{"id":9154,"date":"2010-09-25T17:41:30","date_gmt":"2010-09-25T17:41:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=9154"},"modified":"2012-07-08T15:03:06","modified_gmt":"2012-07-08T15:03:06","slug":"%e2%80%9cwho-do-you-think-youre-border-patrolling%e2%80%9d-negotiating-%e2%80%9cmultiracial%e2%80%9d-identities-and-%e2%80%9cinterracial%e2%80%9d-relationships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=9154","title":{"rendered":"\u201cWho Do You Think You’re Border Patrolling?\u201d: Negotiating \u201cMultiracial\u201d Identities and \u201cInterracial\u201d Relationships"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWho Do You Think You’re Border Patrolling?\u201d: Negotiating \u201cMultiracial\u201d Identities and \u201cInterracial\u201d Relationships<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Georgia State University
\n2008
\n348 pages<\/p>\n

Melinda Anne Mills<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University<\/em><\/p>\n

Research on racial border patrolling has demonstrated how people police racial borders in order to maintain socially constructed differences and reinforce divisions between racial groups and their members. Existing literature on border patrolling has primarily focused on white\/black couples and multiracial families, with discussions contrasting \u201cwhite border patrolling\u201d and \u201cblack border patrolling,\u201d in terms of differential motivations, intentions, and goals (Dalmage 2000). In my dissertation research, I examined a different type of policing racial categories and the spaces inbetween these shifting boundaries. I offer up \u201cmultiracial interracial border patrolling\u201d as a means of understanding how borderism impacts the lives of \u201cmultiracial\u201d individuals in \u201cinterracial\u201d relationships.<\/strong> In taking a look at how both identities and relationships involve racial negotiations, I conducted 60 in-depth, face-to-face qualitative interviews with people who indicated having racially mixed parentage or heritage. Respondents shared their experiences of publicly and privately managing their sometimes shifting preferred racial identities; often racially ambiguous appearance; and situationally in\/visible \u201cinterracial\u201d relationships in an era of colorblind racism. This management included encounters with border patrolling from strangers, significant others, and self.<\/p>\n

Not only did border patrolling originate from these three sources, but also manifested itself in a variety of forms, including benevolent (positive, supportive); beneficiary (socially and sometimes economically or materially beneficial); protective, and malevolent (negative, malicious, conflictive). Throughout, I discussed the border patrolling variations that \u201cmultiracial\u201d individuals in \u201cinterracial\u201d relationships face. I also worked to show how people\u2019s participation in border patrolling encouraged their production of colorblind discourses as a strategy for masking their racial attitudes and ideologies about \u201cmultiracial\u201d individuals in \u201cinterracial\u201d relationships.<\/p>\n

Table of Contents<\/strong><\/p>\n