Multiracial Children's and Adults' Categorizations of Multiracial Individuals

Research has explored how multiracial individuals are categorized by monoracial individuals, but has not yet explored how they are categorized by multiracial individuals themselves. We examined how multiracial children (4-9 years) and adults categorized multiracial targets (presented with and without parentage information). When parentage information was provided, multiracial targets were more likely to be categorized as neither wholly black nor wholly white. However, both multiracial adults and children more often categorized multiracial targets as black than as white regardless of the absence or presence of parentage information. For multiracial children, increased contact with white people predicted the tendency to categorize multiracial targets as black. These data suggest that multiracial children's categorizations are more flexible than those of monoracial children in previous research, and that the tendency to categorize multiracial targets as black emerges early in development within multiracial samples, and is especially likely in predominantly white contexts.