By Megan R. Mahoney, STAT, August 19, 2020
My parents fell in love at a time when their union was illegal in 16 states. My father, who is white and who was a priest at the time, married my mother, who later became one of the first black women college presidents.
As a mixed-race kid growing up in Ohio, I often felt like a chameleon who could move in and out of different cultural worlds. Understanding various perspectives is a multiracial kid’s superpower, and I felt that I could almost fit in anywhere, though I fully fit in nowhere. I relish what Barack Obama and Trevor Noah have written about their similar childhood experiences.
The historic announcement of Kamala Harris as the Democratic party’s nominee for vice president coincides with a rapidly growing population of multiracial individuals in the United States. Their presence has been captured with more precision in the 2000 and 2010 Censuses. The 2020 Census will, for the first time, ask those who select white or black for their race to provide information about their heritage — such as Italian, Lebanese, African-American or Ethiopian.
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