UCLA

A growing thread of research uses Biracials—those who exist at the intersection of our major social cleavages (racial groups)—to reveal the current nature and future trajectory of our racial hierarchy. Specifically, researchers explore whether Minority-White Biracials (those with one White parent and one Minority parent) tend to be more similar to either Whites or to their Minor- ity counterparts. The former circumstance would suggest a trajectory of assimilation for racial minority groups and waning intergroup prejudice, while the latter augurs enduring racial group boundaries and continued minority subjugation. Existing studies provide tremendous contribu- tions to this genre, but are constrained in their data and methodology. In this study, I offer new data which measures Biracials by parentage (an important circumvention of endogeneity) and a machine learning approach which can use hundreds of variables at a time in order to measure how Biracials compare to their single-race counterparts. In terms of political attitudes, Black- White Biracials are more simliar to Blacks, while Asian-Whites exhibit political thinking approximating that of single-race Whites. Latino-Whites remain ”in-between” their coutererpart groups.