All posts by Karabi Acharya

Dr. Karabi Acharya is a global public health practitioner and senior director at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). Her book, Multitudes: The Multiracial Experience and How to Forge a Culture of Absolute Belonging (Apollo Publishers), was published November 10, 2026. This article was developed independently as a personal project; the views, opinions, and conclusions expressed here are the author's and do not necessarily represent the views of RWJF.
Authors A-H, Race & Ethnicity, Social Issues

America Isn’t Ready for Its Multiracial Future – by Karabi Acharya

Neither Box Fits

When people ask me where I’m from, they usually want a one-word answer that fits neatly in a box. My name is Indian, my accent is American, and my face often reads Latina. No matter the answer I give, many people follow up with “But where are you really from?” For most of my life, I didn’t have a simple answer; in fact, I didn’t have an answer at all. Increasingly, millions of Americans are in the same position.

In the 2020 Census, about 34 million Americans identified with more than one race, up from about 9 million in 2010. That’s a 276 percent increase! Between 2000 and 2012–2016, the share of US married-couple households that were interracial or interethnic grew from 7.4 percent to 10.2 percent, according to the US Census Bureau.

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