Multiracial children constitute one of the fastest growing racial groups in the United States. However, biracial children, in particular Black-White biracial children, often are not recognized in the educational system. For instance, the current classification of Black-White biracial students in the state and federal educational systems is not disaggregated and does not allow for analyses of educational outcomes for this population. Not only is this population invisible in state education data, the demographic data at the school level often fail to represent this population. Not acknowledging multiple heritages dismisses the identity and experiences of students who are multiracial and thus symbolically negates a part of who they are. Additionally, multiracial students may be classified in a single category by administrators for the purposes of schools and funding. This study offers the perspective of administrators and current state and federal policies on this issue as applied to Black-White self-identified children and describes the complexities and relevance of addressing multiracial policies in educational systems. An ecological theoretical framework is used to explore four research questions in this area. Data were collected from seven school district administrators across Oregon through semi-structured interviews and document analysis. Relationships in the data between responses and procedures from the seven sampled school districts are examined. Results suggest that across the seven school districts in this study, implementation of the policies and procedures of racial and ethnic categorization varied substantially. Furthermore, even though this revised race and ethnicity reporting policy was in part created to more accurately represent the multiracial population, it may actually be obscuring the multiple identities of these students. Detailed policy implications are discussed in further details in the Conclusions chapter.

Two studies were conducted to explore the effects of the sociopolitical ideologies colorblindness and multiculturalism on perceivers’ (1) automatic awareness of race and (2) automatic racial stereotyping. Study 1 showed that a colorblind prime caused White perceivers to notice White targets’ race more compared to a no prime condition, although non-White perceivers were able to ignore race when primed with colorblindness. Multiculturalism, on the other hand, caused individuals to notice race no differently than the control. In terms of stereotyping, Study 2 showed that a colorblind prime did not change automatic stereotyping of Black or White targets. In contrast, multiculturalism increased automatic positive stereotyping of Black targets compared to the control condition, but did not affect stereotyping of White targets. Implications discussed include why colorblindness might affect White and non-White perceivers differently as well as whether or not decreased positive stereotyping of Whites (in the case of colorblindness) and increased positive stereotyping of both Blacks (in the case of multiculturalism) are beneficial ways to attain national unity.

High quality interactions with racial outgroup members have been shown to improve explicit racial attitudes. However, the links between high quality interracial interactions with other cognitive and social factors have received less attention in the research literature. Contact theory posits that more contact with outgroup members leads to less bias towards outgroup members. The disclosure-liking effect posits that we like those who we have disclosed to and those who have disclosed to us. Therefore, some researchers have explored whether intimate self-disclosure in contact experiences can be used as a strategy to foster better interracial interactions. The current study found support for the use of self-disclosure as a strategy in interracial interactions to reduce executive functioning impairments typically found for both African-Americans and Caucasians following interracial interactions. This strategy was not as effective for other interracial interaction outcomes. Although implicit trust for the outgroup increased for Caucasians who interacted with an outgroup member, it decreased for African-Americans following an outgroup interaction. Intimacy of self-disclosure was unrelated to these observed changes in implicit outgroup trust. Furthermore, while this strategy reduced the salience of racial category differences for those who interacted with an outgroup member with high intimacy, the strategy also increased racial category salience for African-Americans. The study's results suggest that for some outcomes the quantity of contact may be as important as quality of contact and highlights the importance of studying effects for both minority and majority group members in interracial interactions. / Psychology