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-Identify the author’s focus
-Compare, contrast, and critique the reading(s)
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-Identify new concepts or theories from the readings that are essential to the understanding of race

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The multiple dimensions of race

Wendy D. Roth

Sociology Department, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Ethnic and Racial

Studies in March 2016, available online:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01419870.2016.1140793

The citation is:

Roth, Wendy D. 2016. “The Multiple Dimensions of Race.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 39(8):

1310-1338.

ABSTRACT

Increasing numbers of people in the United States and beyond experience “race” not as a

single, consistent identity but as a number of conflicting dimensions. This article

distinguishes the multiple dimensions of the concept of race, including racial identity, self-

classification, observed race, reflected race, phenotype, and racial ancestry. With the word

“race” used as a proxy for each of these dimensions, much of our scholarship and public

discourse is actually comparing across several distinct, albeit correlated, variables. Yet

which dimension of race is used can significantly influence findings of racial inequality. I

synthesize scholarship on the multiple dimensions of race, and situate in this framework

distinctive literatures on colorism and genetic ancestry inference. I also map the

relationship between the multidimensionality of race and processes of racial fluidity and

racial boundary change.

KEYWORDS Self-classification; interviewer-classification; skin color; phenotype; ancestry;

race components

This article synthesizes a growing body of scholarship that distinguishes and analyzes the

multiple dimensions of the concept of race as experienced by individuals and as measured in

research. Increasing numbers of people in the United States and beyond experience “race” not as

a single, consistent identity but as a number of conflicting dimensions. These may include, for

instance, how an individual self-identifies her race, how she is perceived by others, how she

believes she is perceived by others, what she checks among the limited options on the census or

other surveys, her skin color and other aspects of her racial appearance, and her racial ancestry.

These dimensions influence one another, but are not necessarily the same. For example, Salvador,

a restaurant worker in New York, identifies his race as Puerto Rican. Phenotypically, he is dark-

CONTACT Wendy D. Roth, wendy.roth@ubc

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skinned with indigenous features, leading some Americans to view him as Black. He believes that

Americans view him as Hispanic, based on his accent and name. Yet on the census, Salvador

checks White for his race because no listed option fits his identity and in Puerto Rico his mixed

racial ancestry allowed him to consider himself closer to White than to Black (Roth 2010). The

word “race” tends to be used as a proxy for each of these dimensions, with the result that much of

our scholarship, as well as public discourse, is actually comparing across several distinct, albeit

correlated, variables.

An important contribution of this scholarship is to emphasize that no single dimension is a

person’s “true” or “correct” race. For instance, observers’ classifications may not match the

individuals’ self-identification, yet each of these dimensions measures something different about

the way that individuals experience race in their daily lives. When it comes to housing or

employment discrimination, Salvador’s perception and treatment as Black is the meaningful

reality, regardless of the fact that those observers are not correctly guessing the way he views

himself. We can understand race as a cognitive structure that divides people into hierarchically

ordered categories on the basis of certain physical or biological characteristics that are believed to

be inherent (Roth 2012). An individual’s race is shaped by both her own identification and the

attributions and reactions of others (Cooley 1902; Jenkins 2008). By deconstructing race into its

diverse dimensions, this scholarship illustrates precisely how race is socially constructed, by

highlighting the micro-level processes and interactions that build, maintain, and occasionally shift

a cognitive structure of race.

Much of the literature that explicitly addresses the multiple dimensions of race focuses on

the United States, where demographic changes such as immigration and interracial marriage have

led to increasing numbers of people experiencing conflicting dimensions of race. This is

particularly true for groups such as Latinos and the multiracial population (Golash-Boza and Darity

2008; Harris and Sim 2000; Hitlin, Brown, and Elder 2007; Rockquemore and Brunsma 2002;

Roth 2010). Native Americans are another group where dimensions of race are frequently

inconsistent (Bratter and Gorman 2011; Campbell and Troyer 2007). Some also find

inconsistencies for Asians and Middle Easterners (Boehmer et al. 2002; Vargas and Stainback In

press), and even some White and Black Americans – two groups for whom racial classification is

assumed to be fairly static (Kressin et al. 2003; Noymer, Penner, and Saperstein 2011; Saperstein

2006). Distinct dimensions of race have also been examined in Latin America, where there has

long been awareness of discrepancies between color, ancestry, and racial classification, for

example (Bailey, Fialho, and Penner In press; Cabella and Porzecanski 2015; Telles 2014; Telles

and Lim 1998). Yet theoretically, the same processes are relevant to Europe, Asia and other regions

of the world, even if those countries focus less explicitly on the concept of race (Ahmed, Feliciano,

and Emigh 2007; Nagaraj et al. 2015; Perrin, Dal, and Poulain 2015; Song and Aspinall 2012).

Which dimension of race researchers use can significantly influence findings of racial

inequality (Bratter and Gorman 2011; Noymer et al. 2011; Saperstein and Penner 2010, 201