Belonging to one or more races or ethnicities is not a novel American phenomenon. Indeed, every group of people throughout the history of the world has intermarried and/or produced offspring of multiracial backgrounds. What is novel, however, is the American government’s shift in the classification of multiracial individuals and its political consequences. Scholars have long addressed racial and ethnic politics in the United States as a site to examine inequality, representation, political behavior, and opportunity. Yet Natalie Masuoka is among the first to meticulously tease out questions of race, identity, ideological beliefs, and American racial classification. In her new book, she offers a deeper understanding of racial differences and political behaviors that are deeply intertwined with government involvement in the racialization process, both historically and in the present day. Drawing on the work of sociologists, legal scholars, political scientists, and historians, Masuoka expertly documents how multiracial identities and governmental categorization are reshaping racial classification. She takes an interdisciplinary approach to framing the study, but uses standard political methods to explore the policy preferences, racial attitudes, and political behavior of multiracial individuals.
The book’s second chapter focuses on the historical formation of racial classification to provide the necessary background for understanding today’s state of racialization, governmental policies, and political behavior. Masuoka documents the ways in which racial classifications have been inconsistent over time and why, as such, a historical argument for racial classification is insufficient. This foundational chapter juxtaposes existing scholarship on arguments about the declining significance of race against scholarship that insists on its enduring prevalence. The author argues that modern adaptations of Americans’ understanding of race require a different lens to analyze racial and ethnic politics in the twenty-first century than either of these approaches offers. She notes that the ability to self-identify one’s racial identity, as a reflection of personal identity, is a direct response to the practice of racial categorization. Rather than being a new racial group, multiracials are simply operating within existing racial structures. It is this ability to self-identify one’s race that is challenging rigid racial boundaries. The political process informs how one’s own race is defined, but current cultural processes are driving a change in the racial system that is moving away from classification based on either ancestry or phenotype.
Furthermore, the liberalization of white racial attitudes in the post–Civil Rights era has led to a change in Americans’ surface embrace of diversity and multiculturalism. This shift has created a welcoming environment for those with multiracial identities to express attachments to multiple racial categories. The change in public discourse has led to a support in multiculturalism and diversity. In turn, this more welcoming environment has given rise to the tacit acceptance of multiracial identities as a form of racial self-identification. The remainder of the book explores the lead-up to, and the consequences of, the 2000 U.S. Census Bureau change to the wording in the racial identification question that allowed respondents to mark one or more races.
Racial formation and identity choice are key frames that Masuoka uses to explore multiracial experiences and political views in the succeeding empirical chapters. This book uniquely captures the voices of multiracial activists who first fought for governmental recognition of their racial identity, and are now drawing attention to issues faced by multiracial families (particularly children). By drawing primarily on the individual agency and personal choice of racial classification, these multiracial activists share their political ideologies and politicized group consciousnesses in order to reveal both the social and political consequences of self-identifying as multiracial.
Interviews with 28 leaders of nonprofit organizations involved in multiracial advocacy provide readers with a deep examination of how the landscape of multiracial politics has changed since the peak of the multiracial movement. While there is an overrepresentation of leaders who have partial Asian descent and white mothers who have biracial children, the majority in the sample are self-identified multiracial activists who are advocating on behalf of mixed-race individuals, interracial families, and families with transracial adoptees. Masuoka’s respondents offer honest personal accounts on a myriad of issues ranging from racial discrimination to Civil Rights. As to be expected among any group, the activists have differing opinions on politics and race relations, but mostly aligned themselves with racial minority groups and saw themselves as a racialized “other” in the United States.
In sum, these activists view American racial classification as rigid and hard to change. They do not see their movement as upending current racial practices or view self-identification as a form of political resistance. This finding, coupled with Masuoka’s adept conceptualization of the respondents’ views in light of historical and modern-day politics, is a major contribution of the work. The author documents the careful and deliberate calculations of multiracials as pragmatic. In doing so, she wades into this intersectionally messy racial political environment that simultaneously creates openings for some and exacerbates tensions for others.
In the end, Masuoka concludes that race still matters. Multiracials are complicating the practices of racial classification; however, the racial classifications are an enduring legacy of the American political system. While racial identities are more fluid, the American racial hierarchy is firmly intact. Furthermore, multiracials themselves do not wholly buck the established racial hierarchy. For example, Chapter 5 demonstrates that some self-identified multiracials have political preferences similar to those of their monoracial counterparts. This finding, unsurprising given their distinct political history and current racialization, indicates that being partially black or identifying as multiracial black influences political attitude formation. Overall, multiracial political interests are more similar to those of racial minorities than of whites. This is most likely a by-product of multiracials seeing themselves as racialized others, which in turn accounts for support for race-based policies such as affirmative action. Then what should we make of the influence of an American society that is purportedly more open to diversity and multiculturalism? Masuoka cautions us to recognize the limitations of self-identity and personal choice within the American racial hierarchy. The enduring norms that preserve the white racial category limit a meaningful disruption of racial classification.
Multiracial Identity and Racial Politics in the United States offers a significant intervention into the fields of political behavior as well as racial and ethnic politics. It also makes an important contribution to the discipline of political science by focusing on a population that is understudied and undertheorized. Masuoka’s work provides scholars, activists, politicians, and political pundits with new tools for understanding the complexity of diversity in American politics. It provides us new vantage points for considering political attitudes and behaviors in an increasingly diversifying America within a relatively stable American racial hierarchy.
