ABSTRACT

The racial categorization systems used by the United States Census until the mid-1990s forced people to report race (or have their race reported for them) in singular and mutually exclusive categories. Under pressure from various groups, the US Office of Management and Budget (1997) instituted the new “mark one or more” system of racial classification designed to accommodate the racial claims of multiracial people in time for the 2000 Census (Perlmann and Waters 2002; Williams 2006). This taxonomic shift lays bare the social construction of race at the national scale. This chapter examines the construction of race, in particular multiraciality, at more local levels: by families in neighbourhoods. Specifically, we ask what happens when parents of multi-racial children are allowed to mark more than one category on the Census form. What are the sorts of neighbourhood where mixed-race couples are most apt to identify their children as multiracial on the Census? Does neighbourhood racial diversity affect the likelihood of this choice? Will the whiteness of neighbourhoods be reflected in the whiteness of choices mixed-race couples make when identifying their children? Will the “some other race” option retain its salience in certain contexts? This chapter provides empirical answers to these questions based on an analysis of confidential 2000 Census data.