Book Review: Multiracial Americans and Social Class: The Influence of Social Class on Racial Identity
Kathleen Odell Korgen, Editor, Multiracial Americans and Social Class: The Influence of Social Class on Racial Identity. New York: Routledge, 2010. 230 pp. (paperback).
Teaching Sociology
Volume 39, Number 2 (2011-04-11)
pages 214-216
DOI: 10.1177/0092055X11403292
Beth Frankel Merenstein, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Central Connecticut State University, New Britain, Connecticut
This collection of articles is organized into four sections, each focusing on the various issues and concerns of multiracial Americans, all with a particular emphasis on social class. Using a variety of methods, including statistical models as well as qualitative, in-depth interviews, the articles focus on issues of identity, demographical change, and culture, all through a lens of, as explained in the foreword, understanding how under a system of white supremacy, social class plays a pivotal role in the creation of a multiracial identity.
One immediate concern I had was with the organization of the book. While I found all the articles useful and informative in their own right, the division under the four different sections was unclear. In particular, I was unclear on why Section III had the three articles it did, focusing on multiracial Asian Americans, multiracial American Indians, and multiracial Hispanic youth, respectively. While none of these articles focused on biracial black-white Americans as the majority of the previous articles did, there seemed to be little other reason these three articles were joined together.
Nonetheless, correctly and jointly, these articles recognize that we live in a society dominated and dictated by white supremacy. To understand multiracial Americans, we must place individuals with this identity within this context. Additionally, this collection does what no other has: It includes in this recognition the role that class can and does play when it comes to understanding a multiracial identity and construction. Furthermore, numerous articles mention the way in which, in most conversations and research on multiracial Americans and racial identity, class is often conflated with culture. For example, Nikki Khanna…
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