Research seminar: The Fluidity of Race: "Passing" in the United States, 1880-1940

Emily Nix:   https://sites.google.com/site/emilyenix/

 (University of Southern California )

  “ The Fluidity of Race: "Passing" in the United States, 1880-1940 ”

 Joint with Ricardo Dahis and Nancy Qian

 Abstract: 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 approximately 5-17% of black males "passed" for white at some point during their lifetime and passing was accompanied by geographic relocation to communities with a higher percentage of whites. Consistent with our analysis recovering true passing as opposed to reflecting matching or measurement error, we find that less than 1% of white males change their reported racial identity. 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.