Interracial Families Racial Identity of Mixed Race Children

Interracial Families and the Racial Identification of
Mixed-Race Children: Evidence from the Early Childhood

Longitudinal Study
David L. Brunsma
Social Forces, Volume 84, Number 2, December 2005, pp. 1131-1157 (Article)
Published by Oxford University Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/sof.2006.0007
For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/194254
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Interracial Families and the Racial Identification of Mixed-
Race Children: Evidence from the Early Childhood
Longitudinal Study
David L. Brunsma, University of Missouri, Columbia
Abstract
In this article, a nationally-representative sample of kindergarten-aged children is used
from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study to explore the structure of parental racial
designation of mixed-race children. The variation in these parental designations of a
variety of mixed-race children is described. Parental racial designations in the three most
common majority-minority interracial couplings White/Hispanic, Black/White and
Asian/White are predicted using multinomial logistic regression models. The results may
indicate a movement by the parents of these multiracial children away from minority
status through racial labeling and towards multiracial and White movements that
are predicated upon gender, class and context. Critical discussions of the implications of
these results as well as directions for future research are offered.
The Loving vs. Virginia decision, handed down in 1967, was a key event in United States
history, creating a spark that lit a subsequent fire of demographic change (Bratter and Zuberi
2001). Such a socio-cultural and legal endorsement of interracial relationships eventually
produced what has been dubbed as a biracial baby boom. In the 1970s, approximately 1
percent of children were products of an interracial union; by 2000, that number had grown
to more than 5 percent (Herman 2004).
Public discourse on issues surrounding the existence of multiracial Americans and
multiraciality has also increased exponentially since the 1970s. While it is absolutely clear that
the existence of multiracial people is not a new phenomenon (Frazier 1957; Porterfield 1978;
Spencer 1999; Williamson 1995), it has solidly become a public issue (Brunsma forthcoming).
By centurys end, the political, cultural and scholarly discourse surrounding multiraciality had
reached a feverish pitch. (See Daniel 2002; Rockquemore and Brunsma 2001; Root 1996; and
Spencer 1999 for reviews.) In the years leading up to the U.S. Census decision to allow
individuals to check all that apply in 2000 reflecting an acknowledgement of demographic
transformations and ever since, debates have flourished hailing the end of race (DSouza
1996; Graves 2004), debates over the color-blind era (Bonilla-Silva 2001; Herring, Keith and
Horton 2004), the role and purpose of collecting racial classification data (Anderson and
Fienberg 1999; Nobles 2000; Zuberi 2003), the distinction between racial identity and racial
identification, and the possibilities and pitfalls of developing a multifaceted racial identity
(Rockquemore and Brunsma 2002, 2001) in 21st century America. The cultural contours of
race in America are changing.
While discourse has shifted to highly personal and political discussions of multiraciality and
the role and meaning of racial categories, the prevalent role of race and processes of racialization
I would like to thank George Yancey, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Kerry Ann Rockquemore, Erica Chito
Childs, Melissa Herman, Annamaria Csizmadia, three anonymous reviewers and the editor of Social
Forces, Judith Blau, for their fantastic comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript. Direct
correspondence to David L. Brunsma, Department of Sociology, 332 Middlebush Hall, University of
Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211. E-mail: brunsmad@missouri.edu.
The University of North Carolina Press Social Forces, Volume 84, Number 2, December 2005
1132 Social Forces Volume 84, Number 2 December 2005
in the lives of Americans as well as the racial inequalities present in primary U.S. institutions has
not subsided (e.g., Blau 2004). Evidence of steady and increasing institutionalized and
interpersonal racism (Conley 1999; Feagin 2000), systemic (Bonilla-Silva 2003; Winant 2002) and
epistemic (Mills 1997) racial inequality, and racially-motivated discrimination (Feagin and
McKinney 2003) grows with every data set accumulated and every collection of results published
the United States remains a racially divided and unequal society.
Existence in such a society exacts a toll on all families, interpersonal relationships and
individuals in a variety of ways. Interracial families and the parents of mixed-race children in
particular have always plotted a strategic course through the racial (and class) structure of
American society (Dalmage 2000). Contemporarily, they are trying to navigate a complex,
changing racial terrain where multiraciality is discussed and debated, where race and racism
is denounced and supposedly diminished, where, in the end, race still matters as an axis
through which goods, services, opportunities and life chances are distributed unequally to
members of the same society. Given the complex interplay of class-based, racial and
gendered structures that contribute to ever-morphing racial formations and racial projects
occurring at the cultural, political, as well as the interactional and individual level, how do
interracial couples (or couples socializing mixed-race children) racially identify their children?
This article will explore the structure and patterns of parents racial designation of their
multiracial children using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study a nationally
representative cohort of American kindergartners and their parents/guardians (U.S. Department
of Education 2001). Given that the greatest proportion of people who checked more than one
racial designation on Census 2000 were below 18 years of age (Jones and Smith 2001), it is
clear that their parents/guardians were heavily (if not solely) involved in the designation of these
childrens racial classification. The children in this study range in age from 4 to 6 years. Exploring
and beginning to understand the complex ways in which their adult guardians racially categorize
them on an institutional survey (e.g., related to their education in school) helps to illuminate the
complexities inherent in race relations, processes of racialization, the structure of racial
stratification, and the enigmatic relationship between racial identity and racial identification.
Research on Identity, Identification and their Interplay
Mixed-race persons have always been a concern in American society because of the
challenge they pose to the racial order. The history and structure of this concern has been well
documented elsewhere (Davis 1991). Classification schemes (e.g., The Great Chain of Being,
the Linnaean system, the norm of Hypodescent, the U.S. Census, etc.) have attempted to
divide and conquer diversity and difference in the social structure while preserving White
privilege. Meanwhile, historically, mixed-race individuals have navigated the racial system in
a variety of different ways with varying degrees of systemic challenge and acquiescence. In
the United States, the real links between the classification system (socially legitimated modes
of identification [Bourdieu 2001]) and the distribution of wealth and privilege have been
recognized, and mixed-race individuals have attempted, whenever possible, to experientially
attach themselves with varying degrees of saliency (modes of identity) to various strategies of
racial identity formation and maintenance.
Multiracials and Racial Identity
Research on biracial and/or multiracial identity has gone through several, fairly distinct phases:
First, developing and investigating models of racial pride focusing on how mixed-race
Racial Identification of Children 1133
individuals could (and should) develop a positive racial identity (i.e., not White) that largely
focused around the flourishing of the pride movements of the late 1960s and 1970s (Bowles
1993; Boykin and Toms 1985; Cross 1971; Miller and Miller 1990; Morten and Atkinson 1983;
Porter and Washington 1993; Porterfield 1978; Poussaint 1984). Second, the 1980s ushered
in models of biracial and multiracial identity that focused on developing models whereby a
mixed-race individual could (and should) effectively cultivate an integrative racial identity a
recognition of both parts of his or her parentage (Gibbs 1997; Herring 1995; Johnson 1992;
Kerwin et al. 1993; Kich 1992; Poston 1990; Wardle 1992). Third, research, largely from the
mid-1990s to the present day, has moved away from normativity in order to empirically
understand grounded patterns of racial identity negotiation and maintenance by multiracial
Americans. This research has concerned itself with trying to understand the multi-
dimensionality of racial identity among mixed-race people in the United States. These latter
studies often looked more critically at the existing structural and cultural forms of
classification (and affiliated racial identification) as a roadmap to power and privilege in the
United States, as a nominal indication of how this society will treat members of different racial
categories, and how this contextual phenomenon influences the development of racial
identities.
The increasing research on processes of identity has indeed uncovered a wide array of
strategies and negotiations that occur along the color line in America strategies that are both
micro/interpersonal, embedded within larger structures of race, and the motivation behind
many recent political and social movements regarding race and racial classification. For
example, Rockquemore and Brunsma (2001), recently studyied these processes for Black-
White biracial adults and found that these individuals understand themselves racially in a
myriad of ways: (1) as biracial, (2) as Black, (3) as Black, White and biracial, depending on the
interpersonal context, (4) as transcendent of racial identity altogether, and (5) as exclusively
White. Similar grounded identity strategies/understandings have been found among other
combinations of mixed-race persons.
Research has found that racial identity is influenced by a number of factors. First,
researchers have found that social class has an impact on the self-understandings of
multiracials primarily finding that the higher ones social class, the less likely he or she is to
relate to minority status or identify with the lower status racial identity (i.e., a Black-Hispanic
person will not pursue an exclusively Black identity) (Daniel 2002; Rockquemore and Brunsma
2001; Yancey 2003). Second, the racial composition of social networks also influence patterns
of racial identity (Hall 1980, Herman 2004; Porter and Washington 1993, Rockquemore 1999;
Rockquemore and Brunsma 2001; Root 1990). The main findings of these studies point to the
higher probability of multiracial individuals in largely minority social contexts (friendship
networks, schools, locales, etc.) to identify more with the minority aspect of their racial
parentage, while whiter social networks appear to alter social spaces for multiracial
individuals to choose to identify as multiracial, biracial or White. Third, family structural
variables have been found to be associated with this process as well (Dalmage 2000; Harris
and Sim 2002; Herman 2004; Rockquemore and Laszloffy 2005) particularly the
racial/gender nexus whereby multiracial young women, for example, are assumed to be more
likely to identify with their mothers racial identity than their fathers, etc. However, research
results on this point are mixed. Fourth, appearance and phenotype are critical components
traversing all the above processes in complex ways (Brunsma and Rockquemore 2001).1 It is
important to note that each of these factors does not work to affect identity in isolation. There
are complex interrelationships (Herring, Keith and Horton 2004).
The vast majority of this work on racial identity has been conducted with samples of
multiracial adults. Some recent research has looked at such processes among adolescent
populations. However, very little sociological research has been done to investigate identity
formation among very young multiracial children. This is a strange state of affairs given that
we know children begin to develop recognition of race and racial differences as social realities
as early as 3 and 4 years of age (Van Ausdale and Feagin 2002), and that parental socialization
influences this process (Rockquemore and Laszloffy 2005). This body of research has
investigated racial identity formation and maintenance among multiracial individuals.
Researchers are currently utilizing the findings on identity processes and assuming that these
same processes will affect racial identification on surveys and censuses. While the same
theoretical processes may indeed have an impact on identification, it remains an empirical
question because racial identity and racial identification represent two related yet distinctly
different outcomes.
Multiracials and Racial Identification
Some very recent research has begun looking at the process of racial identification among mixed-
race people. Identification here refers to how multiracial people racially classify and designate
themselves on surveys and censuses. Such investigations have largely been driven by new data
possibilities given the Census 2000s check all that apply revision. These studies, though few
and far between (Campbell 2002; Campbell and Eggerling-Boeck 2002; Roth 2002), have looked
at individual classification patterns as dependent variables, employing multivariate techniques
(usually multinomial logistic regression models) in order to control for a variety of other factors
as well as to observe interactions and interplay among the variables in the explanation of
identification. Some interesting patterns in racial identification have been uncovered.
Notably, Harris and Sim (2002), looking at the differences in identification across the
contexts of home and school for adolescents, found significant influences of contextual
variables (e.g., region of the country and racial composition of Census tract) as well as the
interpersonal context of the interview (i.e., were parents around during interview or not).
Herman (2004) found that the mixed-race adolescents in her data were more likely to identify
as the minority status (as opposed to White or multiracial) if they received discrimination
because of their appearance and if they held positive ethnic/racial identities. She also found
an effect of racial composition of social networks to be significant in identification (Whiter
networks led to White and multiracial identification, predominantly minority networks led to
minority identification). Yet, regarding racial identification processes, there has not been much
done on the racial designation of children, either by themselves (which is unlikely on surveys)
or, more importantly by their adult guardians/parents. This article begins to fill this gap and
adds to a growing body of empirical research on racial identification processes.
Research on the American multiracial population, then, has looked at identity and
identification as both independent variables (i.e., how does identifying and/or being classified
as Black affect ones life chances, mental health, opportunities, outcomes, etc.) and as
dependent variables (i.e., what factors predict that a Black-White biracial individual will self-
identify as Black and live out that identity? What variables are associated with an Asian-Black
biracial individual checking only Asian on a survey?) This article focuses on racial identification
as a dependent variable. More precisely, I concentrate on the ways that parents of interracial
families/unions classify their children.
Hypotheses
Given the above discussion of previous theoretical and empirical research on multiracial identity
in general, the burgeoning research on multiracial identification, and recent scholarly attention
to shifting racial formations, several hypotheses emerge. First, parameters of identity are
predicated upon existing classification schemes of both the formal (i.e., Census) and informal
(i.e., norms of hypodescent). If we use a broader, more critical notion of hypodescent, which
recognizes that racial groupings have historically followed a normative pattern of hierarchical
valuation, then the simplest form of this hierarchy is binary White vs. non-White (with
Hispanics in a nebulous brown space [Rodriguez 2002]); however, other possibilities exist.
Some argue that we are headed towards a tripartite racial system with White on top,
multiracial second and the collective Black on the bottom (Bonilla-Silva and Glover 2004).2
Conceiving of the cultural legacy of the norm of hypodescent, one would expect that the parents
of White/non-White mixed-race children will identify their children with the non-White
designation. However, if recent scholars are correct that multiracial individuals might be using a
multiracial designation and/or a White designation to distance themselves from minority groups
as well as to locate themselves in a more privileged echelon of society, one might expect, in this
reverse hypodescent possibility, that the parents of White/non-White mixed-race children will
identify their children away from the minority designation and towards the multiracial and/or
White designation. In the case of minority-minority combinations, these parents will choose the
racial designation that is the least negatively valued in American society. (See note #2.)
Second, previous research has indeed shown the impact of socioeconomic status on
racial identity and identification among young adults. Given the complex and historical relation
of class and racial formations, as well as previous research on identification processes, these
parents will influence their children by invoking their own perceptions and understanding of
the racial division of resources in society. In this respect, one expects parents from higher
socioeconomic statuses to racially identify their mixed-race children as multiracial and/or
White, and be less inclined to identify these children as minority. For parents of minority-
minority mixed-race children, one may expect parents from higher socioeconomic status to
identify their mixed-race children with the designation carrying the least negative valuation.
Third, there is abundant evidence that the racial composition of organizational contexts
and social networks affects the ways in which multiracial individuals will self-identify. This
should also affect the parental designations of these mixed-race kindergarten-aged children
given their school compositions. Thus, a predominately minority school context will increase
the likelihood that parents of these mixed-race children will identify their children with the
minority designation. Fourthly, for some of these interracial unions, language is vitally
important for the development of group affiliation (i.e., Hispanics and the Spanish language).
Home language usage may have an impact on the identification of these mixed-race children,
leading to the possibility that in households where a non-English language is predominately
spoken, parents of mixed-race children will be more likely to identify these children with the
minority status. Finally, because results are mixed in the empirical literature and due to the
increasing complexities of race/class/gender in affecting identification and identity (Anderson
and Collins 1992), no specific hypotheses are proposed here regarding the parent/child-
race/gender relationship, the results along these lines will be explored and discussed below.
Data and Methodology
The data used to look at parental racial designation patterns for young children is from the Early
Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS-K). This data was collected in 1998 and came at a time
when the country was debating the proposed Census changes. The parents of multiracial
children were certainly taking notice of the identification issue. These data contain information
from students, parents, teachers and principals on a wide variety of educational, social, cultural
and psychological phenomena at the elementary school level. Key for the purposes of this
research here was information on family structure, school contextual variables and race data for
both parents (biological and residential) and their kindergarten children. Retaining all
kindergartners who had complete files and full parent interviews provided a data set of 17,219
children representative of the entire U.S. kindergarten population in 1998.3
The National Center for Education Statistics appears to have taken cues from extant debates
during the design of their data collection efforts in the ECLS-K. Of primary importance for our
purposes here is that ECLS-K asked racial identification questions with the following options: (1)
White, non-Hispanic; (2) Black or African-American, non-Hispanic; (3) Hispanic, race-specified;
(4) Hispanic, race not specified; (5) Asian; (6) Native Hawaiian, Other Pacific Islander; (7)
American Indian or Alaska Native; and, (8) More than one race. This is actually quite interesting
in that ECLS-K did not allow a check all that apply format, instead, they are offering the option
to check a category of more than one race or, in Census terminology, Multiracial. This is the
debate currently taking place and the proposed change for the 2010 Census (Spencer 1999).
Another useful aspect of the ECLS-K data set that I sought to use to its fullest potential was
the in-depth information regarding these childrens parentage. The data set allows researchers
to know, in detail, the racial identifications of both biological parents as well as the characteristics
of the childs current/residential parents and the current familial structure. Thus, I was able to
understand the multiraciality of these 4 to 6 year olds based on biological parentage as well as
their current experiences and relationships with their residential parents/guardians. This is
extremely useful because we know that interracial marriages have higher divorce rates than
monoracial marriages, and furthermore, that interracial unions that produce children are less
likely to end in a marriage or cohabitation than monoracial unions. Using the available data, for
all racial designations, I collapsed 3 and 4 into one Hispanic4 designation for both child and
parental racial identification and retained the rest of the categories as given by ECLS-K.
Other variables of interest were used in the multivariate models. First, contextual variables
ranged from region of country (Northwest, South and West, with Midwest as the omitted,
comparison category), racial composition of the childrens school (measured as a percentage of
the school body that is non-White), as well as whether they attend a public school (compared
to all other types of school). Second, other family variables provided further information: family
socioeconomic status, age of the residential mother, number of siblings in the household, as
well as whether or not a Non-English language was spoken at home (previous research
indicates the importance of ethnicity in the identification process) (Herman 2004). Finally, I
controlled for the childs age (in months) and gender (1 = female, 0 = male). The basic
descriptive characteristics of primary variables are reported in Table A of Appendix A.
Due to the variation in child racial designations biological as well as residential parental
racial combinations much of the analysis is descriptive. In the end, however, I use multinomial
logistic regression models to look at the processes identified from these detailed and intensive
descriptions using three of the most common biologically mixed-race offspring as they exist and
are influenced by their present, parental and familial structures. These multivariate models allow
us to predict nominal-level child racial designations using a variety of focal and control variables.
Results
Child Racial Identification in Biological and Resident Interracial Unions
Before presenting detailed results on patterns of racial identification among these multiracial
children, it is interesting to discuss the degree of interracial unions, marriage and parents initial
distribution of racial identifications to their children. The distribution of racial identification among
these 17,219 children from ECLS-K is as follows: 57.2 percent are labeled as White, 17.7
percent as Hispanic (all races), 14.2 percent as Black or African American, 6.5 percent as
Asian/Pacific Islander, 1.7 percent as American Indian/Alaskan Native, and 2.6 percent (477) as
More than one race. These figures represent the racial designations assigned to these children
by their parents; it does not reflect the actual number of children in ECLS-K who are multiracial via
biological parentage quite interestingly, this percentage is much higher.
Using data for biological parents only and by cross indexing a childs biological mothers
racial designation with his or her biological fathers racial designation, we end up with 1,784
children in this data set (or 10.4 percent) who are multiracial by birth. The question, of course,
is why the discrepancy? Which social processes are involved that whittle 10.4 percent
multiracial by birth down to 2.6 percent multiracial by parental designation?
Since the unit of analysis here is the child embedded within a household, this percentage
(10.4 percent) also represents the number of interracial unions that produced children in the
United States between 1992 and 1994 (when these children were born). The most prominent of
these couplings is White and Hispanic (4.5 percent of all unions and 43 percent of all interracial
unions), followed by Black and White (1.5 percent and 14.4 percent respectively), and White and
Asian (1.5 percent and 14.1 percent respectively), followed distantly by other combinations.
Table 1 presents results showing the way in which these biologically mixed-race (and
biologically mono-racial) children are distributed across various interracial, current residential
parental combinations. Of note is the weight of the diagonal in this rather large table. Mono-racial
children are more likely than not to live with correlate mono-racial parents. However, looking at the
mixed-race children, we see that though they are quite likely to live with the same mixture of
parents, they also exist in a variety of households with a range of interracial and monoracial
residential parentage. For example, biologically Black-White children live with Black-White parents
(48.3 percent), with only their mother (40.4 percent race of mother not given in table, but
modeled later), in White-White households (7.1 percent), with their father only (1.9 percent race
of father not given in table, but modeled later), in Black-Black households (1.1 percent), as well
as in White-Hispanic and Black-Multiracial households. Though the number of cases in each
biological mixed-race combination vary widely, it is clear that mixed-race children live in a variety
of households with varying racial parentage and embedded within various structures.
Persistence, Hypodescent, Multiraciality and Whiteness
Table 2 shows the detailed distribution of child racial identifications across all possible
biological combinations of parental racial identifications. Several patterns of information
emerge that begin to illuminate the hypotheses. First, the diagonal of this matrix represents
mono-racial parentage. The shaded numbers highlight the degree of persistence in each of
these cells. Persistence is, of course, extremely high, ranging from a low of .925 (for Black-
Black unions) and a high of .995 (for Native American-Native American unions). What is
interesting is that none of these are 1. This is due to the fact that not all of these unions from
the mid-1990s were still together raising these children in 1998 (Table 1). Persistence rates for
residential parents, given their racial designations (data not shown), ,are understandably lower
(i.e., a White woman who had a child with an Asian man is now living with a White man, and
the child is identified by these White parents as Asian). Rates range from (excluding
Multiracial-Multiracial parents) a low of .985 (for White-White residential parents) to a high of
.995 (for Native American-Native American residential parents). Persistence remains an
important process of racial identification, though its influence may be waning slightly.
Second, Table 2 shows (using bolded figures) the various rates of hypodescent processes.
Again, to reiterate, I am using a broader (and more critical) notion of hypodescent, recognizing
Table 1: 1:
Table Mixed-Race Children
Mixed-Race as Distributed
Children Across
as Distributed Various
Across Interracial,
Various Current
Interracial, Residential
Current
Parental Combinations
Residential Parental Combinations
Childs
Bio. WW BB HH AA NN MM WB WH WA WN WM
Mix
WW 84.5 0 0 0 0 0 0 .3 .1 0 .1
BB .3 40.3 0 0 0 0 .2 0 0 0 0
HH .4 0 74.8 0 0 0 0 .8 0 0 0
AA 1.5 0 0 87.6 0 0 0 0 .4 0 .1
NN 0 0 0 0 62.4 0 0 0 0 2.3 0
MM 0 0 0 0 0 100 0 0 0 0 0
WB 7.1 1.1 0 0 0 0 48.3 .7 0 0 0
WH 3.9 0 1.2 0 0 0 0 69.4 0 0.1 0
WA 1.6 0 0 0 0 0 0 .4 81.6 0 0
WN 8.8 0 0 0 2.0 0 0 0 0 59.3 0
WM 4.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2.0 64.0
BH 0 2.3 .8 0 0 0 0 3.1 0 0 0
BA 0 0 0 3.3 0 0 0 0 3.3 0 0
BN 0 5.9 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
BM 4.3 17.4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
HA 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1.3 0 0 0
HN 0 0 4.7 0 0 0 0 4.7 0 0 0
HM 0 0 4.8 4.8 0 4.8 0 4.8 0 0 0
AN 20.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
AM 0 0 0 16.7 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
NM 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Note: Numbers are percentages. Table should be read across rows (i.e., 7.1% of White-Black
Biracial children (BW) currently live with two White parents (WW).
No No
BH BA BN BM HA HN HM AN AM NM Mom Dad
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1.9 13.0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1.5 57.5
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1.4 22.6
0 0 0 0 .1 0 0 0 0 0 1.4 8.9
0 0 0 0 0 0.9 0 0 0 0 0.9 33.3
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 .4 0 0 0 0 0 0 1.9 40.4
0 0 0 0 0 0 .1 0 0 0 2.6 22.7
0 0 0 0 .4 0 0 0 0 0 3.2 12.8
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2.0 33.3
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 6.0 24.0
39.7 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3.8 50.4
0 40.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3.3 50.0
0 0 23.5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 11.8 58.8
0 0 0 30.4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 47.8
0 0 0 0 81.8 0 0 0 0 0 1.3 15.6
0 0 0 0 0 46.5 0 0 0 0 4.7 39.5
0 0 0 0 0 0 42.9 0 0 0 4.8 33.3
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 20.0 0 0 0 60.0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 33.3 0 0 50.0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 75.0 0 25.0
Table
Table2:2: Child
Child Racial
RacialIdentification
IdentificationininallallBiological
BiologicalCombinations
Combinationsof Parentage
ofParentage
Racial Designation of Biological Father

Racial
Designation of
Biological Black/ Hispanic Asian/
Mother White African American (all races) Pacific Islander Native American Multiracial Total
White W 9453 (.992) W 26 (.121) W 86 (.210) W 29 (.287) W 22 (.373) W 16 (.340)
B 13 (.001) B 63 (.293) B 1 (.002) B0 B0 B 1 (.021)
H 37 (.004) H 1 (.005) H 315 (.768) H 2 (.020) H 1 (.017) H 1 (.021)
A 12 (.001) A0 A 2 (.005) A 23 (.228) A0 A0
N 3 (.0003) N0 N 1 (.002) N0 N 26 (.441) N0
M 11 (.001) M 125 (.581) M 5 (.012) M 47 (.465) M 10 (.169) M 29 (.617)
Total = 9529 Total = 215 Total = 410 Total = 101 Total = 59 Total = 47 10361
Black/African W 12 (.286) W 6 (.002) W0 W0 W0 W 1 (.056)

American B 4 (.095) B 2274 (.925) B 19 (.396) B 8 (.615) B 3 (.750) B 11 (.611)
H0 H 5 (.002) H 28 (.583) H0 H0 H0
A 2 (.154)
A0 A 7 (.003) A0 A0 A0
N0 N 2 (.0008) N0 N0 N0 N 1 (.056)
M 26 (.619) M 5 (.002) M 1 (.021) M 3 (.231) M 1 (.250) M 5 (.278)
Total = 42 Total = 2,459 Total = 48 Total = 13 Total = 4 Total = 18 2584
Hispanic W 81 (.227) W 1 (.012) W 14 (.006) W0 W0 W 1 (.055)

(all races) B0 B 19 (.229) B 1 (.0004) B0 B0 B0
H 271 (.759) H 62 (.747) H 2199 (.993) H 31 (.861) H 13 (.684) H 15 (.833)
A 2 (.006) A0 A 1 (.0004) A 5 (.139) A0 A0
N0 N0 N0 N0 N 6 (.316) N0
M 3 (.008) M 1 (.012) M0 M0 M0 M 2 (.111)
Total = 357 Total = 83 Total = 2,215 Total = 36 Total = 19 Total = 18 2728
Racial
Designation of
Biological Black/ Hispanic Asian/
Mother White African American (all races) Pacific Islander Native American Multiracial Total
Asian/Pacific W 43 (.287) W0 W 1 (.024) W 2 (.002) W 1 (.667) W0
Islander B 1 (.067) B 6 (.353) B0 B0 B0 B0
H 2 (.013) H 1 (.059) H 25 (.610) H 2 (.002) H0 H0
A 33 (.220) A 2 (.118) A 15 (.366) A 1013 (.994) A 2 (.333) A 1 (.167)
N0 N0 N0 N0 N0 N0
M 71 (.473) M 8 (.471) M0 M 2 (.002) M0 M 5 (.833)
Native W 10 (.278) W0 W0 W0 W0 W0
American B0 B 5 (.385) B0 B0 B0 B0
H0 H0 H 16 (.666) H0 H 1 (.005) H 1 (.333)
A0 A0 A0 A 1 (.500) A0 A0
N 24 (.571) N 6 (.462) N 6 (.250) N 1 (.500) N 212 (.995) N0
M 8 (.190) M 2 (.154) M 2 (.083) M0 M0 M 2 (.667)
Multiracial W 1 (.333) W0 W0 W0 W0 W0
B0 B 3 (.600) B0 B0 B0 B0
H0 H0 H 2 (.667) H0 H0 H0
A0 A0 A0 A0 A0 A0
N0 N0 N0 N0 N0 N0
M 2 (.667) M 2 (.400) M 1 (.333) M0 M 1 (1.00) M 1 (1.00)
Total 10,123 2,792 2,741 1,171 299 93 17219
Note: Shaded Data refers to Persistence processes. Bold Data refers to Hypodescent processes. Underlined Data refers to Whiteness processes. Italicized
Data refers to Multiracial processes.
that individuals experience a racial hierarchy in the United States (one that is always shifting
and always tied in complex ways to the socioeconomic distribution of status), and for different
reasons, they may identify their children in a myriad of ways along that continuum. Given the
history of the one-drop rule legally and socio-culturally, we would expect identification of a
White/non-White child to lean towards the non-White side. The data show that in virtually all
White/non-White biological combinations, the child is much more likely to be identified with the
non-White facet of his parentage than the White aspect. (See the first column and first row of
Table 2.) An exception to this pattern occurs in the cases of White Mother-Asian Father
parentage as well as Black Mother-White Father parentage, where children in these unions are
more likely to be identified as White than either Asian or White respectively.
Looking across non-White/non-White parental combinations (Table 2), designating children
in these combinations according to this notion of hypodescent, we see some mixed evidence.
To simplify this discussion, we will refer only to those non-White/non-White combinations that
have 10 or more cases as well as those that do not include a multiracial parent (which, as said
above, challenges the one-drop rule). This leaves nine parental combinations. Of these nine,
only two follow the norm of hypodescent: Black Mother-Asian Father (61.5 percent Black child
designation, 15.4 percent Asian child designation) and Black Father-Asian Mother (35.3 percent
Black, 11.8 percent Asian). The majority of these follow a pattern of what I have termed above
as reverse hypodescent. For example, in the case of Black Father-Native American Mother,
more of these children are labeled as Native American (46.2 percent) than Black (38.5 percent).
The patterns are similar for residential parentage combinations (results not shown), though
residentialism will be tested more fully in the multinomial logistic models. This finding
regarding hypodescent patterns is striking. It appears that Black racial identification appears
to be seen, by these parents, as the lowest on the racial hierarchy. The most potent
determinant of reversing the norm of hypodescent is the role of Hispanicity, but how and in
what social contexts is further modeled and explored below.
Given this pattern, one should see a movement towards more multiracial identification as
well as the labeling of children as White. For this discussion, Table 3 condenses the
information in Table 2 and shows all key rates of concern by ranking the interracial
combinations of parents by their prevalence in the data set. Average multiracial rates (i.e., the
percentage of children in each interracial parent combination identified as multiracial), as well
as multiracial rates broken down by gender/race of parent, are given in the last column of Table
3. It is clear that multiracial identification is indeed affected by which parent is which race.
Multiracial rates range from a low of zero (Hispanic-Asian parentage) to a high of .620
(White-Multiracial parentage). If we exclude multiracial parentage for the moment, these
multiracial rates range from a low of zero to a high of .588 (Black-White parentage). This is
strikingly high. For non-White/non-White combinations, multiracial rates range from a low of
zero to a high of .367 (Black-Asian parentage). It is clear from looking at multiracial patterns in
Table 3 that any combination that contains a White or a Multiracial parent has much higher
rates of multiracial identification. On the other hand, the lowest rates are any combination that
contains a Hispanic parent they primarily opt for the Hispanic designation.
Modeling Child Racial Identification in Three Mixed-Race Combinations
The previous results have illuminated some important patterns as well as the immense
variation in parentage (biological), current parentage (residential) and these childrens adult-
given racial designations. Yet, other factors have yet to be investigated including the possible
social, cultural and class-based impetus behind such classifications. Tables 4 through 6 look
at processes of racial identification in the three most prominent mixed-race parental
Table
Table3:3:Persistence,
Persistence,Hypodescent,
Hypodescent, Whiteness
Whiteness and Multiracial Rates
and Multiracial Rates by
byType
Typeofof Parentage
(Biological)
Parentage (Biological)
Persistence Hypodescent/Whiteness Multiracial

Type of Union Rates Rates Rates
Monoracial (15435):
W + W (9529) .992 --- .001
B + B (2459) .925 --- .002
H + H (2215) .993 --- .000
A + A (1019) .994 --- .002
N + N (213) .995 --- .000
Interracial (1784):
W + H (767) --- Avg: W = .218 Avg:.010

H = .764
DadH: W = .210 DadH:.012
H = .768
MomH: W = .227 MomH:.008
H = .759
W + B (257) --- Avg: W = .148 Avg:.588

B = .261
DadB: W = .121 DadB: .581
B = .293
MomB: W = .286 MomB: .619
B = .095
W + A (251) --- Avg: W = .287 Avg:.470

A = .223
DadA: W = .287 DadA: .465
A = .228
MomA: W = .287 MomA: .473
A = .220
B + H (131) --- Avg: B = .290 Avg:.015

H = .687
DadB: B = .229 DadB: .012
H = .747
MomB: B = .396 MomB: .021
H = .583
W + N (101) --- Avg: W = .317 Avg:.178

N = .495
DadN: W = .373 DadN: .169
N = .441
MomN: W = .278 MomN: .190
N = .571
Table
Table3: 3Persistence, Hypodescent,
(cont.). Persistence, Whiteness and
Hypodescent, andMultiracial
MultiracialRates by by
Rates Type of Parentage
Type of
Parentagecontinued
(Biological) (Biological).
Persistence Hypodescent Multiracial

Type of Union Rates Rates Rates
Interracial
(cont.)
H + A (77) --- Avg: H = .727 Avg:.000
A = .260
DadA: H = .861 DadA: .000
A = .139
MomA: H = .610 MomA: .000
A = .366
W + M (50) --- Avg: W = .340 Avg:.620
M = .620
DadM: W = .340 DadM: .617
M = .617
MomM: W = .333 MomM: .667
M = .667
H + N (43) --- Avg: H = .148 Avg:.047
N = .261
DadN: H = .684 DadN: .000
N = .316
MomN: H = .666 MomN: .083
N = .250
B + A (30) --- Avg: B = .467 Avg:.367
A = .133
DadB: B = .353 DadB: .471
A = .118
MomB: B = .615 MomB: .231
A = .154
B + M (23) --- Avg: B = .609 Avg:.304
M = .304 DadB: .400
~ MomB: .278
H + M (21) --- Avg: H = .810 Avg:.143
M = .143 DadH: .333
~ MomH: .111
B + N (17) --- Avg: B = .471 Avg:.176
M = .176 DadB: .154
~ MomB: .250
A + M (6) --- ~ ~
A + N (5) --- ~ ~
N + M (4) --- ~ ~
M + M (1) --- ~ ~
Note: Avg. refers to the average rates of column process for that combination; Subscripts
refer to racial designations (e.g., W = White, B = Black, H = Hispanic, etc.).
combinations in the ECLS-K data: Hispanic and White, Black and White, as well as Asian and
White in order to have analytic power through larger sample sizes. I use multinomial logistic
regression models to pursue a richer understanding5 of these processes of identification as
well as the processes of hypodescent, Whiteness and multiraciality that these parents of
mixed-race children appear to consider in their decisions.
In all models, the dependent variable is a nominal indicator of the three prominent choices
for these parents of mixed-race children: White, multiracial and the minority designation. The
models predict odds of racial identification as White (compared to minority) and multiracial
(compared to minority). Of interest in these models are the coefficients for resident mother and
father race, child gender, region of the country, family socio-economic status and characteristics
of the school in which the kindergarten class is located (public vs. all other types, as well as
percentage of minorities in the student body). Other control variables are mothers age, childs
age (in months), parental use of non-English language in the home, and number of siblings.6 I
also have constructed two interaction components to model the parent race/gender nexus
effect on child racial designation and a contextual public school and percentage minority in the
school variable. Model fit is determined via Chi-Square and explanatory power of the model is
determined by a pseudo-R2 component Nagelkerkes Pseudo-R-Square (Nagelkerke 1991).
Hispanic and White
The most prominent biological racial combination among this cohort of kindergartners was
Hispanic-White (N = 767). As one can see from Table 1, most of these children are being
raised by one Hispanic parent and one White parent, though there is a bit of variation in their
residential parentage. Table 4 presents the results of the multinomial logistic regression
model predicting the racial designation of these children as either White or Multiracial (both
as compared to parental designation of these children as Hispanic).
This model explains roughly 10 percent of the variation in the ways that the parents of these
Hispanic-White mixed-race children are racially identified. Looking at significant effects on White
identification, we see several intriguing results. First, fathers race appears to be important here in
general if the father is Hispanic, these Hispanic-White children are more likely to be identified as
Hispanic. Yet, this also means that if the father is White, these children are more likely to be
identified as White. The interaction component of fathers race and childs gender is not significant.
Second, mixed Hispanic-White girls are more likely to be identified as Hispanic than White the
opposite is the case for these young mixed-race boys. Third, contextually, it is intriguing that these
parents are more likely to identify these children as White than Hispanic in the southern region of
the United States. Yet, concerning more micro-level, interactional contextual experiences of the
degree of minority students in the elementary school is more likely to influence parents to identify
the child as Hispanic. However, the effect is just the opposite for multiracial identification; the more
minorities in the school, the more likely the child will be identified as multiracial instead of Hispanic.
Finally, regarding the idea that White identification for mixed-race kids is predicated upon class, we
see that the higher the family socioeconomic status, the more likely that these parents will identify
their children as White. There were no significant differences between multiracial and monoracial
(i.e., Hispanic) identification processes in these Hispanic-White families.
Black and White
Contrary to assumptions, the next most prevalent racial mixture among American children is
Black-White children. This is due, we think, to the fact that most sociological and demographic
Table 4: Multinomial Logistic Regression Results of Child Racial Identification (Hispanic an
White)
Table 4: Multinomial Logistic Regression Results of Child Racial Identification (Hispanic and White)
White Multiracial
Resident Mother, Hispanic -.40 -.89
(.26) (1.09)
Resident Father, Hispanic -.70* -.73

(.32) (1.25)
Female -.40+ -.48

(.27) (1.29)
Mothers Age (years) .03* -.05

(.01) (.06)
Northeast Region .32 .10

(.32) (1.32)
South Region .43+ .37

(.27) (1.01)
West Region -.02 -.40

(.27) (1.11)
Family SES .32* -.67

(.15) (.62)
Public School -.27 3.95

(.25) (3.65)
Percent Minority in School -.17*** 1.28+

(.05) (.78)
Father Race X Female .37 -.14

(.37) (1.62)
Public X Percent Minority .24*** -1.22+

(.07) (.82)
Intercept -1.65 -.93

(1.59) (7.34)
Notes: N = 760, x2 (30) = 52.97, p < .01, Nagelkerke psuedo R-square = .10. Reference category
for the equation is Hispanic Identification. Standard Errors in parantheses. Also controlling for
Child Age (in months), Parental Use of Non-English Language at Home, and Number of
Siblings. ***p < .001, **p < .01, *p < .05, + .05 < p < .15
Table 5: Multinomial Logistic Regression Results of Child Racial Identification (Black and
White)
Table 5: Multinomial Logistic Regression Results of Child Racial Identification (Black and White)
White Multiracial
Resident Mother, Black -.30 -.87*
(.57) (.44)
Resident Father, Black -1.83* -1.26+

(.80) (.67)
Female -1.48 1.25

(1.28) (1.19)
Mothers Age (years) -.01 -.01

(.03) (.02)
Northeast Region 1.51* .81+

(.75) (.54)
South Region .42 -.92**

(.58) (.36)
West Region 1.09+ .28

(.69) (.46)
Family SES -.11 -.15

(.35) (.26)
Public School 1.11 -.91+

(.99) (.61)
Percent Minority in School -.03 .07

(.22) (.13)
Father Race X Female -1.84 -1.06

(1.38) (1.24)
Public X Percent Minority .02 -.02

(.24) (.15)
Intercept -3.10 -.37

(3.74) (2.58)
Notes: N = 264, x2 (30) = 62.08, p < .001, Nagelkerke psuedo R-square = .25. Reference
category for the equation is Black Identification. Standard Errors in parantheses. Also
controlling for Child Age (in months), Parental Use of Non-English Language at Home, and
Number of Siblings. ***p < .001, **p < .01, *p < .05, + .05 < p < .15
research focuses on interracial marriage and does not give equal attention to interracial unions.
According to Table 1, it is highly probable that interracial unions, in particular those with one
Black partner, are less likely to lead to marriage. These children are also raised in a variety of
households with a variety of consequences for their racial socialization, identification, and as
other studies have shown, their identity. Table 5 presents the results of the multinomial logistic
regression model predicting the racial designation of these children as either White or
Multiracial (both as compared to parental designation of these children as Black).
The model predicting the designations given to these Black-White children by their parents
explains one-quarter (25 percent) of the variation in identifications. As with Hispanic-White
children, fathers race has a significant impact on the childs racial identification. If a Black-
White childs father is Black, he is more likely to be identified as Black and not as White or
Multiracial. Mothers race does affect the pull away from Multiraciality and towards Black.
Second, compared to the midwestern region of the United States, the Northeast as well as
the West are contexts where White identification is significantly more likely for these children.
Concerning multiraciality, this identification possibility is more prominent in the Northeast as
well, but not in the South (where Black appears to be the preferred identification over
multiracial). This is upheld by previous literature (Brunsma in press). Finally, public school
context leads to Black identification for these children. There are no significant effects of
socioeconomic status on these processes for Black-White children. This non-effect of
socioeconomic status shows a strong continuing salience of norms of hypodescent among
partially Black offspring.
Asian and White
Finally, Table 6 reports the results for the multinomial logistic regression predicting racial
designations of children from parents of Asian-White children. This model explains 23 percent
of the variation in these racial designations. Again, as in the previous models, fathers minority
racial status influences a move away from White and multiracial identification and towards
Asian identification. On average, these Asian-White girls are more likely to be identified as
Asian by their parents. These overall patterns in the model are further specified by the
interaction term that shows significant multiracial (as opposed to Asian) identification in the
case of White-Asian girls with Asian fathers; they are more likely to be identified as multiracial.
This is in-line with the role of White mothers in the multiracial movement. Contextually, in the
western United States, these children are more likely to be identified as multiracial and less
likely to be identified as White. We also see that higher family socioeconomic status is indeed
associated with multiraciality among these Asian-White children.
Discussion and Conclusion
The results presented in this article continue the social scientific documentation of the
changing contours of race and processes of racialization in contemporary U.S. society. The
amount of variation in the racial identification of these very young mixed-race children, given
historical treatments of racial classification in the United States (Anderson and Fienberg 1999;
Davis 1991), is truly astonishing. Concerning the hypotheses explored in this article, first, we
see that for majority/minority mixed-race children, their parents are more likely to follow
norms of hypodescent and identify their children with the minority designation. However, this
is not the case for all mixed-race children, nor is it a very strong case for even these
majority/minority mixed-race children. Minority/minority mixed childrens parents, according
Table 6: Multinomial Logistic Regression Results of Child Racial Identification (Asian and
White)
Table 6: Multinomial Logistic Regression Results of Child Racial Identification (Asian and White)
White Multiracial
Resident Mother, Asian -.84 -.69
(.67) (.58)
Resident Father, Asian -1.36+ -1.94**

(.32) (.74)
Female -1.19* -2.01***

(.61) (.58)
Mothers Age (years) -.03 .01

(.04) (.04)
Northeast Region .31 1.06

(.80) (.82)
South Region -.18 .83

(.55) (.59)
West Region -.95+ .80+

(.51) (.53)
Family SES .01 .46*

(.26) (.23)
Public School -.05 .40

(.48) (.47)
Percent Minority in School .12 .24**

(.10) (.09)
Father Race X Female .52 2.01**

(.84) (.78)
Public X Percent Minority -.12 -.15

(.13) (.13)
Intercept -.48 .51

(3.75) (3.44)
Notes: N = 244, 2 (30) = 54.53, p < .01, Nagelkerke psuedo R-square = .23. Reference
category for the equation is Asian Identification. Standard Errors in parantheses. Also
controlling for Child Age (in months), Parental Use of Non-English Language at Home, and
Number of Siblings. *** p < .001, ** p < .01, * p < .05, + .05 < p < .15
to these results, and Hispanic/any-other-race children are actually showing evidence of a

general movement away from minority status identification and from norms of hypodescent.
Thus, regarding hypodescent, one tentative conclusion drawn from this set of analyses is that
the parents of mixed-race children are currently involved in a process of what could be called
reverse hypodescent.
Second, given the notions of the racial hierarchy in the United States, with Black (and
Native American) typically on the bottom (Bonilla-Silva and Glover 2004; Yancey 2003),
coupled with the recognition of how unequally resources and opportunities are distributed
in the United States, these parents appear to begin early in moving their children away
from minority identification to more neutral and unmarked (Brekhus 2000) categories
of existence such as Multiracial or White.7 These results show significant influences
of parental/familial socioeconomic status on this general movement away from minority
designation for mixed-race children. Both Hispanic/White and Asian/White models provide
support for this conclusion. However, socioeconomic status did not affect parental racial
designation among Black/White mixed children. This gives some support to recent
debates about the U.S society moving from a White/non-White society to a Black/non-
Black society (Yancey 2003).
Concerning the other three hypotheses contextual racial composition, parent
race/gender interactions and home language usage mixed results were found. First,
there is tentative evidence that predominantly minority school contexts influenced parents
to label their children in the direction of the minority identification as well as the
multiracial, but away from White. Secondly, except for Asian/White mixed-race children,
there is still no clear pattern of effects regarding the effect that White (or minority)
mothers (or fathers) have on their multiracial sons and daughters. Finally, there were no
significant patterns of the effect of home language use on Hispanic-White parents racial
designations of their mixed-race children. More work needs to be done in these areas.
These findings somewhat line up with recent discussions predicting a shifting racial
order, one more in line with Latin American racial structures. One interpretation is that the
results here may indicate initial evidence that peers into the ways that parents utilize racial
classifications as a possible preparation for this new racial order through parental
socialization and identification strategies. This would be a fruitful line of future inquiry. The
2000 Census change recognized an extant multiracial population and enabled participants
to reflect that demography (Brunsma in press), but perhaps the change represented a
movement in the racial state towards a tri-partite racial system.
It is also interesting to note just how many of these mixed-race childrens parents
designated their children as White given the long history of the one-drop rule and norms
of hypodescent that attempted to mitigate against this occurrence. This designation goes
strongly against the current racial order; yet, if Bonilla-Silva and Glover (2004) are correct
in their assertion that the United States is moving towards a Latin American- and
Caribbean-like racial hierarchy (e.g., a pigmentocracy) it does represent an emergent
possibility.
There are several limitations to this current study. One of the limitations of this set of
analyses is the lack of two primary variables: parental socialization (and in particular, racial
socialization styles) and skin color data for these children. Herman (2004) notes that she
hopes that survey identification is associated with peoples identity in naturally occurring
social situations. In the end, for this project, I wasnt interested in these childrens racial
identity, for that is a moot point. Surely racial identity among these children is beginning to
develop, but a great deal must happen before it does. Furthermore, though the
parameters set by the contours of identification practices do hold some important, albeit
complicated, relationships with identity, it still is highly possible that while an Asian/White
child may have been labeled/identified by their parents as White the role of peers,
teachers and others who perceive the child to be Asian may, in the end, hold more
weight. The data to fully test this possibility was not available future researchers would
do well to incorporate such processes of interactional validation in their models.
It would also have been useful to have parental socialization variables available for this
study. The patterns here may indicate that parents racial designation of their mixed-race
children could illuminate a good deal about their styles of parenting, their understanding
of the racial structure in the United States and how it is linked to power and privilege.
Indeed, it may set the stage for the trajectory of these kids racial development. The racial
identification process seen here may be parental risk assessment, as parents hope to
minimize risks that their mixed sons and daughters will face barriers to opportunity and
social stigma in the future. For example, Hispanic parents, in particular, appear to exercise
strong reverse hypodescent patterns, perhaps in the hope of their children being seen and
treated as anything but Black. Yet, these are empirical questions that need more research.
It should be reiterated that there is a great deal of reflexivity between identity and
identification. We are just now beginning to understand this (Brunsma in press). It appears
that identification is predicated on available choices, whether formal, cultural or social, and
that identity development may be spawned by the structure and discourse of
identification. This is only the beginning. Different racial projects are embedded within
altering racial formations. The seeds of honorary Whiteness and multiraciality may first
be sown in these formations, mediated in the family and other socialization processes and
into identities and politics, culture and symbols, meaning and contestation. We need to
know much more about what these identification processes mean for these parents of
mixed-race children. It may be, as I suggest, that they are seeing the structure of resource
distribution, the racialized and pigmentized racial hierarchy, and the link between the two,
and beginning to distance their children from the bottom of that hierarchy.
Notes
1. The data used in this project, the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS),
unfortunately, does not include phenotype data (e.g., skin color). Data on skin color
variations is becoming of particular interest to sociologists more than it has been in the
past for reasons I have outlined above.
2. It is important to note that nowhere in this article do I intended to insinuate to the reader
negative or positive connotations associated with these labels. Bonilla-Silva and Glovers
(2004) research has indeed provided initial empirical evidence that these labels indeed
play themselves out in the socio-economic structure. Their tri-partite model (still in need
of further empirical verification) is as follows: (1) Whites (Whites; New Whites including
Albanians, Russians, etc.; Assimilated White Latinos; Some multiracials who look White;
Assimilated (urban) Native Americans; and a few Asian-origin people); (2) Honorary
Whites (Light-skinned Latinos, Japanese Americans, Korean Americans, Asian Indians,
Chinese Americans, Middle-Eastern Americans; and most Multiracials), and (3) the
Collective Black (Filipinos, Vietnamese, Hmong, Laotians, Dark-skinned Latinos, Blacks,
New West Indian and African immigrants, and Reservation-bound Native Americans).
One can see the importance here, but not sole importance, of skin color. Of course,
individuals see the racial hierarchy in much more fine-tuned ways (Herring, Keith and
Horton 2004). The data utilized in this project, though lacking in phenotype variables,
explores parental designations and parental understandings of the racial hierarchy and
the concomitant racial designations as arrayed along the current unfolding of the U.S.
racial formation, of which Bonilla-Silvas model is but one attempt to understand that
hierarchy.
3. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, approximately 98 percent of

all children attend kindergarten prior to entering first grade in the United States (NCES
1995).
4. Some may disagree with my conceptualization and utilization of a collapsed Hispanic

category in these analyses of interracial unions and their mixed-race offspring. I fully
acknowledge that the disagreement with conceptualizing Hispanic as a racial
category has to do largely with a strong, historical, disciplinary inertia to retain
Hispanics ethnicity status among race and ethnicity scholars. However, there are
several counterarguments that justify its usage in this project as a racial label and as a
starting point for children (and their parents) for the development of a racial identity
as Hispanic or Latino. First, Hispanics, as a group, have indeed been racialized in
the U.S. context and there exists a vast literature on these processes of racialization for
Hispanic Americans and their concerted opposition to it both macro-politically and
micro-interactionally (Bailey 2001; Bonilla-Silva 2001; Flores-Gonzales 1999; Omi and
Winant 1994; Suarez-Orozco and Paez 2001/2002). Second, the Hispanic label is
often singled out for this criticism, although this leaves categories such as Asian,
Native American and even White and Black as unproblematic monolithic
categories, which they are not. They, too, mask incredible diversity. Finally, scholars
who are currently attempting to understand shifting racial structures and racial
formations in the United States typically understand Hispanics as a racialized group
whose widely varying members are also aligning themselves differentially (based on
class, phenotype, language, immigrant status, etc.) within these new formations. It is
for these reasons that, while I recognize the criticisms, I think there are numerous
reasons to conceptualize and utilize Hispanic as a racial category and explore
patterns as they relate to other racial categories.
5. Ideally one would have both quantitative and qualitative data to pursue these
questions. Such a mixed-method design would provide the richer understanding one
wants to achieve here; however, this data is not yet available. The ECLS-K provides an
important starting point.
6. None of these latter three control variables were significant in any of the multinomial
logistic regression models; therefore, their influence on parental racial designation of
these mixed-race children is insignificant. Though their coefficients are not reported
in the tables, these models include these control variables.
7. Though the data was not available from the social psychological literature to directly
test parental motivations in racial identification, children are often times seen by their
adult guardians as extensions of the parental self (McBride and Rane 1997; Maurer,
Pleck, and Rane 2001) because these childrens lives are seen as fertile ground upon
which parents may experiment with varying identities (Meintel 2002; Tsushima 1999).
This may be even more prevalent in these interracial guardians of mixed-race children.
I am indebted to an anonymous reviewer for suggesting this possible explanatory
framework.
References
Anderson, Margaret L., and Patricia Hill Collins. 1992. Conceptualizing Race, Class, and Gender. Pp. 47-
53. Race, Class, and Gender: An Anthology. Wadsworth, Publishing Company.
Anderson, Margo J., and Stephen E. Fienberg. 1999. Who Counts? The Politics of Census-Taking in
Contemporary America. Russell Sage Foundation.
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Appendix A. Coding and Descriptive Statistics for Variables Used in Multivariate Analyses
Hispanic and Black and Asian and

White Data White Data White Data Coding
Female .50 (.50) .41 (.49) .52 (.50) 0,1.
Childs Age 68.26 (4.22) 68.24 (4.49) 67.86 (4.03) 56.9-79.0

range varies
Mothers Age 33.10 (6.79) 32.46 (7.97) 34.59 (5.40) 19-62.0
range varies
Northeast Region .14 (.34) .15 (.36) .11 (.31) 0,1.
South Region .28 (.45) .35 (.48) .26 (.44) 0,1.
West Region .37 (.48) .19 (.39) .47 (.50) 0,1.
Family SES .06 (.68) -.09 (.67) .43 (.83) -4.47-2.58

range varies
Public School .74 (.44) .85 (.36) .74 (.44) 0,1.
% Minority in 2.17 (2.62) 2.67 (2.34) 2.03 (2.78) 0-5.

School

Interracial Families Racial Identity of Mixed Race Children

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Interracial Families and the Racial Identification of

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Research on Identity, Identification and their Interplay

Multiracials and Racial Identity

Multiracials and Racial Identification

Data and Methodology

Child Racial Identification in Biological and Resident Interracial Unions

Persistence, Hypodescent, Multiraciality and Whiteness

Racial Designation of Biological Father

Black/African W 12 (.286) W 6 (.002) W0 W0 W0 W 1 (.056)

Hispanic W 81 (.227) W 1 (.012) W 14 (.006) W0 W0 W 1 (.055)

Modeling Child Racial Identification in Three Mixed-Race Combinations

Persistence Hypodescent/Whiteness Multiracial

W + H (767) --- Avg: W = .218 Avg:.010

W + B (257) --- Avg: W = .148 Avg:.588

W + A (251) --- Avg: W = .287 Avg:.470

B + H (131) --- Avg: B = .290 Avg:.015

W + N (101) --- Avg: W = .317 Avg:.178

Persistence Hypodescent Multiracial

Hispanic and White

Black and White

Resident Father, Hispanic -.70* -.73

Female -.40+ -.48

Mothers Age (years) .03* -.05

Northeast Region .32 .10

South Region .43+ .37

West Region -.02 -.40

Family SES .32* -.67

Public School -.27 3.95

Percent Minority in School -.17*** 1.28+

Father Race X Female .37 -.14

Public X Percent Minority .24*** -1.22+

Intercept -1.65 -.93

Resident Father, Black -1.83* -1.26+

Female -1.48 1.25

Mothers Age (years) -.01 -.01

Northeast Region 1.51* .81+

South Region .42 -.92**

West Region 1.09+ .28

Family SES -.11 -.15

Public School 1.11 -.91+

Percent Minority in School -.03 .07

Father Race X Female -1.84 -1.06

Public X Percent Minority .02 -.02

Intercept -3.10 -.37

Asian and White

Discussion and Conclusion

Resident Father, Asian -1.36+ -1.94**

Female -1.19* -2.01***

Mothers Age (years) -.03 .01

Northeast Region .31 1.06

South Region -.18 .83

West Region -.95+ .80+

Family SES .01 .46*

Public School -.05 .40

Percent Minority in School .12 .24**

Father Race X Female .52 2.01**

Public X Percent Minority -.12 -.15

Intercept -.48 .51

to these results, and Hispanic/any-other-race children are actually showing evidence of a

3. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, approximately 98 percent of