Journal Articles

Do You See What I Am?: How Observers’ Backgrounds Affect Their Perceptions of Multiracial Faces

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Although race is one of the most salient status characteristics in American society, many observers cannot distinguish the racial ancestries of multiracial youth. This paper examines how people perceive multiracial adolescents: specifically, I investigate whether observers perceive the adolescents as multiracial and whether these racial perceptions are congruent with the multiracial adolescents’ self-identifications. Results show that 1) observers perceived close to half of multiracial targets as monoracial, 2) multiracial targets who identified themselves as black were nearly always perceived as black but not always as multiracial, and 3) the demographic and environmental characteristics of observers had no bearing on the congruence of their racial perceptions. That is, regardless of their own demographic characteristics or exposure to people of other races, observers were more congruent when examining targets who self-identified as black or white and less congruent when identifying targets from Asian, Hispanic, American Indian, or Middle Eastern backgrounds. Despite the demographic trend toward multiracialism in the United States, observers’ perceptions may maintain the status quo in race relations: a black-white dichotomy where part-blacks remain in the collective black category.

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Detail Information

Series Title

Social Psychology Quarterly

Call Number

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Publisher

: sage publisher., 2010

Collation

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Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

01902725

Classification

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Content Type

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Media Type

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Carrier Type

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Edition

Vol. 73, No. 1, March 2010. pp. 58-78

Subject(s)

Race
multiracial
Perceptions
Congruence

Specific Detail Info

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