Commentary on NYT Article: "Choose Your Own Identity"

Nice piece in the NYT today by Bonnie Tsui.

Using the latest Pew research on being multiracial in America (more to come on that) as a springboard, Bonnie Tsui talks about her Chinese-Western "Hapa"  5-year-old son in the SF Bay Area.

3 key takeaways:

  1. "Hapa" seems to be gaining popularity with mixed people with no Asian descent
  2. Mixed White/Asian people in America are almost twice as likely to identify as "White" than as "Asian" (60% to 33%)
  3. The ability for kids in the Bay Area to choose: 1) one or the other race 2) simply "other" 3) neither 4) both, is increasingly markedly. Seems the social space is actually keeping pace with the rapid demographic changes (i.e. 1% births in the U.S. in 1970 were mixed race, whilst 10% [and rising] of births today are mixed race), which is actually quite remarkable and a testament to what an open society America is.
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