Who Am I? Racial Identity and Affect Among Biracial White-Blacks and White-Asians

The multiple-race population of the U.S. currently stands at more than 9 million and is one of the fastest-growing racial groups in the nation. In this paper, we examine the identities, affect, and attitudes of the two largest multiple-race subgroups—biracial White-Asians and White-Blacks—and examine where they reside in the U.S. racial divide. We theorize that biracials’ political attitudes may follow one of two paradigms: a hegemonic model, in which biracials perceive themselves as more strongly tied to Whites; and a racial distinctiveness model, wherein biracials view themselves as members of a minority group, socially and culturally distinct from Whites. Leveraging a novel national survey that samples more than one thousand biracial respondents, we evaluate multiple indicators of racial identity, racial affect, and policy preferences. Our findings suggest that, overall, biracials stake out a distinct identity that occasionally diverges from their heritage groups. On matters of racial attachment, biracials partially bridge the difference between their monoracial White and non-White counterparts, but overall remain close to their minority affiliation. On political issues, however, biracials generally tilt left of monoracial minority groups. We argue that the growth in the multiple-race population, at least in terms of the groups considered here, seems likely to benefit the Democratic Party, unless the Republican Party abandons their hard-line stance on issues of concern to racial minority communities.