Personality Characteristic Adaptations: Multiracial Adolescents' Patterns of Racial Self-Identification Change

Abstract

For multiracial adolescents, forming a sense of self and identity can be complicated, even at the level of classifying themselves in terms of racial group membership. Using a Race Self Complexity (Winston et al., 2004) theoretical framework, this study used an open-ended question to examine the racial self-identification fluidity of 66 adolescents during the 7th, 8th, and 11th grades. This sample included 22 Black/White1 1“Black/White” refers to the race of the sample of this study, as it focuses on Black/White adolescents as opposed to Black/Asian adolescents. However, “Black and White” refers to the reported racial self-identification of our sample in response to questions of racial self-identification. multiracial adolescents, as well as a matched sample of 22 Black and 22 White adolescents. Seventy-three percent of the multiracial adolescents changed their racial self-identification in the form of two time change patterns with a number of consolidating and differentiating racial self-identification variations. There was no change for the monoracial adolescents. These results suggest that within the lives of multiracial adolescents, the process of racial self-identification may be a personality characteristic adaptation to the meaning of race in American society that may change across time, place, and role.