The term “person of color” has grown increasingly common in American public life. A new Berkeley Political Science paper, “Who Counts as a ‘Person of Color’? The Roles of Ancestry, Phenotype, Self-Identification and Other Factors” seeks to answer what the term actually means to the public, and more specifically, how Americans decide who falls under that label.
UC Berkeley Political Science Ph.D. student William Halm conducted a survey experiment to determine which characteristics matter most in classifying someone as a person of color. Participants were asked to evaluate profiles of hypothetical individuals and indicate whether they felt the term applied to them.
The study revealed that Americans overwhelmingly relied on parental racial background when deciding whether someone counted as a person of color. In comparison, skin tone and how someone identified themselves mattered, but played a smaller role.
“These findings align with previous literature on racial classification, namely the idea that ancestry is the most important factor in determining how race is perceived,” said Halm. “However, they run counter to the understanding of racial identity as being a function of one’s skin tone or self-identified race.”
Halm added that: “Our results reveal a consensus among American adults that one’s ancestry is the most important factor when determining whether someone was a person of color.”
The study also found that not all ancestries were equally likely to be classified as a person of color. Profiles describing individuals with Black parents were the most likely to be classified as people of color. Those with Latino or Middle Eastern and North African parents fell somewhere in the middle.
In contrast, individuals with Asian parents were the least likely to be categorized as people of color, Halm said. This suggests that Americans don’t view all non-white identities in the same way when thinking about how to use the label.
“This study also complicates our understanding of the POC identity as homogeneously unifying all non-White identities under one banner,” explained Halm. “The findings suggest that Americans have a disaggregated understanding of the POC identity in which some groups are more closely related to the identity than others.”
These patterns appeared across respondents of many different racial backgrounds. White, Black, Latino and Asian participants generally relied on parental ancestry when deciding who counted as a person of color. This suggests that there is a broad public consensus about the meaning of the category, according to the study.
“Rather than seeing race as a simple binary between Black and non-Black identities – as has been the case historically – Americans seem to now have a more nuanced understanding of race in which multiple groups can count as people of color, although to varying degrees,” said Halm.
These insights have broader implications for how race operates in the U.S. today. According to Halm, this new understanding could be relevant for the formation of political coalitions and social movements.
“If Americans largely see Black, Latino, Asian, Middle Eastern and North African people as belonging to the same identity as people of color, these groups may see each other as having similar experiences of racism and therefore advocate for policies together,” said Halm.
The profiles in the study varied across several characteristics, including skin tone, self-identified race or ethnicity, parental background and socioeconomic status. This method, known as a conjoint survey experiment, allows researchers to change multiple characteristics at once and measure which factors most influence people’s conclusions.