Racial Identity: What a BiRacial Child Feels about RaceWhat are you? Without either malice or menace the question is asked. He wanted to know about my biracial daughter's racial identity. As a society, we're at an awkward place about race. Our old ideas about race and racial categorization are unraveling, and being replaced by new ideas that have a more scientific basis. We are no longer so bound by the 'one-drop rule,' which classified mixed-race children according to the racial group of the lower-status parent - in other words, you could never be considered 'pure' white, no matter your appearance. Racial identity is something far more fluid than it used to be. There was a previous thinking in some quarters that a kid who was biracial needed to develop 'a black identity,' and because this was considered the only healthy endpoint a child who didn't would be pathologized. Now we're beginning to understand, however, there doesn't need to be just one endpoint; there are many possibilities. As a adoptive parent we have to think about race and racism since our children absorb our ideas in those areas. For white parents,understanding race and racial identity involves exploring the meaning of whiteness and privilege and learning to understand alternative viewpoints. "Racism is not about how you look, it is about how people assign meaning to how you look. - Robin D.G. Kelley Historian.See a sobering teen produced video about race,
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