Gender and the Face of Multiraciality

• In Event: 4344 - Culture, Racialization and Intersectionality (Co-sponsored with the Section on Race, Gender, and Class)

Abstract

Self-identification as multiracial is frequently portrayed as a disproportionately female tendency, but previous researchers have not empirically explored why this might be the case. This article draws on the Pew Research Center’s 2015 Survey of Multiracial Adults in the U.S. to determine whether such a gender skew exists, and what might be driving it. Contrary to prior claims, we find that women are actually less likely than men to select more than one race to identify themselves; instead, they are more likely than men to be aware of and report having mixed-race ancestry in the first place. In this two-step process of multiracial awareness and identification, gender also interacts with two other variables. One is the generational locus of individuals’ mixed-race ancestry: among first-generation or “biracial” offspring of parents of two different races, women are more likely than men to select two races for themselves; whereas in the numerically larger population of people with more genealogically distant mixed heritage, men are more likely than women to do so. Another key factor is ancestral racial combination: the disproportionately female pattern of awareness of mixed roots is most marked among Americans with Black or African American ancestry. We situate these findings in the current cultural and institutional contexts of multiracial identity and draw out their implications for future research.

Authors

• Jiayi Janet Xu, Princeton University

• Aliya Saperstein, Stanford University

• Ann J. Morning, New York University

• Sarah Iverson, New York University