While pundits point to multiracial Americans as new evidence of a
harmonious ethnic melting pot, in reality mixed race peoples have
long existed in the United States. Rather than characterize
multiracial Americans as a "new" population, this book argues that
instead we should view them as individuals who reflect a new
culture of racial identification. Today, identities such as
"biracial" or "swirlies" are evoked alongside those more
established racial categories of white, black Asian and Latino.
What is significant about multiracial identities is that they
communicate an alternative viewpoint about race: that a person's
preferred self-identification should be used to define a person's
race. Yet this definition of race is a distinct contrast to
historic norms which has defined race as a category assigned to a
person based on certain social rules which emphasized things like
phenotype, being "one-drop" of African blood or heritage. In
Multiracial Identity and Racial Politics in the United States,
Natalie Masuoka pol17usaes how this cultural shift from assigning
race to perceiving race as a product of personal identification
came about by tracing events over the course of the twentieth
century. Masuoka uses a variety of sources including in-depth
interviews, public opinion surveys and census data to understand
how certain individuals embrace the agency of self-identification
and choose to assert multiracial identities. At the same time, the
book shows that the meaning and consequences of multiracial
identification can only be understood when contrasted against those
who identify as white, black Asian or Latino. An included case
study on President Barack Obama also shows how multiracial identity
narratives can be strategically used to reduce anti-black bias
among voters. Therefore, rather than looking at multiracial
Americans as a harbinger of dramatic change for American race
relations, this Multiracial Identity and Racial Politics in the
United States shows that narratives promoting multiracial
identities are in direct dialogue with, rather than in replacement
of, the longstanding racial order.
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