Multiracial individuals have historically been framed as both points of contention and of triumph in the American story and in U.S. politics. One day after the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, a news article in Jackson, Miss. claimed, “White and Negro children in the same schools will lead to miscegenation. Miscegenation leads to mixed marriages and … [the] mongrelization of the human race.” Mixed race marriages would not be declared legal nationwide until 1967’s Loving v. Virginia, in which the Supreme Court overturned antimiscegenation laws in seventeen Southern states.
The Growing Presence of Multiracial Americans
In recent decades, the number of mutiracial Americans has skyrocketed. U.S. Census figures show that the multiracial population in the U.S. grew from 9 million in 2010 to 33.8 million in 2020, an increase of 276%. While the proportion of the U.S. population that was multiracial was 2.9% in 2010, it rose to 10.2% as of 2020.
This trend is even clearer among children, where the proportion that reported two or more races increased from 5.6% in 2010 to 15.1% in 2020. One caveat here is that part of this change was due to improvements in the design of census questions for race and ethnicity between 2010 and 2020. These changes enabled respondents to self-identify more accurately. Additionally, the Census did not allow individuals to choose more than one racial category before 2000. However, a significant part of the change is still attributable to actual demographic movements.
Breaking these nationwide trends down geographically, multiracial individuals are most prevalent in Hawaii, Alaska, Oklahoma, Washington, and Oregon. Of multiracial adults in the U.S., a vast majority — 89% — are biracial, while 10% identify as three races, and fewer than 1% identify as four or more races. More than 80% of the multiracial population falls into five racial combinations: White and Native American; Black and Native American; White and Black; White and Asian; and White, Black, and Native American.
At the same time, there have been multiple notable figures in American politics with mixed-race backgrounds, including President Barack Obama, whose mother was white and father was Kenyan, and Vice President Kamala Harris, whose father is Jamaican and mother was Indian. The achievements of these figures, as well as many others, have stood as a landmark advancement in the public presence of multiracial Americans, as these individuals have risen to become many of our nation’s most influential political figures despite enduring structural barriers.
The growing presence of multiracial Americans, both among the voting populace and in roles of political power, has highlighted the nuances among multiracial people and experiences in the U.S that are often overlooked in the cultural imagination. Additionally, media portrayals of multiracial individuals demonstrate a need for greater societal recognition of multiracial experiences and the creation of new cultural norms.
Complexities Lost in the Fold
Both the continuation of a partisan divide and differing trends among those with different racial mixes demonstrate the lack of a multiracial monolith. Rather, there exists a more nuanced array of multiracial communities across the cultural landscape. Of multiracial adults, 57% favor the Democratic Party while 37% favor the Republican Party, figures that are not too dissimilar from the general U.S. public, where 53% lean towards Democrats and 41% lean towards Republicans.
Further, the story evolves to reveal persisting division when examining partisanship amongst multiracial sub-groups. American adults who are biracial White-Native Americans are the only prominent multiracial group that lean Republican — 53% compared to the minority 42% who lean Democratic. This closely reflects the partisan composition of white Americans, who tend to lean more Republican. In contrast, 60% of white-Asian individuals lean Democratic while 38% lean Republican. For White-Black individuals, it is 73% Democratic and 15% Republican, while Black-Native Americans lean most heavily towards Democrats with 89% while only 7% lean Republican. On specific policy issues, surveys showed that multiracial Americans are less likely than the general public to favor strengthening gun control, more likely to favor legalizing marijuana, and do not differ from the general public opinion on whether abortion should be legal.
Different groups of multiracial Americans also vary in their experiences with racial identity. According to a 2015 Pew Research Center survey, a 69% multiracial Americans with a Black background report that most people view them predominantly as Black and that they share experiences more closely with the Black community. In contrast, a majority of both biracial white and Asian Americans and white and Native Americans report having more in common with white Americans in terms of experiences and social spheres. While for some individuals this may be due to greater similarities in appearance and thus their perception by others, it may also in some cases be a result of certain cultural and socioeconomic similarities.
While some groups may lean into one racial heritage, they all may face prejudice and discrimination even if on different levels and in different ways. Multiracial Americans of various backgrounds all have high rates of reporting being subject to racist slurs or jokes. However, compared to White-Native American and white-Asian individuals, White-Black and Black-Native American biracial individuals are much more likely to have received poor service in restaurants or other businesses, and to have been stopped unfairly by police officers on account of race. It should further be considered that each individual has a different relationship with their own racial identity and with how that identity connects to their values and political views, meaning that even conclusions drawn with respect to these specific subgroups of multiracial Americans require painting with a broad brush.
Media Portrayal of Multiracial Figures
Another issue that has come up, especially in recent years amid the increasing number of high-profile multiracial figures in American politics, is the role of the media and its coverage of people with multiracial backgrounds. This issue was highlighted starkly when President Donald Trump accused Vice President Kamala Harris of deciding to “turn Black” for political gain during the 2024 U.S. presidential election campaign.
In response to this incident, Professor Mallory Carra at the University of Southern California argued that it was indicative of a larger shortcoming of the American media to responsibly cover multiracial politicians. She raises the notion of “monoracism” — an insistence that people have only one racial identity — as a force that undermines the autonomy of multiracial individuals to fully express their racial identities. In an interview with the Harvard Political Review, Professor Carra explained the source of monoracism: “For a lot of people, at least in my experience, it’s just easier for them to see you as one or the other.” She elaborated that this is reinforced through other mechanisms such as “checkboxes on forms” which often have not offered multiracial individuals the option to express their identities fully, as is often the case in identification forms in which individuals are only able to select one option in the race category. She emphasized that forms like these can cause multiracial people to essentially have to “pick a parent” when they can only choose one option.
One aspect that complicates this further is that the racial identities of multiracial individuals can change between social contexts and over the course of one’s lifetime. Almost 3 in 10 American adults with a multiracial background stated that they have changed the way in which they have described their own race over time. For some individuals, this means that they have come to think of themselves more comfortably as belonging to multiple racial groups over time. For others, it can mean that they come to think of themselves as belonging to only one racial group after previously belonging to multiple.
Professor Carra suggested that the solution to this complexity is simply to ask the individuals about their identifications themselves. She discussed how both the media and our political discourse more broadly should respect the identities that mixed-race public figures ascribe to themselves. An additional suggestion she made was for the media to conduct thoughtful research into the backgrounds of these leaders as far as it is relevant. Rather than reducing the racial identities of these figures to overly simplistic conceptions, the media and political environment should acknowledge the multifaceted nature of racial identity for multiracial individuals.
Bearing the Burden of Racial Tensions
Democratic strategist James Carville has suggested that “demography is destiny” and argued that our current racial hierarchies and institutional biases will naturally fade over the next few decades as a result of shifting demographics. This reflects a conception in American discourse over race relations that claims many of our current problems will be solved by the shifting racial breakdown of the country. The weight of this issue is shouldered by mixed-race Americans, who not only make up the fastest growing racial group in the U.S., but also are hailed by Carville and others as the people that are most starkly ushering in racial harmony by individually blurring the lines of racial divisions.
In an interview with the HPR, Professor Ronald R. Sundstrom at the University of California, San Francisco rejected the notion that “demography is destiny,” specifically with regard to the argument made that the growing number of multiracial people in America will turn the country into one with a post-racial political atmosphere. He discussed how the fact that more Americans are in interracial relationships reflects progress and a greater “exercise of people’s autonomy” that reduces the importance of “superficial boundaries like skin color” in those individuals’ personal lives. However, he made the point that these developments will not solve all of our nation’s political divisions related to race.
Zooming Out: Where Do We Go Next?
The complexities that arise when mixed-race identities clash with the often oversimplifying lenses of politics and the media are not uniquely American issues. Dr. Clayton Chin at the University of Melbourne spoke in an interview with the HPR about the intersection of mixed racial identities and politics in other nations, such as Australia and Canada. He stated that in these nations, the history of various ethnic “migratory groups” has contributed to “widespread diversity,” which leads to complex interactions between race and politics. In these nations too, multiracial people have increasingly played important roles in society and in political discussions. Dr. Chin argues that there is “more work to be done” in understanding the intersection between mixed-race identities and political engagement in these nations. He further details that we need “better cultural literacy” around this issue.
The growing prominence of multiracial individuals both in U.S. politics and in American society as a whole reflects great advancements for mixed-race communities in terms of presence and representation. However, it has also highlighted complexities that are often not covered in the media as well as current shortcomings in our political climate. The mixed-race community is not a monolith, and there exists a vast diversity of views and experiences between and within different groups. Even if they do not intend to, individuals and institutions often serve to limit the identities of multiracial people either by only acknowledging or forcing them to choose one side of their racial background. Often, the media environment furthers this by failing to treat multiracial politicians in a way that properly regards the multifaceted nature of their racial identities.
Our society and other diverse societies around the world ought to address these issues by changing cultural norms to better acknowledge multiracial individuals’ complexities. This will require not only a change in the perceptions of individuals, but also a critical consideration of how our political and media landscapes can be shaped to better acknowledge and handle the complexities of both personal identity and political life.
Senior U.S. Editor
