Multiracial American - History

History

Further information: Jim Crow laws, Mulatto, Colored, and Interracial marriage in the United States

The American people are mostly multi-ethnic descendants of various culturally distinct immigrant groups, many of which have now developed nations. Some consider themselves multiracial, while acknowledging race as a social construct. Creolization, assimilation and integration have been continuing processes. The African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955–1968) and other social movements since the mid-twentieth century worked to achieve social justice and equal enforcement of civil rights under the constitution for all ethnicities. In the 2000s, less than 5% of the population identified as multiracial. In many instances, mixed racial ancestry is so far back in an individual's family history (for instance, before the Civil War or earlier), that it does not affect more recent ethnic and cultural identification.

Interracial relationships, common-law marriages and marriages have occurred since the earliest colonial years, especially before slavery hardened as a racial caste associated with people of African descent in the British colonies. Virginia and other colonies passed laws in the 17th century that gave children the social status of their mother, according to the principle of partus sequitur ventrem, regardless of the father's race or citizenship. This overturned the principle in English common law, that a man gave his status to his children – this had enabled communities to demand that fathers support their children, whether legitimate or not. The change increased white men's ability to use slave women sexually, as they had no responsibility for the children. If the master as well as father of the mixed-race children, they could use them as servants or laborers or sell them as slaves. In some cases, white fathers provided for their multiracial children providing for education or apprenticeships and freeing them, particularly during the two decades following the American Revolution. (The practice of providing for the children was more common in French and Spanish colonies, where a Creole class developed who became educated and property owners.) Many other white fathers abandoned the mixed-race children and their mothers to slavery.

The researcher Paul Heinegg found that most families of free people of color in colonial times were founded from the unions of white women, whether free or indentured servants, and African men, slave, indentured or free. In the early years, the working class peoples lived and worked together. Their children were free because of the status of the white women. This was in contrast to the pattern in the post-Revolutionary era, in which most mixed-race children had white fathers and slave mothers.

Anti-miscegenation laws were passed in most states during the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, but this did not prevent white slaveholders from taking slave women as concubines and having multiracial children with them. Patterns of Asian immigration and Latino residents led white legislators in California and the western US to pass laws prohibiting marriage between European and Asian Americans until the 1950s.