Investigating Critical Consciousness and Racial Color Blindness among Black/White Biracial Individuals: A Quantitative Study Rieanna McPhie
I
n the 2010 United States (U.S.) Census, federal recognition of multiracial identities was seen with the option to select more than one race (Rastogi et al., 2011). The census revealed that 9.5% of married couples and 14% of unmarried heterosexual couples were interracial. Additionally, 1.8 million of the U.S. population racially identified as Black and White, which is the largest multiracial population in the nation (Rastogi et al., 2011). Even in media, an increase in the visibility of multiracial populations, specifically Black and White biracial folks, has been seen, such as former and first Black president Barack Obama, singer Mariah Carey, and former football player Colin Kaepernick. Yet, multiracial populations are still heavily underrepresented in peer-reviewed psychology literature (Edwards & Pedrotti, 2008; Stone & DolbinMacNab, 2017). Some reasons for this limitation can be due to methodological difficulties such as inconsistent definition/ categorization of multiracial across studies such as whether to include Latinx or Hispanic as a category, individuals identification differing across situations (e.g., biracial at home, but one race at school), and the populations uneven distribution in location across the United States (Charmaraman et al., 2014). Hence, excluding narratives, less than 30 peer-reviewed articles are available on major counseling journals up to 2013 around this topic (Edwards & Pedrotti, 2008; Evans & Ramsay, 2015). While it is clear that there has been more research done in recent years as can be seen in the articles referenced in this paper, with a drastic increase since the 2000 (Charmaraman et al., 2014), the biracial identity development model created by Poston as a dissertation (1990) is still referenced by counselors and journal articles since it is the only model available to this day (Evans & Ramsay, 2015). Multiracial individuals, compared to their monoracial peers, tend to seek more counseling service (Milan & Keiley, 2000). It is crucial for psychologists and counselors to have more available literature on multiracial populations to better appropriately serve this underrepresented population when providing service.
Parental Racial Socialization of Multiracial Folks For many people, the family setting is where they learn about the world and how to navigate it with one’s identities whether that being race, gender, or socioeconomic class. Especially for historically oppressed racial groups, this is a key component of their racial identity development. For example, Black families often teach their children how to behave and communicate when encountering police officers, or to embrace and be proud of their Black features (e.g., curly hair, dark skin) regardless of White beauty standards that may be portrayed in media. Such practices where parents teach their children about race, racism, inequality, ethic pride, or culture are referred to as parental racial socialization. The frequency and quality of parental racial socialization can make an enormous impact on a child’s view and attitude of the world and their racial identity development. A study with Black college students found that higher parental racial socialization was linked to lower racial colorblindness, an ideology that dismisses the presence of race and racism, especially systemic racism (Barr & Neville, 2014). Hence, the more open conversation individuals had with their parents regarding racism and oppression, they were more likely to acknowledge and handle racism as a system issue instead of internalizing it. While studies with Black/White biracial folks have shown consistent findings as Barr and Neville (2014), parental racial socialization can be a unique process for Black/White biracial people due to interracial family structure and parents’ differing racial experiences as oppressor and oppressed. Moreover, parental racial socialization can be a key component of how well a multiracial person integrates their racial identities, also known as Multiracial Identity Integration (MII). Importance of Multiracial Identity Integration All multiracial individuals in the U.S. will sooner or later have to decide how they will racially identity, as reporting one’s race is required in documentation from the U.S. Census to college applications (Franco et al. 2016; Milan & Keiley, 2000). However, it is the
