The Fluidity of Race: "Passing" in the United States, 1880-1940 / Emily Nix, Nancy Qian.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Nix, Emily.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Qian, Nancy.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w20828.

NBER working paper series no. w20828

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Other Title:

Fluidity of Race

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2015.

Summary:

This paper quantifies the extent to which individuals experience changes in reported racial identity in the historical U.S. context. Using the full population of historical Censuses for 1880-1940, we document that over 19% of black males "passed" for white at some point during their lifetime, around 10% of whom later "reverse-passed" to being black; passing was accompanied by geographic relocation to communities with a higher percentage of whites and occurred the most in Northern states. The evidence suggests that passing was positively associated with better political-economic and social opportunities for whites relative to blacks. As such, endogenous race is likely to be a quantitatively important phenomenon.

Notes:

Print version record

January 2015.