Theorizing Interracial Families and Hybrid Identity: And Australian Perspective

Posted in Articles, Family/Parenting, Media Archive, Oceania, Social Science on 2010-11-22 03:07Z by Steven

Theorizing Interracial Families and Hybrid Identity: And Australian Perspective

Educational Theory
Volume 49, Issue 2 (June 1999)
pages 223–249
DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-5446.1999.00223.x

Carmen Luke, Emeritus Professor of Education
University of Queensland

Allan Luke, Research Professor
Queensland University of Technology

This essay is a theoretical exploration at how interracial families are sites for the development and articulation of hybrid identity: complex ways of representing and positioning oneself within larger social constructs of racial, social class, gender, and cultural difference. Our aim here is to examine the significance of place, locality, and situated “racializing practices” in the constitution of  identity. We draw on Stuart Hall’s concepts of “New Times” and “hybridity” to argue that interracial subjects or family formations have always been and continue to be of cultural and political concern in both postcolonial and post-industrial nation states and economies. Our cases and illustrations come from the context of the current public and political debate over immigration and multiculturalism, in Australia, a debate that highlights once again the centrality of “race” in the popular imaginary. Working from postcoloinial and feminist theory, we argue that “between two cultures” theorizations, and extant research and social policies on multiculturalism do not adequately account for the hybridity and multiply situated character of several generations of interracial subjects. Throughout we offer comments from interracial families we interviewed. In closing, we turn to more specific narratives of the development of racializmg practices and racial identities in two specific local sites: the cities of Darwin and Brisbane.  We conclude by drawing implications from this study for multicultural and antiracist educational theorizing and practices.

The Study

This essay draws on interview narratives from the initial phase uf a three year study ot mtciethmc families in Australia, In the first two years of the study (1996-1997), we interviewed couples in 42 visibly mixed-race marriages, where one partner was visibly Caucasian, white Australian and the other was of visibly Indo-Asian background. Because a key focus was on the effects of the visibility of mixed-race families in what historically has been a predominantly white Anglo-European society, we selected cuuples where one member was of visible racial difference. Because we were also concerned with understanding how the development of…

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White Women in Interracial Families: Reflections on Hybridization, Feminine Identities, and Racialized Othering

Posted in Articles, Family/Parenting, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive on 2010-03-20 18:08Z by Steven

White Women in Interracial Families: Reflections on Hybridization, Feminine Identities, and Racialized Othering

Gender Issues
Volume 14, Number 2 (June, 1994)
pages 49-72
Print ISSN: 1098-092X, Online ISSN: 1936-4717
DOI: 10.1007/BF02685656

Carmen Luke, Emeritus Associate Professor of Education, and Director of the Centre for Women’s Studies
James Cook University, Queensland, Australia

Interracial unions, biracial and bicultural children are social facts of modern multicultural societies, yet they have been almost completely overlooked by scholars. What little research is available on interracial family formations and identity is largely based in psychological, sociological, social psychological, social work and counselling theories. Interracialism has not been taken up at all by feminists, postcolonial theorists, or multicultural research.

This essay is concerned with race and gender identity politics among white women living in interracial relationships, particularly in families with biracial and monoracial children. I report here on published research on inter- and biracialism, and include some data from pilot interviews I conducted with white women in interracial families with whom I share work relationships and friendships. I discuss, first, the politics of voice and identity in the context of current debate over speaking rights, racial and cultural identities. I then briefly survey recent research on biracial children before turning attention to white women in interracial relationships. Drawing on existing research and my own data, I discuss relationships between interracial couples and their own parents, the politics of managing their biracial children’s schooling, and the often contradictory logics of the cultural and gender regimes women marry into. I conclude that current theories of identity politics are analytically inadequate for describing how racisms operate within a racially unmarked dominant culture because racial identity is theorized exclusively as an identity marker of groups and persons of color…

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