Multiracial American

Multiracial American

Multiracial Americans are Americans who identify as of "two or more races". The term may also include Americans of mixed-race ancestry who identify with just one group culturally and socially. On the 2010 US census, approximately 9 million individuals, or 2.9% of the population, self-identified as multiracial. There is evidence that an accounting by genetic ancestry would produce a higher number, but people live according to social and cultural identities, not DNA. Historical reasons, including slavery creating a racial caste and the European-American suppression of Native Americans, often led people to identify or be classified by only one ethnicity, generally that of the culture they were raised in. Prior to the mid-20th century, many people hid their multiracial heritage because of racial discrimination against minorities. While many Americans may be technically multi-racial, they often do not know it or do not identify so culturally, any more than they maintain all the differing traditions of a variety of national ancestries.

After a period of racial segregation in the former Confederacy following Reconstruction and social segregation in many areas of the country, more people are forming interracial unions again. Social conditions have changed and increasingly diverse immigration has brought new groups to the United States. The number of acknowledged interracial couples and mixed-race children has increased in the United States. In addition, since the 1980s, the United States has had a growing multiracial identity movement. Because of citizen requests, the 2000 census for the first time allowed residents to identify as multiracial by checking more than one ethnicity. In 2008 Barack Obama was elected as the first multiracial President of the United States; he has an acknowledged multiracial background and identifies as African American.

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