Mixed Race Studies

From Black to Biracial: Transforming Racial Identity Among Americans

Praeger Publishers an imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group
1998
160 pages
Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Paperback ISBN: 0-275-96744-1; ISBN-13: 978-0-275-96744-4

Kathleen Odell Korgen, Professor of Sociology
William Paterson University, Wayne, New Jersey

Is a person with both a white and African American parent black?  Thirty years ago in American society the answer would have been yes. Today, the answer most likely depends on whom you ask. According to the U.S. Census, a person with both a black and a white parent is, in fact, black. However, most young persons who fit this description describe themselves as biracial, both black and white. Most young Americans, whatever their racial background, agree.  Since the Voting Rights Act of 1965 signaled the culmination of the Civil Rights Movement, a transformation has occurred in the racial self-definition of Americans with both an African American and a white parent. This book describes the transformation and explains why it has occurred and how it has come about. Through extensive research and dozens of interviews, Korgen describes how the transformation has its roots in the historical and cultural transitions in U.S. society since the Civil Rights era. A ground breaking book, From Black to Biracial will help all Americans understand the societal implications of the increasingly multiracial nature of our population. From affirmative action to the present controversy over the U.S. Census 2000, the repercussions of the transformation in racial identity related here affect all race-based aspects of our society. Students and faculty in sociology and multicultural studies, business leaders, and general readers alike will benefit from reading this work.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: The Transformation of Racial Identity
• Biracial Americans: White, Black, Both, Neither
• Black by Definition or The Best of Both Worlds?
• The Transformation: From Black to Biracial
• Turning Points: Biracial College Students and Dating
• Marginality and the Biracial American
• Identities and Transformation
• Public Policy Implications
• Appendix: Notes on Methodology
• Bibliography
• Index

Claiming Place: Biracial Young Adults of the Post-Civil Rights Era

Praeger
2000-11-30
208 pages
Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-89789-760-0
Ebook ISBN: 978-0-313-06507-1

Marion Kilson, Dean of the Graduate School
Salem State College, Massachusetts

Born in the 1960s, the middle-class Biracial Americans of this study are part of a transitional cohort between the hidden biracial generations of the past and the visible blended generations of the future. As individuals, they have variously dealt with their ambiguous status in American society; as a generation, they share common existential realities in relation to White culture.

During the last decade of the 20th century public awareness of mixed race Americans increased significantly, in no small part because there has been a substantial increase in interracial marriages and offspring since 1960. This study, based on ethnographic interviews, provides an historical overview of the study of Biracial Americans in the social sciences, a sociological profile of project participants, sociocultural discussions of family and race as well as racial identity choices, and examinations of racial realities in adult lives and of recurrent systemic and personal life themes. The textual part of the book demonstrates the diversity of perception and experience regarding race and identity of these biracial young adults. The Epilogue not only reviews major findings pertaining to this transitional generation of Biracial Americans but discusses biraciality and the deconstruction of race in contemporary American society. An extensive bibliography of popular and scholarly sources concludes the book.

Table of Contents:

Preface
Biracial American Experience in Post-Civil Rights Era
Biracial Americans
Biracial Americans and Their Families
Biracial American Identity Choices
Racial Realities in Adult Biracial American Lives
Biracial American Life Themes
Biracial American Voices
Development of Racial Identities
Childhood Memories of Race
Family Relationships Remembered
Assessments of Biracial American Experiences
Epilogue
Bibliography

Light, Bright, and Damned Near White: Biracial and Triracial Culture in America

Praeger Publishers an imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group
2009-03-20
168 pages
Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Hardcover ISBN: 0-275-98954-2; ISBN-13: 978-0-275-98954-5

Stephanie Rose Bird

The election of America’s first biracial president brings the question dramatically to the fore. What does it mean to be biracial or tri-racial in the United States today? Anthropologist Stephanie Bird takes us into a world where people are struggling to be heard, recognized, and celebrated for the racial diversity one would think is the epitome of America’s melting pot persona. But being biracial or tri-racial brings unique challenges – challenges including prejudice, racism and, from within racial groups, colorism. Yet America is now experiencing a multiracial baby boom, with at least three states logging more multiracial baby births than any other race aside from Caucasians.  As the Columbia Journalism Review reported, American demographics are no longer black and white. In truth, they are a blended, difficult-to-define shade of brown.

Bird shows us the history of biracial and tri-racial people in the United States, and in European families and events. She presents the personal traumas and victories of those who struggle for recognition and acceptance in light of their racial backgrounds, including celebrities such as golf expert Tiger Woods, who eventually quit trying to describe himself as Cablanasin, a mix including Asian and African American.  Bird examines current events, including the National Mixed Race Student Conference, and the push to dub this Generation MIX.  And she examines how American demographics, government, and society are changing overall as a result.  This work includes a guide to tracing your own racial roots.
 
Table of Contents:

Chapter I: Premixed Pre-measured: Populace of the New World.
Chapter II: Too Light to be Black, Too Dark to be White: who is passing for what?
Chapter III Tan Territory: eparating Fact, Fiction and Fantasy.
Chapter IV: Some of Americas Best Known Biracials and Triracials Across History.
Chapter V: Bricolage: Constructed Identities of Les Gens de Couleur Libre and Cane River Negroes
Chapter VI: From Italian explorers to Sicilian Contandini and Biracial Royals: the Mixed Race Experience as Illustrated by the Italian Diaspora.
Chapter VIII: When Things Really Go Wrong: Australia’s Black/White Debacle.
Chapter IX: Profiles of Triumph and Courage.
Chapter X: Current events: In Government, On Campus, the Internet and in the News.
Chapter XI: Tool Box for Change/Conclusions

About the Author:
Stephanie Rose Bird is an independent scholar and anthropologist. She is herself tri-racial, and has been interviewed on the topic by media including ABC, National Public Radio, and the Public Broadcast System.

Relative/Outsider: The Art and Politics of Identity Among Mixed Heritage Students

Praeger Publishers
2001-05-30
200 pages
Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-56750-551-1
Hardback ISBN: 978-1-56750-550-4
e-Book ISBN: 978-0-313-07598-8
DOI: 10.1336/1567505511

Kendra R. Wallace, Assistant Professor of Education
University of Maryland, Baltimore

The author explores the ethnic and racial identity formation among high school and college students of racially mixed heritage. The portraits in this book provide a thorough examination of the dynamic ethnic and racial lives of a multifaceted and growing segment of students. Unlike most recent projects on mixed heritage people which are narrow in scope and focus on one set of backgrounds (e.g., black and white or black and Japanese), the subjects in this study represent a vast array of heritages, including those of dual minority ancestry.

The students’ stories speak volumes about the uneven nature of racial and ethnic experience within and across traditional communities in contemporary U.S. society. Unlike studies analyzing broad intergroup processes, this work begins by examining the cultural dynamics of the home, contributing valuable insights into the otherwise invisible lives of mixed heritage families. Processes of enculturation and discourse acquisition are considered in the development of ethnic identity. The book also helps to frame how changes within the U.S. racial ecology lead many recently mixed heritage individuals to see themselves as occupying (un)common ground. Finally, this work offers recommendations for educators concerned with creating school contexts that are critically supportive of human diversity.
 
Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction
Surveying the U.S. Racial Ecology
Out of the Borderlands: Interethnic/Interracial Families
Lessons of Community: Origins of and Approaches to Ethnic Identity
Constructing Race
On Being Mixed: Issues and Interpretations
Conclusions and Educational Implications
Appendix A: Race-Ethnicity Survey
Appendix B: Recruitment Flyer
Appendix C: Expressive Autobioraphical Interview Probes
References
Index

Who Is Black? One Nation’s Definition

Penn State Press
2001 (Originally published in 1992)
232 pages
6 x 9
ISBN 978-0-271-02172-0

F. James Davis, Professor Emeritus of Sociology
Illinois State University

Winner of the 1992 Outstanding Book on the Subject of Human Rights from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights in the United States.

Tenth Anniversary Edition

Reprinted many times since its first publication in 1991, Who Is Black? has become a staple in college classrooms throughout the United States, helping students understand this nation’s history of miscegenation and the role that the “one-drop rule” has played in it. In this special anniversary edition, the author brings the story up to date in an epilogue. There he highlights some revealing responses to Who Is Black? and examines recent challenges to the one-drop rule, including the multiracial identity movement and a significant change in the census classification of racial and ethnic groups.

Table of Contents

• PREFACE
• CHAPTER ONE: THE NATION’S RULE
  • The One-Drop Rule Defined
  • Black Leaders, But Predominantly White
  • Plessy, Phipps, and Other Challenges in Courts
  • Census Enumeration of Blacks
  • Uniqueness of the One-Drop Rule
• CHAPTER TWO: MISCEGENATION AND BELIEFS
  • Racial Classification and Miscegenation
  • Racist Beliefs About Miscegenation
  • The Judge Brady Paradox
  • Miscegenation in Africa and Europe
  • Race vs. Beliefs About Race
• CHAPTER THREE: CONFLICTING RULES
  • Early Miscegenation in the Upper South: The Rule Emerges
  • South Carolina and Louisiana: A Different Rule
  • Miscegenation on Black Belt Plantations
  • Reconstruction and the One-Drop Rule
  • The Status of Free Mulattoes, North and South
  • The Emergence and Spread of the One-Drop Rule
• CHAPTER FOUR: THE RULE BECOMES FIRM
  • Creation of the Jim Crow System
  • The One-Drop Rule Under Jim Crow
  • Effects of the Black Renaissance of the 1920s
  • The Rule and Myrdal’s Rank Order of Discriminations
  • Sexual Norms and the Rule: Jim Crow vs. Apartheid
  • Effects of The Fall of Jim Crow
  • De Facto Segregation and Miscegenation
  • Miscegenation Since the 1960s
  • Development of the One-Drop Rule in the Twentieth Century
• CHAPTER FIVE: OTHER PLACES, OTHER DEFINITIONS
  • Racial Hybrid Status Lower Than Both Parents Groups
  • Status Higher Than Either Parent Group
  • In-Between Status: South Africa and Others
  • Highly Variable Class Status: Latin America
  • Two Variants in the Caribbean
  • Equality for the Racially Mixed in Hawaii
  • Same Status as the Subordinate Group: The One-Drop Rule
  • Status of an Assimilating Minority
  • Contrasting Socially Constructed Rules
• CHAPTER SIX: BLACK ACCEPTANCE OF THE RULE
  • Alex Haley, Lillian Smith, and Others
  • Transracial Adoptions and the One-Drop Rule
  • Rejecton of the Rule: Garvey, American Indians, and Others
  • Black Acceptance: Reasons and Implications
• CHAPTER SEVEN: AMBIGUITIES, STRAINS, CONFLICTS, AND TRAUMAS
  • The Death of Walter White’s Father and Other Traumas
  • Collective Anxieties About Racial Identity: Some Cases
  • Personal Identity: Seven Modes of Adjustment
  • Lena Home’s Struggles with Her Racial Identity
  • Problems of Administering the One-Drop Rule
  • Misperceptions of the Racial Identity of South Asians, Arabs, and Others
  • Sampling Errors in Studying American Blacks
  • Blockage of Full Assimilation of Blacks
  • Costs of the One-Drop Rule
• CHAPTER EIGHT: ISSUES AND PROSPECTS
  • A Massive Distortion? A Monstrous Myth?
  • Clues for Change in Deviations from the Rule
  • Clues for Change in Costs of the Rule
  • Possible Direction: Which Alternative?
  • Prospects for the Future
• EPILOGUE TO THE TENTH ANNIVERSARY
• EDITION
• WORKS CITED
• INDEX

Notes of a White Black Woman: Race, Color, Community

Penn State Press
1995
206 pages
6 x 9
cloth: ISBN 978-0-271-01430-2
paper: ISBN 978-0-271-02124-9

Judy Scales-Trent, Floyd H. & Hilda L. Hurst Faculty Scholar, Professor Emerita
State Univerisity of New York at Buffalo Law School

“I remember one time in particular, after the cab I was in crashed into the car in front, then backed into the one behind. A policeman stopped to help.  As he was taking down my name and address, I noticed that he had checked the ‘white’ box.  ‘Officer,’ I said politely, ‘you made an error on your form. I am not white. I am black.’ He gave me a long, bored look, decided not to discuss it, and said, ‘Sure, lady.  If you say so.’ If I say so? If I say so!  As if it were my idea!  I was enraged at his assumption that all of this—the categories, the racial purity laws, the lives that are stomped, mangled, ruined because of those categories and those laws ïwas based on my say-so.  If I said so, we would do away with all of it ïthe sickness and fear, the need to classify as a way to control, the need to make some appear smaller so that others can appear larger. ‘If I say so’ indeed.”

While the “one-drop rule” in the United States dictates that people with any African ancestry are black, many black Americans have white skin.  Notes of a White Black Woman is one woman’s attempt to describe what it is like to be a “white” black woman and to live simultaneously inside and outside of both white and black communities.

Law professor Judy Scales-Trent begins by describing how our racial purity laws have operated over the past four hundred years.  Then, in a series of autobiographical essays, she addresses how race and color interact in relationships between men and women, within families, and in the larger community.  Scales-Trent ultimately explores the question of what we really mean by “race” in this country, once it is clear that race is not a tangible reality as reflected through color.

Scales-Trent uses autobiography both as a way to describe these issues and to develop a theory of the social construction of race.  She explores how race and color intertwine through black and white families and across generations; how members of both black and white communities work to control group membership; and what happens to relations between black men and women when thelayer of color is placed over the already difficult layer of race.  She addresses how one can tell–and whether one can tell–who, indeed, is “black” or “white.”  Scales-Trent also celebrates the richness of her bicultural heritage and shows how she has revised her teaching methods to provide her law students with a multicultural education.

The Social Construction of Race and Ethnicity in the United States (2nd Edition)

Prentice Hall
2001
525 pages
Paperback ISBN-10: 0130283231; ISBN-13:  9780130283238

Edited By:

Joan Ferrante
Northern Kentucky University

Prince Brown, Jr.
Northern Kentucky University

For undergraduate courses in race and ethnic relations.

This groundbreaking collection of classic and cutting edge sociological research gives special attention to the social construction of race and ethnicity in the United States. It offers an in-depth and eye-opening analysis of (a) the power of racial classification to shape our understanding of race and race relations, (b) the way in which the system came into being and remains, and (c) the real consequences this system has on life chances.

I. THE PERSONAL EXPERIENCE OF CLASSIFICATION SCHEMES.
Patricia Riley, Adventures of an Indian Princess. Timothy Egan, Expelled in 1877, Indian Tribe is Now Wanted as a Resource. Lawrence Otis Graham, Black Man with a Nose Job. Garrett Hongo, Culture Wars in Asian America. Andrea Kim, Born and Raised in Hawaii, But Not Hawaiian. Yolanda Adams, Don’t Want to Be Black Anymore. Mitzi Uehara-Carter, On Being Blackanese. Joan Ferrante, Six Case Studies. Dympna Ugwu-Oju, What Will My Mother Say. Paul Andrew Dawkins, Apologizing for Being a Black Male. Judy Scales-Trent, Choosing Up Sides. Marilyn Halter, Identity Matters: The Immigrant Children. Sarah Van’t Hul, How It Was for Me. Joseph Tovares, Mojado Like Me. Yuri Kochiyama, Then Came the War.

II. CLASSIFYING PEOPLE BY RACE.
Paul Knepper, Historical Origins of the Prohibition of Multiracial Legal Identity in the State and the Nation. Federal Statistical Directive No. 15 THE U.S. OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET, OMB’s Decisions: Revisions to Federal Statistical Directive. Prince Brown, Jr., Biology and the Social Construction of the “Race” Concept. Ian F. Haney Lopez, The Mean Streets of Social Race. Jack D. Forbes, “Indian” and “Black” as Radically Different Categories. Michael Granberry, A Tribe’s Battle for Its Identity. Madison Hemings, The Memoirs of Madison Hemings. Ariela J. Gross, Litigating Whiteness. Laura L. Lovett, Invoking Ancestors. Angelo N. Ancheta, Race Relations in Black and White . Time Magazine, How to Tell Your Friends From the Japs.

III. ETHNIC CLASSIFICATION.
The U.S. Bureau of the Census, Questions Related to Ethnicity. Luis Angel Toro, Directive No. 15 and Self-Identification. Himilce Novas, What’s in a Name? Julie E. Sprott, The Mingling of Alaska Natives with “Foreigners”: A Brief Historical Overview. Mary C. Waters, Choosing an Ancestry. David Steven Cohen, Reflections on American Ethnicity. Yen Le Espiritu, Theories of Ethnicity. Rudolph J. Vecoli, Are Italian-Americans Just White Folk? Peter D. Salins, Americans United by Myths.

IV. THE PERSISTENCE, FUNCTIONS, AND CONSEQUENCES OF SOCIAL CLASSIFICATION.
Judy Scales-Trent, On Being Like a Mule. Article XIX, Chinese, Constitution of the State of California, 1872; Repealed, November 4, 1952, State of California. Howard Zinn, Persons of Mean and Vile Condition. Stephen Jay Gould, Science and Jewish Immigration. J. A. Rogers, Remarks on the First Two Volumes of Sex and Race. Prince Brown, Jr., Why “Race” Makes No Scientific Sense: The Case of Africans and Native Americans. Albert Jacquard, Science, Pseudo-science and Racism. Charles A Gallagher, White Reconstruction in the University. Trina Grillo and Stephanie M. Wildman, Taking Back the Center. The U.S. Supreme Court, Plessy v. Ferguson. Cheryl I. Harris, Plessy. Albert Jacquard, Declaration of Athens: Scientists Speak Out Against Racism.

V. TOWARD A NEW PARADIGM: TRANSCENDING CATEGORIES.
Vivian J. Rohrl, The Anthropology of Race: A Study of Ways of Looking at Race. Letter from Thomas Jefferson: Virginia’s Definition of a Mulatto. Cruz Reynoso, Ethnic Diversity: Its Historical and Constitutional Roots. Erich Loewy, Making Good Again. Stephen H. Caldwell and Rebecca Popenoe, Perceptions and Misperceptions of Skin Color. Selected Discrimination Cases Handled by the U.S. Department of Justice in 1999. Nicholas Peroff, Indianess. K.C. Cole, Brain’s Use of Shortcuts Can Be A Route to Bias. Richard T. Schaefer, Talking Past One Another. Ward Churchill, Let’s Spread the “Fun” Around: The Issue of Sports Team Names and Mascots. Lawrence Otis Graham, The Rules of Passing. Anthony S. Parent and Susan Brown Wallace, Childhood and Sexual Identity Under Slavery. Patricia Hill Collins, Toward a New Vision: Race, Class, and Gender as Categories of Analysis and Connection. Bruce N. Simon, White-Blindness. Robert Jensen, White Privilege Shapes the U.S. Robert Jensen, More Thoughts on Why the System of White Privilege is Wrong.

Meeting the Needs of Multiethnic and Multiracial Children in Schools

Merrill an imprint of Pearson
2003-10-23
256 pages
ISBN-10: 0205376088
ISBN-13:  9780205376087

Francis Wardle
Red Rocks Community College, Colorado

Maria I. Cruz-Janzen, Associate Professor of Multicultural Education
Florida Atlantic University

From one of the premiere experts on the subject comes this “crash course” for teachers on understanding the developmental needs of multiethnic, multicultural, and multiracial children.

This book educates teachers through the experiences of children culturally, ethnically, and racially mixed heritage. In doing so, the authors challenge even longtime multicultural experts to broaden how we think and approach multicultural education. Wardle and Cruz-Janzen push the envelope of typical awareness. They are the harbingers of questions and information in a changing climate of race and culture ripe for redress and new ways of thinking, talking, and educating.

Both of these authors bring to this topic a wealth of personal experience and academic scholarship and insight. They courageously embrace new ideas and concepts of race and culture, both nationally and globally, and provide new and exciting ways of thinking, talking, learning and educating.

Features

• Authors encourage the reader to critically think about diverse family constellations and individual racial and ethnic identity.
• Different models of multiracial identity development are reviewed.
• Focus Questions at the beginning of each chapter help give students direction.
• A variety of tools are provided to help students critically examine their own perceptions, and to evaluate materials, curricular approaches, and instructional methods.

Author Bios

Francis Wardle first became involved in issues regarding multiethnic and multiracial children when his four-year-old daughter came to him in tears, after a peer used race as a put down. Since then he has created the Center for the Study of Biracial Children, given presentations on multiethnic and multiracial issues throughout the US and Canada, written extensively on the topic, and been quoted in newspapers, magazines, TV programs, and radio stations including NPR. Currently Dr. Wardle teaches at Red Rocks Community College and the University of Phoenix/Colorado Campus, consults for the National Head Start Migrant Program, and writes for a variety of national publications.

Marta I. Cruz-Janzen is Associate Professor of Multicultural Education at Florida Atlantic University. She received a Ph.D. in Curriculum & Instruction from the University of Denver, a Master of Arts and Master of Education in Human Development from Columbia University Teachers College, and a Bachelor of Science from Cornell University. Her dissertation, Curriculum and the Self-Concept of Biethnic and Biracial Persons received the University of Denver Phi Delta Kappa 1996-97 Dissertation of the Year Award. Marta has been a bilingual teacher and elementary school principal.

Table of Contents

1. Multiethnic and Multiracial Children.
   • Multiethnic and Multiracial Children in Our Schools.
   • Myths and Realities.
   • Chapter Feature: Eva.
   • Diversity in the Classroom.
   • Bill of Rights for Racially Mixed People.
   • Needs of Multiethnic and Multiracial Children.
   • Development of Racial and Ethnic Identity.
   • Student Profile.
   • Supporting Multiethnic and Multiracial Children.
2. Traditional Approaches.
   • Single Race-Ethnicity Approach.
   • Avoid Diversity by Celebration.
   • Student Profile.
   • Multicultural Education.
   • Group Membership.
   • Getting on the Same Page.
   • Approaches to Multicultural Education.
   • Banks’ Dimensions of Multicultural Education.
   • Banks’ Approaches to Multicultural Education.
   • Reforming Multicultural Education.
3. Historical Developments.
   • Student Profile.
   • Development of a Racial System.
   • Origins of U.S. Racism.
   • Rejection of Racial Mixing.
   • Latinos.
   • Student Profile.
   • Immigration.
   • Racism and Segregation.
   • Desegregation in Education.
4. Categorizing People.
   • Student Voices.
   • Understanding Race, Racism and Categorizing People.
   • Not Quite White: The Arab American Experience.
   • The Ethnic Category.
   • The Race Myth.
   • After the Civil War.
   • How Other Nations Categorize People.
   • The Legacy of Slaves and Slave Owners.
   • Maintaining the Color Line.
   • Today’s Multicultural and Multiethnic Children.
5. Identify Development of Multiethnic and Multiracial Children.
   • Identity Development.
   • Identity Development Models.
   • Chart Showing the Identity Models.
   • Developmental and Ecological Model of Identity Development.
   • Student Voices.
   • Diagram of the Ecological Components of the Multiethnic/Multiracial Identity Model.
6. Families and Communities.
   • The Multiethnic and Multiracial Family.
   • Myths and Realities.
   • Table of Age-Related Issues for Interracial and Interethnic Families.
   • Raising Healthy, Happy Interracial Children.
   • Different Family Structures.
7. Curricular Approaches.
   • Early Childhood.
   • Student Voices.
   • Late Elementary.
   • Student Voices.
   • How to Evaluate a Textbook/Reading Book for P-12 Programs.
   • Middle School.
   • Student Voices.
   • Multicultural School Activities.
   • High School.
   • Student Voices.
   • Comments About Interracial Marriage and Multiracial Identity by Frederick Douglass and Bob Marley.
   • Hidden Curriculum.
   • Multicultural Model.
   • Anti-Bias and Ecological Model of Multicultural Education.
   • Case Study of the Anti-Bias and Ecological Model.
8. Instructional Strategies.
   • The Impact of Standards on Instruction.
   • The Influence of the Teacher.
   • Student Voices.
   • Materials and Activities Checklist.
   • Biased Instructional Materials.
   • Culturally Authentic Bias.
   • Suggestions for Instructional Techniques.
   • Analysis of a Teaching Unit.
   • Multicultural Music and Dance.
9. Teaching Teachers.
   • The Nature of Public Education.
   • Preparing Future Teachers.
   • Teacher Preparation Programs.
   • Student Voices.
   • Sociopolitical Construction of Multiethnic and Multiracial Persons.
   • What Teachers Must Know and Be Able to Do.
   • Twenty-Five Recommendations for Teacher Education and Educational Leadership Faculty, Pre-Service Teacher Candidates, and Participate in Teacher In-Service.

Multiracial Classification on the United States Census: Myth, Reality, and Future Impact

Revue Européenne des Migrations Internationales
Volume 21, Number 2 (2005)
Pages 111-134

Ann Morning, Associate Professor of Sociology
New York University

The 2000 census in the United States provoked a flurry of media attention in the months leading up to it, as well as in its aftermath. At issue was the new federal decision permitting Americans to identify themselves with more than one race on the census form. Advocated in large part by interracially-married couples and their offspring, this bureaucratic change in racial classification practices was widely interpreted in the press as having a wider significance for the nation as a whole. As one reporter put it, “the change is fueling a weighty debate about the meaning of race” (2000). Other articles spoke to the same thought-provoking effect of the new classification standards: the Washington Post ran “Mixed-Race Heritage, Mixed Emotions: In Census and Society, Question of Categories Yields Many Answers” (Fears, 2001), while Newsday asked, “Does It All Add Up? New Census Race Categories Raise Questions About How They’re Used” (Winslow, 2001). According to the latter, “the impact of racial classifications on the latest census has far-reaching implications– socially, politically, even statistically– that have sown anger, suspicion, uncertainty and excitement in varying quarters.”

This essay examines the expectations – both positive and negative- that characterized public discourse about the introduction of multiple-race reporting on the 2000 U.S. census. More importantly, I revisit these predictions in order to assess whether they have proved accurate. In so doing, the paper aims for a clear stock-taking of the impact of multiple-race reporting to date: which expectations have been borne out, which have not, and what unforeseen developments seem most likely to be the medium or long-term legacy of the revision of the federal racial standards?

I begin by recalling both the benefits and the drawbacks that commentators in the late 1990s and early 2000s expected from multiple-race classification. With the understanding that some predictions were too long-term to fully assess today, I nonetheless consider each and offer a prognosis. I then extend the discussion to consider two potential results of multiple-race reporting that have received less attention: its impact on essentialist or biological interpretations of race, and its implications for the classification of the Hispanic population. In conclusion, I argue that the most widely-publicized hopes and fears about multiracial classification are likely to prove minor outcomes, while the unanticipated consequences may well be more significant…

Read the entire article here.

The Effects of Mixed-Race Households on Residential Segregation

Journal Urban Geography
Issue Volume 28, Number 6, August 16-September 30, 2007
Online Date: 2007-11-27
Pages 554-577
ISSN: 0272-3638
DOI 10.2747/0272-3638.28.6.554

Mark Ellis
University of Washington

Steven R. Holloway
University of Georgia

Richard Wright
Dartmouth College

Margaret East
The University of Texas, Arlington

This paper investigates how household-scale racial mixing affects measurements of neighborhood-scale racial segregation. This topic is increasingly important as mixed-race households are becoming more common across the United States.  Specifically, our research asks two questions: What is the sensitivity of neighborhood racial segregation measures to levels of household-scale racial mixing? And what is the relationship between neighborhood racial diversity and the presence of mixed-race households? We answer these questions with an analysis that uses confidential long-form data from the 1990 U.S. census. These data provide information on household racial composition at the tract level. The results show that racial mixing within households has meaningful effects on measurements of neighborhood segregation, suggesting that patterns of mixed-race household formation and residential location condition understandings of neighborhood segregation dynamics. We demonstrate that mixed-race households are a disproportionate source of neighborhood diversity in the least racially plural neighborhoods. This article also reflects on the complications that mixed-race households pose for the interpretations of neighborhood-scale segregation and cautions against drawing conclusions about residential desegregation based on racial mixing in households.

Read or purchase the article here.