toledoblade.com --

So-called "golden babies" are more numerous than ever before in the nation's history. Multiracial children born to mothers of one race and fathers of another are becoming more common, and in Ohio, Toledo leads the way.

In Toledo, 7 percent of the multiracial children under 5 were born to mixed race couples at a time when the men and women in these relationships are increasingly more accepted than in the past.

Furthermore, throughout northwest Ohio's 18-county region, 4.4 percent of the children under 5 were born to parents of different races. Multiracial children in the urban area are more likely to have a black and a white parent. In rural areas, the children usually have one white and one Hispanic parent.

Of course, the percentages showing how many multiracial preschool youngsters are born here may not seem like much. But the percentage of multiracial youngsters under 5 is almost double that of those children between 5 and 17, which is 4.6 percent. Plainly put, the color of the nation is changing, and northwest Ohioans show that the change has nothing to do with white flight when persons of another race consciously decide to marry and have children with someone of a different race.

Obviously, mixed marriages and multiracial children have been around for decades. Demographers have said for years that in time the majority, whites, will become the minority. In fact, almost three years ago, historian Hugh Davis Graham of Vanderbilt University concluded that, "Everybody's a minority." At that time, a quarter of the nation was minority, and predictions were that within 15 years, one-third of the national population would be minority.

But it took the 2000 Census form to make the picture clearer in terms of what's really happening. Previous census forms didn't allow persons of multiracial heritage to so identify themselves. The choices previously were basically black and white, you might say.

But also, and more importantly, this change reflects the growing acceptance of the parents and the multiracial children that they bring into the world. Certainly there are plenty of staunch stay-with-your-own-kind types, so intolerance is still very real. Yet even some of them are won over by their desire to maintain relationships with sons and daughters who choose partners of another race.

The multiracial population is growing fast, so fast that trend watchers say that one day, the 20th century concepts of race will be history.

Is that something to lament, or embrace?

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