When surveying youth in foster care, almost one in five changed their racial self-identification over a one-year period. This reflects a higher rate of change over a shorter period of time than has been reported in the literature for adolescents in the general public. In contrast, the increased likelihood for Native American and multi-racial youth in the current study to change their racial categorization mirrors findings from earlier studies involving similarly-aged youth; the findings also suggest that a significant proportion of Hispanic youth change their ethnic categorization as well. Findings from the current study further highlight high rates of discordance between the racial and ethnic self-identification of Native American, Hispanic and multi-racial youth, and how agencies (school and child welfare) categorize them. For example, the level of discordance between self-reports of Native American youth and the racial designations made by child welfare was 90% at Time 1; youth–child welfare discordance was even higher (96.1%) for multiracial youth. Similarly, Hispanic youth were misclassified by the child welfare system over half of the time, and by school approximately one-third of the time.
Jessica Schmidt, et. al., “Who am I? Who do you think I am? Stability of racial/ethnic self-identification among youth in foster care and concordance with agency categorization,” Children and Youth Services Review, Volume 56, September, 2015, 65. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2015.06.011. Also here.