Monoracial perceivers’ sociopolitical motives and their inclusion versus exclusion of multiracial people

ABSTRACT

Many societies today are organised as race-based social hierarchies, with clear boundaries between racial groups at the top versus bottom. The growth of multiracial populations has been heralded as holding the potential to blur existing group boundaries. But whether multiracial people do blur boundaries depends critically on how monoracial perceivers categorise them. We review our research programme on how monoracial perceivers’ categorisation of multiracials depends on sociopolitical motives. We present the Sociopolitical Motive × Intergroup Threat Model of Racial Categorisation, which describes how sociopolitical motives interact with specific threats to drive multiracial categorisation, and how this depends on perceivers’ group position in the racial status hierarchy. Our empirical work is based on the U.S. context, but we discuss how our research, grounded in theories of intergroup relations that have been tested cross-culturally – social dominance, system justification, authoritarianism, and social identity theories – may apply more broadly.

KEYWORDS:

• Race categorisation
• race perception
• racial hierarchy
• multiracial
• hypodescent
• sociopolitical motives
• intergroup relations

Author Note

This article is dedicated to the memory of Jim Sidanius, whose ground-breaking research and theorizing inspired much of the work reviewed herein.

Notes

¹ Many countries in Europe do not keep statistics on the racial and ethnic makeup of their population, but among those that do, the multiracial population likewise appears to be growing rapidly. For example, it is expected to triple between 2001 and 2051 in the U.K. (Rees et al., 2012), and grew by approximately 15% each year in Ireland between 2011 and 2016 (Ireland Central Statistics Office, 2019). In some Latin American countries, the multiracial population already accounts for a large percentage of the population. For example, in Brazil, the multiracial “Parda” population represented 43% of the overall population in 2010 (SIDRA, 2010), and in Cuba, the multiracial “Mestizo” population represented 27% of the population in 2012 (Oficina Nacional de Estadistica e Informacion, 2012).

² Part of the multiracial population “growth” in the U.S. is certainly due to changing laws and norms that allow for greater flexibility in how multiracial people racially identify, and thus increasing numbers of people who identify as multiracial rather than increasing numbers of people with ancestry from multiple racial groups per se (e.g., see Roth, 2005, on changes to how Black–White families have identified their multiracial children over time). Indeed, for the first time in U.S. history, the 2000 U.S. Census provided an option to choose more than one race. Concurrently, attitudes towards inter-racial families have improved. For example, 87% of U.S. respondents approved of marriage between Black and White people in 2013, compared to 4% in 1958 (Newport, 2013). Multiracial identification has undoubtedly increased as a result of the emergence of a more tolerant normative climate. At the same time, however, how progressive and racially tolerant a climate is, is itself shaped by some of the sociopolitical motivations we review in the current paper (e.g., by social dominance motives; Kteily et al., 2019). Additionally, although the current review is focused on our research programme, which has examined how monoracials’ sociopolitical motives affect their ingroup versus outgroup categorisation of multiracials, we discuss below how our theoretical framework might be applied to understand other forms of categorisation, such as whether perceivers use a multiracial category (i.e., whether perceivers accept the emergence of more flexible forms of categorisation). Furthermore, we discuss below the possibility that sociopolitical motives can influence how multiracial people identify themselves (e.g., whether they identify as Multiracial vs. as a member of their minority parent group). Thus, notwithstanding changing norms and laws allowing for greater flexibility in how multiracial people identify (e.g., as Black and White rather than as Black alone), it is plausible that sociopolitical motives influence 1) the normative climate and 2) the acceptance of some identity options, among monoracial and multiracial people alike.

³ Black–White and Asian–White multiracials currently represent the two largest multiracial groups in the U.S., according to the 2010 decennial U.S. Census (Jones & Bullock, 2012), and also represent the two fastest growing multiracials groups, according to data on multiracial newborns in the U.S. (Pew Research Center, 2015).

⁴ In the first study, we also asked participants to categorise ¼ Asian – ¾ White or ¼ Black – ¾ White targets. In this case, we found a marginally significant trend suggesting a target difference, such that perceivers categorised the ¼ Black target as more Black than they categorised the ¼ Asian target as Asian. Interestingly, in this case, there was also a perceiver difference, such that non-White perceivers categorised the ¼ Black target as more Black than did White perceivers (but did not differ in their categorisation of the ¼ Asian target).

⁵ Below, after we have reviewed work demonstrating the relation between sociopolitical motives and racial categorisation, we discuss how sociopolitical motives might play a role in perceivers’ tendency to require greater White phenotype to consider a target White than minority phenotype to consider a target minority (as well as how sociopolitical motives and target status may have played a role in the target race effect we observed).

⁶ It is possible that by manipulating the target’s conformity to societal norms, we are also manipulating perceptions of the target’s political conservatism. However, this is unavoidable, given that social conservatism in particular is defined by adherence to traditional social norms (Duckitt et al., 2002). The finding that RWA, and not SDO, was related to perceptions of the target suggests that we were not manipulating the target’s economic conservatism, since SDO is known to be related to economic conservatism (Duckitt et al., 2002). Thus, if we were manipulating perceptions of the target’s economic conservatism (vs. liberalism), we might expect higher SDO respondents to also be affected by the manipulation – i.e., for SDO to interact with the manipulation to predict perceptions of the target – since higher SDO people would likely reject those who they perceive to be economically liberal (given their opposition to economic redistribution).

⁷ Furthermore, we found that White perceivers who disfavoured the White ingroup and held essentialist beliefs showed a non-significant tendency to categorise the target as White, consistent with the idea that perceivers generally weigh disfavoured entities more heavily than favoured entities, irrespective of which group is disfavoured (though notably, our participants were, on average, more pro-White than pro-Black).

⁸ Building on Roberts et al.’s (2020) use of a novel group paradigm to examine hypodescent among children and adults, it would be useful to examine how sociopolitical motives affect the categorisation of additional exemplars of mixed-novel group targets. For example, showing that individuals who are higher (vs. lower) in RWA are more likely to think that a mixed-novel group target descended from one normative and one non-normative novel group belongs to the non-normative group (particularly when the perceiver is assigned membership in the normative group) would reveal the broad reach of RWA in affecting the categorisation of individuals descended from multiple groups.

⁹ Although we agree with Young et al. (2021) that differences in measurement can influence whether hypodescent is observed, and also agree that researchers should carefully consider how measurement affects categorisation, we believe that it is just as important to consider how particular categorisation outcomes, such as hypodescent, are defined. In Young et al.’s (Young et al., 2021) meta-analysis, with binary measures, the most frequently used type of measure (52 studies), hypodescent was defined as choosing a minority option (e.g., Black) more than White. In contrast, with multiple options measures – the most frequently used type of measure among studies that did not find hypodescent (28 studies) – hypodescent was defined as whether the minority option was chosen more than expected by chance (e.g., with three options, and a Black–White target, whether Black is chosen greater than 1/3 of the time). Critically, this leaves unclear whether hypodescent would have been observed with “multiple options” measures if hypodescent was defined as it was with the binary measures (as the tendency to select minority more than White). For example, imagine a study in which participants were asked to categorise a ½ Black – ½ White target as Black, White, or Multiracial, and 3 out of 10 participants chose Black, 6 out of 10 chose Multiracial, and 1 out of 10 chose White. Using the “more minority than White” definition, this result would support hypodescent, but using the “choose the minority option more than expected by chance” (33%) definition, this result would not support hypodescent. This example illustrates that beyond how categorisation is measured, how particular outcomes such as hypodescent are conceptualised or defined is also critical to researchers’ interpretation of results. Additionally, it may be important to consider how the category Multiracial is conceptualised by social perceivers (also see discussion above concerning how conceptualisations of the category Multiracial can vary). For example, take the scenario given above, in which 6 out of 10 perceivers chose Multiracial to describe a ½ Black – ½ White target. It would be useful for future research to further probe what these perceivers think of when they think of Black–White Multiracial people. Do they think of Black–White Multiracial people as more Black than White, more White than Black, as full members of each group, or as a completely unique group? Without knowing more about what people think about when they consider the category Multiracial, it is difficult to definitively conclude that selecting Multiracial to describe a Black–White person signifies the absence of hypodescent (e.g., it is plausible that perceivers who use the category Multiracial nevertheless think that multiracial people are more similar to their minority parent group). More broadly, we believe that future research would do well to consider not only how categorisation is measured, but also how particular categorisation outcomes are defined, and how particular categorisation options are conceptualised by social perceivers.