Biracial Identity Development Research Articles

'What are you?': Exploring the Developmental Impacts of Identity Formation within Multiracial Adolescents

Throughout the History of the United States, multiracial identity has been a neglected notion; An unrecognized option for individuals. In hand with the growing minority population, interracial or mixed-race persons are the fastest-growing demographic within the United States. Existing research on multiracial identity formation is not only outdated but predominantly focuses on Black and White racial mixing, evidently lacking the incorporations of other multi-ethnic cultures and pairings; The majority of which include overlooked minority groups. Moreover, current research principally fixates on children, neglecting adolescent populations. With adolescents frequenting the peak conflicting identity formation stages, current research elucidates that adolescents beg the most attention within this research community. The following study investigates the identity development of multiracial adolescents and their numerous environmental factors – focusing primarily on the impressions of multiracial parenting and educational institutions. This study utilizes phenomenological research strategies to form a multifaceted questionnaire with questions regarding perceptions of self, parenting/family atmospheres, and school environments. The questionnaire would be developed with a combination of previously used attitude identifier scales, predominantly focusing on popularized Poston’s BIDM (Biracial Identity Development Model). In the assessment of 31 questionnaire responses, research would suggest that the survey participants exhibit high identity development indicators, which would reflect the results of positive parenting styles and an inclusive educational atmosphere. With the results at hand, this study provides a converse result of parental and educational factors and serves as a strong affirmatory measure to encourage the multiracial research community to enhance the literature within the community.

Exploring Biracial Identity Through Roots Travel for African Diasporas

This auto-ethnography, grounded in my experiences as a biracial, bicultural black woman, is written as an exploration of how identity formation is impacted through travel. It considers my lived experiences with Du Bois' double consciousness in a traditionally hegemonic society. Using Poston's biracial identity development model as a framework for my inquiry, I examine a roots tourism trip to Ghana as a reflection of my lived experiences to demonstrate how the utilization of auto-ethnography as a critical method of inquiry can provide important insights into the intersectionality between roots tourism and identity. Results from this study suggest that exposure to roots travel can be the catalyst for personal internal and external reflection on one's patterns of behavior and thought about their identity.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF BIRACIAL IDENTITY IN PATRICIA PARK’S RE JANE

Race in America is an important issue because, through the decennial census, the American government distributes the federal budget to many communities to support their education and health. Throughout the American census history, the government starts to acknowledge the people with one or more races in 2000. However, in society, people with more than one race will be classified based on their physical features and acknowledged by only one race. This research aims to reveal the biracial identity development in Re Jane novel by Patricia Park (2015) using racial identity and negotiation theory. It uses a qualitative method with primary data source from the novel and secondary data source from books, thesis, journals, articles, and online sources. This research shows that factors that affect Jane’s biracial Korean-American identity development are microlenses factors consisting of inherited influences and social environment. These factors make Jane not have a sense of belonging both in the the Korean-American community and the Caucasian community. Second, to have a sense of belonging in the community, she negotiates with her family, friends, and workplace by supporting and challenging others’ desired self-image. Thus she can feel secure, trusted, and accepted.

Biracial Identity Development at Historically White and Historically Black Colleges and Universities

This study explores the relationship between biracial identity development and college context. I draw on interviews with 49 black-white biracial first- and second-year students attending historically black colleges/universities (HBCUs) or historically white colleges/universities (HWCUs) and follow-up interviews with the same students at the end of college to explore how and why their racial identities changed over time. Most participants experienced racial identity change over the course of the study, and this change was most often in the direction of a strengthened black identity for both HBCU and HWCU students. An increasing understanding of racism led students at both institutional types to develop stronger black identities. The processes that led to this heightened awareness of racism, however, differed across institutions. Reflected appraisals (HBCU students’ impression that their peers included and accepted them as black and HWCU students’ impression that their white peers excluded and labeled them as nonwhite) also played a role in students’ strengthening black identities, as did increased contact with black peers (especially for HBCU students). This article describes the implications of biracial identity development for biracial students’ psychosocial well-being, campus social adjustment, and college persistence.

Racial Socialization Practices of White Mothers Raising Black-White Biracial Children

The purpose of this retrospective qualitative study was to examine the impact of monoracial Black or White parents’ racial socialization practices on the process of biracial identity development for their Black-White biracial children. Data were obtained through in-person, semi-structured interviews with ten White monoracial mothers and 11 of their adult (ages 18–40) biracial children. The phenomenological analysis of participants’ experiences raising biracial children and growing up biracial revealed two overarching themes of racial socialization practices interacting with and influencing biracial identity development: creating a biracial family identity and navigating biracial with the outside world. Findings from this study expand the racial socialization research by connecting parental racial socialization with their child’s biracial identity and adding the unique perspective that racial socialization is an interactive family process in interracial families. Additionally, data from this study has important clinical and future research implications.

Biracial Identity Development: A Case of Black-Korean Biracial Individuals in Korea

This study examines two cases of Black-Korean biracial individuals and 4 Black-Korean biracial public figures who were playing influential roles in South Korea (Yoon Mi-Rae, Hines Ward, Insooni, and Moon Taejong). The purpose of this study was to understand how Black-Korean biracial individuals construct their identities, how they navigate various identity options, and how they understand experiences they have in South Korea that are significant to their identity development. This study raises a number of issues in the Korean context where the ideology of a “pureblood” Korean race still prevails, and biracial Koreans continue to face implications of racism and colorism.

Biracial Identity Part 1: Development Models From Deficit to Integration

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.

Coping with the crickets: a fusion autoethnography of silence, schooling, and the continuum of biracial identity formation

This study explores biracial identity development in the adolescent years through fusion autoethnography. Using an ecological model of biracial identity development, this study illustrates how family, peers, and school curricula validate and reject racial self-presentations. We pay specific attention to the different forms of silence (i.e. “crickets”) that teachers and peers deploy as tactics of rejection and how racially coded artifacts such as hip-hop culture and Black Liberation texts function as validations of racial self-presentations. Overall, this study helps researchers and practitioners to understand the fluidity of biracial and multiracial identity development as it relates to everyday school spaces and processes.

Understanding and Assisting Black/White Biracial Women in Their Identity Development

Therapeutic interventions with Biracial women and girls are proposed with an emphasis placed on racial identity development. The Black/White Biracial Identity Development Model is presented as the basis for developing therapeutic interventions. The model was created based on a qualitative research study with Black/White Biracial women. It is proposed that an understanding of Biracial identity development is necessary in order to develop effective interventions that can assist Biracial women and girls with racial identity difficulties.

Black identity in biracial black/white people: a comparison of Jacqueline who refuses to be exclusively black and Adolphus who wishes he were.

Two biracial college freshmen, both of whom identify as Black, were chosen from a larger sample of participants in a qualitative study of biracial identity development to exemplify the differences in the paths that 2 biracial individuals could take to achieve racial identity resolution. Through the case study method, the authors describe the course and progression of racial identity development (RID) in these 2 individuals and discuss some key themes in their lives that have contributed to the development of their RID. The purposes are fourfold: to describe nonclinical subjective experiences of being biracial in the United States, to explore the differences in the paths that 2 biracial individuals can take to achieve what looks superficially like similar Black racial identity resolution, to demonstrate how identifying as Black can have different meanings and consequences for 2 biracial people, and to contribute to the differentiation of Black RID from biracial Black/White RID. The authors raise questions about the generalizability of monoracial Black and ethnic identity theories to biracial individuals.

Biracial Japanese American identity: an evolving process.

This qualitative study explored the complexity of biracial identity development in Japanese Americans. It is based on the constant comparable method of analysis, or grounded theory. The study focused on how Japanese Americans perceived themselves in relation to other individuals, groups, and their environment. The data consisted of 15 extensive semistructured interviews with 8 men and 7 women (ages 20 to 40 years), each with 1 Japanese parent and 1 non-Asian parent. Findings relate to participants' initiating explorations of identity and perseverance in pursuing a biracial identity, which depended on the degree of support or negative experience within their social networks. Participants explored identity options attempting to develop their own meaning of identity, to develop a confident sense of themselves, and to secure a positive ethnic identity. Identity development among participants varied. It was a long-term process involving changes in the individual-environment relationship, which differed in the way individual participants influenced or selected from environmental opportunities, even creating or recreating some aspects. Within a given setting, as youths, the potential for social experiences were relatively fixed and changed only gradually. As adults, there were opportunities for participants to select their own social and geographic settings, providing opportunity for change. In their new environments, participants were exposed to new contacts and role models, acquired new behavioral repertoire, and underwent role transitions. Depending on this, new and different aspects of biracial identity developed. Participants indicated it was an emotional and conflictual process to positive assertion of identity. Before reaching this, all of the participants experienced periods of confusion. Most asserted biracial identity gradually, through a process of racial identity development consisting of the individual's changing or maintaining certain reference group perspectives, identifications, and allegiances as they passed through a series of life experiences. Instead of staying marginalized, they integrated both cultures, recognizing positive values of both, thus developing an integrated identity. Although the participants' experiences and perceptions were varied, the overarching themes of self-evaluation, confusion of categorization, belonging, infusion/exploration, situational use of identity, and resolution/acceptance/self-verification were presented. On the basis of the research, a model of ethnic identity for biracial individuals is proposed.

Biracial-Bisexual Individuals: Identity Coming of Age

There is considerable controversy regarding the means by which bisexual and biracial individuals achieve a sense of identity. In this paper, the concepts of bisexual and biracial identity are reviewed, and the literature on identity developmental models are critiqued. Further, a qualitative study is presented that explored the complexity of biracial identity development in Japanese-Americans. It is based on the constant comparative method of analysis, or grounded theory. The study focused on how Japanese-Americans perceived themselves in relation to other individuals, groups, and/or their environment. Findings related to initiating explorations of identity and perseverance in pursuing a biracial identity, which depended on the degree of support or negative experience within their social networks. Participants explored identity options attempting to develop their own meaning of identity, to develop a confident sense of themselves and secure a positive ethnic identity. Based on research and dialogue, there appears to be parallels between bisexual and biracial identity development. A model is proposed that suggests that individuals who are bisexual or biracial go through four phases in their development of their positive identity. These phases are: Phase I—Questioning/Confusion; Phase II—Refusal/Suppression; Phase III—Infusion/Exploration; and Phase IV—Resolution/Acceptance. These phases describe people who have two distinct identities that place them in a position of self-devaluation. From there they move to a position where there is a positive perception of identity based on the coexistence of their identities.

Ethnocultural resistance to multicultural training: Students and faculty.

Teaching diversity courses in mental health programs presents a unique set of issues for the faculty. These courses generate various forms of emotional reactions in students that could take the form of anger, silence, avoidance, and passivity. The purpose of this article is to specifically focus on the experience of students of color who find themselves in these courses and the various ways they respond. This learning process is often impeded by resistance because of the personal experiences of all students, but students of color experience a unique set of resistances in each stage of this process, either because of their own experience or because of a lack of experience with racism, racial and biracial identity development, cultural and bicultural identity, or acculturation issues. Resistance in the classroom interferes with the reciprocal communication between instructors and students and interferes with learning and the development of trust between instructors and students of color. Suggestions are made to help faculty to understand these resistances and to develop appropriate responses for working through the process.

The Biracial Identity Development Model: A Needed Addition

The author presents demographic information about biracial persons, reviews previous models of racial identity development, discusses their shortcomings when applied to biracial persons, and then presents a new model of racial identity development focusing on the unique aspects of the experience of biracial individuals in the United States. In addition, the author presents several important counseling implications suggested by the model and discusses areas of future research and theory building.