"The problem of the twentieth-century is the problem of the Color Line". Writer and social reformer, W.E.B. Du Bois said at the beginning of the 20th century. At that time, the color line corresponded to a Black-White divide. However, from the end of the twentieth-century to the beginning of the 21st century, the Color Line seemed to have evolved with the arrival of new immigrants in the US, such as Asians and Latinos, as the result of the Hart-Celler Act. "Reinventing the color line" is an article on the evolution of the Color Line within the 20th century. This is a study led by two professors at the University of California that was based on results of two formal elements: the 2000 U.S. Census on multiracial reporting, and data collected from in-depth interview with 46 multiracial individuals. In this article, writer's goal is to elucidate the experience of ethnic identification: the choice of ethnic and multiracial identities; if they feel constraint or free in their choice of identities; and the meaning of the same.
[...] The blacks' interviews did not give the same results: they did not claim a white or nonblack racial identity. The findings indicated that group boundaries are more likely to be fading for Latinos and Asians than for Blacks. Asians and Latinos are not only closer to whites than blacks are to whites; they are also closer to whites than to blacks. And wherever the new color line is situated, it continues to exclude blacks from other racial groups, similarly to the traditional black-white divide. Asians and Latinos multiracials may be the next in line to be white. [...]
[...] Indians, according to the common understanding of “whiteness”. Furthermore, in the late 1980's, a new expression further cements the divide white-nonwhite: “people of color”, gathering all nonwhite people. According to these policies, Asians and Latinos seemed to be on the nonwhite side of the divide. Concerning the Black-Nonblack divide, it seems to continue the exclusion of Blacks from others. According to Ignatiev (1995), European nonwhite immigrant ethnic groups (Italians, Irish) attained whiteness by adopting deliberate and extreme measures to distance themselves from African Americans. [...]
[...] To Americans, there are cliché about what a typical Asian or Latino would look like, and if multiracial Asians or Latinos do not look like it (for example a Mexican with green eyes), they are considered as totally white just because they look like whites. As a conclusion of the interviews, Latinos and Asians have more freedom to choose among various racial and ethnic options, including white identities while Blacks have not that choice. For most Asian-white and Latino-white multiracials, their ethnic identities are “more symbolic than instrumental”. Most feel that their races hold very little consequences in their daily lives. [...]
[...] According to the authors, three color lines are now possible: a black-nonblack one, a white-nonwhite one, and a tri-racial hierarchy. Concerning the white-nonwhite divide, it is historically the division enforced. At the beginning of the 20th century, intermarriage was legally banned between whites and other races in many states. The Supreme Court of the US often ruled in the same way. In two cases, Takao Ozawa v. United States (1922) and United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind (1923), the court decided that people with Asian origin are considered as nonwhite, and ineligible for US citizenship. [...]
[...] To my mind, Reinventing the Color Line is a brilliant article, but not totally complete because it does not cover the trend in the whole country. Furthermore, it seems to hide some aspect of the immigrants' life, who are, according to me, still subject to discrimination even if they “look like whites”. Plus, to me, this study does not cover the whole topic; indeed, multiracials in general have to face exclusion from “both that is to say, for example a white-black multiracial is consider as black for whites and as white for blacks; and this problem is not typical to the US. [...]
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