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| poptime = (2010 Census) Multiracial Identified Americans 9,000,000〔2010 census, based on self-identification〕 (2.9% of the U.S. population) | caption = | popplace = Western US 2.4 million (3.4%) Southern US 1.8 million (1.6%) Midwestern US 1.1 million (1.6%) Northeastern US 0.8 million (1.6%) }} Multiracial Americans are Americans who have mixed ancestry of "two or more races". The term may also include Americans of mixed-race ancestry who self-identify with just one group culturally and socially (cf. the one-drop rule). In the 2010 US census, approximately 9 million individuals, or 2.9% of the population, self-identified as multiracial.〔 has 6.1 million (2.0%)〕 There is evidence that an accounting by genetic ancestry would produce a higher number, but people live according to social and cultural identities, not DNA. Historical reasons, including slavery creating a racial caste and the European-American suppression of Native Americans, often led people to identify or be classified by only one ethnicity, generally that of the culture in which they were raised.〔Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. ''Faces of America: How 12 Extraordinary Americans Reclaimed Their Pasts'' (New York University Press, 2010)〕 Prior to the mid-20th century, many people hid their multiracial heritage because of racial discrimination against minorities.〔 While many Americans may be biologically multiracial, they often do not know it or do not identify so culturally, any more than they maintain all the differing traditions of a variety of national ancestries.〔 After a lengthy period of formal racial segregation in the former Confederacy following the Reconstruction Era, and bans on interracial marriage in various parts of the country, more people are openly forming interracial unions. In addition, social conditions have changed and many multiracial people do not believe it is socially advantageous to try to "pass" as white. Diverse immigration has brought more mixed-race people into the United States, such as the large population of Hispanics identifying as mestizos. Since the 1980s, the United States has had a growing multiracial identity movement (cf. Loving Day).〔Root, ''Multiracial Experience'', pp. xv–xviii〕 Because more Americans have insisted on being allowed to acknowledge their mixed racial origins, the 2000 census for the first time allowed residents to check more than one ethno-racial identity and thereby identify as multiracial. In 2008 Barack Obama was elected as the first multiracial President of the United States; he acknowledges both sides of his family and identifies as African American.〔("Obama raises profile of mixed-race Americans" ), ''San Francisco Chronicle'' 21 July 2008.〕 Today, multiracial individuals are found in every corner of the country. Multiracial groups in the United States include many African Americans, Louisiana Creoles, Métis Americans, Mestizo Americans, Hapas, Melungeons, Lumbees, Houmas, and several other communities found primarily in the Eastern US. Many Native Americans are multiracial in ancestry while identifying fully as members of federally recognized tribes. ==History== The American people are mostly multi-ethnic descendants of various culturally distinct immigrant groups, many of which have now developed nations. Some consider themselves multiracial, while acknowledging race as a social construct. Creolization, assimilation and integration have been continuing processes. The African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955–1968) and other social movements since the mid-twentieth century worked to achieve social justice and equal enforcement of civil rights under the constitution for all ethnicities. In the 2000s, less than 5% of the population identified as multiracial. In many instances, mixed racial ancestry is so far back in an individual's family history (for instance, before the Civil War or earlier), that it does not affect more recent ethnic and cultural identification. Interracial relationships, common-law marriages, and marriages occurred since the earliest colonial years, especially before slavery hardened as a racial caste associated with people of African descent in the British colonies. Virginia and other English colonies passed laws in the 17th century that gave children the social status of their mother, according to the principle of ''partus sequitur ventrem,'' regardless of the father's race or citizenship. This overturned the principle in English common law by which a man gave his status to his children – this had enabled communities to demand that fathers support their children, whether legitimate or not. The change increased white men's ability to use slave women sexually, as they had no responsibility for the children. As master as well as father of mixed-race children born into slavery, the men could use these people as servants or laborers or sell them as slaves. In some cases, white fathers provided for their multiracial children, paying or arranging for education or apprenticeships and freeing them, particularly during the two decades following the American Revolution. (The practice of providing for the children was more common in French and Spanish colonies, where a class of free people of color developed who became educated and property owners.) Many other white fathers abandoned the mixed-race children and their mothers to slavery. The researcher Paul Heinegg found that most families of free people of color in colonial times were founded from the unions of white women, whether free or indentured servants, and African men, slave, indentured or free.〔 In the early years, the working-class peoples lived and worked together. Their children were free because of the status of the white women. This was in contrast to the pattern in the post-Revolutionary era, in which most mixed-race children had white fathers and slave mothers.〔(Paul Heinegg, ''Free African Americans of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland and Delaware'', 1995–2010 )〕 Anti-miscegenation laws were passed in most states during the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, but this did not prevent white slaveholders, their sons, or other powerful white men from taking slave women as concubines and having multiracial children with them. In California and the western US, there were greater numbers of Latino and Asian residents. These were prohibited from official relationships with whites. White legislators passed laws prohibiting marriage between European and Asian Americans until the 1950s. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Multiracial American」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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