The Los Angeles Times reported this weekend on how some multiracial families see Barack Obama as ‘Other’ like them — meaning that Obama’s multiracial identity, not fitting into a single “racial category,” is sometimes best described by the term ‘Other.’ The article tells the stories of several multiracial families who provide commentary on the difficulty of assigning themselves to a single racial category on forms like college applications. The LA Times reports:
Race, however, continues to be a stubborn puzzle. It wasn’t until 2000 that Americans were allowed to check more than one box for race on U.S. census forms. At that time, about 6.83 million people, or 2.4%, checked two or more races on census forms out of a population of about 281 million.
Additional commentary from a sociologist and a demographer helps to clarify this new trend…
Carolyn Liebler, a sociology professor specializing in family, race and ethnicity at the University of Minnesota, said she expected that the numbers of people identifying as multiracial would be higher in 2010 than they were in 2000 “because the number of mixed-raced marriages are going up” and because of Obama.
Tom W. Smith, an expert on race and demographics at the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, calls it the “Obama effect.” “He’s made being multiracial salient,” Smith said.
Comments 1
Umlud — December 1, 2008
As a member of the demographic "Other", I have been happy to check that box since 2000. However, I doubt that all "others" felt comfortable to do so - having been pigeon-holed into a specific racial group by society for their entire lives. I wonder if the election of an "Other" president would mean that more people will feel free - and proud - to check that "Other" box.