In America

The new millennium has seen a significant change in American mixed-race demographics and attitudes. Up to the mid 1900s, people with the blood of two or more races were separately identified from whites by the Census, perhaps a reflection of society’s view that they were an abomination. Throughout slavery and Jim Crow, interracial marriage with whites was largely illegal. But since the 1967 Supreme Court’s Loving decision overturned those laws, Americans from every racial group have created mixed-race families in growing numbers. It’s not just those families who are involved. Studies show that between 67-75% of Americans say it would be all right for a relative to marry outside their race.

Recent statistics document this shift. Multi-racial marriages (among any race combinations) grew from 7% of newlyweds in 1980 to 17% in 2015. Between the 2000 and 2010 Census, multi-racial births grew three times faster than single race births, with one multiracial in every seven U.S. births. The 2020 Census is expected to show an increasing acceleration in these growth trends, leading to a projected 20+ percent interracial American population by 2050.

Americans already know some mixed-race people. The kid in your child’s class or the couple down your street. The girl your cousin married or the family sitting a few pews away at worship. The mixed-race celebrities you might follow. Some identify as mixed, like Meaghan Markle, while others claim a cultural identity in only the minority race, where they are most centered, like Barack Obama. Today, few, if any have to run away and hide from their families for 35 years like my parents did in 1943.

In My Life

I write about the mixed race experience in America, focused on black-white unions, inspired by my family’s experiences. In 1942 my black father and white mother fled Indiana’s Klan and anti-miscegenation laws to legally marry in New York, twenty-four years before the Supreme Court made mixed-race marriage legal.