Sunday,
June 29,
Are Italians White or Caucasian?? The
Increasing Complexities of "Whiteness"
The
ANNOTICO Report
The
Whiteness
and the privileges that came with it were so closely guarded that in 1912, a House
committee held hearings on whether Italians
were really Caucasian, says Thomas Guglielmo,
a historian at
The
Definition of Whiteness Continues to Shift
Wall
Street Journal
By June Kronholz
June 12,
2008; Page A10
When
Barack Obama, whose mother was white, identifies himself as black, and when
The
U.S. Census Bureau says the country will be majority-minority in 2050 -- that
is, the combined number of blacks, Asians, American Indians and Hispanics will
put whites in the minority.
But
the definition of white keeps shifting. Groups have been welcomed in or booted
out; people opt out, sue to get in or change their minds and jump back and
forth.
The
deepest racial divide, between blacks and nonblacks,
endures. But there also are identity shifts among African-Americans, as Sen.
Obama's success suggests. Some make it into the middle class, where education
and social mobility may help shape their identities as much as race does.
Others are left behind in increasingly segregated schools and neighborhoods.
The
Whiteness
and the privileges that came with it were so closely guarded that in 1912, a
House committee held hearings on whether Italians were really Caucasian, says
Thomas Guglielmo, a historian at
Ethnic
Fractions
The
Census Bureau, which went door-to-door to count heads until 1970, for a time
recorded gradations of blackness. That prevented those with any black ancestor
from claiming to be white -- a measure known as the "one drop" rule.
The agency defined those with one black parent as mulattos, one black
grandparent as quadroons, and one black great-grandparent as octoroons.
In
1922, the Supreme Court decided that a Japanese man had white skin but wasn't
ethnically Caucasian, and it denied him citizenship. A year later, it decided a
South Asian was ethnically Caucasian but not white, and it denied him
citizenship, too.
All of this because whiteness mattered a lot. Until 1943, only blacks
of African heritage and whites could become naturalized citizens. Interracial marriage
was illegal in some states until 1967, and some Jim Crow laws that protected
white jobs, neighborhoods, voting rights and political power didn't fall until
the 1970s.
An
"expansive definition" of who wasn't white meant the pool of
lower-paid, nonwhite labor was always growing, Dr. Guglielmo
says.
Today,
being white still has its privileges, but its meaning is changing now that
those who are nonwhite face fewer legal and social barriers.
"Who's white [won't] mean that much, but when someone is
partly black, that will still be noticed by a large part of society," says
Intermarriage
is now common, blurring racial lines. Demographers estimate that about 8% of
the
Opting
Out of Whiteness
After
the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, there was "some sentiment"
among non-Arabs for counting Arab-Americans as nonwhite, says David Roediger, a
Some
minorities or multiracial Americans who were once counted as white are opting
out of the category. The population calling itself Native American quadrupled
when the Census Bureau began asking people to identify themselves by race
rather than relying on its own enumerators to do the job.The
number of Hawaiian dropped by half when the "two or more races"
category was introduced.
Mexicans
were long counted in the Census as whites because of an 1848 U.S.-Mexico treaty
that allowed them citizenship; only whites and blacks could naturalize, so by
that logic, Mexicans were white. But since 1980, Hispanics have had a separate
Census category where even intermarried, non-Spanish speakers can include
themselves, if they choose. One in eight people in the
Identity
groups that once lobbied to be accepted as whites now see advantages in being
nonwhite, including college-admission and hiring preferences. Some
African-Americans who fear losing political power to the fast-growing Hispanic
population have quietly urged Caribbeans and those of
mixed race to identify themselves simply as black.
Other minority groups are reclaiming their racial identities out of pride.
"Racial
categories as we know them are not going to continue to hold for another 50 to
100 years," says Donna Gabaccia, who heads the
The
Melting-Pot Effect
That
doesn't mean race won't matter, even as it becomes harder to define. Blacks
still cannot jump back and forth across those shifting racial
lines, which explains why Sen. Obama calls himself black even while he
singled out his white grandmother in his speech claiming the Democratic
nomination.
That's
not likely to change soon. Some demographers predict that within a century,
there will be as many Americans who are mixed-race as there will be those whose
parents are both of the same race, further blurring color lines. But that
"hybridity," as demographers call it, will
be concentrated among Hispanics and Asians who marry whites and each other, not
among blacks.
Meanwhile,
the definition of who is white may change again -- and again. A century ago,
Americans faced the same predictions about the loss of the white majority that
they do today. Then, with Eastern and Southern Europeans flooding in, it was
predicted that Caucasians would fall into the minority by 1950, says the
Those Italians, Slavs and other immigrants
eventually were redefined as white as they assimilated and moved up the
economic ladder. "That same thing could happen again," Dr. Roediger says -- this time, with minorities and immigrants
changing their racial identities themselves. "Race is malleable in that
sense," he says.
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