Sociology Compass 8/1 (2014): 63–77, 10.1111/soc4.12100 The Influences Affecting and the Influential Effects of Multiracials: Multiracialism and Stratification Hephzibah V. Strmic-Pawl * Department of Psychology and Sociology, Coastal Carolina University Abstract Early research on multiracials documents the existence of a newly emergent population, those who identify with more than one race or what is commonly now known as multiracials. Contemporary research on multiracialism has a new focus on the stratification that multiracials experience and how multiracials may be influencing a new racial hierarchy. This paper discusses some of the primary issues of multiracialism and stratification including colorism, the racial hierarchy, social class, gender and sexual orientation, and multiracial as a celebrity-like status. As the multiracial population grows, so must the field of multiracialism grows to include critical issues and questions regarding stratification. Multiracials, or people deemed to be of multiple races, have always existed in the United States; as early as the 1890 U.S. Census, this country formally recognized those of mixed-race descent. The categories of Octoroon (1/8 Black), Quadroon (1/4 Black), and Mulatto (1/2 Black) were used because more-White/less-Black meant more status and opportunity in society (Davis 1991; Lee 1993). The United States has also historically recognized people of mixed Native American and White descent or “half-bloods,” those of Mexican and White descent or “half-breeds,” and those of Asian and White descent or “Eurasians” (Nakashima 2004). The articulation of a “multiracial” identity, however, did not begin until the late 1970s. By the late 1980s, three notable organizations instigated the movement to make “multiracial” a legitimately recognized and positive racial identity: Association of Multiethnic Americans (AMEA), Project Reclassify All Children Equally (Project RACE), and A Place For Us (APFU). These organizations slightly differed in tactics and goals, but they all agreed on the fundamental right for one to identify as multiracial (Williams 2006). This movement led to a 1997 revision to the U.S. Census questionnaire to allow respondents to “mark one or more” races; this new race option provides the ability to officially document a population that identifies multiple races (Williams 2006). With the current two or more races population at 2.9 percent and with continued predicted growth, there has been an influx of studies on multiracialism (Jones and Bullock 2012). Early studies documented the rise of mixed-race individuals choosing to identify as biracial and the factors that led them to this identity (Iijima Hall and Cooke Turner 2001; Khanna 2011; Kilson 2001; Korgen 1998; Rockquemore 1999; Rockquemore and Brunsma 2008; Root 1996, 1999; Wijeyesinghe 2001). As studies on multiracialism have expanded, research questions are now moving beyond the initial question of if people are identifying as biracial to what this rise of multiracialism means for multiracials as a group, and what multiracialism means for society as a whole. Contemporary multiracial research puts forth questions such as: how do people of different mixed-race backgrounds vary in their multiracial experience; how does gender affect the multiracial experience; how are class status and multiracialism correlated; and how do multiracials fare in society compared to monoracials? In other words, new research is implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, addressing © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.