I never said "all" children who are mixed will have problems, but the possibility of problems are enough that parents should plan for, and those who don't plan for it, have caused a lot of pain to their children, this is not my opinion, this is supported by almost every study ever done about mixed race children, one example:
http://ematusov.soe.udel.edu/final.paper.pub/_pwfsfp/00000071.htm
Abstract
The United States is a multicultural society. Social interactions among ethnic groups are getting more common nowadays. As a result, the population of interracial marriages and partnerships have gradually expanded. This paper focus on the identity problems among the biracial children from black/white families as well as conflicts they are facing. In addition, I will provide some suggestions from the counselor's points of view in order to help biracial children to be well-adapted in American society.
Paper
The United States is a multicultural society. Social interactions among ethnic groups are getting more common nowadays. As a result, the population of interracial marriages and partnerships have gradually expanded. In 1990, the U.S. Bureau of the Census reported that there were at least 900,000 biracial married couples in the United States (Winn & Priest, 1993). These mixed relationships are producing an increasing number of biracial offspring.
A biracial child is operationally definded as one whose biological parents are of dissimilar racial groups. For example, the children of parents who are African American and Asian, Cuban and European American, Puerto Rican and Native American (Adler, 1987; Winn & Priest, 1993; Nishimura, 1995; Herring, 1995). The statistics of the 1990 census estimated that the number of children born from the interracial marriages were ranging from 5000,000 to 5,000,000 (Winn & Priest, 1993).
In the field of biracial children's research, most of the studies focus on those biracial children who were from African American and European American marriages (Jacobs, 1978; Johnson, 1992; Bowles, 1993; Brown, 1995). The U.S. Census Bureau counted 65,000 black/white interracial marriages in 1970 and 218,000 in 1989. This represents an increase of 300% in less than 20 years (Brown, 1995). I will present a brief overview of the identity problems and the conflicts among biracial in this paper, especially the offspring of black/white couples. Moreover, I will also provide some suggestions from the counselors' points of view in order to help biracial children to be well-adapted in American society.
Identity Problems
Erik Erikson (As cited in Bowles, 1993, p.11) defined identity as " 'the creation of a sense of sameness, a unity of personality now felt by the individual and recognized by others as having consistency in time-of being, as it were, an irreversible historical fact.'" Bowles (1993) suggests that the individual and communal identities are very important for people to form a mature and healthy personality. However, interracial offspring can be considerably more complicated than that of single-race children (McGoldrick, 1982). For example, the biracial offspring often experience difficulties with gender confusion, self-hatred, alcohol and other drug abuse, suicide, delinquency, alienation, and denial of self, as well as racial self-identity (Benson, 1981). According to McRoy and Freeman (1986), these biracial children also display a high incidence of academic and behavioral problems.
What are those factors that influence biracial children in their personal identities? As Bowles (1993) points out, the personal identity is influenced primarily by family relationships. The next influence is from peers as well as societies. Herring (1992) states that "biracial children are particularly vulnerable to differential treatments by their parents and relatives, social rejection by their peers, and ambivalent attention in their schools and communities" (p. 124). Bowles (1993) stresses that families provide the foundation for the biracial children to form their racial identities. However, if the interracial couples have the greater differences between spouses in cultural background, their interactions may negatively affect the ethnic and cultural identity formation of their biracial children (Herring, 1992).
Biracial children often experience the identity confusion. Their choice of ethnic identity is related more to societal norms and expectations that are partially transmitted to biracial children by their parents (Bowles, 1993). According to Bowles' (1993) description of his clinical practice, two black women who were married to whites expressed that "being white would make for 'an easier time in the world' for their daughters" (p.420). However, one of their daughters expressed her feeling that "I am always fearful that others will not see me as white and that makes me anxious all the time" (p. 420). Bowles (1993) also points out the following: If a child dis-identifies with a parent, he cannot use that parent as a reflective mirror, telling the child who s/he is. If mirroring is not possible, the child cannot develop and differentiate her "real" self and feels a sense of emptiness, abandonment and alienation. These feelings result because the child disowns part of who s/he is. When the child is confronted by the alienated part of the self, the child experiences toxic shame. The alienated part of the self makes the child feel that s/he never quite belongs: that s/he is always on the outside looking in. (p. 422)
According to Bowles (1993), shame affirms one's sense of being worthless and inferior. Therefore, failure to identity with one parent would lead biracial children to have the feelings of shame, emotional isolation and depression (Bowles, 1993). In American society, children of mixed black and white racial heredity are often categorized as black (Bowles, 1993; Brown 1995). Hence, these children of mixed black and white are more likely to see themselves as black in order to resolve their conflicts of racial identity (Brown, 1995). A 23-year-old college senior from the Brown (1995) Interracial Young Adult Interview said: I thought of myself as mixed. It was not a problem for me until someone said, "well how can you consider yourself interracial? You are black!" That was in my "Race Awareness" class. (The professor... was trying to get us to say whether we consider ourselves black or white.) [The professor explained] "You can't be both." "If there was a war, blacks on one side and whites on the other, which side would you go on?" I said: "Probably neither, because I would have to choose between my father and mother, and I don't have a favorite." But since I could not answer, he was yelling at me, 'People see you as black.' "That is just describing my color," [the participant responded] "but if I go by what I know, I can't consider myself black." I remember I was very upset, and I wanted to drop out of class after that.... But ever since then I have been filling out forms...by what people see me as rather than what I should put down. I know a lot of my friends are the same way. Well, my black friends, anyway. I don't want to have every single day an argument. (p. 127)
Brown (1995) found that the majority of the biracial participants (74.8%) in his study had experienced some degree of conflict about their racial identity while growing up. "They continued to feel misidentified by society, rendered invisible, and pressured to deny their white parent and their own whiteness" (Brown, 1995, p.128). According to Herring (1992), biracial females may limit their future choice of sexual partners and activities to minority men. Biracial males may project the risk of rejection by white women.
Suggestions for Counselors
According to Nishimura (1995), a good counseling program will prevent the problems that are formed by biracial children. He suggests some recommendations for school counselors: (a) Conducting a careful examination of his or her own personal attitudes about interracial marriage and biracial children. (B) Providing a broad description (visual and verbal) of possible family compositions when families are the discussion topic © Expanding the concept of one's cultural background to include multiple cultural heritages. (d) emphasizing that diversity goes beyond the acknowledgment of racial groups to include biracial people, different lifestyles,age, gender orientation, and physical disabilities. (e) Being sensitive to the dilemmas of biracial children when topics pertaining to personal and group identity are being presented(p.55). Indeed, school counselors must develop a positive working relationship with biracial children. In addition, school counselors must increase their own awareness and knowledge regarding the cultural customs of other ethnic groups. They can apply the understanding of other ethnic groups to help the biracial children to build self-esteem as unique individuals (Herring, 1992).
School counselors should also provide resources that help to educate biracial youth about their parents' racial heritage (Herring, 1995). The biracial children should be encouraged to explore both sides of their racial heritage in order to form a positive sense of identification with their ethnic and cultural roots (Gibbs, 1987). However, counselors should be sensitive to their own feelings, values, and perceptions related to biracial children (Winn & Priest, 1993).
Biracial youth have more positive outcomes when they are reared in supportive family systems (Herring, 1995). Consequently, facilitating the family involvement is necessary, particularly in parents and siblings (Gibbs, 1989). It's important to teach biracial children that a family which consists of different cultural backgrounds is common and acceptable. Interracial children have the same parenting needs as all children. As a result, Winn and Priest (1993) provide some suggestions for parenting: (a)Parents of interracial children need to bring both cultures and languages into the home and to give their children extensive experiences with a wide range of ethnic and racial groups. (b)They need to support their child's exploration of first one side and then the other side of his/her heritage. ©They need to accept with patience and understanding the ambivalence and possible negativism this exploration engenders (p. 33).
A child can be helped to incorporate both parents into his or her identity when offered an interracial label. Parents should have accepted what their children have to say about race before correcting them. Parents need to allow their children freedom to individualize without guilt or divided loyalties; for the first agenda in childrearing is to build positive self identity (Jacobs, 1978; Johnson, 1992).
It is also important that giving biracial children the opportunity to develop relationships with racially diverse peers (Winn & Priest, 1993). Nishimura (1995) points out that peer relationships greatly influence how adolescents view themselves in relation to others. However, Williams (As cited in Herring, 1992) found that interracial children are chosen as friends and playmates just as often as other children.
Conclusion
Interracial identity is the most conducive to the emotional well-being of interracial children. According to Johnson and Nagoshi (As cited in Winn & Priest, 1993, p.30), "biracial children who grow up in a nurturing family and in a community where biculturalism is met with acceptance, will experience no greater problems than monocultural children." If we afford a choice, most biracial children would choose to classify themselves as biracial rather than identify with a single racial group. Therefore, it is important to provide biracial children positive role models that include family members, peer group, school and community members (Nishimura, 1995). I believe that if American society pays more attention to those biracial children and help them to develop a healthy sense of themselves, the problems of biracial children will be diminished.
Regarding the field of biracial children's researches, most studies focus on black/white families. It is rare to see the researches that study biracial children of other interracial families such as American and Asian. Would those biracial children have other difficulties of dealing with their racial identities than black/white biracial children? Maybe they have less problems than black/white biracial children. Researchers should be further in the studies of other interracial children except black/white population.