{"id":717,"date":"2009-09-16T19:23:46","date_gmt":"2009-09-16T19:23:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=717"},"modified":"2012-02-17T21:36:13","modified_gmt":"2012-02-17T21:36:13","slug":"the-united-colors-of-family-interview-with-charmaine-wijeyesinghe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=717","title":{"rendered":"The United Colors of Family (Interview with Charmaine Wijeyesinghe)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/umassmag.com\/2007\/Summer2007\/Features\/united_colors.html\" target=\"_blank\">The United Colors of Family (Interview with Charmaine Wijeyesinghe)<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/umassmag.com\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\"><em>UMass Amherst, The Magazine for Alumni and Friends<\/em><\/a><br \/>\nUniversity of Massachusettes<br \/>\nSummer 2007<\/p>\n<p><strong>Interviewed by Faye S. Wolfe<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<strong>Tell us about your work on racial identity.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>For my dissertation I interviewed people who were black, white, or biracial. I came up with a model for how people form a sense of racial identity. Many factors are involved: racial ancestry, physical appearance, cultural attachment, early experience, spirituality\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>Identity is a matter of choice to some degree.\u00a0 Multiracial people may choose to identify themselves as that, or as monoracial: black, white, Asian. I had three grandparents who were white. My mother was Dutch Portuguese, my father Sri Lankan. Filling out forms, I\u2019ve checked off Asian, I\u2019ve checked off black. Do you check one box or two? There was a time when you could check only one; society constrained one\u2019s choices. It\u2019s still controversial, the idea of racial identity as a choice. Some people would say, choice is a luxury.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m interested in working with \u201chelping agents\u201d\u2014teachers, counselors\u2014on questions this idea raises: What do you think race is based on? What do you bring to an interaction with a multiracial child? With the parents? With a multiracial person who says, I\u2019m white? The idea of racial identity as a choice lends itself to great, sometimes painful conversations&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The United Colors of Family (Interview with Charmaine Wijeyesinghe) UMass Amherst, The Magazine for Alumni and Friends University of Massachusettes Summer 2007 Interviewed by Faye S. Wolfe &#8230;Tell us about your work on racial identity. For my dissertation I interviewed people who were black, white, or biracial. I came up with a model for how [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,414,125,8],"tags":[415],"class_list":["post-717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-family","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","tag-charmaine-wijeyesinghe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717","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=717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}