The harms of racial miscategorization: Comparing multiracial individuals' well-being in the continental U.S. versus Hawai'i.

Objective: The current work explores the effects of racial miscategorization (incongruence between other people's racial categorization of an individual and that individual's racial self-identification) and subjective well-being of multiracial individuals in Hawai'i versus California. We set out to examine how multiracial individuals experience racial miscategorization in more or less ethnically diverse environments and how this experience shapes the extent to which they feel a sense of belonging and inclusion.

Method: The study consisted of interviews with 55 multiracial undergraduate and graduate students conducted in Hawai'i (20 self-identified women and 9 self-identified men, with ages ranging from 18 to 47 years; = 22.