Who counts as multiracial?

ABSTRACT

Who counts as multiracial? The answer to this question – while never straightforward in the past – is becoming ever more complicated and contested. Given the very significant growth of people with racially mixed ancestries, there has been surprisingly little written about who “counts” as multiracial per se. There is no one definitive measure or definition of multiracial status across multi-ethnic societies that share many discourses of race, such as the USA and the UK. This question is important because it concerns whether people are able to achieve personal validations of how they wish to be identified, and because definitions of who counts as multiracial can fundamentally influence a variety of race-based and equality policies. This article synthesizes a wide range of literature that addresses how we may conceptualize, measure, and recognize multiracial people.

KEYWORDS:

• Multiracial
• ancestry
• racial identity
• census
• group membership
• multigeneration multiracials

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 It was not until the 1991 England and Wales census that a question about ethnicity was introduced, with the provision of 9 “ethnic” categories.

2 Before 2000 (when multiple race responses first became possible in the USA) it was possible to report a mixed heritage by reporting an ancestry that differed from their race response. From 1980, a person could report mixed heritage by giving an answer in the ancestry question that indicated a different race group than their answer to the race question. The ancestry question (“What is this person’s ancestry or ethnic origin?”) is an open-ended question (Liebler and Song, forthcoming).

3 In fact, the category “Mixed/multiple groups” in the 2011 British census includes people with disparate European ancestries:

The ethnicity of the people within the “Other Mixed” category is undoubtedly the most difficult to conceptualise. Within this category are many different identities, including Mixed white ethnic identities. Their demographic and socio-economic characteristics will vary accordingly. The result is that findings for the “Other Mixed” will be unique. (Bradford 2006, 11)