Race is Not a Black and White Issue Anymore

            In the United States, the era of the 1950s-60s was a time of prodigious technological advancement. Innovative devices such as credit cards, microchips, microwaves, pacemakers, and passenger jets transformed key aspects of everyday life. These remarkable conveniences have become so indispensable in terms of accomplishing routine tasks that many Americans today would have difficulty imagining life without them.

Another appliance that soon found its way into progressively more homes was the color television set. Although inventors had developed machines capable of depicting hues other than black and white much earlier, not until the early 1950s did this extraordinary equipment begin to gain popularity. Even then, however, the transition to colorized television proceeded at an unhurried pace due in part to expense, but also because some had grown accustomed to their black and white televisions and were not willing to change.

These decades also experienced intense turmoil that ironically was the result of another black and white matter (which, in this case, never should have existed in the first place). W. E. B. Du Bois referred to the issue as “the problem of the color-line.”[1] In the United States, ethnic discord between Anglos and African Americans was painful and all too common. The Civil Rights Movement (ca. 1954-1968) drew attention to the sorrows that centuries of injustices had wrought in the African American community. Martin Luther King Jr., along with other brave men and women, unwearyingly opened the nation’s eyes to these travesties. At the behest of President Lyndon B. Johnson, Congress eventually passed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, outlawing “discrimination or segregation on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin.”[2] Three years later, in 1967, the Supreme Court went a step further, ruling in the Loving v. Virginia case that it was constitutional for people to marry across ethnic lines.[3]

In the early twenty-first century, practically all residents of the United States have embraced the concept of color television. Younger generations take this equipment for granted, largely unaware of its outmoded predecessor. Regrettably, however, conversations regarding ethnic relations in America rarely move past the black and white paradigm of the 1950s-60s. They often fail to consider all of the “colors” of the ethnic spectrum that now populate this nation in increasingly larger quantities.[4] 

Deborah Ramirez noted two decades ago, “In 1960, blacks constituted 96 percent of the minority population. Today, the phenomenal growth in the Asian and Latino communities has altered the mix of people of color so dramatically that blacks now make up only about 50 percent of the population of people of color.”[5] If anything, the number of minority populations that reside in the United States is more diverse than it was twenty years ago. Nevertheless, due to ethnic demographics that existed half a century ago, most research still focuses on Anglo and African American relations to the exclusion of the interrelationships of other people groups.[6] For a number of reasons, the need of the moment is for followers of Christ to engage in an ethno-cultural conversation that considers all people groups instead of utilizing the obsolete Black-White archetype of the past. Consider the following evidence.

The 2010 United States census revealed that while 14 percent of the population claimed African American heritage,[7] 16 percent identified as Hispanic.[8] Almost 10 percent of the population classified itself as Asian, or Asian in combination with another ethnicity.[9] Although a relatively small population, one must not overlook the original inhabitants of the United States; 0.9 percent of Americans indicated Native American or Alaskan Native ancestry, with another 0.7 percent possessing indigenous heritage in addition to some sort of ethnic admixture.[10] Additionally, the biracial population grew at a faster rate than their monoethnic counterparts, numbering at least nine million.[11] By contrast, in 1960, 11 percent of the population was African American, 3.5 percent was Hispanic, and 0.6 percent was Asian.[12]

The change of the United States' ethnic composition requires a change in the manner in which we approach the topic of race. While the Black-White model was appropriate for the 1960s, it no longer fits the needs of the early twenty-first century. It is time to employ an ethnic model that takes into consideration all of the people groups that now call the United States home. 

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[1] W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, with an Introduction and Notes by Farah Jasmine Griffin (New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 1903; 2003), 3.

[2] “Transcript of the Civil Rights Act (1964),” Office of the Clerk: U.S. House of Representatives, http://library.clerk.house.gov/reference-files/PPL_CivilRightsAct_1964.pdf (accessed 20 January, 2016).

[3] “U.S. Supreme Court: Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967),” https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/388/1 (accessed 20 January, 2016).

[4] Larger numbers of Hispanics and Asians reside in the United States than ever before. By 2044, statisticians estimate that growth among these people groups will result in a “majority-minority nation” for the first time in history. See Sandra L. Colby and Jennifer M. Ortman, “Projections of the Size and Composition of the U.S. Population: 2014-2016, United States Census Bureau, http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/ publications/2015/demo/p25-1143.pdf (accessed 6 February, 2016).

[5] Deborah Ramirez, “Multicultural Empowerment: It’s Not Just Black and White Anymore,” Stanford Law Review 47.5 (May 1995): 962.

[6] Nikki Khanna, “The Role of Reflected Appraisals in Racial Identity: The Case of Multiracial Asians,” Social Perspectives 54.2 (Summer 2011): 115; Linda Trinh Võ and Rodolfo D. Torres. “Mapping Comparative Studies of Racialization in the US,” Ethnicities 4.3 (September 2004): 307.

[7] Sonya Rastogi, Tallese D. Johnson, Elizabeth M. Hoeffel, and Malcolm P. Drewery Jr., “The Black Population: 2010,” United States Census Bureau, http://www.census.gov/ prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-06.pdf (accessed 20 January, 2016).

[8] Sharon R. Ennis, Merarys Ríos-Vargas, and Nora G. Albert, “The Hispanic Population: 2010,” United States Census Bureau, http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/ c2010br-04.pdf (accessed 20 January, 2016).

[9] Nicholas A. Jones, “The Asian Population in the United States: Results from the 2010 Census,” United States Census Bureau, https://www.ssa.gov/aapi/2010census-data.pdf (accessed 20 January, 2016).

[10] Tina Norris, Paula L. Vines, and Elizabeth M. Hoeffel, http://www.census.gov/ prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-10.pdf, United States Census Bureau (accessed 20 January, 2016).

[11] “2010 Census Shows Multiple-Race Population Grew Faster Than Single-Race Population,” United States Census Bureau, https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/ archives/race/cb12-182.html (accessed 20 January, 2016).

[12] Jeffrey S. Passel and D’vera Cohn, “U.S. Population Projections: 2005-2050,” Pew Research Center, http://www.pewhispanic.org/2008/02/11/us-population-projections-2005-2050/ (accessed 20 January, 2016).