{"id":56390,"date":"2018-05-14T20:24:51","date_gmt":"2018-05-14T20:24:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=56390"},"modified":"2018-05-14T20:32:44","modified_gmt":"2018-05-14T20:32:44","slug":"i-study-biracial-identity-in-america-heres-why-meghan-markle-is-a-big-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=56390","title":{"rendered":"I study biracial identity in America. Here\u2019s why Meghan Markle is a big deal."},"content":{"rendered":"

I study biracial identity in America. Here\u2019s why Meghan Markle is a big deal.<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Vox<\/a>
\n2018-05-14<\/p>\n

Sarah E. Gaither<\/strong><\/a>, Assistant Professor of Psychology
\nDuke University<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>
\nPhotos: Getty Images. Photo illustration: Christina Animashaun\/Vox<\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Biracial representation is sorely needed in a country with a fraught relationship with mixed-race people.<\/em><\/p>\n

Growing up in the late \u201980s as a biracial girl, I never had a mixed-race princess whose image I could sport on my backpack or my lunchbox. There was little to no representation of my identity \u2014 almost no characters in movies or television shows, no musicians or celebrities who identified as mixed-race.<\/p>\n

For today\u2019s biracial youth, Meghan Markle<\/a>, the actress who is marrying into the British royal family<\/a> \u2014 and who has defined herself publicly as \u201ca strong, confident mixed-race woman\u201d \u2014 represents the biracial role model I didn\u2019t have growing up.<\/p>\n

My mother is white and my father is black, and as a social psychologist<\/a>, I research mixed-race identity and perceptions of biracial people for a living. The history of biracial couplings and children in our country is fraught: The \u201cone drop\u201d rule<\/a> that categorized people with any African ancestry as \u201ccolored\u201d was legally codified in a couple of states<\/a> in the early 1900s. Interracial marriage was illegal in some states starting in 1664 until 1967 with the famous Loving v. Virginia<\/em><\/a> case, and it wasn\u2019t until the year 2000 when the option to \u201ccheck all that may apply\u201d for race appeared on the census…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Biracial representation is sorely needed in a country with a fraught relationship with mixed-race people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,395,125,8,394,20],"tags":[20717,11816,9692,18116],"class_list":["post-56390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-autobiography","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-socialscience","category-usa","tag-meghan-markle","tag-sarah-e-gaither","tag-sarah-gaither","tag-vox"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56390"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56390\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56391,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56390\/revisions\/56391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}