The Racial Identification of Young Adults in a Racially Complex Society

Quantitative studies of racial identification have commonly focused on the identification choices of children and adolescents living in the parental home. Less is known about the racial self-identification choices that individuals make as they develop into independent young adults. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, I compare the racial self-identification of respondents when they were aged 18–23 to their biological parents’ racial identification. Results suggest unexpected effects of individual development-related and socioeconomic characteristics. Measures of greater independence from parents and communities of adolescent development were associated with both greater and weaker consistency between self-identification and parental identification, and measures of parental socioeconomic status were associated with weaker consistency. The results across racial parentage groups conform to historical norms for Whites, Blacks, and American Indians, while the results for biracial respondents, Asians, and Hispanics are less clearly guided by these norms