Mixed Race Identities

P. Aspinall, M. Song

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781349324620, 9780230275041
• eBook ISBN: 9781137318893
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Policy
• Index: Social Sciences

This book explores the ethnic and racial options exercised by young mixed race people in Britain. It reveals the diverse ways in which young people identify and experience their mixed status, the complex nature of such identities, and the rise of other identity strands which are now challenging race and ethnicity as dominant and salient identities.

1

Exploring ‘Mixed Race’ in Britain

Introduction

To what extent can we say that there is a ‘mixed race’ group in Britain today? What commonalities underlie the experience of being mixed, and in what ways does the growing population of mixed people comprise a group? This book explores the racial identifications and experiences of mixed race young adults in further and higher education in Britain. While studies of mixed people have grown in Britain in the last two decades, we still know remarkably little about this population. For instance, how do different types of mixed people identify themselves in ethnic and racial terms, and what sorts of identity options do they possess? Does the wider society validate mixed people’s asserted identifications? Is being mixed race in Britain a racially disadvantaged status? To what extent is being mixed central to their sense of selves and their everyday lives?

Advocates of ‘multiracial’ people (the preferred term in the US), especially in the United States, have asserted that they have a right to be recognized as multiracial – as opposed to affiliated singularly with only one ‘race’ (see e.g. Root 1996). What is unknown, however, is whether the official recognition of ‘mixed race’ (the dominant term in Britain) or ‘multiracial’ people by the state actually heralds the emergence of a new racial identity (and/or group) which undercuts current racial classification schemes in which racial groups are still regarded as mutually exclusive entities (Bratter 2007).

By focusing upon Britain’s mixed population, we are aware that this study of mixedness is situated in the context of specific social and migration histories. Clearly, the debates, policies, and discourses around mixed race people (and relationships) differ hugely across disparate societies. For instance, discussions of mixedness (or of ethnic and racial difference more generally) in Australia and New Zealand tend to centre on indigenous racialized populations, white settlers, and more recently arrived non-white migrants (such as migrants from East Asia), while ‘New World’ Caribbean societies’ understandings of ‘mixing’ and mixed people are characterized by their own specific histories of colonization and racial categories and differences. Nevertheless, our study of young mixed people in Britain will contribute important empirical and theoretical findings to the existing body of research on multiracial people, which has thus far been dominated by studies of North America.

We use the terms ‘mixed race’, ‘mixed’, and ‘multiracial’ interchangeably throughout this book. There is no one terminology which is agreed upon among scholars (or among ‘ordinary’ people). What many scholars do agree upon is that these terms, like ‘race’, are all socially constructed, employed multifariously in a variety of discursive interactions (Harris & Rampton 2009) and subject to interpretation in particular ways and in particular societies. Who is considered to be mixed race or multiracial in the first place is by no means obvious and depends on the specific racial classification systems operating in a specific society (Aspinall 2009; Song 2009; Morning 2000). As DaCosta (2007) notes, the use of multiple terms also signals a heterogeneous group in the making, rather than a group in any fixed sense.

Furthermore, in our discussion and exploration of ‘mixed race’ people in this book, we refer to both race and ethnicity, and the often messy, and blurred boundaries between the two (Song 2003). Although some analysts have tended to differentiate clearly between these concepts, understandings and references to ethnicity and race can overlap with each other and are sometimes used interchangeably. While ‘race’ is now widely regarded as a socially constructed concept used to describe pan-ethnic population groups differentiated primarily by markers of visibility (in which Whiteness has traditionally constituted the norm), conceptualizations of race have typically referred to beliefs about biological differences among population groups. Recently, there have been attempts to reclaim the term ‘race’ to describe clusters representing important genetic differences between populations (Skinner 2007). ‘Race’ has been used historically to assign people into stigmatized categories, so that attributions of race are centrally about the exercising of power (see Omi & Winant 1994; Cornell & Hartmann 1998; Bashi & McDaniel 1996).

By comparison, analysts of ‘ethnicity’ have tended to emphasize collective assertions of shared culture, ancestry, and histories, whether imagined or real (see e.g. Bulmer 1986). Interestingly, unlike the United States, where the language and terminology of race is still largely uncontroversial (for example, the term continues to be used in the decennial US Census), many British analysts, and the Office for National Statistics (responsible for the census in the UK), pointedly refer to ‘ethnicity’ and manifest a clear discomfort with the language of ‘race’. Indeed, the view that race should only be used in the contexts of racism and the history of race science is ascendant, rather than as a population category to describe differences based on visible markers like ‘colour’ or other racialized characteristics.

So while debates about the use of racial terminology continue in Britain (see Chapter 8), we would maintain that it is not always possible to differentiate neatly between ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ in our study of ‘mixed race’ young people, though these terms do carry disparate inflections and meanings in particular contexts and situations. Furthermore, the saliency in the use of ‘mixed race’ as a self-descriptor amongst our research subjects (rather than imposed terms like ‘mixed heritage’) gives the term legitimacy.

The growth of so-called mixed people and relationships today makes nonsense out of the idea that there exist discrete races that can be defined as mutually exclusive among people in multiethnic societies around the world (Parker & Song 2001) – though scientific debates continue concerning the legitimacy of population groups distinguishable as ‘races’ (see Kohn 1995; Herrnstein & Murray 1994; Gould 1996). And although we use the terms ‘mixed race’ and ‘monoracial’ to distinguish between those who are seen (or see themselves) as mixed from those who are (do) not, we recognize that population mixing has characterized the history of our species and is evident in our genetic make-up (Jones 1994; Spencer 2006).

Historically, mixed people have been pathologized as occupying a marginal location, in which they neither truly belong in one or another racial group (see Stonequist 1937; Furedi 2001). More recently, some analysts have argued that multiracial people’s in-between status has resulted in their propensity to be especially racially conscious: ‘The particular standpoint of multiracial persons, not being fully a part of a monoracial group, nor being completely recognized as a separate category, leads to an increased emphasis on racial issues for them’ (Brackett et al. 2006:443).

Increasingly, research (especially in the US and Britain) has debunked depictions of mixed people as fragmented, marginal, and necessarily confused (see Phoenix & Owen 1996; Root 1992, 1996; Daniel 1996; Spickard 1989; Olumide 2002; King & DaCosta 1996; Zack 1993). Nevertheless, much public policy in Britain has tended to see family breakdown or parental inadequacy as a direct result of racial mixing (Caballero et al. 2008). Arguing against what is perceived to be an essentialist, rigid, and now rather dated view of the dynamics surrounding racial identification, recent evidence concerning the racial identification of so-called mixed race people suggests growing latitude in how they may identify (or are identified by others), including a mixed or ‘border’ identification which refutes the primacy of one race over another (see Root 1996; Wilson 1987; Mahtani 2002; Herman 2004; Khanna 2010; Rockquemore & Brunsma 2002; Edwards & Caballero 2008; Ali 2003; Tizard & Phoenix 1993; Barn & Harman 2006; Okitikpi 2005; Barn 1999).

As found in many studies, having mixed ancestry does not necessarily mean that one identifies (or is identified) as a mixed or multiracial person. In fact, (arguably) the world’s most famous mixed person, Barack Obama, apparently ticked ‘Black’ when he filled in his Census form – though the US Census now allows respondents to tick more than one category in its race question (Roberts & Baker 2010). Nevertheless, in the United States, where studies of the multiracial population are most numerous (at least in the Western world), a significant proportion of mixed people, including Black/White mixed people, are now asserting multiracial identities (see Root’s 1992 and 1996 volumes; Brunsma 2006; Bratter 2007; Zack 1993; Harris & Sim 2002; Rockequemore & Brunsma 2002; Rockquemore & Laszloffy 2005; Roth 2005; DaCosta 2007; Khanna 2010; Dalmage 2000) – despite the historical legacy of the ‘one drop rule’, in which anyone with any known Black ancestry was labelled Black (Davis 1991). This growing latitude in identification is significant because it signals some degree of blurring and fluidity of racial boundaries (see Alba & Nee 2003).

A plethora of studies – both quantitative and qualitative – has identified a number of factors which influence the ways in which mixed people identify and understand themselves, including their socialization, ethnic composition of neighbourhood, socioeconomic status, physical appearance, and their locality and region, among others (see Rockquemore & Brunsma 2002; Harris & Sim 2002; Twine 2010; Tizard & Phoenix 1993). These many variables also intersect in both patterned and unpredictable ways.

Thus contemporary studies of race and ethnicity increasingly conceive of ‘race’ as a fluid concept which has been historically and socially constructed and maintained. Many analysts now recognize that racial statistics cannot always provide us with a picture of how race is actually experienced in ‘real life’ social interactions (Roth 2010; Troyer & Campbell 2007; Khanna 2004; Song & Hashem 2010; Harris & Rampton 2009; Earle & Phillips 2009). However, methodological innovations in how such data are collected and analysed are providing new insights. For example, post-census validation surveys and record linkage in census-based datasets (such as the Longitudinal Study) and other survey and administrative data are providing information on stability and change in self-assigned ethnicity over the short and long terms (Platt et al. 2005). Increasingly, data are collected in the census and surveys on multiple dimensions in the cultural question set, such as ethnic group, national identity, religion, and language (Burton et al. 2010), and the availability of census and survey microdata have facilitated exploration of how these variables and others of interest are related to each other at the person level (see Chapter 7). The UK Household Longitudinal Study, which is now a key vehicle for exploring the complexity of ethnic identity and other dimensions, is also undertaking new question development.

These datasets (and others in the US such as the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health [Add Health], Current Population Survey, and Public Use Microdata Samples from the decennial census) have been exploited to show that people’s sense or reporting of their racial/ethnic identities may be variable, and that there is a possibility that there is a mismatch between how individuals racially and ethnically see themselves, and how others see them, in a variety of settings (Khanna 2010; Roth 2010; Song & Aspinall 2012). Some British scholars, such as Ali (2003), Gilroy (2000), and Nayak (2008), have also emphasized the importance of adopting a post-racial perspective in the study of ‘mixed’ people and forms of interracial and interethnic co-mingling (and see Hylton et al. (2011) for a debate concerning critical race theory).

Yet in spite of the growing importance of mixed people and families in demographic terms and its entry into official data collection (see Aspinall 2003; Aspinall 2009; Panico & Nazroo 2011), relatively little is known about the life experiences of so-called mixed people in Britain, or how this diverse population identifies in ethnic and racial terms – information which is crucial for our understandings of cultural diversity and changing beliefs and practices concerning ethnic and racial difference. In the last two decades in particular, British studies of mixed people have grown significantly, focusing upon racial identification (Parker & Song 2001; Tizard & Phoenix 1993; Ali 2003; Katz 1996; Barn & Harman 2006; Ifekwunigwe 1999; Olumide 2002), family relationships (Song 2010; Caballero et al. 2008; Ali 2003; Twine 2010; Wilson 1987), and child welfare (Barn 1999; Okitikpi 2005). More recent analysis of the 2001 census and of ONS Longitudinal Study data has also resulted in studies of the residential geographies of ‘mixed-ethnicity’ families in Britain, showing variable concentrations of such families in distinct locations (Smith et al. 2011), and of neighbourhood ethnic mix and the formation of interethnic unions (Feng et al. 2010).

However, most studies of the mixed population in Britain have concerned (as in the US) Black/White ‘mixture’, and as discussed below, popular depictions of mixed relationships and people in Britain are likely to overlook the diverse experiences, identifications, and backgrounds of contemporary mixed people and their families.

Studying the mixed population in Britain today

A study of the mixed population in Britain is extremely timely for a number of reasons. First, there has been a marked growth in the number of mixed people and in the rates of interracial/ethnic partnering. In 2001, the England and Wales Census counted about 663,000 people (about 1.2% of the population) who identified themselves as ‘mixed’. If mixedness is defined to encompass all those who are the offspring of parents in interracial/ethnic unions (as opposed to a measure of those who identified as being mixed), then the count is substantially larger: a recent analysis of the UK Household Longitudinal Study data (Wave 2, 2010) indicates that of those whose parents were of different ethnic groups, only 30% self-identified as ‘mixed’. Thus, when based on parentage, the ‘mixed’ count is around three times larger than when captured in a self-identification question (Nandi & Platt 2012).

The recent release of the 2011 England and Wales Census data revealed that the ‘mixed/multiple ethnic groups’ grew from 1.2% in 2001 to 2.2% of the population in 2011 (ONS 2012). This growth has come about during a period of significant demographic change. For instance, those who chose ‘White’ as their ethnic group decreased from 94% in the 1991 England and Wales Census to 86% in the 2011 Census (ONS 2012). In absolute terms the White British population fell from 45.5 million to 45.1 million, while the White Other population increased from 1.3 million to 2.5 million. Furthermore, 12% of households with at least two people had partners or household members of different ethnic groups in 2011 (up 3% from 2001) (ibid.).

The mixed group is now one of the fastest growing sectors of the British population. The mid-2009 ONS experimental population estimates by ethnic group for England and Wales had indicated an increase in the size of the ‘mixed’ group of 46.8% between mid-2001 and mid-2009, with only the Chinese, Other, and Black African groups growing more quickly. However, the 2011 Census showed that in the inter-censal decade, the ‘mixed’ group had grown by 85%, varying from 80% for the White and Black Caribbean category to 110% in the case of the White and Black African category. This was a faster rate of growth than the Chinese group (73%) but not as high as the Black African increase (106%). Demographers have also identified that the mixed group will continue to grow at a high rate to 2020 and beyond. One set of projections indicate a 40% growth rate between 2001 and 2010, to reach almost 1 million, and 30% during 2010–2020 to achieve 1.2 million, although still smaller than the pan-ethnic Asian (3.5 million) and black (1.6 million) groups (Rees 2008). Another model predicts a ‘mixed’ population of 859,000 (2006), 2.23 million (2031), and 4.21 million (2056), representing annual growth rates of 3.82% (2006–2031) and 3.18% (2006–2056) (Coleman 2010), but exceeded by several other groups including Black African, Other Asian, and Other. Whatever the long-term increase, the inter-censal rise has been notable (Aspinall 2009). In the United States, the results of their 2010 census found a 32% rise since the 2000 census in the number of Americans who self-identified with two or more races, rising from 2.4% to 2.9% of the population (Humes et al. 2011): In the United Kingdom the intercensal increase in ‘mixed’ numbers has been twice as high at 85%, with a commensurate increase in the contribution to the total population.

Britain manifests high rates of intermarriage among Western countries (Song 2009), and all second-generation ethnic minority groups exhibit a higher tendency to intermarry than the first generation, though individuals of Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi backgrounds are less likely to do so than other groups (Muttarak & Heath 2010). In a recent analysis of the Labour Force Survey, nearly half of Black Caribbean men in a partnership were partnered (married or cohabiting) with someone of a different ethnic group (and about 1/3 of Black Caribbean women), while 39% of Chinese women in partnerships had a partner from a different ethnic group (Platt 2009).¹ There are now more children in Britain (under age 15) with one Black Caribbean and one White parent than children with two Black Caribbean parents (Owen 2007). A recent report by think tank British Future (‘The Melting Pot Generation: How Britain Became more Relaxed About Race’) found that the number of people concerned about mixed race relationships fell from 50% in the 1980s to 15% in 2012 (Ford et al. 2012).

In stark contrast with the United States, the relatively high rate of Black/White intermarriage in Britain accompanies various forms of Black/White ‘conviviality’ (Gilroy 2004) and social interactions (Back 1995; Hewitt 1986; Alexander 1996; Nayak 2003), especially in large, urban contexts. Recent research...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Exploring ‘Mixed Race’ in Britain
• 2. Racial Identification: Multiplicity and Fluidity
• 3. Differential Ethnic Options?
• 4. Does Racial Mismatch in Identification Matter?
• 5. Are Mixed Race People Racially Disadvantaged?
• 6. How Central Is ‘Race’ to Mixed Race People?
• 7. Rethinking Ethnic and Racial Classifications
• 8. Conclusion: What Is the Future of ‘Mixed Race’ Britain?
• Notes
• References
• Index