Mixed races, mixed results on revoking racial hierarchy

Some friends of ours have two sons. I may have mentioned them to you. Awhile back, one son declared himself to be black and the other said he was Filipino. We all have to have a racial ID so that everyone else can instantly know all there is to know about us.

Of course, whatever you call yourself, other people will take a look and apply their own classification, race being so dependent on appearance. But some people fall between the lines visually, like those two biracial boys. Before kids are old enough to label themselves, their parents choose, and these days parents of mixed-race children have more choices than ever. The choices they make are a good way to track the ever-shifting world of race in the United States.

David L. Brunsma, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Missouri-Columbia, has a study that mines data from thousands of families.

The children in the study were born between 1992 and 1994, which is when my son and his mixed-race friends entered the world.

Brunsma writes, "Mixed-race persons have always been a 'concern' in American society because of the challenge they pose to the racial order." Race is one of the ways we determine how social and economic goodies are distributed. People who are mixed confuse the system.

The one-drop rule arose to fix the problem of people who would otherwise defy the sorting mechanism. The practice in United States has been that a person couldn't be considered white if he or she had one drop of minority blood.

But that rule no longer holds for everyone.

Research has shown that racial identity is influenced by numerous factors, including social class, the social network of the people involved, the appearance of a mixed person.

Parents of multiracial children are moving away from the one-drop rule (hypodescent) into what Brunsma calls "reverse hypodescent." That is, they're calling their children white or multiracial rather than giving them a minority label that might be disadvantageous.

Higher socioeconomic status increased that tendency, especially with children of Hispanic and white or Asian and white parents. (The study treated Hispanic as a racial category.)

White mothers of biracial children led the effort that allowed people to choose more than one race on the 2000 Census. They were essentially negotiating a higher status for their children.

The study found families in which one parent was black called their children black regardless of their class, with very few exceptions.

I suspect that reflects partly the reality that such children will still be viewed as black by the larger society. Usually, you can tell by looking.

Children grow up, of course, and decide for themselves how they will deal with race, but this study concentrated on the decisions parents make.

Interracial marriage became legal across the United States with the Loving v. Virginia decision in 1967. By 2000 just over 5 percent of children sprang from interracial unions. Not a tidal wave, but maybe enough to affect the racial order.

Brunsma said the data suggest the United States may be moving toward a different type of racial hierarchy as parents of mixed children try to distance them from lower levels.

The white/nonwhite dichotomy may be shifting toward a black/nonblack way of looking at race.

Or perhaps we're developing a three-tiered system, with white at the top, most other people in the middle and blacks and some Native Americans on the bottom.

The only thing certain is that we still have a distance to go before we free ourselves of racial hierarchies.

Jerry Large: 206-464-3346 or jlarge@seattletimes.com