instrucción de "marcar solo una". Si bien algunas encuestas ofrecen una casilla "otra", esta opción agrupa a personas de muchos tipos multirraciales diferentes (por ejemplo, los euroamericanos/afroamericanos se agrupan con los asiáticos/indios nativos americanos). [ cita requerida ]
En el censo de Estados Unidos de 2000, en la categoría de respuestas por escrito se incluyó una lista de códigos que estandariza la ubicación de las distintas respuestas por escrito para su colocación automática dentro del marco de las razas enumeradas en el censo de Estados Unidos. Si bien la mayoría de las respuestas se pueden distinguir como pertenecientes a una de las cinco razas enumeradas, quedan algunas respuestas por escrito que se incluyen en el encabezado " Mezcla " y que no se pueden categorizar racialmente. Entre ellas se incluyen "Birracial, Combinación, Todo, Muchos, Mixto, Multinacional, Múltiple, Varios y Varios". [23]
En 1997, Greg Mayeda, miembro de la junta directiva del Foro de Asuntos de Hapa , asistió a una reunión sobre las nuevas clasificaciones raciales para el Censo de los Estados Unidos de 2000. Estaba argumentando en contra de una categoría multirracial y a favor de que las personas multirraciales se contabilizaran como todas sus razas. Sostuvo que una
Una casilla multirracial independiente no permite que una persona que se identifica como mestiza tenga la oportunidad de ser contabilizada con precisión. Después de todo, no somos simplemente mestizos. Somos representantes de todos los grupos raciales y deberíamos ser contabilizados como tales. Una casilla multirracial independiente revela muy poco sobre los antecedentes de la persona que la verifica. [24]
Según James P. Allen y Eugene Turner de la Universidad Estatal de California , Northridge, quienes analizaron el Censo de 2000, la mayoría de las personas multirraciales se identificaron como parcialmente blancas. Además, el desglose es el siguiente:
En 2010, 1,6 millones de estadounidenses marcaron tanto "negro" como "blanco" en sus formularios del censo, una cifra un 134% superior a la de una década antes. [26] El número de matrimonios y relaciones interraciales y de adopciones transraciales e internacionales ha aumentado la proporción de familias multirraciales. [27] Además, es posible que más personas identifiquen múltiples ascendencias, ya que el concepto es más ampliamente aceptado.
A pesar de una larga historia de mestizaje dentro del territorio político estadounidense y el paisaje continental americano, la defensa de una clasificación racial social única para reconocer la paternidad multirracial directa o reciente no comenzó hasta la década de 1970. Después de la Era de los Derechos Civiles y la rápida integración de los afroamericanos en instituciones y comunidades residenciales predominantemente euroamericanas, se volvió más aceptable socialmente que las mujeres identificadas como blancas salieran, se casaran y procrearan hijos engendrados por hombres no blancos. Esta tendencia generó un impulso político para que los hijos de las uniones interraciales heredaran completamente las clasificaciones raciales sociales de ambos padres, independientemente de la clasificación racial del padre materno. Esta defensa contrarrestaba lo que se había practicado en los Estados Unidos desde principios del siglo XIX, donde la clasificación racial de un recién nacido se basaba por defecto en la de su madre, que se había mantenido según una variedad de clasificaciones que diferían de un estado a otro durante los últimos dos siglos. En algunos estados, la ascendencia africana determinaba la identidad africana en tres cuartas partes, en otros estaba más calificada o menos. La regla de la hipodescendencia o de una gota, es decir, un antepasado africano identificado como negro, fue adoptada por Virginia en 1924. Esta regla de una gota no fue adoptada como ley por Carolina del Sur, Luisiana y otros estados donde los criollos eran o habían sido dueños de esclavos. Los supremacistas blancos, en efecto, practicaron la regla de una gota durante la esclavitud , la regla delegó la clasificación racial de la descendencia producida por amos y esclavas blancos como esclavos, sin reconocer la paternidad masculina. De manera similar, se aprobaron leyes que castigaban a las personas libres de herencia mixta, al igual que a los hombres y mujeres negros libres, negándoles sus derechos básicos. El voto, por ejemplo, que los negros libres podían y podían hacer bajo el dominio francés, se les negó después de la Compra de Luisiana en 1803 en unos pocos años. Alrededor del diez por ciento de la población esclava, según los observadores, parecía ser blanca, pero tenía antepasados africanos conocidos. Después del fin de la esclavitud, la mayoría de estas personas desaparecieron en la población blanca simplemente moviéndose. Walter White, presidente de la NAACP en 1920, informó que entre 1880 y 1920, unos 400.000 descendientes de esclavos se hicieron pasar por blancos. Véase Helen Catterall, editora, Judicial Cases Concerning American Slavery and the Negro, 5 volúmenes, 1935 y A Man Called White, autobiografía de Walter White, primer presidente de la NAACP.
En 2009, Keith Bardwell, juez de paz de Robert, Luisiana , se negó a oficiar una boda para una pareja interracial y fue demandado sumariamente en un tribunal federal. Véase rechazo de matrimonio interracial en Luisiana .
Alrededor del 15% de todos los matrimonios nuevos en los Estados Unidos en 2010 fueron entre cónyuges de diferente raza o etnia, más del doble de la proporción en 1980 (6,7%). [28]
Dada la variedad de entornos familiares y sociales generales en los que se crían los niños multirraciales, junto con la diversidad de su apariencia y herencia, las generalizaciones sobre los desafíos u oportunidades de los niños multirraciales no son muy útiles. Un artículo de 1989 escrito por Charlotte Nitary reveló que los padres de niños mestizos a menudo luchaban entre enseñar a sus hijos a identificarse únicamente con la raza de su padre no blanco, no identificarse en absoluto con la raza social o identificarse con las identidades raciales de ambos padres. [29]
La identidad social de los niños y de sus padres en una misma familia multirracial puede variar o ser la misma. [30] Algunos niños multirraciales sienten presión de diversas fuentes para "elegir" o identificarse con una única identidad racial. Otros pueden sentir presión para no abandonar una o más de sus etnias, en particular si se identifican culturalmente con ellas.
Algunos niños crecen sin que la raza sea un tema importante en sus vidas porque se identifican con la regla de una gota. [31] Este enfoque para abordar la herencia racial plural es algo en lo que la sociedad estadounidense se ha socializado lentamente, ya que el consenso general entre las personas identificadas como monorraciales es que la identidad racial plural es una elección y presenta motivos engañosos contra la identidad racial heredada más oprimida. [32] En la década de 1990, a medida que más estudiantes identificados como multirraciales asistían a colegios y universidades, muchos se encontraron con el aislamiento de los grupos cultural y racialmente homogéneos en el campus. Esta tendencia nacional común vio el lanzamiento de muchas organizaciones universitarias multirraciales en todo el país. En la década de 2000, estos esfuerzos por la autoidentificación pronto llegaron más allá de las instituciones educativas y a la sociedad en general. [33]
En su libro La revolución del amor: el matrimonio interracial , Maria PP Root sugiere que cuando los padres interraciales se divorcian, sus hijos mestizos se vuelven amenazantes en circunstancias en las que el padre con la custodia se ha vuelto a casar en una unión en la que se pone énfasis en la identidad racial. [34]
Algunas personas multirraciales intentan reivindicar una nueva categoría. Por ejemplo, el atleta Tiger Woods ha dicho que no sólo es afroamericano sino también "cablinasiano", ya que es de ascendencia caucásica, afroamericana, nativa americana y asiática. [35]
En el censo de 2010, casi 3 millones de personas indicaron que su raza era nativa americana (incluidos los nativos de Alaska). [49] De estos, más del 27% indicó específicamente "Cherokee" como su origen étnico . [50] [51] Muchas de las Primeras Familias de Virginia afirman descender de Pocahontas o alguna otra " princesa india ". Este fenómeno ha sido denominado el "síndrome Cherokee". [52] En todo Estados Unidos, numerosos individuos cultivan una identidad étnica oportunista como nativos americanos, a veces a través de grupos de herencia Cherokee o bendiciones de bodas indias . [53]
Los niveles de ascendencia nativa americana (distinta de la identidad nativa americana ) difieren. Los genomas de los afroamericanos autodeclarados tenían un promedio de 0,8 % de ascendencia nativa americana, los de los euroamericanos un promedio de 0,18 % y los de los latinos un promedio de 18,0 %. [54] [55]
Many tribes, especially those in the Eastern United States, are primarily made up of individuals with an unambiguous Native American identity, despite being predominantly of European ancestry.[53] Point in case, more than 75% of those enrolled in the Cherokee Nation have less than one-quarter Cherokee blood.[56] Former Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation, Bill John Baker, is 1/32 Cherokee, amounting to about 3%.
Historically, non-Native governments have forced numerous Native Americans to assimilate into colonial and later American society, e.g. through language shifts and conversions to Christianity. In many cases, this process occurred through forced assimilation of children sent off to special boarding schools far from their families. Those who could pass for white had the advantage of white privilege.[53] Today, after generations of racial whitening through hypergamy, a number of Native Americans may have fair skin like White Americans. Native Americans are more likely than any other racial group to practice racial exogamy, resulting in an ever-declining proportion of indigenous blood among those who claim a Native American identity.[57] Some tribes disenroll tribal members unable to provide proof of Native ancestry, usually through a Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood. Disenrollment has become a contentious issue in Native American reservation politics.[58][59]
![Radmilla Cody es un miembro inscrito de la Nación Navajo y de ascendencia afroamericana.[62]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8d/Radmilla_cody.jpeg/1280px-Radmilla_cody.jpeg)
![Redd Foxx's mother was half Seminole and his father was African-American.[68]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7d/Redd_Foxx_1966.JPG/1280px-Redd_Foxx_1966.JPG)
![Jimi Hendrix was born to a Cherokee mother and was part English, African-American, Irish and German.[69][70][71]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ae/Jimi_Hendrix_1967.png/1280px-Jimi_Hendrix_1967.png)
Interracial relations between Native Americans and African-Americans is a part of American history that has been neglected.[79] The earliest record of African and Native American relations in the Americas occurred in April 1502, when the first Africans kidnapped were brought to Hispaniola to serve as slaves. Some escaped and somewhere inland on Santo Domingo, the first Black Indians were born.[80] In addition, an example of African slaves' escaping from European colonists and being absorbed by Native Americans occurred as far back as 1526. In June of that year, Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón established a Spanish colony near the mouth of the Pee Dee River in what is now eastern South Carolina. The Spanish settlement was named San Miguel de Gualdape. Among the settlement were 100 enslaved Africans. In 1526, the first African slaves fled the colony and took refuge with local Native Americans.[81]
European colonists created treaties with Native American tribes requesting the return of any runaway slaves. For example, in 1726, the governor of New York exacted a promise from the Iroquois to return all runaway slaves who had joined them. This same promise was extracted from the Huron people in 1764, and from the Delaware people in 1765, though there is no record of slaves ever being returned.[82] Numerous advertisements requested the return of African-Americans who had married Native Americans or who spoke a Native American language. The primary exposure that Native Americans and Africans had to each other came through the institution of slavery.[83] Native Americans learned that Africans had what Native Americans considered 'Great Medicine' in their bodies because Africans were virtually immune to the Old-World diseases that were decimating most native populations.[84] Because of this, many tribes encouraged marriage between the two groups, to create stronger, healthier children from the unions.[84]
For African-Americans, the one-drop rule was a significant factor in ethnic solidarity. African-Americans generally shared a common cause in society regardless of their multiracial admixture or social/economic stratification. Additionally, African-Americans found it, near, impossible to learn about their Native American heritage as many family elders withheld pertinent genealogical information.[79] Tracing the genealogy of African-Americans can be a very difficult process, especially for descendants of Native Americans, because African-Americans who were slaves were forbidden to learn to read and write and a majority of Native Americans neither spoke English, nor read or wrote it.[79]
![Maria Tallchief was a member of the Osage Nation and of Ulster-Scots descent.[88]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/Maria_Tallchief_1961.png/1280px-Maria_Tallchief_1961.png)
Interracial relations among Native Americans and Europeans occurred from the earliest years of colonization. European impact was immediate, widespread and profound—more than any other race that had contact with Native Americans during the early years of colonization and nationhood.[90]
Some early male settlers married Native American women or had informal unions with them. Early contact between Native Americans and Europeans was often charged with tension, but also had moments of friendship, cooperation and intimacy.[91] Several marriages took place in European colonies between European men and Native women. For instance, on April 5, 1614, Pocahontas, a Powhatan woman in present-day Virginia, married the Virginian colonist John Rolfe of Jamestown. Their son Thomas Rolfe was an ancestor to many descendants in First Families of Virginia. As a result, discriminatory laws (such as those against African Americans) often excluded Native Americans during this period. In the early 19th century, the Native American woman Sacagawea, who would help translate for and guide the Lewis and Clark Expedition in the West, married the French-Canadian trapper Toussaint Charbonneau.
Some Europeans living among Native Americans were called "White Indians". They "lived in native communities for years, learned native languages fluently, attended native councils, and often fought alongside their native companions."[92] European traders and trappers often married Native American women from tribes on the frontier and had families with them. Sometimes these marriages were done for political reasons between a Native American tribe and the European traders. Some traders, who kept bases in the cities, had what were called "country wives" among Native Americans, with legal European-American wives and children at home in the city. Not all abandoned their "natural" mixed-race children. Some arranged for sons to be sent to European-American schools for their education. Early European colonists were predominately men and Native American women were at risk for rape or sexual harassment especially if they were enslaved.[93]
Most marriages between Europeans and Native Americans were between European men and Native American women. The social identity of the children was strongly determined by the tribe's kinship system. This determined how easy it would be for the child assimilated into the tribe. Among the matrilineal tribes of the Southeast, such as the Creek and Cherokee, the mixed race children generally were accepted as and identified as Indian, as they gained their social status from their mother's clans and tribes and often grew up with their mothers and their male relatives. By contrast, among the patrilineal Omaha, for example, the child of a white man and Omaha woman was considered "white"; such mixed-race children and their mothers would be protected, but the children could formally belong to the tribe as members only if adopted by a man.
In those years, a Native American man had to get consent of the European parents to marry a white woman. When such marriages were approved, it was with the stipulation that "he can prove to support her as a white woman in a good home".[94]
In the early twentieth century in the West, "intermarried whites" were listed in a separate category on the Dawes Rolls, when members of tribes were listed and identified for allocation of lands to individual heads of households in the break-up of tribal communal lands in Indian Territory. This increased intermarriage as some white men married Native Americans to gain control of land. In the late 19th century, three European-American middle-class female teachers married Native American men they had met at Hampton Institute during the years when it ran its Indian program.[95] In the late nineteenth century, Charles Eastman, a physician of Sioux and European ancestry who trained at Boston University, married Elaine Goodale, a European-American woman from New England. They met and worked together in Dakota Territory when she was Superintendent of Indian Education and he was a doctor for the reservations. His maternal grandfather was Seth Eastman, an artist and Army officer from New England, who had married a Sioux woman and had a daughter with her while stationed at Fort Snelling in Minnesota.
Americans with sub-Saharan African ancestry for historical reasons: slavery, partus sequitur ventrem, one-eighth law, the one-drop rule of 20th-century legislation, have frequently been classified as black (historically) or African-American, even if they have significant European-American or Native American ancestry. As slavery became a racial caste, those who were enslaved and others of any African ancestry were classified by what is termed "hypodescent" according to the lower status ethnic group. Many of majority European ancestry and appearance "married white" and assimilated into white society for its social and economic advantages, such as generations of families identified as Melungeons, now generally classified as white but demonstrated genetically to be of European and sub-Saharan African ancestry.
Sometimes people of mixed Native American and African-American descent report having had elder family members withholding pertinent genealogical information.[79] Tracing the genealogy of African-Americans can be a very difficult process, as censuses did not identify slaves by name before the American Civil War, meaning that most African Americans did not appear by name in those records. In addition, many white fathers who used slave women sexually, even those in long-term relationships like Thomas Jefferson's with Sally Hemings, did not acknowledge their mixed race slave children in records, so paternity was lost.
Colonial records of French and Spanish slave ships and sales and plantation records in all the former colonies, often have much more information about slaves, from which researchers are reconstructing slave family histories. Genealogists have begun to find plantation records, court records, land deeds and other sources to trace African-American families and individuals before 1870. As slaves were generally forbidden to learn to read and write, black families passed along oral histories, which have had great persistence. Similarly, Native Americans did not generally learn to read and write English, although some did in the nineteenth century.[79] Until 1930, census enumerators used the terms free people of color and mulatto to classify people of apparent mixed race. When those terms were dropped, as a result of the lobbying by the Southern Congressional bloc, the Census Bureau used only the binary classifications of black or white, as was typical in segregated southern states.
In the 1980s, parents of mixed race children began to organize and lobby for the addition of a more inclusive term of racial designation that would reflect the heritage of their children. When the U.S. government proposed the addition of the category of "biracial" or "multiracial" in 1988, the response from the public was mostly negative. Some African-American organizations and African-American political leaders, such as Congresswoman Diane Watson and Congressman Augustus Hawkins, were particularly vocal in their rejection of the category, as they feared the loss of political and economic power if African-Americans reduced their numbers by self-identification.[96]
Since the 1990s and 2000s, the terms mixed race, multiracial and biracial have been used more frequently in society. It is still most common in the United States (unlike some other countries with a history of slavery) for people seen as "African" in appearance to identify as or be classified solely as "Black" or "African-Americans", for cultural, social and familial reasons.
President Barack Obama is of European-American and East African ancestry; he identifies as African-American.[97] A 2007 poll, when Obama was a presidential candidate, found that Americans differed in their responses as to how they classified him: a majority of White and Hispanics classified him as biracial, but a majority of African-Americans classified him as black.[98]
A 2003 study found an average of 18.6% (±1.5%) European admixture in a population sample of 416 African-Americans from Washington, D.C.[99] Studies of other populations in other areas have found differing percentages of ethnicity.
Twenty percent of African-Americans have more than 25% European ancestry, reflecting the long history of unions between the groups. The "mostly African" group is substantially African, as 70% of African-Americans in this group have less than 15% European ancestry. The 20% of African Americans in the "mostly mixed" group (2.7% of US population) have between 25% and 50% European ancestry.[100]
The writer Sherrel W. Stewart's assertion that "most" African-Americans have significant Native American heritage,[101] is not supported by genetic researchers who have done extensive population mapping studies. The TV series on African-American ancestry, hosted by the scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., had genetics scholars who discussed in detail the variety of ancestries among African-Americans. They noted there is popular belief in a high rate of Native American admixture that is not supported by the data that has been collected.[citation needed]
Genetic testing of direct male and female lines evaluates only direct male and female descent without accounting for many ancestors.[102] For this reason, individuals on the Gates show had fuller DNA testing.
The critic Troy Duster, writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education, thought Gates' series African American Lives should have told people more about the limitations of genetic SNP testing. He says that not all ancestry may show up in the tests, especially for those who claim part-Native American descent.[102][103] Other experts also agree.[104]
Population testing is still being done. Some Native American groups that have been sampled may not have shared the pattern of markers being searched for. Geneticists acknowledge that DNA testing cannot yet distinguish among members of differing cultural Native American nations. There is genetic evidence for three major migrations into North America, but not for more recent historic differentiation.[103] In addition, not all Native Americans have been tested, so scientists do not know for sure that Native Americans have only the genetic markers they have identified.[102][103]
On census forms, the government depends on individuals' self-identification. Contemporary African-Americans possess varying degrees of admixture with European (and other) ancestry. They also have various degrees of Native American ancestry.[105][106] In addition to being found to have 8% Asian and 19.6% European ancestry, African-Americans, who were sampled in 2010, were found to be 72.5% African; the Asian ancestry serving as a proxy for Native-American.[107]
Many free African-American families descended from unions between white women and African men in colonial Virginia. Their free descendants migrated to the frontier of Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina in the 18th and 19th centuries. There were also similar free families in Delaware and Maryland, as documented by Paul Heinegg.[108]
In addition, many Native American women turned to African-American men due to the decline in the number of Native American men due to disease and warfare.[90] Some Native American women bought African slaves but, unknown to European sellers, the women freed the African men and married them into their respective tribes.[90] If an African-American man had children by a Native American woman, their children were free because of the status of the mother.[90]
In their attempt to ensure white supremacy decades after emancipation, in the early 20th century, most southern states created laws based on the one-drop rule, defining as black persons with any known African ancestry. This was a stricter interpretation than what had prevailed in the 19th century; it ignored the many mixed families in the state and went against commonly accepted social rules of judging a person by appearance and association. Some courts called it "the traceable amount rule." Anthropologists called it an example of a hypodescent rule, meaning that racially mixed persons were assigned the status of the socially subordinate group.
Prior to the one-drop rule, different states had different laws regarding color. More importantly, social acceptance often played a bigger role in how a person was perceived and how identity was construed than any law. In frontier areas, there were fewer questions about origins. The community looked at how people performed, whether they served in the militia and voted, which were the responsibilities and signs of free citizens. When questions about racial identity arose because of inheritance issues, for instance, litigation outcomes often were based on how people were accepted by neighbors.[109]
The first year in which the U.S. Census dropped the mulatto category was 1920; that year enumerators were instructed to classify people in a binary way as white or black. This was a result of the Southern-dominated Congress convincing the Census Bureau to change its rules.[110][111]
After the Civil War, racial segregation forced African Americans to share more of a common lot in society than they might have given widely varying ancestry, educational and economic levels. The binary division altered the separate status of the traditionally free people of color in Louisiana, for instance, although they maintained a strong Louisiana Créole culture related to French culture and language, and practice of Catholicism. African Americans began to create common cause—regardless of their multiracial admixture or social and economic stratification. In 20th-century changes, during the rise of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, the African-American community increased its own pressure for people of any portion of African descent to be claimed by the black community to add to its power.
By the 1980s, parents of mixed race children (and adults of mixed race ancestry) began to organize and lobby for the ability to show more than one ethnic category on Census and other legal forms. They refused to be put into just one category. When the U.S. government proposed the addition of the category of "biracial" or "multiracial" in 1988, the response from the general public was mostly negative. Some African-American organizations and political leaders, such as Senator Diane Watson and Representative Augustus Hawkins, were particularly vocal in their rejection of the category. They feared a loss in political and economic power if African-Americans abandoned their one category.
This reaction is characterized as "historical irony" by Reginald Daniel (2002). The African-American self-designation had been a response to the one-drop rule, but then people resisted the chance to claim their multiple heritages. At the bottom was a desire not to lose political power of the larger group. Whereas before people resisted being characterized as one group regardless of ranges of ancestry, now some of their own were trying to keep them in the same group.[96]
Since the late twentieth century, the number of African and Caribbean ethnic African immigrants have increased in the United States. Together with publicity about the ancestry of President Barack Obama, whose father was from Kenya, some black writers have argued that new terms are needed for recent immigrants. There is a consensus that suggests that the term African-American should refer strictly to the descendants of American Colonial Era chattel slave descendants which includes various, subsequent, Free People of Color ethnic groups who survived the Chattel Slavery Era in the United States.[121] It's been recognized that grouping together all Afrodescent ethnicities, regardless of their unique ancestral circumstances, would deny the lingering effects of slavery within the American Colonial Era chattel slave descended community.[121] A growing sentiment within the Descendants of American Colonial Era Chattel Slaves (DOS) population insists that ethnic African immigrants as well as all other Afro-descent and Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade descendants and those relegated, or self-designated, to the Black race social identity or classification recognize their own unique familial, genealogical, ancestral, social, political and cultural backgrounds.[121]
Stanley Crouch wrote in a New York Daily News piece "Obama's mother is of white U.S. stock. His father is a black Kenyan," in a column entitled "What Obama Isn't: Black Like Me." During the 2008 campaign, the mixed-race columnist David Ehrenstein of the LA Times accused white liberals of flocking to Obama because he was a "Magic Negro", a term that refers to a black person with no past who simply appears to assist the mainstream white (as cultural protagonists/drivers) agenda.[122] Ehrenstein went on to say "He's there to assuage white 'guilt' they feel over the role of slavery and racial segregation in American history."[122]
Reacting to media criticism of Michelle Obama during the 2008 presidential election, Charles Steele Jr., CEO of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference said, "Why are they attacking Michelle Obama and not really attacking, to that degree, her husband? Because he has no slave blood in him."[123] He later claimed his comment was intended to be "provocative" but declined to expand on the subject.[123] Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (who was famously mistaken for a "recent American immigrant" by French President Nicolas Sarkozy[124]), said "descendants of slaves did not get much of a head start, and I think you continue to see some of the effects of that." She has also rejected an immigrant designation for African-Americans and instead prefers the terms black or white.[125]
Some of the most notable[vague] families include the Van Salees,[86] Vanderbilts, Whitneys, Blacks,[126] Cheswells,[127] Newells,[128] Battises,[129] Bostons,[130] Eldings[131] of the North; the Staffords,[132] Gibsons,[133] Locklears, Pendarvises,[87] Driggers,[134][135] Galphins,[136] Fairfaxes,[137] Grinsteads (Greenstead, Grinsted and Grimsted),[138] Johnsons, Timrods, Darnalls of the South and the Picos,[139] Yturrias[140] and Bushes of the West.[141]
DNA analysis shows varied results regarding non-European ancestry in self-identified White Americans. A 2003 DNA analysis found that about 30% of self-identified White Americans have less than 90% European ancestry.[142] A 2014 study performed on data obtained from 23andme customers found that the percentage of African or American Indian ancestry among White Americans varies significantly by region, with about 5% of White Americans living in Louisiana and South Carolina having 2% or more African ancestry.[54]
Some biographical accounts include the autobiography Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black by Gregory Howard Williams; One Drop: My Father's Hidden Life—A Story of Race and Family Secrets written by Bliss Broyard about her father Anatole Broyard; the documentary Colored White Boy[143] about a white man in North Carolina who discovers that he is the descendant of a white plantation owner and a raped African slave and the documentary on The Sanders Women[144] of Shreveport, Louisiana.
![Patrick Francis Healy was born to an Irish-American plantation owner and his biracial slave. He and his siblings identified as white in their formative years and most made careers in the Catholic Church in the North.[146]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/54/Patrick_Francis_Healy_solitaire.jpeg/1280px-Patrick_Francis_Healy_solitaire.jpeg)
Passing is a phenomenon most widely noted in the United States, which occurs when a person who may be literally classified as a member of one racial group (by law or frequent social convention applied to others with similar ancestry) is accepted or perceived ("passes") as a member of another.
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?" ... A person who is one-fourth or less American Indian or Korean or Filipino is not regarded as passing if he or she intermarries with 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... [W]hen 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.[149]
Laws dating from 17th-century colonial America defined children of African slave mothers as taking the status of their mothers and born into slavery regardless of the race or status of the father, under partus sequitur ventrem. The association of slavery with a "race" led to slavery as a racial caste. But, most families of free people of color formed in Virginia before the American Revolution were the descendants of unions between white women and African men, who frequently worked and lived together in the looser conditions of the early colonial period.[155] While interracial marriage was later prohibited, white men frequently took sexual advantage of slave women, and numerous generations of multiracial children were born. By the late 1800s it had become common among African Americans to use passing to gain educational opportunities as did the first African-American graduate of Vassar College, Anita Florence Hemmings.[156] Some 19th-century categorization schemes defined people by proportion of African ancestry: a person whose parents were black and white was classified as mulatto, with one black grandparent and three white as quadroon, and with one black great-grandparent and the remainder white as octoroon. The latter categories remained within an overall black or colored category, but before the Civil War, in Virginia and some other states, a person of one-eighth or less black ancestry was legally white.[157] Some members of these categories passed temporarily or permanently as white.
After whites regained power in the South following Reconstruction, they established racial segregation to reassert white supremacy, followed by laws defining people with any apparent or known African ancestry as black, under the principle of hypodescent.[157]
However, since several thousand blacks have been crossing the color line each year, millions of white Americans have relatively recent African ancestors (of the last 250 years). A statistical analysis done in 1958 estimated that 21 percent of the white population had some African ancestors. The study concluded that the majority of Americans of African descent were today classified as white and not black.[158]
A typical Latino American family may have members with a wide range of racial phenotypes, meaning a Latino couple may have children who look white and black and/or Native American and/or Asian.[159] Latino Americans have several self-identifications; most Latinos identify as "Some other race", while others identify as white and/or black and/or Native American and/or Asian.[1][2]
Latinos of darker skin tones are noted as having limited media appearance; critics and Latinos of color have accused Latin American media of overlooking dark-skinned individuals in favor of those that are of lighter complexion, blonde-haired and blue/green-eyed – especially in regards to actors and actresses on telenovelas – rather than the typical nonwhite Latin Americans.[160][161][162][163][164][165][166][167][168]
![Comedian Sal Vulcano is of Italian, Puerto Rican, and Cuban ancestry.[179]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/74/Sal_Vulcano_in_2017.png/1280px-Sal_Vulcano_in_2017.png)
During the 19th century, Christian missionaries from Europe and the United States followed Western traders to the Hawaiian Islands, leading to a wave of Western migration to the Kingdom of Hawaii. Westerners in the Hawaiian Islands often intermarried with Native Hawaiian women, including Hawaiian royalty. These developments eventually led to a gradual change in the beauty standards of Native Hawaiian women to a more westernized standard, which was reinforced by the refusal of Westerners to marry dark-skinned Hawaiians.[181]
While some American Pacific Islanders continue traditional cultural endogamy, many within this population now have mixed racial ancestry, sometimes combining European, Native American, as well as East Asian ancestry. The Hawaiians originally described the mixed race descendants as hapa. The term has evolved to encompass all people of mixed Asian and/or Pacific Islander ancestry. Subsequently, many ethnic Chinese also settled on the islands and married into the Pacific Islander populations.
There are many other Pacific Islanders outside of Hawaii that do not share this common history with Hawaii and Asian populations are not the only race that Pacific Islanders mix with.
In its original meaning, an Amerasian is a person born in Asia to an Asian mother and a U.S. military father. Colloquially, the term has sometimes been considered synonymous with Asian-American, to describe any person of mixed American and Asian parentage, regardless of the circumstances. The term "wasian" is also common slang to describe the individuals. "Wasian" has gained popularity on online platforms like TikTok among younger audiences, where trends in the 2020s have increased the proliferation of the term.[192]
According to the United States Census Bureau, concerning multiracial families in 1990, the number of children in interracial families grew from less than one-half million in 1970 to about two million in 1990.[193]
According to James P. Allen and Eugene Turner from California State University, Northridge, by some calculations the largest part white biracial population is white/American Indian and Alaskan Native, at 7,015,017; followed by white/black at 737,492; then white/Asian at 727,197; and finally white/Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander at 125,628.[25]
The U.S. Census categorizes Eurasian responses in the "some other race" section as part of the Asian race.[23] The Eurasian responses which the U.S. Census officially recognizes are Indo-European, Amerasian, and Eurasian.[23]
Chinese men entered the United States as laborers, primarily on the West Coast and in western territories. Following the Reconstruction era, as blacks set up independent farms, white planters imported Chinese laborers to satisfy their need for labor. In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed and Chinese workers who chose to stay in the U.S. were unable to have their wives join them. In the South, some Chinese married into the black and mulatto communities, as generally, discrimination meant they did not take white spouses. They rapidly left working as laborers and set up groceries in small towns throughout the South. They worked to get their children educated and socially mobile.[207]
The Afro-Asian population drastically increased by the 1950s, with a number of Afro-Asians born to African American fathers and Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, or Filipino mothers due to the large number of African Americans who enrolled in the military and developed relationships with Asian women abroad. Other groups of Afro-Asians are those who are of Caribbean American descent and are considered Dougla, or of Indian or Indo-Caribbean and African or Afro-Caribbean descent.
As of the census of 2000, there were 106,782 Afro-Asian individuals in the United States.[208]
The figure of the "tragic octoroon" was a stock character of abolitionist literature: a mixed-race woman raised as if a white woman in her white father's household, until his bankruptcy or death has her reduced to a menial position[218] She may even be unaware of her status before being reduced to victimization.[219] The first character of this type was the heroine of Lydia Maria Child's "The Quadroons" (1842), a short story.[219] This character allowed abolitionists to draw attention to the sexual exploitation in slavery and, unlike portrayals of the suffering of the field hands, did not allow slaveholders to retort that the sufferings of Northern mill hands were no easier. The Northern mill owner would not sell his own children into slavery.[220]
Abolitionists sometimes featured attractive, escaped mulatto slaves in their public lectures to arouse sentiments against slavery. They showed Northerners those slaves who looked like them rather than an "Other"; this technique, which is labeled White slave propaganda, collapsed the separation between peoples and made it impossible for the public to ignore the brutality of slavery.[221]
Charles W. Chesnutt, an author of the post-Civil War era, explored stereotypes in his portrayal of multiracial characters in southern society in the postwar years. Even characters who had been free and possibly educated before the war had trouble making a place for themselves in the postwar years. His stories feature mixed-race characters with complex lives. William Faulkner also portrayed the lives of mixed-race people and complex interracial families in the postwar South.
Comic book writer and filmmaker Greg Pak wrote that while white filmmakers have used multiracial characters explore themes about race and racism, many of these characters created stereotypes that Pak described were: "Wild Half-Castes", "sexually destructive antagonists explicitly or implicitly perceived as unable to control the instinctive urges of their non-white heritage" who exhibited the same racial stereotypes of their "full blood" counterparts, symbolically used by filmmakers to "[perpetuate] the association of multiraciality with sexual aberration and violence"; the "Tragic mulatto", "a typically female character who tries to pass for white but finds disaster when her non-white heritage is revealed" whose plight used by filmmakers to "to critique racism by inspiring pity"; and the "Half Breed Hero", an "empowering" stereotype whose objective of "[inspiring] identification as he actively resists white racism" is contradicted by the character being played by a white actor, reinforcing a "white liberal's dream of inclusion and authenticity than an honest depiction of a multiracial character's experiences." Pak noted that "Wild Half Caste" and "Tragic Mulatto" characters possess little to no character development and that while many multiracial characters have appeared more frequently in films without reinforcing stereotypes, white filmmakers have mostly avoided addressing their ethnicities.[222]
![Auliʻi Cravalho es de ascendencia hawaiana, irlandesa, puertorriqueña, portuguesa y china.[36][37][38]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6d/Auli'i_Cravalho_December_2016.jpg/1280px-Auli'i_Cravalho_December_2016.jpg)
![Charles Mingus nació de una madre de ascendencia inglesa y china y un padre de ascendencia afroamericana y sueca.[39][40]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3f/Charles_Mingus_1976_cropped.jpg/1280px-Charles_Mingus_1976_cropped.jpg)
![Jennifer Beals nació de madre irlandesa-estadounidense y padre afroamericano.[41]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5d/Jennifer_Beals_at_GLAAD_Awards_cropped.jpg/1280px-Jennifer_Beals_at_GLAAD_Awards_cropped.jpg)
![Kamala Harris nació en Oakland, California, de madre india tamil[42] y padre afrojamaicano.[43]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/41/Kamala_Harris_Vice_Presidential_Portrait.jpg/1280px-Kamala_Harris_Vice_Presidential_Portrait.jpg)
![Rebecca Hall nació de una madre de ascendencia inglesa, alemana, holandesa y afroamericana y de un padre inglés.[44][45][46][47][48]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f5/Rebecca_Hall_Berlinale_2010_cropped.jpg/1280px-Rebecca_Hall_Berlinale_2010_cropped.jpg)
![Bill John Baker, que tiene un 3,13 % de ascendencia cherokee,[60] fue el jefe principal de la Nación Cherokee de 2011 a 2019.](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/de/ChiefBillJohnBakerByPhilKonstantin.jpg/1280px-ChiefBillJohnBakerByPhilKonstantin.jpg)
![El anciano seminola Billy Bowlegs III también era de ascendencia muscogee, afroamericana y escocesa a través de su abuelo materno Osceola.[61]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/40/Billy_Bowlegs_III_3c25031u.jpg/1280px-Billy_Bowlegs_III_3c25031u.jpg)
![Charles Curtis, vicepresidente de los Estados Unidos, era un nativo americano, hijo de una madre kaw, osage, potawatomi y francesa y de un padre inglés, escocés y galés.[63]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e6/Charles_Curtis-portrait.jpg/1280px-Charles_Curtis-portrait.jpg)
![Deb Haaland is from the Laguna Pueblo people and is the first Native American Cabinet Secretary as Secretary of Interior. Her father is Norwegian-American.[64]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cf/SecretaryDebHaaland.jpg/1280px-SecretaryDebHaaland.jpg)
![President of the Navajo Nation Buu Nygren was born in Utah to a Navajo mother and a Vietnamese father.[65]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/39/Buu_Nygren,_2023.jpg/1280px-Buu_Nygren,_2023.jpg)
![Mary Peltola was born to a Yup'ik mother and a German American father.[66]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/08/U.S._Representative_Mary_Peltola,_117th_Congress.jpg/1280px-U.S._Representative_Mary_Peltola,_117th_Congress.jpg)
![Booboo Stewart was born to a father of Blackfoot, Russian, and Scottish ancestry and a mother of Korean, Chinese, and Japanese ancestry.[67]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c8/Booboo_Stewart_in_2017.jpg/1280px-Booboo_Stewart_in_2017.jpg)
![Edmonia Lewis was of Mississauga Ojibwe, African-American and Haitian descent.[72]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1c/Edmonia_Lewis_by_Henry_Rocher.jpg/1280px-Edmonia_Lewis_by_Henry_Rocher.jpg)
![Claudia McNeil was born to an Apache mother and an African-American father.[73]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/22/Claudia-McNeil.jpg/1280px-Claudia-McNeil.jpg)
![Rosa Parks was of Cherokee-Creek,[74] African-American and Scots-Irish descent.[75]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c4/Rosaparks.jpg/1280px-Rosaparks.jpg)
![Della Reese was born to a mother of Cherokee descent and an African-American father.[76][77][78]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7b/Della_Reese_1998.jpg/1280px-Della_Reese_1998.jpg)
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![Ben Nighthorse Campbell was born to an Azorean Portuguese mother and father of Northern Cheyenne, Apache and Pueblo Indian descent.[85]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/75/BenNCampbell.jpg/1280px-BenNCampbell.jpg)
_of_Faunceway_Baptiste_or_Battice_(Mixed_Blood)_1868.jpg/1280px-Portrait_(Front)_of_Faunceway_Baptiste_or_Battice_(Mixed_Blood)_1868.jpg)
![Ruth Gordon's ancestor Parthena was an African mistress of Joseph Pendarvis a member of the notable, Native American descended, Landgrave family of South Carolina.[86][87]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/27/Ruth_Gordon_1919.jpg/1280px-Ruth_Gordon_1919.jpg)
![Heather Locklear is of Lumbee descent.[89]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Heather_Locklear_(2078349596)_(cropped).jpg/1280px-Heather_Locklear_(2078349596)_(cropped).jpg)
![Tia Mowry Her mother is of Afro-Bahamian descent and her father is of English and Irish ancestry.[112]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/65/Tia_Mowry_on_Sidewalks.jpg/1280px-Tia_Mowry_on_Sidewalks.jpg)
![James Brown was of Apache, African-American and Asian descent.[113][114]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d8/James_Brown_(1977).jpg/1280px-James_Brown_(1977).jpg)
![Muhammad Ali was of English, African-American and Irish descent.[115]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/89/Muhammad_Ali_NYWTS.jpg/1280px-Muhammad_Ali_NYWTS.jpg)
![Whitney Houston was part Native American, African-American and Dutch.[116]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a7/Whitney_Houston_Welcome_Home_Heroes_1_cropped.jpg/1280px-Whitney_Houston_Welcome_Home_Heroes_1_cropped.jpg)
![Martin Luther King Jr. was of Irish and African descent.[117][118]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/84/Martin_Luther_King_Jr_NYWTS.jpg/1280px-Martin_Luther_King_Jr_NYWTS.jpg)
![John Mercer Langston was of English, Native American and African descent.[119]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0b/John_Mercer_Langston_-_Brady-Handy.jpg/1280px-John_Mercer_Langston_-_Brady-Handy.jpg)
![Oprah Winfrey is 89% Sub-Saharan African, 8% Native American and 3% East Asian.[120]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Oprah_Winfrey_(2004).jpg/1280px-Oprah_Winfrey_(2004).jpg)
![George Herriman, who was born into a mixed-race Creole family, wore a hat to conceal his hair texture, and sometimes self-identified as Greek, Turkish, or Irish. His death certificate identified him as Caucasian.[145]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fd/George_Herriman_and_fans.jpg/1280px-George_Herriman_and_fans.jpg)
![Carol Channing was born to a white mother and a half African-American and German father. She passed for white during the height of her career and later publicly acknowledged her mixed race origins.[147][148]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/90/Carolchanning.jpg/1280px-Carolchanning.jpg)
![G. K. Butterfield was born to two mixed race black identified parents of Portuguese and African descent from the Azores.[150]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/96/G._K._Butterfield,_Official_Portrait,_112th_Congress.jpg/1280px-G._K._Butterfield,_Official_Portrait,_112th_Congress.jpg)
![Robert Purvis was born to a part Moorish, German Jewish and Sephardic Jewish free woman of color and an English father. He identified as black and worked to serve his community.[151][152][153]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8b/Robert_Purvis_daguerreotype_BPL.jpg/1280px-Robert_Purvis_daguerreotype_BPL.jpg)
![Imitation of Life star Fredi Washington portrayed a woman who passed in the famous film, but was against passing in her own life.[154]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/92/Imitation_of_Life_(1934)_trailer_8.jpg/1280px-Imitation_of_Life_(1934)_trailer_8.jpg)
![Stacey Dash is the daughter of a Mexican-American mother Linda Dash (née Lopez;[169][170] d. 2017)[171] and Dennis Dash, an African-American.[170]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/40/Stacey_Dash.jpg/1280px-Stacey_Dash.jpg)
![Geraldo Rivera is half Puerto Rican and Ashkenazi Russian Jew.[172][173][174]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/59/GeraldoRiveraSept2010.jpg/1280px-GeraldoRiveraSept2010.jpg)
![Adrian Grenier mother is Mexican (Spanish, Indigenous) and some French.[175] His father is of English, Scottish, Irish and German ancestry.[175]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b3/Adrian_Grenier_June_2014.jpg/1280px-Adrian_Grenier_June_2014.jpg)
![Chita Rivera's mother was of Scottish and Italian descent and her father was Puerto Rican.[176]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/65/Chita_Rivera_1.jpg/1280px-Chita_Rivera_1.jpg)
![Rosa Salazar is of French and Peruvian descent.[177]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d2/Rosa_Salazar_by_Gage_Skidmore.jpg/1280px-Rosa_Salazar_by_Gage_Skidmore.jpg)
![According to DNA testing, Eva Longoria's Mexican-American ancestry consists of 70% European, 27% Asian and Indigenous and 3% African origin.[178]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/16/Eva_Longoria_Cannes_2015.jpg/1280px-Eva_Longoria_Cannes_2015.jpg)
![Bruno Mars was born in Hawaii to a father of Puerto Rican and Hungarian and Ukrainian Jewish ancestry and a mother of Filipino and Spanish ancestry.[180]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/39/Bruno_Mars_portrait.jpg/1280px-Bruno_Mars_portrait.jpg)
![Princess Kaʻiulani was of Indigenous Hawaiian and Scots-American descent.[182]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e8/Kaiulani_in_San_Francisco,_1897,_photograph_by_I._W._Taber,_retouched_photo_by_J._J._Williams,_Library_of_Congress_(restored).jpg/1280px-Kaiulani_in_San_Francisco,_1897,_photograph_by_I._W._Taber,_retouched_photo_by_J._J._Williams,_Library_of_Congress_(restored).jpg)
![Queen Emma of Hawaii was of Hawaiian Nobility and Scottish ancestry.[183]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e7/Queen_Emma_of_Hawaii,_retouched_photo_by_J._J._Williams.jpg/1280px-Queen_Emma_of_Hawaii,_retouched_photo_by_J._J._Williams.jpg)
![Actor Dwayne Johnson's mother is Samoan and his father is Black Nova Scotian.[184][185][186][187]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f1/Dwayne_Johnson_2,_2013.jpg/1280px-Dwayne_Johnson_2,_2013.jpg)
![Jason Momoa was born to a mother of Native American, Irish and German ancestry and a father of Indigenous Hawaiian ancestry.[188]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f2/Jason_Momoa_2011.jpg/1280px-Jason_Momoa_2011.jpg)
![Lou Diamond Phillips is of Cherokee, Hawaiian, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Filipino and Scotch-Irish American ancestry.[189][190][191]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/15/LouDiamondPhillipsByPhilKonstantinPublicDomain.jpg/1280px-LouDiamondPhillipsByPhilKonstantinPublicDomain.jpg)
![Chloe Bennet; mother is Caucasian and her father is Chinese.[194]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/08/Chloe_Bennet_by_Gage_Skidmore_2.jpg/1280px-Chloe_Bennet_by_Gage_Skidmore_2.jpg)
![Moon Bloodgood is part Irish, Dutch, and Korean.[195][196]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/79/Moon_Bloodgood_2012_Dark_Horse_Comics_booth_(cropped).jpg/1280px-Moon_Bloodgood_2012_Dark_Horse_Comics_booth_(cropped).jpg)
![Tia Carrere is part Spanish, Chinese, and Filipino.[197]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0d/Tia_Carrere_2009.jpg/1280px-Tia_Carrere_2009.jpg)
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![Sean Lennon is the son of Japanese multimedia artist Yoko Ono, and English and Irish descended John Lennon.[198]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d9/Sean_Lennon_Saint_Asbury_Park_NJ_09272013_LHCollins_400.jpg/1280px-Sean_Lennon_Saint_Asbury_Park_NJ_09272013_LHCollins_400.jpg)
![Olivia Munn; father is of English, Irish, and German ancestry,[199] while her mother is from Vietnam.[200]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/92/Olivia_Munn_2013.jpg/1280px-Olivia_Munn_2013.jpg)
![Jennifer Tilly is part Native American, Irish, Finnish, and Chinese.[201][202][203][204]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/57/Jennifer_Tilly,_2006_(cropped).jpg/1280px-Jennifer_Tilly,_2006_(cropped).jpg)
![Danny Pudi was born to a Polish American mother and a Telugu Indian father.[205]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6f/Danny_Pudi_by_Gage_Skidmore_2.jpg/1280px-Danny_Pudi_by_Gage_Skidmore_2.jpg)
![Mitski was born in Mie Prefecture, Japan to a Japanese mother and an American father.[206]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/29/Mitksi_(46927277872)_(cropped).jpg/1280px-Mitksi_(46927277872)_(cropped).jpg)
![Nicki Minaj is part Afro-Trinidadian and Indo-Trinidadian.[209][210]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/dd/Nicki_Minaj_3,_2012.jpg/1280px-Nicki_Minaj_3,_2012.jpg)
![Ne-Yo is part African-American and Chinese.[211]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c3/Ne-Yo_2013.jpg/1280px-Ne-Yo_2013.jpg)
![Bobby Scott is of African-American and Filipino (maternal grandfather) descent.[212]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b5/BobbyScott.jpg/1280px-BobbyScott.jpg)
![Sonja Sohn is part African-American and Korean.[213]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6a/Sonja_Sohn_at_Harvard_Law_School.jpg/1280px-Sonja_Sohn_at_Harvard_Law_School.jpg)
![Jero is part African-American and Japanese.[214]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/67/JERO_@_Japan_Society_-_6-8-2012_-_18.jpg/1280px-JERO_@_Japan_Society_-_6-8-2012_-_18.jpg)
![Seattle mayor Bruce Harrell was born to an African-American father and a Japanese mother.[215]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a0/Bruce_Harrell_(52457507483)_(2).jpg/1280px-Bruce_Harrell_(52457507483)_(2).jpg)
![Steve Lacy was born to an African-American mother and a Filipino father.[216]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/42/Steve_Lacy_at_Icebox_in_2019.jpg/1280px-Steve_Lacy_at_Icebox_in_2019.jpg)
![Marilyn Strickland was born in Seoul to a Korean mother and an African-American father.[217]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/96/Marilyn_Strickland_117th_U.S_Congress_(cropped).jpg/1280px-Marilyn_Strickland_117th_U.S_Congress_(cropped).jpg)
{{cite web}}: |last= has generic name (help){{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link){{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)Being 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.
"Many 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 black/Asian/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, many multiracial students expressed the need to create and maintain a self-identified multiracial community on campus. 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 component ethnic groups. Multiracial students of different ancestries have their own experiences in common.
Women with children, especially biracial children, have fewer chances for remarriage than childless women. And because the children of divorce tend to remain with mothers, becoming incorporated into new families when their mothers remarry, interracial children are more threatening markers of race and racial authenticity for families in which race matters.
{{cite web}}: |last= has generic name (help)The researchers found that European-Americans had genomes that were on average 98.6 percent European, .19 percent African, and .18 Native American.
"never emulate white men and brown men whose fates didn't speak to my own. It was into my father's image, the black man, son of Africa, that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself, the attributes of Martin and Malcolm, DuBois and Mandela."
In 1971, however, the Krazy world changed. While researching an article on Herriman for the Dictionary of American Biography, the sociologist Arthur Asa Berger got a copy of Herriman's birth certificate. Although Herriman died listed as Caucasian in 1944 in Los Angeles, he was classified as "colored" when born to two mixed race or Creole parents in New Orleans in 1880, which had legal segregation. In 1880 Herriman would have been considered a mulatto. By the turn of the century, when he was a fledgling cartoonist, the newspaper bullpens "were open to immigrants but not to blacks".
According to the 2000 census, out of the 281,421,906 people living in the U.S., 10,242,998 of them identified themselves as entirely of Asian race (3.6%). Additionally, there were 1,655,830 people who identified themselves as being part Asian and part one or more other races. Asian and Black/African American ... 106,782 ... 0.64% (percentage of total multiracial Asians)
Another US congressman who has Filipino roots is Rep. Robert Scott, an African-American representing Virginia's third District. The Harvard-educated Democrat's maternal grandfather, Valentin Cortez Hamlin, is from the Philippine." (sic., final word should read "Philippines")
A husky-voiced woman of African American and Korean parentage, Sohn (who's straight, in case you're wondering) got her start in the New York slam-poetry circuit (including the Def Poetry Jam) before moving on to the TV and movie game (check her out in Shaft).