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2019 Midterm2 (assignment) Index to Sample Midterm2 Answers Part 3. Research Report Starts |
LITR 4340
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Heidi Kreeger
The New Normal: America's Image in 2043
It fascinates me that when my parents were born interracial marriage was still
illegal in much of America. Of course we have grown as a country since then but
I have personally witnessed how slow the progress has been. I was born to a
white American father and Korean immigrant mother so I am mixed race but growing
up there was only one family in our school that had one white and one black
parent and everyone seemed keenly aware of it. However my generation seems to
have embraced multi-cultural marriage at a much larger rate and as I myself have
half black children I am curious if this trend will continue and what the face
of America will look like when my daughters have children. What do all the
experts and projections have to say about race in 2043, and will there be anyone
left who can claim to be of only one race?
Let me first address my choice of year: my mom was born in 1959 and had me in
1987 at the age of twenty-eight. When I turned twenty-eight I had my first
child, a daughter, born in 2015, and when she is twenty-eight years old it will
be 2043.I am a millennial who often hears about how our generation is so radical
and different with our parenting techniques. My hope is that radically different
parenting will lead to radically different views about inter-marriage between
both immigrants and minorities. As I mentioned my mother is a Korean immigrant
but my parents’ marriage was rarely viewed as negative in the way that most
black/white marriages were at the same time. And black/white marriages were not
just frowned upon but legally prohibited until Loving v. Virginia in
1967.
A Pew Research report in 2012 corroborated much of this when it concluded that “nearly
two-thirds of Americans (63%) say it ‘would be fine’ with them if a member of
their own family were to marry someone outside their own racial or ethnic group.
[However, in] 1986, the public was divided about this. Nearly three-in-ten
Americans (28%) said people of different races marrying each other was not
acceptable for anyone, and an additional 37% said this may be acceptable for
others, but not for themselves. Only one-third of the public (33%) viewed
intermarriage as acceptable for everyone.” The same report also studied
how Americans of different ages, races, political affiliations, education levels
and even locations currently view mixed marriages. It found that “Minorities,
younger adults, the college-educated, those who describe themselves as liberal
and those who live in the Northeast or the West are more disposed than others to
see intermarriage in a positive light.”
These trends would suggest that as younger generations take over, mixed
marriages will become even more common as they are more likely to be minority or
mixed themselves, more likely to be college educated, and as another Pew
Research report from 2019 found they are more liberal than past generations.
Research shows that young immigrants are coming in better educated and with
better language skills than ever before. They are also more likely to have a job
than those who are native-born, all of which supports the theory that future
generations will be more ‘mixed’.
Exactly how mixed and how quickly is obviously speculation, however.
Jenée
Desmond-Harris
did an article for The Root in which she lays out four very different scenarios
for how increased interracial marriage will affect us:
1. We could all finally reject the idea that biology divides human beings into
five racial groups.
2. We might develop more accurate ways to describe our identities.
3. We could begin to shake off racial stereotypes.
4. “People of color” could lead the way on equality.
The fourth and last possibility is a theory proposed by
Angela Glover Blackwell, founder and CEO of PolicyLink, who “says it’s possible
that people of color—blacks, Asians, Latinos—are on the verge of doing something
white people did a long time ago: identifying themselves as a group and emerging
as a powerful majority…White people didn’t identify as a race until politically
and economically it benefited them to do so—they were just Irish, Italian,
Greek, etc.,” I highlight her scenario because coincidently enough the year 2043
specifically is mentioned when relaying Blackwell’s outlook: “The fact that by
2043 the majority of Americans will be of color will be relatively meaningless
if blacks, Latinos and some Asian groups that are being disproportionately left
behind don’t come together to see what they have in common and push for an
equity agenda.”
My interest was piqued by Blackwell’s theory because it raises an additional
question beyond “what will America look like in 2043?” and asks “will Americans
still get treatment based on how they look in 2043?” For some reason this
thought had not occurred to me and it frustrates me deeply.
If
you are like myself and need a physical estimation of what America will look
like in the next generation the best option I have found is an article that
National Geographic did in 2013. In it they try to piece together what that
world would look like with pictures of and interviews with modern day
individuals of mixed decent.
I
still want to extend these last two paragraphs further, but I would like some
help in organizing this particular essay, I don’t know how the flow is since
I’ve read it a million times now it all runs together. I also want to try to
find some more scientifically based projections on the future, but am struggling
to find anything concrete based on past data or something like that. Help in
this regard would be much appreciated as well if you happen to know of a source
or a good place to look for one.
https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2012/02/16/the-rise-of-intermarriage/2/
https://www.history.com/topics/civil-rights-movement/loving-v-virginia
https://www.theroot.com/the-future-of-race-in-america-1790898742
