BrainTrust Query: How should mixed race affect target marketing plans?
A recent article in the New York Times entitled Who Are We? New Dialogue on Mixed Race discusses a consumer segment that we don't hear about much: people who don't neatly fit into the five racial buckets now being used by the U.S. Census.
According to the article, "The old categories are weakening ... as immigration and the advancing age of marriage in the United States fuel a steady rise in the number of interracial marriages. The 2000 Census counted 3.1 million interracial couples, or about 6 percent of married couples. For the first time, the Census that year allowed respondents to identify themselves as being two or more races, a category that now includes 7.3 million Americans, or about 3 percent of the population."
It's not yet a big segment, but it's one that's growing in terms of visibility and identity, in part fueled by the mixed race heritage of Senator Barack Obama.
Though some choose a multiple race identity, others tend to stick to a one-race label; the decision of choosing a racial identity is often a deeply personal one. According to the article, racial identification "is influenced by how and where they were reared, how others perceive them, what they look like and how they themselves come to embrace their identity."
Discussion Questions: Have the old racial categories become irrelevant? What are the implications for those companies that are specifically targeting specific racial groups with a marketing campaign?
[Author's commentary] In 2007, New American Dimensions conducted focus groups
and in-depth interviews with mixed race people between the ages of 14 and 28
in Los Angeles. Some key findings:
- The number one advantage of being multi-racial is learning from an early age to be highly adaptable. Most have a diverse mix of friends, even beyond their own ethnic mix. Most friends are based on subculture and common interest, rather than ethnicity.
- Most feel they have more latitude to try different things (activities, foods, events, dating other ethnicities) than their full-blood/full-culture counterparts.
- Many felt pressured to choose a culture, or to self-classify as one primary ethnicity. This came up big in dating relationships (i.e. "You have to tell my parents you're Puerto Rican or Dominican!") Some did express never feeling fully accepted and craving a grounded identity. A majority resented always being assumed to be Mexican.
- The number one complaint was the emphasis that people place on race and on being mixed and hate being defined by this. Mixed race people are constantly being asked "what they are." As a result, many reach out to other cultures or subcultures where they feel less attention is given to race.
Hispanics, who are largely of meztiso or mixed race origin, are the nation's largest and near-fastest growing minority, a group for whom the current racial buckets make no sense. In the 2000 Census, 42 percent of Hispanics, a total of 15 million people, chose the Census category "some other race" (SOR).