Freakonomics author: Mixed-race children better looking
by Tami Winfrey Harris, ARP editor
(Note: In the study discussed below, mixed race = having one black parent and one white parent.)
A recent paper co-authored by Steven D. Levitt asserts:
1) Mixed-race kids grow up in households that are similar along many dimensions to those in which black children grow up: similar incomes, the father is much less likely to be around than in white households, etc.2) In terms of academic performance, mixed-race kids fall in between blacks and whites.
3) Mixed-race kids do have one advantage over white and black kids: the mixed-race kids are much more attractive on average.
4) There are some bad adolescent behaviors that whites do more than blacks (like drinking and smoking), and there are other bad adolescent behaviors that blacks do more than whites (watching TV, fighting, getting sexually transmitted diseases). Mixed-race kids manage to be as bad as whites on the white behaviors and as bad as blacks on the black behaviors. Mixed-race kids act out in almost every way measured in the data set.
Here is the full study, which seems to me to reflect some serious bias. What is the determinant for attractiveness? And how do these findings jibe with the fact that most African Americans are mixed race, with some quantity of Caucasian DNA? Is the academic performance of mixed-race children a reflection of their biracial heritage or environment, school system, etc.?
Have you been following the coverage of this new study? What do you think?
The New York Times article.
NPR Bloggers Roundtable discussion.
Image courtesy of csskclark at Flickr.
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of 
Karen wrote:
For the determinant for attractiveness, see page 10 of the study. An adult interviewer rates the attractiveness of the subject.
Posted 22 Aug 2008 at 12:00 pm ¶
Tami Winfrey Harris wrote:
Karen, my question was a bit rhetorical. I know that the determinant for attractiveness was the study interviewer. Given that, it is highly likely that the attractiveness rating reflects both the interviewer and society’s biases. Attractiveness isso subjective that it boggles that one could make a statement like “X children are more attractive.”
Posted 22 Aug 2008 at 12:34 pm ¶
gaba wrote:
I think it is a silly study… where are the pure white and the pure black? I think most of “african american” are mixed race…
And about attractiveness … , I think is totally subjective. There is a lot of erotization (I wonder if that is an english word or not) of the black and latino people.
Posted 22 Aug 2008 at 3:58 pm ¶
Art Dada wrote:
Physical attractiveness is not that subjective. In art school I learned the proportions that make someone good looking and these formulas cross all cultural lines, hardwired into our brains. Fashion has a say in things like how fat, skinny, pale or tan someone should be, but the appeal of a well-proportioned and symmetrical face is beyond the reach of cultural influence.
Posted 22 Aug 2008 at 7:08 pm ¶
christine wrote:
The attractiveness comes from the “exotic” look of biracial children. They are unique, and people just love an anomaly!! Its almost fetishized (if thats a word, lol).
Posted 22 Aug 2008 at 10:25 pm ¶
Ann wrote:
I agree with ArtaDad attractiveness is not “completely” subjective. Now, if the author had used previous studies or done his own using babies reactions to faces I might find his “findings” to be worth a second look. They have done studies with babies and their reactions to faces and found the better looking faces ellicited different responses from babies. However, since the author didn’t bother to go that deeply into proving his own theories it is just him spouting thoughts and being rather lazy about it.
Posted 24 Aug 2008 at 11:04 am ¶
Andrea wrote:
It’s an interesting study and it seems to match some of the families I’ve encountered personally.
Of the families I know of personally with one black parent, one white parent:
Three of the families I know of are single parent families, headed by the white mother, with the black father absent. Financially, the moms are probably struggling lower middle class to blue collar. The children appear to be doing pretty well, at least from an outsider’s perspective. In one family, the boy has played on a traveling basketball team. In another, the daughter is popular, outgoing, on the honor roll and the state student council. In the third family, the boy is on the honor roll, performs in school plays, appears popular. All of the kids attend majority white schools where there are only a handful of minority students.
The fourth family is a divorced black father and white mother. The father runs a successful daycare business and seems to still be involved with the children. The kids have had some problems, involving police being called for a runaway situation. I’m not sure what the nature of the problems were.
All of these mixed race kids are quite attractive, though I’ve seen some fat, plain mixed race kids walking about town as well. I think the unusual looks of the kids and the contrast of their coloring can definitely attract attention and seem more attractive to people than they would if the child was simply white or simply black, provided the child’s other features are equally attractive. One of the children I”m thinking of has wavy blonde hair and green eyes combined with medium brown skin. Her other features are also very regular and she’d still be a pretty girl with brown hair and eyes and brown skin or blonde hair and blue eyes and fair skin, but the contrasting coloring really makes her stand out in a crowd.
I would also say that it does seem to be a bit more common here for young white girls from single parent families or lower income families to have babies with black or American Indian or Hispanic men and to end up raising the child/children alone after the boyfriend takes off than it does for there to be married interracial couples with children, though there are some of those as well.
Girls from two-parent families or from middle class families seem a bit less likely to become single parents. It would be interesting to see the family backgrounds of the white parents in the study this researcher did. I think the outcome for the kids probably reflects the social background of the white mother or father as much as being mixed race. The study is probably describing class differences as well. Children tend to have problems when they are raised in troubled, chaotic single parent families with low incomes, regardless of what their race is.
Posted 24 Aug 2008 at 12:41 pm ¶
Lyonside wrote:
>Fashion has a say in things like how fat, skinny, pale or tan someone should be, but the appeal of a well-proportioned and symmetrical face is beyond the reach of cultural influence.
ArtDada, this is true, and is based on anthropological and archaeological evidence, and even has elements of sociobiology/evolutionary science in it. A proportionate body indicates one generally free of obvious disease, bone malformation, etc. If you have all your limbs and fingers, eyes, and ears, in a pre-industrial, hunter/gatherer society, you are 1) probably lucky or skillful in avoiding serious injury, 2) possibly of a high enough rank to avoid the more dangerous jobs and positions, 3) of a high enough social status or from a well-ordered knowlegeable society that allows basic injuries to be treated before they lead to infection and gangrene. All of which indicate a healthy person giving signs that they would be (at least on the surface) a good potential mate.
But “symmetry” has nothing to do with mixed racial heritage. There are symmetrical people in every ethnic group and “racial” division. That’s where the whole “mixed is beautiful” thing breaks down and makes no sense.
Not to mention the fact that many mixed-race people are rendered invisible by mainstream standards of what “mixed” means - most often when someone mixed-race is mentioned, it’s someone with one white parent - i.e. they are closer to the white ideal. That’s changing somewhat, but for so many years “white and something else” was the more common. Which means the European beauty standard is still being reinforced.
Posted 24 Aug 2008 at 9:30 pm ¶
Karen wrote:
Tami, of course the ratings reflect interviews’ and society’s biases - that is the whole point of “attractiveness”. It is meaningful (not mind-boggling) that the group of children grouped as biracial were rated as more attractive than the other groups. It is almost redundant to say “rated as.” It would, however, be interesting to compare the ratings given by different groups of people, i.e., to control for interviewer race and gender. Which is not to say that the uncontrolled experiment should be dismissed out of hand.
Posted 24 Aug 2008 at 9:51 pm ¶
Max wrote:
Totally agree that it is their exotic look so they stand out, but what really stands out is the summary of how adolescents are doing. The fact that they possibly feel marginalized and therefore participate in riskier behavior is most troubling and heart-breaking.
Posted 24 Aug 2008 at 10:45 pm ¶
Sofia wrote:
I have not been keeping up with the study, but from what I’ve read today, as has been stated already, a major flaw in this flimsy study is the attractiveness part. Proportionality (aka attractiveness) knows no race. So there.
And yes, the study portrays that mixed race always means white and something else.
After reading the comments on the New York Times article and skimming the study, both of my above statements are awfully simplistic and it gets really mind-numbing to try to point out every biased, vague, and racist point, assertion or phrase. So I’m not gonna do it.
Posted 26 Aug 2008 at 3:46 am ¶
Jennifer wrote:
I thinks it’s very difficult if not nearly impossible to make this a quantifiable element in analyzing mixed-race children of any racial background. And what I took from Tami’s emphasizing of this element–the “attractiveness” is its linkage to being an “advantage” and what the underlying message is in this study.
Is it an advantage to be attractive in this society? Probably. Is this something we should all strive to achieve or to have our children achieve–attractiveness? I recently asked a friend whether he would rather be praised for his looks (he’s quite handsome) or his intelligence (he’s also a smart fellow). He said intelligence–attractiveness seems (and is) surface.
I’m not knocking attractiveness (in other words, I’m not trying to be biased against the more aesthetically pleasing among us) but trying to link attractiveness as a primary advantage of mixed-race children seems shallow, dismissive, and stereotypical. It’s like saying that the advantage to adopting an Asian baby is that s/he will grow up to be part of the model minority–a smart, high test achieving child. Or that having a black child will ensure that your son/daughter will be active in sports since there are so many African American athletes.
I know I’m being deliberately provocative, and I’m sure more than one reader can poke holes in my Tuesday morning coffee-hasn’t-quite-kicked-in logic, but I think what I take overall from this study and this particular comment is the way that mixed-race children (and adults) get exoticized in this nation–that we see mixed-race people as these super-human beings–they are more attractive, more exotic, more interesting than the poor “purebreds”–and that underlying sentiment does a disservice to the complexity of mixed-race people.
Posted 26 Aug 2008 at 7:43 am ¶
dianne m wrote:
I can’t resist - even though there is no disagreement here -
“Attractiveness” is clearly subjective and unquantifiable. After all, as a parent, I know that the most attractive kids on Earth are…mine.
Posted 26 Aug 2008 at 12:02 pm ¶
VHM wrote:
Sheesh. I’m mixed race and I’m not beautiful by anyone’s standards. I just got the usual “what are you?” from strangers when I was a kid.
I am concerned by Andrea’s comments (and a few others) and hope that someone more capable than I am will address some of her points. Conflating race with economics, coupled with value judgments, seems so last-century.
Posted 26 Aug 2008 at 6:23 pm ¶
Lyonside wrote:
>Sheesh. I’m mixed race and I’m not beautiful by anyone’s standards. I just got the usual “what are you?” from strangers when I was a kid.
Me too. Sign me onto the support group for honestly non-gorgeous mixed folk (seriously, do we need a livejournal or something)?
And *GASP* I even have that one white parent! And *GASP* I even got married to a spouse not of my ethnic backgrounds, and had a kid!
Still waiting to be tragic here…
Posted 27 Aug 2008 at 2:23 am ¶
dianne m wrote:
VHM and Lyonside,
I bet (I hope) your mothers think you are amazingly BEAUTIFUL! Which, while I joked about that above, underlines how ridiculous such a paramter is in a “scientific study.”
For what it’s worth, I have also been asked “what are you” and I am not (to my knowledge) black on either side. I have always been unable to resist pretending thes people were asking if I was from another planet.
Posted 27 Aug 2008 at 12:05 pm ¶
Lyonside wrote:
>I bet (I hope) your mothers think you are amazingly BEAUTIFUL!
But of course - she’s my mom
And I’d rather be pretty and interesting on the inside anyway, since physical appearance is truly the one thing you can’t take with you. I’m really not intending to diss myself in any way based on my ethnic background - but the beauty myth needs to be buried 6 feet deep. Damned if you are, damned if you aren’t.
Now, as a proud mom, I look at my daughter and have a hunch that she’s gonna be a good looking kid. But I’m not going to attribute that to any specific ethnic group.
Posted 27 Aug 2008 at 1:57 pm ¶
dianne m wrote:
Lyonside,
Agreed! On all points…and, as I am sure gathered, my point was that asking anyone to assess a child’s attractiveness is silly (sadly, the thought behind it is destructive, but I have found focusing on the silliness save my sanity).
Posted 27 Aug 2008 at 3:12 pm ¶
Andrea wrote:
VHM, my comments may be “so last century” but they’re also based on what I’ve observed in the town where I live. I’ve also seen the stats to back up my observations about economics and marriage patterns, at least here. North Dakota is still 93 percent white and very rural and probably still old-fashioned.
Posted 28 Aug 2008 at 9:22 pm ¶
venda wrote:
I am an art student and i would agree that humans do strive for symmetry due to its appearance of harmony but like all rules this one is and will always be subjective when applied to humans…many of the worlds most beautiful people have asymmetric faces also, a lager eye or a slightly lower nostril on one side. All races have people with symmetrical faces so, symmetry as the definition of beauty is not what the prototype for beauty is in this study. The beauty model being used here is what is considered beautiful to western society. Which in the end has nothing to do with mixed race, as mixed race children can also not fit western beauty standards and many people have a very stereotypical idea of what a biracial person looks like.
As far as behavior, this to me seems like a class and environment study more then one based on race, which is a mistake that many western societies fail to address, especially america.
The thing is people from troubled environments and low income backgrounds are more likely to become victims or perpetrators of violence, contract std’s and other negative behaviors. This is prevalent in both low income and/or troubled black, white, latino and asian homes. Factors of culture will also determine whether these people will participate in these behaviors. So i guess that is where the study throws me for a loop.
My other issue with this study is like tami, i understand that many black people have mixed heritage, without having parents or even grandparents of different races. My own heritage can be used in this case as i am always mistaken to be biracial though i have no recent biracial admixture. So looking at my great great grandparents on one side of my family, an irish man who had children with a black women, would that be a determinant to my families behaviors though everyone of us living today have had no immediate contact with those two family members, even though i do believe that the nature of their relationship and societies thoughts on it at that time could have had lasting affects that can still be seen generations later, but that is another area of study on its own. I just think this study approaches to contrast and compare mixed race children with their black and white counterparts with too simple of a research method.
Posted 12 Sep 2008 at 3:09 pm ¶