What’s it like to grow up with one parent who is black and another who is white?
In a recent paper I co-authored with Roland Fryer, Lisa Kahn, and Jorg Spenkuch, we look at data to try to answer that question. Here is what we find:
1) Mixed-race kids grow up in households that are similar along many dimensions to those in which black children grow up: similar incomes, the father is much less likely to be around than in white households, etc.
2) In terms of academic performance, mixed-race kids fall in between blacks and whites.
3) Mixed-race kids do have one advantage over white and black kids: the mixed-race kids are much more attractive on average.
The really interesting result, though, is the next one.
4) There are some bad adolescent behaviors that whites do more than blacks (like drinking and smoking), and there are other bad adolescent behaviors that blacks do more than whites (watching TV, fighting, getting sexually transmitted diseases). Mixed-race kids manage to be as bad as whites on the white behaviors and as bad as blacks on the black behaviors. Mixed-race kids act out in almost every way measured in the data set.
We try to use economic theory to explain this set of facts. I can’t say we are entirely successful. If we had to pick an explanation that best fits the facts, it would be the old sociology model of mixed-race individuals as the “marginal man”: not part of either racial group and therefore torn by inner conflict. One reason this model is largely consistent with our facts is because it makes so few strong predictions that it is hard to falsify, which isn’t really fair to the competing models.
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You really should be more careful about using phrases like “throughout history” when describing race relations. The last two hundred years aren’t necessarily representative of the last five thousand.
That might be the most honest assessment by a publishing author about their own theory I have ever seen in print (I guess a blog is slightly less official print than a journal paper, but still).
Refreshing.
“2) In terms of academic performance, mixed-race kids fall in between blacks and whites.”
HA. If someone is, say, 3/4 black — do they score 25% of the difference between blacks and whites above blacks and 75% of the difference below whites?
Very interesting. But I wish it was possible to, retrospectively, compare these data with the mixed race folks of Louisiana, and, other mixed Africans Americans from the slavery and JIm Crow eras via some of the prevailing sociological data of the time periods. Other than the obvious differences between groups in question, it would be interesting to see if similar sociological observations could be found between the groups. And if not, why not? I mean todays mixed race or “voluntary”. Although ‘SMALL’ in numbers, in comparison today’s numbers, there must have been others, other than those who, involuntarily, bore mixed race children. What were their existence or sociologic profiles like? As far as today’s mixed race kids, I think it’s a bit much to refer to them as “Marginal Persons”. And now we wonder or speculate why they now have so many risky behavior profiles.I think this is a derogatory term used by “polite” racists. I personally feel mixed race kids have more opportunities to mess up because of their demographic circumstances and wider exposures.
Why is watching TV considered bad behavior?
Do you mean watching too much TV, to the exclusion of other more edifying activities like reading and exercise?
Amazingly enough, I’m an outlier on every one of those findings. Except #3, of course.
Thank god you said that! According to this article I’m “sub-average”. Who ever wrote this needs to widen their horizons. Actually, I didn’t find this interesting, I found it insulting, racist and hurtful. Mixed, and PROUD!
Was there a difference between when the mother is the black parent and the father the white vs. the other way around?
I’d be interested to see if these results are consistent for other race mixes, white/Asian, black/Latino, etc.