Racing Places: The Relationship Between Racial Composition in State of Residence With Racial Identification Among a Cohort of People with Only One Asian Indian Parent

The rise in the Multiracial population in the United States contributes to the shift from a majority white population to a majority non-white population, commonly referred to as the browning of America. Population projection models often assume that people identified as Multiracial in childhood will continue to identify as Multiracial in adulthood. However, racial self-identification continues to develop over the lifecourse, and is both fluid and context-dependent (Albuja et al. 2018; Liebler et al. 2017; Root 1998; Waters 2000). An important contextual factor to consider when studying the racial identification of people with multiracial backgrounds is the racial composition of where they live. Using restricted data from Census 2000 and Census 2020, I link the racial identification responses in childhood and in adulthood for 2,509 individuals who have only one Asian Indian parent and use logit regression models to study the association between their racial identification and the racial composition in their state of residence. I find that the share of White and the share of Asian population in the state of residence are significant predictors of corresponding identifications for people who have only one Asian Indian parent and who are born between 1990 and 2000. This work uniquely contributes to the literature about the understudied association between racial identification and the racial demographics of place, and has implications for policy makers, population scientists, and the projected browning rate of America.