Though most Americans may still think of themselves as belonging to a single race, the multiracial population is surging. Racial boundaries are more permeable and easier to ignore than ever before.Yet, as Jacoby notes, the federal government and race-based interest groups are pushing harder than ever to maintain a system of racial designations, while most Americans have moved on:
Today, one in seven new marriages — 14.6 percent — unites spouses of different races, according to the Pew Research Center. The interracial marriage rate has doubled since 1980, and is six times what it was in 1960. For some combinations, the rate of increase has been even more rapid. When Barack Obama was born in 1961, less than one new marriage in 1,000 was, like his parents’, that of a black person and a white person. “By 1980, that share had risen to about one in 150 new marriages,’’ Pew notes. “By 2008, it had risen to one in 60.’’
To be sure, some lobbies and grievance groups profit from aggravating racial distinctions. But most Americans have moved beyond the color-consciousness of generations past, and it’s time federal agencies did too. Congress should instruct the Census Bureau to stop counting and classifying Americans by race, and to mark the occasion by installing at its headquarters a monument bearing these words, which Thurgood Marshall wrote in a brief for the 1950 Supreme Court case of McLaurin v. Oklahoma:I made similar points in my prior post, Why Don't We Just Stop Counting?
“Racial criteria are irrational, irrelevant, [and] odious to our way of life.’’
Getting back to the title of Jacoby's post, I assume the Editors at The Globe (owned by The New York Times) did not like his reference to "Racial Bean Counters" and changed the column title.
I liked Jacoby's original title better, it was so much more accurate.
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As a lily-white American who lived and taught in Africa, and who is married to a beautiful black African woman, I demand to be labeled an African-American.
ReplyDeleteBesides - if evolutionary theory is true, all of our ancestors came from Africa anyway. Even if it was millions of years ago.
"... most Americans have moved on."
ReplyDeleteI thought I had moved on too, until one day I was bragging about the golden tan I'd achieved at the beach that day and our biracial daughter rolled her eyes and said, "Daddy, you're pink."
Brown little brat. I think she's just jealous of my blue eyes.
Anyway, the government has no business in this area and I wish they'd stop it.
I am married to a Russian woman and, I have to say, Russians are a race unto themselves.
ReplyDeleteOf course, I always put down that I am Native American when the bean counters ask me. After all, I was born in the USA as was my mother and father. What?!!? Even the aboriginals who we like to call Native Americans had, at one time, only one set of parents who were born here.
Of course, this is all completely besides the point. The real point is to manipulate identity groups to gain and maintain power. There is nothing other than that.