ABSTRACT
More than 15 years have passed since the United States (U.S.) Census Bureau included the option of allowing respondents to self-identify as more than one race (Jones & Bullock, 2012). In the wake of the organization’s milestone change, researchers have completed numerous studies and reports to chart and analyze the significance of the decision such as by calling into question how the selection affects national demographic shifts. Steady increases in biracial marriages provide additional motivation for the continued study of mixed race families and multiracial people as recent statistics show that such couplings grew from less than 1% in 1970 to 6.3% of all marriages in 2013 (Wang, 2015); furthermore, the percentage of multiracial babies increased from 1% to 10% between 1970 and 2013 (Pew Research Center, 2015). As a consequence, the percent of traditional-age college students who identify with more than one racial group is likely to increase during the years to come.
