Racially Mixed People in America

Maria P. P. Root

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 1992
• Print ISBN: 9780803941021
• eBook ISBN: 9781452253350
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Recipient of the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights in the United States 1993 Outstanding Book Award

America has been the breeding ground of a "biracial baby boom" for the past 25 years. Unfortunately, there has been a dearth of information regarding how racially mixed people identify and view themselves and how they relate to one another. Racially Mixed People in America steadily bridges this gap and offers a comprehensive look at the social and psychological adjustment of mixed-race people, models for identity development, contemporary immigration and marriage patterns, and methodological issues involved in conducting research with mixed-race people, all in the context of America?s mixed race past and present. Including contributions by ethnohistorians, psychologists, and sociologists, this powerful volume will provide the reader a tool for examining ideologies surrounding race, race relations, and the role of social science in the deconstruction of race. Racially Mixed People in America is essential reading for researchers and practitioners in cross-cultural studies, psychology, family studies, sociology, and social work.

"Racially Mixed People in America is not just a ??feel good?? affirmation of mixed race people. It offers explanations of ??how possibly?? the constructed notions of race operate in our society through an examination of mixed race people from the ??margins?? of psychological and sociological studies to the center of race relation?s discourse. This, perhaps, is its greatest contribution."  

--Amerasia Journal

"A compendium of articles on the experiences and identities of racially mixed people, [it] takes a scholarly approach to understanding the issues of racial identity. It is a book we highly recommend for an overview of the psychological implications of the personal conflicts inherent in multiracial identity."  

--Minority Markets Alert

"Maria P. P. Root and her coauthors have performed a service to society in general and to biracial/multiracial people and families in particular. By dispelling myths and showing the biracial/multiracial experience to be a healthy, normal one, the book will help demolish barriers of fear and ignorance and will, hopefully, enable all of us to banish the lingering miasma of obsolete concepts."  

--Joe Cunningham, The Interracial Club Newsletter

"An especially timely and well-documented book. Recommended to mental health professionals who wish to heighten their sensitivity in working with racially mixed people."  

--Readings: A Journal of Review and Commentary in Mental Health

Racially Mixed People in America is an important book, effectively presenting a comprehensive, multidisciplinary examination by ethnohistorians, psychologists and sociologists of America?s multiracial past and present.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Dedication
• Part I - Racial Ecology
• Chapter 1 - Within, Between, and Beyond Race
• Chapter 2 - The Illogic of American Racial Categories
• Chapter 3 - The Human Ecology of Multiracial Identity
• Chapter 4 - Developmental Pathways: Toward an Ecological Theoretical Formulation of Race Identity in Black-White Biracial Children
• Chapter 5 - Mixed-Heritage Individuals: Ethnic Identity and Trait Characteristics
• Chapter 6 - The Quiet Immigration: Foreign Spouses of U.S. Citizens, 1945-1985
• Chapter 7 - Beauty and the Beast: On Racial Ambiguity
• Part II - Recovering the Multiracial Past
• Chapter 8 - Passers and Pluralists: Subverting the Racial Divide
• Chapter 9 - Blood Quantum: Native American Mixed Bloods
• Chapter 10 - La Raza and the Melting Pot: A Comparative Look at Multiethnicity
• Chapter 11 - From Dust to Gold: The Vietnamese Amerasian Experience
• Chapter 12 - An Invisible Monster: The Creation and Denial of Mixed-Race People in America
• Part III - What of the Children?
• Chapter 13 - Back to the Drawing Board: Methodological Issues in Research on Multiracial People
• Chapter 14 - Identity Development in Biracial Children
• Chapter 15 - Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Social Adjustment of Biracial Youth
• Chapter 16 - Negotiating Ethnic Identity: Issues for Black-White Biracial Adolescents
• Chapter 17 - Offspring of Cross-Race and Cross-Ethnic Marriages in Hawaii
• Chapter 18 - Please Choose One: Ethnic Identity Choices for Biracial Individuals
• Chapter 19 - Interracial Japanese Americans: The Best of Both Worlds or the End of the Japanese American Community?
• Chapter 20 - Prism Lives: Identity of Binational Amerasians
• Chapter 21 - The Developmental Process of Asserting a Biracial, Bicultural Identity
• Part IV - Challenging the Census
• Chapter 22 - Is Multiracial Status Unique? The Personal and Social Experience
• Chapter 23 - Coloring Outside the Lines
• Chapter 24 - Multicultural Identity and the Death of Stereotypes
• Chapter 25 - Beyond Black and White: The New Multiracial Consciousness
• Chapter 26 - From Shortcuts to Solutions
• References
• Index
• About the Authors