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Multiracial People as Parents
An Overview of Research on Multiracial People
In 2001, David Parker and I observed that âthe topic of âmixed raceâ can bring out the worst in people.â1 What we meant by this tart remark was that the topic tended to elicit polarized views, so that while some regarded mixed people and âmixingâ as hugely problematic, others saw it as the answer to many of our social ills. The current growth in academic writings and forms of popular culture concerning multiracial people demonstrate that we have reached a key juncture in how scholars and the wider society think about and represent multiracial people and their families. In fact, as Jayne Ifekwunigwe observes, we have witnessed three different âagesâ of multiracial thinking and discourse, starting with the âAge of Pathology,â then going on to the âAge of Celebration,â and now to the âAge of Critique,â in which much of the recent scholarship in the twenty-first century has adopted a more critical and skeptical stance toward multiracial status, identifications, and experiences. 2
Earlier scholarship about multiracial people tended to depict such individuals as leading a difficult in-between, âmarginal manâ existence, marked by emotional and psychological insecurity.3 Through much of the early to middle twentieth century, anxieties about racial mixing sat uneasily with proclamations about racial equality and justice in the civil rights movement. This is evident in many cultural representations (both in literary and cinematic forms) of the tragic mulatto, who was typically portrayed as someone who suffered bodily disharmony and psychological instability.4 High rates in the dissolution of interracial unions, as well as the disproportionate numbers of mixed Black/White children in foster care, also comprised key parts of the negative discourse surrounding âmixingâ and mixed people.5
Countering the pathologizing discourses about mixing, and growing out of the multiracial movement spearheaded by groups on American college campuses, a new generation of scholars, many multiracial themselves, adopted a more celebratory stance toward their multiracial backgrounds, though much of this literature also highlighted the personal difficulties and experiences associated with being mixed.6 Emblematic of this kind of defiant and celebratory stance are the volumes edited by Maria Root.7 Along with her theorizing on multiracial identity development, the pioneering work of historian Paul Spickard has been important in shaping much of subsequent work.8 Rather than elaborating a staged model of identity development in multiracial individuals,9 Root proposes that multiracial people can adopt four modes of âborder crossing,â which have been subsequently adapted by many scholars. They are âhaving both feet in both groupsâ; âthe shifting of foreground and background as one crosses between and among social contexts defined by race and ethnicityâ; âone decisively sits on the borderâ; and âone creates a home in one âcampâ for an extended period of time and makes forays into other camps from time to time.â10 Furthermore, she outlines a âbill of rights for racially mixed people,â in which mixed individuals are urged to assert any identification they wish, regardless of other peopleâs challenges to such claims.11 As in other British research on mixedness and mixing, this book takes neither a negative nor celebratory stance toward interracial unions and multiracial people.12 In fact, various scholars have argued that normative stances on mixing are misplaced, as well as being a dead-end in terms of advancing our understanding of this growing phenomenon.13
One immediate challenge in any study of multiracial people is the huge diversity contained within such a category, even when we limit our focus to one specific country. Furthermore, where do we situate multiracial people in racially stratified societies, which are usually understood to be comprised of monoracial groups? Are multiracial people in majority White countries more like White people or more like minority people in terms of their social experiences? Interestingly, a recent Pew survey of multiracial Americans found that those with Black ancestry tend to have a set of experiences and social interactions that âare much more closely aligned with the black community,â while those with Asian ancestry âfeel more closely connected to whites than to Asians.â14 Given the numerous studies of multiracial people in the United Statesâa country with a very distinctive racial historyâit is imperative that the status and experiences of multiracial people in other countries, such as Britain, be explored.
Interracial Couples and the Racial Identification of Multiracial Children
The contentious issue of how multiracial people are identified (vis-Ă -vis others in a racially stratified society), along with the social and political implications of such identifications, has constituted a key focus of research for many American scholars of interracial unions and multiracial people. A great deal of the US literature on multiracial people has looked at census data (or other large national surveys) and investigated how interracial couplesâthat is, those consisting of partners with different monoracial backgroundsâhave racially identified their multiracial children.15 Generally speaking, these studies found that Black/White interracial couples in the United States were more likely to identify their children with their minority race (Black) than were Asian/White, Latino/White, and Native American/White couples, who racially classified their multiracial children in more varied ways.16
Now, however, some analysts in the United States have found that Black/White interracial couples are less constrained in classifying their multiracial children solely as âBlack,â and conclude that there has been a gradual weakening of the âone drop ruleâ of hypodescent in the United States,17 though others report the continuing strength of the âone drop ruleâ for Black and part-Black people.18 In her study of intermarried Black and White couples and their racial identification of their children, Wendy Roth found that most of these couples rejected the âone drop rule,â and instead designated a multiracial category for their children.19 Roth argues that any divergence from the norm to classify multiracial Black/White children as Black is significant because of the historical strength of such a norm.20 Furthermore, Carolyn Lieblerâs recent analysis of how the children of many types of interracial unions in the United States (between 1960 and 2010) are categorized points to the growing salience of both multiracial Asian and multiracial Black as categories that are used in mixed families and in the wider society.21
While they do not explicitly say so, many of these studies imply that there is likely to be a correspondence between how parents in interracial unions racially see their children (identification) with how these children will come to see themselves over time (identity). Parents are indisputably one of the most fundamental influences on how multiracial children will identify, racially and ethnically, but childrenâs sense of themselves cannot be automatically presumed or read off of how parents designate them on census or other large survey forms.22 As cogently articulated by Steven Holloway and his colleagues, âThe racial claims of parents on behalf of their multiracial children . . . reflect, if only imperfectly, their understanding of who their children are racially, as well as who they may want their children to become racially.â23 The exploration of who multiracial people want their children to become is central to this book.
Many studies employing census data and other large data sets in the United States have also regarded the question of how parents identify their multiracial children as an important snapshot of the racial landscape and a revealing indicator of the continuing salience of racial boundaries and differential racial privileges. For instance, David Brunsma argues that there is emerging evidence of a âreverse hypodescentâ process occurring in how multiracial children are being racially labelledâat least for some kinds of mixed households.24 Given the opportunity, some interracial couples engage in what Charles Gallagher has called âracial redistrictingâ in order both to distance their multiracial children from a stigmatized minority status and to reap the benefits of a closer proximity to Whiteness.25 Kerry Ann Rockquemore and Patricia Arend contend that the fact that some multiracial people in the United States are now identifying as White is evidence of âan expansion of the rules of whiteness that reduce the absolute need for âracial purity,â and instead imply socioeconomic standards and cultural assimilation as the price of admission.â26 Furthermore, in a study linking changes in racial classification (by others) and racial identification with social stratification processes, Aliya Saperstein and Andrew Penner found that as individuals experienced forms of upward mobility, they were more likely to be âwhitenedâ by others and to whiten their own identifications, and that as some experienced unemployment or were incarcerated, the opposite was true, and they were more likely to âdarkenâ their identifications (or be seen as more Black by others).27
Despite the significant number of studies of how interracial couples racially identify their children, researchers have been able only to speculate about why parents identify their multiracial children in particular ways. As David Brunsma points out, âWe need to know much more about what these identification processes mean for these parents of mixed-race children. It may be, as I suggest, that they are seeing the structure of resource distribution, the racialized and pigmentized racial hierarchy, and the link between the two, and beginning to distance their children from the bottom of that hierarchy.â28 While such motivations on the part of parents of multiracial children cannot be discounted, they may constitute only part of the explanation for how and why parents identify and socialize their children in particular ways. Some of these studies can adopt an overly narrow and instrumental understanding of how parents in interracial unions think about and weigh up choices about their children. A further difficulty with studies that focus on how parents racially identify their mixed children is that there is no information about who fills in the census forms or whether the racial designation of children is discussed or in any way negotiated among family members. Families that have members with attachments to multiple and different ethnic or racial groups may experience differences and even conflicts in relation to the identification and socialization of their children.29 While various US studies have documented the identification of multiracial children on official forms, we still know very little about how multiracial children are brought up in their families.
Raising Multiracial Children
While a number of studies of multiracial children have centered on parentsâ ability to foster racial awareness, the vast majority of these studies have addressed the experiences of Black/White multiracial children.30 In Britain, a growing body of work has examined whether Whit...