Mixed Race Studies

Vulnerable Multiracial Families and Early Years Services: Concerns, Challenges and Opportunities

Children & Society
Volume 10, Issue 4 (December 1996)
Pages 305 – 316
DOI: 10.1111/j.1099-0860.1996.tb00598.x

Margaret Boushel
Department of Social Work and Social Care
University of Sussex

In Britain, very young mixed-parentage children are more likely to receive state care than any other children. However, despite a dramatic increase in the number of multiracial families, their experiences have received little research attention. This article reviews the research on the experiences of vulnerable and poor multiracial families. Three areas of concern emerge—the relationship between family structure, locality and racism, disadvantage and oppression; the impact on family life of structurally reinforced and culturally defined gender roles; and the strengths and limitations of current early years research and practice. Suggestions are made about ways in which early years professionals might develop their practice with young vulnerable multiracial families.

Read or purchase the article here.

Building Kinship and Community: Relational Processes of Bicultural Identity Among Adult Multiracial Adoptees

Family Process
Volume 49, Issue 1 (March 2010)
pages 26-42
DOI: 10.1111/j.1545-5300.2010.01306.x

Gina Miranda Samuels, Associate Professor
School of Social Service Administration
University of Chicago

This study uses the case of transracially adopted multiracial adults to highlight an alternative family context and thus process of African American enculturation. Interpretive analyses of interviews with 25 adult multiracial adoptees produced 4 patterns in their bicultural identity formation: (1) claiming whiteness culturally but not racially, (2) learning to “be Black”—peers as agents of enculturation, (3) biological pathways to authentic Black kinship, and (4) bicultural kinship beyond Black and White. Conceptualizing race as an ascribed extended kinship network and using notions of “groundedness” from bicultural identity literature, the relational aspects of participants’ identity development are highlighted. Culturally relevant concepts of bicultural identity are proposed for practice with multiracial adoptees who have multiple cultures of origin and for whom White mainstream culture is transmitted intrafamilially as a first culture.

Read the entire article here.

Communication, Race, and Family: Exploring Communication in Black, White, and Biracial Families

Routledge
1999-08-01
Pages: 264
Trim Size: 6 x 9
Hardback ISBN: 978-0-8058-2938-9
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8058-2939-6

Edited by:

Thomas J. Socha

Rhunette C. Diggs

This groundbreaking volume explores how family communication influences the perennial and controversial topic of race. In assembling this collection, editors Thomas J. Socha and Rhunette C. Diggs argue that the hope for managing America’s troubles with “race” lies not only with communicating about race at public meetings, in school, and in the media, but also—and more fundamentally—with families communicating constructively about race at home.

African-American and European-American family communication researchers come together in this volume to investigate such topics as how Black families communicate to manage the issue of racism; how Black parent-child communication is used to manage the derogation of Black children; the role of television in family communication about race; the similarities and differences between and among communication in Black, White, and biracial couples and families; and how family communication education can contribute to a brighter future for all. With the aim of developing a clearer understanding of the role that family communication plays in society’s move toward a multicultural world, this volume provides a crucial examination of how families struggle with issues of ethnic cultural diversity.

Table of Contents

• M.K. Asante, Foreword. Preface
• T.J. Socha, R.C. Diggs, At the Crossroads of Communication, Race, and Family: Toward Understanding Black, White, and Biracial Family Communication
• J.L. Daniel, J.E. Daniel, African-American Childrearing: The Context of a Hot Stove
• I.B. Ferguson, African-American Parent-Child Communication About Racial Derogation
• S.L. Parks, Race and Electronic Media in the Lives of Four Families: An Ethnographic Study
• R.A. Davilla, White Children’s Talk About Race and Culture: Family Communication and Intercultural Socialization
• R.C. Diggs, African-American and European-American Adolescents’ Perceptions of Self-Esteem as Influenced by Parent and Peer Communication and Support Environments
• M. Dainton, African-American, European-American, and Biracial Couples’ Meanings for and Experiences in Marriage. M.P. Orbe, Communicating About “Race” in Interracial Families
• B.K. Alexander, H.P. LeBlanc, III, Cooking Gumbo–Examining Cultural Dialogue About Family: A Black-White Narrativization of Lived Experience in Southern Louisiana
• T.J. Socha, J. Beigle, Toward Improving Life at the Crossroads: Family Communication Education and Multicultural Competence
• K. Galvin, Epilogue: Illuminating and Evoking Issues of Race and Family Communication

Racial Identification of the Biracial Preschool Child in a Single parent Family: Implications for Study

Family Science Review
Volume 4, Number 3 (August 1991)
pages 81-92

Z. Lois Bryant, Professor of Human Development and Family Studies
University of Missouri, Columbia

Johnetta Wade Morrison, Professor of Human Development and Family Studies
University of Missouri, Columbia

This article addressess some previously unexplored factors related to the racial identity and self-concept formation of biracial preschool children of single female parents. Empirically based research literature on this population is limited although numerous authorities have emphasized the importance of self-concept and racial identity to the total development of the preschool child. The self-concepts and racial identity and attiudes of the mothers of these children, as well as the influence of the preschool setting also are addressed.

Read the entire article here.

The End of the One-Drop Rule? Labeling of Multiracial Children in Black Intermarriages

Sociological Forum
Volume 20, Number 1 (March, 2005)
pages 35-67
Print ISSN: 0884-8971, Online ISSN: 1573-7861
DOI: 10.1007/s11206-005-1897-0

Wendy D. Roth, Assistant Professor of Sociology
University of British Columbia, Canada

The identity choices of multiracial individuals with Black heritage have traditionally been limited in America by the one-drop rule, which automatically designated them as Black. This paper evaluates the rules contemporary influence and argues that, with increasing interracial marriage, options in racial identification are now available to this group. Using the 5% 1990 and 2000 Public Use Microdata Samples, I consider how children from Black intermarriages are racially identified by their families and, using 2000 data, evaluate theoretical hypotheses to explain identification processes. The results show that most families with Black intermarriages reject the one-drop rule, but that Black–White families create unique interracial options, the implications of which are considered.

Read or purchase the article here.

Passing for White: Race, Religion, and the Healy Family, 1820–1920

University of Massachusetts Press
July 2002
296 pages
6 illustrations
Cloth ISBN: 978-1-55849-341-7
Paper ISBN: 978-1-55849-417-6

James M. O’Toole, Clough Professor of History
Boston College, Boston, Massachusets

• An alternate selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club
• Winner of the New England Historical Association Book Award

The remarkable saga of a mixed-race family in nineteenth-century America

Through the prism of one family’s experience, this book explores questions of racial identity, religious tolerance, and black-white “passing” in America. Spanning the century from 1820 to 1920, it tells the story of Michael Morris Healy, a white Irish immigrant planter in Georgia; his African American slave Eliza Clark Healy, who was also his wife; and their nine children. Legally slaves, these brothers and sisters were smuggled north before the Civil War to be educated.

In spite of the hardships imposed by American society on persons of mixed racial heritage, the Healy children achieved considerable success. Rejecting the convention that defined as black anyone with “one drop of Negro blood,” they were able to transform themselves into white Americans. Their unlikely ally in this transition was the Catholic church, as several of them became priests or nuns. One brother served as a bishop in Maine, another as rector of the Cathedral in Boston, and a third as president of Georgetown University. Of the two sisters who became nuns, one was appointed the superior of convents in the United States and Canada. Another brother served for twenty years as a captain in the U.S. Coast Guard, enforcing law and order in the waters off Alaska.

The Healy children’s transition from black to white should not have been possible according to the prevailing understandings of race, but they accomplished it with apparent ease. Relying on their abilities, and in most cases choosing celibacy, which precluded mixed-race offspring, they forged a place for themselves. They also benefited from the support of people in the church and elsewhere. Even those white Americans who knew the family’s background chose to overlook their African ancestry and thereby help them to “get away” with passing.

By exploring the lifelong struggles of the members of the Healy family to redefine themselves in a racially polarized society, this book makes a distinctive contribution to our understanding of the enduring dilemma of race in America.

View a 58 minute-long discussion from 2002-12-04 with the author here.

Blended Nation: A Portrait of Mixed-Race America

Yes! Magazine
2010-02-10

The fear and xenophobia in the aftermath of 9/11 got Mike Tauber and Pamela Singh thinking about how race and ethnicity are based on visual cues.

They began photographing a network of mixed-race friends in the spring of 2002, eventually working with organizations like Swirl, a national, multiracial organization that challenges notions of race; and the Mavin Foundation, an organization that raises awareness about the experiences of multiracial people.

Read the entire article here.
To view a photo essay that samples the book, click here.

Blended Nation: Portraits and Interviews of Mixed-Race America

Channel Photographics
2009-08-11
140 pages
11 x 11 inches
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-9773399-2-1

Mike Tauber

Pamela Singh

What are you? On the 2000 U.S. Census, for the first time, multiracial individuals were allowed to indicate more than one race. Nearly seven million Americans did so. Blended Nation: Portraits and Interviews of Mixed Race America features individuals from this rapidly growing demographic of mixed race Americans across the country who identify as more than one race.

Through words and images, Mike Tauber and Pamela Singh explore the concept of race in America through the prism of the very personal experiences of people of mixed race heritage. Ann Curry writes in her Foreword, “As dad would say, ‘You are the best of both worlds,’ and so are the people you see on these pages, who cannot but strengthen America’s dream, as they are living proof it comes true.”

Mixed Race Americans Picture A ‘Blended Nation’

Weekend Edition Sunday
National Public Radio
2009-11-08

Liane Hansen, Host

The 2000 U.S. census was the first to give Americans the option to check more than one box for race. Nearly 7 million people declared themselves to be multiracial that year, a number that’s expected to shoot up in the 2010 count. As more of the nation’s population identifies itself as being of mixed race, the authors of a new book say Americans’ traditional ideas of racial identity are in for a challenge.

In the book Blended Nation, photographer Mike Tauber and producer Pamela Singh combine portraits of mixed-race Americans with stories of living beyond the sometimes rigid notions of race. The husband-and-wife team tell host Liane Hansen they wanted to highlight the personal experiences of life between categories.

“We really wanted to know what it was like for somebody who checks more than one box to exist in that realm,” Tauber says…

Read the entire story here.
Listen to the story here.

Social Work Practice and Lone White Mothers of Mixed-Parentage Children

British Journal of Social Work
Volume 40, Number 2
pages 391-406
DOI:10.1093/bjsw/bcn164

Vicki Harman, Lecturer in Social Policy and Social Work
Royal Holloway, University of London

This paper reports on empirical research involving focus groups with social workers in order to provide insight into their experiences of working with lone white mothers of mixed-parentage children in England. Social workers’ understandings of key areas of families’ lives are explored, including experiences of racism and adequacy of social support networks. The analysis highlights the need for a greater awareness of racism and social disapproval experienced by mothers, and how this impacts upon their support networks. The contested areas of identity and social and political identification for mixed-parentage children are discussed and key questions are asked about the use of terminology and how this influences social work practice. This paper also considers how social workers felt services could be improved and highlights the need for further training.

Read or purchase the article here.