Multiracialism is a conceptual framework used to theorize and interpret identity formation in global multiracial populations. Multiracialism explores the tendency for multiracial individuals to identify with a third category of 'mixed-ness' as opposed to being a fully accepted member of multiple, or any, racial group(s). [1] As an analytical tool, multiracialism strives to emphasize that societies are increasingly composed of multiracial individuals, warranting a broader recognition of those who do not fit into a society's clear-cut notions of race. Additionally, multiracialism also focuses on what identity formation means in the context of oppressive histories and cultural erasure. [2]
Multiracial identities have manifested themselves in many different ways across cultural identities, historical moments, and social norms. The meaning of what it is to be multiracial changes depending on what society is in question. [2] As a result, multiracialism is often used to critique the continuation of race as a means of social categorization, especially given that race is a social and political construct that has served systems of oppression and systematically overlooked large populations that fall between its limited categorizations. [3]
As argued by King et al. in Global Mixed Race, racial mixing and multiracial identities have existed for centuries. The emergence of multiracial identities in the United States is often attributed to the repeal of anti-miscegenation laws and the subsequent legalization of interracial marriages. [4] However, this has been disproven by documented histories of miscegenation in the United States beginning in the 17th and 18th centuries. [4] Furthermore, anti-miscegenation laws weren't established globally, problematizing the scope of this argument's relevance transnationally. [4] Instead, the emergence and growth of multiracial populations can be more accurately attributed to global and transnational phenomenon such as changes in trade patterns and migration flows as a result of historical events, colonization, and or globalization. [5]
Additionally, the application of multiracialism, as well as the size of a nation's multiracial population, will be unique across societies. [5] This can be attributed to the function of race as a social and political construct, one which was developed in order to more easily distribute resources and determine status within societies. [3] The nature of race as a construct leads to racial ideals adopting additional or contrary meaning across different societies. [5] Furthermore, the meaning societies associate with different racial groups evolves over time. Increased opportunities for interracial relationships and interaction are often attributed to what scholars Small and King-O’Riain would call tenants[ spelling? ] of globalization, [5] which provide opportunities for racial learning and a less hegemonic understanding of unfamiliar racial groups. [6] Small and King-O’Riain contend that globalization has opened new avenues for increasing hybridity and social acceptance of multiracial identities while recognizing that the nature of race as a construct means that these global conversations on racial ideals will ultimately manifest themselves differently across local contexts. [5]
The colonial history of Brazil established the framework for the system of racial hierarchy present in the nation today. Colonial ties to Portugal provided the opportunity for European racial ideals to enter Brazil and establish Eurocentric racial projects. One of the most impactful social influences established by Portugal was the incorporation of Brazil into the African slave trade. This industry was extensive, leading Brazil to be considered one of the two largest slaveholding nations in the Americas [7] with records showing that Brazil imported ten times as many slaves as the USA, [8] and estimates holding that approximately 3.6 million Africans were brought to Brazil during the three and a half centuries of Portuguese rule. [9] Not only did these circumstances lead to the circulation of racial ideology, but they also constructed a unique racial distribution within Brazil.
Despite a lack of data during the early colonial period, scholars widely accept that white settlers in Brazil made up a minority of the population throughout this era. In 1600, the white residents in Brazil amounted to merely one third of the population, and estimates show that by 1798 the population of 3 million was composed of around 1,000,000 white Brazilians, 1,500,000 slaves, 225,000 Freed Coloreds (typically individuals of multiracial heritage), and 250,000 Native Americans. [7]
The increasing number of Africans in Brazil led to this population supplementing and eventually replacing the Native American labor force. [7] These three categories—European, African, and Native American—were placed within a racial hierarchy established around a Eurocentric agenda; [7] the particular system implemented in Brazil was known as the ternary racial project, which was popularized by anthropologist Gilberto Freyre. [7] This system was established in order to validate the nation's extensive miscegenation practices, creating three categories of classification: white, multiracial, and black. Brazil never passed anti-miscegenation laws, and instead, viewed miscegenation as a means to slowly whiten the Brazilian population. [8] But focusing on this lack of legalized racial discrimination resulted in the misconception that Brazilian society was also free of racism, a concept known as "racial democracy" wherein Brazil was free of discrimination such as segregation and racial violence. [9] The theory of "racial democracy" was further developed in the 1930s as a means to reconcile nationalist anti-immigration sentiment, the perceived failure of the state initiative to whiten Brazil, and the growing multiracial population. [9] Freyre interpreted Brazil's mixed-race population as being the defining characteristic of Brazil: a country where one could live in a harmonious, multiracial society. [9]
In line with this agenda, social status in Brazil was not exclusively determined by race; instead, it can be argued that an individual's social identity is more impacted by physical appearances in combination with class and cultural practices. [7] By creating a third category in the ternary system, multiracial individuals were given more vertical social mobility than Brazilians of African descent. [7] However, multiracial identities were further stratified, with the order of desirability being as follows: mamelincos (European and Native American), mulatto (European with either Native American or African), and catusos (Native American and African); wherein mamelincos and mulatto identities had more opportunities for mobility than those of catusos heritage. [7]
Further effects of the ternary system are seen in how Brazilian slave holders incorporated the population of Freed Coloreds, typically mulattos, as enforcers of the racial hierarchy. [7] By buying into the enforcement of the status quo, multiracial individuals were emplacing themselves in this system—both as superior to black Brazilians and complacent as second-class citizens to white Brazilians. [7] This is further explained through the “mulatto escape hatch”, wherein individuals who were visibility of mixed heritage would be granted situational permission to identify as white due to their talents and assets such as education level or learned skills. [10] By employing this social strategy in the context of the ternary system, Brazilian elites were able to keep the most outspoken and skilled multiracial individuals from critiquing the unequal status quo. [10] Due to the operation of this racialized system, it became favorable for Brazilians to present themselves as belonging to Native American or European heritages [7] while simultaneously distancing themselves from African descendancy. [7]
Identity formation in Brazil although deeply rooted in the nation's colonial past has and continues to be confronted and changed. Evidence of this is seen in the 1970s through Brazil's Black Movement, as well as the counter movement in 2001 known as Brazil's Multiracial Movement. [10] These incidents among other modern developments in Brazilian politics have led to the shifting of racial discourse in the nation.
Interviews conducted by the National Public Radio (NPR) in 2019 consulted Brazilians on their experiences with multiracialism in their nation and how this impacts self-identification. The focus of the report was on the affirmative action mandate established as federal law in Brazil during 2014. This policy enacted a quota wherein 20% of students accepted to federal universities and 20% of all employees working civil service jobs must be black. [8] By establishing benefits in the form of increased quality of education and financial security, NPR substantiated that the government of Brazil had provided the population with an incentive to (re)claim African heritage. And with such an extensive history of multiracial descendancy, it is difficult to visually determine whether an applicant is actually of African descent. Each individual who indicates black on these applications must be verified by the anti-fraud commission and determined to be black based upon facial features—a process which is informed by Brazilian society's tendency to prioritize appearance over heritage in terms of identity formulation. [8]
The colonial history of the United States has provided the basis for the nation's current race relations. [11] As European colonial empires expanded in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, European constructions of race were spread globally. [11] The concepts of race and racial hierarchies were developed as a means to justify emerging forms of exploitation during the colonial era. [11] These emerging social constructs provided a framework for societies to categorize individuals and subsequently place them within a hierarchy—typically seen with what is defined as ‘white’ at the top and ‘black’ at the bottom. [11] Professor of sociology, G. Reginald Daniel elaborates that these systems were ultimately constructed and employed as a means by which the practice of enslaving Africans could be defended. [11]
Slavery provided the context for the emergence of multiracial identities in colonial America as African slaves and European indentured servants formed interracial unions. [12] But the multiracial children of these relationships were perceived as a threat to the purity of the white race, and anti-miscegenation laws were promptly passed in the 1660s to preserve distinct racial categories. [12]
Further means of legitimizing the construct of race in the United States emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century through what was known as racial science or scientific racism. [13] These ideologies were eventually disproven; however, at the time of their rise, they occupied a critical role in American scholarship's understanding and depiction of human beings. [13] Racial sciences gained additional credibility due to the illustrious reputations of the scholars who conceptualized the field, such as Louis Agassiz a leading member of the American School of Ethnology from Harvard University. [13]
Eurocentric frameworks brought to the United States through colonial ties led to the emergence of a binary racial project wherein ‘blackness’ and ‘whiteness’ are presented as opposite ends of a racial spectrum with no categories in between. [11] This limitation lends multiracial individuals to being perceived in relation to either extreme of the spectrum, and not as occupying the space between black and white despite how they personally identify. [11] This phenomenon can be further explained through the history of the one-drop rule, a means of racial categorization which emerged during the Jim Crow era in the American South. [12] In effect, the one-drop rule upheld that Americans with any African heritage would be considered fully black. [12] This policy barred multiracial descendants of black Americans from accessing the higher social statuses of their white family members, while also refusing to acknowledge the existence of multiracial identities. [12] Remnants of the one-drop rule are still evident today as multiracial Americans of African heritage are still often perceived as black instead of multiracial. [12]
The Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s inspired discourse which dramatically changed the perception of multiracial identities in the United States. [12] In 1967, the Supreme Court Case Loving v. Virginia repealed all remaining anti-miscegenation laws, deeming these practices to be unconstitutional. [12] As a result, the 1970s saw a rise in biracial marriages, a trend which is still evident decades later. [12]
In the 2000 U.S. Census, Americans were able to self-identify as more than one racial group, marking the first time that multiracial identities were legally recognized by the United States. [14] Calculations based on the U.S. Census Bureaus’ s 2005-2015 American Community Surveys and 2000 decennial census show that the number of individuals who identify as more than one race rose by 106 percent between 2000 and 2015. [14] Furthermore, a 2018 report from the U.S. Census Bureau projects that, if trends continue, the multiracial population will triple in size by 2060. [14]
With the rise of multiracial identities in the United States, multiracialism has become an increasingly popular framework. Scholars such as Lauren D. Davenport, a political science professor from Stanford University, are exploring how the increasing number of Americans self identifying as multiracial has the potential to impact political affiliations and minority solidarity. [14] Davenport stresses how this has raised serious concerns in the African American community, as multiracial individuals with black heritage have been instrumental in promoting the political agendas of the black community. The main concern is that growing solidarity among the multiracial community will lead to other minority groups losing impassioned support from a critical group of allies. [14] In fact, this is one of the reasons why the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the National Urban League saw the push for a multiracial category on the U.S. Census in 1990 as a threat to black solidarity. [14]
Additionally, multiracialism has been used to frame the expansion of the multiracial population as evidence of America becoming a post racial democracy. [4] The merging of races has been interpreted as evidence of incremental steps toward racial equality and social progress; however, the mixing of these identities has been occurring for centuries, and the social benefits of multiracialism have not been well researched or supported. [4]
Black is a racialized classification of people, usually a political and skin color-based category for specific populations with a mid- to dark brown complexion. Not all people considered "black" have dark skin; in certain countries, often in socially based systems of racial classification in the Western world, the term "black" is used to describe persons who are perceived as dark-skinned compared to other populations. It is most commonly used for people of sub-Saharan African ancestry, Indigenous Australians and Melanesians, though it has been applied in many contexts to other groups, and is no indicator of any close ancestral relationship whatsoever. Indigenous African societies do not use the term black as a racial identity outside of influences brought by Western cultures.
Miscegenation is marriage or admixture between people who are members of different races. The word, now usually considered pejorative, is derived from a combination of the Latin terms miscere and genus. The word first appeared in Miscegenation: The Theory of the Blending of the Races, Applied to the American White Man and Negro, an anti-abolitionist pamphlet David Goodman Croly and others published anonymously in advance of the 1864 presidential election in the United States. The term came to be associated with laws that banned interracial marriage and sex, which were known as anti-miscegenation laws. These laws were overruled federally in 1967, and by the year 2000, all states including Alabama had removed them from their laws. In the 21st century, newer scientific data shows that human populations are actually genetically quite similar. Studies show that races are more of an arbitrary social construct, and do not actually have a major genetic delineation.
Mestizo is a person of mixed European and Indigenous non-European ancestry in the former Spanish Empire. In certain regions such as Latin America, it may also refer to people who are culturally European even though their ancestors are Indigenous. The term was used as an ethno-racial exonym for mixed-race castas that evolved during the Spanish Empire. It was a formal label for individuals in official documents, such as censuses, parish registers, Inquisition trials, and others. Priests and royal officials might have classified persons as mestizos, but individuals also used the term in self-identification. With the Bourbon reforms and the independence of the Americas, the caste system disappeared and terms like "mestizo" fell in popularity.
Mulatto is a racial classification that refers to people of mixed African and European ancestry. Its use is considered by Nicholas Patrick Beck to be outdated and offensive in some countries and languages, such as English with the exceptions of some Anglophone Caribbean or West Indian countries and Dutch, but it does not have the same associations in languages such as Spanish and Portuguese. Among Latin Americans in the US, for instance, the term can be a source of pride. A mulatta is a female mulatto.
Melungeons are one of the many tri-racial isolate populations originating in colonial Virginia primarily descended from free people of color and white settlers.
The terms multiracial people or mixed-race people refer to people who are of more than one race, and the terms multi-ethnic people or ethnically mixed people refer to people who are of more than one ethnicity. A variety of terms have been used both historically and presently for mixed-race people in a variety of contexts, including multiethnic, polyethnic, occasionally bi-ethnic, Métis, Muwallad, Melezi, Coloured, Dougla, half-caste, ʻafakasi, mestizo, mutt, Melungeon, quadroon, octoroon, sambo/zambo, Eurasian, hapa, hāfu, Garifuna, pardo, and Gurans. A number of these once-acceptable terms are now considered offensive, in addition to those that were initially coined for pejorative use.
In the colonial societies of the Americas and Australia, a quadroon or quarteron was a person with one-quarter African/Aboriginal and three-quarters European ancestry. Similar classifications were octoroon for one-eighth black and quintroon for one-sixteenth black.
Half-caste is a term used for individuals of multiracial descent. It is derived from the term caste, which comes from the Latin castus, meaning pure, and the derivative Portuguese and Spanish word casta, meaning race. Terms such as half-caste, caste, quarter-caste and mix-breed were used by colonial officials in the British Empire during their classification of indigenous populations, and in Australia used during the Australian government's pursuit of a policy of assimilation. In Latin America, the equivalent term for half-castes was Cholo and Zambo. Some people now consider the term offensive.
The one-drop rule was a legal principle of racial classification that was prominent in the 20th-century United States. It asserted that any person with even one ancestor of black ancestry is considered black. It is an example of hypodescent, the automatic assignment of children of a mixed union between different socioeconomic or ethnic groups to the group with the lower status, regardless of proportion of ancestry in different groups.
In societies that regard some races or ethnic groups of people as dominant or superior and others as subordinate or inferior, hypodescent refers to the automatic assignment of children of a mixed union to the subordinate group. The opposite practice is hyperdescent, in which children are assigned to the race that is considered dominant or superior.
The tragic mulatto is a stereotypical fictional character that appeared in American literature during the 19th and 20th centuries, starting in 1837. The "tragic mulatto" is a stereotypical mixed-race person, who is assumed to be depressed, or even suicidal, because they fail to completely fit into the "white world" or the "black world". As such, the "tragic mulatto" is depicted as the victim of the society that is divided by race, where there is no place for one who is neither completely "black" nor "white".
The United States has a racially and ethnically diverse population. At the federal level, race and ethnicity have been categorized separately. The most recent United States census recognized five racial categories, as well as people who belong to two or more of the racial categories. The United States also recognizes the broader notion of ethnicity. The 2000 census and 2010 American Community Survey inquired about the "ancestry" of residents, while the 2020 census allowed people to enter their "origins". The Census Bureau also classified respondents as either Hispanic or Latino, identifying as an ethnicity, which comprises the minority group in the nation.
Social interpretations of race regard the common categorizations of people into different races. Race is often culturally understood to be rigid categories in which people can be classified based on biological markers or physical traits such as skin colour or facial features. This rigid definition of race is no longer accepted by scientific communities. Instead, the concept of 'race' is viewed as a social construct. This means, in simple terms, that it is a human invention and not a biological fact. The concept of 'race' has developed over time in order to accommodate different societies' needs of organising themselves as separate from the 'other'. The 'other' was usually viewed as inferior and, as such, was assigned worse qualities. Our current idea of race was developed primarily during the Enlightenment, in which scientists attempted to define racial boundaries, but their cultural biases ultimately impacted their findings and reproduced the prejudices that still exist in our society today.
Mestiço is a Portuguese term that referred to persons of mixed European and Indigenous non-European ancestry in the former Portuguese Empire.
Multiracial Americans or mixed-race Americans are Americans who have mixed ancestry of two or more races. The term may also include Americans of mixed-race ancestry who self-identify with just one group culturally and socially. In the 2020 United States census, 33.8 million individuals or 10.2% of the population, self-identified as multiracial. There is evidence that an accounting by genetic ancestry would produce a higher number.
There is no single system of races or ethnicities that covers all modern Latin America, and usage of labels may vary substantially.
In the United States, many U.S. states historically had anti-miscegenation laws which prohibited interracial marriage and, in some states, interracial sexual relations. Some of these laws predated the establishment of the United States, and some dated to the later 17th or early 18th century, a century or more after the complete racialization of slavery. Nine states never enacted anti-miscegenation laws, and 25 states had repealed their laws by 1967. In that year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Loving v. Virginia that such laws are unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Blanqueamiento in Spanish, or branqueamento in Portuguese, is a social, political, and economic practice used in many post-colonial countries in the Americas and Oceania to "improve the race" towards a supposed ideal of whiteness. The term blanqueamiento is rooted in Latin America and is used more or less synonymously with racial whitening. However, blanqueamiento can be considered in both the symbolic and biological sense. Symbolically, blanqueamiento represents an ideology that emerged from legacies of European colonialism, described by Anibal Quijano's theory of coloniality of power, which caters to white dominance in social hierarchies. Biologically, blanqueamiento is the process of whitening by marrying a lighter-skinned individual to produce lighter-skinned offspring.
Racism has been present in Brazil since its colonial period and is pointed as one of the major and most widespread types of discrimination, if not the most, in the country by several anthropologists, sociologists, jurists, historians and others. The myth of a racial democracy, a term originally coined by Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre in his 1933 work Casa-Grande & Senzala, is used by many people in the country to deny or downplay the existence and the broad extension of racism in Brazil.
Biracial and multiracial identity development is described as a process across the life span that is based on internal and external forces such as individual family structure, cultural knowledge, physical appearance, geographic location, peer culture, opportunities for exploration, socio-historical context, etc.
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