These experiences show that, while we as monoracial Black parents can socialize our mixed-race children to represent themselves to society as being part of the larger African American community, their individual traits, aptitudes, and personality differences as mixed-race children are also influential in the racial identity process.

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2022-03-17 20:29Z by Steven

These experiences show that, while we as monoracial Black parents can socialize our mixed-race children to represent themselves to society as being part of the larger African American community, their individual traits, aptitudes, and personality differences as mixed-race children are also influential in the racial identity process. These personal factors may be strongly tied to a mixed-race child’s authentic view of themselves (their identity versus how they are identified by others), making parenting concerns such as understanding African American heritage more difficult. Unfortunately, in an effort to help our multiracial daughters understand their Black heritage, we as parents dismissed their experiences by noting that a “brown” identity is not satisfactory. I will also note here that this feeling towards a brown identity was most deeply expressed by fathers; each of us as stepmothers—without a direct biological tie to our daughters—were more open to the idea of our stepdaughters labeling and developing a self-defined identity. This could be influenced by our location as stepparents, as well as the fact that we all hold advanced degrees in social science fields. Critical race theory (CRT) challenges traditional claims that uphold the status quo (Ladson-Billings, 1998, Yosso et al., 2009). It is a form of oppositional scholarship, with a framework grounded in the experiences of Black Americans, meant to challenge the experiences of White people which are considered normative and standard in the U.S (Taylor, 1998). MultiCrit (Harris, 2016) is an offshoot of CRT that aims to challenge dominant monoracial ideologies by utilizing the experiences of multiracial individuals to deconstruct monoracial ideas about race. Based on the experiences of the case study families, I find that, essentially, during socialization, monoracial parents should be centering the experiences of their mixed-race child in an effort to not perpetuate monoracial ideas about race. Centering “communicates the lived experience of marginalized groups so that the understanding of the problem and its response is more likely to be impactful to the community in the ways the community itself would want” (Doucet, 2019, pg. 3).

Yolanda T. Mitchell, “She’s Biracial, but She’s Still Black: Reflections from Monoracial African American Parents Raising Biracial Children,” Journal of Child and Family Studies, Volume 31, Issue 3 (March 2022) (Special Issue on Multiracial Families). https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10826-022-02263-8.

Tags: , ,

She’s Biracial, but She’s Still Black: Reflections from Monoracial African American Parents Raising Biracial Children

Posted in Articles, Family/Parenting, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, United States on 2022-03-11 04:42Z by Steven

She’s Biracial, but She’s Still Black: Reflections from Monoracial African American Parents Raising Biracial Children

Journal of Child and Family Studies
Volume 31, Issue 3 (March 2022) (Special Issue on Multiracial Families)
Published online 2022-02-22
pages 675–684
DOI: 10.1007/s10826-022-02263-8

Yolanda T. Mitchell, Assistant Professor of Human Development and Family Science
University of North Texas, Denton, Texas

In this commentary, a scholar of Black families blends observations that emanate from her research with those arising within personal experiences. Applying a multicrit lens, she seeks to reflect on the experiences of monoracial parents in joint biological stepfamilies, raising biracial children. Her work draws upon heuristic analysis of African American parents raising biracial children in concert with monoracial Black children. Multicrit tenets of experiential knowledge, challenge to dominant ideology, racism, monoracism, and colorism, a monoracial paradigm of race, and intersections of multiple racial identities are applied to contextual environmental factors of socialization including racial profiling, parents’ perception of their mixed-race child’s personality and skin tone, and parental orientations toward mixed-race versus monoracial children. This study highlights relevant aspects in the development of mixed-race children including how they are perceived and how they encounter the world around them in an effort to help monoracial parents limit racial polarization and increase an understanding of multiple intersectional identities.

Highlights

  • Monoracial Black parents engage racial socialization as a protective factor in the development of their children.
  • Racial identity development is a central component of healthy identity development in biracial children.
  • Biracial identity development is influenced by contextual environmental factors such as family structure and parent racial socialization practices of monoracial parents.
  • Multicrit highlights the unique needs of multiracial individuals regarding experiences of race-ethnicity in the United States.
  • Biracial identity development techniques can be used to reduce racial polarization and inform a sense of shared racial identity.

Read the entire article here.

Tags: , ,