Daughters more likely to ID as multiracial.

• Position: Racial Identity

Daughters of interracial parents are more likely than sons to identify as multiracial, and this especially is true for children of black-white couples, according to a study in American Sociological Review.

Among black-white biracials--the offspring of interracial couples in which one parent is black and the other is white--in the study, 76% of women and 64% of men identified as multiracial. In terms of Latino-white biracials, 40% of women and 32% of men self-labeled as multiracial. Regarding Asian-white biracials, 56% of women and 50% of men identified as multiracial.

"It would seem that, for biracial women, looking racially ambiguous is tied to racial stereotypes surrounding femininity and beauty," says study author Lauren Davenport, assistant professor of political science at Stanford University, Palo Alto, Calif. "So, biracial women are often seen as not fully white and not entirely minority, and they are cast as kind of a mysterious, intriguing racial 'other.'

"As a consequence, it may be easier for women to reside in multiple racial groups simultaneously. However, biracial men may be more likely to be perceived as 'people of color.' I contend that the different ways that biracial people are viewed by others influences how they see themselves."

The study relies on data from the Cooperative Institutional Research Program Freshman Survey. Every year, thousands of incoming freshmen at hundreds of community colleges, four-year colleges, and universities across the U.S. complete the survey, which the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, conducts.

Black-white, Latino-white, and Asian-white biracials were the focus of Davenport's study. In addition to gender, religion and socioeconomic status strongly influences how biracials self-identify. "Relative to biracials who were religiously unaffiliated, those who identified with ethnically homogeneous religions were more likely to label themselves with a single racial category than as multiracial." For instance, in contrast to religiously unaffiliated black-white biracials, the likelihood of identifying as multiracial declined by 44% for black-white biracial Baptists.

"I also found that money 'whitens' racial identification for biracials," relates Davenport, noting that, compared to less-affluent biracials, those from the most-affluent homes and neighborhoods were more inclined to identify themselves as "white" or as multiracial than as singular...