Mixed Race Studies

Mixed Experiences: a study of the childhood narratives of mixed race people related to risks to their mental health and capacity for developing resilience

City University London, School of Health Sciences
December 2011
330 pages

Dinah Cecilia Morley

This thesis is submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Community and Health Sciences Research.

Background: The mixed race child population is growing proportionately faster than any other group. Whilst there is a body of research in this country, albeit small, that looks at the experiences of mixed race children, none of this research examines specifically the risks for mental health and the possibilities for developing resilience which may be related to growing up as a mixed race child.

Methods: Twenty-one adults, recruited through the internet, were asked to reflect on their childhood experiences in relation to being mixed race. They were offered a choice of response methods. The majority chose to provide a written account. A thematic analysis was carried out, within a phenomenological framework. A further analysis was undertaken to assess whether risks to mental health or opportunities to develop resilience could be identified in the findings from the phenomenological analysis using known risk and resilience factors relating to the mental health of children and young people.

Results: The data show that there are some additional risks to the mental health of mixed race young people. As well as difficulties experienced in establishing personal identity, they show that there are specific difficulties in secondary school and that young people of mixed race experience racism and prejudice from both black and white peers. The data indicate a capacity for building resilience, necessitated by their mixedness, linked to supportive families.

Conclusions: The overarching findings from this study mirror many of those from other mixed race studies. However this study shows how mixed race young people may experience some additional risks to mental health which need to be understood and considered by professionals in health, social
care, education and justice systems.

Table of Contents

• Index of Tables
• List of Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements and Declaration of Powers
• Abstract
• Chapter 1: Introduction
  • Background and context
  • Popular discourse
  • Creative writing and personal accounts
  • Demographic trends
  • Reasons for undertaking this study
  • Risk and resilience as a theoretical framework
  • Methodological approach and method
  • Positionality
  • Terminology
    • Race, ethnicity and culture
    • Mental health
  • The Structure of the Thesis
• Chapter 2: A Review of the Literature
  • Chapter overview
  • Mental health and ethnicity
  • Mixed race young people
  • Service delivery issues as they affect young people of mixed race
  • Chapter Summary
• Chapter 3: Risk and Resilience
  • Chapter overview
  • The Literature
  • Risk factors relating to family
  • Risks associated with the wider community
    • The school
    • Peers
    • The community beyond the school
  • Resilience
  • Chapter summary
• Chapter 4: Relevant Demographic Data
  • Chapter Overview
  • Robustness of the data as it relates to mixedness
  • Ethnicity
  • Location
  • Education
  • Crime
  • Victims of Crime
  • Early Pregnancy
  • Children in Public Care
  • Mental Disorder
  • Summary of statistical information
• Chapter 5: Methodology
  • Chapter overview
  • Using phenomenology
  • Interpreter bias and reflexivity
  • Using narrative
  • Rationale for the use of deductive material in the secondary analysis
  • Methodological approach summary
• Chapter 6: Method
  • Chapter overview
  • Participant eligibility
  • The recruitment process
  • The chosen web sites
  • Contacts and participants recruited
  • Sample size
  • Types of responses – pros and cons
  • Confidentiality, anonymity and integrity
  • Reflexive aspects
  • Use of the internet to identify participants
  • Who uses the internet?
  • Other recruitment methods
  • Data quality
  • The thematic analysis
  • Reliability
  • Chapter summary
• Chapter 7: The Thematic Analysis
  • Chapter overview
  • The analysis process
  • Telling the stories
  • Identifying the dominant themes
  • Themes and risks relating to the child
    • Appearance
    • Involvement in anti-racist work of some participants
  • Themes and risks relating to the family
    • Attitudes of family members
    • Access to wider family and visits for parents’ home countries
    • Sibling differences
    • Class
    • Meeting the absent parent
  • Themes and risks relating to the community
    • Mixed race isolation
    • School experiences
    • The multi-cultural nature of the community
    • Access to groups outside the family and school, including black groups
    • How public services respond to children on mixed race
  • Chapter summary
• Chapter 8: The Obama Election
  • Chapter overview
  • Background
  • Participants’ views
  • Chapter summary
• Chapter 9: Analysis of Risk and Resilience Issues
  • Chapter overview
  • Grouping the risk factors
    • Poor self esteem
    • Hostile and rejecting relationships
    • Discrimination
  • Establishing proxy indicators
  • Disconfirming evidence
  • Racism
  • Identity
  • Isolation
  • Overview of risk
  • Resilience
  • The continuum of risk to resilience
  • Chapter summary
• Chapter 10: Theoretical Possibilities: an exploration of ‘risk’ and ‘mixed race’ from a sociological perspective
  • Chapter overview
  • Theorising mixed race in the context of globalisation and the risk society
  • Chapter summary
• Chapter 11: Discussion of Findings and their Context
  • Chapter overview
  • Reviewing and assessing the thematic findings
    • Identity confusion
    • Otherness and isolation
    • Secondary school experiences
    • Racism
    • Family support or lack of it
  • Review of the methodology
  • Policy and practice implications
  • Strengths, limitations and future opportunities
  • Chapter summary
• Chapter 12: Concluding Remarks
• Appendices

Index of Tables

• Table 1: Prevalence of specific child and adolescent mental health risk factors and impact on rate of mental disorder
• Table 2: Mixed race demography (UK) 2001
• Table 3: Mixed race demography (E&W) 2001
• Table 4: Age distributions across the ethnic groups
• Table 5: Location of people of mixed race in the UK – 2001 Census
• Table 6: Educational attainment (higher educational qualification) as a proportion of ethnic population (16-74yrs). 2001 Census E&W)
• Table 7: 5 A-C passes gained by 15-year olds in GCSE and equivalent by ethnicity – England)
• Table 8: Attainment at Key Stage 4 (KS4) – percentage of pupils gaining 5 A*-C grades of pupils of mixed race, by gender, ethnicity and free school meals (FSM) eligibility in England
• Table 9: Criminal justice disposals of young people aged 12-17 by ethnicity
• Table 10: Convictions for drug usage by ethnicity in young people aged 10 – 17
• Table 11: Children in Public Care by Ethnic Group. (DfES 2006)
• Table 12: Initial response grid p.105
• Table 13: Households with access to the Internet in Great Britain
• Table 14: Length of written submissions
• Table 15: Characteristics of participants, showing pseudonyms
• Table 16: Clusters of Themes
• Table 17: Family status of participants
• Table 18: Wider family relationships and influences
• Table 19: Growing up without two birth parents
• Table 20: Indicators of specific risks for mixed race young people
• Table 21: Proxy indicators showing the presence of risk factors in relation to the significant findings for the selected sample

Documents: Introductory Materials, Volume 1, and Volume 2 (Appendices)

Mixed-race Britain: Proud of both sides and here to stay

The Daily Mail
Lindsay John’s blog
2012-12-11

Lindsay John

According to data from last year’s census, revealed today, Britain’s mixed-race population probably now exceeds one million. Moreover, the mixed-race population is among the fastest growing in Britain and is already the largest ethnic group among under-16s.

Introduced onto the census form in 2001, the mixed-race category was at the time somewhat controversial, seen as a ‘divide and conquer’ mechanism by old school, anti-racism campaigners, but is now widely accepted as a very useful and apposite tool for reflecting and describing the manifold complexities of race and personal identity.

What do these intriguing census results say about Britain today, the way we now perceive ethnicity and the progress we have made as a nation with regards to race? As a person of mixed race myself (with a Coloured South African father, a white English mother and proud of both sides), I feel I am in a fairly good position to comment…

Read the entire article here.

Coming Clean About Blackness, Mixed Race Identity and the Multiracial Movement

Is That Your Child? Thought in Full Color
2012-12-10

Michelle Clark-McCrary

Before I go into my reflections on CNN’s “Who’s Black in America” series, I have to come clean about the evolution of my personal perspective on blackness, mixed race identity and the “multiracial movement.” Over that last three years, I’ve been trying to develop a deeper, more nuanced understanding of race-particularly as it relates to how my marriage, motherhood, and my daughter fit within the historical continuum of our racialized society. Part of my process has to do with balancing my emotional, gut responses to race/racism with my contemplative, critical responses to race/racism. To be clear, there is room for both responses to simultaneously coexist. I’m a firm believer in trusting one’s instinctual, emotional responses, while at the same time interrogating and rounding out those responses with more rational, contemplative thought…

…As my critical contemplative response tempered my emotional one, I saw that the antiblack bias at the core of many multiracial organizations had shaped the larger discourse of mixedness and multiracial identity. While many mixed individuals and organizations are engaged and invested in social justice, discussions about mixed identity the realm of popular culture and mass media tend to frame the presence of black ancestry as a hindrance. While I believe that there is a definite mixed experience, I think that care must be taken not to cleave that experience from the broader historical continuum of how race has been constructed and reconstructed in America and that any analysis of race/identity must begin with defining whiteness and how the construction of whiteness has directly impacted the construction of all other identities in this country. As parents of black/white mixed kids and black/nonwhite mixed kids, we have to address the ways in which we’ve all internalized messages of antiblack bias and how that affects both the identity choices we make for our children and the ones we want them to make for themselves. For those outside the realm of the black/white/black/nonwhite mix, it’s still important to consider how antiblack bias relates to your child’s particular identity construction and how the historical black/white mixed binary informs how all mixed/multiracial identities are understood in our society…

Read the entire article here.

Shame on CNN: A commentary by Susan Graham

Project RACE
2012-12-10

Susan Graham, Executive Director

CNN aired a show hosted by Soledad O’Brien Sunday called “Who is Black in America?” I have been disgusted with the public misunderstanding of multiracial people on so called news shows in the past, but this one wins the prize for the absolute worst.

First, let’s not forget that Soledad O’Brien is an entertainer and not an authority on the news. Her game is simple: ratings. She does not believe that people get to choose their own identities. But neither she nor anyone else should ever question someone’s racial self-identification.

O’Brien’s mother is black and her father is white; her mother told her not to let anyone tell her she’s not black. So she self identifies as only black, denying half of her identity. She has that right and that opportunity. I feel that everyone should clearly have the right and opportunity to choose to be multiracial, too. But she has clearly brought her identity into her job this time…

…This CNN special tells the story of several multiracial people who identify only as black, and are coerced into identifying as black to be on the national news. Some “experts” are thrown in who simply are getting free publicity for their books or are holding on to their academic jobs by writing and talking about the advantages of self-identifying as black if you happen to be unfortunate enough to have been born to parents of different races…

…This show is, in my opinion, the most misguided show in the CNN “race” series to date. It’s a propaganda piece for every multiracial person to identify only as black; they should not even have a choice. Ms. O’Brien even tries to completely nullify multiracial advocacy by stating that you may only choose one race on the US Census. That statement has been absolutely untrue since the 2000 US Census…

…There are plenty of people who will publicly—on the Internet anyway—applaud Ms. O’Brien for whatever reason and it will give them a chance to spout more hate against the multiracial movement, Project RACE, and me. I’m used to it after 23 years of fighting for the rights of multiracial people who wish to embrace their entire heritage. What is more recent is the new hatred against white people who are being blamed for what happened so many years ago and who fostered the civil rights movement…

Read the entire article here.

Black (Or Not) Like Me: Thoughts on CNN’s Black in America 5

The Huffington Post
2012-12-10

Smokey Fontaine, Chief Content Officer
Interactive One

I know who my colleagues think I am. I’m pretty sure they’ve accepted me as the lightest Black dude in the office. My job demands that I constantly engage co-workers around racial issues, so I have opportunities to represent my Black experience all the time which I’m sure gains me some points.

But it’s different in the street. My what-is-he? scorecard for strangers who pass me by in New York City is as follows:

• 60 percent think I’m Latino
• 25 percent think I’m Black or interracial
• 15 percent think I’m White

Pretty good percentages for me because I’m only comfortable when my see-me-as-a-person-of-color index is above half. That was my problem in Baltimore. Living there for a few years to teach sixth grade at Booker T. Washington Middle School made me vulnerable to mis-identification in a southern environment without a significant Latino population. My white quotient jumped to above 50…

…CNN’s latest installment of their top-rated Black In America series handles these complex issues of identity, asking young African-Americans of various shades and backgrounds to discuss their experience. First, I’m surprised that it took them so long to address this topic (especially given series hostess Soledad O’Brien’s interracial heritage), but I was most struck by how the young people’s experiences were so similar to mine and those of my (not all-Black) friends 20 years ago. It was like I was watching a video of a college I-Pride meeting from 1995.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Every generation’s naivete drives their passion to figure out the world and clearly the show’s goal is to raise more questions than it answers. But as cultural critic Stuart Hall liked to say, “cultural identity is one of becoming as well as being. Like everything which is historical… [identities] undergo constant transformation” and I didn’t feel that in the show.

There is a cultural upheaval going on in our country that is expanding ideas about Blackness. Latino, Asian and even white identity are also being affected (don’t get it twisted: the identity of caucausian culture is as dependent on people of color as the other way around). But this shift was not loudly represented by all the great young folks in Black In America talking about how they see and socialize themselves…

…What I’ve learned is that when there is a gap between how someone feels about themselves and how they’re perceived by others, you get conflict. Even within my own interracial family, there are darker-skinned folks who take on their Italian maiden name as an homage to the white mother that raised them (and a dis to the Black father who didn’t), and lighter-skinned folks who refuse to ever straighten their hair to avoid any more obvious connections to a European heritage…

Read the entire article here.

2011 Census: Key Statistics for England and Wales, March 2011 (Ethnic Group)

Office for National Statistics (ONS)
Census 2011
Ethnic Group: Part of 2011 Census, Key Statistics for Local Authorities in England and Wales Release
Release Date: 2012-12-11

Figure 3: Ethnic groups by English regions and Wales, 2011

Ethnicity across the English regions and Wales
Figure 3: Ethnic groups by English regions and Wales, 2011

For more information, click here.

Psychology Study: Is This You? Please Join Us!

University of Maryland, College Park
Psychology Department
Post Date: 2012-12-11

If you have 1 self-identified Black parent and 1 self-identified White parent, and are over the age of 18, we invite you to volunteer to be a part of our research.

• Earn SONA Course Credit or $10 in exchange for an hour of your time.
• Your personal experience can help increase research on an understudied population.
• You will be asked to reflect on personal experiences while blood pressure and heart rate measures are taken

For more information or to sign up to volunteer, please contact the following e-mail address: MFresearchstudy@gmail.com.

Same-Sex Issue Pushes Justices Into Overdrive

The New York Times
2012-12-09

Adam Liptak, Supreme Court Correspondent

In the civil rights era, the Supreme Court waited decades to weigh in on interracial marriage. On Friday, by contrast, the court did not hesitate to jump into the middle of one of the most important social controversies of the day, agreeing to hear two cases on same-sex marriage.

By taking both, the court gave itself the chance to issue a sweeping ruling that would cast aside bans on same-sex marriage nationwide. But the speed with which the court moved also raised the possibility of a split decision, one that would provide federal benefits to same-sex couples married in states that allow such unions but would permit other states to forbid gay and lesbian couples from marrying…

…In private correspondence in 1957, Justice Felix Frankfurter said the court was doing all it could to avoid hearing cases that would require giving the nation an answer about whether bans on interracial marriage — anti-miscegenation laws, in the parlance of the day — were constitutional.

“We twice shunted it away,” Justice Frankfurter wrote to Judge Learned Hand, “and I pray we will be able to do it again without being too brazenly evasive.”

Judge Hand responded that “I don’t see how you lads can duck it.”

But Justice Frankfurter was unpersuaded.

“I shall work, within the limits of judicial decency,” he wrote, “to put off decision on miscegenation as long as I can.”

The Supreme Court did not strike down laws banning interracial marriage until 1967, in Loving v. Virginia, when 16 states still had them on the books. That was almost two decades after the California Supreme Court in 1948 struck down a law making illegal “all marriages of white persons with Negroes” in Perez v. Sharp.

It has been just four years since the California Supreme Court, citing Perez, struck down two state laws limiting marriage to a man and a woman…

Read the entire article here.

Why? CNN’s “Black in America” and NPR’s “State of the Re:Union” Offer Up a Potpourri of Tragic Mulattoes Before a National Audience

We Are Respectable Negroes
2012-12-10

Chauncey DeVega

Watching CNN, and listening to NPR on Sunday night, reminded me that Imitation of Life was not just a movie or a play; for many of us, such stories of racial identity, confusion, denial, and shame are all too real.

CNN’s special on colorism and mixed race identity went as expected. It profiled many maladjusted young black people who would fail any brown paper bag test, yet have an almost pathological obsession with wanting to be white. I was laughing at the TV screen during the show because these brown complected black folks, who desperately want to “pass,” would have been better suited for a skit on Chappelle’s Show, than discussing matters of “race” and “culture” on national television.

As an antidote to such tragic mulattoes, Soledad O’Brien’s Black in America special also profiled some well-adjusted black people who understand that race is a fiction. Despite the “race” of their not black parent, they understand that the one drop rule prevails in the United States, and these individuals gain strength and grounding from their identities as Black Americans.

By comparison, NPR’s State of the Re:Union ran a much more powerful and important show on Sunday night. All aspects of the sad and twisted American obsession with race, and how it has damaged all of us, were on clear display there.

There is a cruel and plain truth which ties CNN’s “Black in America“, and NPR’s “Pike County, Ohio: As Black as We Wish to Be“, together…

Read the entire article here.

Soledad O’Brien and three of the interview subjects from her docu discuss the fifth installment of CNN’s Black in America series

Starting Point with Soledad O’Brien
Cable News Network (CNN)
2012-12-10

Soledad O’Brien, Host

The fifth installment of CNN’s Black in America Series focused on the question, “Who is black in America?” That single, seemingly simple question unravels the complicated, densely packed issue of racial identity in this country. To continue this important conversation, three of the interview subjects from the documentary: Fmr. Editor, Essence Magazine Michaela Angela Davis, “(1)ne Drop Project” Artistic Director and a consulting producer for the documentary Yaba Blay and poet and mentor Perry “Vision” DiVirgilio join “Starting Point” this morning…

O’BRIEN: Joining us to continue this conversation three of the subjects in the documentary, Mikaela Angela Davis is the former editor of “Essence” magazine, Perry “Vision” Divirgilio, a poet and teacher, and Professor Yaba Blay is the artistic director of the One Drop Project and she was a consulting producer on our documentary.

It’s nice to have you all with us. So why do you think this touches such a nerve? I mean, all you do is sit for a minute on my Twitter feed timeline, and realize like people were angry, freaked out, emotional about this. Why?

YABA BLAY, CONSULTING PRODUCER, “BLACK IN AMERICA”: It touches on our lived experience. I think, you know, I don’t know that I’m biased, but I think of all of the black in America iterations, that this is one that everyone can relate to, whether it’s them personally, as a mother, father, grandmother.

All of the feedback I was getting online, always included a personal testimony, how this reminds me of my grandmother, this reminds me of this, I have a story, and I think it’s one of those things that people tap into on a personal level, and it’s — there is an emotion there.

O’BRIEN: The documentary focused on two young poets in your class. You mentor both of them. How unusual were their story? They grapple with racial identity. You picked two people who were the dysfunctional ones. Is that — is that the case or do you think their quest typical?

PERRY “VISION” DIVIRGILIO, POET AND MENTOR: I don’t think it’s dysfunctional. I think what they are doing is very normal for teenagers just brave enough to throw it out there, let the world know this is who I am, how I feel. You heard these lot during workshops. You know, folks look at that’s a young black man or young black woman, were checking other, were not wanting to identify with race at all. I’m a man, woman, I’m human.

O’BRIEN: Many people actually also, I mean, on Twitter, who knows who many is. Listen, kumbaya real progress would be when we don’t have to talk about race it all. We’re just Americans.

MICHAELA ANGELA DAVIS, FORMER EDITOR, “ESSENCE MAGAZINE”: Acting like it doesn’t exist doesn’t heal and this incredibly emotional response as Yaba said. America as a family this is our taboo issue. This brings up so much — triggers a lot of black girl pain.

It triggers a lot of secrets and bias. It triggers emotional things in life. Any family — when we go into our history and say this horrible thing created this characteristics, people don’t like to look at it. This is the road to healing. The only way we’ll feel hole, we talk about where we’re fractured.

O’BRIEN: So John Berman is our token white man on the panel this morning, John Berman, in all seriousness.

BERMAN: I am white, all seriousness.

O’BRIEN: This conversation, was it one that you were ever aware of?

BERMAN: I was just thinking what makes this so interesting, the minute you put a question mark on it, you know, who is black in America or what is black in America, it makes everyone ask a question of themselves…

Read the entire article and watch the video clip here. Read the transcript here.