Empirical research on the growing multiracial population in the United States has focused largely on the documentation of racial identification, analysis of psychological adjustment, and understanding the broader political consequences of mixed-race identification. Efforts toward theory construction on multiracial identity development, however, have been largely disconnected from empirical data, mired in disciplinary debates, and bound by historically specific assumptions about race and racial group membership. This study provides a critical overview of multiracial identity development theories, examines the links between theory and research, explores the challenges to multiracial identity theory construction, and proposes considerations for future directions in theorizing racial identity development among the mixed-race population.In the United States, debate over how individuals with parents of different races (i.e., mixed-race people) would be racially categorized in the 2000 Census focused national attention on this growing population. Underlying the debate over whether or not to add a stand-alone "multiracial" category was the difference between the identity of mixed-race people and the identification of them by others and the state (Brunsma, 2006). On one side of the debate, a coalition of various activists, scholars, and pundits argued that increasing rates of interracial marriage since the Civil Rights Movement had created a "biracial baby boom." They argued that such demographic shifts necessitated the addition of a "multiracial"

Current research on racial identity construction among biracial people derives primarily from small convenience samples and assumes that individuals with one black and one white parent have only two options for racial identity: “black” or “biracial.” Rockquemore's (1999) taxonomy of racial identity options is used as a framework to synthesize existing research and to generate hypotheses that are explored using survey data from a sample of 177 biracial respondents. The findings support a multidimensional view of racial identity by illustrating that biracial people make various identity choices, albeit “choices” that are differentially available due to an individual's structural iocation.

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