Mixed Race Studies

Developing a positive racial identity–challenges for psychotherapists working with black and mixed race adopted adults

The Psychotherapist
Spring 2010
pages 10-12

Esther Ina-Egbe, Psychotherapist, Counsellor and Trainer

In this article, Esther Ina-Egbe argues that psychotherapists need to explore the repetitions and lack of mirroring that may be present in the therapeutic relationship

There is a huge body of knowledge on the development of racial identity. This article has been influenced by notable writers and critics, such as Schwartz, and Armstrong and Slaytor, who have carried out extensive work on this topic. I have also consulted other writers and formed my own opinion and judgments based on my experience in private practice.

What is racial identity?
Before addressing how to develop a positive racial identity, we must first look at what racial identity is. Armstrong and Slaytor consider that children as young as two and a half years old are aware of racial differences, and that development of a positive racial identity does not just happen but must be cultivated. Bath and North-East Somerset Council has defined racial identity as ‘one’s self perception and sense of belonging to a particular group including not only how one describes and defines oneself, but also how one distinguishes oneself from other ethnic groups’. According to this definition, racial and ethnic group differences will certainly impact on children’s social development, although that impact may differ according to age and specific ethnicity. Hence, social context, immediate surroundings and historical heritage are underpinning factors in the development of a child’s race awareness and identity…

…Mixed race heritage
Having a mixed ethnic heritage has a different effect on a child’s development (Herring, 1992), and it is therefore very important to actively help mixed race children acquire a positive self-concept. They need exposure to models of all the ethnicities they embrace. They need to understand what it means to be mixed race and to acquire coping skills linked to their cultures, including ways to deal with racism and discrimination (Wardle, 1987).  Referring to the American experience, where there is dearth of fully integrated, stable and tension-free racially mixed communities, Miller and Rotheram-Borus (1994) advise that ‘families and schools must work hard to provide a supportive community that affirms multi-racialism’. A key factor in the lives of mixed race children and adults is how they are labelled by themselves, their families and society in general. Root (1996) views labels as a motivating factor, stating that ‘labels are important vehicles for self-empowerment as there has been an increase in the self-determination of interracial families’. Many have become active politically to ensure that they are accepted as a group with special concerns separate from other racial or ethnic populations. A recent example is the current president of the USA, Barack Obama.

Mixed race children and adults need to work through internal conflicts and guilt about having to develop an identity that might not incorporate all aspects of their heritage and to resist internalising society’s negative attitudes, mixed racialism and minority status. Ultimately, successful identity formation, or a satisfying feeling of wholeness, requires that mixed race people appreciate and integrate all components of their heritage into their lives (Poston, 1990). Furthermore, while some families help their children develop a biracial identity based on the components of their particular background, it is important for children to take equal pride in all their heritages and to maintain equal connections with all members of their family. According to Pinderhughes (1995), some of these families recognise that their children’s appearance reflects their dual heritage and they want the family’s culture to embody that. However, other families foster their children’s identification with only one race. Single parents, especially, may want to emphasise the culture of their own race because that is what they know best and because their children resemble them (Mills, 1994). Some parents of children with African ancestry may assume that society will consider the children black, so they raise them as black to better prepare them for their treatment in later life (Morrison and Rodgers, 1996). In addition, society may encourage children only to identify with their minority group in an effort to maintain the ‘racial purity’ of whites. Conversely, some mixed race children may be urged to assume a white identity on the assumption that if they can ‘pass’ as white they can avoid experiencing racism (Miller and Rotheram-Borus, 1994)…

Read the entire article here.