Geographies of racially mixed people and households: A focus on American Indians

Multiracial individuals and mixed race households show different residential locationpatterns depending on the races of the groups involved and the ways in which peoplereport their mixed racial heritage. In this research, we focus on multiracial andinterracially married American Indians in recent decades. Although they aresubstantively interesting, American Indians and multiracial people are rarelyrepresented in social science research on residential location and segregation. UsingU.S. public-use microdata from four decades (1980, 1990, 2000, and 2008), we map thelocations of two groups of multiracial American Indians and two groups of interraciallymarried American Indians, in comparison to their single-race counterparts. In 1980 and1990, we measure multiracial using the respondents answers to both the race and theancestry census questions. Our disaggregation of different types of mixed-raceAmerican Indian households extends the work of Wong (1998, 1999) and Wright et al.(2003) to reflect current sociological knowledge about the varieties of experiences ofpeople in different multiracial situations. By doing so, this research advances knowledgeabout the social context of race and identity in the contemporary United States.