Biracial Identity Part 1: Development Models From Deficit to Integration

Abstract

We are living in an era of a biracial baby boom. Forty-two percent of the 6.8 million people who self-identified as biracial in the 2000 census were under the age of 18.1,2 Thanks to genetics, I am in a unique position to talk about biracial identity development. I am blond-haired, green-eyed, and fair-skinned. And black—when forced to pick. As the daughter of a white mother raised in a trailer park and an Ivy League-educated black father, I am biracial, although I add the caveat that I have a “comfort zone” of black. In this article I discuss biracial identity models in the US and, at the same time, examine how I felt I was perceived and treated by society, often influenced by these models.