Moving Beyond the Black-White Color Line? Immigration, Diversity, and Multiracial Identification in the United States.

This paper explores theory and evidence about immigration, race/ethnicity, intermarriage, and multiracial identification, and assesses the implications of trends and patterns for changes in America’s color lines, focusing especially on the traditional and relatively persistent black-white color line that has long divided the country. For more than three and a half decades, continued immigration from Latin America and Asia has transformed the United States from a largely biracial society consisting of a large white majority and smaller black minority into a society composed of multiple racial and ethnic groups. At the same time, the rate of intermarriage between whites and nonwhites increased dramatically, and along with its rise, the growth in the multiracial population. For the first time in U.S. history, the 2000 Census allowed Americans the option to mark "more than one race" to self-identify, reflecting the view that race is no longer conceived of as a bounded category. Increases in immigration, intermarriage, and multiracial identification might appear to indicate that race is declining in significance, and racial/ethnic divides, eroding for all groups. However, the trends and patterns of interracial marriage and multiracial reporting indicate that while racial/ethnic boundaries may be loosening for some groups, they are not loosening for all. Moreover, while the traditional black-white divide may be fading, a new divide seems to be emerging-one that separates blacks and non-blacks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]