In Why the ‘ethnic’ aisle is merging with the ‘beauty’ one Kristal Brent Zook explains the significance behind the maintstreaming of the black hair care industry.
African Americans
CCF Civil Rights Symposium: Women’s Changing Social Status since the Civil Rights Act
Overview: Women’s Changing Social Status since the Civil Rights Act
Remarks by Stephanie Coontz
Today the Council on Contemporary Families releases the third set of papers in a three part symposium marking the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act. The first two sets of papers described changes in America’s religious and racial-ethnic landscape in the half century since it became illegal to discriminate on the basis of religion, skin color, national origin, race, ethnicity or gender.
It’s appropriate that we turn last to how women have fared since passage of the Civil Rights Act, because the addition of the word “sex” was a last minute addition to the bill. Opponents hoped — and supporters feared — that threatening to make discrimination on the basis of sex illegal would kill the bill, and when it passed anyway, few policymakers took the sex provision seriously. Although the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission immediately moved to ban job ads that specified a particular race, it refused to do the same for the sex-segregated want ads that were the norm in 1964.
Not until 1968 did the New York Times eliminate its “Help Wanted: Male” and “Help Wanted: Female” sections of the newspaper, and not until 1973, in Pittsburgh Press Co. v. Pittsburgh Commission on Human Relations, did the Supreme Court rule that printing separate job listings for men and women was illegal. Since then, however, the changes in women’s social status, legal options, and economic opportunities have been dramatic, as Max Coleman of Oberlin College describes in his report, “Civil Rights for Women, 1964-2014.”
As the Civil Rights Act was being debated, a Gallup poll found that only 55 percent of Americans would vote for a qualified woman for president. At that time, women made up just two percent of the U.S. Senate and less than four percent of the House of Representatives. Since then female representation has grown tenfold in the Senate and fivefold in the House. Today 95 percent of Americans now say they could support a female presidential candidate.
Things have changed in the home as well as the House. In 1970, one survey found that 80 percent of wives felt it was “much better” when “the man is the achiever outside the home and the woman takes care of the home and family.” Today 62 percent of all Americans, and 78 percent of young women, prefer a marriage where husband and wife share breadwinning and homemaking.
Women’s wages as a proportion of men’s have climbed steadily since outright wage discrimination was made illegal. In 1963, full-time working women earned only 59 cents for every dollar men earned. Today, women earn 84 percent of men’s hourly wages. Among workers ages 25 to 34, women’s hourly earnings are 93 percent of men’s. Nearly 40 percent of working wives outearn their husbands.
Women have also made impressive progress in entering high-status fields formerly dominated by men. In 1963, less than three percent of all attorneys and just six percent of physicians were women. Women held less than one percent of all engineering jobs. Today, almost one-third of attorneys and more than one-third of physicians and surgeons are women, and women occupy almost 30 percent percent of science and engineering jobs.
In 1964, not a single woman had served as CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Today, women run 23 Fortune 500 Companies.
But women have not shattered the glass ceiling. In law firms, only 15 percent of equity partners and five percent of managing partners are women, and women comprise less than five percent of Fortune 500 CEOs. In her contribution to the symposium, “Dilemmas Facing High-Achieving Career Women,” Joan Williams (University of California, Hastings College of the Law) calculates that at the current hiring rate, “it would take 278 years for equal numbers of men and women to be CEOs.” Williams describes four distinct patterns of gender bias that high-achieving career women encounter.
Up until 1980, the average female college graduate, working fulltime, earned less than the average male high school graduate. That is no longer true, yet at every educational level, Coleman reports, women earn less than men with the same credentials.
Women in low-wage jobs and women who lack a college degree experience a lower gender wage gap than their more educated and affluent counterparts, but they are much more economically vulnerable, and they have been losing ground in relation to high earners of both sexes. Most women still work in traditionally female occupations, which pay less than traditionally male jobs requiring comparable skills. In fact, working-class jobs are as segregated today as they were in 1964. Women are more likely to live in poverty than men, and they constitute 62 percent of all minimum wage workers.
A key source of wage disparities and discrimination against women today is motherhood. In 1978 the Civil Rights Act was amended to make it illegal for employers to exclude pregnancy and childbirth from sick leave and health benefits. But the United States is still the only industrialized country that does not guarantee subsidized, job-protected leave for new mothers. As a result, many women are forced to quit or cut back on work when they give birth, creating a lifetime earnings penalty. Even mothers who do not cut back are regarded with suspicion by employers, who are less likely to hire such women, and, if they do, offer them lower wages than other employees.
Men do not face the same automatic discrimination when they become fathers — and some actually receive a fatherhood bonus — because employers assume that men, unlike women, will work even harder after they become parents. But new research shows that men face similar penalties to women when they request leave or flex time in order to meet their family obligations. This suggests that a future goal for equal rights advocates and pro-family activists might be eliminating discrimination on the basis of caregiving status as well as continuing the battle against racial, ethnic, religious, and gender bias.
For Further Information
For more detailed information about fifty years of changes in civil rights, read today’s papers papers (on civil rights for women and career women) in the CCF Civil Rights Online Symposium on Women’s Changing Social Status since the Civil Rights Act (links on right top sidebar). Stephanie Coontz was convener and editor of this symposium. The authors along with Stephanie Coontz are available for further information.
About CCF
The Council on Contemporary Families, based at the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Miami, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization of family researchers and practitioners that seeks to further a national understanding of how America’s families are changing and what is known about the strengths and weaknesses of different family forms and various family interventions.
The Council helps keep journalists informed of notable work on family-related issues via the CCF Network. To join the CCF Network, or for further media assistance, please contact Stephanie Coontz, Co-Chair and Director of Research and Public Education, at coontzs@msn.com, cell 360-556-9223.
CCF Civil Rights Symposium: Racial-Ethnic Realities since the Civil Rights Act
Overview: Changing Racial-Ethnic Realities since the Civil Rights Act
Remarks by: Stephanie Coontz
Today the Council on Contemporary Families releases the second set of papers in a three part symposium marking the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act. Yesterday researchers described the rearrangement of America’s religious landscape over the past half century. Today’s four papers discuss the changes in racial-ethnic relations, including the emergence of Latinos as the largest “minority” in the United States, the approaching eclipse of the white majority, the increase in interracial marriage and multiracial families, and the progress that has and has not been made in lessening the inequities historically associated with non-white status.
New Demographic Realities
In 1964, race relations, like television shows, were still largely viewed in black and white. As author Raha Forooz Sabet notes in “Changes in America’s Racial and Ethnic Composition Since 1964,” at that time, 85 percent of the population was white and 11 percent black. Latinos were less than four percent of the population, and fewer than six percent of U.S. residents were foreign-born.
Today half of all children under the age of one are ethnic and racial “minorities,” and within 40 years, non-Hispanic whites will account for just 47 percent of the population. There are now as many foreign-born as black Americans.
By 2060, according to University of Texas-San Antonio researcher Rogelio Sáenz, the single largest component of the child population of the U.S. will be Latino. In his paper, “The State of Latino Children,” Sáenz discusses the characteristics of these Americans, who will soon become the most numerous single group of students, voters, workers, and consumers. Latinos overall have below-average levels of educational attainment, in part because of low levels of preschool enrollment. However, it is a myth that Latino youth are not learning English. Three-fifths of Latinos aged three to 17 are bilingual, speaking Spanish at home but also fluent in English. Only four percent of all Latino children and less than 12 percent of those who are foreign-born are unable to carry on a conversation in English.
More than one-third of Latino children live in poverty. Having two married parents is less protective for Latino children, in terms of income, than it is for white and black families. Nearly one-quarter of children in Latino married-couple families are poor.
But Sáenz highlights an “epidemiological paradox” in the Latino community. Despite higher than average poverty rates, Latino children are healthier than average and have a longer life expectancy at birth than either white or black babies. Sáenz argues that determining the source of this cultural advantage is as important as finding ways to help Latino children overcome their educational and income disadvantages.
The Good News: Old Prejudices are Lessening and Many Old Boundaries Have Been Broken Down
Discussing the changing prospects of African Americans (“Are African Americans Living the Dream 50 Years after Passage of the Civil Rights Act?”), Velma McBride Murry and Na Liu of Vanderbilt University note real breakthroughs for a significant portion of that population. The number of elected black officials in the country has skyrocketed, from about 100 in 1964 to 10,000 in 1990, and today we have an African-American president in his second term. There is now a substantial African-American middle class. Indeed, one in ten black households earns $100,000 or more a year.
One dramatic change, Kimberlyn Fong points out in “Changes in Interracial Marriage,” is the revolution in attitudes toward interracial marriage. When the Civil Rights Act was enacted, less than five percent of Americans approved of interracial marriage. Today 77 percent approve of such marriages, an all-time high. Since the early 1960s the number of new marriages contracted each year between spouses of a different race or ethnicity has increased sixfold.
Fong documents interesting differences among racial-ethnic groups in the extent of interracial marriage and in its gender makeup. Among recent marriages, the most common interracial matches are white/ Hispanic couples. The second most common is between whites and Asians. However, Asian women are more than twice as likely as Asian men to marry outside their race.
The sex ratio skews in the opposite direction in marriages between blacks and whites. But black-white marriages remain the least common interracial marriage, accounting for 12 percent of new marriages in 2010. And that brings us to the bad news.
Despite the Movement of Some Blacks into the Upper Echelon of Political and Economic Life, the Majority Still Bear a Heavy Legacy of Disadvantage
African Americans have experienced significant declines in poverty and increases in access to middle-class jobs. Yet through almost the entire half century since passage of the Civil Rights Act the black unemployment rate has consistently remained twice as high as that of whites, and the poverty rate has been more than twice as high.
After declining in the 1970s, school segregation has increased again. Residential and economic segregation also remain strong. Among Americans born between 1985 and 2000, 31 percent of blacks, versus only one percent of whites, live in neighborhoods where 30 percent of the residents are poor.
African Americans have greatly increased their educational achievement over the past 50 years. But at every educational level, blacks earn less than whites with the same educational credentials.
And racial discrimination remains widespread. African-American men are far more likely to be arrested and to receive longer sentences than whites who commit the same offenses. A study of the low-wage job market in New York City found that white applicants were twice as likely as equally qualified blacks to receive a callback or job offer. White applicants who had just been released from prison were as likely to get a callback or job as black and Latino applicants with no criminal record!
These examples suggest a growing class polarization within the African-American community, alongside the continuing gap between the average fortunes of blacks and whites, with an elite group pulling away from the larger number of blacks who continue to experience racial profiling and deeper levels of poverty than whites. This raises the troubling possibility that the progress of one sector of the African-American community provides many Americans with an excuse to ignore the historical legacy of segregation and the persistence of racial discrimination for the black population as a whole.
For Further Information
For more detailed information including figures and graphs that illustrate fifty years of changes in civil rights, visit today’s papers (on Latino children, intermarriage, changing demographics, and African Americans) in the CCF Civil Rights Online Symposium on Changing Ethnic Realities since the Civil Rights Act (links on the top right sidebar). Stephanie Coontz was convener and editor of this symposium. The authors along with Stephanie Coontz are available for further information.
About CCF
The Council on Contemporary Families, based at the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Miami, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization of family researchers and practitioners that seeks to further a national understanding of how America’s families are changing and what is known about the strengths and weaknesses of different family forms and various family interventions.
The Council helps keep journalists informed of notable work on family-related issues via the CCF Network. To join the CCF Network, or for further media assistance, please contact Stephanie Coontz, Co-Chair and Director of Research and Public Education, at coontzs@msn.com, cell 360-556-9223.
CCF Civil Rights Symposium: Are African Americans Living the Dream 50 Years After Passage of the Civil Rights Act?
By Velma McBride Murry and Na Liu
Vanderbilt University
In 1963, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. made his famous “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington, the momentous demonstration that helped spur passage of the Civil Rights Act the following year. He described African Americans as living “on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.” A half-century after the Civil Rights Act we can assess how much progress African-Americans have made in key areas such education, employment, income, health, and longevity.
Certainly, many African Americans have moved into positions of power that were scarcely imaginable when Dr. King gave his speech. In 1964 there were only 100 Black elected officials in the country. By 1990 there were 10,000. Since then there have been two Black Secretaries of State, and America’s first African-American president is now in his second term.
The number of Black households earning $100,000 a year or more has increased by 500 percent in the past 50 years, to about one-in-ten of Black households. African Americans have even headed several Fortune 500 companies. Examples include Dr. Clifton R. Wharton, Jr., former Chairman and CEO of TIAA-CREF, Ursula M. Burns, Chairman and CEO of Xerox Corp., Kenneth I. Chenault, Chairman and CEO at American Express, and Kenneth C. Frazier, President and CEO of Merck & Co. Inc. Many African Americans have also attained unprecedented wealth, status, and respect in the news, entertainment, and sports industries.
Yet despite these individual attainments, African Americans remain heavily underrepresented in the highest ranks of the business world, comprising barely one percent of the CEOs of the Fortune 500. Oprah Winfrey is the only African American on the Forbes 400 richest Americans list. And in the lower echelons of the income ladder, racial economic disparities have been remarkably persistent and gotten worse in a few respects.
Education. Over the past 50 years, there has been considerable progress in the educational attainments of African Americans, although they still lag behind the levels of Whites. In 1966, the high school completion rate of African Americans was just a little more than half that of White Americans. By 2012 it was almost 95 percent that of Whites. In 1966, fewer than four percent of African Americans, compared to more than ten percent of Whites, had college degrees. By 2012, the percentage of African Americans with college degrees had risen to 21.2, compared to 31.3 percent for Whites (U.S. Census, Education and Social Stratification Branch, 2013). See Figure 1.
Figure 1. People 25 or older who have completed four year of high school or more, and who have completed four year of college or more
Source: U.S. Census Bureau. 1947, and 1952 to 2002 March Current Population Survey, 2003 to 2012 Annual Social and Economic Supplement to the Current Population Survey (non-institutionalized population, excluding members of the Armed Forces living in barracks); 1950 Census of Population and 1940 Census of Population (resident population).
But after declines in school segregation during the 1970s and 1980s, progress leveled off and even reversed in some areas. In 1968, 76.6 percent of African American children attended segregated schools. In 2012, 74 percent of African American children were in segregated schools, 15 percent of them in schools where less than one percent of the student body was White (Orfield, Kucsera, & Siegel-Hawley, 2012). Majority Black schools are generally characterized by lower funding, lower teacher quality, and higher drop-out rates than majority White schools (The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, 2013).
Employment and Income. There have been significant improvements in employment opportunities for African Americans over the past half century. In 1960, only 6.7 percent of African Americans in the labor market were in professional and managerial positions, compared to 26 percent of Whites (Smith & Welch, 1977). By contrast, in 2012, 30 percent of employed African Americans were in professional and managerial positions, compared to 39 percent of employed Whites (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2012). African American women have made especially significant gains and are now more likely than their male counterparts to occupy professional and managerial positions.
However, African Americans professionals earn significantly less than their White peers, and African American women in such occupations earn less than their male counterparts. In 2012, the median weekly earnings for African American women who worked in “management, professional, and related occupations” were $838, compared to $958 for White women, $1,021 for African American men, and $1,339 for White men (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2012). See Appendix A for charts on median household income in historically and recently by race.
Overall, despite absolute progress in Black earnings, the income gap between Blacks and Whites remains large. In 1963, African American workers earned 55 cents for every dollar earned by Whites. By 2012, that had risen to 78.4 cents, leaving Blacks still more than 20 percent behind (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2013).
The wealth gap is even higher, due to the lower value of homes in predominantly black communities and the much smaller access of African Americans to any accumulated wealth of parents and grandparents. The median wealth of White households is ten times as large as that of Black households.
Educational disparities may explain some of the remaining gap in pay equity. We have come some distance from the 1960s, when African Americans with a four-year college degree earned less than White men with only a high school diploma (Katz & Stern, 2006; Taylor, 1981). Today, by contrast, being college graduate counts for more than being a White man in determining earnings.
Yet as late as 2012, African American men and women still earned less than their White peers with the same level of education. For male college graduates over age 25, Whites’ weekly earnings were $1,399, compared to $1,086 for African Americans. College–graduated Black women, aged 25 years and older, had weekly earnings of $913, compared to $1,012 for White women with similar educational attainment. White men with a high school diploma earned over $150 more a week than similarly-educated African American men — $760 vs. $604 per week. In fact, a Black man with an associate’s degree earns, on average, $15 per week less than a White man with only a high-school diploma (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2013).
Unemployment and Poverty. African Americans are also more likely to lose their jobs during economic downturns (see Figure 2). Despite ups and downs in unemployment for all racial and ethnic groups, the Black unemployment rate has consistently been twice as high as that of Whites since the 1950s.
Figure 2. Employment-population ratios and unemployment rates
Source: U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Table B-35 & Table B-37. Data related to persons 16 years of age and over.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, (2013). Labor force characteristics by race and ethnicity, 2012.
And since 1964, the poverty rate of African Americans has consistently been more than twice that of Whites. Worse, Blacks are far more likely to live in areas of concentrated poverty. Among Americans born between 1985 and 2000, 31 percent of Blacks, versus only one percent of Whites, live in neighborhoods where 30 percent of the residents are poor (see Figure 3).
Figure 3. Poverty rate by race and ethnicity
Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. Information on poverty and income statistics: A summary of 2012 current population survey data.
Social and Institutional Disparities. African American children are at greater risk than their White counterparts for numerous problems associated with growing up in poverty, (e.g., poor prenatal health care, malnutrition, poor quality housing, and exposure to environmental toxins). This helps explain why African Americans are disproportionately affected by chronic illnesses, such as cancer, heart disease, and diabetes, and, because of lack of access to quality health care, are more likely to die from these illnesses and diseases (Mead, Cartwright-Smith, Jones, Ramos, Woods, & Siegel, 2008). Blacks are three times as likely to die from asthma as Whites. Black women are less likely than White women to develop breast cancer, but more likely to die from it (Mead et al, 2008). And Black maternal mortality rates are three to four times higher than rates for Whites. See Appendix B for charts of racial and ethnic health disparities by race.
While life expectancies for all Americans have greatly improved over time, African Americans continue to have a shorter life expectancy than Whites. In 2008, there was a 5.5 year gap between African American and White men, and a 3.8 year gap between African American and White women (U.S. Census, 2010). African American men have the shortest life expectancy at birth of all Americans across racial and ethnic groups (see Figure 4).
Figure 4. Life expectancy at birth from 1960 to 2007
Source: U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, National Vital Statistics Reports (NVSR), Deaths: Preliminary data for 2008, Vol, 59, No.2.
Incarceration. The rate of imprisonment is one area where there has been significant deterioration for African Americans in the past half-century. Incarceration rates among African American men are three times higher than 50 years ago and the disparity between incarceration rates for African Americans and Whites has continued to grow. African American men are more likely to be arrested and receive longer sentences for nonviolent drug crimes than Whites committing similar or more serious offenses. In consequence, African Americans, who are just ten percent of the overall U.S. population, represent 35.4 percent of the prison population, with an incarceration rate more than six times higher than Whites. One in three African American men can expect to go to prison at some point in his life time, compared to one in 17 White men. (Pettit & Western, 2004).
Conclusion. As we reflect on the state of African Americans 50 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, it is clear that despite the progress made in many arenas of life, African Americans are still burdened by the legacy of slavery, segregation, and discrimination. In fact, it may be that the dramatic successes of a minority of Blacks have made it harder for Americans to recognize the continuing disparities and injustices facing the remainder.
For Further Information
For further information, contact Velma McBride Murry, Professor and Betts Chair, Human and Organizational Development Dept., Vanderbilt University; velma.m.murry@vanderbilt.edu.
References
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2010). National Center for Health Statistics. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Eggebeen, D. J., & Lichter, D. T. (1991). Race, family structure, and changing poverty among American children. American Sociological Review, 801-817.
Gabe, Thomas (2013). Poverty in the United States: 2012. Congressional Research Service (CRS) based on U.S. Census Bureau 2012 and 2011 American Community Survey (ACS) data.
Katz, Michael and Stern, Mark, One Nation Indivisible (2006). Russell Sage, p. 95.
King, Martin Luther; King, Coretta Scott (2008). The Words of Martin Luther King, Jr.: Second Edition. Newmarket Press. p. 95.
Lichter, D., Zhenchao, Q., & Crowley, M. (2006). Race and poverty: Divergent fortunes of America’s children?. Focus, 24(3), 8-16.
Loeber, R., Pardini, D., Homish, D.L., Wei, E.H., Crawford, A.M., Farrington, D.P., et al. (2004). The prediction of violence and homicide in young men. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 76, 1074–1088
Mead, H., Cartwright-Smith, L., Jones, K., Ramos, C., Woods, K., & Siegel, B. (2008). Racial and ethnic disparities in US health care: A chart book. Commonwealth Fund New York.
Orfield, G., Kucsera, J., & Siegel-Hawley, G. (2012). E Pluribus… Separation: Deepening Double Segregation for More Students. Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles.
Pettit, B., & Western, B. (2004). Mass imprisonment and the life course: Race and class inequality in U.S. incarceration. American Sociological Review, 69, 151-169.
Roscigno, V. J., Williams, L. M., & Bryon, R. A. (2012). Workplace racial discrimination and middle class vulnerability. American Behavioral Scientist, 56, 696-710.
Sawhill, I., Winship, S., & Grannis, K. (2012). Pathways to the middle class: Balancing personal and public responsibilities. Washington, DC: Brookings.
Smith, J. P., & Welch, F. R. (1977). African American/White Male Earnings and Employment: 1960-70. In Distribution of Economic Well-Being (pp. 233-302). NBER.
Taylor, D. E. (1981). Education, on-the-job training, and the African American-white earnings gap. Monthly Lab. Rev., 104, 28.
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights (2013). Still segregated: How race and poverty stymie the right to education. http://civilrightsdocs.info/pdf/reports/Still_Segregated-Shadow_Report.pdf.
Washington, James M. (1991). A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. HarperCollins. Pp. 365–67.
Wolff, Edward N. (2010). Recent trends in household wealth in the United States: Rising debt and the middle-class squeeze-An update to 2007, working paper, Levy Economics Institute, No. 589.
U.S.Census of Bureau, Education and Social Stratification Branch, (2013). CPS data on educational attainment: http://www.census.gov/hhes/socdemo/education/data/cps/historical/index.html.
U.S. Bureau of the Census (1974, 1994, 1996, 1997, 1998). Current Population Reports: Income, Poverty, and valuation of Noncash Benefits.
U.S. Bureau of the Census, (2012). Statistical Abstract of the United States, 2012. http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0691.pdf.
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, (2012). ASPE issue brief: Information on poverty and income statistics: A summary of 2012 current population survey data. http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/12/povertyandincomeest/ib.shtml.
U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, (2010). National Vital Statistics Reports (NVSR), Deaths: Preliminary data for 2008, Vol, 59, No.2.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, (2013). Labor force characteristics by race and ethnicity, 2012. http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsrace2012.pdf
CCF Civil Rights Symposium: Changes in America’s Racial and Ethnic Composition Since 1964
By Raha Forooz Sabet
University of Miami
When the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, racial differences in the United States were almost literally black and white. In the early 1960s, 85 percent of the population was white and 11 percent was black. Less than four percent of the population was Latino and less than six percent was foreign-born.
The biggest change since 1964 has been the growing diversification in America’s racial-ethnic makeup. The growth rate of the black or African-Americans has been slow, rising just two percentage points, from 11 to 13 percent. By contrast, the percentage of foreign-born Americans has more than doubled, so that they too represent 13 percent of the population.
Latinos now comprise 17 percent of the population and are the second largest racial and ethnic group after whites, with a population of about 51 million. This group is projected to triple in size by 2050, accounting for 60 percent of total population growth over a 45-year period.
Asians currently comprise just five percent of the population, but as of 2012 the Asian population was the fastest-growing racial or ethnic group. In 2050, they are projected to comprise nine percent of the total U.S. population.
There are about three million people who identify as American Indian and Alaska Native, while only 0.2 percent of the population identities as Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander. Almost 20 million people identify as “some other race.” And in the first decade of the 21st century alone, the multiracial population grew by 33 percent, from 6.8 million in 2000 to 9 million in 2010.
Non-Hispanic whites are the largest racial and ethnic group in the U.S. However, this group is growing at the slowest rate, and the U.S. Census Bureau predicts that by 2050 – in less than 40 years — non-Hispanic whites will be a minority, accounting for just 47 percent of the population. Already, 50 percent of children below age one are ethnic and racial minorities, and there are 14 states including New York, New Jersey and Florida, where the majority of births are to minorities.
For Further Information
For further information contact Raha Sabet (graduate student), Department of Educational and Psychological Studies, University of Miami; r.sabet@umiami.edu.
References
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL32701.pdf
http://www.census.gov/population/race/
http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/population/cb13-112.html
http://www.aging.senate.gov/crs/aging4.pdf
http://www.pewhispanic.org/2008/02/11/us-population-projections-2005-2050/.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States
http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/11/14/u-s-racialethnic-demographics-1960-today-and-2050/
http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-02.pdf
http://www.pewhispanic.org/2008/02/11/us-population-projections-2005-2050/
http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-13.pdf
http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/up-front/posts/2011/08/26-census-race-frey
http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/population/cb12-90.html
Perez, Anthony Daniel and Charles Hirschman. 2009. “The Changing Racial and Ethnic Composition of the US Population: Emerging American Identities,” Population and Development Review, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Mar., 2009), pp. 1-51.
The Unfeminine Mystique – Stereotypes about African-American Women
By Shirley Hill
Professor of Sociology and Director of Graduate Studies
Kansas University
hill@ku.edu / 785-864-9420
The gendered mystique that still poses barriers to African-American women in their personal and public lives is perhaps best described as an “unfeminine mystique” – the idea that they have characteristics and embrace lifestyles that are outside the boundaries of “real” womanhood. This “unfeminine mystique” has plagued African-American women for more than 200 years.
In the early19th century, a new definition of femininity was applied to white women. In sharp contrast to the colonial idea of women as helpmates and fellow providers for their family, the Victorian ideal of “true womanhood” emphasized women’s seclusion from the public world of work and social interactions. The True (White) Woman was depicted as sexually innocent, innately submissive, and incapable of making her way through life without a man to protect her. Black women, by contrast, were seen as indelicate because of their work and social activities outside the home. They were depicted as sexually profligate and dominant over men. They abandoned their children to engage in paid labor. And they often raised children without a man in the home.
The idea that African-American women were “unfeminine” masked the fact that most simply had little control over their sexuality, childbearing, or work experiences. But it justified denying them the privileges and respect supposedly accorded to those who conformed to the stereotype of “the weaker sex.”
In the 20th century the “unfeminine mystique” was modernized into the image of the “black matriarch.” African –American women were described as domineering figures who transgressed mainstream gender restrictions by heading their own families and usurping the power of African-American men. Despite many scholarly refutations of the “black matriarch” thesis, it still powerfully shapes the images, expectations, and experiences of black women. Black women are constantly told that the strength and self-sufficiency they have had to acquire is an affront to black manhood, and is at the root of the gender trouble between black men and women. Some African-American men seek to reclaim their power through exploitative or even violent relationships with women. Others, buying into the myth that African-American women are able to fend for themselves, often feel justified letting them do just that.
Rather than investigate the external economic and social pressures that put extra strain on relationships in many African-American communities, many observers — including some black leaders and churches — castigate black women for failing to create male-headed families that are seen as vital to the success of black people. Employers assume African-American women are all single-mothers and unreliable workers. Policymakers stereotype African-American women as sexually irresponsible, blame them for the economic and social challenges facing black children, and use those claims to justify denying social assistance to struggling families. And, sadly, African-American women often buy into the “unfeminine mystique,” blaming themselves for not being able to form successful intimate relationships while at the same time experiencing frustration for not being as strong and independent as they are assumed to be. What is needed are truly liberating images of African-American women — images that portray them as fully human with all the vulnerabilities and strengths that entails.
