Interracial families and the racial identification of mixed-race children: evidence from the early childhood longitudinal study.

Social Forces, December, 2005 by Brunsma, David L.

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...

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