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Individuals are claiming greater scope for choice in their racial identities. But how they are seen and classified by others is not necessarily changing in a similar way. Racial appraisals are the way that people classify the race of others, both particular individuals and larger groups. In this paper, I make a case for the study of racial appraisals as a field of sociological inquiry. I map out the different analytical levels and methodological approaches for this field and discuss how these can be used to understand observed race, norms of racial classification, and societal norms of the racial order. I present an example of how societal norms and logics of racial classification can be analysed in real time through survey research, using 2015-16 data on 866 White Americans’ reactions to Rachel Doležal’s racial identity claims. I present an agenda for studying changes in racial boundaries and classification norms through the longitudinal tracking of racial appraisals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A primary justification for collecting U.S. racial statistics is the need to monitor racial discrimination. This article aims to show how analyses of Hispanics-who may officially be of any race-tend to miss discrimination based on racial appearance by relying on data that instead capture racial self-identification, a different aspect of race that often does not correspond. The study analyzes 60 qualitative interviews with Dominican and Puerto Rican migrants in the New York metropolitan area. It employs multiple measures to represent theoretically distinct aspects of the lived experience of race. Respondents interpret the Census race question in different ways corresponding to different aspects of race, which often do not match one another. Although respondents experience discrimination on the basis of phenotype, their racial self-identification is a poor proxy for measuring their racial appearance. Scholars need to develop a language of race that communicates the multiplicity of social processes involved. Social surveys must provide measures of these multiple components, including interviewer observations of racial appearance, to monitor discrimination on the basis of phenotype within Hispanic groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]