Multiracial people
This article needs additional citations for verification. (January 2020) |
The terms multiracial people or mixed-race people refer to people who are of more than one
Individuals of mixed-race backgrounds make up a significant portion of the population in many parts of the world. In North America, studies have found that the mixed-race population is continuing to grow. In many countries of Latin America, mestizos make up the majority of the population and in some others also mulattoes. In the Caribbean, mixed-race people officially make up the majority of the population in the Dominican Republic (73%), Aruba (68%), and Cuba (51%).[12]
Definitions
In terms of race
While defining race is controversial,[13] race remains a commonly used term for classification, often related to visible physical characteristics or known community. Insofar as race is defined differently in different cultures, perceptions of mixed race are subjective.
According to U.S. sociologist Troy Duster and ethicist Pilar Ossorio:
Some percentage of people who look native European will possess genetic markers indicating that a significant majority of their recent ancestors were African. Some percentage of people who look African or native African will possess genetic markers indicating the majority of their recent ancestors were European.[14]
In the United States:
Many state and local agencies comply with the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) 1997 revised standards for the collection, tabulation, and presentation of federal data on race and ethnicity. The revised OMB standards identify a minimum of five racial categories:
Census 2000 race data are shown for people who reported a race either alone or in combination with one or more other races.[15]
Related terms
In the
Terms such as mulatto for people of partially African descent and mestizo for people of partially Native American descent are still used by English-speaking people of the Western Hemisphere[
In South Africa and much of English-speaking southern Africa, the term Coloured was used to describe both mixed-race persons of African and European descent, and those Asians not of African descent.[16] While the term is socially accepted, it is becoming outdated because of its association with the apartheid era.[citation needed]
In Latin America, populations became triracial after the introduction of African slavery. A panoply of terms developed during the Spanish and Portuguese colonial periods, including terms such as zambo for persons of Native American and native African descent. Charts and diagrams intended to explain the classifications were common. The well-known Casta paintings in Mexico and, to some extent, Peru, were illustrations of the different classifications.
At one time, Latin American census categories have used such classifications. In Brazilian censuses since the
In the English language, the terms
In terms of ethnicity
The terms "multi-ethnic people" or "ethnically mixed people" refer to people who are of more than one ethnicity.[2][20]
Regions with significant mixed-race populations
Africa
In East Africa, specifically Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania (including portions of the East African Community), people of mixed race are called half-castes (in English) or chotara (singular, in Swahili), wachotara (plural in Swahili).[21]
North Africa
North Africa has numerous mixed-race communities, reflecting a history of both extensive Mediterranean trade around the region and later colonization and migration by African groups. Among these are the
For centuries,
Cape Verde, in west Africa, has one of the most mixed-race populations (around 75% of the population) on the planet.[citation needed]
South Africa
In South Africa, the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act of 1949 prohibited marriage between Native Europeans (people of European descent) and non-Whites (being classified as African, Asian and Coloured). But this followed centuries of interaction and unions resulting in mixed-race children. This law was repealed in 1985.
Mixed-race South Africans are commonly referred to as
Madagascar
Virtually all Malagasy people are of some degree of mixed descent; however, the amount of mixture varies greatly between regions of Madagascar, despite all Malagasy people sharing a common language and similar cultural elements. The Malagasy of the central highlands of Madagascar have predominantly Austronesian ancestry, the Malagasy of the west coast and the south of the island have predominantly Bantu ancestry, and Malagasy of the island's east coast are of roughly equal degrees Bantu and Austronesian ancestry. The average Malagasy person's genetic makeup includes a roughly equal blend of Southeast Asian and East African genes.[25]
Asia
India
Henry Louis Vivian Derozio, a radical thinker and educator, was of Indian and European background.[relevant?] Prior to colonization, the peoples of India had a long history of trade and other interaction with other peoples. More recently a Eurasian mix developed during the Colonial period, beginning with the French, Dutch, Portuguese and other European traders and merchants, including British. Such interaction continued during the British Rule in India, although it lessened as British families settled in the country. The estimated population of Anglo-Indians, the term for these Eurasians, is 600,000 worldwide, with the majority living in India and the UK.
Article 366(2) of the Indian Constitution defines Anglo-Indian as:[26][27]
(2) an Anglo-Indian means a person whose father or any of whose other male progenitors in the male line is or was of European descent but who is domiciled within the territory of India and is or was born within such territory of parents habitually resident therein and not established there for temporary purposes only;
Myanmar (Burma)
Philippines
The
After the defeat of Spain during the
After the bases closed in 1992, American troops left, often abandoning partners and their Amerasian children.[29] The Pearl S. Buck International foundation estimates there are 52,000 Amerasians in the Philippines, with 5,000 in the Clark area of Angeles City.[30] An academic research paper presented in the U.S. (in 2012) by an Angeles, Pampanga, Philippines Amerasian college research study unit suggests that the number could be a lot more, possibly reaching 250,000. This is also partially due to the fact that almost all Amerasians intermarried with other Amerasians and Filipino natives.[31][32] The newer Amerasians from the United States would add to the already older settlement of peoples from other countries in the Americas that happened when the Philippines was under Spanish rule,[33] as the Philippines once received immigrants from Spanish occupied Panama, Peru,[34] and Mexico.[35]: Chpt. 6
In the United States, intermarriage between Filipinos and other ethnicities is common. They have the highest number of interracial marriages among Asian immigrant groups, as documented in California.[36] Some 21.8% of Philippine-Americans are of mixed ancestry.[37]
Singapore and Malaysia
According to government statistics, the population of Singapore as of September 2007 was 4.68 million. Mixed-race people, including Chindians and Eurasians, formed 2.4%.
In Singapore and
The Chitty people, in Singapore and the Malacca state of Malaysia, are Tamils with considerable Malay ancestry. The early Tamil settlers took local wives, as they had not brought their own women at that time.
In the East Malaysian states of
Sri Lanka
Due to its strategic location in the Indian Ocean, the island of Sri Lanka has been a confluence for settlers from various parts of the world. There are several mixed-race ethnicities in the island. The most notable mixed-race group is the Sri Lankan Moors, who trace their ancestry to Arab traders who settled on the island and intermarried with local women. Today, the Sri Lankan Moors live primarily in urban communities. They preserve Arab-Islamic cultural heritage while adopting many Southern Asian customs.
The
The
Vietnam
Under terms of the
China
West Asia
Ottoman slave traders sold slaves in cumulatively large numbers over the centuries throughout the Persian Gulf, Anatolia, Central Asia and the Arab world and communities descended from these slaves can be found throughout these regions.[23]
Europe
Romani people are of mixed South Asian, Middle Eastern and European ancestry. They settled in Europe thousands of years ago.[41]
United Kingdom
In 1991 an analysis of the census showed that 50% of Mixed Caribbean men born in the UK have native British partners,[42] and the 2011 BBC documentary Mixed Britannia noted that 1 in 10 British children are growing up in mixed households.
In 2000,
In the United Kingdom, many mixed-race people have
The
North America
Canada
Mixed-race Canadians in 2006 officially totaled 1.5% of the population, up from 1.2% in 2001. The official mixed-race population grew by 25% since the previous census. Of these, the most frequent combinations were multiple visible minorities (for example, people of mixed black and South Asian heritage form the majority, specifically in Toronto), followed closely by white-black, white-Chinese, white-Arab and many other smaller mixes.[48]
During the time of slavery in the United States, a very large but unknown number of African American slaves escaped to Canada, where slavery was made illegal in 1834, via the Underground Railroad. Many of these people married in with European Canadian and Native Canadian populations, although their precise numbers and the numbers of their descendants are not known.
Another 1.2% of Canadians officially are
United States
In the United States, the 2000 census was the first in the history of the country to offer respondents the option of identifying themselves as belonging to more than one race. This mixed-race option was considered a necessary adaptation to the demographic and cultural changes that the United States has been experiencing.[49]
Mixed-race
In 2010, the number of Americans who checked both "black" and "white" on their census forms was 134 percent higher than it had been a decade earlier.[53] In 2012, those choosing 'Two or more races' on the census was 2.4% of the total.[54]
According to
- White/Native American and Alaskan Native: 7,015,017
- White/African American: 737,492
- White/Asian: 727,197 and
- White/Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander: 125,628.[55]
The stigma of a mixed-race heritage, associated with racial discrimination among numerous racial groups, has decreased significantly in the United States. People of mixed-race heritage can identify themselves now in the U.S. Census by any combination of races, whereas before Americans were required to select from only one category. For example, in 2010, they were offered choices of one or more racial categories from the following list:[56]
|
|
|
|
The US has a growing mixed-race identity movement, reflective of a desire by people to claim their full identities. Interracial marriage, most notably between whites and blacks, was historically deemed immoral and illegal in most states in the 18th, 19th and first half of the 20th century because of its long association of blacks with the slave caste. California and the Western United States had similar laws to prohibit European-Asian marriages, which was associated with discrimination against Chinese and Japanese on the West Coast. Many states eventually repealed such laws and a 1967 decision by the US Supreme Court (Loving v. Virginia) overturned all remaining US anti-miscegenation laws.
The United States is one of the most racially diverse countries in the world. Americans are mostly mixed ethnic descendants of various immigrant nationalities culturally distinct in their former countries. Assimilation and integration took place, unevenly at different periods of history, depending on the American region. The "Americanization" of foreign ethnic groups and the inter-racial diversity of millions of Americans has been a fundamental part of its history, especially on frontiers where different groups of people came together.[58]
On January 20, 2009,
Oceania
Fiji
Fiji has long been a multi-ethnic country, with a vast majority of people being mixed race even if they do not self-identify in that manner. The indigenous Fijians are of mixed Melanesian and Polynesian ancestry, resulting from years of migration of islanders from various places mixing with each other. Fiji Islanders from the Lau group have intermarried with Tongans and other Polynesians over the years. The overwhelming majority of the rest of the indigenous Fijians, though, can be genetically traced to having mixed Polynesian/Melanesian ancestry.
The Indo-Fijian population is also a hodge-podge of South Asian immigrants (called Girmits in Fiji), who came as indentured labourers beginning in 1879. While a few of these labourers managed to bring wives, many of them either took or were given wives once they arrived in Fiji. The Girmits, who are classified as simply "Indians" to this day, came from many parts of the Indian subcontinent of present-day
Over the years, particularly in the
Latin America and the Caribbean
"Mestizo" is the common word for mixed-race people in Latin America, especially people with Native American and Spanish or other European ancestry. Mestizos make up a large portion of Latin Americans, comprising a majority in many countries.
In Latin America, racial mixture was officially acknowledged from colonial times. There was official nomenclature for every conceivable mixture present in the various countries. Initially, this classification was used as a type of caste system, where rights and privileges were accorded depending on one's official racial classification. Official caste distinctions were abolished in many countries of the Spanish-speaking Americas as they became independent of Spain. Several terms have remained in common usage.
Race and racial mixture have played a significant role in the politics of many Latin American countries. In most countries, for example Mexico, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic and Panama, a majority of the population can be described as biracial or mixed race (depending on the country). In Mexico, over 80% of the population is mestizo in some degree or another.[63]
The Mexican philosopher and educator
Colonialism throughout the
heritage.Brazil
This section needs additional citations for verification. (November 2009) |
According to the 2010 official census, 43.13% of Brazilians identified themselves as pardo skin color.[66] That option is normally marked by people that consider themselves mixed race (mestiço). The Mixed Race Day or Mestizo Day (Dia do Mestiço), on 27 June, is official event in States of Amazonas, Roraima e Paraíba and a holiday in two cities. The term pardo is formally used in the official census but is not used by the population. In Brazilian society, most people who are mixed race call themselves moreno: light-moreno or dark-moreno. Those terms are not considered offensive and focus more on skin color than on ethnicity (it is considered more like other human characteristics such as being short or tall).
The most common mixed-race groups are between European and African (mulatto) and Amerindian and European (caboclo or mameluco). But there are also African and Amerindian (cafuzo) and East Asian (mostly Japanese) and European/other (ainoko or more recently, hāfu). All groups are more or less found throughout the whole country. Brazilian mixed-race people with three origins, Amerindian, European and African, make up the majority. It is said today[who?] that 89% or more of the "Pardo" population in Brazil has at least one Amerindian ancestor; most brancos or White Brazilians have some Amerindian or African ancestry too despite nearly half of the country's population self-labeling as "Caucasian" in the censuses.[citation needed] In Brazil, mixed-race people commonly claim to have no Amerindian ancestry, but studies have found[who?] that if a mixed-race Brazilian can trace their ancestry back to nearly eight to nine generations, they will have at least one Amerindian ancestor from their maternal side of the family.
Since mixed-race relations in Brazilian society have occurred for many generations, some people find it difficult to trace their own ethnic ancestry. Today a majority of mixed-race Brazilians do not really know their ethnic ancestry. Their unique features make them Brazilian-looking in skin color, lips and nose shape or hair texture, but they are aware only that their ancestors were probably Portuguese, African or Amerindian. Also, a very large number of other Europeans (counted in the millions) contributed to the Brazilian racial make-up, Japanese (the largest Japanese population outside Japan), Italian (the largest Italian population outside Italy), Lebanese (the largest population of Lebanese outside Lebanon), Germans, Poles and Russians. A high percentage of Brazilians is also of Jewish descent, perhaps hundreds of thousands, mostly found in the northeast of the country who cannot be sure of their ancestry as they descend from the so-called "Crypto-Jews" (Jews who practiced Judaism in secret but outwardly pretended to be Catholics), also called Marranos or New Christians, often considered Portuguese. According to some sources, one third of families arrived from Portugal during colonization were of Jewish origin.[citation needed]
There is a high level of integration between all groups but also a great social and economic difference between European descendants (more common in upper and middle classes) and African, Amerindian and mixed-race descendants (more common in lower classes), which is called Brazilian apartheid.
See also
- Hyphenated ethnicity
- Melting pot
- Multiethnic society
- One-drop rule
- Origins of Tutsi and Hutu
- Passing (racial identity)
- Plaçage
- Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact hypotheses
- Race and society
- Race traitor
- William Loren Katz
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External links
- The Multiracial Activist, an online activist publication registered with the Library of Congress, focused on multiracial individuals and interracial families since 1997
- ProjectRACE, an organization leading the movement for a multiracial classification
- Advocacy groups
- Association of MultiEthnic Americans, Inc., US
- Blended People of America, US-based nonprofit organization representing the interests of the mixed-race community
- Brazilian Multiracial Movement, Brazilian mixed-race organization
- The Hafu Project, a study of half-Japanese people, London-, Munich-, Tokyo-based nonprofit organisation
- MAVIN Foundation Archived 9 March 2012 at the Wayback Machine, an organization advocating for mixed-heritage people and families
- Mixed Race UK Archived 17 June 2020 at the Wayback Machine, UK-based nonprofit organization representing the interests of the mixed-race community
- Mosaic UK, a UK-based organisation for mixed-race families
- People in Harmony UK
- Swirl Archived 11 August 2015 at the Wayback Machine, US-based mixed community