Summary Of The Risk Of Multiracial Identification By Naomi Riley

In her essay, The Risks of Multiracial Identification, Naomi Riley argues that people are unlikely to be around people of distinct culture and color. Throughout the text, Riley fails to support her argument because she conflicts anecdotal evidence with statistical statements. She based her argument on an anecdotal evidence from a Harvard newspaper. She supports her claims based on an interview of a handful of college students who felt excluded from their student clubs, which does not necessarily imply that this is the case for every American college. The arguments that Riley makes by saying that people are unlikely to be around others from a distinct culture are disproven by the fact that more interracial marriages are occurring. It proves

In other words, Naomi is cherry picking her own points. American society is striving to assimilate people from distinct cultures and races. If we look at American universities and the data of increasing interracial marriages, it is evident that we, as a country, are trying to interact with different people in our society and treat them equally. Our society's continual adaptation to changing minds contradicts Riley’s view that we would never be comfortable with a race other than our own. Our society is not the way she described it to be in her text. Being multiracial is something that we are gradually getting comfortable with; eventually there will be a more accepting society that will contradict her idea of us being in a society that is not likely to change for the

According to the Pew Research Center, our generation is more likely to get married to someone from a distinct culture or race than our previous generations. These statistics show that of the 3.6 million adults who got married in 2013, 58% of American Indians, 28% of Asians, 19% of blacks and 7% of whites have a spouse whose race was different from their own. According to these statistics, 4 in 10 people have a mixed race background and classify as multiracial. Indeed, even Naomi agrees with the fact that “Racial mixing will become increasingly common” which contradicts her own argument of race that “people will hang on to racial identity for dear life because that's what their father and grandfather did” (Riley). The arguments that Riley makes by saying that people are unlikely to be around others from distinct cultures are disproven by the fact that more interracial marriages are occurring. It proves that people do not just want to be associated with the people who are similar to them in appearance. Since countless people are getting married to someone from a different culture, they are associating with people who are not like them instead, they are from different ethnic backgrounds. In other words, Naomi is cherry picking her own points. Furthermore, her idea that people only identify with a certain group contradicts the ideas she acknowledges