At a time when one-quarter of California’s population is foreign-born, the state just might be the world’s most perfect lab for studying multiracial identity. So said participants at a three-day conference hosted by the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CSRE) this spring.
Although the preliminary findings of the 2000 census are still being released, it is clear that the Golden State is at the forefront of sweeping demographic change. Whites constitute 69 percent of the national population, but less than a majority—47 percent—of Californians, 32 percent of whom are Latino. Moreover, 4.7 percent of Californians reported belonging to two or more racial groups in 2000, and about 20 percent of the country is expected to do so in the 2050 census.
Which brings demographers to the new box on the Census 2000 form that, for the first time, allowed respondents to write in “some other race” to identify themselves. “The key is how people assimilate as they become adults,” says Stanford sociology professor C. Matthew Snipp, a member of the Census Bureau’s Race and Ethnic Advisory Committee. “And we’re finding that parents identify [themselves] very differently from their children.”
CSRE demographer Alejandra Lopez has confirmed that complexity through interviews she’s conducted with teenagers. “Mixed-heritage high school students straddle many different categories—on the forms and in their daily lives,” she says. “They acknowledge the nuances of their identity and are much more sophisticated in talking about race and ethnicity than I’d anticipated.”
Lopez, ’95, heads a project at the center to publish about a dozen reports about California and the Bay Area based on the Census 2000 data. So far, the reports have confirmed that the Bay Area is one of the most ethnically and racially diverse regions in the nation. They’ve also examined residential segregation and characteristics of households and families.
And it’s an Information-Age project. “Faculty like to talk about the olden days when they had to go and pull [data] tapes,” Lopez says. “But one of the neat things about Census 2000 is that so much data is accessible online. This is a fun time to be working with data.”
