A young biracial girl looks around her world for her color. She finally chooses her own, and creates a new word for herself—honeysmoke. Simone wants a color. She asks Mama, “Am I black or white?” “Boo,” Mama says, just like mamas do, “a color is just a word.” She asks Daddy, “Am I black or white?” “Well,” Daddy says, just like daddies do, “you’re a little bit of both.” For multiracial children, and all children everywhere, this picture book offers a universal message that empowers young people to create their own self-identity. Simone knows her color—she is honeysmoke. An Imprint Book "This will appeal to so many biracial kids looking for a way to embrace every part of themselves." —NBCNews.com "A terrific addition to the WeNeedDiverseBooks canon, where it joins such books as Selina Alko's I’m Your Peanut Butter Big Brother and Taye Diggs' Mixed Me!." —Booklist

"It's kind of an odd thing, really, because it's not like I'm one or the other, or like I fit here or there, but I kind of also fit everywhere. And nowhere. All at once. You know?" — Florence "My racial identity, I would have to say, is multiracial. I am of the future. I believe there is going to come a day when a very, very large majority of everybody in the world is going to be mixed with more than one race. It's going to be multiracial for everybody. Everybody and their mother!" — Jack Kristen A. Renn offers a new perspective on racial identity in the United States, that of mixed race college students making sense of the paradox of deconstructing racial categories while living on campuses sharply divided by race and ethnicity. Focusing on how peer culture shapes identity in public and private spaces, the book presents the findings of a qualitative research study involving fifty-six undergraduates from a variety of institutions. Renn uses an innovative ecology model to examine campus peer cultures and documents five patterns of multiracial identity that illustrate possibilities for integrating notions of identity construction (and deconstruction) with the highly salient nature of race in higher education. One of the most ambitious scholarly attempts to date to portray the diverse experiences and identities of mixed race college students, the book also discusses implications for higher education practice, policy, theory, and research.

By examining Black mixed-race identities in the city through a series of historical vantage points, Making Mixed Race provides in-depth insights into the geographical and historical contexts that shape the possibilities and constraints for identifications. Whilst popular representations of mixed-race often conceptualise it as a contemporary phenomenon and are couched in discourses of futurity, this book dislodges it from the current moment to explore its emergence as a racialised category, and personal identity, over time. In addition to tracing the temporality of mixed-race, the contributions show the utility of place as an analytical tool for mixed-race studies. The conceptual framework for the book – place, time, and personal identity – offers a timely intervention to the scholarship that encourages us to look outside of individual subjectivities and critically examine the structural contexts that shape Black mixed-race lives. The book centres around the life histories of 37 people of Mixed White and Black Caribbean heritage born between 1959 and 1994, in Britain’s second-largest city, Birmingham. The intimate life portraits of mixed identity reveal how colourism, family, school, gender, whiteness, racism, and resistance, have been experienced against the backdrop of post-war immigration, Thatcherism, the ascendency of Black diasporic youth cultures, and contemporary post-race discourses. It will be of interest to researchers, postgraduate and undergraduate students who work on (mixed) race and ethnicity studies in academic areas including geographies of race, youth identities/cultures, gender, colonial legacies, intersectionality, racism, and colourism.

Choosing Ethnic Identity explores the ways in which people are able to choose their ethnic identities in contemporary multiethnic societies such as the USA and Britain. Notions such as adopting an identity, or self-designated terms, such as Black British and Asian American, suggest the importance of agency and choice for individuals. However, the actual range of ethnic identities available to individuals and the groups to which they belong are not wholly under their control. These identities must be negotiated in relation to both the wider society and coethnics. The ability of minority individuals and groups to assert or recreate their own self-images and ethnic identities, against the backdrop of ethnic and racial labelling by the wider society, is important for their self-esteem and social status. This book examines the ways in which ethnic minority groups and individuals are able to assert and negotiate ethnic identities of their choosing, and the constraints structuring such choices. By drawing on studies from both the USA and Britain, Miri Song concludes that while significant constraints surround the exercising of ethnic options, there are numerous ways in which ethnic minority individuals and groups contest and assert particular meanings and representations associated with their ethnic identities.

This volume offers a "southern," Pacific Ocean perspective on the topic of racial hybridity, exploring it through a series of case studies from around the Australo-Pacific region, a region unique as a result of its very particular colonial histories. Focusing on the interaction between "race" and culture, especially in terms of visibility and self-defined identity; and the particular characteristics of political, cultural and social formations in the countries of this region, the book explores the complexity of the lived mixed race experience, the structural forces of particular colonial and post-colonial environments and political regimes, and historical influences on contemporary identities and cultural expressions of mixed-ness.

Grounded in the life experiences of children, youth, teachers, and caregivers, this book investigates how implicit bias affects multiracial kids in unforeseen ways. Drawing on critical mixed-race theory and developmental psychology, the authors employ radical listening to examine both how these children experience school and what schools can do to create more welcoming learning environments. They examine how the silencing of mixed-race experiences often creates a barrier to engaging in nuanced conversations about race and identity in the classroom, and how teachers are finding powerful ways to forge meaningful connections with their mixed-race students. This is a book written from the inside, integrating not only theory and research but also the authors’ own experiences negotiating race and racism for and with their mixed-race children. It is a timely and essential read not only because of our nation’s changing demographics, but also because of our racially hostile political climate. Book Features: Examination of the most contemporary issues that impact mixed-race children and youth, including the racialized violence with which our country is now reckoning.Guided exercises with relevant, action-oriented information for educators, parents, and caregivers in every chapter.Engaging storytelling that brings the school worlds of mixed-race children and youth to life.Interdisciplinary scholarship from social and developmental psychology, critical mixed-race studies, and education. Expansion of the typical Black/White binary to include mixed-race children from Asian American, Latinx, and Native American backgrounds.

This book investigates the social and political implications of the US multiracial population, which has surged in recent decades.