THE BLENDING OF THE UNITED STATES

By Rochelle L. Stanfield

For years, Jorge DelPinal's job as assistant chief of the Census Bureau's Population Division was to fit people into neat, distinct racial and ethnic boxes: white, black, Hispanic, Asian or Native American. As the son of an Anglo mother and a Hispanic father, however, he knew all along that the task was not always possible.
"My identity has evolved as being Hispanic, although I'm only half-and-half," he explained. He said he thus understood the frustration of interracial couples who have always been expected to assign just one race to their children when they fill out government forms. "They're saying, 'Why should we have to choose between the parents?'" the Census Bureau official said.
For the 2000 decennial census, that will no longer be the case. For the first time, the census forms will allow people to check off as many races as apply. As a result, the Census Bureau should obtain a better picture of the extent of intermarriage in the United States.
In the absence of such a direct method, a few years ago veteran demographer Barry Edmonston used sophisticated mathematical modeling techniques to calculate how intermarriage is changing the face of the United States as part of an immigration study he directed for the National Research Council of the American Academy of Sciences. His research was summarized in a report entitled The New Americans: Economic, Demographic and Fiscal Effects of Immigration. But as the Canadian-born, white husband of sociologist Sharon Lee, a Chinese-American, Edmonston really needed no computer to understand the transformation under way in this society. He and his family are living, breathing participants.
The face of America is changing -- literally. As President Clinton has said, within 30 or 40 years, when there will be no single race in the majority in the United States, "we had best be ready for it." For his part, Clinton is preparing for that time by talking about racial tolerance and the virtues of multiculturalism. Others are debating immigration policy. Almost all discussion focuses on the potential divisiveness inherent in a nation that is no longer a predominantly white country with a mostly European ancestry.
But afoot behind the scenes is another trend that, if handled carefully, could bring the country closer together rather than drive it apart. This quiet demographic counter-revolution is a dramatic upsurge in intermarriage.
"Demography is a very intimate deal," notes Ben J. Wattenberg, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) in Washington. "It's not about what activists say; it's about what young men and women do. And what they're doing is marrying each other and having children."
Edmonston's study projected that by 2050, 21 percent of the U.S. population will be of mixed racial or ethnic ancestry, up from an estimate of seven percent today. Among third-generation Hispanic and Asian Americans, exogamy -- marriage outside one's ethnic group or tribe -- is at least 50 percent, he and others estimate. Exogamy remains much less prevalent among African Americans, but it has increased enormously, from about 1.5 percent in the 1960s to eight to 10 percent today.
Such a profound demographic shift could take place while no one was watching ause, officially, no one was watching. Federal agencies traditionally collected racial data using a formula -- one person, one race -- similar to the time-honored voting principle. Thus, the Census Bureau could estimate that on census forms no more than two percent of the population would claim to be multiracial. In the absence of a more straightforward count, no one could know for sure what the demographics are.
That's about to change. After the 2000 census, the U.S. Government should have a better idea. In 1997, the Office of Management and Budget, which oversees federal statistical practices, approved a directive allowing people to check as many racial boxes as they believe apply to them. The shift was a compromise between the demands of some interest groups that wanted the addition of a "multiracial" box, and those that objected to any change, fearing dilution of their numbers.
To get ready for the 2000 census, the Census Bureau has conducted dress rehearsals in three sites around the United States. In Sacramento, California, 5.4 percent of the population checked off more than one racial box, nearly three times the proportion expected by many experts. The numbers also demonstrate that intermarriage is on the rise. Among people over 18 years old, 4.1 percent checked more than one box; among those under 18 years old, 8.1 percent did so.
Meanwhile, in the absence of official numbers, with the heightened tension surrounding racial issues, and with the mutual suspicion that exists among competing racial and ethnic interest groups, there's little aement on what intermarriage will mean for U.S. society in the future.
Some sociologists call Asian-white and Hispanic-Anglo intermarriage simply the latest addition to the melting pot that, since the start of this century, has fused so many Irish, Italian, German and other families of European origin. But despite the rise in black-white marriage, many doubt that African Americans will be included in this mix.
"I think the almost ineradicable line in America is between blacks and all others," says Roger Wilkins, a history professor at George Mason University in suburban Virginia and a longtime civil rights figure. "Blacks have always been the indigestible mass. Having said that, however, there's no doubt that something is happening," he continued. "Just look at the ads on television [with] beautiful models, male and female, who are not quite white. Are they a mixture of black and white, black and Asian, Hispanic and white? You just can't tell."
Others anticipate that the bedroom will accomplish what other catalysts could not. Douglas J. Besharov, an AEI resident scholar, said in a 1996 article in The New Democrat that the growing numbers of mixed-race youth represent "the best hope for the future of American race relations."
Ramona Douglass, president of the Association of MultiEthnic Americans, enthused, "We're living proof that people with two different races or ethnic backgrounds can live together in harmony, that [interracial] families actually do function." Douglass's mother is Italian-American, and her father is a multiracial blend of African American and Native American.
Of course, many portray intermarriage as gradual genocide that will culminate in the disappearance of their particular group. That was the traditional view of the Jewish community, which throughout history closely guarded its small numbers from loss through assimilation. But the very high rate of Jewish out-marriage since World War II has caused an official rethinking among the prossive elements of American Judaism. These groups still encourage marriage within the faith, but instead of shunning those who do marry non-Jews, they are now courting these intermarried couples.
"The Jewish community, at least its liberal branches, moved from a posture of outrage to a posture of outreach," explained Egon Mayer, who is a sociology professor at Brooklyn College and former co-director of the North American Jewish Data Bank at the City University of New York (CUNY). "There's been a tremendous upsurge in efforts to reach out to these families, to invite them in and, in a way, to have a multicultural cake and eat it, too."
Although sociologists are quick to point out the differences between Jews and other minority groups, they nonetheless acknowledge that the evolution of the Jewish approach to intermarriage may provide a model for the nation as a whole as it discovers, and then confronts, the racial and ethnic blending of the United States.
Melting Pot
To see the new face of the United States, go to a grocery store and look at a box of Betty Crocker-brand food products. Betty's portrait is now in its eighth incarnation since the first composite painting debuted in 1936 with pale skin and blue eyes. Her new look is brown-eyed and dark-haired. She has a duskier complexion than her seven predecessors, with features representing an amalgam of white, Hispanic, Indian, African and Asian ancestry.
A computer created this new Betty in the mid-1990s by blending photos of 75 diverse women. That process was relatively quick, General Mills Inc., spokesmen explain. But they acknowledge that it took quite a while to spread the new image to the whole range of Betty Crocker products.
The slow pace of that process itself could be a metaphor for gradual racial and ethnic intermixing in this country. Indeed, it's taking a long time for the new blended American to surface in society's consciousness. Tiger Woods, the young golf at, publicized the trend by identifying hilf as Cablinasian, a mixture of Caucasian, black, Native American and Asian.
For the most part, the marketplace -- not government -- is leading the way in this evolution. Mixed-race models, particularly men, are in at demand, according to fashion industry experts. And multiracial child actors are now more likely to be tapped for television advertisements.
The ad agencies that hire those models and actors "are not idealistic people," Wilkins said. "They are out to sell stuff, and they study trends very carefully. So, what they see is a big market out there that is reached by beautiful people who are not exactly white, or who are yearning for a melting pot America."
That serious scholars should be talking about a melting pot is itself a reversal. As a metaphor for American diversity, the melting pot was first discredited after World War I, when the European immigrants streaming into American cities formed distinct ethnic and national enclaves that didn't melt together.
The timing was off, it turned out, and the metaphor

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