One of the most overlooked demographic categories in America is multiracial people—or in the U.S. Census’ parlance, people claiming “two or more” races. They represent around 3 percent of the nation’s population according to Census estimates, though Pew Research estimates this number could be more like 7 percent based on their own surveys. Moreover, multiracial Americans are one of the fastest-growing demographic segments: Pew reports that they’re growing at three times the rate of the general population. Multiracial babies, for instance, went from 1 percent of births in 1970 to 10 percent of births in 2013.
They’re also, it seems, a potentially-important Democratic constituency: they’re disproportionately young, and also very tolerant. A majority of them, according to Pew, say that they’re proud of their mixed race background, with 59 percent saying that their heritage has made them more open to other cultures.
On the other hand, “multiracial” is a complex identity, and, like being Hispanic or Latino, many people who fit in that demographic box don’t necessarily find that central to how they think of themselves. One of Pew’s findings is that many people of mixed backgrounds simply don’t think of themselves as “multiracial” (they say 61 percent do not), and that many people have changed the way they think of or describe their race over the years. Among people who are both white and Asian, or white and Native American, often the default is to think of oneself primarily as “white” (for instance, of people who are white and Native American, only 22 percent they have a lot in common with people who are Native American).
The state with the highest percentage of multiracial people is, by far, Hawaii. That may not be surprising, since it’s a state without any clear racial majority (Hawaii as a whole breaks down as around 38 percent Asian, 23 percent non-Hispanic white, 10 percent Native Hawaiian, 9 percent Hispanic, and 24 percent from two or more races) and where there isn’t a lot of geographic segregation.
If you drill down a little deeper, though, you’ll find that there’s a significantly higher percentage of people claiming “two or more” races in Hawaii’s 2nd congressional district, rather than its 1st district. (The rate is 26 percent in the 2nd, and 22 percent in the 1st.) For context, the 1st district is basically limited to what’s thought of as Honolulu, while the 2nd district consists of all the other islands in the state as well as the non-Honolulu portion of Oahu. (I say “thought of as Honolulu” because there aren’t city limits to Honolulu; the entire island of Oahu is administered as one municipal entity, Honolulu County. Most of the island’s population is concentrated into a much smaller urban and suburban area, though.)
The key difference between the two districts is that the 1st district—Honolulu proper and its close-in suburbs like Pearl City and Ewa Beach—mostly consists of people who are Asian alone (they’re around 50 percent of HI-01’s population). The 2nd district winds up being the “everybody else” district, with only 27 percent of its population being Asian alone; for instance, two-thirds of Hawaii’s white population is in the 2nd (much of Hawaii’s white population is on Maui, and Oahu’s white residents are disproportionately found in the further-out suburb of Kailua), and the bulk of Hawaii’s Native Hawaiian population is either on the other islands or in the rural parts of Oahu.
Nationwide, there are 10.4 million people claiming “two or more” races; of those, the most common configuration is both white and African-American ancestry, at 2.8 million people, followed by white and Asian ancestry, at 2.2 million people. You might think that, similarly, many of Hawaii’s 2nd district’s multiracial residents fall in the white and Asian category, but they don’t. Of HI-02’s 189,000 multiracial residents, only 37,000 are white and Asian (and only 4,000 are white and black).
The Census Bureau doesn’t appear to go into further detail about who goes into the remainder, but most likely the most common configuration in the 2nd is, instead, Asian plus “Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander.” (The Census’s NHPI category contains not just Hawaiians, but also, for instance, Samoans and Guamanians.) You can figure this out as a subtraction problem: there are 219,000 people in HI-02 who claim Native Hawaiian as a race, either alone or in combination with something else. But only 88,000 are Native Hawaiian alone. So around 131,000 people are Native Hawaiian plus something else.
Appropriately, one of Hawaii’s 2nd district’s many multiracial residents is its Representative, Democrat Tulsi Gabbard. Gabbard’s father, state Sen. Mike Gabbard, is of mixed Samoan and European descent, while her mother is European. (Interestingly, her father is a practicing Catholic, while her white mother is a practicing Hindu; Gabbard identifies as Hindu as well.)
Gabbard, previously a Honolulu city councilor and a state representative, was elected to the House in 2012, after Maizie Hirono vacated the seat to successfully run for the U.S. Senate. Her primary election was a bit of an upset, as she defeated well-known Honolulu mayor Mufi Hannemann in a six-way primary by a wide margin.
In this heavily blue district, Gabbard faces little trouble with re-election in general elections. (The district gave Hillary Clinton 61 percent of the vote in 2016 to Donald Trump’s 30; that’s still quite a drop from 2012, where native son Barack Obama got 71 to Mitt Romney’s 27.) However, Gabbard could face more of a challenge in Democratic primaries going forward, based largely on her heterodox foreign policy positions, most significantly her failures to condemn the Assad regime in Syria. (Gabbard’s father is also a noted social conservative, though Gabbard herself has recently steered clear of that.) Gabbard’s cumulative record puts her well to the right of the midpoint of the Democratic caucus (DW-Nominate placed her as the 161st most liberal member in the 113th Congress), unusual for such a blue district.
For instance, one of Hawaii’s largest unions, the Hawaii State Teachers Association, recently backed Gabbard’s Democratic primary opponent, Sherry Campagna, for the 2018 election, despite having few qualms with Gabbard on educational policy specifically. Campagna hasn’t received much attention or financial backing from elsewhere, so it remains to be seen how much of a threat she poses to the well-known Gabbard this year, but this could be a continuing trend in future elections for Gabbard.
“The Most District” is an ongoing series devoted to highlighting congressional district superlatives around the nation. Click here for all posts in this series.