Kerry Ann Rockquemore
Department of Sociology
Pepperdine University
My Dissertation
Race and Identity: Exploring the Biracial Experience A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Notre Dame June 1999
Race and Identity: Exploring the Biracial Experience A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Notre Dame June 1999
Abstract Dedication Chapter 1: Who is Black? Flux and Change in American Racial Identity Chapter 2: Research Methods Chapter 3: What is "Biracial Idenity"? Chapter 4: What is the Effect of Socialization on Biracial Identity Chapter 5: The Color Complex: Appearances and Identity Chapter 6: Who is Black Today and Who Will be Black Tomorrow? AppendicesA. Interview Consent Form B. Interview Questions C. "The Bill of Rights for Racially Mixed People" D. Demographic Questionnaire E. Solicitation Letter for Participation in the Study F. Questionnaire G. Interview Consent Form #2Endnotes
RACE AND IDENTITY: EXPLORING THE BIRACIAL EXPERIENCE Abstract by Kerry A. Rockquemore
In preparation for the 2000 Census, a debate arose over the possible addition of a "multi-racial" option to existing racial categories. Proponents argued that demographic trends have caused a 'biracial baby boom' and that members of this emerging population should be officially recognized as "multi-racial". This debate called into question the One-Drop Rule, an historical norm mandating that anyone with "one drop" of Black blood is a member of the Black race. At the heart of this debate were questions about the criteria for racial group membership, how the norms of categorization reflect and shape the self-identity of mixed race people, and how the existing norms may (or may not) be changing. This dissertation asks two important questions: 1) what does it mean to be 'biracial' according to members of this population and 2) what social factors influence how individuals construct and maintain their racial identity. Analysis of both survey and interview data from 225 respondents with one Black and one White parent reveals that biracial people have multiple ways in which they understand their racial identity. Some choose a singular identity (exclusively Black), some choose a border identity (exclusively biracial), others use the protean option of choosing between Black, White and/or biracial identities at different times and different places, and still others choose the transcendent path, denying any racial identity whatsoever. While there were different routes to each identity option, two important social processes governed individual choices: social context and interactional validation. Individual cases from the data illustrate how social network composition, socialization, and physical appearances influence the way racial identity is socially experienced within the networks of biracial people. It is these interactions that set the parameters of meaning from which a biracial individual's racial identity is constructed, negotiated, challenged, reshaped, validated and ultimately sustained. Because the socioeconomic status of one's parents was inversely related to Black identity, it appears that the One-Drop Rule continues to be the norm among poor and working class African-Americans. It is the children of the middle class who are increasingly opting for alternatives to a "Black" racial identity. Return to the Top
DEDICATION
Completing this dissertation has been one of the most difficult tasks I have ever faced. It has also been one of the most enjoyable due to the support of many individuals who each, in their own unique way, guided me along the long and winding path to its' completion. My greatest thanks and praise is to God who has ordered my steps throughout this project. Without faith, daily prayer, and His continual and undeserved gifts of grace, this study would have remained an interesting idea, and nothing more. The greatest among the gifts I have received have been the relationships that have nurtured my soul and my research, and it is to these individuals that I dedicate this work. First and foremost, this dissertation is dedicated to my incredible colleagues and friends: Elizabeth Schaefer-Caniglia, Michael Davern, Thorrodur Bjarnson, Amy Orr, Michelle Janning, Arul Arokiasamy, and Estelle McNair. I thank each of them for the time they have spent reading numerous drafts and their ability to give me strength when my confidence failed me. Special thanks must be given to David L. Brunsma, without whom, the following pages would be much uglier. David has been my "big brother" for the past five years, and oversaw my data collection and analysis with the patience of Job. He served as my 'trusted assessor', commenting on drafts I was too timid to show others, cutting straight to the problems, and delivering criticism in as gentle a manner possible. Secondly, I respectfully dedicate this dissertation to my committee members. I am greatly indebted to Richard Lamanna, Lyn Spillman, and Richard Williams for providing me with just the right balance of expert guidance and space to grow independently. No graduate student could ask for a finer advisor than Andrew Weigert. He has served as both an advisor and mentor to me, teaching me about everything from the appropriate use of an apostrophe to the meaning of life (and many things in-between). This dissertation is also dedicated to my family. I offer special thanks to my loving parents, Rosemarie and Leroy Rockquemore who have supported me in more ways than I could ever record and without whom, I literally would not be here. I am most thankful to God for the gift of my faithful and adoring spouse, William Haupricht. My husband has never complained nor constrained me. When our house was dirty, he hired a maid. When there was no dinner, he cooked. He just kept repeating the mantra "focus on your work, I'll take care of the rest". His countless selfless actions created the time and space in which this dissertation was written. Finally, I offer great thanks to my respondents. This dissertation is dedicated to all those who gave their time and effort to this project by expressing, some for the first time, what it is like to be biracial in America. Without their generosity and willingness to share their personal experiences, this work would fail to exist. Thank you. Return to the Top
CHAPTER 1 WHO IS BLACK?: FLUX AND CHANGE IN AMERICAN RACIAL IDENTITY
In 1995, a coalition of mixed race individuals and advocacy groups from across the nation lobbied the United States Census Bureau for the addition of a "multiracial" category to the 2000 Census. Instead of denying the request outright, a lengthy period of public debate ensued over the proposed adjustment to existing racial classifications. After a three-year study, a multi-agency governmental task force rejected the proposed "multiracial" category. While there continues to be an ongoing need for reliable data on racial groups, the addition of more categories was deemed both unnecessary and divisive. As a compromise, the 2000 Census will enable individuals to check more than one racial category if they desire. The compromise plan, which will be adopted for the collection of all government data on race, received unanimous support from thirty federal agencies including the Census Bureau, the Department of Justice, and the National Center for Health Statistics.
Support for the multiracial initiative was led by grass roots organizations such as Project RACE and the American Multi-Ethnic Association. These advocacy groups argued for the creation of a new racial category for both demographic and cultural reasons. Their demographic justification cited the trend of increasing interracial marriages and births of mixed-race children in the United States. In the past three decades, the number of inter-racial marriages in the United States has increased from 150,000 to 1.5 million and these households are estimated to have 4 million children (Bureau of the Census, 1995). Their second argument was that mixed-race individual's view themselves as "multiracial" as opposed to belonging exclusively to the racial group of one of their parents. The addition of a multiracial category, they argued, was essential to accurately represent existing demographic shifts in the population and to provide a true reflection of biracial peoples' understanding of their racial identity.
Leading the opposition to the mixed race initiative were well-known Civil Right's leaders, such as Jesse Jackson and Kweisi Mfume representing the NAACP and the Congressional Black Caucus. They argued that the underlying purpose of legislative directives mandating the collection of data on racial groups was to enable the enforcement of Civil Rights legislation and to document the existence of racial inequalities. Adding a multi-racial category, they argued, would increase the difficulty of collecting accurate data on the effects of discrimination and, therefore, deviated from the legal directive given to the Census Bureau.
The debate surrounding the possible addition of a "multiracial" category to the 2000 Census was an important development because at its' foundation, the debate questioned deeply held American assumptions about miscegenation and racial identity. While there are many more biracial people in the United States today than in any previous time in our country's history, the demographic argument raised by multiracial advocates was less theoretically penetrating than the questions raised by their cultural and social-psychological contention. To be certain, biracial-ness is not a newly emergent social phenomenon. What is new, however, is the way in which these advocates claim that people understand being biracial in America. Most intriguing about the mobilization of advocacy groups, and the deeply entrenched opposition they encountered in trying change the Census racial categorizations, is that it highlights the latest twist in the ongoing socio-historical problematic of classifying mixed-race people in the United States, and more pointedly, in answering the question: "who is Black?".
Racial groups in the United States have historically been stratified and this stratification has been supported by an ideological belief in genetic differentiation between races. Given this stratification, American society has developed a norm to classify individuals who straddle the socially constructed boundaries of "Black" and "White". In other words, society developed a systematized and legally codified answer to the question "who is Black?" This norm is formally referred to as "hypodescent" by anthropologists, but it is more commonly known as the "one-drop rule". The one-drop rule mandates that a mixed race child be relegated to the racial group of the lower status parent. In practice, this norm has been applied most directly to the African-American population as compared to other racial minority groups. The implication is that "one drop" of Black ancestry contaminates an individual from ever being "pure" White.
The one-drop rule is firmly grounded in historical tradition, but more importantly, it has served as a cultural base supporting racial inequalities. Because this social norm is at the very foundation of the question "who is Black?", and because our understanding of biracial identity rests on the answer to this question, it is important to briefly explore the emergence, ideological purpose, and historical trajectory of the one-drop rule.
The Beginnings of Miscegenation
Miscegenation has occurred in the United States from the time that individuals from African and European populations have had contact. Race mixing, as well as the one-drop rule, can be traced back to the colonial period. In the early colonies, particularly the Chesapeake area, miscegenation occurred largely between White indentured servants and both slave and free Blacks (Williamson, 1980). These individuals were from the lowest socioeconomic status, and therefore, the practice was seen as a vice of the White underclass (Reuter, 1970). In most colonies, the mixed race children that resulted from these unions were considered Black . As society viewed miscegenation as unacceptable, the one-drop rule emerged and functioned as an un-codified societal norm.
During this early colonial period, areas in the lower South, especially Louisiana and South Carolina, perceived race mixing differently than their Eastern counterparts. Interracial intercourse occurred less frequently in the lower South and these illicit unions were generally between White men and both slave and free Black women (Blassingame, 1973). Miscegenation was more accepted in these areas, particularly in Charleston and New Orleans where free mulattos formed an alliance with Whites and served an important role as a buffer group between Whites and Blacks (Dominguez, 1986). It is important to note that in these two geographic locales, mulattos possessed a unique in-between status within the existing racial hierarchy. Because of their buffer status, they developed a strong group identity that was distinct from either Whites or Blacks (Davis, 1991).
Slavery and The One-Drop Rule
The institution of slavery was built upon a strong White supremacist ideology of racial separation and an absolute social prohibition of miscegenation. The fear underlying anti-miscegenation attitudes was that Black blood would taint the purity of the White race. While Whites publicly denounced miscegenation, White men practiced it with regularity. The plantation era brought Whites and Blacks into close physical proximity on a daily basis. The slave-owning mentality included a belief that White male slave owners had the right to sexually "use" their Black female slaves at will. As a result, the vast majority of interracial sex consisted of exploitative unions between White male slave owners and their Black female slaves (Blassingame, 1972). Sexual intercourse between White women and Black male slaves was strictly forbidden, in large part, because of the possibility of that union producing a mixed-race child. To have a mulatto child in a White family was socially scandalous and threatened the entire ideological logic of the slave system. A mixed race child in the slave quarters, however, was not only tolerated but was considered an economic asset (Davis, 1991). As miscegenation between Whites and Blacks continued, in addition to the sexual unions between mulatto and unmixed Black slaves, the Black population gradually "whitened". By the end of slavery, there existed a diversity of physical traits among Blacks that ranged from unmixed African Blacks to White (Davis, 1991).
There were clear and obvious incentives for plantation owners to classify their mixed race children as Black. Despite relegating their own offspring to slave status, many times light skinned mulatto children of the master were given special privileges. These "privileges" included work in the master's house (as opposed to the more demanding work in the fields), an education, training in the skilled trades, and access to the White culture (Davis, 1991). Overall, the one-drop rule was the unquestioned norm in the plantation dominated South.
The exceptions to the one-drop rule, which both challenged and contradicted it as the existing racial classification norm, were Charleston and New Orleans. As previously mentioned, free mulattos in these two regions had aligned themselves with Whites and willingly served as a buffer between Whites and free and enslaved Blacks. As the Civil War approached, White southerners became increasingly defensive of slavery and rallied in support of the one-drop rule. This defensive posture created a climate of distrust and hostility towards free mulattos throughout the Southern states and permanently altered the relationship between Whites and mulattos in these two deviant locales. The severed ties between these two groups sent free mulattos seeking alliances with Blacks and shifted their sense of identity accordingly (Davis, 1991).
The Civil War caused existing ideological divisions to become even more deeply entrenched. The socially constructed boundaries between Blacks and Whites were reinforced as national attention was focused on the war which had the institution of slavery squarely at its center. At the war's conclusion, Southern Whites accepted the one-drop rule without question, as they tended to view all Blacks as the enemy (Davis, 1991). Mulattos became even more closely aligned with Blacks during the war due to their increased alienation from Whites, and the fact that many Whites viewed them as part of the Black race (Williamson, 1980). Because mulattos tended to be better educated and skilled than the newly freed Blacks, many emerged as leaders of Southern Blacks and served in the critically important roles of teachers, relief administrators, missionaries, and legislators (Davis, 1991). This complete alliance between mulattos and Southern Blacks resulted in full acceptance of the one-drop rule by all members of the American population. Whites, Blacks, and mulattos, for varying reasons, all came to full agreement that the one-drop rule was the answer to the question "who is Black?"
Jim Crow and the Protection of White Womanhood
The Jim Crow system of segregation was built upon the landmark legal case Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 (Davis, 1991). This case established the doctrine of "separate but equal" throughout the country and enabled a clear and unequivocal distinction to be made between the social worlds of Blacks and Whites. The passing of a multitude of segregation and anti-miscegenation laws in most states necessitated a legal definition of who, precisely, belonged in the category "Black". It was at this time in history that the one-drop rule, previously an informal norm, was legally codified (Mangum, 1940).
While society was preoccupied with racial boundary maintenance, mulattos continued to be considered as members of the Black community (Williamson, 1980). The political struggle against segregation was led by prominent mulattos such as W.E.B. Dubois, William Monroe Trotter, James Weldon Johnson, A. Philip Randolph and Walter White. The complete identification of mulattos with the Black community was further illustrated in the Harlem Renaissance (1923-1930). In this artistic celebration of the Black American experience, the total and complete internalization of the one-drop rule by both Blacks and mulattos was evident (Wintz, 1988). This is clear because the work of mulatto artists, musicians, dancers, poets, and writers was the articulation the Black experience (Williamson, 1980; Davis, 1991). Included among these prominent and gifted artists were Zora Neal Hurston, Langston Hughes, Claude Mckay, and Jean Toomer, names and people that historians simply remember as "Black".
During the period of segregation, interracial sexual contacts decreased significantly and were restricted, almost exclusively, to White male exploitation of Black women. Segregation raised the specter of "White womanhood" as the penultimate justification of anti-miscegenation laws. These images were represented in the mainstream media, most saliently captured in the popular movie Birth of a Nation. In one scene, a White virgin is being chased by a Black man to the edge of a cliff where she must decide the lesser of two evils, being (presumably) raped by her Black pursuer or throwing herself off the cliff. She jumped to her death and sent a powerful message about miscegenation. The taboo against intercourse between Black men and White women was strong and backed by an informal system of violent sanctions, the most common of which was lynching. Not unlike the days of slavery, White men publicly decried miscegenation in defense of White womanhood, but privately engaged in interracial sex. This contradictory stance was supported by the one-drop rule because a mulatto child could be accepted in a Black family without question.
The One Drop Rule and Civil Rights
The system of segregation was doomed by the precedent setting decision of Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. This decision nullified the spirit of the 'separate but equal' doctrine previously established in Plessy v. Fergeson, that was reinforced by numerous, increasingly restrictive, state segregation laws thereafter. Desegregation in the deep South was initiated slowly until the Supreme Court decided in 1969 (Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education, 396 U.S. 19) that no further delays in the desegregation of schools would be tolerated and that Southern schools must draft realistic plans for desegregation immediately (Davis, 1978). Passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act in 1965, and legislative protections against housing discrimination in 1968, legally tore down barriers for Blacks, but did not provide instant social integration. While these legal barriers were dismantled, de facto segregation remained alive and well in both the North and South (Davis, 1991).
In addition to the continued de facto segregation, Blacks faced considerable White backlash in reaction to court enforced desegregation. The result of the backlash was increased unity within the Black population and the emergence of "Black pride" and "Black power" in the late 1960's. This intense period of group unity produced a strong sense of Black identity and pride in Afro-American culture. In this emotional climate of racial polarization, mulattos, who had led the earlier renaissance, were stigmatized (Davis, 1991). While light skin and a White appearance had been assets in upward mobility within the Black community in earlier periods, they lost their value and became a liability (Williamson, 1980). This is best captured in the following description of the term 'high yelluh':
"A very light-complexioned African American; praised in some quarters, damned in others. Community ambivalence stems from high yelluhs' close physical approximation to European Americans. To the extent that white skin is valued, as was the case, for example, in the 1940's and 1950's, then being yelluh is a plus. On the other hand, to the extent that a yelluh African is a reminder of whiteness/the "enemy," as was the case in the black Power Movement of the 1960's and 1970's, for instance, then being yelluh is a minus." (Smitherman, 1994 p. 242)
Mulattos walked a find line in these tumultuous times. The more the country focused on the "race problem", the more deeply American's viewed race as an absolute biological, as opposed to a socially constructed, reality and the more unquestioned the one-drop rule became. Miscegenation continued throughout these times, although marriage increasingly became an option after the Supreme Court ruled in 1967 that state laws prohibiting interracial marriages were unconstitutional (Bland, 1973). In the 1960's and 1970's inter-racial marriages increased, however, marriages between Blacks and Whites accounted for less than 1% of all marriages. Mixed race people remained fully aligned with Blacks, despite the fact that some (especially those who appeared White) experienced negative treatment by Blacks in the climate of Black pride.
Cultural Norms and Support of Racial Stratification
When classifying human beings in discrete categories is critical to the maintenance of social relations within a society, norms emerge to establish strict boundary maintenance. Throughout the history of race relations in the United States, racial group membership has been a critical identity marker affecting the life chances and mobility of individuals. At the heart of the varying systems of racial stratification lies the critical question: who is Black? A patterned answer emerges from the previous historical analysis. That answer can be found by examining the existing stratification system of each time period. The one-drop rule emerged to support the system of slavery in the Southern states. It became more deeply entrenched in the minds of Southern Whites as slavery became threatened and forcibly dissolved. This classification norm served equally well to justify the inequalities of legalized segregation while simultaneously allowing for continued miscegenation between White men and Black women. As legalized segregation was dismantled, racial discrimination continued with the one-drop rule as the unquestioned assumption of racial categorization.
It is also necessary to consider the interplay between societal pressures for racial boundary maintenance and group responses to the parameters of identity set forth. Within this complex dynamic, we can begin to see clearly how identity functions as a social process. American history provides interesting cases where regional cultures deviated from the one-drop rule. These cases enable us to see the social psychological processes of identity development at work in varying normative circumstances. New Orleans and Charleston were previously mentioned as deviations from the one-drop rule, places where historians argue that mulattos were closely aligned with Whites prior to the Civil War, forming a buffer group between Blacks and Whites. In these two cases, mulattos developed a racial identity that corresponded to their social location as a separate group. This option was possible because the dominant group both provided and accepted an alternative racial identity for mulattos. An in-between status was impossible elsewhere because Whites would not allow mulattos to exist as a buffer group. With the alternative option in place in Charleston and New Orleans, mulattos developed an understanding of themselves as mulattos, and viewed their relationship to others as a separate racial group.
The self-identity of mulattos, as "mulattos", in both Charleston and New Orleans changed drastically as American society engaged in the Civil War. Their long-standing alliance with Whites disintegrated as their buffer status and separate identity became socially unacceptable in the racially polarized south. Mulattos in these two cities became more closely aligned with Blacks as society, increasingly accepting the one-drop rule as absolute, viewed them as part of the Black race. Because the separate mulatto identity was no longer available, their self-understanding shifted within the changing parameters. By the time of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920's, mulattos were universally considered a part of the Black community. They had so fully accepted a Black racial identity, that they were at the cutting edge of artistically expressing the meaning of the Black experience in America.
An historical view allows us to see several key features that are fundamental to an understanding of racial identity. First and foremost, racial identities are socially constructed and maintained to support existing social relations. The preservation of these categories is difficult due to the fact that they are grounded in social, as opposed to biological, reality. They require an elaborate series of assumptions, rules, and laws in order to be maintained. Inevitably, individuals exist who defy the dichotomous classification and their identity will depend on the existing status of race relations. American society has followed this pattern in the past. However, as African-Americans make economic gains, middle-class integration becomes more widespread, and interracial marriages increase, how do the changing inter-group relations effect the way biracial children are viewed by society? In other words, how does the changing nature of racial stratification in today's society effect the way in which those individuals who defy dichotomous classification are socially categorized and come to understand their own racial identity?
Assimilation vs. Egalitarian Pluralism
The term assimilation is usually reserved for discussions of White ethnic groups referring to the social processes by which groups enter a new society and gradually become part of that society by shedding the culture of their native land. Assimilation is considered to be a gradual process, one which occurs more successfully the more time an individual or group has spent in their new country. It was once believed that for European immigrants, ethnic identity would cease to remain a salient category of self-understanding because individuals would so thoroughly become part of their new culture, particularly after several generations, that they would no longer need to identify with their county of origin (Park, 1950).
Successful assimilation of immigrant groups depends upon the reduction of structural barriers (Hechter, 1978). It has been argued that if members of an ethnic group are residentially segregated, discriminated against in the labor market, and restricted in their social networks, their ethnic identity will remain strong. If, however, those structural barriers are decreased or disappear altogether, ethnic group membership will no longer be salient (Gordon, 1964). Instead, other types of identity will become more important to individuals as categories of self-understanding. The key indicator of how successfully a group has assimilated is the group's rate of inter-marriage. Decreasing importance of the ethnic identity increases willingness and likelihood of marriage outside the ethnic group. Therefore, high inter-marriage rates indicate successful ethnic group assimilation.
The term "assimilation" is used sparingly with racial groups and almost never in reference to African-Americans. Given the prohibitions, once legal and later cultural, against intermarriage between racial groups (most notably Blacks and Whites), the idea of assimilation has never been a goal in the same way it was for White ethnic groups. More specifically, racial groups were not placed on the assimilation path because of the white supremacist belief in the biological purity of the White race. Since the 1970's, Black leaders conceptualized an egalitarian pluralism, not assimilation, as the goal for Black-White race relations. This egalitarian pluralism includes equal treatment, freedom from discrimination, mutual respect of all racial and ethnic groups, and retention of group identity (Killian, 1975). It is a very different proposition from the vision of assimilation previously described.
The move to add a multiracial category to the US Census provides some evidence of both mixed-race individuals and white women (on behalf of their children) demanding a separate racial status. Advocates can be generally characterized as middle-class, living in racially heterogeneous neighborhoods, and wanting to be considered distinct from both Whites and Blacks. Their multiracial agenda implies a different answer to the question "who is Black?" and their answer is both an explicit rejection of the one-drop rule, and has been portrayed as a movement towards both cultural and racial assimilation. This agenda, particularly its' implied assimilationist goal, has been most passionately objected to by leaders of the Black community. Underlying their legalistically framed opposition is a threat of a decreased Census count, which has real political and financial consequences. At a deeper level, however, there exists an open hostility towards the idea that mixed race people may want to distinguish themselves as separate from the Black community. It seems worthwhile to quote at length Molefi Kete Asante, an ardent Afrocentrist, as he distinctly articulates his opposition, not to the addition of a "multiracial" category to the Census, but to the idea of mixed-race identity:
"One cannot read magazines like New People and Interrace without getting the idea that self-hatred among some African Americans is at an all time high. Both of these magazines founded by interracial couples and appealing most to interracial families, see themselves as the vanguard to explode racial identity by claiming to be a third race in addition to African and European. Of course, in the context of a racist society the white parent wishes for his/her offspring the same privileges that he/she has enjoyed often at the expense of Africans. However, the offspring is considered by tradition, custom, appearances, and history to be black. In a white racist society blackness is considered a negative attribute which carries with it the burden of history and discrimination. Thus, the New People and the Interrace group attempt to minimize the effects of blackness by claiming that they are neither white nor black, but colored. The nonsense in this position is seen when we consider the fact that nearly seventy percent of all African Americans are genetically mixed with either Native Americans or whites. The post-Du Bois, and perhaps more accurately, the post-Martin Luther King, Jr. phenomenon of seeking to explode racial identity has two prongs: one is white guilt and the other is black self-hatred. In the case of interracial families one often sees the urgent need to provide the offspring with a race other than that defined by custom, tradition, appearances, and history."
This statement articulates the frustration of those opposing the multiracial category. Asante's comments force a questioning of where race relations stand in post-Civil Rights America? He suggests that a negative consequence of the discourse on race is the emergence of the myth that, at the turn of the millenium, race no longer matters. However, the mere desire of a White parent for their child to be identified as mixed race (as opposed to Black) signifies an implied acknowledgment that racial groups exist, they exist in a hierarchy, and that separation from one group brings an individual closer to the dominant group. Opponents view the demand of advocates for a new racial category, in combination with their middle-class economic status, as a movement with an assimilationist ideological underpinning.
What is critical to this tension between multiracial advocates and leaders of the Black community is the racial self-understanding of biracial people. In other words, it is less important whether or not biracial people appear Black "on the outside," it's how they understand themselves "on the inside" that counts. Black identity is not characterized by physical traits because members of the Black community have an enormous variety of physical appearances, including those that physically appear White. Instead, Black identity is conceptualized as developing out of the common experience of being Black in America. Black leaders would point to the numerous people who may have one Black and one White parent, yet experience the world as Black people and are understood by others in society as members of the Black community (Jones, 1990; McBride, 1996; Scales-Trent, 1995; Williams, 1995). As Asante stated, biracial children are "considered by tradition, custom, appearances, and history to be black."
In contrast, leaders of the multiracial movement would point to the push for self-determination by individuals who understand their racial identity, not as Black in accordance with the one-drop rule, but as "biracial". They would argue that being biracial is a unique experience that is different from being Black. According to them, individuals, regardless of physical appearance, experience the world from the unique perspective of being mixed race, have common experiences with Blacks, Whites and other biracial people, and are understood by others as biracial (not exclusively as Black). In order to have that particular self-understanding, this identity must be validated by others in their social environment. It is precisely this claim of validation that leads individuals to believe that the category has meaning and is a necessary addition to the existing racial landscape.
Understanding this tension between interest groups and at the broadest level, the competing visions of the future of Black-White race relations, is critical to grasping the profound importance of the new answer, to the very old question, who is Black? For both parties in the Census debate, understanding biracial identity is critical. Each perspective holds a differing and singular view of how mixed race people understand their place in America's racial landscape. Their positions are fundamentally dependent on how people within the emerging mixed-race population understand their racial identity. Therefore, the first research question asked in this study was what does it means to be biracial according to members of this population? This tension that is posed by those wishing to maintain, and those who want to abolish, the one-drop rule demands inquiry beyond this first, primarily descriptive question. It is not only necessary to describe how biracial people understand their racial identity, but in addition, to explore what social factors influence that self understanding.
This dissertation examines what "biracial identity" means in the United States and proposes an explanatory model of the social factors influencing differences in the racial self-understanding of Black/White biracials. I will propose a theoretical model that includes socialization, contextual and interactional factors and I will explore its interpretive power using both in-depth interview and survey data from a sample of 200 biracial respondents. The following chapter (Chapter 2) describes the research design used to collect both the interview and survey data. Chapter 3 provides a descriptive account of the multiple ways in which mixed race people understand what "biracial identity" means, drawing heavily on interview data to create a conceptual map of existing possibilities for racial self-understanding. In chapter four, multivariate analysis is employed to investigate the social factors that influence different understandings of "biracial identity". Chapter 5 pushes for further theoretical depth by illustrating the crucial function of appearances in the selection of racial identity options. The final chapter (Chapter 6) reflects on the economic and political context that may have created an environment for the emergence of new understandings of biracial identity and the potential ramifications that newly emergent categories may have for race relations in the United States.
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CHAPTER 2 RESEARCH METHODS
Measuring Racial Identity
In order to delve more deeply into the social processes which govern the meaning of racial identity and factors influencing racial identity construction for Black/White biracials, I collected my own data using a multi-phase approach which included both qualitative and quantitative methods. Phase One of the research plan involved in-depth interviews with biracial undergraduates at a Catholic University in the Midwest. The interview study provided a framework from which a survey was produced and distributed in Phase Two of the study. Respondents for the second phase were drawn from a large community college and a private university in the Detroit Metropolitan Area. Results from the survey were then clarified in Phase Three of the project through purposive interviewing of selected survey respondents.
Measuring racial identity has never been an exact science. The difficulty is only compounded when attempting to measure biracial identity. In this chapter, I will outline each phase of the research design employed in this study. The obstacles were many and I will address them, and the attempted solutions, in each phase of data collection. The goal of this chapter is to provide enough detail to enable other researchers interested in studying the biracial population to be able to replicate, and improve upon, the methodology utilized in this study.
I would also clarify at this point, that the intent of this study was exploratory in nature. The purpose was not to test formal hypotheses, but to generate an understanding about a growing and elusive population (Root, 1992; Taylor and Bogdan, 1984). Therefore, the goals were to investigate a little understood phenomenon through the collection of descriptive data, to identify important factors which may influence individual's choices of racial identities, and to formulate a tentative explanatory model of the relationship between these factors and an individual's racial self-understanding (Marshall and Rossman, 1989). The multi-method approach was used to collect data in order to facilitate these exploratory goals.
Phase One: In-depth Interviews
The Sample
In efforts to collect data on biracial people researchers have run into numerous difficulties, including accurate identification of potential respondents and the ability to attract enough respondents to draw meaningful generalizations. Numerous data sets have been collected in the past five years, however no published empirical studies have exceeded samples of over 50 respondents and most studies have included, within a small non-random sample, respondents with varying combinations of racial backgrounds. The most oft-cited research anthology of mixed race people is Maria P. Root's The Multiracial Experience: Racial borders as the New Frontier (1992). This text, in fact, was mandatory reading for all members of the 2000 Census Advisory Board. While it is generally considered the most comprehensive collection of research on the biracial population, the largest sample used in any of the studies included in the anthology has 31 respondents. Most of the studies in this text generalize broadly from anecdotal, biographical, or small interview studies of less than 20 respondents. Small samples which include large degrees of variance on elements as fundamental as racial/ethnic combination of parents make it extremely difficult to draw any meaningful generalizations whatsoever. The first phase of data collection attempted to develop a unique solution to the problem of identifying potential respondents. Collecting survey data in Phase Two of the research design addressed the need to have a large enough sample to detect patterned attitudes and behavior.
In the first phase of the research design, I conducted in-depth interviews with biracial undergraduates at the University of Notre Dame. The selection criterion was that respondents have one Black-identifying parent and one White-identifying parent. My intention was to collect qualitative data for descriptive analysis. This data was also used to create the survey instrument for Phase Two of the research design. I contacted all students registered as Black or African-American at the university. This list was generated from the university registrar and provided to me by the African-American Studies department. I e-mailed a solicitation for participation in the study to each of the 221 students registered as Black. Twenty-four of the students responded that they fit the selection criteria and were willing to participate in the study.
The Interviews
I interviewed fourteen of the students who responded to the call for participation. The students ranged from 18 to 22 years of age and were raised in 10 different states in the U.S. The students were all high in socio-economic status and all came from families in which at least one parent had completed a bachelor's degree. The interviews took place at a variety of locations on the campus of the university including the dining hall, the coffee shop, the food court, and the lounge of the student union. Each of the interviews took place in a public setting and lasted between one and three hours. The average interview was one hour and thirty minutes. All interviews were audio taped and transcribed by a third party.
The interview guide consisted, not of structured questions and answers, but of general pre-defined topic areas. These were designed to guide the interviews in a loosely structured manner. The general topic areas included descriptions of experiences growing up, schooling (elementary through high school), friendships, significant others, and transitions to college; descriptions of interactions with strangers; and self-perceptions. Appendix B contains a complete set of guidelines used for the interviews. Additionally, each respondent signed a Consent Form (Appendix A) at the beginning of the interview, reacted to the "Bill of Rights for Racially Mixed People" (Appendix C), filled out a one page demographic questionnaire (Appendix D), and each respondent's picture was taken.
The data analysis procedure followed that posited by McCraken (1988). It includes the following five stages: 1) initially, sorting the important from the unimportant data; 2) examining the data for logical relationships and/or contradictions, 3) rereading the initial transcripts to confirm or disconfirm the relationships that are emerging, 4) identifying general themes and sorting them in hierarchical fashion, and 5) reviewing the emergent themes in each interview and determining how they can be synthesized. This procedure was used as the guidelines for the data analysis in this study. The researcher began with transcription of the audio taped interviews. These transcripts were then read and reread to form categories related to the research question. The important pieces of data were "cut and pasted" to form a second transcript which was read, and reread to question, reconfigure, and finally confirm categories of responses. From this point, major and minor categories where determined to construct a descriptive map of the various ways in which the respondents understood their racial identity.
Phase Two: Mail Survey
The Sample
The selection criterion for the second phase of data collection was the same as the first; respondents must have one Black-identifying biological parent and one White-identifying biological parent. Given the specified criteria, I drew respondents from two educational institutions: The University of Detroit-Mercy, and Henry Ford Community College. By drawing the sample from two Detroit area schools, the goal was that individuals would be comparable along the dimension of education level, would be purposively stratified by socio-economic indicators, yet allowed for variance in appearance and identity. The sample in the first phase of the research design was severely limited because students were homogenous in social network composition, age and life experience and highly skewed in socioeconomic status.
The University of Detroit-Mercy is the largest independent Catholic University in the state of Michigan. Undergraduate enrollment for the 1997-1998 school year was approximately 4,600 students, 30% African-American, and most students were state residents. Tuition for the 1997-1998 school year was $13,350 with room and board costing approximately $4930.00. Henry Ford Community College, in contrast, is a district-supported institution that has an open enrollment policy and approximately 21,000 students. The student profile for the 1997-1998 school year indicated that 98% of students were state residents. The school itself lies on the border of Detroit's southwest corridor and the outlying suburbs. It draws its' student body largely from the city of Detroit and the suburb of Dearborn. Black students make up approximately 15% of the overall student population and commute to the institution from the city of Detroit. Tuition costs district residents $1470.00 per year and out of district residents $2200.00 per year. Drawing respondents from these two distinct educational institutions accomplished the sampling goals of building in variance along important socio-demographic characteristics and corrected for some of the limitations in the phase one sampling strategy.
I mailed a request for participation in the study (Appendix E) to all students registered as "Black or African-American", "Other", or those that left the race question blank. The rationale for this decision was drawn from the sampling strategy used in Phase One of the research design where e-mail solicitation of African-American students at the University of Notre Dame drew out the initial biracial respondents. The pilot study revealed that even students who most militantly stated they were biracial (i.e., they were 'NOT Black') indicated they had identified as Black or African-American on their college admission forms. This was done for two reasons: 1) the desire for social or organizational inclusion, and 2) perceived individuals gain. Students stated that they 'checked the Black box' instead of 'other' (and writing in biracial or mixed) because they did not want to be excluded from activities that were targeted for the Black student population, such as solicitations for Black student organizations or announcements of special speakers. The second, and more salient reason, was that students felt that 'it couldn't hurt' their opportunities for admission or for financial opportunities that may be designated for minority students. Given this consistent response, soliciting the entire Black student population at each institution seemed to be the most efficient way to draw a group of biracial respondents. The limitation of the phase one sampling strategy was that I potentially missed individuals with one Black one White parent who identified as White. To attempt to compensate for this shortcoming, I included individuals who had registered as "other" and those who left the race question blank on their admissions forms. While it may not have solved the issue entirely, I was able to get considerably more variance among respondent from Henry Ford Community College and University of Detroit-Mercy than from the University of Notre Dame sample.
Drawing a sample of college students was done primarily to control for education among respondents. It seemed necessary to try to maintain some level of consistency within the sample on selected factors while allowing for other, more salient factors, to vary. The Detroit Metropolitan Area was selected because of the large African-American population and the diversity of neighborhoods and social contexts. The community college draws students from all parts of the metropolitan area, allowing for respondents who live both inside and outside the racially homogeneous city limits. The university draws students almost exclusively from the city itself. Both institutions have students who ranged in age, socio-economic status, and life experience, all of which were factors examined in the process of the research project. Despite the restriction of my sample to college students, I found a large amount of variance among my respondents. They ranged in age from 18 to 64, came from low, middle, and upper middle class backgrounds, and had every imaginable physical appearance.
The Survey
The finalized survey (Appendix F) was eleven pages in length and consisted of one hundred three closed-ended questions. The survey questions were developed from analysis of in-depth interview data collected in Phase One of the research process. The survey was then pre-tested on all African-American students at the University of Notre Dame with an 82% response rate. Numerous corrections and adjustments were made based on the comments and responses of pre-test respondents. The survey was then submitted for administrative approval at Henry Ford Community College, to the Institutional Review Board for the Protection of Human Subjects at the University of Detroit-Mercy and the Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects at the University of Notre Dame. The finalized survey was approved at all institutional levels.
Following the distribution of 4532 letters requesting participation in the study from students at Henry Ford Community College and the University of Detroit-Mercy, I received approximately 5% returned reply cards indicating a willingness to complete a survey. The finalized surveys were promptly mailed to respondents along with a brief explanatory cover letter and a postage-paid envelope for their convenient return. Approximately 85% of the surveys were returned either initially, or after follow up post-cards were mailed. Some respondents had not read the solicitation carefully and realized they did not fit the selection criteria once they received the survey in the mail. Those respondents either called, returned the survey with a note stating the reasons for its' return, or simply did not return the survey. Data was promptly entered into a database when returned and statistically analyzed using SPSS software.
Phase 3: In-depth Interviews
The Sample
The final phase of data collection occurred after all surveys had been collected and preliminary analysis had been completed. The final survey question had asked respondents if they would be willing to participate in an in-depth interview. It their answer was "yes" to that question, they were directed to provide contact information. I purposively subsampled from the total group of respondents with the intention of interviewing representative individuals.
The Interviews
Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with 25 respondents, where all had indicated a willingness to be interviewed. Each respondent completed a Consent Form (Appendix G) as in the Phase One interviews. I began each interview by asking respondents what was their racial identity and then asked questions to ascertain why they answered that way? The questions inquired about the racial composition of the respondent's social networks, early childhood experiences, interactions with different racial groups, parental socialization, experiences of discrimination, and group evaluations of both Blacks and Whites. These were general pre-defined topic areas, rather than a structured schedule. The topic areas were designed to guide the interviews and utilized few pre-determined questions and prompts. All interviews were audio taped and transcribed by a third party. The data analysis procedure was the same as described in analyzing the interview data in Phase One of the research project.
A Note on Researcher Subjectivity
There are well-known problems in engaging a sample of biracial respondents . The primary dilemmas are 1) the difficulty in identifying potential respondents and 2) the sensitive nature of the subject matter (Root, 1992). The difficulty in identifying potential respondents was addressed by soliciting respondents from the population of students who identified themselves on their admissions forms as "African-American", "other", or provided no racial information at the two educational institutions. I recognize that the subject of racial identity is, to some degree and for some individuals, sensitive subject matter. Mail solicitation allowed for individuals to simply ignore the research if they were unwilling to provide information. Additionally, the in-depth interviews, in both Phase One and Phase Three of the research design, were drawn only from individuals who indicated a willingness to participate in such activity. Finally, I conducted the interviews myself and I am a member of the population being studied. Interview respondents in Phase One of the study expressed increased comfort levels within the interview context because I, as the interviewer, was also biracial.
I can be described as a biracial individual who identifies as African-American. In Phase One interviews, I tried two different strategies in managing my racial identity in the role of 'interviewer'. Respondents were contacted via e-mail solicitation where I described myself as a "Black graduate student". The result of this strategy was that I received numerous pleasant and encouraging messages from Black students who were not biracial, as well as responses from biracial students offering to be interviewed. When I met the individuals to be interviewed, it would have been clear to them, given my ambiguous appearance that I had one White parent. The second strategy, used in Phase Three interviews, was to not offer any personal information about my race or my self-identification. When I did not offer any information, respondents either asked if I was biracial or they assumed that I was biracial. None, however, asked how I chose to identify myself. What was important to respondents was that I was biracial (regardless of how I identified myself) and that they perceived my being biracial as the basis of a shared experience. Therefore, I did not purposively announce my identity to any respondent in the Phase Three interviews.
The data collected will be used in the following chapters to explore the meaning of biracial identity in the United States and the factors which influence why Black/White biracial individuals have very different understandings of their racial identity. The data provide a window into how biracial people construct and maintain their racial identities in the unique historical context of post-Civil Rights America. The survey data provides part of the overall picture and allows for some degree of theoretical generalization while interview data contributes the more rich detail of how and why biracial people develop their unique understandings of what it means to be biracial.
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CHAPTER 3 WHAT DOES 'BIRACIAL IDENTITY' MEAN?
Introduction
In the introductory chapter, I highlighted the recent public debate concerning proposed modifications to the 2000 Census. Proponents have argued that the dramatic increases in interracial marriages over the past three decades have caused a "biracial baby boom." This expanding population of biracial Americans, advocates argue, should be recognized by the government as 'multi-racial.' Those who opposed the possible addition of a multiracial category argued quite the opposite. From their perspective, biracial Americans are still viewed by society as Black and, therefore, they develop a self-understanding of their racial identity as members of the Black community.
I suggested that this debate was the latest litmus test for the one-drop rule as the official norm for answering the question "who is Black?" in the United States. Children of Black/White marriages have historically been considered part of the African-American community, however, the multiracial advocates have proposed an alternative response through their quest for separate group recognition. By demanding an independent governmental designation for mixed race people, they are, in fact, arguing for nullification of the one-drop rule.
Critical to the arguments on both sides of the Census debate are contrasting, and mutually exclusive, visions of how mixed-race people understand their racial identity. Multi-racial advocates suggest the category is necessary as an accurate reflection of the way that biracial people self-identify. Opponents of the measure hold steadfast that biracial people experience the world, and their place in it, as African-Americans. This chapter focuses on the tension between the rhetoric of political lobbyists and the broad and complex reality of individual's experiences. I will present the findings of my descriptive data analysis to address the questions at the heart of this debate. First, what does it mean to be 'biracial' according to members of this population? Further, is there a singular way in which people with one Black and one White parent understand their racial identity or does 'biracial' have multiple meanings?
Theoretical Framework of Identity Formation
The conceptual framework of this argument rests on the three classic assumptions of symbolic interactionism: 1) that we know things by their meanings, 2) that meanings are created through social interaction, and 3) that meanings change through interaction (Blumer, 1969). Given these basic assumptions, it is necessary to clearly delineate the conceptual terminology to be used in the following discussion. First and foremost, what is meant by the term 'identity'?
Social actors are situated within societies that designate available categories of identification, how these identities are defined, and their relative importance. The term identity refers to a validated self-understanding that situates and defines the individual or, as Stone (1962) suggests, establishes what and where an actor is in social terms. These are processes by which individuals understand themselves and others, as well as evaluate their self in relation to others. Identity is the direct result of mutual identification through social interaction. It is within this process of validation that identity becomes a meaning of the self. I utilize the term identity interchangeably with self-understanding throughout the dissertation .
By situating identity within an interactionist framework, biracial identity may be understood as an emergent category of identification. If identity is conceptualize as an interactionally validated self-understanding, then identities can only function effectively where the response of the individual to themselves (as a social object) is consistent with the response of others. In contrast, individuals cannot effectively possess an identity that is not socially typified, or where there is a disjuncture between the identity an actor appropriates for him/herself and where others place him/her as a social object. In other words, an individual cannot have a realized identity without others who validate that identity. The challenge of research on biracial identity then is twofold. First, it is necessary to explore how individuals understand their social location as 'biracial,' and secondly, to examine what social and interactional factors lead to the development of this identity and how these individuals try to realize their appropriated identities in social context.
What does 'biracial identity' mean according to members of this population? Since I conceptualize the term identity to mean an interactionally validated self-understanding, another way of formulating the question becomes how do individuals interpret their biracialness and respond to it? My data suggest some tentative descriptive categories for the ways that mixed race individuals understand their biracialness: 1) a border identity, 2) a protean identity, 3) a transcendent identity, or 4) a traditional identity . Each of these different interpretations of 'biracial identity' will be explored and discussed in the context of the data collected.
A Border Identity
Anthony was over six feet tall, eighteen years old, and a football player. I knew the instant I saw him that he was biracial, but his appearance can be best described as being ambiguous, but clearly non-white. Anthony was raised in a small rural community in northern Ohio. His father (Black) left his mother (White) when he and his brother were young hence they were raised exclusively by their mother and her extended family. There was a deep sense of tangible resentment when Anthony spoke about his father, and a self-satisfied revenge that he and his brother had become successful, despite their abandonment. Anthony was popular in his high school and reported attending a school with several other self-identified biracial students. His hometown was predominately White, however half of the non-White students in his high school were mixed-race. This accessible group of peers, and their location in a predominately White setting, helped to account for the fact that Anthony had a very strong identity as biracial. When asked, he told me "I'm not black, I'm biracial" with such a forceful expression that one could not doubt the seriousness of his conviction. Anthony told numerous stories about incidents in high school where the biracial students boldly differentiated themselves from the Black students by teasing them about the darkness of their skin. They affectionately referred to themselves as the 'high yelluh's.'
Anzualdua (1987) conceptualizes biracial identity as a 'border identity' or one that lies between predefined social categories. In essence, understanding biracial identity as a border identity highlights the individual's existence between two socially distinct 'races' as defining their biracialness. Meaning lies in their location of in-betweeness, and it is this unique status that serves as the grounding for their racial identity. A mixed-race person who understands being biracial as a border identity doesn't consider themselves to be either Black or White, but instead incorporates both "Blackness" and "Whiteness" into a unique hybrid category of self reference. One respondent explained that it was not only the location of being on the border of socially defined categories, but that the border status itself brought with it an additional dimension:
"It's not that just being biracial is like you're two parts [White and Black], you know, you have two parts but then there is also the one part of being biracial where you sit on the fence. There's a third thing, a unique thing."
A border identity is the most common way of conceptualizing biracialness among contemporary researchers focusing on the biracial population (Bradshaw, 1992; Fields, 1996; King and DaCosta, 1996; Williams, 1996). It can be inferred from most recent work on this population that when the term 'biracial identity' is used, it is being understood as a border identity. The border interpretation was also the most common category of self-understanding among those surveyed and interviewed for this study. Approximately 55% of those surveyed defined their racial identity as neither exclusively Black or White, but instead as a third, and separate, category which draws from both of these group characteristics and has some additional uniqueness in its combination. Importantly, these respondents fell into two distinct sub-categories: those who had their self-understanding validated by others, and those whose self-understanding remained un-validated.
The Validated vs. UN-Validated Border Identity (The Real Tragic Mulattos?):
Chris was a calm woman who displayed a level of maturity beyond her years. Most people would assume that she is African-American, however she described her identity as "biracial, but I experience the world as a Black woman." She talked freely about both her Black and White extended families and the fond memories she had about the uniqueness of growing up in a loving family that was a patchwork of traditional Black and Irish influences. She was however, acutely cognizant of how others viewed her, both strangers and those in her intimate social network. Chris told me that, due to her appearance, race functioned as the first thing that many people saw about her, and that many of the other roles that she fulfilled at school and in society were differentiated by her race. She was the "black intern," a "black feminist," "a black student," and "a black friend." She felt a close affiliation to other African-Americans based on a common life experience of negotiating interactions as a minority within a dominant (White) culture. She felt that those close to her appreciated and understood her as biracial, but when it came to functioning outside of her immediate social network, others categorized her as Black, and attributed to her all the assumptions and preconceived ideas that go along with that racial group membership. This made her feel both sad and somewhat resigned to the fact that there would always be a chasm between her self-identification (as biracial) and society's identification of her (as Black).
For approximately 20% of the total respondents, their racial identity was exclusively biracial, with the understanding of biracial as a border identity. They described their racial identity in the following way: "I consider myself exclusively as Biracial (neither Black nor White)." However, an additional 35% of respondents answered: "I consider myself Biracial, but I experience the world as a Black person." This is of interest because while more than half of all respondents identified themselves as biracial (as opposed to exclusively Black or White), more than half of that group expressed a disjuncture between their self-understanding and the way in which they socially experienced race. The difference between these two sets of responses seems to suggest the importance of interactional validation, which can best be understood by closely examining this second response.
Interviews with people like Chris offer additional insight into the un-validated biracial identity. While she views herself as biracial, the social world fails to uniformly validate that category of self-understanding. Given both the consistency and frequency of this non-validation, these individuals live in the gray area between their own self- understanding and the differential view that others have of them. They consider themselves biracial, they are neither Black nor White but something that lies uniquely in-between. They qualify this, however, with the honest recognition that they "experience the world as a Black person," meaning that within their social contexts, their self-understanding of being Biracial is not always validated by others. Consistent with this self-understanding/validation split is the fact that when asked about different arenas of identity expression, this un-validated group is more likely to report their cultural, political, physical, and bureaucratic identity as "Black" than as "Biracial".
If these individuals, as social actors, appropriate an identity for themselves as biracial, then why do others fail to place them, as a social object, into the same category? There seem to be two logical possibilities to answer that question. First, others may not have 'biracial' as an existing category of classification for individuals racial identity so they may be operating with only the dichotomous, mutually exclusive categories "Black" and "White." The second possible explanation for this classification failure is even if others possess cognitive categories for "Black," "White," and "Biracial," the individuals appearance may be composed of characteristics that would lead others to classify them as "Black." While the first explanation is certainly a viable possibility, we are unable to explore it with the existing data. The second explanation however, would lead us to examine the differences between the self-reported appearances of the validated and un-validated border identities. Among those whose border identity is validated, 33% described their appearance as either "ambiguous, people do not assume that I am Black" or "I physically look White, I could 'pass'." In contrast, only 9% of the un-validated respondents described their appearance this way. The un-validated respondents were also more likely (26%) to describe their appearance as "I look Black and most people assume that I am Black" while only 3% of the former group answered the same way (see Table 3.1).
TABLE 3.1 DIFFERENTIAL APPEARANCES BETWEEN VALIDATED AND UN-VALIDATED BORDER IDENTITIES
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I look Black, most people assume that I'm Black |
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My physical features are ambiguous, people assume I am Black mixed with something else. |
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My physical features are ambiguous, people do not assume that I am Black. |
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I physically look White, I could 'pass' |
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Finally, it may be asked how individuals could develop a racial identity that is un-validated if identity itself has been conceptually defined as an interactionally validated self-understanding. In other words, how can the un-validated border identity be developed and maintained if others do not recognize its' existence? We need only return to the case of Chris in the beginning of this section to see that in reality, her identity as biracial is validated by her significant others, such as her parents and friends. At the primary level of social intimacy, she feels that her authentic self is validated and realized. It is in the more everyday, non-intimate social meetings with strangers and acquaintances that she is un-validated and routinely mis-identified. I have referred to the un-validated border identity as the real 'tragic mulattos' because it is precisely this group that experiences an internalized social dislocation because of their continual oscillation between having their self-understanding validated by some, and remaining un-validated by others.
A Protean Identity
Mike was a gregarious and enjoyable individual. He was a popular student at the university and seemed to know almost everyone that walked into the coffee shop on the evening of our interview. Mike had finished college when we interviewed and was completing his semester of student teaching at a local public high school. Mike was raised in a small town in the Midwest. His parents were the only inter-racial couple in the area. In fact, they were such an anomaly that he had a newspaper clipping which featured his parents on the front page. Mike's father was a minister in the local church, which afforded his family a uniquely high and visible status in their community. Mike was the only non-White person in his neighborhood, school, and group of friends. He did, however, have close ties with his Black extended family, which he saw on a regular basis. Mike thought that it was his particular upbringing that led him to see his racial identity as he now understands it. His racial identity changes and shifts according to the group of people that he is with, and the social context. The lesson he has learned from being around homogeneous groups of Blacks and Whites his entire life is that there is one way to act in a group of Blacks and a different way of acting around a group of Whites. While many people might agree with this idea, regardless of their race, Mike's version is a bit different than most. He not only realizes that these situations require different social behaviors, but he has the unique experience of feeling not only knowledgeable of these different behaviors, but that when he is in these groups he is accepted, by members of the group, as an insider. While most people might adjust their behavior to differing circumstances, Mike adjusts his identity to these different circumstances. He feels that he has the capacity to understand himself, as Black, when he is with other Blacks and that his self-understanding is fully validated. He feels that he is able to understand himself as White, when he is with other Whites and that this self-understanding is fully validated. Further, he feels that he is able to understand himself as biracial, when he is in a heterogeneous group, and that self-understanding is also validated. For Mike, any social situation must be assessed for what identity will 'work' and then that particular identity will be presented. Is this shape shifting viewed as problematic for him? Actually, for Mike, the ability to effectively posses, present, and have different identities accepted as authentic by different groups of people is the "gift of being biracial."
Respondents like Mike understand biracial identity as their protean capacity to move among cultural contexts (Lifton, 1993). Their self-understanding of biracialness is directly tied to their ability to cross boundaries between Black, White, and biracial which is possible because they possess Black, White, and biracial identities. These individuals feel endowed with a degree of cultural savvy in several social worlds and understand biracialness as the way in which they were able to fit in, however conditionally, in varied interactional settings. They believed their dual experiences with both Whites and Blacks have given them the ability to shift their identity according to the context of any particular interaction. This contextual shifting leads these individuals to form a belief that their multiple racial backgrounds are but one piece of a complex self that is composed of assorted identifications which are not culturally integrated. When the topic of racial identification was initially broached with Mike, he stated: "well shit, it depends on what day it is and where I'm goin."
Understanding biracialness as a protean identity was the least frequent choice by the mixed-race people surveyed. Only 4% of the respondents selected this option when asked about their identity. This particular interpretation of racial identity is one that is of the great theoretical interest given the persistent self-monitoring of the actor's presentation of self and the purposive manipulation of appearances. This identity option is discussed in much greater detail in Chapter 5.
A Transcendent Identity
Rob was in his senior year of college when we arranged to meet in a coffee shop on campus. Typically, when I arrived I could pick out my interviewee immediately. When I went to meet Rob however, I couldn't tell who I was supposed to meet, everyone in the coffee shop looked White. Finally, a handsome young man came up to my table and asked if we were supposed to meet for an interview, he had been watching me look around for him all along. I told him immediately that he didn't look mixed, and he responded "Neither do you. I just saw you looking around the room and figured you were the person I was supposed to meet." This first incident in our meeting is illustrative of our conversation about race and identity because it reveals Rob's construction of reality. Throughout our interview I stayed locked in a social world that is perceived through the lens of race, and Rob consistently and repeatedly questioned my "fixation".
Rob was born and raised in Dayton, Ohio. His parents were both teachers and he had several brothers and sisters. Rob told a story of growing up in an intellectually stimulating household, where parents and siblings were encouraged to read, write, and discuss political and social matters openly. Rob attended public schools which were evenly integrated and found friendship within diverse circles. Rob was adamant that race was a false categorization of individuals. He also didn't like to be thought of as a member of any racial category whatsoever. Rob's greatest desire was to be understood by others as the unique individual that he was, to be appreciated for his particular gifts and talents, and not to be 'pigeon holed' into a pre-formulated category that carried with it a multitude of assumptions about the content of his character. Rob was not Black, White, or biracial. He was a musician, a thinker, a kind-hearted individual, a good friend, a Catholic, and a hard working student with dreams and ambitions. For Rob, race had been an interference in others seeing his authentic self and he could see in the future, it continuing to color how others viewed him, his work, and his personal talents.
After conducting my first round of interviews, I gave Rob a transcript of our interview and a draft of a conference paper I was developing based on my data analysis. He contacted me short thereafter to ask if we could meet again. At that time, I had only conceptualized the first three categories presented here (the border, protean and singular identities). He confronted me with the fact that he didn't see himself in any of these categories and that he resented being either falsely stuffed into a rigid and unrepresentative typology, or being excluded as an 'outlying case.' After a lengthy discussion, I was forced to rethink my initial grouping and added this fourth type of understanding that race has for biracial individuals.
After examining the survey data, it became clear that some individuals understood their biracialness, similar to Park's Marginal Man (1950), as providing them with the perspective of the 'stranger.' This enabled them to objectively articulate the social meaning placed on race and discount it as a "master status" altogether. These individuals responded to questions about their identity with answers that were unrelated to their racial status, such as in the following example:
"I'm just John, you know. I never thought this was such a big deal to be identified, I just figured I'm a good guy, just like me for that, you know. But, when I came here [to college] it was like I was almost forced look at people as being white, black, Asian, or Hispanic. And so now, I'm still trying to go 'I'm just John' but uh, you gotta be something."
This respondent later talked about 'using' race (to benefit others as a mentor or role model) in a way that suggested it was not only a pliable category that one could fit into at will, yet more importantly, that it's 'reality' was highly questionable. Slightly less than 14% of the total sample of mixed-race respondents understood being biracial as a transcendent identity.
A Singular Identity
John looked White. When he first walked into my classroom, I instantaneously had him categorized as a 'typical White fraternity-guy.' He was quite handsome, early twenties, and unusually articulate. The fact that he was biracial didn't surface until much later in the course when another student was presenting a project. He volunteered the fact that his mother (White) had been raped by Black man and had twins, a sibling that died in the hospital and himself. John was raised in an affluent, exclusively White community. He had a highly strained relationship with his stepfather, who had not revealed the circumstances of his conception and birth to John until he was 18 years old. He had lived his entire life assuming that he was White, that he came from a White family and that his step-father was his biological father, despite the fact that they had no physical similarities. When John was a teenager, he thought that his lips and nose were a bit wide, particularly for the modeling career he envisioned, so he had plastic surgery to thin his lips and trim his nose. His identity as White was entirely unaffected by the sudden revelation that his real father was Black. It didn't cause him to re-think his identity, nor question his Whiteness. He was simply a White man who happened to have a Black father.
John is representative of the individuals with one Black and one White parent whose racial identity falls into the category I term 'singular'. In the singular understanding, the individual's racial identity is exclusively either Black or White. Being 'biracial' means merely acknowledging of the racial categorization of one's birth parents. At the extreme, respondents did not deny the existence of their opposite race parent but it was not salient in defining their self-understanding and may not have been offered as identifying information unless specifically requested. Approximately 20% of the sample considered themselves "exclusively Black (or African American)" and 3% of the sample considered themselves "exclusively White (not Black or biracial).
Discussion
It has been assumed by both researchers and multi-racial advocates that mixed-race people share a singular understanding of what 'biracial identity' means. Researchers tend to treat biracial identity as an idea for which a conceptual definition is unnecessary. Their assumption is that members of this population hold a clear and unified understanding of what 'biracial identity' means and how that term translates into a racial self-understanding and/or group affiliation (Bradshaw, 1992; Fields, 1996; King and DaCosta, 1996; Williams, 1996). Both interview and survey data collected for this study suggest that this is a misguided assumption because what it means to be 'biracial' is both conceptually complex and varies among respondents. In other words, an analysis of the data suggests there is not a common singular understanding among mixed-race people as to what 'biracial identity' means or how it translates into an individual self understanding.
The voices of biracial people reveal that there are varying understandings of what 'biracial identity' means to individuals within this population. Individual's selves have not one, but several ways in which they may interpret and respond to the circumstance of having one Black and one White parent. These divergent self-understandings are grounded in differential experiences, varying biographies, and cross cutting cultural contexts. Having established that biracial identity is multi-dimensional, the following chapters will explore how individuals develop and maintain these very different self-understandings.
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CHAPTER 4 SOCIALIZATION AND BIRACIAL IDENTITY
Introduction
The previous chapter delineated the different ways that mixed-race individuals interpret biracial identity. My data suggested that biracial identity is understood in various ways by members of the mixed-race population; as a border identity, as a protean identity, as a transcendent identity or as a singular identity. Having established this conceptual map of identity options that exist for mixed-race individuals, the primary concern of this chapter is how individuals come to these distinct understandings about being biracial and why they choose these very different identity strategies.
Literature Review
What is racial/ethnic identity?
Previous studies of racial and ethnic identity have attempted to specify both the socioeconomic and demographic determinants of one's group identity (Allen, Dawson, and Brown 1989; Broman, Neighbors, and Jackson, 1988; Demo and Hughes, 1990; Waters, 1990). Mary Waters' (1990) work focuses on ethnic "options" for individuals with multiple White-ethnic heritages. Waters was interested in why individuals with multiple ethnic backgrounds chose to emphasize one of their ethnicities over others. The factors involved in resolving White ethnic options included: 1) knowledge about the ethnicity; 2) surname; 3) appearance; and 4) general popularity of ethnic groups. Waters concluded that ethnicity was largely 'symbolic,' because it had no consequences for an individual's life chances or everyday interactions and that it was characterized by the existence of choice either to assume the ethnic identity or not.
Waters' findings are important because they reveal the symbolic basis of White-ethnicity and explicitly differentiate it from race. According to Waters, the symbolic ethnicity of Whites differs from non-Whites because race is not an option from one situation to the next and race has both immediate and real consequences. Therefore, identity options are either non-existent, or function differently, for members of racial groups as compared to Whites because racial and ethnic categories are socio-culturally stratified. Her work implies that race and ethnicity function differently due to visibility, the capacity of individual choice, and a history of stratification based on racial group membership.
It is necessary when approaching an explanation of various choices biracial people make about their racial identity to extend Waters ideas into the research on the concept of Black identity. This is necessary because 1) biracial individuals have historically and traditionally been considered members of the African-American community and 2) most racial identity research (as opposed to ethnic identity research) focuses on the Black population. Within this body of literature, identities are assumed to be sub-units of the overall self-concept. They are "meanings a person attributes to the self as an object in a social situation or social role" (Burke 1980, p.18). To be African-American in American society means that an individual occupies a racially defined, albeit socially constructed, ascribed status. That status implies a variety of roles within the family, community, and society. These broader socially defined roles have significant social-psychological implications, one of which is that existence within a socially defined racial category brings with it a group identity.
The literature on racial identity differs significantly from research on ethnic identity. Importantly, where ethnic identity is viewed in the late twentieth century as "optional" and/or "symbolic", racial identity is viewed as multifaceted and encompasses both the group and individual (e.g., Broman et al. 1988; Gurin, Miller, and Gurin, 1980). Specifically, the idea of Black group identity is used to refer to "the feeling of closeness to similar others in ideas, feelings, and thoughts" (Broman et al. P.148). Others have suggested that instead of this singular understanding, Black group identity is multi-dimensional including both in-group factors, such as closeness to other Blacks and Black separatism, as well as reflexive factors, such as racial group evaluation (Allen et al., 1989; Cross, 1985; Demo and Hughes 1990).
What Influences Racial/Ethnic Identity?
Researchers have argued that American society has a particular historical and structural context from which ethnicity emerges (Yancey, Ericksen, and Juliani, 1976; Taylor, 1979). Demographic and structural factors play an important role in shaping the racial identity of African-American adults. Broman et al (1988) found that people who were older, southern, rural, and less educated scored higher on an index measuring closeness to other Blacks. Allen et al (1989) found that socioeconomic status was negatively related to Black autonomy and closeness to other Blacks but positively to favorable evaluations of Blacks as a group. Exposure to Black-oriented media and religiosity have been shown to also be positively but weakly related to Black identity variables (Allen et al, 1989).
Recent work by Demo and Hughes (1990) focuses on the importance of socialization and social interaction variables as important determinants of Black identity. These researchers found that interracial interaction and parental socioeconomic status had a generally positive effect on Black group evaluation but a negative effect on feelings of closeness to the group and separatism. Most importantly, Demo and Hughes research highlights the importance of parental socialization in the development and maintenance of racial identity.
The research on ethnic and racial identity differs in several important ways. Studies on ethnic identity, due to its symbolic nature, focus on individual characteristics to explain why individuals may choose one ethnic identity over another. Racial identity research however, takes as an unquestioned assumption, that choice simply does not exist. Hence, an individual is assumed to have a Black identity which is composed of various dimensions including group evaluation (positive or negative), closeness to other members of the group (high or low), and group autonomy (high or low preference). Here the individual factors are severely downplayed and the structural factors are emphasized because an individual does not choose whether or not to have a racial identity as Black, but one's feelings about group membership are free to vary.
When examining a mixed race population, we must take both of these models into account. It is necessary because I have previously documented (Chapter 3) that some degree of choice is present and active within the population of Black/White biracials. Therefore, Waters' framework outlining the existence and explanation of White ethnic options will inform the construction of my explanatory model. The existence of choice should not however, suggest to the reader that the matter of "choice" for Black/White biracials is entirely free of constraint. The existence of social constraints necessitates drawing from the body of research on racial identity in general, and on African-
American identity specifically. Weaving together the ideas generated from these two streams of research is necessary in order to build a comprehensive explanatory model that encompasses both individual level and socialization factors present in the construction and maintenance of racial identity for biracial people.
What Factors May Explain Identity Choices Among Black/White Biracials?
Individual Factors: Appearances
Appearances provide information about individuals that helps others to define the self as situated. This information enables others to know in advance what they expect of an actor and what the actor can expect of them (Goffman, 1959). Appearances provide the first information, albeit constructed, about an individual to others in the context of face-to-face social interaction. It helps to define the identity of the individual and for him/her to express their self-identification. It is in this process that identities are negotiated and either validated or remain un-validated.
Appearance is critical in understanding how individuals develop and maintain racial identities (Stone, 1962). I limit my consideration of appearances to physical features. The physical characteristics of biracials range widely in skin color, facial features and hair texture. At one extreme are individuals who physically possess traits that are socially defined as belonging to the "Black race" and at the other, are those who are visually unidentifiable as Black, or possess no features which are associated with African descent. Because racial categories are defined by appearances, the logic and enactment of racial categorization becomes questionable if individuals cannot be identified on sight. One's skin color, facial features, and hair are strong membership cues in socially defined racial groups.
Socialization Factors: Childhood and Adult Socialization
Families provide a social context in which individuals develop a sense of self, values and beliefs (Gecas, 1981). Parent-child interactions are ongoing, intense and deeply integral to the interactional processes of identification, modeling, and role-playing. Children learn within the family context who they are in relation to themselves, their family, and others in society (Demo, Small, and Savin-Williams 1987; Gecas and Schwalbe, 1986). The socialization process, by definition, serves the purpose of transmitting norms and values from one generation to the next. For members of racial groups, socialization extends itself to encompass the norms and values of the unique racial group, as well as interweaving the racial group membership into the child's understanding of their self (Demo and Hughes, 1990). There is a wide body of research on the problems associated with racial socialization (Boykin and Toms, 1985), particularly the problems of socializing biracial children (Herring, 1995). There is little discussion however of how parents socialize children into racial identities and/or the importance of parent socialization in the development of racial identity.
While primary socialization occurs in the family, it is not the sole source of socialization. Individuals interact with a multitude of others in their pre-adult social context. That social network can have a wide variety of characteristics, one of which being its racial composition. Existing empirical research demonstrates that racial group identification can be affected negatively by inter-racial contact if the racial context exposes an individual to prejudiced communications and to out-group norms, values, and attitudes (Rosenberg 1975, 1979). Additionally, the awareness of one's ethnic group membership decreases as the group becomes less distinct within a particular social environment (McGuire, McGuire, Child, and Fujioka, 1978). These studies seem to suggest that racial group identity will be positively developed in homogeneous social contexts or in inter-racial contexts that are not characterized by prejudiced attitudes and behaviors. This distinction will lead us to examine separately 1) inter-racial contact, and 2) experiences of discrimination.
Unique to the biracial population is the impossibility of existing in a racially homogeneous social context. Specifically, it is highly unlikely that any respondent in this study was raised in a social network composed predominately of mixed-race couples and biracial children. Therefore, it can be inferred that inter-racial contact is the norm. What I want to explore is if higher contact with one group, as opposed to the other, will influence the directionality of the individual's racial identity options. In a similar vein, discrimination may take on various forms for biracial individuals because they can feel discriminated against by either Blacks or Whites (or both), which may effect their racial identity choices.
The socioeconomic status of an individual's family may be especially important to racial identity formation. Family resources structure an individual's social network by determining the parameters of social activity including neighborhoods and schools. These in turn affect the types of people that an individual may develop a friendship with, and the norms, values and attitudes to which they may be exposed (Gecas, 1979). According to the literature on social structure and personality, it could be expected that much of the effect of parent's social class on racial identity would be indirect, operating through the microsocial interaction processes such as parent socialization and interracial contact (Demo and Hughes, 1990).
A great deal of the existing literature on racial identity focuses on Black children. Adult racial group identification is much more limited. Socialization theory has a natural tendency to focus on individuals in the pre-adult stage, apparently assuming that socialization is complete and racial identity is fully formed by the time an individual reaches adulthood. Demo and Hughes (1990) state that it is imperative to question the degree to which adult social structure and social process variables affect Black identity independent of childhood background and socialization variables. Researchers analyzing the life course provide ample evidence to support this relationship between adult roles and personality (Clausen, 1986; Elder, 1981; Gecas and Mortimer, 1987). One can be sure that adults have different cognitive capacities (Suls and Mulen, 1982) and reasoning abilities (Basseches, 1984; Horn and Donaldson, 1980; Schaie, 1983) than children, therefore, we would expect a different type of interaction to occur between their structural location and their racial identity maintenance.
Previous research suggests that numerous factors may be important as predictors of adult racial identity for African-Americans. Research conducted by Demo et al (1987) and Hughes and Demo (1989) reveals that the quality of interpersonal relations with family and friends positively influences both racial self-esteem and feelings of closeness to other Blacks. Religious participation has also been explored as an important socializing factor because Black churches have historically allowed African-Americans to hold positions of authority unavailable in other social institutions, leading to increased self-respect and positive group evaluation (Hughes and Demo, 1989) and enhanced psychological well being (Ortega, Crutchfield, and Rushing, 1983). Adult socio-economic status has been shown in two recent studies (Allen et al, 1989; Broman et al., 1988) to be negatively related to feelings of closeness to other Blacks. Finally, studies focusing on adult interracial interaction (Rosenberg and Simmons, 1972; Rosenberg, 1979, Broman et al., 1988) have found that existence outside of a racially homogeneous community minimizes Black group identification. (Rosenberg and Simmons, 1972; Rosenberg, 1979, Broman et al., 1988).
The Problem
Empirical studies of racial identity development in African-American children and adults, and among White ethnics, are limited in explaining racial identity formation within the mixed-race population. They do however, lay a solid foundation by suggesting an empirical link between the social structure in which one is embedded, the social interactions an individual experiences within that structure, and the power of socialization to shape and maintain our racial identities. The question then becomes, how might these same factors explain, or fail to explain, the choices biracial individuals make between several strategies of racial identification?
Data and Methods
Sample
The sample consisted of individuals with one Black and one White parent. Respondents were generated from the population of students at Henry Ford Community College in Dearborn, Michigan and the University of Detroit-Mercy in Detroit, Michigan. A total of 225 respondents were surveyed (see Chapter 2 for a more detailed description of the sampling procedure).
Dependent Variables:
Racial Identity: A singular measure was used on the survey to determine biracial identity. Respondents were asked, "Which of the following statements best describes how you feel about your racial identity? A) I consider myself exclusively Black (or African-American), B) I sometimes consider myself Black, sometimes my other race, and sometimes biracial depending on the circumstances, C) I consider myself Biracial, but I experience the world as a Black person, D) I consider myself exclusively as Biracial (neither Black nor White), E) I consider myself exclusively as my other race (not Black or Biracial), F) Race is meaningless, I do not believe in racial identities." Dummy variables were created for each category so that separate models could be run for each identity option. For example, after constructing a variable for the last response, no racial identity (I_NORACE), respondents would be coded "1" if they chose that identity option, "0" if they chose a different option. Table 4.1 provides a descriptive breakdown for each dummy variable.
Individual Variables
Appearance: Respondents were asked to describe their own physical appearance. Specifically, they were asked: "Which of the following best describes your physical appearance: A) I look Black and most people assume that I am Black, B) My physical features are ambiguous, people assume I am Black mixed with something else, C) My physical features are ambiguous, people do not assume that I am Black, D) I physically look White, I could 'pass'." This variable was reverse coded so that a high score indicates that a respondent's appearance is Black and a low score indicates the respondent's appearance is White.
Age: Age is the self-reported age of the respondent in years. Respondents ranged in age from 16 to 58 years with an average age of 26 years.
Gender: Gender is the self-reported gender of the respondent coded "1" if the respondent was female and "0" if the respondent was male. Approximately 58% of the sample was female, 42% male.
Socialization Variables
Interracial contact: The survey items measuring interracial contact illustrate the respondent's level of involvement with both Black and White people over their lifetime. Respondents were asked to judge the racial composition of eight social settings in their life including: 1) elementary school, 2) closest friends in elementary school, 3) junior high school, 4) high school, 5) closest friends in high school, 6) college, 7) neighborhood while growing up, 8) present neighborhood, 9) church or place of worship, 10) present workplace and 11) closest friends today. Responses were coded as follows: 1 = all Blacks, 2 = mostly Blacks, 3 = about half Black, 4 = mostly Whites, and 5 = almost all Whites. From these items we constructed two scales of interracial contact: 1) a pre-adult interracial contact scale (Items 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7), and 2) an adult interracial contact scale (Items 8, 9, 10, and 11). The reliability coefficient for the pre-adult scale was .88 and .71 for the adult scale. For each scale we summed the items containing valid data for each respondent.
Experience of Discrimination: The respondent's experiences of discrimination were recorded for both Blacks and Whites. Respondents were asked: "Have you ever experienced personal discrimination or hostility from Whites because of your race?" and "have you ever experienced negative treatment from Blacks because of your skin color or physical features?" The respondent was allowed to answer "A) Yes I have frequently experienced negative treatment, B) Yes, I have occasionally experienced negative treatment, or C) No, I have never experienced negative treatment." The first two responses were then collapsed to create a dichotomous variable indicating that the respondent either had, or had not, experienced negative treatment by Blacks or Whites.
Parent Socialization: Respondents were asked "Did you talk openly in your family about being biracial?" Answers were coded "1" if the respondent indicated that their family had talked about being biracial and "0" if they had not.
Adult Socioeconomic Status: Our measure of current socioeconomic status used the respondent's education (which was recorded in one of six categories according to level of education completed where 1 = High School, 2 = Associates Degree, 3 = Bachelors Degree, 4 = Masters Degree, 5 = Doctorate, and 6 = Other). Respondents completed educational levels ranged from less than high school to a doctorate. The average level of education completed was some college, although less than an associates degree.
Parents Socioeconomic Status: Respondents were asked: "When you were growing up, what was your father's occupation?" They were also asked: "What is the highest level of education your father has completed?" The same questions were asked about the respondent's mother. To calculate occupational prestige, the 1980 Census Occupational Categories were used with the corresponding 1989 Occupational Prestige scores, which is the standard procedure adopted by the NORC. Unfortunately, there were so many missing data on parent's education that it was impossible to use this variable in determining parent's socioeconomic status. Instead, the occupational prestige score was calculated for each parent and the score of the higher parent was used to assess socioeconomic status. Table 4.1 provides the means and standard deviations of all the variables previously described.
TABLE 4.1 MEANS AND STANDARD DEVIATIONS FOR VARIABLES =====================================================
|
Variable |
Mean |
SD |
|
Dependent: |
|
|
|
Black Identity |
0.20 |
0.40 |
|
Validated Biracial Identity |
0.19 |
0.39 |
|
Un-validated Biracial Identity |
0.33 |
0.47 |
|
Shifting Identity |
0.04 |
0.20 |
|
White Identity |
0.03 |
0.16 |
|
No Racial Identity |
0.13 |
0.34 |
|
|
|
|
|
Independent: Individual |
|
|
|
Appear Black |
2.94 |
0.96 |
|
Age |
25.65 |
9.05 |
|
Gender |
0.58 |
0.49 |
|
|
|
|
|
Independent: Socialization |
|
|
|
Interracial Contact (Pre-Adult) |
7.89 |
5.72 |
|
Interracial Contact (Adult) |
5.67 |
3.41 |
|
Experienced Discrimination By Blacks |
0.61 |
0.49 |
|
Experienced Discrimination By Whites |
0.78 |
0.41 |
|
Adult SES |
1.93 |
1.52 |
|
Parent Socialization |
0.62 |
0.49 |
|
Parents SES |
45.32 |
11.80 |
Findings
Multivariate Models
Tables 4.2 through 4.6 represent the final results for logistic regression analysis. Because racial identity for mixed-race people is multi-dimensional, separate logistic regressions were run for each of the dependent measures of racial identity. These include: 1) biracial (border identity), 2) exclusively Black (singular identity), 3) Black, White, and/or Biracial (protean identity), and 4) no racial identity (transcendent). For all the tables, unstandardized logistic regression coefficients are presented in column 2 with the standard errors in parentheses.
It should be noted that several of the key variables suggested in the literature on Black racial identity failed to have an influence over the choice of identity made by mixed -race individuals and did not make the final trimmed model. These variables include the racial composition of both the pre-adult and adult social networks and adult socioeconomic status. A thorough discussion of the final model reveals that these factors tend to work through the remaining variables.
Biracial: A Border Identity
As discussed in Chapter 3, mixed-race individuals make varying choices about their racial identity. One of those choices, the border identity, involves the creation of a new category of identification, one which encompasses both of the socially accepted racial categorizations of Black and White, but includes an additional element from it's combination. These respondents make up 55% of the total sample and can be further subdivided into those whose identity as biracial is validated, versus those whose identity as biracial is un-validated. The difference between those two lies in the respondent's perception of the response that others have to their racial group membership. Both understand being biracial as a border identity. For some respondents, the border identity is consistently validated by others in their social network. For others, a racial identity as "biracial" fails to be accepted by others as a valid category of racial identification. It was this latter group of individuals that answered the identity question "I consider myself Biracial, but I experience the world as a Black person."
Table 4.2 represents the logistic regression model for validated Biracial identity while Table 4.3 represents the results for the un-validated Biracial identity. Immediately striking is the differential effect of the appearance variable, which is a self-report of the respondents appearance ranging from "I look Black and most people assume that I am Black" to "I physically look White, I could 'pass'". The directionality of this variable is opposite in the two models. Appearance is highly significant as a factor influencing a validated biracial identity. The data suggest that if an individual's physical appearance is closer to Whites than to Blacks, they are more likely to understand being biracial as a border identity, and that identity is more likely to be validated than un-validated. For those whose appearance is closer to Blacks than to Whites, their identity is less likely to be validated.
TABLE 4.2 LOGISTIC REGRESSION OF INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIALIZATION VARIABLES ON VALIDATED BIRACIAL IDENTITY =====================================================
|
|
|
|
Respondent Characteristics |
-.05 (.03) |
|
Age |
-.21 (.43) |
|
Female |
-.61 (.23)** |
|
Appearance |
|
|
|
|
|
Socialization Factors |
|
|
Parent SES |
.02 (.02) |
|
Talk About Identity |
.61 (.47) |
|
Discrimination from Blacks |
.22 (.48) |
|
Discrimination from Whites |
.11 (.51) |
|
|
|
|
Constant |
-.06 |
|
Chi Square |
16.305** |
|
d.f. |
7 |
|
N |
164 |
TABLE 4.3 LOGISTIC REGRESSION OF INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIALIZATION VARIABLES ON UN-VALIDATED BIRACIAL IDENTITY =====================================================
|
|
Identity is Biracial (Black) |
|
Respondent Characteristics |
|
|
Age |
-.01 (.02) |
|
Female |
-.22 (.36) |
|
Appearance |
.27 (.21) |
|
|
|
|
Socialization Factors |
|
|
Parent SES |
-.01 (.02) |
|
Talk About Identity |
.59 (.38) |
|
Discrimination from Blacks |
1.27 (.42)** |
|
Discrimination from Whites |
-.60 (.43) |
|
|
|
|
Constant |
-1.47 |
|
Chi Square |
15.730** |
|
d.f. |
7 |
|
N |
164 |
It is too simplistic a picture to say that biracial individual's appearance alone determines their racial identity. The effect of social networks in which an individual is situated must additionally be considered in order to understand their choice of identity. Individuals are socially located in systems of networks, or social relationships, which are directly related to their social status. Status brings access to different types of social networks. For biracial individuals, the higher the status of one's parents, the more likely that an individual is to have contact with White peer groups. The more time that individuals spend interacting with White peer groups, the less likely they are to develop an understanding of their biracialness as a singular (Black) identity. More specifically, the more time that an individual spends in White peer groups, the more likely they are to cultivate a degree of cultural savvy to fit in with their peers and to see both Whiteness and Blackness in their self-understanding and interactional presentation of self.
The preceding statement suggests that it is merely the access to different types of networks that influences the directionality of one's biracial identity. It is important to note however, that it is not merely the amount of contact an individual has with either White or Black peers or family members (Hall, 1980), nor is it exclusively which group the individual uses as a reference group (Fields, 1996; Kerckhoff and McCormick, 1995). Instead, it is the type of contact that an individual has with others, or the way in which an individual socially experiences race, that mediates the relationship between one's social status and their biracial identity.
An additional case from the in-depth interviews may illustrate this argument. Kristy is a biracial woman from New Jersey. She is White in appearance, with fair skin, long curly light brown hair, freckles, and green eyes. She attended public schools, which were 50% Black, until the 10th grade. She stated the following in reference to her relationships with Black students:
"I was always rejected by the black women. I just shied away from the black males because they were a little intimidating and a little too aggressive I thought. So then when I transferred sophomore year, I went to a Catholic school that only had maybe, about ten blacks counting the four biracial students so when I got there I was really taken in by these people and it was just a total different world. It was like, [in public school] I was really never accepted by these black females because well, you probably been told this too, they were jealous because you have good hair and light eyes. I remember thinking what were they jealous of? I didn't choose to be like this, I don't mind it, you know what I mean, so it was really their problem I think. Then I went to Catholic school...I didn't really know anybody, and I was just like hopefully, it will be better. Of course it was better because there was less black people for me to contend with...Maybe because it was a Catholic prep school that was $4000.00 a year, that made people really appreciate education and different cultures and you know, and these people really took me in and it was nice. So we [the black and biracial students], it was a close knit group, it was kind of like family within that high school..."
She said about her college transition:
"When I came here it was like, I'm gonna go to [college] and it's gonna kind of be the same as my high school. Cuz you know, here there's not many black people - it's on a larger scale, but it's the same kind of ratio. So I was asked to do a program [specifically for minority students] the summer before freshman year, and naturally you're friends with thirty black people right away. So that was great and you know, finally it was like oh, they don't care that I'm so light-skinned or whatever, so that was nice. Especially freshman year, I totally identified with the black population here. And I was telling my parents, this is so opposite of what I've been running away from all my life because finally these people are like, 'you're just a person', you know what I mean."
Kristy's experience is interesting specifically because it provides a critical case that defies the simplicity of using the number of Black social networks for understanding how an individual may develop an understanding of being biracial as a border identity. Her story also helps to explain why interracial contact was not in the final model. In this case, Kristy underwent the greatest degree of rejection by her Black peers when she was in an environment with a large number of Blacks. Attending a school where 50% of the students were Black provided her with numerous opportunities to form friendships with other Black students (as compared to a school with a lower Black student population). It was in this environment however, that she reports feeling 'rejected' by Black women and avoiding interaction with Black men. Here, her racial identity as "Black" was not validated. In fact, the incongruence between her appearance and identity caused numerous interactional ruptures (such as gum being thrown in her 'good' hair and fist-fights). This 'rejection' by Black women, was counterbalanced by friendship from her White peers with whom she had a common economic status. It was in the context of this simultaneous failure to be accepted as Black, by Blacks, and acceptance by Whites as biracial, that Kristy developed her understanding of biracialness as a border identity.
Once Kristy transferred to a predominately White school, however, with fewer Blacks to "contend with," her closest network of friendships shifted from exclusively White to inclusive of Black and biracial students. This environment was substantively different than her previous school with different 'types' of students. Specifically, the Black students at her new school were exclusively middle to upper-middle class and, because they were in an environment which made them a visible minority, they had a strong vested interest in mutual self-acceptance. It was in this group, composed of Blacks that accepted her, and several other biracial peers, that she found further validation for her border identity.
Finally, Kristy's transition to college further illustrates the importance of examining the type of social interaction an individual has within any given social network. Again, Kristy was in an environment in which Blacks were a small and highly visible minority (less than 2% of the student body). Here, the pattern of her high school relationships was repeated, facilitated by ties made during the summer program. She was accepted by a small cohesive group of Black students at a predominately White institution while maintaining her core group of White friends. These experiences solidified her understanding of choice of racial identity.
Specific socio-demographic factors may enable an individual to have access to differing types of social networks than would be available to others. Social networks provide the terrain in which identities may be negotiated, particularly where non-existent identities may emerge in order for the participants to understand an individual's presence within a particular network. It is precisely in these networks that the key process of interactional validation occurs and contributes to the differential choices of racial identity for biracial individuals.
Singular Identity
The singular identity differs from the option previously discussed because, as opposed to creating a new category of identification, an individual chooses between the two existing racial categories and identifies as exclusively one or the other. In the case of Black/White biracials, the choices are either to identify exclusively as African-American or exclusively as White. Table 4.4 represents the results of the logistic regression analysis on Black racial identity. The model on White identity is not presented because there were so few respondents (3% of the total sample) who identified themselves exclusively as White.
Similar variables play important roles, albeit in different ways, as predictors of the singular Black identity. Appearance, once again, plays a major role in influencing whether or not an individual will choose this particular identity strategy. The data suggest that if an individual's physical appearance is very close to African-Americans, they are more likely to identify themselves as exclusively Black, as opposed to Biracial or White. Interestingly, we see the expected pattern, although it is not statistically significant, in the model for singular White identity where those whose appearance is very unlike Blacks are more likely to identify as White.
TABLE 4.4 LOGISTIC REGRESSION OF INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIALIZATION VARIABLES ON EXCLUSIVELY BLACK IDENTITY =====================================================
|
|
|
|
Respondent Characteristics |
|
|
Age |
.04 (.02) |
|
Female |
.11 (.48) |
|
Appearance |
1.92 (.41)*** |
|
|
|
|
Socialization Factors |
|
|
Parent SES |
-.02 (.02) |
|
Talk About Identity |
-0.95 (.49)* |
|
Discrimination from Blacks |
-1.33 (.55)** |
|
Discrimination from Whites |
1.42 (.66)* |
|
|
|
|
Constant |
-7.47 |
|
Chi Square |
62.942*** |
|
d.f. |
7 |
|
N |
164 |
Two of the socialization variables have a significant effect in influencing the choice of this identity option; family discussion about being biracial and experiencing discrimination from Blacks. Individuals who did not talk openly in their family about being biracial and who did not experience negative treatment from Blacks are the most likely to understand their racial identity as exclusively Black.
Much of parental socialization occurs through verbal interactions within the family context. Family discussion about being biracial may take on a variety of differing meanings and dimensions. The question asked of respondents was "did your family talk openly about being biracial?" Interview data suggests two different interpretations of a "no" response. The first is that the family simply did not discuss race as a salient element of everyday life nor was the racial socialization of children in the family done in a conscious verbalized manner. The second interpretation was that the family did not discuss 'being biracial' as a legitimate identity option. Dee provided the following characterization of her family's "talk about being biracial":
"They didn't sit me down and talk about like 'you're biracial' and all that. My dad, whenever he would talk to us - he was the main one who talked to us about things - and he would say 'well, being black, you're gonna have these problems in life and you're gonna have to know how to deal with them.' So he never really addressed the fact that we were biracial, my dad was like 'you're black'."
The second variable of interest here is the experience of negative treatment by Blacks. It is clear from the final model that there are both push and pull factors at work when an individual chooses a singular Black identity. The push factors come from the experience of negative treatment by Whites and the pull from the lack of such negative experiences by Blacks. Lau (1989) demonstrates that "the more strongly other people treat a person as part of a group, the more strongly will that group become a part of the person's social identity" (p. 222). If a biracial person appears Black, is accepted as Black, by Blacks, and simultaneously experiences negative treatment by Whites as an out-group member, it seems intuitive that the individual will come to develop a racial identity that is exclusively Black.
Protean Identity
The protean identity differs from the singular and border identities because the individual does not possess a single unified racial identity. Instead the biracial person possess multiple racial identities and personas that may be called up in the appropriate context. Instead of identifying the self as biracial, Black, or White consistently, the individual will sometimes identify as Black, at other times, White, and still other times as biracial. The identity that is called up as representing the self is dependent solely on the individuals assessment of what is most appropriate, or desirable, in the social context. Unique to this identity strategy is the ability to be accepted as an in-group member, by different groups. This requires a complex mastery over various cultural norms and values and an ongoing awareness and monitoring of one's presentation of self. Table 4.5 provides the results from the logistic regression analysis of this identity option. Because only 4% of the sample selected this type of racial identity strategy, the explanatory power of the model is severely limited. I will however provide some tentative suggestions drawn from the interview data.
Exploring a case from the interview data may provide an illustration of the contextual shifting characteristic of this identity and an explanation as to why an individual may make develop this understanding of what it means to be biracial. A respondent named Mike discussed how his dual cultural competencies allowed for him to function as an 'insider' in differing social groups. Mike grew up in an all-White neighborhood and attended predominantly White private schools his entire life. His father, who was African-American, was a prominent figure in this small town where he was raised. Despite their geographic distance, Mike did have frequent contact with his Black extended family. Mike felt that his particular circumstances growing up helped him to not only develop both middle-class White and Black cultural competencies, but also simultaneous multiple identities. In the following excerpt from our conversation, he uses table manners to illustrate his perception of the subtleties of contextual shifting:
"Because of their [his parents] status, I always learned, you know start with the outside fork and work your way in, and this one is for dessert, you know. So I know, I know not to eat like this [puts his elbows on the table]. But then again, at the same time, [respondent shifts to Black vernacular] when it comes picnic time or some other time and some ribs is on the table, I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty and dig on in and eat with my hands and stuff like that. [respondent shifts back to Standard English] I mean I guess my, the shift is when I'm not afraid to function in either world."
While his depiction may be exaggerated and stereotypical, it reveals his understanding of biracialness as having the ability to contextually shift his self-label between what he perceives as Black and White-cultural contexts. In addition, his experience enables us to see that for him, Black and White social networks were always separate and distinct entities, each calling for different behavior and ways of being. From this separation, and lack of family talk about one's identity, we can tentatively understand how individuals may develop this type of self-understanding.
TABLE 4.5 LOGISTIC REGRESSION OF INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIALIZATION VARIABLES ON PROTEAN IDENTITY =====================================================
|
|
Identity is Shifting |
|
Respondent Characteristics |
|
|
Age |
-.01 (.06) |
|
Female |
1.41 (1.15) |
|
Appearance |
.35 (.59) |
|
|
|
|
Socialization Factors |
|
|
Parent SES |
-.03 (.05) |
|
Talk About Identity |
-.39 (.98)* |
|
Discrimination from Blacks |
-1.82(1.24) |
|
Discrimination from Whites |
-.31 (.1.04) |
|
|
|
|
Constant |
-2.875 |
|
Chi Square |
6.246 |
|
d.f. |
7 |
|
N |
164 |
Transcendent Identity
The final type of identity that biracial individuals may choose, is the non-racial or transcendent identity. This choice is different from the others because the individual consciously denies having any racial identification whatsoever. Individuals who chose this type of self-understanding simply do not use race as a construct to understand the social world or their relative place in it. Table 4.6 presents the results of the logistic regression analysis for this identity option.
Once again, appearance is the most salient factor in the model. Having a White appearance, or the ability to 'pass', is crucial to this self-understanding. When considering this type of identity, it is understandable that this option is uniquely and exclusively available to individuals whose appearance has some degree of ambiguity. If an individual is biracial, and their physical appearance is much closer to Whites than Blacks, they will not socially experience race in the same way as someone who physically looks African-American. The logic of racial group categorization is based upon the ability of others to immediately recognize one's group membership. If this is impossible due to physical appearance, or if it is mistaken and the person is assumed to be White, then they will have vastly different social interactions than those for whom this ambiguity fails to exist. These individuals are closer to the White ethnics described by Waters (1990) who have the choice of whether or not to reveal their ethnicity in any given interaction.
TABLE 4.6 LOGISTIC REGRESSION OF INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIALIZATION VARIABLES ON TRANSCENDENT IDENTITY =====================================================
|
|
|
|
Respondent Characteristics |
|
|
Age |
.01 (.03) |
|
Female |
.00 (.49) |
|
Appearance |
-.88 (.25)*** |
|
|
|
|
Socialization Factors |
|
|
Parent SES |
.00 (.02) |
|
Talk About Identity |
-.18 (.51) |
|
Discrimination from Blacks |
-.47 (.52) |
|
Discrimination from Whites |
-.27 (.53) |
|
|
|
|
Constant |
0.654 |
|
Chi Square |
15.294* |
|
d.f. |
7 |
|
N |
164 |
Discussion
The four distinct models presented in this chapter are affected differently by the predictor variables. This suggests that it is reasonable to conceptualize biracial identity as a multidimensional phenomenon. Being biracial means different things to different segments of the mixed-race population and people make decisions about their racial identity based on varying sets of criteria. Given that several factors which consistently have predicted Black racial identity and White ethnic identity failed to aid in explaining Biracial identity, it can be concluded that biracial identity is conceptually unique. These findings support the function of both individual and socialization factors in influencing which type of racial identity a biracial individual may choose. The following chapter examines the function of appearances in the selection of racial identity options.
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CHAPTER 5 THE COLOR COMPLEX: APPEARANCES AND BIRACIAL IDENTITY
Introduction
Focusing on the biracial experience enables a fertile exploration of how culture influences identity, or how our socially constructed, cognitive understandings of differing racial categories interact with significant symbols to influence the way in which we understand our selves and our relationship to others. The most salient symbol representing group membership is our appearance. It is important to focus on appearances for several reasons. First and foremost, the data analysis in previous chapters has indicated the importance of physical appearance in understanding the different choices which biracial individuals make about their identity and why they make those choices. Even more interestingly, appearances play a different, and at times counter-intuitive, role in each of the various identity options. Theoretically, appearances are fundamentally important to the process of human interaction because we are unable to observe directly the intentions and character of individuals (Goffman, 1959). It is through appearances that we evaluate ourselves and others and through which we present ourselves to others (Ichheiser, 1970). Appearances present our identities to others in social interaction. At the same time, they allow us to infer the other's identities, help to define the situation, and provide a cognitive context for the actors involved. In this sense, appearances can become a reality in and of themselves (Stone, 1962).
Gregory Stone's work on appearance serves as the theoretical underpinning for my use of appearance as the building block for a larger interpretive model to understand biracial identity. I will briefly restate Stone's thesis on the relationships between appearance and identity, expand the model to encompass master statuses or universal identities, and test the interpretive power of the model by examining data from case studies. The purpose of this expansion is an attempt to grasp the power of cultural influences and social interaction in the process of identity construction and maintenance.
Theoretical Background
The Situated Self: Stone and Appearance
Gregory Stone asserts that identity establishes what and where an actor is in social terms. It is not a substitute word for 'self,' but instead, describes the self as situated. The self is cast in the shape of a social object by the acknowledgment of the actor's participation or membership in social relations (Stone, 1962). The presenter's identity is validated when others in an interactional context are able to place the actor as a social object by assigning them the same words of identity that the actor uses for his or her self. It is in the acknowledgment of an individual's asserted placement by others that identity becomes a public meaning of the self, despite the fact that the public meaning may or may not coincide with the presenter's intended meaning. This dialectical process of potential mutual agreement, Stone argues, is stimulated by symbols of one's appearance. Mutual identification is an ongoing dance of reflexive social processes. Stone refers to these processes as 'apposition' and 'opposition,' a simultaneous bringing together and setting apart. We are able to locate and understand others in particular situations (as social objects) by bringing them together with other social objects so that they are similarly situated. At the same time that we engage in this bringing together, we differentiate, or set the actor apart from, other social objects. For Stone, "identity is intrinsically associated with all the joinings and departures of social life" (1962, p. 188-189). For an identity to be publicly and personally meaningful, an individual must be concurrently joined with some social objects while separated from others by both the self and others.
Situating the other is only one aspect of the mutual identification process. Situating is followed by an additional simultaneous set of processes: "identification of" and "identification with". These two processes are interdependent in that we cannot identify with another without having identified, or placed, the other. Role taking is one form of identifying with, as is sympathy. Mutual identification is typically facilitated by appearance and initiated without verbal communication. Stone gives the example of gender in that we don't verbally inquire about others' status as male or female, yet one's sex category must be established because it structures the parameters of any given interaction. We come to know the other's sex category because it is silently established through appearances. It becomes clear at this point that appearances establish an actors basic "universal" identification, hence appearance functions as a form of communication that is very different from discourse. Stone argues that appearance "sets the stage for, permits, sustains, and delimits the possibilities of discourse by underwriting the possibilities for meaningful discussion" (1962, p. 103).
Stone conceptually defines identity as an ongoing process of mutual identification. He frames social interaction as the context of identity establishment, arguing that it is necessary to break down a social transaction into its communicative parts. Communication, he argues can be divided into two equally relevant parts: 1) discourse, and 2) appearances. Discourse refers to the substance of what is being verbally communicated between actors while appearances serve as non-verbal sources of communication.
Appearances not only communicate identity, but have a reflexive relationship with identity. They simultaneously present one's identity while serving as the source of identity (or as a mask to hide identities). Despite explicating that a reflexive relationship exists, Stone's work does not expand upon the latter function of appearances. Instead, he focuses on how appearances function as situators in the process of face-to-face interaction. Through appearances, the self presents an identity. Because Stone uses empirical data to explore his theoretical model, he must limit his use of appearance to a singular observable dimension. He chooses to focus on clothing as an operationalization of his theoretical concept of appearance. To justify this selection, Stone argues that one's clothes impart value to the wearer, both in the wearer's own eyes and in the eyes of others (Sullivan, 1953; Cooley, 1902). In response to his clothes, the wearer is cast as a social object, or given some identity. If the self (as object) is established by appearance then the meaning of appearances can be studied by examining the responses mobilized by an actor's clothing. Model 5.1 is a schematic representation of my interpretation of Stone's theoretical framework. The Meadian influence is clear as he searches for the meaning of appearances in the responses that they mobilize. Hence, Stone relies on a fundamentally interactionist understanding and focuses his work on the responses to individual's appearances within the context of social interaction. The model specifies three separate responses: 1) the "program", 2) the "review", and 3) the self's imagined response of the other (Cooley, 1902). Stone uses the term 'program' to describe the responses made about the individual actor by the actor him/herself. The second set of responses, the reviews, are those made about the actor by others with whom they interact. There is an additional third type of response which Stone specifies is relevant, but which is outside the limits of his empirical investigation. This third type of response is the actor's imagination of other's responses to their appearance and resultant initial self feeling (Cooley, 1902).
Programs and reviews agree with each other when the self has presented an identity and that identity is accepted by the other within the process of social interaction. When this agreement occurs, the self of the one who appears, or the actor whose appearances has elicited the desired response, is validated. Disagreement occurs when the program and the response do not agree. In this case, the self of the actor who appears is challenged. Behavior between the actors may be directed towards a redefinition, or re-negotiation, of the challenged self. Challenges and validations of the self, according to Stone, are initially aroused by self and other's response to an actor's personal appearance.
Stone, drawing from Mead (1934), Cooley (1902), and Sullivan (1953), argues that self's responses to one's appearance are reflexive in character. His idea of mutual identification implies that when we place others, we engage in a complementary placing of the self so that each actor's 'place' is relative to the 'place of others.' When we respond to other's appearances, we respond to our own. Reviews and programs are intricately linked because our programs parallel our reviews of others. Stone believes that "one appears, reflects upon that appearance, and appropriates words of identity, and attitude for himself in response to that appearance" (1962, p. 193). By appearing, the person announces his identity. If the meaning of the appearance is "supplied" by the reviews others make of one's appearance, it is established or consensually validated, by the relative coincidence of such reviews with the program of the one who appears. In other words, if an actor's clothing calls out in others the same identifications of the wearer as it calls out in the wearer, the appearance is situationally meaningful. By way of appearances, then, selves are established and mobilized. From this theoretical model, Stone defines the self as "any validated program which exercises a regulatory function over other responses of the same organism, including the formulation of other programs" (1962, p. 194). The meaning of appearance, therefore, is the establishment of identity for the actor who appears by the coincident programs and reviews awakened by their appearance.
Expanding the Appearance-Identity Model
Stone asserts that there are multiple types of identities, the varieties of which are isomorphic with the varieties of social relations. He states early on that there are at least 4 different types used to place and announce the identities communicated by appearance: 1) universal words designating one's humanity (such as age and gender); 2) names and nicknames, 3) titles, and 4) relational categories. Left out of the discussion of universal identities is that of race. Hence, the first way we must extend Stone's model is by joining the idea of appearance as the source of identity and the reality of the cultural context in which the actor operates. In American society, certain physical characteristics signify racial group membership. Because this signifier also carries with it an historical tradition of stratification and stigmatization, we must recognize this particular appearance as a master status (Strauss, 1959). Race, as a master status, is a singular identity that has the power to subsume most other role-related identities. For example, one is not simply a 'student', but a 'Black student' or a "student of color".
When we deal with an identity that is a master status, it becomes necessary to re-examine the reflexive capacity of the appearance identity link. We have explored Stone's analysis of how appearances present identity, but appearances are also the source of identity because others respond to us in terms of our appearances and body-derived identities which are both constructed and imposed in situation. To utilize Stone's model in understanding racial identity, we must expand the previously stated conceptual framework to encompass these particularities.
Our physical bodies are, social psychologically, a collection of cultural meanings that supply basic information and interpretations to others. Race refers, not to a genetically based reality, but to the symbolic meaning of bodily differences. For this reason, bodily characteristics, specifically skin color, facial features, and hair texture, define the actor in a way that forces language to become a secondary appearance cue, and clothing is relegated to a tertiary status. Because American cultural coding imposes a uniquely dichotomous Black-Non Black schema of racial identification, race functions as a socially general, or "universal", interactional resource. I must reiterate that race, as a universal category of identity, is subtly important to most social interactions because of its link to the distribution of power and status in society. Physical characteristics are inescapable signifiers utilized as the context for designation of an actors social group membership. These signifiers provide individuals with an immediate basis for identification of the other and set up the parameters in which the universe of discourse takes place.
The second fundamental way in which I would like to expand Stone's model is by addressing his limited conception of the self. Stone depicts a truncated version of the self, one that represents an objectively biased cognitive reduction of the self as process. Specifically, Stone's self one-sidedly focuses on the self as object without considering the subjective element or the self as subject. Stone's version of identity provides a window to the self as situated -- but he has limited himself in being able to deal with how the situated self knows itself, not as social object, but as subject. Weigert makes this critique and posits an alternative formulation of the self, the 'substantival self". He defines self as "an actor 1. Whose action is conceptualized as intending behavior; 2. Whose consciousness of such behavior is characterized by concomitant awareness of the self in action; and 3. Who thus possesses the capacity of being both subject and object to himself (sic)" (Weigert, 1975). This conception of self allows us to think more expansively about the relationship between the self and identity and allows for a deeper contextualization of the function of appearances.
I would also add that within Stone's model we may also be able to draw out the subjective elements of the self by capitalizing on his idea of the "imagined" response of the other." Stone suggests that the self in action has the capacity to view and interpret the responses of the other. Can we not also consider that the actor, in addition to this, has the capacity to anticipate the other's review; know that it is reflecting on that review; and consciously use that imagined response in order to formulate a program. In other words, I am suggesting that the actor may be consciously assessing the other to gauge and estimate his/her review (we can say the actor is making a 'pre-view'), and use that estimation to calculate and manipulate the program put forth or the identity presented (Goffman, 1959). It will become easier to assess the usefulness of the 'pre-view' later in the discussion of the case studies. Model 5.2 is a schematic representation of my attempt to extend Stone's conceptual framework.
While I have suggested several limitations of the model for interpreting racial identity, I have retained Stone's fundamental processes of situating the other as social object and mutual identification. Appearances provide the parameters for social interaction and may have the capacity to validate or challenge the self that is presented. In the following sections I will examine selected case studies in order to assess whether or not appearances represent the terrain in which embodied selves are established and mobilized as suggested in the previous discussion. The extended theoretical model provides a sense of the processes of identity construction and maintenance with respect to racial identities. Case studies of biracial individuals who have diverse bodily characteristics, varying appearances, and different understandings of their self as biracial, allow us to see how their different understandings of biracial identity emerge through the process of mutual (mis)identification.
How Do Appearances Influence the Development of Differential Understandings of Biracial Identity?
In Chapter 3, I demonstrated that while we may categorize all individuals who have one Black and one White biological parent as a 'biracial,' we find that these people understand their racial identity in varying ways and may use different racial identifiers to describe themselves. Individuals may understand their biracialness as 1) a border identity, 2) a protean identity, 3) a transcendent identity, or 4) a traditional identity. I will explore each of these different understandings in order to assess the interpretive power of the expanded conceptual model.
The Border Identity
Some individuals with one Black and one White parent understand this status as a border identity. This refers to a self that lies between predefined social categories yet has a substantive uniqueness all its own. For these people, it is their social location between the categories of Black and White that defines their racial identity. These individuals emphasize their in-betweeness, highlighting that particular location as the grounding for their identity. They do not consider themselves to be either Black or White, but instead have a self-understanding that incorporates both Blackness and Whiteness into a unique category of 'biracial.' It is this unique location of difference that serves as the substantive base of what it means to be biracial for them.
It must be recognized immediately that this type of identification has only recently become available to individuals, and still exists only in selected contexts within American society. Historically and traditionally, children of inter-racial marriages were limited to a 'Black' racial identity (regardless of physical appearance) in accordance with the "One-Drop-Rule" (see Chapter 1 for a more expansive discussion of this idea). Given the stigmatization of race, biracial children have always been considered members of the Black community regardless of their appearance. Given this historical pattern, any self-understanding of biracial people other than Black is a relatively new phenomenon. How then have these individuals developed and maintain a previously non-existent identity?
There is a common set of experiences among the group of individuals who understand being biracial as a border identity. Many of the individuals were middle to upper-middle class, private school educated, raised in predominately White neighborhoods with predominately White friends and relatives composing their social networks. In many of these cases, they were the only (or one of few) non-whites within their schools and communities. Many were popular and active in sports and school activities and/or held leadership positions in their educational institutions. Generally speaking, these individuals were uniformly raised in a predominately White middle class social context. It is within this particular type of socialization, combined with a homogeneous set of social networks that these individuals were able to develop a self-understanding of being biracial as a border identity, an understanding that was not previously/historically available (or at the very least was not validated by others). These individuals approximated their White peers in every way, in their language usage, tastes, mannerisms, and style. In fact, the only difference between them and their peers was the racial group membership of one of their parents (who may, or may not, have played a role in their upbringing) and their physical appearance. In the minds of their peers, they were more like them than they were different and did not fit into their cognitive conception of "Black." Given that both the biracial individuals and the peers had little contact with Blacks, their perceptions were largely stereotypical and derived from the media. The result of this particular set of circumstances is that individuals repeatedly were told by their peers "Well, I don't really think of you as 'Black'". This statement implies the following: 1) that the speaker has a cognitive perception of what "Black" is; 2) that "Black" is something different from what the speaker is ("White"); and 3) that the biracial person does not fit into that category because they are more like the speaker (in the speakers mind) than their understanding of "Black". The result of this coincidental failure of mutual identification is for both parties to agree on a new category of identification -- that being "biracial" where biracial means, for both, something between White and Black.
When we consider the process of mutual identification, it becomes difficult if individuals cannot be immediately and unconsciously placed into a particular category. Categorization becomes difficult: 1) if their bodily features are ambiguous; 2) if there is a knowledge on the part of the other of information about the individual which complicates categorization (such as knowing that a person has one Black and one White parent); or 3) if the individuals secondary and tertiary cues (language and dress) do not fit into the others preconceived ideas about members of a particular category. Any one or a combination of these factors can introduce difficulty into the mutual identification process. This difficulty is typically broken by directly addressing the identification problem. Biracial individuals often report being asked the "What are you?" question to clarify an unclear program (Williams, 1996). This question and answer series typically results in the introduction of the new category of meaning as "biracial,' and the two individuals renegotiating both the program and the review.
It is from this context of negotiated identification that we can begin to understand how a biracial individual could develop a self-understanding of biracial as a border identity regardless of their bodily appearance. There are in this category individuals who may be characterized from bodily appearance alone as Black. However, their White parentage, socialization in White middle class networks, and the program that they put forth allow them to understand and be validated in their understanding of "biracial" as a border identity. This category also encompasses individuals whose physical characteristics are ambiguous (but not White) with similar socialization experiences. Finally, this category includes those individuals who are 'light enough to pass,' or look White, who also shared similar social experiences. In sum, regardless of the individuals' bodily characteristics, their understanding of their racial identity as being neither Black nor White derives from the complexity of the mutual identification process and the ability of individual actors to negotiate a meaningful identity with a selected subset of White others.
The Protean Identity
In contrast to a self-understanding of "biracial" as a border identity, some individuals understand their identity as being characterized by their protean capacity to move between and among cultural contexts and established identities (Lifton, 1993). They understand being biracial as the ability to cross cultural boundaries between Black, White, and biracial which is possible because they possess the ability to present a Black, White, and biracial program successfully. These individuals highlighted their cultural savvy in multiple social worlds and understood biracialness as the way in which they were validated, however conditionally, in varied interactional settings. More specifically, these people were accepted as selves with various racial identities by members of different racial groups in diverse social contexts. They believe their dual experiences with both Whites and Blacks have given them the ability to shift their identity according to the context of any particular interaction and, most importantly, they have learned to effectively imagine the desired presentation of self of their audience and adjust their program to that pre-view. This contextual shifting is evidence of a complex self, one that has a heightened concomitant awareness of the self in action.
Individuals who understood being biracial as a protean identity were most likely to use multiple and varied self-labels. At times, they would call themselves "Black", at others "White"-ethnic, and still others as "biracial". They readily admitted checking different racial identity boxes on institutional forms according to what they thought the audience would find most favorable. For example, when filling out admissions forms for colleges and universities, members of this group admitted checking "Black" as their race. They did so because of a perception that this would either work to their advantage or, at the very least, not hurt their chances of gaining admission or financial aid. This example illustrates well the use of programs by this group to manipulate information (albeit in this case, the program is bureaucratic and not put forth in face-to-face interaction). Here, the programs are always false and the individual putting them forth knows they are false. These programs are false precisely because the individual falls into a location that cannot be easily categorized by their appearance. Instead of constant negotiation (the strategy of the border identity), they put emphasis on playing the expected role, or allowing the pre-view to dictate the program instead of an authentic self. One cannot simply look at them and know that they are Black-Irish, or Black-German. Even if it were somehow possible to communicate this in their bodily presence, it would be an ambiguous, or meaningless, category of understanding for most others. It would not allow for the facile categorization that the general categories of placement provide. In other words, it would not facilitate the important process of mutual identification to occur.
This group of individuals maximized their manipulation of appearances by using secondary and tertiary cues. They move in and between Standard English and Black Vernacular with an intuitive ease. In one case, I was able to observe this during the interview. The respondent and I were seated in the main eating area on campus and several of his friends approached our table during the interview. The respondent greeted each one differently, some with Standard English and some with Black Vernacular, some with a stiff body posture, some with a loose demeanor. In fact, due to the ambiguities in the researcher's own appearance, this particular respondent began the interview speaking in Standard English because he was unable to assess my pre-view. After several minutes he directly inquired about my racial identity. After I answered, his formal demeanor instantly slipped away and he never again used Standard English.
Renegotiating a program is, for this group, not a fundamentally problematic experience. If, for any reason, their preview is wrong or they misjudge the expected response of the other, they simply renegotiate. A challenge to a projected identity is not equivalent to a questioning of the self (although it would be for Stone's definition of 'self'). For those who understand being biracial as a border identity, an un-validated program would be highly problematic. If, for example, someone were to call one of those people a derogatory name used exclusively for African-Americans and the context of the situation did not allow for re-negotiation, it would call the self-understanding directly into question. For the protean group, however, no such self-questioning would be necessary. Because they are continually engaged in the concomitant awareness of the pre-view -program - review process and are not particularly wedded to any program, they can shift to an alternative program without great social psychological cost.
The Transcendent Identity
The third way of understanding biracialness is reminiscent of Robert Parks "Marginal Man" (in its original context). Parks discussed the qualities of the cosmopolitan stranger, an individual who was bi-cultural (as opposed to bi-racial), and whose marginal status enabled an objective view of social reality. I refer to this as a 'transcendent identity' because like Park's 'stranger,' individuals with this self-understanding view their biracialness as a unique marginalization, one that enables an objective perspective on the social meaning placed on race. These individuals discount race as a "master status" altogether. A transcendent self-understanding is uniquely and exclusively available to individuals whose bodily characteristics have a high degree of ambiguity (i.e., those who are "passe-blanc" or "light enough to pass").
This type of self-understanding of biracialness results in an avoidance, or rejection, of any type of racial group categorization. For these individuals, the program put forth is intentionally race-less. In a society in which we have a finite codification system of racial group membership, this purported race-less program is the functional equivalent to putting forth a White program. In fact, built into every interaction for this individual is the anticipation that the reviews of others will be erroneous, or an acceptance of the fact that others will assume they are White. For example, when one respondent entered into an interactional context, his physical features did not, in and of themselves, announce any particular racial identity (by default, he was considered White). He does not engage in any attempts to utilize secondary or tertiary cues, such as the purposive use of Black Vernacular, or donning certain types of apparel in order to consciously put forth a program that might hint of any racial group membership. In the mind of this individual, he continuously puts forth programs that announce various identities that are unrelated to any master status racial category. Because the individuals' bodily features are unambiguous (he looks White), the reviews will be consistently mistaken in their assumption of White racial group membership. This individual allows the mistaken reviews in order to facilitate the announcement of his alternative programs, but will reveal his parentage if the information is requested.
This type of an identity has been constructed over time due to the ambiguity of the individual's appearance and a parental socialization stressing the inaccuracies and ideological problematics of racial categorization. Due to the bodily ambiguities, the individual can go for long periods of time with the constructed identity maintained, or with the various non-racialized programs continuously validated. However, in some social contexts, and for some individuals, attempts to avoid, deny, or denounce categorization is unacceptable. It is unacceptable in some contexts precisely because the mutual identification process that utilizes these racial categorizations has meaningful consequences. Where racial group membership is a particularly salient feature of everyday life, one's group membership serves as a signifier of where one will stand on social issues; with whom one can (and cannot) be friends; and the range of others considered acceptable in the dating pool. Upon entering this type of social context, where the race-less stranger is no longer an available possibility, the demands for self-identification are both persistent and difficult to avoid for those with a transcendent identity.
Given that the one-drop-rule is remains, by and large, the cultural and legal norm, the result is a grudging acceptance of categorization as Black. I refrain from saying that these respondents accept a Black identity because it is only the label "Black" that is accepted. This particular group of individuals (those who do not look Black) may also find themselves in social contexts where they experience a double bind of not being accepted as Black by either Whites or Blacks.
The transcendent self-understanding is unique in several ways. First, it is available only to those whose bodily experiences fit into the common perception of "White" or "Caucasian". Secondly, they are different from the protean identity group because they do not have the ability, or the desire, to manipulate their program according to the pre-view of others and the given social context. Finally, racial group membership does not hold any significant importance in their self-understanding. Instead, being biracial has provided them with a location to view and discard race as a meaningful category of their existence.
The Singular Identity
Finally, there are individuals with one Black and one White parent who understand being biracial as a 'singular identity'. In this case, the racial identity is exclusively African-American or exclusively White. For people having this understanding of their biracialness, it is a mere acknowledgment of the racial categorization of their birth parents. This is because the individual's cognitive conception of what it means to be "Black" (or less commonly "White") is inclusive of a wide range of individual appearances and parental combinations. At the extreme, individuals simply do not recognize the existence of their (White or Black) parent, but this is not salient in defining their self-understanding and may not be offered as identifying information unless specifically requested.
In Chapter 3, I mentioned the case of John, who self-identifies as White. This case, while rare, is worthy of further analysis. John was the respondent who was not told that his biological father was Black until he was 18, which did not change his racial self-understanding whatsoever. In part, John's failure to consider the race of his father as necessitating a modification of his racial identity is due to the negative association with the circumstances of his conception. It is also partly due to his physical appearance and the fact that other people assume, without question, that he is White. In this case, the individual has constructed an identity as White without knowing that his biological father was African-American. This identity was consistently validated throughout his socialization. When the critical information was revealed, he was unable to reconcile it with the constructed identity. Instead of questioning the self-understanding, or re-evaluating the self in light of the new information, this individual chose to have his appearance permanently altered in order to support the existing identity.
The singular understanding of "biracial" identity, typically relies heavily on a combination of physical characteristics and the cultural availability of identity options. For many, the border, protean, and/or transcendent identities are not available, either because others do not hold the categories to be meaningful, or the physical appearance demands adherence to traditional categories of racial categorizations.
Discussion
When focusing on master statuses, particularly on racial identity, the use of appearances as signifiers of group membership is not always clear cut. When we examine mixed race identities and the relationship between appearances and the choice of identities that individuals make, that relationship becomes even more complex. I have put forth the various types of self-understandings that biracial people have of their racial identity to allow us to explore how the proposed expanded model linking appearances and identity construction and maintenance may function. In each of the types of identities, I have attempted to show how the basic processes of mutual identification and concomitant awareness help us to better understand two outcomes. The first is how people with the same parental background (one Black and one White parent) can make very different choices about their identity(ies). The second is to try to understand why one's appearance does not always predict that outcome -- or why do we find people who are physically White who identify as Black and those who are physically Black who say they are NOT Black, but biracial. Trying to interpret these cases becomes clearer if we focus on the basic processes that take place between individuals and within the individual (in the process of self-ing). That first process of mutual identification is critical to both identity construction and maintenance. If the individual actor (regardless of bodily characteristics) exists within a social context where "biracial" has a meaningful existence, he/she may cultivate a border identity. If this cultural category does not exist and they become accustomed and adept at switching from Black to White, they will cultivate a protean identity. If their appearance is White, they may develop a transcendent identity, but only if their social context does not demand categorization. If none of these options are available to an individual, than the existing cultural norms dictate the racial identity above and beyond (and at times in spite of) their appearance.
The second process at work allows us to see the self functioning as subject. How does the self reflect on one's own identity-in-context? In some cases (the protean identity) we saw the self as not only having the capacity for concomitant awareness, but utilizing that capacity in all interactions as a survival tool. The individual was able to assess the anticipated review from the approaching other, to modify the program accordingly, and to continually monitor for necessary re-negotiations or re-formulations of the program. This intense activity requires an ongoing subjective awareness of the self's activities and much bi-cultural capital. We see this same process continually at work in the other identity options, however, it takes on a slightly variant form of activity. Simply put, racial identities are subject to a degree of constraint that ethnic identities are not. Specifically, racial identities are constrained by historical stratification that is directly tied to bodily characteristics. It is these characteristics which linger in our cultural symbols and traditional ways of thinking and being. For individuals who are caught in between existing cultural categories at a time of uneven but emerging changes in those categories, appearances remain a significant constraining factor in identity construction and maintenance.
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CHAPTER 6 WHO IS BLACK TODAY AND WHO WILL BE BLACK TOMORROW?
The Tensions Revisited
This dissertation began with a description of the battle that was waged over the possible addition of a "multiracial" category to the 2000 Census. The push for change was led by a coalition of advocacy groups comprised of mixed race people and White mothers of biracial children. The multiracial initiative was strongly opposed by leaders of the African-American community. Those in favor of the change cited the increasing numbers of mixed-race people in the population, and that these people self-identify as "biracial". Failing to recognize this emerging group with a separate racial category, advocates argued, was an inaccurate reflection of demographic reality. The opposition contended that historically, traditionally, and culturally society views biracial people, particularly Black/White biracials, as "Black" and that these individuals experience the world as Black people. Arguments on both sides of the issue lacked empirical grounding because few studies of biracial people have been conducted.
At a broader level, the debate over the Census issue was important because it caused a re-examination of the fundamental question "who is Black?" Historically, Americans have answered this question by using the one-drop rule, meaning that individuals with any Black ancestry whatsoever, regardless of their physical appearance, belonged to the Black race. The proposition of adding a new category for mixed race people implied a rejection of the one-drop rule and a need for a reassessment of the question "who is Black?" in the context of late twentieth century America.
At the center of this controversy is the question of how biracial people understand their racial identity. Both parties had the same flawed assumption at the foundation of their positions. They each assumed that biracial people have a singular way in which they understand their racial identity. Multiracial advocates argued that most (if not all) Black/White mixed race people identify as "biracial" while Black leaders argued that this same group of people identifies exclusively as "Black". This high stakes confrontation led both sides to become so deeply entrenched in their own positions that each group used their unique, empirically unsubstantiated, vision of biracial identity to conveniently support their political agenda.
Data analysis presented in the preceding chapters confirmed that neither the multiracial advocates, nor Black leaders had a comprehensive picture of the complex reality of biracial identity. In Chapter 2, my analysis revealed that biracial people have multiple ways in which they understand their racial identity. Some choose a singular identity (either exclusively Black or exclusively White), some choose a border identity (exclusively biracial), others use the protean option of choosing between Black, White and/or biracial at different times and different places, and still others choose the transcendent path, denying any racial identity whatsoever. The most important finding of this study in relation to the Census debate is that today, among those individuals with one Black and one White parent, there is no singular agreed upon understanding of what it means to be biracial in America.
More important to an overall understanding of the social psychological processes that individuals use to develop and maintain a racial identity are the findings presented in Chapters 3 and 4. Here, I asked how it is possible that people with the same racial background can make radically different choices about their racial identity. The analysis showed that while there are different paths to each identity option, two important social processes govern these choices: social context and interactional validation. Within any social context, biracial people may only choose a racial identity within a range of options that are socially acceptable. Different social networks offer distinct parameters of available identity options for biracials to select amongst. Within each individuals own somewhat restrictive range, appearances, socialization, and experiences of rejection and/or acceptance by both racial groups, further influence racial identity development. Most importantly, the responses of others in an actor's social network have the power to validate (or leave un-validated) any proposed racial identity.
In this final chapter, I will offer some reflections on what my findings may reveal about the future of the one-drop rule and the implications this dissertation may have for the ongoing discourse over the question "who is Black?" in America. In order to address these salient issues, it is necessary to consider the broader, economic, political, and cultural environment in which these non-traditional forms of racial identity have emerged.
.
Who is Black Today?
The United States is certainly not the only society where multiracial populations have existed. Davis (1991) provides an extensive analytic exploration of cross-cultural alternatives used for dealing with racial hybrid groups. In fact, he states that there are seven possible strategies used by societies dealing with mixed-race populations. Mixed race people may occupy: 1) a lower status than either parent group (Vietnamese-Americans in Vietnam), 2) a higher status than either parent group (Mestizos in Mexico), 3) an in-between marginal status (the Coloureds in South Africa during Apartheid), 4) a variable status that depends more on socioeconomic position than race (Mestizos in Brazil), 5) a variable status that does not depend on race whatsoever (mixed-race people in Hawaii), 6) the same position as the lower-status parent group (Mulattos in the U.S.), or 7) the status of an assimilating minority (non-Black racial minorities in the U.S.).
The United States has historically followed the pattern of hypodescent, where the mixed-race group has had the same position as the lower-status parent group. In other words, children of Black/White interracial unions have been considered "Black" by mainstream society and have been accepted within the Black community as "Black". In the context of American history, the one-drop rule has only been eliminated in circumstances where the dominant majority has provided and accepted an alternative racial identity for biracial people. Specifically, the majority group has had the power to set the parameters of available identity options for mixed-race people (Davis, 1991). Cases of deviance from the one-drop rule have only occurred when Whites have allowed biracials to act as a buffer group in support of existing race relations. This was the case for mulattos in Charleston and New Orleans in the early colonial period in America and has not recurred since that time.
The one-drop rule has been fully accepted by Whites, Blacks and biracial people. In fact, the debate over adding a "multiracial" category to the 2000 Census has illustrated that the group most strongly in favor of maintaining the one-drop rule are African-Americans. The tensions and inherent paradox of Blacks being the strongest defenders of the one-drop rule is captured in the following statement:
"If one result of such a change would be to cause some lighter-colored persons to leave the black community for the white community, the former would lose some of its hard-won political strength, perhaps some of its best leaders, some members of its churches, and other community institutions, some business and professional people, and some customers and clients. American blacks now feel they have an important vested interest in a rule that has for centuries been a key instrument in their oppression." (Davis, 1991, p. 180)
I suggested in Chapter 1 that underlying the Census debate were fundamentally different visions of the future of race relations. Mixed race identity, for many within the Black community, is seen as a transitional identity that, with continued intermarriage, will lead some Blacks down the path of assimilation. Total assimilation has long been rejected as a goal within the Black community in favor of an egalitarian pluralism. Rising Black unity that followed the passage of Civil Rights legislation created a double bind. On one hand, there was encouragement of institutional integration in efforts to reduce economic inequalities and move towards pluralist dream. One the other hand, that same Black unity rejected more complete social integration and the eventuality of total assimilation. Informal sanctions remain strong within the Black community against interracial marriage. This pressure, which at a deeper level represents a pressure against assimilation, has the effect of reinforcing the one-drop rule.
Davis (1991) argues that the seventh status, that of the assimilating minority is unlikely to occur in the U.S. because of the persistence of the one-drop rule. Non-Black racial groups have typically experienced upward social mobility through intermarriage. When their racial ancestry becomes one-fourth or less, they are accepted as assimilated Americans. For example, an individual who is one-fourth or less Filipino and three-fourths White, may be proud of his/her Filipino ancestry in a way that is similar to someone who is one-fourth or less German, Irish or Italian. In the first and second generation after intermarriage, the mixed-race person may experience some discrimination, but by the fourth generation, their racial identity has become equivalent to the symbolic ethnicity of White ethnics (Davis, 1991). Blacks, in contrast, have been permanently detoured from the assimilation path because of the one-drop rule. According to the logic of the one-drop rule,no amount of intermarriage, or generational distance, can remove a person from being categorized as "Black".
At the conclusion of his lengthy socio-historical analysis of the one-drop rule as America's answer to the question "who is Black?", F. James Davis predicts that "it seems unlikely that the one-drop rule will be modified in the foreseeable future, for such a move would generally be opposed by both whites and blacks" (p. 186). The only possibilities for change, Davis argues, lies in the reduction of prejudice and discrimination against African-Americans.
Who Will be Black Tomorrow?
I believe that my data fails to support Davis' predictions and there seems to be at least one recent development in the economic and cultural landscape that he did not to take into consideration. Specifically, the social and psychological consequences of declining structural barriers for African-Americans. The unprecedented gains made by the Black middle class, seem to have led this group in two differing directions, some have moved towards a yet unrealized egalitarian pluralism. Others however, through increasing intermarriage, seem to moving towards assimilation. This newly emergent economicc group holds the key to better understanding the environment in which new racial identity options are available to some mixed-race people.
Black Middle-Class Gains
A critical element in the proliferation of racial identity options for biracial people is the growth of the Black middle class. Gains made by African-Americans since the passage of Civil Rights Legislation have not, however, been evenly distributed within the Black community. Thirty years after Martin Luther King's death, American has the largest Black middle class and the largest Black underclass in history. The Black middle class are a select group within an increasingly economically polarized Black community, that have directly experienced and benefited from the lowering of structural barriers.
This emergent group is important because their integration has moved beyond the arena of social institutions into the arena of interpersonal relations. First and foremost, they are more likely than less economically advantaged Blacks to move out of racially segregated inner-cities into predominately White suburbs (Feagin and Sikes, 1994). While U.S. housing continues to be characterized by distinct racial patterns, middle class Blacks possess the economic resources to choose suburban living to a larger degree than poor Blacks and have, in fact, done so (Feagin and Sikes, 1994).
Living in integrated neighborhoods, interacting with Whites in the workplace, and sending one's children to integrated schools bring middle class Blacks into more frequent and intimate social contact with Whites than ever before. This contact is not always free of prejudice, racism or confrontation. In fact, the frustration, rage and alienation of middle class Blacks has been well documented in recent social science literature (Feagin and Sikes, 1994; Cose, 1993). What is less well documented are the experiences of middle class Blacks who have the most frequent and intimate contact with Whites, those who are in interracial marriages.
First and foremost middle class, educated Blacks are more likely to marry Whites than other Blacks. It is easiest to understand the statistics on Black/White intermarriage by comparing same race (Black/Black) to interracial (Black/White) marriages. At the lowest income levels, the ratio of same race to interracial marriages is heavily skewed towards Black/Black couples. As income increases, the ratio comes into closer alignment. At the highest income levels ($100,000 and above) the ratio of same race to interracial marriages is nearly even. The same pattern holds for educational attainment. For those at the highest educational levels, completing "graduate or professional degrees", the ratio of Black/Black couples to Black/White couples is nearly even. Put simply, the more educated and more economically successful a Black person is, the more likely they are to be in an interracial marriage (Besharov and Sullivan, 1996).
The trend towards interracial marriages for middle class Blacks, has increased over time. Besharov and Sullivan (1996)compare Black/Black and Black/White marriages by age cohorts and found that for those over 65, the ratio of same race to interracial marriages was 6:1. That dropped to 3:2 for those under 35, and for those under 25 it approaches 1:1. They estimate that approximately 10% of the Black men who marry today marry White women. The rate is half that for Black women, but the number of them who have married outside their race is increasing at a faster rate than for Black men (Besharov and Sullivan, 1996).
These trends in intermarriage with Whites among members of the Black middle class are important because parental socioeconomic status makes a difference in lifestyle for their mixed race children. Biracial children of middle-class parents overwhelmingly exist in social networks that are more heavily populated by Whites than if their parents were lower in socioeconomic status. They live in predominately White neighborhoods, attend predominately White schools, and have predominately White peer groups. Socioeconomic status differed significantly between the group of respondents who choose to identify as Black and those who choose to identify as Biracial. Those who choose a biracial identity were more likely to have middle class parents than those who identified exclusively as Black. As an extension of their White middle-class social context, middle class biracials reported feeling greater social distance between themselves and Blacks, much more so than those who chose a Black identity.
This is an important phenomenon given within the theoretical framework of identity construction that I have outlined. Specifically, I have posited that 1) identities must be validated by others in a social actor's environment and that an identity can not exist without being interacionally validated (Chapter 3) and 2) historically, any deviation from the one-drop rule required validation on the part of Whites (Chapter 1). In the case of middle class biracials, both of these elements have converged. Specifically, middle class biracials tend to feel closer to their White peers, who are similar in socioeconomic status, than they do to Blacks. This is not difficult to understand, given that they share many things in common with their middle class White peers including language usage, tastes, mannerisms, and style. Many of these things generate from a particular environment that is shaped by social class and availability of resources. One of the few differences between middle class biracials and their peers is that they have one Black parent. In the minds of their peers, they are more like them than they are different and do not fit into their cognitive conception of "Black." Given that both these biracial individuals and the peers have little contact with Blacks, their perceptions are largely stereotypical and media-driven. The result is that both parties agree on a new category of identification -- that being "biracial" where biracial means, for both, something between White and Black.
Affluent Blacks seem to have two distinct responses to their middle class status. The first well documented response is that they continue to experience racism and discrimination which fosters feelings of anger and resentment that the dream of egalitarian pluralism is still a dream and that in late twentieth century America, race still matters. The opposite, lesser known response is a step towards assimilation through intermarriage with Whites. These increasingly high rates of intermarriage and socialization of children as "biracial", as opposed to Black, is a critical departure from the pluralist agenda.
And so, it is in this climate, that we can begin to see how the multiplicity of understandings that biracial people have about their racial identity have emerged. For those who are the middle-class children of an upwardly mobile, intermarrying Black parent, who have lived in racially heterogeneous neighborhoods, attended integrated schools, and felt closer in many ways to their middle-class White schoolmates than the images of poor Blacks they see on television, identifying as biracial is a rational choice. In contrast, the children of less affluent Blacks, who have lived in racially segregated neighborhoods, attended predominately Black schools, and feel closer to the Blacks they see everyday than the images of affluent Whites they see on television, identifying as Black is a rational choice.
In the final analysis, the one-drop rule seems headed for a slow and painful death. As middle class Blacks gain economic and political power, those that have (at least implicitly) rejected the pluralist vision of race relations have, and likely will continue, to mobilize their resources to guarantee their biracial children exemption from the one-drop rule. Although their efforts in the latest round of Census modifications were only partially successful, it gained them both recognition and continued support from Whites. The multiracial movement will be fought every step of the way by leaders of the Black community, for whom their agenda is a direct and immediate threat at both the practical and ideological levels. One thing remains certain, the answer to the question "who is Black?" in America will continue to reflect the deep complexity of race relations.
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APPENDIX A WRITTEN CONSENT FORM (Phase One: In-depth Interviews)
To participants in this study:
I am a graduate student at the University of Notre Dame. The subject of this research project is "Exploring Biracial Self-Identification." I am interviewing male and female undergraduates at the University of Notre Dame, who have one Black self-identifying parent and one White self-identifying parent. You are one of approximately twenty participants.
As part of this study, you are being asked to participate in one in-depth interview. The topics covered include your experiences before coming to the university, as well as those you've had as a student. I may ask an occasional question for clarification or for further understanding, but mainly my part will be to listen as you recreate your experience within the interview.
My goal is to analyze the materials from your interview in order to understand better your experience and that of other biracial people. I may use the material from your interview for a journal article, a book, or a presentation to an interested group.
Each interview will be audio-taped and later transcribed by me. At the end of the interview I will take your picture. I do not guarantee your anonymity, due to the fact that I am interested in the process of self-identification as a public act. I feel that any information given under the condition of anonymity will undermine the purpose of this study. However, in all written materials and oral presentations in which I might use materials from your interview, I will use your first name only. Additionally, pictures that are taken are for my analytic use, not to be use d in any publications or presentations.
You may at any time withdraw from the interview process. You may withdraw your consent to have specific excerpts used, if you notify me at the end of the interview. If I were to want to use any materials in any way not consistent with what is stated above, I would ask for you additional written consent.
In signing this form, you are also assuring me that you will make no financial claims for the use of the material in your interviews; you are also stating that no medical treatment will be required by you from the University of Notre Dame should any physical injury result from participating in these interviews. I _____________________________ have read the above statement and agree to participate as an interviewee under the conditions stated above.
_____________________________________________________ __________________
Signature of participant Date
_____________________________________________________ __________________ Signature of interviewer Date
APPENDIX B Open-Ended Interview Questions Phase One: In-depth Interviews
GROWING UP
1. When did you become conscious of race?
2. Can you tell me about any memorable experiences you had growing up?
3. Was the topic of race explicitly dealt with in your family?
4. Did your parents try to identify you or tell you how to identify yourself?
SCHOOL AND FRIENDS
5. Were your friends in school exclusively Black, exclusively White, or a mix.
6. Did you have friends who were mixed race? Did you talk about being biracial/multi-racial with each other?
7. What types of names, either positive or negative, can you remember people calling you (both White people and Black people?
8. What about significant others? Were they typically Black, White, or both?
9. Can you remember times in your school experiences when you were very conscious of being mixed race?
IDENTITIES
10. How do you identify yourself at this time in your life?
11. Can you tell me about a specific time when you identified yourself as Black? What did you fill out on the form to attend ND?
12. What about a time when you identified yourself as White?
13. Can you tell me about a time when you identified yourself as biracial or mixed?
14. Can you tell me a little more about the shifts?
COLLEGE TRANSITION
15. Is it more or less important now that you are in college to identify yourself as Black/White/or Biracial?
16. If you attended a historically black college like Moorehouse/Spellman do you think that you would continue to identify yourself as biracial? Do you think that identity would be as easily recognized/accepted as it is here at Notre Dame?
17. Describe your current friendship groups?
OTHER PEOPLE
18. Can you tell me how people typically react to you? What do they assume about your racial identity?
PERCEPTIONS
19. Have you ever been to a tanning salon?
20. Have you ever tried to make yourself look (physically) more or less Black?
21. Do you think that you act differently around Black people than White people? What about when you are with your Black friends versus when you're with White friends?
22. Do you feel any bond with other biracial people?
23. Do you feel like there is any sense of community?
24. How do you feel about the idea of a mixed race category on the census?
25. What do you usually fill out on forms?
26. How do you feel about the idea of passing?
27. Do you think there's a difference between people who pass and people who may sometimes express their white-ethnic identity? Is there a difference between a biracial person identifying as black and passing?
28. How would you respond to a black person who opposes the census category, or the general idea of biracial people identifying themselves as biracial instead of black, by saying that biracial people who do that are in a state of self-hatred, specifically hating their black self?
SELF
29. Do you feel like being biracial is an advantage, a disadvantage, or has no meaning in your life?
30. Why?
31. Hypothetically, if you could choose your race in your next life, what would you choose? (Black white or biracial)
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APPENDIX C BILL OF RIGHTS FOR RACIALLY MIXED PEOPLE
I HAVE THE RIGHT...
Not to justify my existence in this world.
Not to keep the races separate within me.
Not to be responsible for people's discomfort with my physical ambiguity.
Not to justify my ethnic legitimacy.
I HAVE THE RIGHT...
To identify myself differently than strangers expect me to identify.
To identify myself differently from how my parents identify me.
To identify myself differently from my brothers and sisters.
To identify myself differently in different situations.
I HAVE THE RIGHT...
To create a vocabulary to communicate about being multiracial.
To change my identity over my lifetime -- and more than once.
To have loyalties and identification with more than one group of people.
To freely choose whom I befriend and love.
Copyright Maria P. P. Root, Ph.D., (Root, 1994)
APPENDIX D Demographic Questionnaire (Phase One: In-depth Interviews)
1. Respondent Name:
2. Age
3. Sex
4. City and State of Birth
5. Race of your parents:
Mother
Father
6. Your parents are:
Married Divorced Never married
7. Their yearly income is approximately p/year
8. Your elementary school was predominantly
White Black Integrated
9. Your high school was predominantly
White Black Integrated
10. The neighborhood you grew up in was
Urban Suburban Rural Small Town
White Black Integrated
11. The contact you had with your mother's family can be described as
Frequent Infrequent No contact
12. The contact you had with your father's family can be described as
Frequent Infrequent No contact
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APPENDIX E Solicitation Letter for Participation in Phase Two: Mail Survey
Dear Student,
Over the past two years, researchers at the University of Notre Dame and Henry Ford Community College have been collectively engaged in a study of the social determinants of racial identity among college students. You have been selected as a potential participant in the next stage of this study. The purpose of the study is to address the lack of information on racial identity formation that focuses on individuals who have one Black and one non-Black parent.
You are one of 4000 African-American college students from the University of Notre Dame, the University of Detroit-Mercy, and Henry Ford Community College that we have selected as potential participants in the study. We are hoping to contact as many students as possible with one Black and one non-Black parent. Our goal is to assemble the largest existing data set of mixed-race college students that will enable a greater understanding of racial identity formation. If you fit this criterion and would be willing to respond to our brief survey, please fill out the enclosed blue reply card and return it at your earliest convenience. If you do not fit this criterion, but know someone else who does, please feel free to pass this information along. Your participation is very important and greatly appreciated.
Once we receive the enclosed reply card, we will send you a survey that takes approximately 15 minutes to complete. A postage paid response envelope will be enclosed for your convenience. We believe our research findings may be of great personal interest to you. Therefore, we will send you a report with our findings at your request.
If you have any questions about the study, or if you would like any additional information, please feel free to contact Kerry Rockquemore at (313) 845-6439 or by electronic mail at Kerry.A.Rockquemore.1@nd.edu.
Thank you for taking the time to consider participating in this valuable research project. We look forward to receiving your reply card.
Sincerely,
Kerry A. Rockquemore
Research Director
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APPENDIX F Questionnaire Phase Two: Mail Survey
Instructions: Please answer all of the following questions. Circle the response that best represents your answer.
What is the highest level of education you have completed (CIRCLE ONE)?
A) High School
B) Associates Degree
C) Bachelors Degree
D) Masters Degree
E) Ph.D.
F) Other, please specify____________
What is the highest level of education you expect to complete (CIRCLE ONE)?
A) High School
B) Associates Degree
C) Bachelors Degree
D) Masters Degree
E) Ph.D.
F) Other, please specify____________
What is your current occupation? _________________________________
What is your date of birth? _____________
What is the city and state in which you were born? _______________________
Are you male or female (CHECK ONE)? ( ) Male ( ) Female
Were you adopted?
( ) Yes ( ) No
What is your racial or ethnic origin?
_____ American Indian/Alaskan Native
_____ Asian/Pacific Islander
_____ Black
_____ Hispanic
_____ White
_____ Other ________________
_____ Mixed Race (check all that apply)
_____ American Indian/Alaskan Native
_____ Asian/Pacific Islander
_____ Black
_____ Hispanic
_____ White
_____ Other ________________
What is your mother's racial or ethnic origin?
_____ American Indian/Alaskan Native
_____ Asian/Pacific Islander
_____ Black
_____ Hispanic
_____ White
_____ Don't know
_____ Other ________________
_____ Mixed Race (check all that apply)
_____ American Indian/Alaskan Native
_____ Asian/Pacific Islander
_____ Black
_____ Hispanic
_____ White
_____ Other ________________
What is the highest level of education you mother has completed (CIRCLE ONE)?
A) High School
B) Associates Degree
C) Bachelors Degree
D) Masters Degree
E) Ph.D.
F) Other, please specify____________
When you were growing up, what was your mother's occupation? ____________
What is your father's racial or ethnic origin?
_____ American Indian/Alaskan Native
_____ Asian/Pacific Islander
_____ Black
_____ Hispanic
_____ White
_____ Don't know
_____ Other ________________
_____ Mixed Race (check all that apply)
_____ American Indian/Alaskan Native
_____ Asian/Pacific Islander
_____ Black
_____ Hispanic
_____ White
_____ Other ________________
What is the highest level of education your father has completed (CIRCLE ONE)?
A) High School
B) Associates Degree
C) Bachelors Degree
D) Masters Degree
E) Ph.D.
F) Other, please specify____________
When you were growing up, what was your father's occupation? ___________________
Are your parents currently married to each other? ( ) Yes ( ) No
The Census bureau has considered adding a 'multiracial' category to their racial classification system. Which of the following statements would best describe your opinion of that change. (CIRCLE ONE)
A) I think it is a bad idea because it will have negative effects on the Black community
B) I think it is a bad idea because it will separate biracial people from Blacks
C) I think it is a good idea because biracial people should have the opportunity to choose how they want to identify.
D) I think it is a good idea because it reflects reality within the Black population
E) I have no opinion.
Interracial marriages are currently on the rise in the United States. Which of the following statements best describes your opinion about the children of those unions:
A) They are Black and should identify themselves that way.
B) They are biracial, but they should identify themselves as Black.
C) They are biracial and should identify themselves that way.
D) They shouldn't have to define themselves as any one race.
E) They are biracial, but they should have a choice of how they may identify themselves (as Black, Biracial or White).
F) Other___________________________________________________
Circle the area on the continuum that best describes your skin color?
|_______________|_____________|______________|____________|____________|______________|
Black Dark-Brown Medium-Brown Light-Brown Yellow Olive White
What was the racial composition of your grammar or elementary school?
( ) All Blacks
( ) Mostly Blacks
( ) About Half Black
( ) Mostly Whites
( ) Most All Whites
( ) Other
What was the racial composition of your closest friends in grammar or elementary school?
( ) All Blacks
( ) Mostly Blacks
( ) About Half Black
( ) Mostly Whites
( ) Most All Whites
( ) Other
What was the racial composition of your junior high school?
( ) All Blacks
( ) Mostly Blacks
( ) About Half Black
( ) Mostly Whites
( ) Most All Whites
( ) Other
What was the racial composition of your high school?
( ) All Blacks
( ) Mostly Blacks
( ) About Half Black
( ) Mostly Whites
( ) Most All Whites
( ) Other
What was the racial composition of your closest friends in high school?
( ) All Blacks
( ) Mostly Blacks
( ) About Half Black
( ) Mostly Whites
( ) Most All Whites
( ) Other
What was the racial composition of your neighborhood while growing up?
( ) All Blacks
( ) Mostly Blacks
( ) About Half Black
( ) Mostly Whites
( ) Most All Whites
( ) Other
What is the racial composition of your college?
( ) All Blacks
( ) Mostly Blacks
( ) About Half Black
( ) Mostly Whites
( ) Most All Whites
( ) Other
What is the racial composition of your present neighborhood?
( ) All Blacks
( ) Mostly Blacks
( ) About Half Black
( ) Mostly Whites
( ) Most All Whites
( ) Other
What is the racial composition of your church or place of worship?
( ) All Blacks
( ) Mostly Blacks
( ) About Half Black
( ) Mostly Whites
( ) Most All Whites
( ) Other
What is the racial composition of your present workplace?
( ) All Blacks
( ) Mostly Blacks
( ) About Half Black
( ) Mostly Whites
( ) Most All Whites
( ) Other
What is the racial composition of your closest friends today?
( ) All Blacks
( ) Mostly Blacks
( ) About Half Black
( ) Mostly Whites
( ) Most All Whites
( ) Other
What is the race of your current, or most recent, significant other (i.e., spouse, love interest, boy/girlfriend)?
_____ American Indian/Alaskan Native
_____ Asian/Pacific Islander
_____ Black
_____ Hispanic
_____ White
_____ Other ________________
Some people call the slang that African-American people speak 'Black Vernacular' or 'Ebonics'. In your home, how would you characterize the use of Black Vernacular?
A) Everyone in my home speaks in the vernacular all the time.
B) We sometimes speak in vernacular, sometime we use Standard English.
C) Standard English is exclusively used in our home.
D) I have never paid attention to the way people speak.
E) Other ______________________________________________________
How close do you feel to poor Blacks?
( ) Very Close
( ) Close
( ) Not close at all
How close do you feel to religious Blacks?
( ) Very Close
( ) Close
( ) Not close at all
How close do you feel to young Blacks?
( ) Very Close
( ) Close
( ) Not close at all
How close do you feel to middle-class Blacks?
( ) Very Close
( ) Close
( ) Not close at all
How close do you feel to working-class Blacks?
( ) Very Close
( ) Close
( ) Not close at all
How close do you feel to older Blacks?
( ) Very Close
( ) Close
( ) Not close at all
How close do you feel to Blacks with a White parent?
( ) Very Close
( ) Close
( ) Not close at all
How close do you feel to Black elected officials?
( ) Very Close
( ) Close
( ) Not close at all
How close do you feel to Black professionals?
( ) Very Close
( ) Close
( ) Not close at all
How close do you feel to Black entertainers?
( ) Very Close
( ) Close
( ) Not close at all
How close do you feel to Black athletes?
( ) Very Close
( ) Close
( ) Not close at all
How close do you feel to poor Whites?
( ) Very Close
( ) Close
( ) Not close at all
How close do you feel to religious Whites?
( ) Very Close
( ) Close
( ) Not close at all
How close do you feel to young Whites?
( ) Very Close
( ) Close
( ) Not close at all
How close do you feel to middle-class Whites?
( ) Very Close
( ) Close
( ) Not close at all
How close do you feel to working class Whites?
( ) Very Close
( ) Close
( ) Not close at all
How close do you feel to older Whites?
( ) Very Close
( ) Close
( ) Not close at all
How close do you feel to White politicians?
( ) Very Close
( ) Close
( ) Not close at all
How close do you feel to White professionals?
( ) Very Close
( ) Close
( ) Not close at all
How close do you feel to White entertainers?
( ) Very Close
( ) Close
( ) Not close at all
How close do you feel to White athletes?
( ) Very Close
( ) Close
( ) Not close at all
In the neighborhood that you grew up in, the most common language usage was which of the following:
A) Everyone in my home speaks in the vernacular all the time.
B) We sometimes speak in vernacular, sometime we use Standard English.
C) Standard English is exclusively used in our home.
D) I have never paid attention to the way people speak.
Did your parent(s) belong to any race-based political organizations, (for example, the NAACP or Urban League)?
( ) Yes ( ) No ( ) Don't Know
Did your parent(s) ever participate in any of the following political activities (CHECK ALL THAT APPLY)?
( ) march or demonstration
( ) voter drive
( ) circulate a petition
( ) attend a protest meeting
( ) boycott
( ) Other _________________________________________________
Did your parent(s) ever discuss personal experiences of discrimination based upon their
race/ethnicity?
( ) Yes ( ) No
Black children should learn an African language.
( ) Strongly Agree
( ) Agree
( ) No opinion
( ) Disagree
( ) Strongly Disagree
Blacks should always vote for Black candidates when possible.
( ) Strongly Agree
( ) Agree
( ) No opinion
( ) Disagree
( ) Strongly Disagree
Black women should not date White men.
( ) Strongly Agree
( ) Agree
( ) No opinion
( ) Disagree
( ) Strongly Disagree
Black people should shop in Black-owned shops whenever possible.
( ) Strongly Agree
( ) Agree
( ) No opinion
( ) Disagree
( ) Strongly Disagree
Black men should not date White women.
( ) Strongly Agree
( ) Agree
( ) No opinion
( ) Disagree
( ) Strongly Disagree
Black parents should give their children African names.
( ) Strongly Agree
( ) Agree
( ) No opinion
( ) Disagree
( ) Strongly Disagree
Some parents attempt to influence their children's dating partners. When you think about your own parents, how would you describe their involvement in your choice of dating partners?
A) They never tried to influence my choice of dating partners.
B) They tried to influence my dating partners, but it had nothing to do with the person's race.
C) They tried to influence my dating partners by urging me to date only within my race.
D) They forbid me from dating outside my race.
E) Other _____________________________________________
Have you ever experienced personal discrimination or hostility from Whites because of your race?
( ) Yes, I have frequently experienced racial discrimination
( ) Yes, I have occasionally experienced racial discrimination.
( ) No, I have never experienced racial discrimination.
Have you ever experienced negative treatment from Blacks because of your skin color or physical features?
( ) Yes, I have frequently experienced negative treatment because of my physical appearance
( ) Yes, I have occasionally experienced negative treatment because of my physical appearance
( ) No, I have never experienced negative treatment because of my physical appearance.
Has anyone ever told you that you talk, dress, or act "White"? ( ) Yes ( ) No
Do you belong to any race-specific organizations or clubs (for example a Black fraternity or sorority or a Black student group)?
( ) Yes ( ) No
Have you ever, at any time in the past, belonged to any race-specific organizations or clubs (for example a Black fraternity or sorority or a Black student group)?
( ) Yes ( ) No
Individuals have many different types of identities. How would you describe your identity in the following contexts?
I consider my social identity as:
( ) Black
( ) Biracial
( ) White
( ) Other _____________
I consider my political identity as:
( ) Black
( ) Biracial
( ) White
( ) Other _____________
I consider my cultural identity as:
( ) Black
( ) Biracial
( ) White
( ) Other _____________
I consider my physical identity as:
( ) Black
( ) Biracial
( ) White
( ) Other _____________
On forms I identify myself as:
( ) Black
( ) Biracial
( ) White
( ) Other _____________
Did you talk openly in your family about being biracial? ( ) Yes ( ) No
Did your parents try to directly shape your racial identity? ( ) Yes ( ) No
If yes, which racial identity did they encourage you to adopt?
_____ American Indian/Alaskan Native
_____ Asian/Pacific Islander
_____ Black
_____ Hispanic
_____ White
_____ Other ________________
_____ Mixed Race
Instructions: Individuals often have a variety of feelings about other people from their own, and other, racial groups. The questions below ask you to reflect on your general perceptions of African-Americans. Some are positive attributes and some are negative attributes. Indicate your level of agreement with the statement by marking whether you think the statement is true, somewhat true, a little true, or not true at all.
How true do you think it is that most Black people are hard working?
( ) True ( ) Somewhat True ( ) A Little True ( ) Not True at All
How true do you think it is that most Black people love their families?
( ) True ( ) Somewhat True ( ) A Little True ( ) Not True at All
How true do you think it is that most Black people are ashamed?
( ) True ( ) Somewhat True ( ) A Little True ( ) Not True at All
How true do you think it is that most Black people are lazy?
( ) True ( ) Somewhat True ( ) A Little True ( ) Not True at All
How true do you think it is that most Black people neglect their families?
( ) True ( ) Somewhat True ( ) A Little True ( ) Not True at All
How true do you think it is that most Black people are lying and trifling?
( ) True ( ) Somewhat True ( ) A Little True ( ) Not True at All
How true do you think it is that most Black people keep trying?
( ) True ( ) Somewhat True ( ) A Little True ( ) Not True at All
How true do you think it is that most Black people do for others?
( ) True ( ) Somewhat True ( ) A Little True ( ) Not True at All
How true do you think it is that most Black people give up easily?
( ) True ( ) Somewhat True ( ) A Little True ( ) Not True at All
How true do you think it is that most Black people are weak?
( ) True ( ) Somewhat True ( ) A Little True ( ) Not True at All
How true do you think it is that most Black people are proud of themselves?
( ) True ( ) Somewhat True ( ) A Little True ( ) Not True at All
How true do you think it is that most Black people are honest?
( ) True ( ) Somewhat True ( ) A Little True ( ) Not True at All
How true do you think it is that most Black people are selfish?
( ) True ( ) Somewhat True ( ) A Little True ( ) Not True at All
How true do you think it is that most Black people are strong?
( ) True ( ) Somewhat True ( ) A Little True ( ) Not True at All
The contact you had with your mother's family (grandparents, aunts, uncles) can be described as:
( ) Daily ( ) Once a week ( ) Once a month ( ) Several times a year ( ) No contact
The contact you had with your father's family can be described as:
( ) Daily ( ) Once a week ( ) Once a month ( ) Several times a year ( ) No contact
Which of the following responses do you think best describes what your parents taught you about what it is to be (half) Black?
A) Be yourself, just take care of yourself
B) Don't be Prejudiced
C) Whites believe they are superior
D) None of the above
E) Other _________________________________________________
Which of the following responses do you think best characterizes the way that your parents taught you about Black-White relations?
A) You're as good as anybody else
B) Recognize that all races are equal
C) Blacks don't have the chances that whites have
D) None of the above
E) Other _________________________________________________
Which of the following responses do you think best describes what your parents taught you about how to get along with White people?
A) Don't ever put your trust in Whites.
B) Just work hard
C) Treat Whites the way you want to be treated.
D) None of the above
What group of people would you say you feel most comfortable being around:
A) I am most comfortable with Blacks
B) I am most comfortable with Whites
C) I am equally comfortable with Blacks and Whites
D) I am most comfortable with Biracial or Multi-ethnic people
E) I am most comfortable in diverse groups with people of varying races
and ethnicities
F) Race is not the most important factor that determines my comfort level
Which of the following statements best describes how you feel about your racial identity?
A) I consider myself exclusively Black (or African-American)
B) I sometimes consider myself Black, sometimes my other race, and sometimes biracial depending on the circumstances.
C) I consider myself Biracial, but I experience the world as a Black person.
D) I consider myself exclusively as Biracial (neither Black nor White)
E) I consider myself exclusively as my other race (not Black or biracial)
F) Race is meaningless, I do not believe in racial identities.
G) Other _________________________________________________
Which of the following best describes your physical appearance:
A) I look Black and most people assume that I am Black
B) My physical features are ambiguous, people assume I am Black mixed with something else.
C) My physical features are ambiguous, people do not assume that I am Black
D) I physically look White, I could 'pass'
Have you experienced negative treatment by Blacks because you have parents of different races?
( ) Yes, I have frequently experienced negative treatment by Blacks
( ) Yes, I have occasionally experienced negative treatment by Blacks
( ) No, I have never experienced negative treatment by Blacks
Have you experienced negative treatment by Whites because you have parents of different races?
( ) Yes, I have frequently experienced negative treatment by Whites
( ) Yes, I have occasionally experienced negative treatment by Whites
( ) No, I have never experienced negative treatment by Whites
Which of the following positions do you support about the U.S. Census racial categorizations?
( ) No change should be made in the existing Census categories.
( ) They should add a 'Multiracial' category.
( ) They should allow people to 'check all that apply' of the existing categories.
( ) They should add a 'Multiracial' category that allows an individual to 'check all that apply' underneath.
It is extremely difficult to record many aspects of the biracial experience in a survey. Therefore, would you be willing to be contacted for a brief interview (for which you would be monetarily reimbursed)?
( ) Yes ( ) No
If yes, please provide the following contact information
Name: ________________________________________________________________
Address: ______________________________________________________________
City/State/Zip: __________________________________________________________
Phone: ________________________________________________________________
Return to the Top
APPENDIX G WRITTEN CONSENT FORM (Phase Three: In-depth Interviews)
You are being asked to participate in a study of racial identity that focuses on the biracial experience. We hope to learn what it means to be biracial in the United States and what experiences in your life have influenced your understanding of your racial identity. You were selected as a participant in the interview phase of this study because you have one Black and one White biological parent and because you indicated a willingness to be interviewed on your returned questionnaire.
As part of this study, you are being asked to participate in one in-depth interview that will last between one and three hours. During the course of the interview, I will ask you questions that will invite you to recreate the unique personal experiences that led to your current self-understanding. Each interview will be audio-taped and later transcribed by a third party. If you wish, you may receive a copy of the transcript. At the end of the interview I will take your picture.
Any information that is obtained in connection with this study and that can be identified with you will remain confidential. Your name will not be used at any time and your picture will be used for analytic purposes only (i.e., it will not be used in any presentation of the findings of this study) unless you provide express written permission.
Your decision whether or not to participate will not prejudice your future relations with the University of Notre Dame, Henry Ford Community College, or the University of Detroit-Mercy. If you decide to participate, you may withdraw from the interview process at any time. You may withdraw your consent to have specific excerpts used, if you notify the interviewer at the end of the interview. If we want to use any materials in any way not consistent with what is stated above, we would ask for you additional written consent.
If you have any questions, we expect you to ask us. If you have any additional questions later, Kerry Ann Rockquemore (313-845-6439) will be happy to answer them.
You will be given a copy of this form to keep.
YOU ARE MAKING A DECISION WHETHER OR NOT TO PARTICIPATE. YOUR SIGNATURE INDICATES THAT YOU HAVE DECIDED TO PARTICIPATE HAVING READ THE INFORMATION PROVIDED ABOVE.
_______________________________________ ___________________
Signature of the Participant Date
_______________________________________ ___________________
Signature of the Interviewer Date
Return to the Top
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1. This dissertation focuses exclusively on the Black/White biracials. Whenever the term "biracial" is used, it is used to denote an individual who has one Black and one White parent.
2 The following historical discussion is drawn largely from F. James Davis' Who is Black?: One Nation's Definition. For a more thorough exploration of the historical aspects of the one-drop rule, the reader is advised to consult this text.
3 Virginia provides a notable exception. Mixed race children were sometimes considered White because the colony had passed a law stating that any person who had 1/4th Black ancestry was Black. Therefore, some mixed race people were considered White in Virginia (Berlin, 1975).
4 Free mulattos tended to replicate White culture as closely as possible, which resulted in a sense of elitism lasting many generations.
5 Interestingly, the "Black" man in birth of a nation is actually a white man in black face, exaggerating the facial features of African-Americans.
6 Twenty-two states still had anti-miscegenation laws until the early 1960's.
7 See Root (1992) for a thorough discussion of unique methodological issues faced by researchers studying the biracial population.
8 Interracial marriages have increased from 150,000 in 1960 to 1.5 million in 1990 (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1993).
9 See Weigert (1986) for a thorough discussion of the historical development of various theoretical conceptualizations of identity.
10 These categories of self-understanding are not necessarily mutually exclusive, instead they represent ideal types.
11 All names are pseudonyms.
12 The term 'bureaucratic identity' refers to the racial identity that they select on forms.
13 Ethnic identity in this context refers to individuals several generations removed from the immigration experience.
14 The term "Black autonomy" typically refers to the idea that Black should restrict their social interactions to other members of the Black community.
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