{"id":9858,"date":"2010-11-01T02:08:44","date_gmt":"2010-11-01T02:08:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=9858"},"modified":"2010-11-01T02:18:18","modified_gmt":"2010-11-01T02:18:18","slug":"the-importance-of-being-%e2%80%9cother%e2%80%9d-a-natural-experiment-about-lived-race-over-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=9858","title":{"rendered":"The importance of being \u201cother\u201d: A natural experiment about lived race over time"},"content":{"rendered":"

The importance of being \u201cother\u201d: A natural experiment about lived race over time<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Social Science Research
\nVolume 36, Issue 1<\/a> (March 2007)
\npages 159-174
\nDOI: 10.1016\/j.ssresearch.2005.11.002<\/a><\/p>\n

J. Scott Brown<\/a><\/strong>, Associate Professor of Gerontology, Scripps Research Fellow
\nMiami University, Oxford, Ohio<\/em><\/p>\n

Steven Hitlin<\/a><\/strong>, Assistant Professor of Sociology
\nUniversity of Iowa<\/em><\/p>\n

Glen H. Elder, Jr.<\/a><\/strong>, Research Professor of Sociology and Psychology
\nUniversity of North Carolina, Chapel Hill<\/em><\/p>\n

Despite recent concern with the measurement of race, almost no scholarship has explored the residual response category of \u201cother\u201d itself. The 2000 census included a significant number selecting \u201cother,\u201d suggesting that the option was not simply a residual response. Using a serendipitous change in the measurement of race in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), we explore the social reality of the \u201cother\u201d category at three levels of analysis: self-identification, external attribution, and structural interpretation. Far from being a residual category, we find that \u201cother\u201d is a meaningful social category for about half of the Hispanics in Add Health. Current measurement conventions that distinguish between race and ethnicity, while established for laudable reasons, misrepresent the ways that Americans\u2014Hispanic and otherwise\u2014utilize social categories. Individuals do not treat Hispanics differently than blacks or Asians when seen as members of a meaningful social group. The separation of race from ethnicity leads to confusion and measurement difficulty. Such problems are compounded when \u201cother\u201d is removed as a potential response.<\/p>\n

1. Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWe are here on Earth to do good to others. What the others are here for, I don\u2019t know.\u201d
\nW. H. Auden<\/a> (1907\u20131973)<\/p>\n

Concern with racial measurement has flourished in recent years (Harris and Sim, 2002; Hirschman et al., 2000) as sociologists and demographers have increasingly focused on the fluid nature of a once taken-for-granted concept. The growing number of multiracial individuals in the United States has underscored the difficulty of adequately measuring what has long been understood to be a meaningful and stable criterion for social grouping. Studies of racialfluidity and multiracial individuals have largely overlooked an important aspect of racial measurement in the US, namely, the (supposedly) residual \u201cother\u201d category. Originally intended to allow individuals more latitude for recording their self-understandings of race (see Snipp, 2003), this category has a substantive reality in its own right (Hirschman et al., 2000). In almost all cases in the 2000 census, the \u201cother\u201d category represents a proxy for \u201cHispanic,\u201d demonstrating that the lived experience of millions of individuals contradicts the academic reification between race and ethnicity. An in-depth examination of the \u201cother\u201d category suggests that current racial measurement conventions do not accurately reflect Americans\u2019 social reality.<\/p>\n

Using a serendipitous change in the measurement of race in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), we track individuals\u2019 changes in racial self-identification across time when the \u201cother\u201d option is removed from the racial measurement item. We explore the socialreality of the \u201cother\u201d category at three levels of analysis: self identification, external attribution, and structural interpretation. This approach extends traditional concerns with racialmeasurement that focus on self-identification in two directions. First, it allows us to examine the process of social attribution as it reflects external views of racial\/ethnic group membership. Second, we suggest that this measurement convention biases social science research findings. All three levels of analysis are based on social psychological understandings of the psychological process of social categorization that underlies the perception of race\/ethnicity. We find that \u201cother\u201d is an important response category for Hispanics, the best proxy they have available within the currently separated race and ethnicity format. Such self-reports have profound implications for national statistics and social science analyses. We conclude with a call for altering the official racial measurement instrument to more accurately reflect the cognitive processes that individuals use to delineate their meaningful social groups.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The importance of being \u201cother\u201d: A natural experiment about lived race over time Social Science Research Volume 36, Issue 1 (March 2007) pages 159-174 DOI: 10.1016\/j.ssresearch.2005.11.002 J. Scott Brown, Associate Professor of Gerontology, Scripps Research Fellow Miami University, Oxford, Ohio Steven Hitlin, Assistant Professor of Sociology University of Iowa Glen H. Elder, Jr., Research Professor […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,125,8,394,20],"tags":[4306,164,163,822,162],"class_list":["post-9858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-socialscience","category-usa","tag-glen-elder","tag-glen-h-elder","tag-j-scott-brown","tag-social-science-research","tag-steven-hitlin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9858\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}