ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on how beliefs about race shaped differentiated positions and experiences of all people, how mixed-race people impacted and were impacted by this context of race. Proponents of race as a social construct rely on biological explanations that suggest groups of human beings have more genetic similarity than genetic differences with each other when it comes to racial categories. The discussion that follows is organized around three broad areas of racial theory: race as nation building, race as ethnicity, and race as a reflection of class status. As colonization ensued, European colonists used their positions of power and a desire to distinguish themselves from those whom they had conquered to delineate characteristics that defined whiteness and non whiteness. Either way, racial hierarchies as status constructions influence their social positions as mixed-race individuals, in part because many in the United States continue to either overtly or covertly adhere to stereotypical notions about race upon which racial hierarchies are built.
