Barack Obama made history when he became America’s first black president. His parents were pioneers as well: When they wed in 1961, interracial unions were illegal in more than a dozen states and fewer than one in 1,000 new U.S. marriages involved black and white partners. Now it’s one in 60.
A recent Pew Research Center analysis shows the trend has spread across races and ethnicities, with mixed unions reaching a record 14.6 percent of new marriages in 2008. The numbers reflect an immigration-fueled rise in the country’s minority populations, along with growing acceptance of mixed couples. (antimiscegenation laws ended in 1967 when the supreme court struck down Virginia’s ban.) Though immigrants do not tend to intermarry, their children do, says Pew senior demographer Jeff Passel.
25 April 2012
"Race" is such an artificial construct
From the National Geographic Magazine's Blog Central:
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Amen. I am so effing tired of the entire concept of race; a phony pseudo-science that should have died along with phrenology, and probably would have but for its political usefulness.
ReplyDeletePolitical usefulness is right! In the US, every new immigrant group was pitted directly against Blacks for jobs and resources in the 19 & 20th centuries.
ReplyDeleteToday, in any Latin American country you choose, the rich and ruling power elite are always (always) lighter skinned Hispanics- except in Cuba and Venezuela.
Uhm... I am not sure why they were talking about the illegality of anti miscegenation and only showing data for hispanics and whites. Hispanics and whites have always intermarried and it has never been illegal. Remember Lucy and Desi Arnez?
ReplyDeleteRacial classification puts Hispanics IN the "white race". Hispanic is not a race.
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