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More Americans are now identifying as multiracial, and "white guilt" could be at the root of this phenomenon, WMAR News reports.
The 2020 census reported that 33 million people identified as more than one race, which is a dramatic increase from the 25 million of the 2010 census.
While some experts believe the rising rate of people saying they're multiracial could result in more racial harmony, Reginald Daniel, a university sociology professor, told WMAR News that the solution to fixing inequality isn't so simple.
"We may have an increase in interracial marriages but that won't change the larger-scale issues like systemic racism," Daniel said.
Daniel said that the increase in multiracial Americans could come from 'white guilt' brought on by the nation's racial reckoning after George Floyd's murder.
"One of the arguments is that people identified as multiracial because they don't want to be associated with white agency," Daniel added.
Demetrius Nelson, a 30-year-old multiracial musician, told WMAR news that the increase in people identifying as more than one race is a step in the right direction.
“I remember being in a predominantly Black high school freshman year and everyone knew me as Justin Timberlake,” Nelson said. “Not even a year later I moved from inner-city Buffalo to Syracuse, New York, and everyone called me Lil’ Bow Wow. It was intense but funny.”
Sometime between 2040 and 2050 the U.S will be a majority-minority country, according to the Census Bureau.
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