Mixed Race Studies

Panel discusses effect of race in relationships in second interracial dating panel

The Daily Northwestern: Northwestern and Evanston’s Only Daily News Source Since 1881
Evanston, Illinois
2015-03-06

Emily Chin, Assistant Campus Editor

Jakara Hubbard said she has been told throughout her life that her race is a problem and must be difficult to deal with.

Hubbard, who identifies as mixed race, spoke Thursday about different perspectives about mixed-race people during a panel on interracial dating at Northwestern.

The panel, hosted by the Mixed Race Student Coalition, discussed how relationship dynamics differ in monoracial and interracial relationships before a room of more than 80 people. The panel was a celebration of Loving Days, a series of events that commemorate the Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia, which legalized interracial marriage.

Panelists included Hubbard, a couple and family counselor, Cristina Ortiz, a graduate student at the University of Chicago, and Kai Green, a postdoctoral fellow at NU…

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White Parents – Black Children: How Parents Contribute to the Development of their Biracial Child’s Identity

American Sociological Association Annual Meeting
Hilton San Francisco
San Francisco, California
2009-08-09
20 pages

Cristina Ortiz
University of Chicago

When a biracial child has one black and one white parent, society tends to identify the child as “black” or “biracial” but rarely as “white”. This study investigates how parents contribute to the development of their biracial child’s identity. Using in-depth, open-ended interviews, my research examines the roles that parents play in negotiating their biracial child’s identity in a racialized society. The findings of my research demonstrate the overwhelming impact that the perceptions of race in society plays in the location, manner, and environment in which parents raise their biracial children. My research has found that these societal perceptions contribute to a shift in a way that parents identify their children and the strategies they use in developing their child’s identity. My findings demonstrate the significance of the one-drop rule in the strategies that these parents use in developing their biracial children’s identity. With the presence of the one-drop rule in our society, the participants in my research have placed more of an emphasis on the development and strengthening of their child’s black identity than their white identity. As the majority of the parents who participated in my research would identify their child as biracial, the strategies utilized in the development of their biracial children’s identity fails to correlate with the way in which they characterized their child’s race.

Read the entire paper here.