“What Are You?”: Racial Ambiguity and the Social Construction of Race in the Us Page: 6
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Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander was established (Greico, 2001), and the definition of white
used by the U.S. Census was changed in the 2000 census to include people considered as Middle
Easterners, whose origins were not in Europe, but parts of Asia and northern Africa.
These classifications are also problematic because they are based on geographic origins
of ancestors in a world where global and regional migration are common. When one also
considers the ethnic category of Hispanic, or Latino, the largest minority racial/ethnic group in
the U.S., accounting for 16.3 % of the total U.S. population (Passel, Cohn & Lopez, 2011),
which is proud of its mixed ancestral heritage, and the large volume of transnational migration
that occurs these days, the idea of looking at people and really knowing the truth of their racial
classifications according to the U.S. system becomes even less certain (Amissah, 2008; Bonilla-
Silva, 2003; Etzioni, 2006; Forman, Goar & Lewis, 2001; Goldstein, 1999; Greico, 2001;
Hattam, 2005; Hirschman, 2004; Hochschild, 2005; "NCLR Q&A", 2007; Portes & Zhou, 1994;
Prewitt, 2005; Smith, 1996; Tatum, 1997; Wu, 2002).
America's racial demographics have always been dynamic. In the past five years, the
largest racial/ethnic minority group changed from African Americans or blacks who had held
this position for decades, to Latinos whose increased share in the population is due to a high birth
rate and immigration (U.S. Census, 2005). Hispanics accounted for most of the national
population growth rate from 2000 to 2010 (Passel, Cohn & Lopez, 2011). For more than a
decade, demographers have been predicting that by 2050, the U.S. will no longer have a
numerical majority racial group. A nation in which whites are the majority will become majority-
minority in government parlance, which simply means that no racial/ethnic group will account
for more 50 % of the population (Hattam, 2005; Hirschman, 2005; Prewitt, 2005).
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Smith, Starita. “What Are You?”: Racial Ambiguity and the Social Construction of Race in the Us, dissertation, May 2012; Denton, Texas. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc115163/m1/13/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; .