Sunday, February 9, 2014

Race Remixed: The Changing Face of America

Jordan Spencer, 18 and Celeste Seda, 26 for National Geographic.
We've been talking about the social constructions of race ethnicity in class, and these are issues that we've all experienced day to day. Our nation is growing by the minute and we have to take time to come to terms with the new face of our nation and issues that it brings up. Diversity drives innovation and expands consumer bases, and affects us politically, socially, and economically. As this article details, the number of Americans who consider themselves multiracial grew faster than those who identify as a single race.

This may be explained by a February 2012 Pew Research report that used Census data to show that the number of intermarriages has more than doubled since 1980, from 6.7 percent of new marriages then to 15 percent in 2010. It credited growing public acceptance of mixed-race relationships as one reason for the rise. For generations, there had been a taboo surrounding the issue of intermarriage, especially here in the Deep South, but the times have been changing. This is particularly evident in the story of Sonia Cherail Peeples and Michael Peeples, married with two sons, who met as students at the University of Southern Mississippi. They have faced criticism as well as acceptance.

Despite gains socially for people of mixed race and intermarriage, there are still issues with the way race and ethnicity are classified in our nation. Specifically, many Latinos argue that the country’s race categories — indeed, the government’s very conception of identity — do not fit them. Here is an excerpt from a recent NY Times article in 2012 on this issue:
Latinos, who make up close to 20 percent of the American population, generally hold a fundamentally different view of race. Many Latinos say they are too racially mixed to settle on one of the government-sanctioned standard races — white, black, American Indian, Alaska native, native Hawaiian, and a collection of Asian and Pacific Island backgrounds.
Increasingly, this issue has become more than just confusion over identity, but also a political battle. With Census numbers determining various government decisions, accurate numbers are becoming more important than ever. The question is now, how do we deal with Americans' new and ever-changing sense of self?

Julie Weiss, 33 and Maximillian Suguira, 29 for National Geographic.
How do you define yourself and the people around you?

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