Morally Fraught Identities: How Multiracial Individuals Navigate Race and Whiteness

Abstract

Multiracial identities and experiences cannot be fully understood through monoracial categories, yet multiracial individuals must contend with monoracial structures. Through 55 in-depth interviews and photo elicitation with multiracial young adults (18-24) in the Midwest, I examine how multiracial individuals navigate and contend with race, racism, and identity in the context of Whiteness, family, and education. First, I find that multiracial individuals who can be seen as White, at least some of the time, experience Whiteness as a wage (benefit) that is tempered in part by a “tax” on the benefits of Whiteness. This tax stems in part from experiences of Whiteness as a “contingent status,” in which interpretation as White by others is not a guarantee. Second, I examine bidirectional ethnic-racial socialization within multiracial families to show that children engage in the socialization of their parents around matters related to race and racism. In particular, children drew on knowledge of social movements like Black Lives Matter and Stop Asian Hate, exercising agency, conducting hidden labor, and operating as one potential force for generational social change. Third, I analyzed experiences with racial socialization and racialization within school settings, finding that multiracial students contend with a contradiction: schools routinely dismiss race and racism as legitimate topics of study, yet it is within schools that multiracial students are starkly racialized. Multiracial students respond to a lack of instruction on race and racist interactions with peers by conducting their “own research” with respect to racial identity, drawing moral boundaries as they develop racial and political consciousness. In each of these social realms (experiences with Whiteness, family, and education), multiracial individuals navigate race and racism on monoracial terms. This study suggests the need for a “multiracial paradigm” of race, which can account for the totality of multiracial experiences with race and multiraciality.