One drop on the move: historical legal context, racial classification, and migration

ABSTRACT

We examine the relationship between historical anti-miscegenation laws and contemporary racial classification within Black–White households in the United States using a multi-layered approach to conceptualizing that socio-historical context. We draw our sample of married Black–White households with children under the age of 18 from the 2012–2016 American Community Survey 5-Year estimates. Consistent with previous research, results suggest that households with connections to states that never had an anti-miscegenation law are less likely to adhere to the “one drop rule” than other households. However, these connections are not purely a reflection of the current state of residence; households comprised of two parents who were born in “no law” states – but currently live in states that had historical anti-miscegenation laws – display distinct racial classification patterns. This research contributes to our understanding of the link between place and race and highlights the power of migration in shaping ideas about race.

KEYWORDS:

• Race
• multiracial identification
• anti-miscegenation laws
• legacy
• context
• migration

Acknowledgements

This paper was presented at the 2018 annual meeting of the Population Association of America in Denver, CO. We would also like to thank Mary Campbell and Amy-Kate Bailey for their supportive comments on previous work that contributed to the development of this project. Finally, we wish to acknowledge Alana Peck for her part in creating the title for this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Liebler and Zacher (2016) incorporate a different dimension of migration into their analysis of American Indian racial classification outcomes, but it is not their focus and is, therefore, not fully developed theoretically.

2 Our results are consistent when including a fourth category for responses of “some other race.” We exclude this category due to its small cell size, and to ease interpretation.

3 Corresponding tables for the race- and gender-specific exposure variables are available upon request.