Mixed Race Studies

Mixed-race couples, residential mobility, and neighborhood poverty

Social Science Research
Volume 73, July 2018
pages 146-162
DOI: 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2018.03.007

Ryan Gabriel, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah

Despite substantial growth in mixed-race coupling, we know little about their association with neighborhood poverty. To address this gap, I utilize data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics linked to information from four censuses. With these data, I assess the extent to which mixed-race couples are more likely than monoracial couples to migrate in response to higher percentages of neighborhood poverty; and, once they move, I examine the percentage poverty in their destination neighborhoods. I find that most mixed-race couples are similar to white couples in their out-mobility responses to neighborhood poverty. However, when mixed-race couples with black partners migrate they tend to move to neighborhoods with higher poverty concentrations than couples without a black partner. Mixed-race couples without black partners experience similar percentages of poverty in their destination neighborhoods as whites, providing further evidence of the profound impact of black race on residential stratification.

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Is race a ‘salient…’ or ‘dominant identity’ in the early 21st century: The evidence of UK survey data on respondents’ sense of who they are

Social Science Research
Available online 2012-11-07
DOI: 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2012.10.007

Peter J. Aspinall, Emeritus Reader in Population Health
Centre for Health Services Studies
University of Kent

Miri Song, Professor of Sociology
University of Kent

The term ‘master status’, coined by Everett Hughes in 1945 with special reference to race, was conceptualised as one which, in most social situations, will dominate all others. Since then race and other collective social identities have become key features of people’s lives, shaping their ‘life scripts’. But is race still a ‘master’ or ‘dominant identity’ and, if not, what has replaced it? Analyses of recent social surveys show that race has lost its position to family, religion (in the South Asian and Black groups) and (amongst young mixed race people) also age/life-stage and study/work. However, many of these different identity attributes are consistently selected, suggesting the possibility – confirmed in in-depth interviews – that they may work through each other via intersectionality. In Britain race appears to have been undermined by the rise of ‘Muslim’ identity, the increasing importance of ‘mixed race’, and the fragmentation of identity now increasingly interwoven with other attributes like religion.

Highlights

• Race has lost its dominant position to family, religion, age/life-stage & study/work.
• Many selected identity attributes work through each other via intersectionality.
• Race has been undermined by religion, mixedness, & fragmentation of identity.

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Measures of “Race” and the Analysis of Racial Inequality in Brazil

Social Science Research
Available online 2012-07-05
DOI: 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2012.06.006

Stanley R. Bailey, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of California, Irvine

Mara Loveman, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of Wisconsin, Madison

Jeronimo O. Muniz, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Federal University of Minas Gerais

Quantitative analyses of racial disparities typically rely on a single categorical measure to operationalize race. We demonstrate the value of an approach that compares results obtained using various measures of race. Using a national probability sample of the Brazilian population that captured race in six formats, we first show how the racial composition of Brazil can shift from majority white to majority black depending on the classification scheme. In addition, using quantile regression, we find that racial disparities are most severe at the upper end of the income distribution; that racial disparities in earnings are larger when race is defined by interviewers rather than self-identified; and that those classified as “black” suffer a greater wage penalty than those classified as “brown.” Our findings extend prior conclusions about racial inequality in Brazil. More generally, our analysis demonstrates that comparison of results across measures represents a neglected source of analytic leverage for advancing empirical knowledge and theoretical understanding of how race, as a multidimensional social construct, contributes to the production of social inequality.

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Racial identity and the spatial assimilation of Mexicans in the United States

Social Science Research
Volume 21, Issue 3 (September 1992)
pages 235-260
DOI: 10.1016/0049-089X(92)90007-4

Douglas S. Massey, Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs
Princeton University

Nancy A. Denton, Professor of Sociology
Center for Social and Demographic Analysis
State University of New York, Albany

Mexico’s national ideology holds that Mexicans are mestizos, a racially mixed group created by the union of Europeans and Indians. When Mexicans migrate to the United States, this mixed racial identity comes into conflict with Anglo-American norms that view race dichotomously, as Indian or white but not both. In this paper we examine the process of ideological assimilation by which Mexicans in the United States shift their identities from mestizo to white, and then measure the effect that race has on the level of residential segregation from non-Hispanic whites. Although residential barriers are not as severe for mestizos as for Hispanics of African heritage, we find that mestizos are significantly less likely than white Mexicans to achieve suburban residence and that this fact, in turn, lowers their probability of contact with non-Hispanic whites.

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I wouldn’t, But You Can: Attitudes toward Interracial Relationships

Social Science Research
Published online: 2011-11-18
DOI: 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2011.11.007

Melissa R. Herman, Visiting Researcher of the Research Unit
Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin fĂźr Sozialforschung
also Assistant Professor, Sociology, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire

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

Using the 2008 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES), we study Whites’ attitudes towards dating, cohabiting with, marrying, and having children with African Americans and Asian Americans. We find that 29% of White respondents reject all types of relationships with both groups whereas 31% endorse all types. Second, Whites are somewhat less willing to marry and bear children interracially than to date interracially. These attitudes and behaviors are related to warmth toward racial outgroups, political conservatism, age, gender, education, and region. Third, White women are likely to approve of interracial relationships for others but not themselves, while White men express more willingness to engage in such relationships personally, particularly with Asians. However, neither White men nor White women are very likely to actually engage in interracial relationships. Thus, positive global attitudes toward interracial relationships do not translate into high rates of actual interracial cohabitation or marriage.

Highlights

• Whites are more willing date interracially than to intermarry or bear multiracial children.
• These attitudes are related to outgroup warmth, conservatism, age, gender, education & region.
• White women generally approve of interracial relationships for others but not themselves.
• White men generally approve of interracial relationships both personally and globally.
• Neither White men nor White women are very likely to actually engage in one.

Ties on the fringes of identity

Social Science Research
Volume 33, Issue 4 (December 2004)
Pages 702-723
DOI: 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2003.10.002

Carolyn A. Liebler, Assistant Professor of Sociology
University of Minnesota

I use data on part-American Indian children in the 1990 Census 5% PUMS to assess my hypotheses that thick racial ties within the family constrain racial identification, and that structural aspects of the community (group size, inequality, and racial heterogeneity) affect racial identification when racial ties are thin within the family. American Indians present an interesting case study because their high levels of intermarriage and complex patterns of assimilation/identity retention for generations provide a varied group of people who could potentially identify their race as American Indian. Several hypotheses are supported by the data, signifying that racial identification among people with mixed-heritage is affected by the social world beyond individual psychology and racial ties within the family.

Article Outline

1. Introduction
2. Identity and thickness of ties
3. Hypotheses
4. Data and sample selection
5. Dependent variables
6. Focal independent variables
7. Control variables
8. Drawbacks to using census data to study identity
9. Results
10. Discussion
11. Conclusion
Appendix A. Descriptive statistics for entire sample
References

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Choosing Race: Multiracial Ancestry and Identification

Social Science Research
Volume 40, Issue 2 (March 2011)
pages 498–512
DOI: 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2010.12.010

Aaron Gullickson, Assistant Professor of Sociology
University of Oregon

Ann Morning, Assistant Professor of Sociology
New York University

Social scientists have become increasingly interested in the racial identification choices of multiracial individuals, partly as a result of the federal government’s new “check all that apply” method of racial identification. However, the majority of work to date has narrowly defined the population of multiracial individuals as the “biracial” children of single-race parents. In this article, we use the open-ended ancestry questions on the 1990 and 2000 5% samples of the U.S. Census to identify a multiracial population that is potentially broader in its understanding of multiraciality. Relative to other studies, we find stronger historical continuity in the patterns of hypodescent and hyperdescent for part-black and part-American Indian ancestry individuals respectively, while we find that multiple race identification is the modal category for those of part-Asian ancestry. We interpret this as evidence of a new, more flexible classification regime for groups rooted in more recent immigration. Our results suggest that future work on multiracial identification must pay closer attention to the varied histories of specific multiracial ancestry groups.

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The importance of being “other”: 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 of Sociology and Psychology
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Despite recent concern with the measurement of race, almost no scholarship has explored the residual response category of “other” itself. The 2000 census included a significant number selecting “other,” 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 “other” category at three levels of analysis: self-identification, external attribution, and structural interpretation. Far from being a residual category, we find that “other” 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—Hispanic and otherwise—utilize 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 “other” is removed as a potential response.

1. Introduction

“We are here on Earth to do good to others. What the others are here for, I don’t know.”
W. H. Auden (1907–1973)

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 “other” 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 “other” category represents a proxy for “Hispanic,” demonstrating that the lived experience of millions of individuals contradicts the academic reification between race and ethnicity. An in-depth examination of the “other” category suggests that current racial measurement conventions do not accurately reflect Americans’ social reality.

Using a serendipitous change in the measurement of race in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), we track individuals’ changes in racial self-identification across time when the “other” option is removed from the racial measurement item. We explore the socialreality of the “other” 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 “other” 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.

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Thinking outside the (black) box: Measuring black and multiracial identification on surveys

Social Science Research
Volume 36, Issue 3, September 2007
Pages 921-944
DOI: 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2006.07.001 

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

To better understand the diversity of the multiracial population, compare multiracial data to single-race data, and evaluate the rigidity of racial boundaries, we must understand the single-race identification choices of multiracial respondents. Many studies assume that this pattern will be straightforward for multiracial respondents who choose a part-black identification, with virtually all choosing a “black” single-race identification. I investigate whether this assumption is justified by available survey data. Using the May 1995 Current Population Survey’s Race and Ethnicity Supplement, I explore the single-race identifications of individuals who have chosen a part-black multiracial label on a survey. I find that single-race identification choices on forced-choice questions vary considerably across family heritage groups, with those who choose a “black-American Indian” identity extremely likely to select a black single-race identity, while other groups like “black-whites” have substantial variation in single-race identifications. Identification patterns vary significantly by age, family context and survey characteristics.

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Homelands and Indigenous Identities in a Multiracial Era

Social Science Research
Article In Press, Accepment Manuscript
Online: 2010-02-17

Carolyn A. Liebler, Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology and Minnesota Population Center
University of Minnesota

Although multiple race responses are now allowed on federal censuses and surveys, most interracially married single-race parents report a single race for their children. It is well-established that the social context of these racial identification decisions affects their outcome. This research focuses instead on the physical context. It is argued that homelands – physical places with cultural meaning – are an important component of the intergenerational transfer of a single-race identity in indigenous mixed-race families. To test potential explanations for the relationship between homelands and indigenous identities, this research focuses on families in which an interracially married American Indian lives with a spouse and child and was included in the Census 2000 5% Public Use Microdata Sample. Logistic regression reveals a strong effect of living in an American Indian homeland on the child’s chances of being reported as single-race American Indian. This effect remains even after accounting for strong ties to American Indians and other groups, family and area poverty levels, geographic isolation, and the racial composition of the area. The intergenerational transmission of strong identities continues in this multiracial era (as it has for centuries) in the context of culturally meaningful physical places.

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