Mixed Race Studies

Obama gives hope to multiracial families

The Connecticut Record-Journal
2009-01-24

George Moore

Three-year-old George Garner used to introduce himself as ‘George Barack Obama’ when his mother took him to political events. For George, an energetic boy of a mixed racial background, Barack Obama’s presidency will serve as proof that he, too, can be president, said his mother, Jean Garner.

“I can tell this guy, ‘If you want to be president, go for it,'” she said in her Cheshire living room Thursday, as George bounced around with his Batman figurine.

Three years ago, Jean and Tim Garner, both white, adopted George, who is part Canadian, Native American and African-American. Garner said she hopes that Obama, the son of a white mother and a Kenyan father, will inspire more people to consider people for who they are, rather than what they look like.

Obama not only shows that a black man can become president, but that someone of a multiracial background can lead the country.

While Obama calls himself black, observers interviewed Friday said he has been so open about his parents and his upbringing that the entire nation is aware of his multiracial heritage. Sociologist Jenifer Bratter said Obama shatters stereotypes that people of mixed race have strained life experiences…

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Will “Multiracial”: Survive to the Next Generation?: The Racial Classification of Children of Multiracial Parents

Social Forces
Volume 86, Number 2 (December 2007)
pages 821-849
DOI: 10.1353/sof.2008.0007

Jenifer L. Bratter, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Associate Director of the Institute for Urban Research
Rice University

Will multiracial identification resonate with future generations? Using the 2000 U.S. Census, I analyze the impact of a multiracial parent on the classification of children in four types of multiracial families (e.g., white/non-white, black/non-black). Compared to families where parents are of two different single-race backgrounds, parental multiracial identity decreased the likelihood of multiracial classification due to the use of labels reflecting a shared single-race category (e.g. white-Asian mother and white father). When parents’ races did not overlap, multiracial classification was more common in households if the other parent was white or American Indian. These results suggest that intergenerational transmission of a multiracial identity is more common in contexts of racial diversity.

Assimilating Blackness?: Multiple-Race Identification and African American Mate Selection

Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association
Hilton San Francisco & Renaissance Parc 55 Hotel
San Francisco, CA
2004-08-14

23 pages

Jenifer L. Bratter, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Associate Director of the Institute for Urban Research
Rice University

I investigate the influence of multiracial identification on assortative mating by race for the African American population. Using 2000 1 percent Public Use Microdata File of the U.S. Census, I compare mate selection patterns of the single race non-Hispanic Black population to the multiple race population whose selected “Black” at least once. I employ multinomial logistic regression models to explore how likely a respondent selects Black (single race) spouses compared to non-Hispanic Whites and Multiracial Blacks. The results show Black persons who selected at least one other race are more likely than their single race counterparts to have White spouses, they are far more likely to have multiracial spouses.  These analyses also show that neither of these tendencies are explained by other identity choices such as alternative races or ancestry responses, structural assimilation of the multiracial population, or regional location near other interracial couples. These results indicate that a “Black” identity is still salient in the mate selection of multiracial Blacks.  Although some marital assimilation is occurring , multiracial persons appear to engage in more marital homogamy with other multiracial persons.

Read the entire paper here.

Mother’s, Father’s, or Both? Parental Gender and Parent-Child Interactions in the Racial Classification of Adolescents

Jenifer L. Bratter, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Associate Director of the Institute for Urban Research
Rice University

Holly E. Heard
Rice University

Sociological Forum
Volume 24, Number 3, September 2009
pages 658-688
DOI: 10.1111/j.1573-7861.2009.01124.x

Research on racial identification in interracial families shows that children are more likely to be labeled as minority if the father is of minority race. Yet, prior studies have not sufficiently considered the role of parent-child relationships in shaping children’s identification with either mother’s or father’s race.  We address this limitation using data on 706 adolescents in interracial families from Wave 1 of Add Health.  We examine whether adolescents identify with their mother’s race or with their father’s race, as opposed to selecting a multiracial identity, within specific combinations of parents’ races. We also explore whether indicators of parental involvement (i.e., quantity and quality of involvement, educational involvement, and social control) explain any gender effects. Contrary to prior studies, we find that the tendency to match father’s race is only true in black/white households, particularly if he is white, while adolescents in Asian/white families tend to match mothers regardless of her race. Moreover, while father’s involvement, particularly educational involvement, was more likely than mother’s to influence racial classification, adjusting for involvement does not explain gender patterns.  This study shows that the well-known gender influences on parenting have little to do with the complex ways parent-child relationships impact racial classification.

Read the entire paper proposal for presentation at the Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America, 2006 here.

Read or purchase the article here.