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For Economic Advantage or Something Else? A Case for Racial Identification Switching

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The Review of Black Political Economy

Abstract

The identity choices people take on serve as a filter for viewing the world. It is believed that race identity formation is in part a response to economic and social incentives. Using NELS 1988 dataset we evaluate at the individual level factors that affect changes in self-reported racial identity. We find that being multiracial, living in a non-affirmative action ban state, and relative income/education measures within race groups have an effect on racial identity switching. We find strong evidence that the social-political environments surrounding an affirmative action ban alters the likelihood that an individual will change race. Our results suggest that social factors when present dominate economic incentives to take on a different racial identity.

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Notes

  1. Los Angeles Times. “Los Angeles Times Exit Poll Study #389 Exit Poll: The General Election, November 5, 1996.” Los Angeles Times (November 1996). Available online at http://www.latimesinteractive.com/pdfarchive/stat_sheets/la-timespoll389ss.pdf

  2. We will omit “non-Hispanic” from appearing in every race reference from here on out. However, the reader should note that every race/ethnicity category is unique to each individual and that it refers to the race/ethnicity choice in 1988.

  3. Omitting Florida and Washington from the group of ban states does have small effects on our results. However, they do not affect the main conclusions. We use Antman and Duncan (2015) Table 1 to determine the states with affirmative action bans (a similar list is in Hinrichs (2012)).

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Correspondence to Salvador Contreras.

Additional information

This paper has benefited by comments and suggestions made by Mark Lopez, Luis Rene Caceres, Carolyn Liebler, and two anonymous referees.

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Contreras, S. For Economic Advantage or Something Else? A Case for Racial Identification Switching. Rev Black Polit Econ 43, 301–323 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12114-016-9238-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12114-016-9238-5

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