The social position of multiracial groups in the United States: evidence from residential segregation

I use multiple perspectives on the racial order in the United States to generate hypotheses about the social position of mixed-race groups. Perspectives that view the racial order as binary, ternary with an undifferentiated middle, or ternary with a stratified middle present different expectations for the social position of multiracial groups. I use a group's level of residential segregation as an index of social position. In 2000, multiracial persons lived in neighbourhoods that were more white than the neighbourhoods of single-race minorities, though more diverse than the neighbourhoods of whites. Thus, multiracial groups appear to occupy an intermediate social position relative to blacks and whites, a finding that supports contemporary arguments about shifting colour-lines in the United States and the emergence of a triracial system of stratification. Yet, findings also suggest that the social space between blacks and whites is, itself, racially stratified.