Race-ing and (E)race-ing the Child: Interracial Families Negotiate Racial Identification for their Multiracial Children

Posted in Family/Parenting, Media Archive, Papers/Presentations, United States on 2009-10-07 01:25Z by Steven

Race-ing and (E)race-ing the Child: Interracial Families Negotiate Racial Identification for their Multiracial Children

Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association
Marriott Hotel, Loews Philadelphia Hotel
Philadelphia, PA
2005-08-12

18 pages

David L. Brunsma, Professor of Sociology
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

In this paper, a nationally-representative sample of kindergarten-aged children is used from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study to explore the structure of parental racial designation of mixed-race children. The variation in these parental designations of a variety of combinations of mixed-race children is described. Parental racial designations in the three most common majority-minority interracial couplings – White/Hispanic, Black/White, and Asian/White – are predicted using multinomial logistic regression models. The results may indicate a movement by the parents of these multiracial children away from minority status through racial labeling and towards “multiracial” and “white” – movements that are predicated upon social class. A critical discussion of the implications of these results considers the multifaceted reasons why parents are deciding to racially label their children in the ways that they do.

Read the entire paper here.

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