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  3. THE BLENDING OF THE UNITED STATES For years, Jo

THE BLENDING OF THE UNITED STATES For years, Jo

游客2024-06-11  14
问题                              THE BLENDING OF THE UNITED STATES
    For years, Jorge Del Pinal’s job as assistant chief of the Census Bureau’s Population Division was to fit people into neat, distinct racial and ethnic boxes: white, black, Hispanic, Asian or Native American. As the son of an Anglo mother and a Hispanic father, however, he knew all along that the task was not always possible.
    For the 2000 decennial census, that will no longer be the case. For the first time, the census forms ’will allow people to check off as many races as apply. As a result, the Census Bureau should obtain a better picture of the extent of intermarriage in the United States.
    In the absence of such a direct method, a few years ago ,veteran demographer Barry Edmonston used sophisticated mathematical modeling techniques to calculate how intermarriage is changing the face of the United States as part of an immigration  study he directed for the National Research CounciIof the American Academy of Sciences. His research was summarized in a report entitled The New Americans: Economic, Demographic and Fiscal Effects of Immigration. But as the Canadian - born, white husband of sociologist Sharon Lee, a Chinese - American, Edmonsto really needed no’ computer to understand the transformation under way in this society. He and his family are living, breathing participants.
    The face of America is changing literally. As former President Clinton has said, "within 30 or 40 years, when there will be no single race in the majority in the United States, we had best be ready for it." For his part, Clinton is preparing for that time by talking about racial tolerance and the virtues of multiculturalism. Others are debating immigration policy. Almost all discussion focuses on the potential divisiveness inherent in a nation that is no longer a predominantly white country with a mostly European ancestry.
    But afoot behind the scenes is another trend that, if handled carefully, could bring the country closer together rather than drive it apart. This quiet demographic counter- revolution is a dramatic upsurge in intermarriage.
    Edmonston’s study projected that by 2050, 21 percent of the U.S. population will be of mixed racial or ethnic ancestry, up from an estimate of seven percent today. Among third - generation Hispanic and Asian Americans, exogamy - marriage outside one’s ethnic group or tribe   is at least 50 percent, he and others estimate. Exogamy remains much less prevalent among African Americans, but it has increased enormously, from about 1,5 percent in the 1960s to 8 to 10 percent today.
    Such a profound demographic shift could take place while no one was watching because, officially, no one was watching.  Federal agencies traditionally collected racial data using a formula — one person, one race    similar to the time - honored voting principle. Thus, the Census Bureau could estimate that on census forms no more than two percent of the population would claim to be multiracial. In the absence of a more straightforward count, no one could know for sure what the demographics are.
    That’s about to change. After the 2000 census, the U.S. Government should have a better idea. In 1997, the Office of Management and Budget, which oversees federal statistical practices, approved a directive allowing people to check as many racial boxes as they believe apply to them. The shift was a compromise between the demands of some interest groups that wanted the addition of a "multiracial" box, and those that objected to any change, fearing dilution of their numbers.
    Meanwhile, in the absence of Official numbers, with the heightened tension surrounding racial issues, and with the mutual suspicion that exists among competing racial and ethnic interest groups, there’s little agreement on what intermarriage will mean for U.S. society in the future.
    Melting Pot
    To see the new face of the United States, go to a grocery store and look at a box of Betty Crocker - brand food products.  Betty’s portrait is now in its eighth incarnation since the first composite painting debuted in 1936 with pale skin and blue eyes. Her new look is brown - eyed and dark - haired. She has a duskier complexion than her seven predecessors, with features representing an amalgam of white, Hispanic, Indian, African and Asian ancestry.
    A computer created this new Betty in the mid - 1990s by blending photos of 75 diverse women. That process was relatively quick, General Mills Inc. spokesmen explain. But they acknowledge that it took quite a while to spread the new image to the whole range of Betty Crocker products.
    The slow pace of that process itself could be a metaphor for gradual racial and ethnic intermixing in this country.  Indeed, it’s taking a long time for the new bended American to surface in society’s consciousness. Tiger Woods, the young golf great, publicized the trend by identifying himself as Cablinasian, a mixture of Caucasian, black, Native American and Asian
    For the most part, the market-place ~ not government is leading the way in this evolution. Mixed -race models, particularly men, are in great demand, according to fashion industry experts. And’ multiracial child actors are now more likely to be tapped for television advertisements.
    That serious scholars should be talking about a melting pot is itself a reversal. As a metaphor for American diversity, the melting pot was first discredited after World War I, when the European immigrants streaming into American cities formed distinct ethnic and national enclaves that didn’t melt together.
    The timing was off, it turned out, and the metaphorical pot was in the wrong place. Interracial and multiethnic fusion started after World War II and happened in the suburbs. City folk moved from their Italian, Irish, Polish or Jewish urban neighborhoods into diffuse suburban settings, then sent their kids to large public universities, throwing them together with youngsters from other ethnic backgrounds who, nonetheless, came from families with similar lifestyles.
    Whether blacks will follow other minorities into the melting pot remains a subject of debate. Skeptics point to the much smaller proportion of black -white marriages and say it won’t happen soon. Others respond that the Statistical base is very small because, until 1967, such marriages were illegal in 19 states.
    Countervailing Forces
    While many forces are at work to facilitate intermarriage, others militate against it. This is particularly the case for African Americans.
    The growing segment of the black community that is going to college, entering the middle class and moving out to the suburbs is also following the general trend toward intermarriage. This tendency is particularly noticeable in California and in cities such as Dallas (Texas), Las Vegas (Nevada) and Phoenix (Arizona), where residential segregation has been less pronounced than in the older northeastern and midwestern U. S. cities, according to Reynolds Farley, who has studied African American residential patterns. In California, for example, among 25 - to - 34 - year - old African Americans, 14 percent of the married black women and 32 percent of the married black men had spouses of a different race, Edmonston noted.
    But in the isolated urban neighborhoods of the U. S. Northeast and Midwest, the old pattern remains. "There is a considerable fraction of the black population that still lives in inner - city areas — in Detroit, Chicago, New York City that has not been caught up in dynamic economic growth," said Farley, formerly a professor at the University of Michigan and now a vice president of the Russell Sage Foundation in New York City. "They’ve been left behind, and they are quite far out of it."
    Another countervailing force is immigration. Immigrants generally don’t man7 outside their racial or ethnic group. Their children do to some extent, but out- marriage really is most prevalent in the third generation. The most recent large - scale wave of immigration has produced only first - or second - generation Americans.
    Regardless of the real degree of racial and ethnic intermixing that goes on, the test of a blended society will be the proportion of people who identify as multiracial or multiethnic. Until now, that percentage has been small. That’s partly because people tend to assume the racial or ethnic identity of one parent — often the minority parent, in the case of blacks and Hispanics. But to a large extent, that identity has been imposed by society.
    "I have a Spanish name and I speak Spanish, so people see me as being of Spanish origin," DelPinal, the Census Bureau official, explained.
    Racial identification can stem from other sources, such as heightened ethnic pride or the opportunity to benefit from affirmative action and other programs. Over the last few decades, having Native American ancestry has apparently become popular. Between 1970 and 1980, the number of people who checked "American Indian" on their census forms grew from 800,000 to 1.4 million, a much faster increase than could be accounted for by births minus deaths. "People decided they wanted to identify as American Indians, to some extent because of rising ethnic consciousness," observed Jeffrey S. Passel, director of the Immigration Policy Program at the Urban Institute and a former director of the Census Bureau’s Population Division.
    It is this positive approach to racial or ethnic identification on which liberal elements of the Jewish community are trying to capitalize. For two millennia, exogamy was a major transgression for Jews. (In many communities, prayers for the dead were recited for a Jew who married a non - Jew. ) As a result, out - marriage was rare. Before World War II, it amounted to less than seven percent of Jewish marriages, according to Mayer of CUNY. But in 1970, a National Jewish Population Survey discovered that in the previous five years, 30 percent of new Jewish marriages were to non - Jews. By 1990, that figure was more than 50 percent.
    After many meetings, much soul - searching and a lot of acrimonious debate, various synagogue groups in the most liberal denominations and Jewish civic organizations decided to reverse their approach. They still try to discourage intermarriage, but once it occurs, they tend to welcome new interfaith families. [br] The racial and ethnic intermixing in this country is sometimes gradual and sometimes accelerated in history.
选项 A、Y
B、N
C、NG
答案 C
解析 文章第二部分谈到“通用面粉公司(General Mills Inc．)制作了新贝蒂形象，并将新形象推广到整个贝蒂·克罗克食品系列，但是却花费了不少时间”；作者接着点出推广进程的缓慢暗示着美国种族融合的缓慢步伐。此处没有提到种族融合的步伐是否有加快的时期。
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