How do we describe the offspring of racially mixed couples? The dilemma has led to suggestions that the U.S. Census revise its methods of collecting information about us. Some parents and organizations have lobbied vigorously for inclusion of a new category, "multiracial."
In his new book, The New Colored People: The Mixed-Race Movement in America, (New York University Press, $24.95) author Jon Michael Spencer explores the controversy. He observes that the Census Bureau has estimated at least 75 percent of the black population are ancestrally multiracial.
There has been a biracial baby boom in the past two decades, doubling the number of interracial marriages (from 1 percent to 2 percent) and tripling the number of interracial births, now up to 3 percent.
Spencer looks to the experience of South Africa, which changed its methods of identifying mixed races some years ago. He writes that "the most humanistic argument the multiracialists make in favor (of the new category) is that their movement may be the answer to the question of how to overcome racism."
The author disagrees with this contention, pointing out that South Africa has seen its problems with identifying the races become more complicated and less beneficial. "I feel that the racial clannishness that apartheid has left in its wake is not something that black and mixed-race black Americans would find at all attractive in America. Yet this racial clannishness, or some semblance of it, is what could and likely would develop if this country were to pursue the course of action promoted by multiracialists."
Spencer's writing style is muddy, awkward and at times numbing in its plodding manner of exposition. His frequent citing of South Africa's experiences proves eventually boring, rather than helping to make the points he seeks to nail down.
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