'Mixed Race', 'Mixed Origins' or What? Generic Terminology for the Multiple

Author(s): Peter J. Aspinall

Source: Anthropology Today, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Apr., 2009), pp. 3-8

Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20528211

For the first time in the 2000/01 national census round, census agencies in a number of Western countries offered options for people who, by virtue of their parentage or more distant ancestry, wished to declare a 'mixed' identity in questions on race and ethnic group. In 1991 the Great Britain Census had only provided free-text options for this population (Fig. 1 ). The England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland censuses of 2001 all offered options for the 'Mixed' group. England and Wales (Fig. 3; see Anon. 2005) captured this population - a total of 661,034 persons - in the four cultural back ground categories 'White and Black Caribbean' (35.9%), 'White and Black African' (11.9%), 'White and Asian' (28.6%), and a free-text 'Any other Mixed background' (23.6%); Scotland and Northern Ireland both offered an open-response option. The 'Mixed' group in England and Wales accounted for 1.3% of the total population or 14.6% of that in groups other than 'White'. The count of the 'mixed race' population and its pro filing, its rapid growth rate over the last half dozen years or so, and the analysis of monitoring data (which accrued when census categorization was quickly adopted across government departments) have all given rise to a substantial research interest in this group. This has included how 'mixed race' is conceptualized, and the terminology used to describe the group.