The key finding in Gene Balk’s post on new census data that shows Seattle has become less white and more diverse is the sharp increase of people who are of “two or more races (including Hispanic).” This group is now the third-largest in the city, after Asian Americans.
Let’s think about this development for a moment. Does the rise of the mixed-race population in Seattle represent a perceptual (or ideological) shift as well as a hard demographic one? To the point: Are we witnessing a growing rejection of the “one-drop rule” (one drop of blood makes you black)?
Unlike South Africa and Brazil, the US designates a person as black until they are 100 percent white. And so, those who even look more white than black, are still considered black. Obama, for example, is actually half white, but he is still called the US’s first black president, and not its first mixed-race president. The increase of those claiming to be mixed are likely to be young, and might see the one-drop rule for what it is—racist. Mixed people exist and are a fast-growing population. According to U.S. Census Bureau, mixed-race Americans are “increasing three times faster than the population” and “by 2060, the number of multiracial Americans will be three times larger than it is now.” This explosion of mixing along with the large Latino population is nothing but a nightmare for Trump and his supporters. Mixing, blackness, and brownness are all at the root of their existential crisis. Whiteness is no longer a safe place to be.
Here, we find an opening for a quick thought on an argument made by Spokane’s famous fake black woman, Rachel Dolezal. She claims that she can be what ever color she wants to be because race is an idea rather than a real thing. We all come from the motherland. There are many problems with this line of thinking, one of which is it dismisses the real importance of ideas. Humans are the animal whose lives are profoundly governed by ideas. In fact, in some cases, it’s easier to transplant on organ in the body than an idea in the mind. All of the science and DNA evidence in the world will not convince millions of white Americans that they are in fact an African ape. That idea is just too much for them. The greatness of whiteness goes with them to the grave.
