“Multiracial” Today, but “What” Tomorrow? The Malleability of Racial Identification Over Time

“Multiracial” Today, but “What” Tomorrow? The Malleability of Racial Identification Over Time

Paper presented at the Population Association of America 2005 Annual Meeting
2005-03-31 through 2005-04-02
Philladelphia, Pennsylvania
27 pages

Jamie Mihoko Doyle
Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology
University of Pennsylvania

Grace Kao, Professor of Sociology, Education, and Asian American Studies
University of Pennsylvania

We use the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) to examine the change in racial identification among Multiracial Adolescents and Monoracial Adolescents as they make the transition from adolescence to adulthood. In general, we find that Multiracial youth exhibit more volatile racial identities than Monoracial youth. Youth who reported Native-American & White in Wave I were the least likely to maintain this identity (22%), while about 50% of Asian-white and black-white youth maintained their identities. In empirical analyses, we find that youth with more highly educated mothers have more stable racial identities between two waves of the survey. Physical appearance, as described by the interviewer at Wave I, is an important predictor of change between Wave I and Wave III responses. Our results suggest that while racial identity is malleable, it is still conditioned on variation in physical appearances.

Read the entire paper here.

Tags: , , ,