Mixed Race Studies

The Race of a Criminal Record: How Incarceration Colors Racial Perception

Social Problems
Volume 57, Issue 1 (February 2010)
pages 92-113
DOI: 10.1525/sp.2010.57.1.92

Aliya Saperstein, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Stanford University

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

In the United States, racial disparities in incarceration and their consequences are widely discussed and debated. Previous research suggests that perceptions of crime and the operations of the criminal justice system play an important role in shaping how Americans think about race. This study extends the conversation by exploring whether being incarcerated affects how individuals perceive their own race as well as how they are perceived by others, using unique longitudinal data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Results show that respondents who have been incarcerated are more likely to identify and be seen as black, and less likely to identify and be seen as white, regardless of how they were perceived or identified previously. This suggests that race is not a fixed characteristic of individuals but is flexible and continually negotiated in everyday interactions.

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Does Whitening Happen? Distinguishing between Race and Color Labels in an African-Descended Community in Peru

Social Problems
Volume 57, Number 1 (February 2010)
pages 138-156
DOI: 10.1525/sp.2010.57.1.138

Tanya Golash-Boza, Professor of Sociology and American Studies
Kansas University

This article explores how race and color labels are used to describe people in an Afro-Peruvian community. This article is based on analyses of 88 interviews and 18 months of fieldwork in an African-descended community in Peru. The analyses of these data reveal that, if we consider race and color to be conceptually distinct, there is no “mulatto escape hatch,” no social or cultural whitening, and no continuum of racial categories in the black Peruvian community under study. This article considers the implications of drawing a conceptual distinction between race and color for research on racial classifications in Latin America.

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Multiracial Groups and Educational Inequality: A Rainbow or a Divide?

Social Problems
Volume 56, Number 3 (August 2009)
Pages 425–446
DOI 10.1525/sp.2009.56.3.425

Mary E. Campbell, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of Iowa

How do multiracial groups “fit” into the system of racial oppression and privilege in the United States? Are the outcomes of multiracial individuals explained by the Latin Americanization hypothesis (Bonilla-Silva 2002), or a hardening racial divide between blacks and all other racial groups (Gans 1999; Yancey 2006)? Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, I address these questions and show that the educational outcomes of multiracial groups and individuals are not consistently explained by measures of appearance, as suggested by these theories. Although the educational outcomes of Latinos and single-race groups are significantly associated with skin color and the racial perceptions of observers, multiracial young adults’ high school and college educational outcomes are not consistently related to either measure of appearance. Parental education and family income are the most important predictors of educational outcomes for multiracial respondents across different types of outcomes. The implications of these findings for racial inequality and research on multiracial groups are discussed.

One of the key debates about the future of racial and ethnic inequality in the United States is the question of how multiracial Americans will fit into the United States’ system of racial oppression and privilege. These groups may be a bellwether we can use to discern how racial inequality is changing, since they straddle racial boundaries and therefore are often the first to experience changes in those boundaries and systems of racialized advantage. For example, Eduardo Bonilla Silva (2002; Bonilla Silva and Embrick 2006) has argued that the United States is moving towards a three-tier racial stratification system that is increasingly similar to Latin American systems of racial stratification based on skin tone, and thus biracial groups that are lighter skinned will have greater privilege than those that are darker skinned. George Yancey (2006) and Herbert Gans (1999), in a distinct but related argument, contend that we are moving away from a binary system that used a narrow and exclusive definition of “whiteness” to disadvantage anyone perceived as “not white” towards an evolving binary system that systematically disadvantages anyone seen as “black” and advantages anyone seen as “not black” (even those who are not considered “white”). Under this shifting system, biracial individuals perceived as black will experience oppression, while the rest of the multiracial groups will experience positive outcomes that become more similar to whites over time…

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“What are You?”: Explaining Identity as a Goal of the Multiracial Hapa Movement

Social Problems
Volume 56, Number 4 (November 2009)
Pages 722–745
DOI 10.1525/sp.2009.56.4.722

Mary Bernstein, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of Connecticut

Marcie De la Cruz
Empirical Education Inc.

This article uses the Hapa movement as a case study in order to provide a framework for understanding identity as a goal of social movements and to expand on a theoretical understanding of multiracial social movements. In contrast to current understandings of identity-based movements, this article argues that the Hapa movement seeks simultaneously to deconstruct traditional notions of (mono)racial identities and to secure recognition for a multiracial “Hapa” identity. Movements that have identity as a goal are motivated by activists’ understandings of how categories are constituted and how those categories, codes, and ways of thinking serve as axes of regulation and domination. The Hapa movement simultaneously challenges (mono)racial categories at both the institutional level through targeting the state and at the micro level through challenging the quotidian enactment of race and promulgating a Hapa identity. Activism by mixed-race individuals and organizations constitutes an important challenge to power that has significant implications for racial categorization and classification in contemporary American society.