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 because, 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 agreement 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 progressive 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 great, publicized the trend by identifying himself 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 great 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 metaphorical pot was in the wrong place. Interracial and multiethnic fusion started after World War II and happened in the suburbs. City folk moved from their Italian, Irish, Polish or Jewish urban neighborhoods into diffuse suburban settings, then sent their kids to large public universities, throwing them together with youngsters from other ethnic backgrounds who, nonetheless, came from families with similar lifestyles. "Most people meet their potential partners either at college or when they start working," said sociologist Lee, a University of Richmond (Virginia) professor who is spending some time as a visiting scholar at Portland (Oregon) State University. "When you have a college education, you're likely to be in a milieu where there will be people of all kinds of ethnic backgrounds, and that increases the chances of marrying someone different from your own ethnic background." Lee is a case in point, having met her husband, Edmonston, director of Portland State's Center for Population Research and Census, when they were students. David Tseng, a special assistant in the U.S. Department of Labor's Pension and Welfare Benefits Administration, tells a similar story. His mother came from Ecuador; his father was the son of a Chinese diplomat in Washington. Their marriage in the late 1950s was unusual for the time. But, says Tseng, "I think it helped that the people with whom they were friendly and socialized with were educated and intelligent and comfortable with people from other lands and cultures." That dynamic is now routinely seen among native-born Asian Americans and Hispanic Americans. "We're seeing very high rates of intermarriage for Hispanics and Asians who are living in fairly integrated areas outside their traditional areas [of concentration] in the Southwest and West," Edmonston pointed out. He cited a study that showed an 80 percent exogamy rate for young, native-born Asians in New England (the U.S. Northeast), for example. Ironically, the rise in immigration and the trend toward multiculturalism that so many analysts view as major factors leading to divisiveness actually contribute to this blending of races and ethnic groups. "Once you fragment ... the society into so many different ethnic origins, you make it mathematically less and less likely to meet somebody of your own ethnicity," said Wattenberg. "That's what happened, basically, to the Jewish population." Whether blacks will follow other minorities into the melting pot remains a subject of debate. Skeptics point to the much smaller proportion of black-white marriages and say it won't happen soon. Others respond that the statistical base is very small because, until 1967, such marriages were illegal in 19 states. Countervailing Forces While many forces are at work to facilitate intermarriage, others militate against it. This is particularly the case for African Americans. The growing segment of the black community that is going to college, entering the middle class and moving out to the suburbs is also following the general trend toward intermarriage. This tendency is particularly noticeable in California and in cities such as Dallas (Texas), Las Vegas (Nevada) and Phoenix (Arizona), where residential segregation has been less pronounced than in the older northeastern and midwestern U.S. cities, according to Reynolds Farley, who has studied African American residential patterns. In California, for example, among 25-to-34-year-old African Americans, 14 percent of the married black women and 32 percent of the married black men had spouses of a different race, Edmonston noted. But in the isolated urban neighborhoods of the U.S. Northeast and Midwest, the old pattern remains. "There is a considerable fraction of the black population that still lives in inner-city areas -- in Detroit, Chicago, New York City -- that has not been caught up in dynamic economic growth," said Farley, formerly a professor at the University of Michigan and now a vice president of the Russell Sage Foundation in New York City. "They've been left behind, and they are quite far out of it." Another countervailing force is immigration. Immigrants generally don't marry outside their racial or ethnic group. Their children do to some extent, but out-marriage really is most prevalent in the third generation. The most recent large-scale wave of immigration has produced only first- or second-generation Americans. Regardless of the real degree of racial and ethnic intermixing that goes on, the test of a blended society will be the proportion of people who identify as multiracial or multiethnic. Until now, that percentage has been small. That's partly because people tend to assume the racial or ethnic identity of one parent -- often the minority parent, in the case of blacks and Hispanics. But to a large extent, that identity has been imposed by society. "I have a Spanish name and I speak Spanish, so people see me as being of Spanish origin," DelPinal, the Census Bureau official, explained. Racial identification can stem from other sources, such as heightened ethnic pride or the opportunity to benefit from affirmative action and other programs. Over the last few decades, having Native American ancestry has apparently become popular. Between 1970 and 1980, the number of people who checked "American Indian" on their census forms grew from 800,000 to 1.4 million, a much faster increase than could be accounted for by births minus deaths. "People decided they wanted to identify as American Indians, to some extent because of rising ethnic consciousness," observed Jeffrey S. Passel, director of the Immigration Policy Program at the Urban Institute and a former director of the Census Bureau's Population Division. It is this positive approach to racial or ethnic identification on which liberal elements of the Jewish community are trying to capitalize. For two millennia, exogamy was a major transgression for Jews. (In many communities, prayers for the dead were recited for a Jew who married a non-Jew.) As a result, out-marriage was rare. Before World War II, it amounted to less than seven percent of Jewish marriages, according to Mayer of CUNY. But in 1970, a National Jewish Population Survey discovered that in the previous five years, 30 percent of new Jewish marriages were to non-Jews. By 1990, that figure was more than 50 percent. After many meetings, much soul-searching and a lot of acrimonious debate, various synagogue groups in the most liberal denominations and Jewish civic organizations decided to reverse their approach. They still try to discourage intermarriage, but once it occurs, they tend to welcome new interfaith families. Rabbi Daniel G. Zemel of Temple Micah, a Reform congregation in Washington, was one of those who switched positions. In 1979, when he was ordained a rabbi, Zemel recalled recently, "I felt those rabbis who officiated at intermarriages should be excommunicated from the rabbinical associations. Since that time, my thinking has changed enormously." However, he said, he still does not personally officiate at interfaith marriages. "I think if you can find ways to conceive of a diverse, heterogeneous Jewish community, then that's what we'll be looking at in the future," he said. But, he acknowledged, that will require a revolution in outlook for that component of the Jewish community that has been tied together more by European ethnic roots than by its religious practices. The sea change contemplated by Zemel is in some ways analogous to the shift required by the United States as it transforms itself from a mostly white nation to a multiracial, blended society. The first step down that path is probably figuring out just who we are. And that requires an accurate count of all colors and the various shades in between. ---------- Rochelle L. Stanfield, a former staff correspondent for National Journal, is a Washington, D.C.- based freelance writer specializing in demographics and urban affairs. This article originally appeared in the September 13, 1997, issue of National Journal. It has been updated by the author. Copyright © 1997 by National Journal Group Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.