Patterns in the Race Responses for Young Children of All Intermarriages for Half a Century

• In Event: 465 - Regular Session. Multiracial Classification

Abstract

When people of two different census-defined races have a child together, how do they report the child’s race(s) when reporting to the census? Patterns in these decisions give empirical information about the otherwise-unseen processes involved in the social construction of race at the family level. This is in contrast to studies of the social construction of race focus on either personal decisions or external forces defining how a person should be identified. Prior research on race responses given for children of intermarriage has found sociologically meaningful patterns, but small groups and most double-minority marriages were excluded in previous work. In this research, we include all children ages 0-9 years whose parents were interracially married. We use restricted-use full-count decennial census data (that is, 100% of the population) from five censuses: 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, and 2010 as well as the 25% 1960 Census file. With multivariate regression models, we identify child, parent, and contextual predictors of the race responses given for these children. Our results highlight factors that will need to be incorporated into future theory and qualitative work on the social construction of race.

Authors

• Carolyn A. Liebler, University of Minnesota

• Jose Pacas, University of Minnesota