Multiracial Americans surge in number, voice

New resources, support seen
“I think there’s a generational difference,” Kilson, 72, told msnbc.com. “My perception, when my kids were little in the ’60s, was that biracial Americans didn’t have a choice about their racial identity, that the wider society would view them as being African-American.” Because of that, “I thought it was important to emphasize that they were African- American.”

“Now, people have an opportunity to proclaim all of their racial identities,” said Kilson, who is at work with colleague and friend Florence Ladd on a new book about rearing biracial children. “One thing that’s different for younger mothers today, there are many more support systems, quite a number of multiracial groups that exist, that involve parents and children, Web sites, clearly there are books that weren’t available before. There’s a lot more out there to support them today.”

Indeed, it’s a veritable boom time right now, said Gong, who recently attended a Northern California gathering with leaders of 13 groups that work on mixed-race issues. “There seems to be a sense that it’s time for the modern multiracial movement to expand into new fronts,” he said. “College campuses in the past have represented the low-hanging fruit” for those interested in organizing multiracial Americans. Various groups represented at the summit are looking to expand their efforts into other institutions and corporate venues. Gong is particularly interested in multiracial members of low-income communities.

A tricky issue for organizers like Gong is apprehension among some leaders of minority communities that a new focus on multiracial identities could lessen their numbers.

“If we look at what was important for communities of color during the civil rights movement, it was solidarity,” he said. “Solidarity served African-Americans and Native Americans very well in the past so now we see a desire to maintain ethnic solidarity still playing out, especially among older folks. We’re worried that we’re going to dilute the voice we have if people identify as being black and white or Native American and black.”

So while drawing attention to the needs of mixed-race Americans, “We really need to respect those communities’ needs to maintain ethnic solidarity," Gong said. "Those needs are very real.”

Frey, the Brookings demographer and author of a February paper on “Race, Immigration and America’s Changing Electorate,” said that while “race does matter” in U.S. elections, it’s often hard to figure out just how. With the nation’s single-race minority groups skewing Democrat but still vastly underrepresented on voter rolls relative to their overall numbers, he said, the impact of multiracial voters is especially hard to divine. “They’re really pretty small numbers,” he said. “We’re going to have to look down the road quite a bit before they’re going to become a major factor.”

Inspiration drawn from Obama candidacy
But Americans from multiracial backgrounds and families (some 5 million Americans are married across racial lines and millions more are members of racially blended families) seem universally happy and proud that a biracial man is the front-runner for a major party’s presidential nomination. Over and over again, in e-mail and interviews, regardless of whether they agree with his politics or intend to vote for him, “Gut Check” respondents said they were heartened by Obama’s candidacy.

“I like Obama,” said Ken Woodard of Wichita. “This is something that I’ve always dreamed of, someone who has the issues down pat, not just running as a black man, but running as a man who is sort of all of America, not just the black race but every race,” said Woodard, 61, a black man who has a son and daughter with his white wife of 27 years.

Lewis-Keene, the West Virginia health-care worker, said she sees Obama as someone who is “wholly true-hearted in his feelings of unity from the simple fact of where he comes from. … I feel like he is the kind of person who would be able to solve conflicts with other countries just as well as here in the United States.”

Despite the positive feelings from the Obama candidacy and other strides, ambiguity and confusion over racial identity will persist for many mixed-race Americans, said Gong, a fact experienced even in families such as his own that have been multiracial for generations. The palette of cultural diversity has often been smudged by outside influences like “all these federal policies that were designed to deconstruct native identity,” such as off-reservation boarding schools, the Indian Removal Act and urban relocation programs.

The ambiguity caused by such policies made planning a recent funeral for one of his aunts a bit of a puzzle, Gong said. “We did an eclectic ceremony, which is now becoming a family tradition, where everybody had a piece of the ceremony. It was in a Catholic church, based on the reservation, and we had a traditional Coast-Salish funeral song, and also a Shaker Church ceremony.”

The lesson is clear, said Gong, whose own excitement and enthusiasm for America’s changing colors is indomitable: America’s melting pot isn’t going to create a bland, homogenous porridge so much as a deeply flavored, spicy stew.

“Mixed race isn’t post race. It’s not less race. It’s more race,” Gong said. “In order to dialog about mixed race, we need more understanding. It’s not a dialog to forget about issues of race.”

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