#that the races that are most common and most likely to intermarry (whites + asians and whites + hispanics)

[a-god-in-ruins-rises]

"raza" is actually referring to the coming american race (the cosmic race, some might say)

[olderthannetfic]

I'm a Chinese, nationally and racially. Racial projection seems to be a common practice in western fandom, doesn't it? I find it a bit... weird to witness the drama ignited upon shipping individuals with different races, or the tendency to separate characters into different "colors" even though the world setting doesn't divide races like that. Such practice isn't a thing here. Mind explaining a bit on this phenomenon?

--

Sure, I can try. But of course, fish aren’t very good at explaining the water they swim in.

Americans aren’t good at detecting our own Americanness, and a lot of what you’re seeing is very much culturally American rather than Western in general. (In much of Europe, “race” is a concept used by racists, or so I’m told, unlike in the US where it’s seen more neutrally.) Majority group members (i.e. me, a white girl) aren’t usually the savviest about minority issues, but I’ll give it a shot.

The big picture is that most US race stuff boils down to our attempts to justify and maintain slavery and that dynamic being applied, awkwardly, to everyone else too, even years after we abolished slavery.

There’s a concept called the “one drop rule” where a person is “black” if they have even one drop of black blood.

We used to outlaw “interracial” marriage until quite recently. (That meant marriage between black people and white people with Asians and Hispanic people and others wedged in awkwardly.) Here’s the Wikipedia article on this, which contains the following map showing when we legalized interracial marriage. The red states are 1967.

That’s within living memory for a ton of people! Yellow is 1948 to 1967. This is just not very long ago at all. (Hell, we only fully banned slavery in 1865, which is also just not that long ago when it comes to human culture.)

Why did we have this bananas-crazy set of laws and this idiotic notion that one remote ancestor defines who you are? It boils down to slavery requiring a constant reaffirming that black people are all the same (and subhuman) while white people are all this completely separate category. The minute you start intermarrying, all of that breaks down. This was particularly important in our history because our system of slavery involved the kids of slaves being slaves and nobody really buying their way out. Globally, historically, there are other systems of slavery where there was more mobility or where enslaved people were debtors with a similar background to owners, and thus the people in power were less threatened by ambiguity in identity.

Post-slavery, this shit hung around because it was in the interests of the people in power to maintain a similar status quo where black people are fundamentally Other.

A lot of our obsession with who counts as what is simply a legacy of our racist past that produced our racist present.

--

The other big factor in American concepts of identity is that we see ourselves as a nation of immigrants (ignoring our indigenous peoples, as usual). A lot of people’s families arrived here relatively recently, and we often don’t have good records of exactly where they were from, even aside from enslaved people who obviously wouldn’t have those records. Plenty of people still identify with a general nationality (”Italian-American” and such), but the nuance the family might once have had (specific region of Italy, specific hometown) is often lost. Yeah, I know every place has immigrants, and lots of people don’t have good records, but the US is one of those countries where families have on average moved around a lot more and a lot more recently than some, and it affects our concepts of identity. I think some of the willingness to buy into the idea of “races” rather than “ethnicities” has to do with this flattening of identity.

New immigrant groups were often seen as Other and lesser, but over time, the ones who could manage it got added to our concept of “whiteness”, which gave them access to those same social and economic privileges.

Skin color is a big part of this. In a system that is founded on there being two categories, white owners and black slaves, skin color is obviously going to be about that rather than being more of a class marker like it is in a lot of the world.

But it’s not all about skin color since we have plenty of Europeans with somewhat darker skin who are seen as generically white here, while very pale Asians are not. I’m not super familiar with all of the history of anti-Asian racism in the US, but I think this persistent Otherness probably boils down to Western powers trying to justify colonial activities in Asia plus a bunch of religious bullshit about predominantly Christian nations vs. ones that are predominantly Buddhist or some other religion.

In fact, a lot of racist archetypes in English can be traced back to England’s earliest colonial efforts in Ireland. Justifying colonizing Those People because they’re subhuman and/or ignorant and in need of paternalistic rulers or religious conversion is at the bottom of a lot of racist notions. Ironic that we now see Irish people as clearly “white”.

--

There are a lot of racist porn tropes and racist cultural baggage here around the idea of black people being animalistic. Racist white people think black men want to rape/steal white women from white men. Black women get seen as hypersexual and aggressive. If this sounds like white people projecting in order to justify murder and rape... well, it is.

Similar tropes get applied to a lot of groups, often including Hispanic and Middle Eastern people, though East Asians come in more for creepy fantasies about endlessly submissive and promiscuous women. This nonsense already existed, but it was certainly not helped by WWII servicemen from here and their experiences in Asia. Again, it’s a projection to justify shitty behavior as what the party with less power was “asking for”.

In porn and even romance novels, this tends to turn up as a white character the audience is supposed to identify with paired with an exotic, mysterious Other or an animalistic sexy rapist Other.

A lot of fandoms are based on US media, so all of our racist bullshit does apply to the casting and writing of those, whether or not the fic is by Americans or replicating our racist porn tropes.

(Obviously, things get pretty hilarious and infuriating once Americans get into c-dramas and try to apply the exact same ideas unchanged to mainstream media about the majority group made by a huge and powerful country.)

--

Politically, within the US, white people have had most of the power most of the time. We also make up a big chunk of the population. (This is starting to change in some areas, which has assholes scared shitless.) This means that other groups tend to band together to accomplish shared political goals. They’re minorities here, so they get lumped together.

A lot of Americans become used to seeing the world in terms of “white people” who are powerful oppressors and “people of color” who are oppressed minorities. They’re trying to be progressive and help people with less power, and that’s good, but it obviously becomes awkward when it’s over-applied to looking at, say, China.

--

Now... fandom...

I find that fandom, in general, has a bad habit of holding things to double standards: queer things must be Good Representation™ even when they’re not being produced for that purpose. Same for ethnic minorities or any other minority. US-influenced parts of fandom (which includes a lot of English-speaking fandom) tend to not be very good at accepting that things are just fantasy. This has gotten worse in recent years.

As fandom has gotten more mainstream here, general media criticism about better representation (both in terms of number of characters and in terms of how they’re portrayed) has turned into fanfic criticism (not enough fics about ship X, too many about ship Y, problematic tropes that should not be applied to ship X, etc.). I find this extremely misguided considering the smaller reach of fandom but, more importantly, the lack of barriers to entry. If you think my AO3 fic sucks, you can make an account and post other fic that will be just as findable. You don’t need money or industry connections or to pass any particular hurdle to get your work out there too.

People also (understandably) tend to be hypersensitive to anything that looks like a racist porn trope. My feeling is that many of these are general porn tropes and people are reaching. There are specific tropes where black guys are given a huge dick as part of showing that they’re animalistic and hypersexual, but big dicks are really common in porn in general. The latter doesn’t automatically mean you’re doing the former unless there are other elements present. A/B/O or dubcon doesn’t mean it’s this racist trope either, not unless certain cliched elements are present. OTOH, it’s not hard for a/b/o tropes to feel close to “animalistic guy is rapey”, so I can see why it often bothers people.

A huge, huge, huge proportion of wank is “all rape fantasies are bad” crap too, which muddies the waters. I think a lot of people use “it’s racist” as an easy way to force others to agree with their incorrect claims that dubcon, noncon, a/b/o, etc. are fundamentally bad. Many fans, especially white fans, feel like they don’t know enough to refute claims of racism, so they cave to such arguments even when they’re transparently disingenuous.

--

Not everyone here thinks this way. I know plenty of people offline, particularly a lot of nonwhite people, who think fandom discourse is idiotic and that the people “protecting” people or characters of color are far more racist than the people writing “bad” fic or shipping the wrong thing.

But in general, I’d say that the stuff above is why a lot of us see the world as white people in power vs. everyone else as oppressed victims, interracial relationships as fraught, and porn about them as suspect. Basically, it’s people trying to be more progressive and aware but sometimes causing more harm than good when those attempts go awry.

[polixy]

7 demographic trends shaping the U.S. and the world in 2018

7 demographic trends shaping the U.S. and the world in 2018;

(Laurentiu Garofeanu/Barcroft USA/Barcoft Media via Getty Images)

More than 2,000 demographers are in Denver this week for the Population Association of America’s annual meeting, where they will discuss topics ranging from the changing family to international migration flows. Ahead of the meeting, here are some important recent demographic findings from Pew Research Center:

1Millennials are projected to outnumber Baby Boomers next year. Numbering 71 million in 2016, Millennials in the United States are approaching Baby Boomers (74 million) in population and are projected to surpass them as the nation’s largest living adult generation in 2019. The Millennial generation, defined as Americans born from 1981 to 1996, corresponds to adults ages 22 to 37 in 2018.

Millennials are already the largest generation in the U.S. labor force, making up 35% of the total. (They surpassed Generation X in 2016.) Although Boomers formed the majority of the labor force in the early and mid-1980s, they made up just 25% of the total in 2017, as many older members of this generation reached retirement age.

In the political arena, the number of Millennials who are eligible to vote in the U.S. is approaching that of Boomers. As of November 2016, Millennials formed 27% of the voting-eligible population, while Boomers made up 31%. However, turnout rates in the 2016 election were lower for Millennials than Boomers (51% vs. 69%), meaning that Millennials accounted for a lower share of votes cast than their proportion of the electorate.

2A record number of Americans live in multigenerational households, part of a broader trend toward more shared living. In 2016, a record 64 million people, or 20% of the U.S. population, lived with multiple generations under one roof, even with improvements in the U.S. economy since the Great Recession. Multigenerational family living is growing among nearly all U.S. racial groups, Hispanics, most age groups and both men and women. In recent years, young adults have edged out older Americans as the most likely age group to live in a multigenerational household, which we define as a household with two or more adult generations, or including grandparents and grandchildren younger than 25.

Meanwhile, 78.6 million adults, or about 32% of the U.S. adult population, were part of a shared household in 2017, reflecting another increasingly common living arrangement. A shared household is a household with at least one adult who is not the household head, the spouse or unmarried partner of the head, or an 18- to 24-year-old student. (Most multigenerational households are also shared households.)

3The institution of marriage continues to change. Half of U.S. adults today are married, a share that has remained relatively stable in recent years but is down significantly over previous decades. Cohabitation among unmarried partners is rising, including among a growing share of unmarried parents. The share of U.S. adults living without a spouse or partner has also increased, from 39% in 2007 to 42% in 2017.

The educational gap in marital status continues to grow. In 2015, among adults ages 25 and older, 65% of those with a four-year college degree were married, compared with 55% of those with some college education and 50% of those with no education beyond high school. Twenty-five years earlier, the marriage rate was above 60% for each group.

The share of adults reporting they are married also varies widely across U.S. religious groups, according to Pew Research Center’s 2014 Religious Landscape Study. For instance, six-in-ten or more Mormons, members of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America are married, compared with fewer than four-in-ten atheists, agnostics and those who say their religion is “nothing in particular.”

Increasing shares of newlyweds have a spouse of a different race or ethnicity. In 2015, 17% of all U.S. newlyweds were intermarried, a more than fivefold increase since 1967. Among cohabiting U.S. adults, 18% were living with a partner of a different race or ethnicity. Patterns differ for racial and ethnic groups: Asians, for example, are more likely than whites to have a spouse or partner of a different race.

4 After decades of decline, motherhood and family size are ticking up in the U.S. Among women at the end of their childbearing years (ages 40 to 44), 86% had ever given birth by 2016, an increase from 80% in 2006 and about the same share as in the early 1990s. Women also are having more children: On average, women in 2016 had 2.07 children during their lives – up from 1.86 in 2006, the lowest average on record.

In addition, there has been a substantial increase in motherhood over the past two decades among women who have never been married. In 2014, more than half (55%) of women ages 40 to 44 who had never married had given birth – up from 31% in 1994.

Parenting is changing in America in other ways, too. Both fathers and mothers are spending more time caring for their children than in the past, even as mothers spend considerably more time working outside the home than they did in previous decades. For their part, 63% of fathers say they spend too little time with their children, mainly because of work obligations, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in 2017. Mothers are far more likely to say that they spend the right amount of time with their kids.

5There are more than 250 million migrants worldwide, according to the latest data from the United Nations on the number of people living outside their birth countries in 2017 (see this updated interactive graphic). Sub-Saharan African nations account for eight of the 10 fastest growing international migrant populations since 2010. The number of migrants from each of these sub-Saharan countries grew by 50% or more between 2010 and 2017, significantly more than the 17% worldwide average over the same period. At least a million sub-Saharan Africans have moved to Europe since 2010. (Read this new Pew Research Center report for more information about the educational backgrounds of sub-Saharan African immigrants in Europe and the U.S.)

At the country level, Syria had the fastest-growing migrant population in the world, and Pew Research Center estimates that six-in-ten of the country’s pre-conflict population is displaced.

6New refugee arrivals are down in the U.S. and their religious composition has changed. The number of refugee arrivals in the U.S. declined after 2016, even as the global refugee population increased. This decline was also widespread across the U.S., with declines in 46 states during the beginning part of fiscal 2017 (which began in October 2016). Furthermore, since 2016, the share of refugees who are Christian has risen, while the share who are Muslim has declined, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. State Department data.

Most refugees coming to the U.S. as of the end of fiscal 2017 were from the Middle East and Africa, although this has not always been the case. In fiscal 2002, Ukraine and Bosnia and Herzegovina accounted for the two largest countries by number of refugees coming to the U.S. And between fiscal 2008 and 2012, more than four-in-ten refugees admitted to the U.S. were from Asian countries.

7International arrivals to the U.S. have risen among some groups. New foreign student enrollment at U.S. colleges and universities doubled between 2008 and 2016, from 179,000 to 364,000, far outpacing growth in overall college enrollment. Growth has been stronger at public schools than private schools. Students from China, India and South Korea accounted for more than half (54%) of all new foreign students pursuing higher education degrees in the U.S. in 2016.

In recent years, there also has been a rise in immigrants to the U.S. from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, whose numbers rose by 25% from 2007 to 2015. The U.S. black immigrant population, though small, also is growing: There were 4.2 million black immigrants living in the U.S. in 2016, up fivefold since 1980.

Once arrived, rising shares of immigrants have become citizens, and naturalization rates are up among most of the largest immigrant groups. The number of naturalized immigrants grew from 14.4 million in 2005 to 19.8 million in 2015. Among origin countries, Ecuador and India had the largest increases.

Another aspect of the immigrant experience, according to a Pew Research Center survey, is that people are less likely to identify themselves as Hispanic the more generations they are from their immigrant roots. Among U.S.-born children with Hispanic ancestry and at least one immigrant parent, 92% identify as Hispanic. But among the next generation, that falls to 77%.

  Topics: Population Trends, Demographics

; Blog – Pew Research Center; http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/04/25/7-demographic-trends-shaping-the-u-s-and-the-world-in-2018/; ; April 25, 2018 at 03:07PM

[multiracialmedia-blog]

Multiracial News Roundup: Interracial Love in the Headlines

  Ashley Graham and husband Justin Ervin on their interracial love. 

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of Loving Day, we’ve brought you a few recent news stories about interracial love that are trending.

Is Swirling in the Movie ‘Everything, Everything a Big Deal?

Some of the buzz around the popular new movie, “Everything, Everything” is about the fact that lead character Maddy, a Biracial teen with a life-threatening health condition (played by Biracial Amandla Stenberg) gets involved with a White neighbor—Olly (played by Nick Robinson). As the blog Bustle states, this is “normal teen movie stuff, except that interracial love is rarely seen in movies. For the young generation of viewers, seeing a film that reflects the changing landscape of relationships in today’s society truly matters, and will hopefully have an effect on the way our society views the connection between romance and race.” Read more

What NOT to Ask an Interracial Couple About Their Interracial Love Story

Student Karen Juarez shares tips for not offending interracial couples in StudyBreaks. “I’m in an interracial relationship, which can be a pairing fraught with unintentionally offensive questions. Two different cultures meet in the relationship, though most of the time the combination is seamless; in fact, it’s usually the families of the two lovebirds that are responsible for introducing drama into the equation. So, to help anyone out who’s curious about what is acceptable and unacceptable to ask, here are a few of the questions that people in multicultural relationships would love to stop having to answer.” Read More

Model Ashley Graham Shocked by Her Family’s Racism

Supermodel Ashley Graham, who grew up in a non-diverse part of Nebraska, met her husband in church, and thought their love transcended prejudice. Her family’s response shocked her. “I naively hoped everyone would be color-blind—which is not what happened. When my grandparents met Justin, my grandmother was cordial but cold. She greeted him and immediately walked away. When it came time for them to leave, my grandparents didn’t even acknowledge him. Instead my grandmother looked me in the eye, with Justin standing behind me, and said, ‘Tell that guy I said goodbye.'”

Graham told ABC News that she “had never seen my loving, hardworking, and wonderful grandma be so hurtful and so racist.” Read More

10 Years Later, Family Still Disapproves of Interracial Love

Though Ed and Naiah Hosley had been married a decade, her Korean family was still openly disapproving of her husband. When they walked hand-in-hand into her sister’s engagement party, Naiah’s sister asked, ‘Why didn’t you come alone?” As the Spartan News at the University of Michigan School of Journalism reports, “The Holseys looked around the room to see her Korean family with disapproving glares and frowning faces. ‘They still couldn’t accept that I married a Black man.’” Read More

Recent Stats Show Interracial Love and Marriage on the Rise…

Just how much have interracial love and interracial marriage grown since it became legal in 1967? It’s grown from 3 to 10 percent. So who’s doing the most swirling? According to a recent study by the Pew Research Center, “Interracial marriage is most common among Asian-Americans and Hispanics. Their surging populations in the U.S. are the biggest contributors to the overall rise in interracial marriage, the report said. Whites have experienced a sharp increase in intermarriage rates, even though they remain the group least likely to have a spouse of another race. Between 1980 and 2015, the share of white newlyweds who marry outside their race has grown from 4 percent to 11 percent. And about 16 percent of all intermarried couples in the U.S. include a Black spouse.” Read More

Though Acceptance About Interracial Love Still Lags Behind…

When the Gregersens moved from diverse Chicago communities to Elmhurst, they felt a distinct chill from neighbors and local business owners. As the Chicago Tribune reports, “When Rachel Gregersen gets asked for identification at the same store where her husband does not, or when they eat out together and the waiter asks if they want separate checks, she said, they notice it.”

“The couple has been married for 11 years, and previously blended into more diverse communities like Chicago’s Pullman neighborhood and Oak Park. When they moved to Elmhurst to be closer to work, unlike some other newcomers, they said no neighbors introduced themselves … More broadly, the couple is concerned about how their children might be treated by law enforcement. Along with a talk about the birds and bees, they will have to talk about what to do when stopped by police.” Read More

Breaking the Rules with an Interracial, Interfaith Union

What happens when you’re forbidden to fall in love with someone from a particular group?

When Sakib Afridi set his sights on Suzie, she prayed that he was a Christian. But he is Pakistani, Pushtoon and Muslim—and as a Greek Orthodox Christian from Jericho, Palestine, she was “absolutely forbidden from falling in love with Muslims.” Despite her sister disowning her, they married and have a child. Suzie has converted to Islam and works as a stand-up comic, and Sakib is a multi-disciplinary artist. Read More

Photo credit: YouTube

Multiracial News Roundup: Interracial Love in the Headlines if you want to check out other voices of the Multiracial Community click here Multiracial Media

[polixy]

Key facts about race and marriage, 50 years after Loving v. Virginia

Key facts about race and marriage, 50 years after Loving v. Virginia;

In 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Loving v. Virginia case that marriage across racial lines was legal throughout the country. Intermarriage has increased steadily since then: One-in-six U.S. newlyweds (17%) were married to a person of a different race or ethnicity in 2015, a more than fivefold increase from 3% in 1967. Among all married people in 2015 (not just those who recently wed), 10% are now intermarried – 11 million in total.

Here are more key findings from Pew Research Center about interracial and interethnic marriage and families on the 50th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision.

1A growing share of adults say interracial marriage is generally a good thing for American society. Nearly four-in-ten adults (39%) say the growing number of people marrying someone of a different race is good for society, up from 24% in 2010. Adults younger than 30, those with at least a bachelor’s degree and those who identify as a Democrat or lean Democratic are especially likely to say this.

Americans today also are less likely to oppose a close relative marrying someone of a different race or ethnicity. Now, 10% say they would oppose such a marriage in their family, down from 31% in 2000. The biggest decline has occurred among nonblacks: Today, 14% of nonblacks say they would oppose a close relative marrying a black person, down from 63% in 1990.

2Asian and Hispanic newlyweds are the most likely to be intermarried. Nearly three-in-ten Asian newlyweds (29%) were married to someone of a different race or ethnicity in 2015, as were 27% of Hispanic newlyweds. Intermarriage for these groups was especially prevalent among the U.S. born: 39% of U.S.-born Hispanics and almost half (46%) of U.S.-born Asian newlyweds were intermarried in 2015.

Although Asian and Hispanic newlyweds are most likely to be intermarried, overall increases in intermarriage have been driven in part by rising intermarriage rates among black and white newlyweds. The most dramatic increase has occurred among black newlyweds, whose intermarriage rate more than tripled from 5% in 1980 to 18% in 2015. Among whites, the rate rose from 4% in 1980 to 11% in 2015.

3The most common racial or ethnic pairing among newlywed intermarried couples is one Hispanic and one white spouse (42%). The next most common intermarriage pairings are one white and one Asian spouse (15%). Some 12% of newlywed intermarried couples include one white and one multiracial spouse, and 11% include one white and one black spouse.

4Newlywed black men are twice as likely as newlywed black women to be intermarried. In 2015, 24% of recently married black men were intermarried, compared with 12% of newly married black women. There are also notable gender differences among Asian newlyweds: Just over one-third (36%) of newlywed Asian women were intermarried in 2015, compared with 21% of recently married Asian men.

Among white and Hispanic newlyweds, intermarriage rates are similar for men and women.

5Since 1980, an educational gap in intermarriage has begun to emerge. While the rate of intermarriage did not differ significantly by educational attainment in 1980, today there is a modest gap. In 2015, 14% of newlyweds with a high school diploma or less were married to someone of a different race or ethnicity. In contrast, 18% of those with some college experience and 19% of those with a bachelor’s degree or more were intermarried.

The educational gap is most striking among Hispanics. Nearly half (46%) of Hispanic newlyweds with a bachelor’s degree were married to someone of a different race or ethnicity in 2015, yet this share drops to 16% for those with a high school diploma or less.

6One-in-seven U.S. infants (14%) are multiracial or multiethnic. This share is nearly triple the share (5%) in 1980. Multiracial or multiethnic infants include children younger than 1 year old who live with two parents and whose parents are each of a different race, those with one Hispanic and one non-Hispanic parent, and those with at least one parent who identifies as multiracial.

Among interracial and interethnic infants, the most common racial/ethnic combination for parents is one non-Hispanic white and one Hispanic parent (42%). The next largest share of these infants have at least one parent who identifies as multiracial (22%), while 14% have one white and one Asian parent and 10% have one white and one black parent. The share of infants with interracial or interethnic parents also varies considerably across states, from 44% among those in Hawaii to 4% among those in Vermont.

7Honolulu has the highest share of intermarried newlyweds of any major metropolitan area in the U.S. Four-in-ten newlyweds in Honolulu (42%) are married to someone of a different race or ethnicity, followed by newlyweds living in the Las Vegas (31%) and Santa Barbara, California (30%) metro areas. At the same time, just 3% of newlyweds in or around Asheville, North Carolina, and Jackson, Mississippi, are intermarried.

(Interactive: Which U.S. metro areas have the largest and smallest shares of intermarried newlyweds?)

Generally, newlyweds living in metropolitan areas are more likely to be intermarried (18%) than those in more rural, non-metro areas (11%).

Topics: Intermarriage, Marriage and Divorce, Race and Ethnicity

; Blog – Pew Research Center; http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/06/12/key-facts-about-race-and-marriage-50-years-after-loving-v-virginia/; ; June 12, 2017 at 12:29AM