Suggests that a multiracial person's answers to questions about
ethnicity may depend on the race of interviewer. Overview of the study of
multiracial mothers questioning on which race do they personally identify
most closely; Implication of the study.
By
Marian M. Jones, published on September 01, 1997
News & Trends
Golf phenom Tiger Woods has been labeled everything from "black" to
"African-Asian-American" in recent news reports. Ask Woods, who is
practically a one-man melting pot, and he'll describe himself as
"Cablinasian." But a study suggests that a multiracial person's answers
to questions about ethnicity may depend on the race of the
interviewer.
In the study, researchers at the National Center for Health
Statistics conducted phone interviews with 542 multiracial mothers,
asking questions such as, "With which race do you personally identify
most closely?" Women who had one black parent saw themselves as
multiracial 25 percent of the time when the interviewer was white and 52
percent of the time when the interviewer was black or Hispanic.
Similarly, part-Hispanic, non-black women identified as multiracial a
third of the time when interviewed by whites, but only 14 percent of the
time with non-whites.
For the 2000 census, the government has proposed that people of
mixed heritage be able to check more than one racial category. Does this
study suggest a census taker's race might influence which box or hexes a
person checks? No, insists researcher Jeffrey Kerwin of Westat Corp. "We
also asked a single `What is your race' question, and found no effects of
the interviewer's race."
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