Mixed Race Studies

Hello, My Race is:… Supporting the Identity of Biracial College Students

People of Color in Predominantly White Institutions
Ninth Annual Conference POCPWI
2004
5 pages

Natasha H. Chapman, Director for the TCU Leadership Center
Texas Christian College

An entire generation of biracial individuals is coming of age suggesting that colleges and universities will experience an increase in their multiracial student body. Student affairs professionals are faced with the challenge of addressing the needs of this emerging student
group. This presentation will describe this diverse population and educate student affairs professionals on their unique developmental views.

Read the entire paper here.

Biracial Identity Development: Therapeutic Implications of Phenotype and Other Contextual Considerations

Practices of Healing: Using Multicultural Psychotherapy to Confront Symbols of Hate Presentation
Hosted by the Multicultural Research and Training Lab, Graduate School of Education and Psychology Psychology Division
Pepperdine University
2008-10-11
35 slides

Krystle G. Hays, M.A. Doctoral Student
Pepperdine University

This presentation examines the interplay of phenotype, environmental influences, and other sociocultural considerations in the self-construction of biracial (African American and Caucasian) individuals. Consideration will also be given to potential therapeutic issues that may arise for someone who is negotiating the development of a biracial identity.

Purpose of Presentation

• Examining the experience of self-identification for persons of biracial heritage, Black and White.
• Overview of research that explores Black culture and values, and the formation of identity in this cultural group.
• Overview of literature that highlights White culture, values, and identity-development.
• Discussion of biracial identity – is there an intersection between Black and White cultural values or is the biracial individual’s identity an independent formation?
• Discussion of biracial identity development for persons of Black and White descent; including factors of phenotype and sociocultural factors such as family and environment.
• Looking at racial identifiers used by biracial persons.

View the presentation (Microsoft Powerpoint) here.

Changing Answers but Not Identities: A Qualitative Investigation of Race Responses in a Longitudinal Survey

Population Association of America
2009 Annual Meeting
Marriott Renaissance Center
Detroit, Michigan
2009-04-16
19 pages

Kelsey Poss
University of Minnesota

Carolyn A. Liebler, Assistant Professor of Sociology
University of Minnesota

Paper presented at the 2009 annual meetings of the Population Association of America on May 1, 2009

We seek to understand why people change their race responses over time. We use longitudinal survey responses to selectively recruit individuals for in-depth interviews about the reasons behind their changing responses to questions about their race(s) and primary racial or ethnic identities between 1988 and 2007. We find a wide variety of changes in 33 individuals’ answers to questions about their race, ancestry and Hispanic origin. To date, we have completed in-depth interviews with nine of these individuals. In many cases, respondents do not remember changing their answers and do not consider themselves to have changed their identities. Respondents’ post-hoc accounts of varied answers often focus on events or thoughts near the time of the survey and on details of question-wording. Many also report a rationalized process for selective reporting of their race(s), depending on the purpose of the form (e.g., job application versus social club).

Read the entire article here.

Black/Irish: How do Americans understand their multiracial ancestry?

Population Association of America
2009 Annual Meeting
Marriott Renaissance Center
Detroit, Michigan
2009-05-01
19 pages

Aaron Gullickson, Assistant Professor of Sociology
University of Oregon

Ann Morning, Assistant Professor of Sociology
New York University

In recent years, studies examining the racial identification of mixed-race individuals on surveys and the U.S. Census have proliferated. The majority of these studies either use parental racial information or a comparison of answers to the race question in different contexts to identify a multiracial population. This paper proposes another method for identifying a multiracial population that is broader and potentially more historical in its understanding of its multiracial heritage, by comparing the ancestry responses on the 1990 and 2000 U.S. Census. The analysis clearly demonstrates that the identification patterns of multiracial individuals vary in systematic ways depending on which groups are involved that correspond to historical evidence on the dynamics of racial boundaries.

Introduction

Although the United States has been home to a significant multiracial population since its founding, American scholarly interest in the racial identity of mixed-race people is a fairly new phenomenon. This development is due in large part to the federal government’s recent change in its official classification system to allow individuals to identify with more than one race (see Office of Management and Budget 1997). With multiple-race statistical data now available, especially after Census 2000, it became clear that millions of Americans would choose to “mark one or more” races when given the opportunity. This observation entailed new relevance for existing social scientific research on identity formation. In particular, Mary Water’s (1990) description of “ethnic options” for white Americans offered a template for thinking about the “racial options” that mixed-race people might confront.

In this article, we seek to explain patterns of racial self-identification by multiracial people in the United States. Do they prefer to select one race or several to describe themselves, and why? Using census data from 1990 and 2000, we identify a mixed-race population by targeting adults who report having ancestry in more than one racial group. This approach offers several advantages over the more common method of equating the multiracial population with the children of interracial unions. First, it allows us to analyze the self-reported identity of adults rather than the parent-proxied identity of children. Second, this approach captures a multiracial population that is broader and potentially more historical in its understanding of multiraciality than the post-Loving “biracial baby boom” often identified by researchers.

The racial affiliations of mixed-race people offer insights into both macro-level historical trends in racial ideology, and micro-level mechanisms of contemporary social stratification. As we will see, the identity choices that individuals make today continue to be shaped by concepts of race that formed centuries ago: ideas (or their absence) of the properties of races and the nature of hybridity still dictate to a considerable extent how people conceive of their racial membership. Perhaps more important, some observers see in multiracial identity choices a harbinger of the future, either as the vanguard of an imminently miscegenated U.S.A., or as a “swing” faction that might eventually be incorporated in the white population (Gans 1979; Lind 1998; Sanjek 1994; Yancey 2003). On a more prosaic yet no less significant level, the ways that multiracial people identify themselves reveal a great deal about the continuing impact of class and gender in shaping the opportunity set of race labels that are available to them…

Read the entire paper here.

The Marital Patterns of Multiracial People in the United States: A Comparison of Asian/Whites and Black/Whites

American Sociological Association Annual Meeting
Hilton San Francisco
San Francisco, California
2009-08-08
20 pages

Michael Miyawaki
Fordham University

In this paper, I examine and compare the marital patterns of two multiracial groups—Asian/whites and black/whites—in the United States. Examining the marital behavior of multiracial people is of particular importance to understanding their state of assimilation. Furthermore, the race of their spouse has important consequences for the racial classification of their offspring. Because the racial identity and experience of multiracial people differ by racial background (i.e., Asian/white, black/white, etc.), there may be differences in the marital patterns of multiracial subgroups in a marriage market segmented by race. In this study, I limit my analysis to non-Latino Asian/white adults (18 and older) married to non-Latino whites, Asians, and Asian/whites, and non-Latino black/white adults married to non-Latino whites, blacks, and black/whites. To compare the odds of Asian/whites and black/whites marrying whites, their nonwhite counterparts, and their multiracial counterparts, I use multinomial logistic regression. While both Asian/whites and black/whites are most likely to marry whites, results show significant differences between the two groups in terms of their odds of marrying whites, nonwhites, and multiracials. Whereas Asian/whites are more likely than black/whites to marry whites (vs. nonwhites) and multiracials (vs. nonwhites), black/whites are more likely than Asian/whites to marry nonwhites. Thus, results demonstrate that not only is the marriage market segmented by race among monoracials, it is also racially segmented among multiracials.

To read the entire paper, click here.

Founding Chestnut Ridge: The Origins of Central West Virginia’s Multiracial Community

The Ohio State University
Department of History
Project Advisor: Randolph Roth, Professor of History and Sociology
March 2010
140 pages

Alexandra Finley
The Ohio State University

Senior Honors Thesis Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for graduation with research distinction in History in the undergraduate colleges of The Ohio State University

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction: The “Guineas” of West Virginia
I. Race and the Male Brothers
II. The Legend of Sam Norris
III. The Life of Gustavus Croston
IV. Henry Dalton’s Fate
V. The Chestnut Ridge People

Appendix A: Associated Surnames and Variant Spellings
Appendix B: Related Genealogies
Appendix C: The Legend of Sam Norris
Appendix D: The Writings of Bill Peat Norris
Appendix E: Associated Families
Appendix F: Maps
Bibliography

Introduction: “A Clan of Partly Colored People:” The “Guineas” of West Virginia

For visitors to Philippi, West Virginia, the name Chestnut Ridge Road carries no significance. There is nothing to distinguish it from Main Street or Walnut Street in the minds of strangers to that small mountain town. For the people of Barbour County, however, Chestnut Ridge carries a connotation that few guests to the area can understand. Natives of the region recognize Chestnut Ridge Road, Kennedy Road, Croston School Road, and Norris Ridge Road as distinct from the rest of Philippi, home to the “Chestnut Ridge People,” the multiracial descendants of early European pioneers, free African Americans, and Native Americans.

Before the ancestors of the Chestnut Ridge People had been defined by the white community as a distinct outside group, they were individual settlers who, like frontier residents of European descent, had migrated westward in hopes of a better life. What set these men and women apart was their racial background. Some, like Henry Dalton, moved west after completing indentures that had resulted from their illegitimate “mulatto” birth. Others, like Hugh Kennedy, were descendents of multigenerational multiracial families that could be traced back to the seventeenth century. One, Wilmore Male, was an Englishman who chose to live as man and wife with his slave, Nancy.

These multiracial families’ difference from the white community gave them a shared experience. The Males and the Daltons quickly intermarried, the free black Hill family taught Henry Dalton’s children the trade of stonemasonry, and each ancestor of the Chestnut Ridge People provided support for others in the same position as themselves. The ties they created survived into the twentieth century.

Though they maintained close relationships among themselves, the ancestors of the Chestnut Ridge People did not live in an entirely insular community. Many individuals formed friendships with their white neighbors and partook in the activities of the white community. Their race was not an impediment to accumulating real estate or personal property. Nor did race prevent many from gaining respect in the wider community, especially as several of the men were Revolutionary War veterans.

Given the background of these first multiracial settlers and the levels of success experienced by many, several questions arise. How were people of mixed race treated on the frontier? Did their experience differ from that of the free black community that remained part of the Atlantic world? How was race defined on the frontier, especially in the case of individuals whose racial background was considered ambiguous? Were all of the restrictions placed on free blacks by lawmakers in the eastern half of the state enforced as stringently in the western half?

The available literature of the Chestnut Ridge community does little to address these questions. Most of what has been written on the group concerns only genealogy and fails to place individuals in a historical context. Almost all of this genealogical work avoids the issue of African heritage and, if it is addressed at all, denies such ancestry in favor of a solely Native American and European background. Additionally, the foundation of most genealogical accounts is community legend rather than historic documentation.

With the notable exception of Avery F. Gaskins, writers from other disciplines such as sociology who have dealt with the Chestnut Ridge People have also focused on legend rather than historical fact. John Burnell, for instance, examined in the 1950s the contemporary status of the group and touched upon speculations about their history without considering the issue in detail. When the community appeared in surveys like Brewton Berry’s that considered multiple multiracial groups in the United States, it was generally given little attention in comparison to better-known multiracial groups such as the Melungeons. Gaskins is the only researcher who has addressed the historical origins of the Chestnut Ridge People in detail.

Within the next five chapters, I will continue Gaskins’s work decoding the true history of the group. I aim to provide a comprehensive history of the Chestnut Ridge community into the nineteenth century and place the experiences of the first multiracial settlers to the area in a historical context. The lives of the Chestnut Ridge People’s ancestors cannot be considered outside of the era and location in which they existed or the prevailing racial attitudes that they encountered in the world around them. Considered together, the story of these multiracial settlers highlights the unique experiences of frontier life and the ways in which everyday interaction between whites and blacks could defy the standards for race relations set by lawmakers…

Read the entire paper here.

Shifting Demographics: Preparing for a New Race and Ethnicity Classification Scheme in NAEP

Population Association of America
2010 Annual Meeting Program
2010-04-17
3 pages
1 chart, 1 table

Salvador Rivas
American Institutes for Research

On September 24, 2007, the U.S. Department of Education (USDE) issued final guidance for collecting and reporting race/ethnicity information to all its jurisdictions. Final implementation of these guidelines is expected to take place no later than the 2010–2011 school-year. This study will therefore try to anticipate how and to what extent the coming change in racial/ethnic classification schemes might affect NAEP trend reporting, especially in relation to previously established racial/ethnic achievement gaps. By using student-reported race/ethnicity information, as proxy parent reports, this study will explore the possible effects of the coming shift in racial/ethnic classification schemes. Data will come from the 2003, 2005, and 2007 NAEP Reading and Mathematics assessments at Grade 8. This study will also explore the possibility of using other data sources such as the American Community Survey (ACS) to help corroborate and contextualize NAEP findings.

Read the entire summary here.

Measuring Race (and Ethnicity): An Overview of Past Practices, Current Concerns and Thoughts for the Future [Draft]

Population Association of America
2010 Annual Meeting Program
2010-04-17
25 pages

C. Matthew Snipp, Professor of Sociology
Stanford University

On the eve of the 2010 census, Census Bureau staff are already beginning to think about how race should be measured in the 2020 census. This paper looks at the history of racial measurement, assesses the performance of the current standard in the context of a 1996 NAS report, and concludes with a set of considerations that must be taken into account for the purposes of assessing race in the census or in any survey instrument. Particular attention is given to a variety of legal definitions that have historically been used to measure race, followed by the first issuance of OMB Directive No. 15 in 1977, and then followed by the latest revision in 1997. Discussion of how various federal agencies have adjusted to the 1997 revision is also included in this discussion.

Read the entire draft paper here.

Bio-Ancestry and Social Construction of Race and Ethnicity

Population Association of America
2010 Annual Meeting Program
2010-04-17

Guang Guo, Odum Distinguished Term Professor of Sociology
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Yilan Fu
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Kathleen Mullan Harris, James Haar Distinguished Professor of Sociology
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Two sharply divided perspectives concerning the nature of racial distinction have developed over the past two decades. On one hand, the consensus has long been established among academics that racial and ethnic categories are the invention of social construction. On the other, a number of genetic studies point to a bio-ancestral base for the major racial/ethnic categories used in the contemporary United States. Instead of treating the two perspectives as diametrically opposed, this application proposes to examine evidence for the coexistence of socially-constructed and bio-ancestrally-rooted racial identity in the contemporary United States.

The overarching goal of this application is to investigate whether adding estimates of bio-ancestry will significantly advance our understanding of social construction of race and ethnicity. In previous studies of social construction of race, racial identities have been considered socially constructed. In this application, we investigate whether and why self-reports of race and ethnicity depart from bio-ancestry. The project will draw on decades of scholarship in race and ethnicity, recent advances in human genetics, and data resources from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) (Harris, Florey, Tabor et al. 2003) and the Human Genome  Diversity Project (HGDP) (Cann, de Toma, Cazes et al. 2002).

This proposed project has two broad objectives. First, we assess the accuracy of a panel of 186 genetic ancestral informative markers in predicting self-reported race/ethnicity in the contemporary United States using a racially and ethnically diverse sample of 17,000 individuals from Add Health. Previous studies of bio-geographic ancestry were carried out for the purpose of understanding the history of human evolution (Li, Absher, Tang et al. 2008; Rosenberg, Pritchard, Weber et al. 2002) or population admixture in the context of genetic association studies (Tang, Quertermous, Rodriguez et al. 2005). These studies did not directly address the relation between bio-ancestry and racial/ethnic identity using a US-based racially- and ethnically-diverse population sample. Second, we take advantage of estimated bio-ancestry and use it in an investigation of the social construction of race and ethnicity in the US. We examine to what extent self-reports of race and ethnicity follow the one-drop rule—the century-old social practice of treating individuals with any amount of African ancestry as black in the US. We address whether and why individuals change their racial/ethnic identity under different social circumstances. We then examine the relationship between bio-ancestry and friendship social network in a school context.

Beyond the Looking Glass: Exploring Variation between Racial Self-Identification and Interviewer Classification

Population Association of America
2010 Annual Meeting Program
2010-04-17
10 pages

Aliya Saperstein, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Stanford University

Andrew Penner, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of California, Irvine

Recent research has demonstrated the existence of fluidity in both racial self-identification and interviewer classification. Racial self-identification has been shown to vary for the same individuals across contexts (Harris and Sim 2002), over time (Doyle and Kao 2007; Hitlin et al. 2006) and depending on their social position (Penner and Saperstein 2008). Similarly, interviewer classifications of the same individuals have been shown to vary over time (Brown et al. 2007), as well as change in response to biographical events such as incarceration, unemployment and experiencing a spell of poverty (Penner and Saperstein 2008). However, the specific pattern of variation between racial self-identification and interviewer classification—i.e., how they might influence each other over time—has yet to be empirically explored.

The prevailing assumption in the literature on racial identity is that people calibrate or edit their self-identification based on how they are perceived by others (e.g., Nagel 1994). We propose to test this hypothesis directly by examining what happens when there is discordance between an individual’s perceived and self-identified race, using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. This is a crucial, and up to now missing, piece of the puzzle of whether and how different measures of race relate to one another. Additional analyses will also provide insight into how differences in life chances, such as educational attainment and contact with the criminal justice system, affect how respondents racially identify, are perceived by others and how both change over time.

Read the entire paper here.