Biracial+in+America

According to the [|U.S. Census Bureau], there are now about 5.2 million Americans who classify themselves as 'multiracial.' [|//Definition of multiracial//]//.//They are the largest growing racial group in the U.S., and account for about 5% of the nation's non-Caucasian population. The map below shows the distribution of multiracial people across the States.Obviously different people have different experiences being multiracial, but, overall, what is it like to be multiracial in America today? How are multiracial people treated by people from the racial groups they belong to? //The areas most densly populated with multiracial people are Alaska, Hawaii, Oklahoma, and California.//

I think I heard that NPR is taking [|a look at race in Hawaii] this weekend.

Linda Hutcherson, a 55 year old biracial woman from Detroit, was interviewed by msnbc about her life experiences in regards to her race. Her father was black and her mother was white. She and her sister, Chyrll, have both had a very hard time being biracial in Detroit, which is one of the most racially segregated cities in America. They've experienced racism from both black and white people. Linda said in her interview that she wanted to look and act more "black" growing up. Chyrl's mother was a black woman in Detroit, and she was proud of that. Linda's mother, however, was a white woman, Jean, who was openly racist and ashamed of her black child. Linda says she sometimes struggles to look and act more like other black people even now, as an adult. She told her interviewer that she's often teased by even her closest black friends for "talking white," or "dancing white," or for having a "white butt." As far as how she views her own race, she seems to fully acknowledge both sides of her heritage. Her sister, however, does not embrace her own white heritage at all. She considers herself black, despite the fact that she has a white parent. Both of these reactions are fairly common amongst multiracial people. //Linda Hutcherson outside her home in Detroit//

Another interview that I found about being biracial in America was Essence.com interviewing Karyn Parsons (from the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air). She is also half black and half white, and is married to a white man. During her interview she said " When I’m around black or white people, I’m always in the middle. Especially when I am around black people; they will really tell how they feel about white people regardless of the fact that I’m also white and have white relatives. It’s very interesting and can be really hard." So she's also experienced a lot of racism from both sides of her heritage. She says "The race thing is something we continue to deal with and just have to learn to love ourselves and others." Obviously she's tired of being judged because of her race, and has really gotten a first-hand look at the deep complexity of modern-racism. It seems to me that the kind of racism that exists today is almost more difficult to combat than the blatant, outright racism of America's past. While in the eyes of the law there is almost complete equality between races, many people still live in the mindset that their own race is superior to others. //Karyon Parsons//

Another interesting interview I found was posted on KQED.org, a public news organization for northern California. **Ellen Chang**, a biracial woman, was interviewed for the program Other Colors by host Barbara Rodgers. Other Colors is a weekly show played on a local public TV station in the Bay Area of California. The show focuses on what it is like to be multiracial in America, and specifically in the Bay Area. Ellen Chang was born in 1955 to an African-American father and a white mother. Her parents feared that her mother's life might be ruined by having to raise a black child, so Ellen was sent to live with her paternal grandparents in Pasco, Washington. She was unaware of her mixed heritage for quite some time, but at age 14, after discovering that her real mother was a white woman, she decided to move in with her. She lived in a predominately white neighborhood in the Bay Area. Growing up for the first 14 years of her life in Washington state, she says that she was often ridiculed by other children for her color. She was often called 'half-breed,' along with other hurtful names. After finding out that she was in fact half white, she says that she still identified herself as black, and that the news didn't upset her very much at all. She was actually a bit excited, because where she lived at that time most white people were wealthier than most black people. She says that she thought maybe she'd get some sort of special treatment now that she could say she had a white mother. Then as she got older and she started to become aware of the Black Nationalist Movement going on at the time, she started to feel confliced about her heritage. She didn't know if she could be 'black and proud' even though she was only half black. At that point she decided to write her mother a letter and ask if she could come and meet her, and her mother agreed. During her visit she was very surprised to be introduced to her mother's life, and says that meeting her mother and being exposed to her white heritage really changed her outlook on race and her racial identity. To see a full transcript of her interview, follow this [|link]. //Ellen Chang//

-** Why are multiracial people much more densely populated in some areas than others? - Why are people who are half black and half white often called black? - Why do people who are half black and half white often identify themselves as black, as opposed to multiracial? - Look in depth at the NPR interveiw with the authors of the book Beyond Black and White. - Look in more depth at the comments people have posted online about the interveiws mentioned in this page.
 * What I'm going to do next:

//To learn more about this issue in general, see Sydney's page about// //multi-racial people////. To learn more about how multiracial children are treated, see Mickayla's page about multi-racial children//

@AnnBibBC