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~ Chapter 6 ~ What About the Children? Interracial Families and Ethnoracial Identification The family, both nuclear and extended, is an important site of ethnoracial identity formation, since cultural traditions and identities are first learned in the home (Alba 1990). When both parents share the same ethnoracial background, there is little discrepancy about how the parents will choose to identify their children, but when parents come from different backgrounds, the choice is far less obvious. Will they prioritize one ethnoracial identity over another, or will they choose to combine both parental backgrounds to identify their children? What are some of the factors that guide the choices parents make? Historically, the legacy of the “one-drop rule” of hypodescent determined the ethnoracial identification of children born to black-white unions, but the children born to Asian-white and Latino-white unions have not been subject to the same constraining principle. One reason for this is that the ethnoracial identification of multiracial Asian and Latino children did not become salient until fairly recently as a result of the rapid growth of the Asian and Latino populations after the 1965 Immigration Act (Xie and Goyette 1997). Another reason is that Asians and Latinos are neither white nor black and therefore lack a historical precedent that governs the identification of children born of Asian-white and Latino-white unions. It is not clear whether their identities will be closely circumscribed, like those of multiracial black children, or whether their identities will be more flexible , fluid, and perhaps even symbolic, like those of European white ethnics. The ways interracial couples identify their children and the ways these children are perceived by others have important implications for the incorporation trajectory of new nonwhite immigrant groups. Whether the children of Asian and Latino intermarriages view themselves and are perceived by others as white will determine to a large extent whether the “racial distinctions” between Asians and whites and Latinos and whites disappear (Alba and Nee 2003). In this chapter we combine background data from the 2000 census with information gained from the in-depth interviews we conducted with thirty-six interracial couples who have at least one biological child together and with forty-six multiracial adults, in order to provide insight into this question. The data from the 2000 census provides a snapshot of how interracial couples identify their children and reveals differences among intermarried Asians, Latinos, and blacks. The in-depth-interview data allows us to better understand the subjective process that guides the ways parents choose to identify their children and the meanings that they ascribe to their choices. Our interviews were geared to eliciting information with three research questions in mind: First, how do interracial couples identify their children, and what are the factors that guide their decisionmaking process? Second, how do the gendered patterns of intermarriage affect the ethnoracial identification of children born to interracial unions? Third, what is the role of the ethnic community and ethnic institutions in shaping the ethnoracial identities of multiracial Americans? Previous Research on the Ethnoracial Identification of Multiracial Youth Much of the earlier research that focuses on how interracial couples identify their children was conducted before 2000, prior to the 2000 census with its new option that allowed Americans to mark “one or more races” to identify themselves and members of their households ethnically and racially. In this earlier body of research, social scientists noted several factors that influence the way interracial couples identify their children, including the gender of the minority parent, the presence of coethnics in the metropolitan area, the diversity of the community, and the generational status of the child. For instance, Asian-white or Hispanic children who live in metropolitan areas with a large presence of coethnics are more likely to be identified as Asian or Hispanic (Eschbach and Gomez 1998; Saenz et al. 1995; Xie and Goyette 1997). Rogelio Saenz, SeanShong Hwang, Benigno E. Aguirre, and Robert N. Anderson (1995) speculate that this may be because a large coethnic population cultivates coethnic networks and institutions, which provide avenues for multiracial children to maintain their minority ethnic identity and culture. A large concentration of coethnics also facilitates the acquisition and maintenance of an ethnic language, enhancing the likelihood that multiracial children will identify with the minority parent’s ethnic origin (Eschbach and Gomez 1998; Harris and Sim 2002; Jiménez 2004; Korgen 1998; Saenz et al. 1995; Stephan and Stephan 1989; Xie and Goyette 1997). Studies of the Asian and Latino second generation confirm the...

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