Britian leading the way in interracial marriages?

[SwordandCompass]

"In 2000, The Sunday Times reported that "Britain has the highest rate of interracial relationships in the world". Apparently contradicting this, more recent census data shows the population of England (in lieu of the UK) to be 1.3% mixed-race (2001), compared with, for example, 1.4% in the USA (2002 estimates, see below). But most of the English population is of one race (white), even more so than in the US, so there are fewer opportunities for interracial relationships in England. In support of the report it can be calculated that 14.4% of those in England who are not white are mixed-race, compared with 7.5% in the US.
Censuses notwithstanding, any count of numbers of mixed-race people is debatable. People may identify themselves as members of one single racial category despite having ancestors belonging to other categories. For instance, genetic studies of black Caribbean people show an ancestry that is on average 10% European and 90% African1. Also, a section of the US black population is of Native American descent. "
news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/uk/2002/race/changing_face_of_britain.stm
www.fact-index.com/m/mu/multiracial.html
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/daily/dec98/melt29.htm

[SwordandCompass]

Bridge over troubled water In America, people of mixed race have been dubbed
`the bridgegeneration'. In this country, one in 20 children under five are
`bi-racial', but can they really heal the colour divide? Aminatta Forna
reports on Brown Britain.


BRITAIN is witnessing a explosion in the number of mixed race children being
born. The news that one in 20 pre-school children (and rising) is of mixed
parentage has produced a range of responses, from predictions of a future
brown Britain, to the idea that such a group could usher in a new era of
race relations to the question of racial identity - both black and white.
One way or the other, as people of mixed race become a significant minority
they are expected to have a vital social impact. Even among people of mixed
heritage themselves, the response is ambiguous. Jo Hodges, author of the
highly successful new film and the novel The Girl with Brains in her Feet a
story about growing up as a mixed race kid in Leicester, claims she has been
able to move fluidly across the cultural divide: "My experience is of being
allowed to eavesdrop on all sorts of conversations that black and white
people have about each other." The idea that mixed race people could create
a "bridge generation" is a possibility. Yet Lenny Kravitz, a black, Jewish,
New Yorker has commented: "You don't have to deny the white side of you if
you're mixed. Accept the blessing of having two cultures, but understand
that you are Black. In this world if you have one spot of Black blood you
are Black. Get over it!" In the USA, where mixed race people live in a
society which is more segregated than the UK, the issues revolve more
urgently around the politics of race.

Mixed relationships have always attracted a disproportionate amount of
interest. In addition, high-profile mixed marriages such as that of Labour
MP Bernie Grant, black peer John Taylor, swimmer Sharon Davies, comedians
Dawn French and Lenny Henry, plus all those black footballers with blonde
girlfriends, have created the impression that large numbers of black men and
white women are marrying each other. But the issue has been somewhat
exaggerated. Figures drawn from the last census and reported in the
newspapers claimed that 40 per cent of African Caribbean men had a white
partner. But misinterpretation and misreporting have given a somewhat
overblown idea of the true extent of mixed unions. In fact, the original
figure was 40 per cent of African Caribbean men with a partner and under 30.
It did not include the many men without a partner, or obviously, older men.
The true figure for African Caribbean men of all ages in a relationship is
25 per cent. And the comparative figure for African Caribbean women is 14
per cent. What is significant is the number of children of mixed race of
pre-school age, suggesting a sudden, recent explosion in the number of these
relationships.

In the United States, a similar group of "bi-racial" people are being called
the "bridge generation." According to British sociologist Stephen Small,
currently a professor at Berkeley and writing a book on people of mixed and
unmixed heritage, they are seen and see themselves as the interface between
black and white generations.

Yet in both the US and in Britain mixed race relationships and people
represent a paradoxical picture and generate radically different reactions.
Today in the UK intermarriage is being portrayed, in the media at least, as
wholesomely positive - a sign of the power of human relationships to
overcome deep-rooted attitudes and a measure of modern racial tolerance. The
same is true to some extent in the United States. However, it was only in
1991 that a survey conducted by the Independent on Sunday demonstrated that
a third of white people thought you should only marry within your race. In
the United States mixed relationships have a complex history, up until
recently being more closely associated with slavery and the exploitation of
black women by white men than anything else. Talk of a "bridge generation"
of people who are both and neither black or white must be understood within
the context of a country which, up until recently, defined a person as black
if they had one sixteenth black blood, and where so much mixing has gone on
in the past that sociologists agree that the majority of so- called "white"
Americans have at least one black ancestor.

Today in the United States there is pressure to change the historic racial
categories contained in the census and on official forms to reflect people
of mixed heritage and even to jettison the whole idea that people can even
be categorised according to race. Initially welcome, the different subtexts
behind some of the calls is becoming evident. Some white women married to
black men, it is claimed, simply do not want their children categorised as
black with all the connotations that brings. And dispensing with racial
classifications is also an aim of the anti-affirmative action lobby, who
want to prevent policies allocating funds to disadvantaged groups.
Interestingly in the US now, some of the most vociferous voices defending
racial categories are black and not white. In the UK, the 1991 census
already included a question on ethnicity including mixed heritage, and there

are rumours that the 2001 census White Paperwill propose a separate
category.

But, the census debate apart, how much further will the US experience,
specifically the idea of a "bridge generation", be reflected in the UK?
Stephen Small points to Liverpool, which has historically had easily the
largest mixed race population of any British city, but also "one of the
highest rates of social exclusion on the grounds of race in the country".
And whereas in the US, those who call themselves the bridge generation come
largely from middle- class backgrounds, with parents who are typically white
liberals married to black professionals, that is not the case in this
country. Britain's black middle class is small and most of the new
generation of brown Britons will grow up in working-class areas. High-
profile mixed-race figures, such as Paul Boateng, the son of a Ghanaian
politician and a white mother, will remain the exception.

And yet Julia Sudbury, who is an academic of mixed race and author of Other
Kinds of Dreams (Routledge) argues that the influences of the new brown
generation will emerge in music, art and writing in the coming decades
produced by people who "play with the boundaries of blackness and whiteness
and move between cultures". Of course Jo Hodges has already done precisely
that, teasing out themes of race and culture, difference and similarity.

But perhaps the most important difference will be the profound change the
emergence of numbers of young, mixed race people will have on discussions
about their own identity. Mixed heritage has always been seen as a problem
and critics of inter-racial relationships have often argued that the
resulting children fall between cultures and belong nowhere. In the context
of a racially oppressive society, all the mixed race people I have spoken to
have mentioned a, sometimes intense, pressure to unify and to conform to
ideas of blackness. Anne Phoenix, a London University psychologist and
author of Black, White or Mixed Race? interviewed mixed race children
between the ages of 14 and 18 and found that this was an issue for many of
them. They nevertheless preferred to identify themselves as "mixed" and not
to deny their own and one of their parents' whiteness.

Of course describing oneself as black is also read as a statement of
political allegiance and refusal to do so can engender hostility or
accusations of naivete. For years, according to Yasmin Alibai Brown, author
of The Colour of Love, this discussion has surrounded people of mixed race.
The difference now is that there is "a growing community of young adults who
can express themselves". Julia Sudbury welcomes a future in which mixed race
people "don't have to genuflect to notions of blackness imposed on them by
unmixed people".

And Alibai Brown, who works at the Institute of Public Policy Research and
last year organised a seminar on the subject of mixed heritage, believes
that there are now a number of concerns which affect mixed race children
separate from their black counterparts. One pressing problem is the highly
disproportionate number of mixed race children in care. Despite the
willingness to interpret relations between black and white as a sign of
racial tolerance on the part of white people, there are a large number of
white women who put their mixed race children into care. While black women
who have a child by a white man usually raise that child, white women who
bear mixed children often do not. This simple, chilling fact speaks louder
than all the rhetoric of a happy, blended brown future.

In the future, people of mixed heritage will find themselves, as they always
have been, at the intersection of debates about race, racialized divisions
and cultural shifts. There won't be one homogeneous "brown" culture, just as
there is not one black culture. They will be as different as Daley Thompson
and Bob Marley, both of black and white parentage, are from each other. But
as the numbers rise, sometime in the future, mixed people who have the
ability to cross cultures will eventually challenge every existing
definition of whiteness and blackness. In the end, their impact, in the
words of Julia Sudbury, will be "immense and irreversible."

(Copyright 1998 Newspaper Publishing PLC)

©1998 UMI Company; All Rights Reserved.

[SwordandCompass]

www.radstats.org.uk/no078/southworth.htm

www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/p20-537.pdf <~~~ american

[nordicyouth]

Interesting...