Mixed Race Studies

2013-01-17

Hi Steven,

This note is a grateful note: just wanted to say thanks for collating such broad, broad data on such a contested subject. Mixed-race is a tough one, hey? It’s wonderful that you made a site which brought all those opinions, past and present, onto a page which I can scroll down and read to my heart’s content (or heart’s discontent, at times, since often the experiences that are told on your site aren’t happy ones at all. But let’s hope for the future.)

I’m a person who identifies as mixed-race. My father is Cape Coloured and my mother was born in Australia to Dutch parents. They met here, in Melbourne.

Thank you for letting me hear the other voices out there; some I can relate to, some I can’t, but all of them make me grateful that we can, at least, have the conversation.

Kindest regards,

Emma Jacobus
Melbourne, Australia

Bridging 1990 and 2000 census race data: Fractional assignment of multiracial populations

Population Research and Policy Review
Volume 20, Issue 6 (December 2001)
pages 513-533
DOI: 10.1023/A:1015666321798

James P. Allen, Emeritus Professor of Geography
California State University, Northridge

Eugene Turner, Professor of Geography
California State University, Northridge

In contrast to previous censuses, Census 2000 permitted individuals to mark more than one race. Because the new race tables include both single-race and mixed-race categories, measuring change during the 1990s requires some method of bridging between the two data sets.

To accomplish this bridging, we first identified biracial populations as of 1990 through the race and ancestry responses of individuals in the PUMS file. With race responses assumed to represent a person’s primary race identity, we then determined the percentage of each biracial group that preferred each race as the primary identity. The same percentages can be used to assign biracial persons from Census 2000 into single-race categories. We also provide fractional assignment percentages for selected states and for the larger specific nationality groups of mixed-race Asians.

Comparison of our 1990 estimates of the numbers in leading biracial groups with those reported in Census 2000 suggests that our fractional assignment values are reasonable for biracial groups other than those involving American Indians and Alaska Natives. For the latter biracial groups and for all groups representing three or more races, we recommend equal fractional assignment into the appropriate single-race categories.