Some observations about racial boundaries and the experiences of American Indians

Abstract

The number of inter‐racial marriages has increased sharply in the last two decades. There are a number of factors that might account for this development ‐ for example, immigration, changing norms, and marriage market composition ‐ but one indisputable outcome has been a rise in the number of persons with multiracial backgrounds. This article argues that multiracial persons have a number of options about how they might identify their ancestry, and this is causing fluidity and instability in racial divisions that were once considered fixed and immutable. While this might be seen as a recent development, American Indians historically have had high rates of intermarriage with other racial groups. The experience of American Indians with regard to the dilemmas posed by shifting racial identities are discussed for the purpose of anticipating the experiences of other groups. In particular, these issues pose a number of challenges to public policies based on increasingly obsolete conceptions of race.