Lexington Books Biracial in America: Forming and Performing Racial Identity

Elected in 2008, Barack Obama made history as the first African American president of the United States. Though recognized as the son of a white Kansas-born mother and a black Kenyan father, the media and public have nonetheless pigeonholed him as black, and he too self-identifies as such. Obama's experience as an American with black and white ancestry, though compelling because of his celebrity, is not unique and raises several questions about the growing number of black-white biracial Americans today: How are they perceived by others with regard to race? How do they tend to identify? And why? Taking a social psychological approach, Biracial in America identifies influencing factors and several underlying processes shaping multidimensional racial identities. This study also investigates the ways in which biracial Americans perform race in their day-to-day lives. One's race isn't simply something that others prescribe onto the individual but something that individuals "do." The strategies and motivations for performing black, white, and biracial identities are explored. Review This is the book for which multiracial and racial identity scholars have been waiting. Nikki Khanna's Biracial in America: Forming and Performing Racial Identity moves us a giant leap forward in our understanding of racial identity among black-white biracial Americans. Through captivating interview excerpts, Khanna brilliantly and clearly describes the underlying social psychological processes through which biracial Americans shape and negotiate multidimensional racial identities. In the process, she reveals both the lingering impact of the one drop rule and the power of individual biracial Americans to actively 'perform race' in an era of increasing racial flexibility.--Kathleen Odell Korgen, William Paterson University Khanna brings conceptual subtlety, careful analysis, and empirical depth to the study of multiracial identity. Drawing on interviews that are striking for their frankness and poignancy, this book will engage not only scholars of race but also anyone who is curious about how biracial Americans make sense of who they are.--Ann Morning, author of The Nature of Race: How Scientists Think and Teach about Human Difference Biracial in America expands on Rockquemore & Brunsma's pioneering foundation, taking the best that has been done previously and pushing the theoretical envelope several steps further ahead. Rejecting the erroneous notion that identity is "something easily ascertained through categories checked on a form," Khanna usefully gets at biracial identity formation through skillful analysis of the processes and negotiations-oftentimes seemingly contradictory-that some biracial individuals go through in shaping their identities.--Rainier Spencer, University of Nevada, Las Vegas About the Author Nikki Khanna is assistant professor of sociology at the University of Vermont.