Some people are black.
Some are Hispanic or Asian or Native American. And some are a mix of two or more ethnic backgrounds. This was seen as a major victory for both biracial persons and the white mothers of biracial children, who had lobbied for years for separate categories on census and other state and federal documents. But it didn't address underlying issues of how biracial men and women choose their individual racial identities or how they deal with a society that wants to pigeon hole individuals as either one thing or the other. For five years, Brunsma and Kerry Rockquemore, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut, have explored issues relating to biracial identity.