Black, with a White Parent, a Positive and Achievable Identity

Abstract

Beverley Prevatt Goldstein is a lecturer in the Centre for Applied Social Studies at the University of Durham. She currently directs the Dip.S.W./MA programme and is also active in the manage ment of Kernet, the Black Practice Learning Centre. Her major social work experience is in childcare, particularly in adoption and fostering. Her teaching, research interests and publications centre on identity, anti-oppressive practice, social work education, professional development of black students, and the voluntary sector, as well as the above. SUMMARY This paper focuses on black children with a white parent in Britain. It is based on historical, research and theoretical material deriving largely from anti-racist and psychological frame works and synthesizes and critically reappraises the existing research on black children with a white parent, living with their original families, in Britain. The objective is to 'normalize' black children with a white parent by identifying and rejecting the forces that pathologize them. The paper therefore highlights the racism, marginalization and alienation which are likely to impact on their world so that action may be taken to combat these. A lack of clarity as to the personal and political complexity of identity has hampered professional perspectives and intervention. The paper consequently explores, from a postmodernist black perspective, the 'racial' self-concepts that are available to this group, identifying their underly ing agendas and their consequences. It concludes that the availability of the self-concept 'black, with a white parent', offered in the framework of change, multiplicity and individual ity, is beneficial. However any consideration of 'racial' self-concept or identity is deemed productive only when combined with efforts to reduce racism, marginalization and alienation. Black children with one white parent have been part of the population of Britain since at least the sixteenth century (Fryer, 1984). They have become a significant part of the black population, forming up to 50 per cent in some areas, such as Liverpool (Small, 1991). Black children with one white parent are, in the 1980s and 1990s, forming an increasing proportion of the young black population nationwide; Coleman (1994) suggests that, by the late 1980s, 1 in 5 of the 0-4 age group of the combined ethnic minority popula tion was of mixed ethnic origin and that this proportion is increasing. This