Paul Spickard

Paul R. Spickard (born 1950) is an American historian and the author of several books on the subject of race and ethnicity, particularly multiracialism. His work was formative in rearticulating and moving beyond a black-white paradigm of race and mixed-race relations in the U.S.

Spickard grew up in a working class and Black neighborhood in Seattle. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley and his undergraduate degree from Harvard University. He served as the Director of Research at the Institute for Polynesian Studies in Honolulu In 2011, Spickard co-founded the Journal for Critical Mixed Race Studies. He currently teaches as a professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara,