Interracial Families and the Racial Identification of Mixed- Race Children: Evidence from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study David L. Brunsma, University of Missouri, Columbia Abstract In this article, a nationally-representative sample of kindergarten-aged children is used from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study to explore the structure of parental racial designation of mixed-race children. The variation in these parental designations of a variety of mixed-race children is described. Parental racial designations in the three most common majority-minority interracial couplings – White/Hispanic, Black/White and Asian/White – are predicted using multinomial logistic regression models. The results may indicate a movement by the parents of these multiracial children away from minority status through racial labeling and towards “multiracial” and “White” – movements that are predicated upon gender, class and context. Critical discussions of the implications of these results as well as directions for future research are offered. The Loving vs. Virginia decision, handed down in 1967, was a key event in United States’ history, creating a spark that lit a subsequent fire of demographic change (Bratter and Zuberi 2001). Such a socio-cultural and legal endorsement of interracial relationships eventually produced what has been dubbed as a “biracial baby boom.” In the 1970s, approximately 1 percent of children were products of an interracial union; by 2000, that number had grown to more than 5 percent (Herman 2004). Public discourse on issues surrounding the existence of multiracial Americans and multiraciality has also increased exponentially since the 1970s. While it is absolutely clear that the existence of multiracial people is not a new phenomenon (Frazier 1957; Porterfield 1978; Spencer 1999; Williamson 1995), it has solidly become a public issue (Brunsma forthcoming). By century’s end, the political, cultural and scholarly discourse surrounding multiraciality had reached a feverish pitch. (See Daniel 2002; Rockquemore and Brunsma 2001; Root 1996; and Spencer 1999 for reviews.) In the years leading up to the U.S. Census’ decision to allow individuals to check “all that apply” in 2000 – reflecting an acknowledgement of demographic transformations – and ever since, debates have flourished hailing “the end of race” (D’Souza 1996; Graves 2004), debates over the “color-blind era” (Bonilla-Silva 2001; Herring, Keith and Horton 2004), the role and purpose of collecting racial classification data (Anderson and Fienberg 1999; Nobles 2000; Zuberi 2003), the distinction between racial identity and racial identification, and the possibilities and pitfalls of developing a multifaceted racial identity (Rockquemore and Brunsma 2002, 2001) in 21 st century America. The cultural contours of race in America are changing. While discourse has shifted to highly personal and political discussions of multiraciality and the role and meaning of racial categories, the prevalent role of race and processes of racialization I would like to thank George Yancey, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Kerry Ann Rockquemore, Erica Chito Childs, Melissa Herman, Annamaria Csizmadia, three anonymous reviewers and the editor of Social Forces, Judith Blau, for their fantastic comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript. Direct correspondence to David L. Brunsma, Department of Sociology, 332 Middlebush Hall, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211. E-mail: brunsmad@missouri.edu. © The University of North Carolina Press Social Forces, Volume 84, Number 2, December 2005