Mixed Race Studies

‘Doing the right thing’: transracial adoption in the USA

Ethnic and Racial Studies
Volume 36, Issue 8 (August 2013)
Special Issue: Mothering Across Racialised Boundaries
pages 1273-1291
DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2013.776698

Ravinder Barn, Professor of Social Policy and Social Work
Royal Holloway, University of London

Racial/cultural identity and parental cultural competence in transracial adoption (TRA) are subjects of fierce debate and discussion in contemporary western societies. The ongoing practice of TRA has led to a polarization that either supports or berates the suitability of the environment provided in such homes. The external scrutiny invariably creates doubt among white adoptive parents as to whether they are ‘doing the right thing’. By drawing upon extant literature and original qualitative research carried out in New York, this paper explores adoptive mothers’ conceptualization and understanding of racial/ethnic socialisation (RES). The paper puts forward three discursive approaches. It is argued that the ways in which white adoptive mothers understand and experience diversity influences their approach to RES, which in turn is mediated through family and community networks and societal discourses on race, power and hierarchy.

Read or purchase the article here.

Mental health service use by adolescents of Indian and White origin

Archives of Disease in Childhood
Published online: 2013-07-29
DOI: 10.1136/archdischild-2013-303772

Panos Vostanis, Professor of Psychology
University of Leicester

Nadzeya Svirydzenka, Research Assistant
Department of Psychology
University of Leicester

Pat Dugard, Independent Senior Statistician
King’s Lynne, United Kingdom

Swaran Singh, Professor of Social and Community Psychiatry
University of Warwick, Coventry

Nisha Dogra, Professor of Psychology
University of Leicester

Background Despite the available epidemiological evidence on the prevalence of mental health problems in childhood and adolescence, there is limited knowledge on whether there are differences in the level of need and service utilisation by young ethnic minority groups.

Methods Adolescents of 13–15 years from nine schools in two English cities in which children of Indian ethnicity were over-represented (n=2900), completed rating scales on different types of mental health problems, contacts with services and informal supports.

Results Indian adolescents scored significantly lower on general mental health and depression symptoms. They were also less likely than White adolescents to self-report having mental health problems, even for a similar level of need. Among those with mental health scores within the clinical range, Indian adolescents were less likely to have visited specialist services. Instead, they were more likely to first approach family members, teachers or general practitioners.

Conclusions Rather than a blanket approach being applied to policy and service planning to meet the needs of diverse communities of young people, more specific evidence needs to be gained about patterns of referrals of minority groups and their strategy of accessing supportive adults.

Read or purchase the article here.

Multiracial Child Resource Book: Living Complex Realities

MAVIN Foundation
2003
288 pages
8 x 7.9 x 0.7 inches
Paperback ISBN: 978-0972963909

Edited by:

Maria P. P. Root

Matt Kelley

As America experiences a multiracial baby boom, parents, teachers and child welfare professionals must be equipped with resources to help raise happy and healthy mixed heritage youth. Published in 2003, this groundbreaking, 288-page volume edited by Maria P. P. Root, Ph.D. and Matt Kelley, offers 35 chapters to assist the people who work with children to serve multiracial youth with compassion and competence. Providing both a developmental and mixed heritage-specific approach, the Multiracial Child Resource Book provides a layered portrait of the mixed race experience from birth to adulthood, each chapter written by the nation’s experts and accompanied by first-person testimonials from mixed heritage young adults themselves.

Participatory diagramming in social work research: Utilizing visual timelines to interpret the complexities of the lived multiracial experience

Qualitative Social Work
Volume 12, Number 4 (July 2013)
pages 414-432
DOI: 10.1177/1473325011435258

Kelly F. Jackson, Assistant Professor of Social Work
Arizona State University

The purpose of this article is to present an illustrative example of the analytic potential of image-based research in social work. Insight gained from a qualitative research study that used a novel form of participatory diagramming to examine the racial identity development of ten multiracial individuals is referenced and critiqued. Utilizing a critical visual methodological framework to analyze visual timelines, this article offers insight into the contextually rich and dynamic processes comprising the multiracial experience. This article concludes with an informative discussion of how visual methods support key social work values, including commitment to clients and understanding the person-in-environment, and how participatory diagramming in particular can enhance culturally sensitive and responsible research and practice with multiracial individuals.

Read or purchase the article here.

Refusing to Identify by Race

The New York Times
2013-07-11

Carlos Hoyt
Andover, Massachusetts

Re “Has ‘Caucasian’ Lost Its Meaning?” (news analysis, Sunday Review, July 7 [2013]):

I recently completed a doctoral study at the Simmons School of Social Work about people who are commonly ascribed to the black/African-American, biracial or multiracial categories, but who do not themselves subscribe to any racial identity.

These race transcenders refuse to self-racialize, while being fully conscious of the fact that they are and have been racialized by others since the Constitution mandated the census, making racialization legal and compulsory beginning in 1790. We have been knotted up in meaningless terms like Caucasian ever since…

Read the entire opinion piece here.

Winners of 1st Korea Multicultural Youth Awards

The Korea Times
2012-12-12

Jun Ji-hye

Habitus, a student volunteer group at Yongmoon High School in Seoul, has worked for vulnerable members of society such as the disabled, senior citizens and multiracial children.

Among their good works, running the study room for elementary school students from multiracial families ought to be highly commended.

Seven students who are in the second grade of the school are in the group. They set themselves up as mentors for such young children and have guided their study from Monday to Friday for a year.

They also became company for them to talk together with, thus giving them the needed emotional support.

“It takes 20 minutes for them to get to the study room from the school. After doing the volunteer work for an hour, they have to go back to school to do their own study till 11 p.m. But they always do such works with a glad heart,” said Choi Nak-won, a guidance teacher of the group.

Choi said, “Seven students have been enthusiastic about understanding multiracial families and always warm-heartedly treating young students from such families. I believe this will help them grow up as leading figures in the future society.”…

Read the entire article here.

Black-White Biracial Children’s Social Development from Kindergarten to Fifth Grade: Links with Racial Identification, Gender, and Socioeconomic Status

Social Development
Volume 23, Issue 1 (February 2014)
pages 157–177
DOI: 10.1111/sode.12037

Annamaria Csizmadia, Assistant Professor of Human Development and Family Studies
University of Connecticut, Stamford

Jean M. Ispa, Professor of Human Development and Family Studies
University of Missouri, Columbia

In this study, we investigated trajectories of Black-White biracial children’s social development during middle childhood, their associations with parents’ racial identification of children, and the moderating effects of child gender and family socioeconomic status (SES). The study utilized data from parent and teacher reports on 293 US Black-White biracial children enrolled in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K). Growth curve models suggested increasing trajectories of teacher-reported internalizing and externalizing behaviors between kindergarten and fifth grade. Parents’ racial identification of children predicted child externalizing behavior trajectories such that teachers rated biracially identified children’s externalizing behaviors lower relative to those of Black- and White-identified children. Additionally, for White-identified biracial children, the effect of family SES on internalizing behavior trajectories was especially pronounced. These findings suggest that in the USA, how parents racially identify their Black-White biracial children early on has important implications for children’s problem behaviors throughout the elementary school years.

Read or purchase the article here.

Why We Need to Talk About Race in Adoption

Bitch Magazine
2013-05-29

Nicole Callahan

Two years ago, on vacation in the Great Smoky Mountains, I saw a white couple at a restaurant with their Asian daughter. Though her father told her to quit staring, I felt the girl’s eyes on me all through the meal. I smiled at her, feeling a strong sense of kinship, a pang of sympathy.  As a child, whenever I saw another Asian person—which I hardly ever did—I used to stare, too, hungry for the sight of someone, anyone, who looked like me.

Adoption has changed in the 32 years since a social worker told my parents “not to worry” about my ethnicity. Thanks to many transracial adoptees who have shared their experiences, there is a greater emphasis on the importance of racial and cultural identity. Numerous books have been written on the subject, and excellent blog posts abound. Transnational adoption has inspired documentary films such as First Person Plural, In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee, Wo Ai Ni Mommy, and Somewhere Between.  

While “colorblindness” in adoption has been widely challenged, however, not everyone is convinced—like the adoptive mother who recently told me, “I don’t see my son’s color. Race is just not an issue for us.”

Some people maintain that any cultural loss is unimportant compared to what children gain through adoption. But in both mainstream media and personal conversations about adoption, cultural and racial identity need not be pitted against a child’s right to love, safety, and security…

…We cannot have an honest discussion about transracial adoption if we aren’t willing to discuss race, prejudice, and privilege. Adoptees need to feel safe when we talk about the instances of racism we encounter. This may not sound easy—because it isn’t easy for white parents to raise children of color. But as the mother of two multiracial children, I can say that it’s not easy for parents of color, either…

Read the entire article here.

Transracial mothering and maltreatment: are black/white biracial children at higher risk?

Child Welfare
Volume 91, Number 1 (January-February 2012)
pages 55-77

Mary E. Rauktis, Research Assistant Professor of Social Work
University of Pittsburgh

Rachel A. Fusco, Assistant Professor of Social Work
University of Pittsburgh

The number of people identifying as biracial is rapidly growing, though little is known about the experiences of interracial families. Previous work indicates that biracial children may be at elevated risk of entering the child welfare system. This could underscore additional risks faced by these families. This document includes data from the Longitudinal Studies of Child Abuse and Neglect (LONGSCAN), a project funded by the Administration on Children, Youth, and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and distributed by the National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect. LONGSCAN data were used to examine familial risks associated with child maltreatment. White mothers of white children were compared to white mothers of biracial children with the hypothesis that interracial families would have less social and community support. Results showed that the women were similar in terms of mental health and parenting behaviors. There were no differences in maternal age, employment status, or presence of a partner. However, mothers of biracial children were poorer, had more alcohol use, and decreased social support. They experienced more intimate partner violence and lower neighborhood satisfaction. Findings have implications for intervention programs focused on reducing social isolation within interracial families.

Racial and Ethnic Identity Development in White Mothers of Biracial, Black-White Children

Affilia
Volume 19, Number 1 (February 2004)
pages 68-84
DOI: 10.1177/0886109903260795

Margaret O’Donoghue, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Social Work
New York University

This article reports on a qualitative research study of the racial and ethnic identity of 11 White mothers who were married to Black (specifically African American) men and were raising biracial children. The uniqueness of these women’s lives, as Whites with an intimate knowledge of the Black experience, makes it difficult to place them within the levels described by current models of racial identity. Through their parenting of biracial children, the mothers had come to a greater sense of their own racial identity and to recognize White privilege and their own White identity. Their specific ethnic identity, as ethnic Whites, has not been passed on to their children.

…Most of the women revealed that in raising their children, they focused on a Black identity, with a somewhat unconscious understanding that the traditions that they, the mothers, could provide were either “just American” or not something their children needed to incorporate into their identities.   Essential to this process of White mothers fostering Black culture in their  biracial children was the presence of Black husbands. All the women were in  long-term marriages with Black men. Their husbands had educated them about Black culture and fostered their knowledge of this ethnicity. Without their husbands’ presence, the women may have found it difficult to impart this sense of ethnic identity to their children….

…In general, the women did not think that their identity had essentially changed since they married, nor did they feel they had somehow “crossed over” and become Black. Many noted, however, that they had become more aware of their own identity as a racial being, as a White person. As was noted in the previous section, before their relationships with their husbands, they had never been placed in a situation of having to consider themselves as having a race. White privilege had previously enabled them to move through social situations without having to consider the impact of their racial identification….

Read the entire here.