Mixed Race Studies

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 für 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.

Methodology and Measurement in the Study of Multiracial Americans: Identity, Classification, and Perceptions

Sociology Compass
Volume 5, Issue 7 (July 2011)
pages 607–617
DOI: 10.1111/j.1751-9020.2011.00388.x

Melissa R. Herman, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Dartmouth College

This article lays out some of the methodological issues in doing research on multiracial people (those whose immediate and/or distant ancestors come from different racial or ethnic groups), including how they are counted, how they are perceived, how they identify themselves, what factors affect their self-identifications, and how their identifications change over time.

Read or purchase the article here.

Do You See What I Am? How Observers’ Backgrounds Affect Their Perceptions of Multiracial Faces

Social Psychology Quarterly
Volume 73, Number 1 (March 2010)
pages 58-78
DOI: 10.1177/0190272510361436

Melissa R. Herman, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Dartmouth College

Although race is one of the most salient status characteristics in American society, many observers cannot distinguish the racial ancestries of multiracial youth. This paper examines how people perceive multiracial adolescents: specifically, I investigate whether observers perceive the adolescents as multiracial and whether these racial perceptions are congruent with the multiracial adolescents’ self-identifications. Results show that 1) observers perceived close to half of multiracial targets as monoracial, 2) multiracial targets who identified themselves as black were nearly always perceived as black but not always as multiracial, and 3) the demographic and environmental characteristics of observers had no bearing on the congruence of their racial perceptions. That is, regardless of their own demographic characteristics or exposure to people of other races, observers were more congruent when examining targets who self-identified as black or white and less congruent when identifying targets from Asian, Hispanic, American Indian, or Middle Eastern backgrounds. Despite the demographic trend toward multiracialism in the United States, observers’ perceptions may maintain the status quo in race relations: a black-white dichotomy where part-blacks remain in the collective black category.

Read the entire article here.

SOCY 57: Identity and Social Interaction of Multiracial Americans

Dartmouth College
Department of Sociology
Upper Division

Currently being taught as of Spring 2011

Melissa R. Herman, Assistant Professor of Sociology

The 2000 Census revealed that nearly 4% of youth and 2% of adult Americans belong to more than one racial category. What are the social, historical, and biological meanings of the term multi-racial? What are the challenges and benefits associated with belonging to more than one race group? How do multi-racial youth negotiate the path to developing a healthy identity differently than mono-racial youth? How has the social context of race changed the way multiracial people identify? We will consider how schools, families, peer groups, and neighborhoods influence the development of biracial Americans. (Course syllabus)

Understanding Identity Differences among Biracial Siblings

American Sociological Association
Annual Meeting 2010
Regular Session: Multi-Racial Classification/Identity
Atlanta Marriott Marquis
Monday, 2010-08-16, 16:30-18:10 EDT (Local Time)

Session Organizer: Rebecca C. King-O’Riain, Senior Lecturer of Sociology, National University of Ireland-Maynooth 
Presider: Carolyn A. Liebler, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Minnesota

Melissa R. Herman, Assistant Professor, Sociology
Dartmouth University

This paper examines identity differences among a sample of 256 biracial siblings. We find that gender, age, and ancestry have modest relationships with identity, but that phenotype, racial context, language use, and social psychological factors have stronger relationships.

For more information, click here.

Politics and policies: attitudes toward multiracial Americans

Ethnic and Racial Studies
First Published on: 2010-04-15
Volume 33, Issue 9 (October 2010)
pages 1511-1536
DOI: 10.1080/01419871003671929

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

Melissa R. Herman, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Dartmouth College

The growing prominence of the multiracial population in the United States is prompting new questions about attitudes toward multiracial people and popular opinion of policies designed to protect them from discrimination. Currently, American anti-discrimination policies are directed at groups who identify with a single race, but the rising profile of multiracial groups introduces new complexity into questions about racial policy. In this study, we find generally positive affect toward multiracial people, although monoracial minorities are more positive toward multiracial people than whites are. About half of the monoracial minorities and the majority of whites oppose including multiracial people in anti-discrimination policies. Attitudes are associated with traditional predictors such as education and political beliefs, and also with the racial heterogeneity of the local context and intimate contact with other racial groups. Although multiracial people report experiencing discrimination at levels similar to those of monoracial minorities, our results suggest there may be significant resistance to anti-discrimination policies that include multiracial groups. 

Read the entire article here.

Chosing Racial Sides… American Society Forces Its Children To Make Tough Choices

USARiseUp.com
2010-02-20

Cassandra Franklin-Barbajosa

When Jolanda Williams looks in a mirror, the image she sees is a warm peach complexion framed in dark silky hair, high cheekbones beneath almond eyes, and full lips that slip into an easy, radiant smile. She has a face that could belong almost anywhere in the world, Mexico, India, or Indonesia. Yet Williams, the daughter of a white German mother and a black American father, has spent the better part of her 35 years coming to terms with where she fits in.

“In America, it is all about your physical characteristics,” says Williams, a resident of Brooklyn, New York, who, for as long as she can remember, has identified herself on paper as African-American. “If I were to put “white” on a job application and walk into an interview, whoever was interviewing me would assume they had the wrong person. It is unrealistic for me to think I can actually walk through the world identifying as white, considering the way I look.”…

…Dr. Melissa Herman, assistant professor of sociology at Dartmouth College in Hanover, [New Hampshire], understands the reasoning behind the choices made by the more than six million multiracial people in the United States.

“A lot of our choices about identity have to do with phenotype, our physical characteristics, because it is these characteristics that determine how other people perceive us and treat us,” she says. “If you look even slightly black, there is extreme social pressure in American society to be black, which is certainly a vestige of the system of hypodescent, or the one-drop rule. Even though it is no longer legally enforced, it is very much socially enforced. It is ingrained in children from a very early age; not necessarily by their parents, who may want them to have the freedom to choose, but by our society.”..

Read the entire article here.

Multiracial Americans and Social Class: The Influence of Social Class on Racial Identity

Routledge
2010-04-21
256 pages
Hardback ISBN: 978-0-415-48397-1
Papeback ISBN: 978-0-415-48399-5
E-Book ISBN: 978-0-203-88373-0

Edited by

Kathleen Odell Korgen, Professor of Sociology
William Paterson University

As the racial hierarchy shifts and inequality between Americans widens, it is important to understand the impact of social class on the rapidly growing multiracial population. Multiracial Americans and Social Class is the first book on multiracial Americans to do so and fills a noticeable void in a growing market.

In this book, noted scholars examine the impact of social class on the racial identity of multiracial Americans in highly readable essays from a range of sociological perspectives. In doing so, they answer the following questions: What is the connection between class and race? Do you need to be middle class in order to be an ‘honorary white’? What is the connection between social class and culture? Do you need to ‘look’ White or just ‘act’ White in order to be treated as an ‘honorary white’? Can social class influence racial identity? How does the influence of social class compare across multiracial backgrounds?

Multiracial Americans and Social Class is a key text for undergraduate and postgraduate students, researchers and academics in the fields of Sociology, Race and Ethnic Studies, Race Relations, and Cultural Studies.

Table of Contents

Part 1: Who are Multiracial Americans?

• 1. Multiracial Americans and Social Class, Kathleen Odell Korgen
• 2. In-Between Racial Status, Mobility and Promise of Assimilation: Irish, Italians Yesterday, Latinos and Asians Today, Charles Gallagher
• 3. ‘What’s Class Got to Do with It?’: Images and Discourses on Race and Class in Interracial Relationships, Erica Chito Childs
• 4. Social Class: Racial/Ethnic Identity, and the Psychology of Choice, Peony Fhagen-Smith
• 5. Stability and Change in Racial Identities of Multiracial Adolescents, Ruth Burke and Grace Kao

Part 2: Culture, Class, Racial Identity, and Blame

• 6. Country Clubs and Hip-Hop Thugs: Examining the Role of Social Class and Culture in Shaping Racial Identity, Nikki Khanna
• 7. Language, Power, and the Performance of Race and Class, Benjamin Bailey
• 8. Black and White Movies: Crash between Class and Biracial Identity Portrayals of Black/White Biracial Individuals in Movies, Alicia Edison and George Yancey
• 9. ‘Who is Really to Blame?’ Biracial Perspectives on Inequality in America, Monique E. Marsh

Part 3: Social Class, Demographic, and Cultural Characteristics

• 10. ‘Multiracial Asian Americans’, C. N. Le
• 11. A Group in Flux: Multiracial American Indians and the Social Construction of Race, Carolyn Liebler
• 12. Socioeconomic Status and Hispanic Identification in Part-Hispanic Multiracial Adolescents, Maria L. Castilla and Melissa R. Herman

Part 4: Social Class, Racial Identities, and Racial Hierarchies

• 13. Social Class and Multiracial Groups: What Can We Learn from Large Surveys? Mary E. Campbell
• 14. The One-Drop Rule through a Multiracial Lens: Examining the Roles of Race and Class in Racial Classification of Children of Partially Black Parents, Jenifer Bratter
• 15. It’s Not That Simple: Multiraciality, Models, and Social Hierarchy, Ingrid Dineen-Wimberly and Paul Spickard

Contributors

Benjamin Bailey is an Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. His research on the interactional negotiation of ethnic and racial identity in US contexts has appeared in Language in Society, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology and International Migration Review.

Jenifer L. Bratter is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Associate Director of the Institute for Urban Research at Rice University. Her research focuses on the dynamics of racial intermarriage, marriage and multiracial populations, and has recently been published in Social Forces, Sociological Quarterly, Sociological Forum and Family Relations.

David L. Brunsma is Associate Professor of Sociology and Black Studies at the University of Missouri. He is author or editor of numerous books, including Beyond Black: Biracial Identity in America. His research has appeared in Social Forces, Social Science Quarterly, Sociological Quarterly, and Identity.

Ruth H. Burke is a Graduate Student in Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on racial inequality in the United States and racial identification.

Mary E. Campbell is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Iowa. Her research focuses on racial inequality and identification, and has recently been published in American Sociological Review, Social Problems, Social Science Quarterly and Social Science Research.

Maria Castilla earned her BA in 2009 from Dartmouth College, with high honors in sociology. She currently attends Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University.

Erica Chito Childs is an Associate Professor at Hunter College. Her research interests focus on issues of race, black/white couples, gender and sexuality in relationships, families, communities and media/popular culture. Her publications include Navigating Interracial Borders: Black-White Couples and Their Social Worlds (2005) and Fade to Black and White (2009).

Ingrid Dineen-Wimberly is a historian and lecturer at UC Santa Barbara, whose forth-coming book, By the Least Bit of Blood, examines the uplift potential a vocal Black identity provided mixed-raced leaders during the 19th and 20th centuries. Her analysis extends beyond the U.S. to include the function of race in the process of Latin-American nation-making.

Alicia L. Edison is a Graduate Student at the University of North Texas. Her research focuses on race and ethnicity, biracial identity formation, and the perpetuation of racial stereotypes within the media.

Peony Fhagen-Smith is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Wheaton College in Norton, MA. Her research centers on racial/ethnic identity development across the life-span and has published in Journal of Black Psychology, Journal of Counseling Psychology, Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development, and The Counseling Psychologist.

Melissa R. Herman, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Dartmouth, studies how identity affects developmental outcomes among multiracial adolescents. Her current research projects examine perceptions of multiracial people and interracial relationships. Her recent work appears in Child Development, Sociology of Education, and Social Psychology Quarterly.

Charles A. Gallagher is Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology, Social Work and Criminal Justice at La Salle University in Philadelphia. In addition to numerous book chapters, his research on how the media, popular culture and political ideology shapes perceptions of racial and social inequality has been published in Ethnic and Racial Studies, Social Forces and Race, Gender and Class.

Grace Kao is Professor of Sociology and Education at University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on race and immigrant differences in educational outcomes. Currently, she serves on the editorial boards of Social Science Research, Social Psychology Quarterly and Social Science Quarterly.

Nikki Khanna is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Vermont. Her research on racial identity negotiation and gender in group processes has been published in Social Psychology Quarterly, Advances in Group Processes, and The Sociological Quarterly.

C. N. Le is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Director of Asian/Asian American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He focuses on racial/ethnic relations, immigration, institutional assimilation among Asian Americans, and public sociology through his Asian-Nation.org website.

Carolyn A. Liebler is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Minnesota. Her research on indigenous populations, racial identity and the measurement of race has been published in Ethnic and Racial Studies, Social Science Research, and Social Science Quarterly.

Monique E. Marsh is a Graduate Student of Sociology at Temple University. Her research focuses on racial inequality and identification, and has recently been presented at the Eastern Sociological Society Annual Conference and at the National Science Foundation’s GLASS AGEP Research Conference.

Paul Spickard teaches history and Asian American studies at UC Santa Barbara. The author of fourteen books, including Almost All Aliens: Immigration, Race, and Colonialism in American History and Identity. He is currently studying race in Hawaii and in Germany.

George A. Yancey is a Professor of Sociology at the University of North Texas. His work has focused on interracial families and multiracial churches. His latest book is Interracial Families: Current Concepts and Controversies.

Implications of Racial Self-Identification, Racial Ancestry, and Racial Context for Depressive Symptoms, Achievement, and Self-Esteem Among Multiracial Adolescents

Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association
Montreal Convention Center
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
2006-08-11
32 pages

Melissa Herman, Assistant Professor, Sociology
Dartmouth University

This paper describes the impact of racial self-identification, racial ancestry, and racial composition of contexts on measures of depressive symptoms, achievement, and self-esteem among 1,417 multiracial youth and 7,310 monoracial youth ages 14-19. Comparisons are made both between multi- and monoracial groups, and within groups of multiracial respondents who self-identify in different single-race categories. Results show that racial ancestry, self-identification, and context are significantly related to these developmental outcomes. For multiracial youth, self-identifying as Black or Hispanic is associated with lower grades while simply having Black ancestry (regardless of self-identification) is not. Net of other factors, neither ancestry nor identification appear to have a significant impact on depressive symptoms among monoracial students but they have a significant impact for multi-racial part-Blacks and part-Hispanics. Racial context showed a significant impact only for neighborhood: the lower percentage of whites in a multiracial youth’s neighborhood, the lower his or her grades.

Read the entire paper here.

Forced to Choose: Some Determinants of Racial Identification

Child Development
May/June 2004
Volume 75, Number 3
Pages 730-748

Melissa Herman, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Dartmouth University

This paper categorizes multiracial youth (N=1,496) ages 14 to 19 and compares them with other and with monoracial youth on identity development measures.  The multiracial categories used here are derived from youths’ reports of their own and their parents’ race(s).  Comparisons are made within groups of multiracial respondents who make different choices among single-race categories.  Results show differences between sub-groups in strength and importance of ethnic identity, self-esteem, and perceptions of ethnic discrimination.  Multinomial logistic regression show further that physiognomy, ethnic identity, and race of coresident parent(s) are significantly associated with reported race.  Also related to racial identification among part-Hispanic youth are racial distribution and socioeconomic status of their neighborhoods and the racial distribution of their schools.

Read the entire article here.