Mixed Race Studies

When Race Matters: Racially Stigmatized Others and Perceiving Race as a Biological Construction Affect Biracial People’s Daily Well-Being

Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
Volume 35, Number 9 (September 2009)
pages 1154-1164
DOI: 10.1177/0146167209337628

Diana T. Sanchez, Associate Professor of Psychology
Rutgers University

Julie A. Garcia, Associate Professor of Psychology
California Polytechnic State University

Stigmatized group members experience greater well-being in the presence of similar others, which may be driven by the perception that similar others value their shared stigmatized identities (i.e., high public regard). Using experience sampling methodology, this hypothesis is tested with biracial people (29 Asian/White, 23 Black/ White, and 26 Latino/White biracial participants). This study proposes that the greater percentage of stigmatized similar others in one’s daily context would predict greater daily well-being for biracial people through higher public regard, but only if biracial people believe that race has biological meaning. These findings add to a growing, but limited, literature on biracial individuals.  These findings are situated within the broader literature on stigma and similar others, as well as new theories regarding the consequences of believing race has biological meaning.

Read or purchae the article here.  Read the pre-published draft here.

Mixed-Race Looks

Contemporary Asthetics
Special Volume 2, 2009

Ronald Sundstrom, Associate Professor of African American Studies
University of San Francisco

The multiracial population is growing larger and so is popular awareness about multiracial or mixed-race identity. Simmering beneath the growing public recognition of multiracial identity are questions about the legitimacy of mixed race, multiracial, or biracial as social categories, and further questions about the ethics and politics of those identities. Behind some of these questions are worries about how multiracial identity interacts with racialized aesthetic standards. This essay addresses these issues by investigating whether those affirmations are racist and betray monoracial groups. This essay concludes that such affirmations are not necessarily racist or traitorous. Instead, they are consistent with modern expressions of individuality, and arise from self-assertions of personal authenticity and autonomy. All the same, these affirmations and assertions do risk participating in, and contributing to, racist aesthetic standards. The arguments presented in this essay are part of a broader project on mixed race and the ethics of identity.

Read the entire article here.