Multidimensionality in Measurement and the Study of Racial and Ethnic Boundaries

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

This panel convenes five papers that examine different dimensions of the tension between how we measure racial identity and what we learn about racial and ethnic politics. The papers tackle the question of how the choice set of categories impacts how we identify by racial/ethnicity, focusing on Middle East North African identity as a commonly missing category from choice sets; develop new machine learning methodologies to analyze how racial boundaries are remade as the nation’s population becomes increasingly biracial; examine empirical comparisons of different approaches to the measurement of racial/ethnic identity and the political implications of these different approaches. For the third of these topics, there are two papers that examine, in different ways, identity point allocation as an alternative measurement approach; a third paper that re-examines the relationship between skin color heterogeneity and one’s political views and identities, focusing on African Americans.

Sub Unit

• Division 5: Political Psychology

Individual Presentations

• Measures of Racial Identity and Their Implications for Political Behavior - Alexander Agadjanian, University of California, Berkeley; Lauren D. Davenport, Stanford University; Taeku Lee, Harvard University

• You MENA I’m White? The Priming of Middle Eastern and North African Identity - Amanda Sahar d'Urso, Georgetown University

• The Racial Frontier: Machine Learning, Biracials, and Racial Group Boundaries - Gregory John Leslie, The Ohio State University

• Accounting for Multidimensionality in Identity Measurement - Amber D Spry, Brandeis University

• The Politics of Skin Color - Nicole Yadon, Ohio State University

Chair

• Mara Cecilia Ostfeld University of Michigan

Discussants

• Efren Osvaldo Perez University of California, Los Angeles

• Andrew Janusz University of Florida