Biracial Black/White Children and Class: The Semi-Permeable Boundaries of Race in America

Aaron Gullickson, University of California, Berkeley

This paper examines educational differences between biracial black/white children and their monoracial peers, using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97). Previous research has revealed an "in-between" effect for biracials. I extend the previous research by defining biracial children by the race of their parents in order to avoid issues of reverse causality. I also test whether the outcomes of biracial children are due to superior family resources. I examine grade retention in both surveys as well as ASVAB scores in the NLSY97. All outcomes follow the "in-between" pattern observed by previous studies. Furthermore, I find that biracial families are more like white families than black families in terms of education, family type, and region. These family differences fully explain differences between biracials and blacks in terms of grade retention and explain a significant portion of the difference in test scores.