Who polices which boundaries? How racial self-identification affects external classification

This study explores whether Americans agree on the ethnoracial categories that are worth policing. It evaluates how receptive White, Black, Latino, and Asian Americans are to how others self-identify by race/ethnicity. Insights from Bourdieu on classification struggles combined with status characteristics theory and gender research suggest that all Americans will police the higher-status White category more than other ethno-racial categories. Other possibilities include White exceptionalism—only White Americans police the White category most—and ingroup overexclusion—everyone polices their own category most. In a conjoint experiment with two samples we find White, Black, Latino and Asian Americans all police the White category most diligently, i.e., they are less responsive when someone identifies as White than when they identify as Latino, Asian, Middle Eastern or North African, or, in most cases, Black. Our results reveal a consensus across Americans on a racial classification schema that reinscribes the contemporary racial hierarchy.