Racial contours : theorizing racial identities through variation in responses among the multiracial population
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- In the 1990's, a small but influential social movement advocating for the inclusion of a multiracial category on the U.S. Census changed the way we collect data on race in the United States. Now, instead of prioritizing single race categories, the Census Bureau, under the directive of the Office of Management and Budget, encourages the expression of a more subjective meaning of racial identity by allowing people to choose more than one race. This new method of measuring race is a closer approximation to a social constructionist view of race and is a significant departure from centuries of racial categorization largely determined by rules of descent. While some people herald this new era of "multiraciality" as an era of post-racialism, I argue that the emergence of a "mark one or more race" category does not necessarily signal the end of race but is significant for other reasons. Indeed, an unintended consequence of the shift in enumeration strategies was that it allowed researchers for the first time to empirically measure how race still matters. In this dissertation, I argue that the variability in responses to questions about race helps us understand how racial ideologies and social structures continue to influence the way people identify. This variability is important to study not because it represents a weakening of racial and ethnic boundaries, though in some cases it may, but because it informs our knowledge of the contemporary and historical boundaries associated with racial and ethnic identities. After analyzing racial and ethnic self-identification across several datasets, I show that racial descent rules and social structures are important predictors of racial self-identification. Furthermore, the knowledge gleaned from models in this dissertation provides a glimpse of the future racial composition of the United States and allows us to gauge the potential impact of a growing multiracial population on race in America.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2010 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Thompson, Victor Ray |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Sociology. |
| Primary advisor | Snipp, C. Matthew |
| Thesis advisor | Snipp, C. Matthew |
| Thesis advisor | Bobo, Lawrence |
| Thesis advisor | McDermott, Monica, 1971- |
| Advisor | Bobo, Lawrence |
| Advisor | McDermott, Monica, 1971- |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Victor Ray Thompson. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Sociology. |
| Thesis | Ph.D. Stanford University 2010 |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2010 by Victor Ray Thompson
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