Multiracial Identity

Ideological Structure

Expressers of multiracial identity, as well as those who advocate its expression, make the basic argument that persons having parents (and sometimes ancestors farther back) who are members of two different racial groups are distinct racially from either of those parents (or more distant ancestors) and should be categorized as multiracial, as opposed to being categorized as monoracial (Black, White, Asian, Native American, etc.). Sometimes the argument includes the specific caveat that the races of those parents (or more distant ancestors) are socially, not biologically, determined. However, this caveat does not evade the problem of explaining why, logically, the child of parents from two different socially determined races should be categorized biologically instead of socially. In other words, it does not explain how the social designation of the parents or more distant ancestors is transferred biologically to the child, since the child could just as well be given a social designation herself or himself.

Beyond this necessary, albeit often disavowed, connection to biological race, adherents of multiracial identity have also struggled to define a criterion for inclusion that is not circular in nature. One popular criterion of inclusion is “having the experience of being multiracial,” but beyond the logical circularity inherent in the qualification, that “experience” is often decidedly different for people of varying ancestral combinations. For example, persons of partial Japanese ancestry who express a multiracial identity often struggle for inclusion as full members within traditional Japanese American society, while persons of partial African American ancestry who express a multiracial identity are generally always accepted as full members by the American Black community as long as there is no perception that Black identity is thereby being rejected. It is thus unclear how “having the experience of being multiracial” would in a logically compelling way link the multiracially identifying individuals in these two hypothetical cases.

Nonetheless, these structural and logical difficulties have not prevented people from assuming and expressing a multiracial identity and arguing for its recognition as a racial identity alongside the existing set of biological races acknowledged in U.S. society. Local and regional multiracial support groups have grown in number, although the membership of such organizations is generally composed of parents of multiracially identified children, as opposed to people who themselves express a multiracial identity. College support groups have also grown, and the members of these organizations are usually individuals who personally identify as multiracial.

Contemporary History

Although multiracial identity has been an issue of varying emphasis and concern for British North America and the United States since the earliest days of population mixture on the North American continent, it has taken on a more enduring presence in contemporary times owing to a number of related phenomena that occurred in the late 20th century.

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