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Census 2000 identified 6.8 million Americans, or 2.4 percent of the total U.S. population, as multiracial. Of these, 93.3 percent identified with two races, 6 percent identified with three races, and 0.6 percent identified with four races. Though not the first time the U.S. Census Bureau counted multiracial individuals, Census 2000 did mark the first time individuals were able to check all races that apply on their census forms. The primary intellectual debate about multiracial identity focuses on whether such an identity is needed to give individuals of mixed racial descent greater latitude to express who they are or whether the proliferation of multiracial identities supports the status quo by subdividing traditional racial communities.

Notably, both sides of this debate agree that race is a social construct. Although commonly thought of as a biological attribute, race actually has no gene to explain its existence. Rather, racial designations result from a complex interplay between individuals' phenotypical characteristics, social labeling and definition, culture, and individual identity. Furthermore, biologists find as much variation within racial groups as between groups on skin color and other biological characteristics typically associated with race.

Historically speaking, race relations had less to do with skin color than patterns of domination and control among groups in society. Various mechanisms reinforce the social construction of racial groups over time and to such an extent that racial categories seem legitimate and natural and are taken for granted. For example, the rule of hypodescent enables white Americans to circumscribe membership in their racial group and perpetuate their privilege by dictating that one drop of black blood (i.e., having any black ancestors) made one black. The rule of hypodescent also applied to mulattos, persons of mixed white and black parentage. Mulattos historically enjoyed higher social status than blacks, but lower than whites, giving rise to a structure of unequal privilege in black communities.

The Census Bureau itself gave legitimacy to the concept of race and hypodescent by identifying and sorting Americans into mutually exclusive groups. The Census Bureau also identifies Americans based on Hispanic origin. Hispanics (or Latinos), sometimes thought of as comprising a "brown" race, actually can be of any race, and their designation is that of an ethnic group, due to their cultural heritage.

A long history of writing, scholarly and otherwise, established a "marginal man" notion of multiracial individuals who did not fit neatly into the Census Bureau's mutually exclusive racial categories, or into the worlds of either parent. Despite traditional pressure on people to identify with one (and only one) race, these individuals often were unable to do so. Prior to the post-World War II civil rights movement, exclusive racial categories enforced white privilege vis-a-vis other groups, serving as the basis for prejudice and discrimination. In more recent times, exclusive racial designations served as the basis for civil rights monitoring and group solidarity.

Despite change in the use of racial categories, failure to fit neatly into one of these categories due to multiracial identity continued as a personal problem. However, recent scholarship supports multiracial persons, maintaining that they are not inherently different from monoracial persons and even have the advantage of multiple social perspectives. The essence of acceptance of one's social identity is public acknowledgment of that multiracial heritage as a source of pride and character. Multiracial identity also allows an individual to include (or exclude) any ancestral group's heritage in defining oneself, and allows for an identity that may be different from other family members. This identity may also change over time, finding different expression in different social situations. What remains important in all instances is the right to self-define race rather than having race imposed externally by society.

The issue of multiracial identity will undoubtedly become more poignant with the passage of time as the U.S. multiracial population grows. Many trace the modern origin of the U.S. multiracial population to the civil rights movement and the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Loving v. Virginia in 1967 that declared unconstitutional state miscegenation laws that prohibited interracial marriage. Since then, the multiracial population has grown alongside an ever increasing number of interracial unions.

Also growing has been an intensification of concern for what multiracial identity means on a personal, social, and political level. This concern inspired the multiracial movement, which transformed the personal problems of self-esteem and identity for interracial couples and their children into a public issue over race and its meaning. In its current form, the multiracial movement is an organized effort to deconstruct race. Pressure arising from the multiracial movement resulted in the Census Bureau acknowledging the modern complexity of race by allowing individuals to check boxes on census forms that represent their entire heritage. With the prospect of an almost unlimited number of possible racial combinations, and the accompanying analytical complexity, some scholars and activists suggest that race will eventually cease to exist as a viable construct.

The multiracial movement also spurred a countermovement that believes that acknowledging multiracial identity in census data and other public forums only reinforces the hierarchical racial structure of U.S. society and undermines efforts for civil rights monitoring. This countermovement worries that nonwhite communities will be divided by a host of new mulatto-like racial identities and confuse who is and who is not a member of a minority group.

Nevertheless, sociological deconstruction of race still leaves room for examining real inequalities between groups related to culture, politics, and economics. Uncertainty remains about what the next stage of debate regarding multiracial identity will be and whether that dialogue will result in further refinement of socially constructed racial categories or an intellectual discussion of "race" as it was once conceived.

References:

1) Root, Maria. 1996. The Multiracial Experience: Racial Borders as the New Frontier. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

2) Williams, Kim M. 2006. Mark One or More. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

3) Winters, Loretta I. and Herman L. Debose, eds. 2003. New Faces in a Changing America: Multiracial Identity in the 21st Century. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.  

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