Our New Look: The Colors Of Race

He United States closed the 19th century declaring--in Plessy v. Ferguson--that rigid segregation was the natural order. It was a time when W.E.B. Du Bois despaired that America would ever get beyond its homespun apartheid. "The problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line--the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men," he famously pronounced in 1903. Americans have not proved Du Bois wrong. Still, the country enters the millennium self-consciously striving to be a more tolerant place. The

new century will not see the end of race--the dawning of an era when skin color is of no consequence--but it will see a further erosion of racial walls. And it will see America struggling to make sense of shifting racial classifications.

Already, Americans are changing--in ways both substantive and superficial--to conform to the new, more egalitarian, ideal. Nazis may still march, but they are inevitably outnumbered by counterprotesters. Aryan Nation kooks may still kill; but, if caught, they are imprisoned, stigmatized and scorned. Racial purity is not as prized as it once was. People who call themselves white proudly acknowledge Latino and Native American roots. A small number even acknowledge some black ancestry. And interracial romance, once outlawed and condemned, now openly blooms.

Between 1960 and 1992 the number of interracially married couples multiplied more than seven times over. Black-white unions are still not the norm, accounting for only 20 percent of interracial marriages, but the marriage color line has all but dissolved between Asians and whites. In America, more children are born to white-Japanese couples than to parents who are both of Japanese ancestry. Then there are Hispanics, who are projected to become America's second largest racial-ethnic group (after whites) by 2010. Latinos may consider themselves white, black, American Indian, Asian or Pacific Islander--or deem themselves none of the above. It is not unusual in Latin America for people who don't consider themselves black to speak of a grandparent who is. Whatever they call themselves, the presence of an ever-growing number of multiracials or mestizos is forcing Americans to relinquish the notion that everyone can be put in a single racial box. The Census Bureau, acknowledging that reality, will allow people to be counted in more than one racial category during next year's Census.

When Tiger Woods revealed in 1997 that he thought of himself as "Cablinasian"--a mixture of Caucasian, black, Indian and Asian--when growing up, he was greeted with bemusement, even hostility. In fact, very few black Americans are just black. If people with "black blood" can now be white or at least not black, what becomes of the concept of passing? Passing, after all, implies a denial of one's authentic ancestry to be accepted as a member of another race. But what happens when the definition of the other race changes enough to accommodate formerly forbidden ancestries? And what happens to the very notion of racism in a society where race has lost much of its meaning?

The rise of the mixed-race--or cafe au lait--society has led some to predict the end of distinctions based on ethnicity, racial appearance or ancestry. That seems unlikely. Even in Brazil, where racial mixing is accepted, even celebrated, color coding has not lost its sting. Status and privilege are still connected to lighter skin. Racial distinctions, albeit mutable and imprecise, are constantly made. In the emerging U.S. mestizo future, some people will still be whiter than others--and if the Latin America experience is any guide, they will have an advantage.