Identity Choices Research Articles

Multiracial Americans: Racial Identity Choices and Implications for the Collection of Race Data

AbstractIn 2010, approximately nine million Americans self‐identified with more than one race on the U.S. Census – a 32 percent increase since 2000. In this paper, I review the growing body of research on this population, with a particular focus on identifying and describing factors important in shaping their racial identities. Factors explored include: social norms regarding racial classification, socioeconomic status, racial composition of one’s neighborhood and community, region, socialization by family, age, cohort, genealogical locus of multiracial ancestry, nativity, and phenotype. I discuss the broader implications of findings to‐date, with a particular focus on the ongoing scholarly discourse regarding the collection of race data in the United States.

Rwanda's ‘Hutsi’: intersections of ethnicity and violence in the lives of youth of ‘mixed’ heritage

This article looks at young Rwandans of ‘mixed’ Hutu–Tutsi heritage, exploring how their mixed identity shaped their experiences during the 1994 genocide and how it influences their everyday experiences of categorization and belonging in contemporary Rwanda. It reveals the complex position of these young ‘Hutsi’ and the significant constraints they face in exercising identity choices in a context with a history of ethnic violence and where state policies have outlawed ethnicity. This article argues that the experiences, narratives and performances of these young Rwandans simultaneously challenge and reinforce the binary ‘ethnic logic’ that persists in contemporary Rwanda. Yet it suggests that providing space for Rwanda's ‘Hutsi’ and their diverse experiences could help to de-essentialize the categories ‘Hutu’ and ‘Tutsi’ and reduce the risks of future violence.

Being mixed: Who claims a biracial identity?

What factors determine whether mixed-race individuals claim a biracial identity or a monoracial identity? Two studies examine how two status-related factors-race and social class-influence identity choice. While a majority of mixed-race participants identified as biracial in both studies, those who were members of groups with higher status in American society were more likely than those who were members of groups with lower status to claim a biracial identity. Specifically, (a) Asian/White individuals were more likely than Black/White or Latino/White individuals to identify as biracial and (b) mixed-race people from middle-class backgrounds were more likely than those from working-class backgrounds to identify as biracial. These results suggest that claiming a biracial identity is a choice that is more available to those with higher status.

Teaching and Learning Guide for: The Role of Racial Identification, Social Acceptance/Rejection, Social Cognition, and Racial Socialization in Multiracial Youth’s Positive Development

Teaching and Learning Guide for: The Role of Racial Identification, Social Acceptance/Rejection, Social Cognition, and Racial Socialization in Multiracial Youth’s Positive Development

Why Ukraine Is Not Russia

The article discusses the impact of national identity on democratization and market reforms in Russia and Ukraine. We develop a concept of hegemonic national identity and demonstrate its role in Russian and Ukrainian post-communist political development. The article argues that Russia’s slide toward authoritarianism was to an important degree an outcome of the notions of national identity adopted by the main political players and society at large. In Ukraine, on the other hand, a hegemonic identity failed to emerge and the public discussion of issues of national identity led to the adoption of much more liberal and democratic notions of identity by a considerable part of the political elite. Adoption of this more liberal identity, in turn, was one of the main reasons for the Orange Revolution. The main theoretical implications of this argument are as follows: (a) choices of national identity profoundly affect the prospects for democracy in the newly democratizing states; (b) institutions do shape identities; (c) elites’ preference for (or opposition to) liberal democracy is not simply a consequence of their understanding of their self-interest in gaining and preserving power but also is dependent to a significant extent on their choices of political identity.

The Role of Racial Identification, Social Acceptance/Rejection, Social Cognition, and Racial Socialization in Multiracial Youth’s Positive Development

AbstractDeficit‐based scholarship has suggested that multiracial youth are maladjusted due to racial identity confusion and social marginality. This paper proposes an integrative model of multiracial youth’s positive development. This model highlights the important role of social cognition in understanding multiracial youth’s development. Drawing on Spencer’s PVEST, developmental research on monoracial and multiracial youth, and the racial socialization literature, I argue that multiracial youth’s perceptions of how their racial identity choices are accepted in their social environment have implications for their adjustment. Serving as developmental resources, parents can attenuate their children’s social perceptual biases or enhance their abilities to cope with actualized negative social experiences by engaging in cultural socialization, preparation for bias, and transmitting race‐related messages that help multiracial children reframe their negative perceptions.

‘Race isn't what defines me’: exploring identity choices in transracial, biracial, and monoracial families

Transracial adoption [TRA], particularly the adoption of black children by white parents, has been a controversial issue in the United States for more than half a century. Much of the criticism surrounding transracial adoption has dealt with concerns that black children raised in white homes will fail to develop a positive black identity. Such critiques are often based on assumptions about the identity of black children raised by their biological parents, yet studies of transracial adoption rarely address identity development struggles experienced by black children raised in black homes. Moreover, while the race of parents in relation to children is at the center of the transracial adoption debate, TRA studies rarely delve into socialization practices of biracial families headed by one white and one black parent. This study addresses a void in the literature by examining the experiences of young black adults whose parents may or may not be of the same race. The impact of varying racialized family structures on black identity development is examined by comparing the experiences of young black adults raised in families with two black parents (monoracial), one white and one black parent (biracial), and two white parents (transracial). Drawing from 32 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with middle-class young black adults between the ages of 18 and 30 years old, findings indicate that all informants, regardless of racialized family structure, approach racial identity development similarly by de-emphasizing the ascribed status of race in favor of achieved statuses as part of the identity construction process.

Identity and redistribution

This paper models the interaction between individuals’ identity choices and redistribution. Both redistributive policies and identity choices are endogenous, and there might be multiple equilibria. The model is applied to ethnicity and social class. In an equilibrium with high taxes, the poor identify as poor and favor high taxes. In an equilibrium with low taxes, at least some of the poor identify with their ethnic group and favor low taxes. The model predicts that redistribution is highest when society is ethnically homogeneous, but the effect of ethnic diversity on redistribution is not necessarily monotonic.

Le yiddish : un passé proche et un souvenir éternel dans l’univers d’Aharon Appelfeld

The article takes a look at what we know about the role of languages in the life of Aharon Appelfeld. He heard Yiddish only in his early childhood, as a language spoken by his grandparents, but in Israel, after the war, learning Yiddish appeared to him as an essential step in the appropriation of Hebrew. Yiddish is an integral part of his relationship to some of his masters, like Dov Sadan or Leib Rochman. His choice of Yiddish as the main subject of his academic studies was the first step of a very painful identity process. The main work concerning this language is a novel called Night After Night (2001). It is about a boarding house in Jerusalem in the fifties. The lodgers, who are all survivors of the genocide, set themselves the task of keeping Yiddish alive. The novel is full of human conflicts between myth and reality, between the fantasy of resurrecting the past and the demands of present life. For Appelfeld, the duty of memory is essential, but it does not stand before the duty of life. Appelfeld speaks perfect Yiddish, he even uses it in public when he has the chance, but he only writes in Hebrew. It is a personal identity choice. He transmits the memory of the Yiddish world in Hebrew, and thus defeats oblivion forever.

Urban Voters, Racial Attitudes, and Neighborhood Context: A Multilevel Analysis of the 2005 Los Angeles Mayoral Election

How does neighborhood context affect the relationship between individual racial identity, racial attitudes, and vote choice in an urban mayoral election? Although there have been many studies about racial context, racial attitudes and political behavior, for a variety of reasons, including methodological complexities and lack of quality contextual exit poll data, few studies have focused on vote choice in an urban election. Using exit poll data from the 2005 Los Angeles election, multilevel logistic random slope models are developed to explore the relationship between vote choice, racial attitudes, and neighborhood context. Results indicate significant variation across neighborhoods in the effects of race and racial attitudes, as well as significant contextual and cross-level effects on vote choice.

Identity and political choice: the co-existence of singular affiliation politics and pluralism

The debate on identity politics is typically carried out in ideological terms. The phenomenon is associated with affiliation to a singular identity. The critique of this view is thus based on the argument that identities can be robustly plural and individuals choose to emphasise a particular identity in each situation. In this paper the focus is shifted from the ideologies of identity politics to the actual process through which individuals make a choice of identity to emphasise. Using empirical evidence from the south Indian city of Bangalore it argues that it is possible, and indeed perfectly consistent, for a robustly plural society, with a variety of identities to choose from, to support forms of singular affiliation identity politics. A free multiparty democracy can then exist even when its politicians are not committed to moderate ideological stances, because its people keep changing the choice of the identity they choose to emphasise.

CONTESTED INSTITUTIONAL PRESCRIPTIONS AND ORGANIZATIONAL IDENTITY IN A PLURALIST COUNTRY

Organizational imprinting hypothesis suggests that institutional environment at founding shapes organizational identities. But it remains ambiguous as to how organizational identities are shaped under institutional pluralism, where multiple institutional constituents co-exist and compete for the attention of the entrepreneurs. In this paper, we theorize how organizational identities are shaped by the interactions between different institutional constituents. An investigation of the linguistic identity choices of newspapers founded in India between 1948 and 2008 lend support to our thesis that the ability of dominant institutional constituents to shape organizational identities at founding is contingent on the strengths of their challengers and allies.

Do EPA Administrators Recommend Environmental Policies That Citizens Want?

We investigate whether Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator recommendations regarding improvements in environmental quality differ from citizen preferences. This is done by conducting identical choice experiments on both citizens and administrators at the EPA. The administrators were asked to choose the alternatives they would recommend as a policy, while the citizens were asked to act as private persons. We find that the rankings of attributes differ between the two groups and that the willingness to pay (WTP) obtained from the choices made by the administrators is higher for five out of the seven attributes, and in some cases the difference between the WTPs is substantial. <i>(JEL D61, Q58)</i>

Identity and sense of belonging in post-colonial education in Hong Kong

This paper explores the construction of local and national identities among secondary school students in post-colonial Hong Kong. As a Chinese society that has undergone a prolonged period of British colonial rule, the reunification of capitalist Hong Kong with the motherland under socialism in 1997 has set the context for a negotiation of identities. It has been revealed that the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region has tried to foster a stronger sense of national identity and a sense of belonging among the younger generations through its education reform measures in the new millennium. Nation-building is part and parcel of the reform, although it is being interpreted and implemented diversely by local officials, school principals and teachers. The intersecting and overlapping nature of students' different identities has set the parameters of their identity formation but allows different latitudes of observance and/or choice of different identities.

How and when Alphanumeric Brand Names Affect Consumer Preferences

This research develops a taxonomy of alphanumeric brand names (ABs) based on the alignment between the brand names and their links to products and attributes. Five empirical studies reveal that ABs have systematic effects on consumers’ product choices, moderated by consumers’ need for cognition, the availability of product attribute information, and the taxonomic category of the AB. In an identical choice set, the choice share of a product option whose brand name takes a higher versus lower numeric portion (e.g., X-200 versus X-100) increases, and it is preferred more even when it is objectively inferior to other choice alternatives. Consumers with low need for cognition use “the higher, the better” heuristic to select options labeled with ABs and choose brands with higher numeric portions. Consumers with high need for cognition process ABs more systematically and make inferences about attribute values based on brand name–attribute correlations. The effects of ABs on consumer preferences are prevalent for most technical products, even when consumers do not know the product category or meanings of attributes.

Separation of water‐soluble polymers using capillary‐channeled polymer fiber stationary phases

Chromatographic separations of synthetic and natural polymers are usually affected by a size exclusion chromatography (SEC) mechanism. Although SEC is a proven method of separation based on hydrodynamic size, a chromatographic method based solely on chemical interactions would present certain advantages. This laboratory has been investigating the use of capillary-channeled polymer (C-CP) fibers as stationary phases in HPLC for the separation of biomacromolecules. C-CP fibers allow highly efficient fluid transport and an amorphous surface structure, minimizing mass transfer effects commonly associated with porous, packed-bed technologies. Choice of the base fiber identity allows flexibility in the potential types of solute-surface interactions. Two water-soluble polymers, glycolic acid ethoxylate 4-nonylphenyl ether, and poly(4-vinylpyridine hydrochloride), were used as test solutes because of their similarities to polymers of interest in the consumer products industry. SEC separation of this pair was not possible due to the similarities in hydrodynamic size. Poly(ethylene terephthalate), polyester and nylon-6 C-CP fibers were evaluated as stationary phase materials. The former was found to offer superior chromatographic separations and recoveries when operating under what would be considered to be typical RP separation conditions: a flow rate of 1 mL/min and gradient of 0-100% H(2)O/ACN with 0.06% TFA over 5 min.

Idempotents in plenary train algebras

In this paper we study plenary train algebras of arbitrary rank. We show that for most parameter choices of the train identity, the additional identity ( x 2 − ω ( x ) x ) 2 = 0 is satisfied. We also find sufficient conditions for A to have idempotents.

Strategic Identity and the Branding of Law Schools

A law school’s strategic identity goes to the core of a school's reputation because the identity defines the image that the school’s various contingencies have in mind when they think of the school. Every institution has a reputation. Absent an ongoing plan to build that reputation, a school has little opportunity to shape that reputation and identity. By adopting a strategic identity plan, the school has the potential to shape its identity and improve its reputation. Building that image — “building the brand” — follows the choice of the strategic identity that the school wants to create. Since every school has a reputation, the absence of a strategic identity plan will result in other forces defining the reputation of the school.

Choosing National Identity

This paper examines national identity in England and Scotland, arguing that it is necessary to understand how people construe it instead of simply assuming that it is constructed from above by the state. It adds to qualitative data on this issue by discussing recent survey data, from the British and Scottish Social Attitudes surveys 2006, in which for the first time people are asked about their reasons for making a specific choice of national identity. In so doing it fleshes out the responses given to a well known survey question (the so-called ‘Moreno’ question) providing a greater understanding of what a large sample of people are saying when they make these territorial identity choices. The English and the Scots handle ‘national’ and ‘state’ identities differently, but the paper shows there is considerable similarity as regards reasons for choosing national identity. Both English and Scottish ‘nationals’, those placing greater weight on their ‘national’ as opposed to their ‘state’ identities, choose to do so mainly for cultural and institutional reasons. They are not making a ‘political’ statement about the break-up of Britain. At the British end of the scale, there are patterns in the English data which throw into doubt easy assertions about ‘being British’. Simply assuming, as some politicians and commentators do, that ‘British’ has singular meanings is unfounded. The future of the United Kingdom as presently constituted may lie in the hands of those who describe themselves as equally national (English or Scottish) and British. Devolution influences which national identity people choose in all three sets of national identity categories but these effects are sociologically most interesting in this group. Devolution seems to have encouraged them to stress the equality of the two nations in the British state, recognising that they are equal partners, that one can be equally proud of a national and a British identity, and that it is not necessary to choose one over the other.

Hip-Hop, White Immigrant Youth, and African American Vernacular English: Accommodation as an Identity Choice

How can scholars interpret the individual stylistic choices that speakers make? To what degree do individuals make identity choices to accommodate to one group or another? Much of the research on accommodation focuses on the standard—nonstandard or on the local—nonlocal dimension. There is notably little research into accommodation from forms that are indexical of a particular ethnic identity to forms that are indexical of another ethnic identity. This article takes up the question of accommodation toward African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and New York Latino English (NYLE) among white ethnic immigrants in New York City who affiliate with hip-hop culture. It provides evidence to support a view of accommodation that stems from a strong attitudinal orientation toward the group with which a speaker wants to associate.