Parental Racial Socialization: Black Exceptionalism, the One-Drop Rule, and the Dual-Minority Multiracial Population

Background/Purpose: 

Our racialized society continues to expose how social dimensions of race have daily real life consequences. Such consequences include discrimination and prejudice as core dimensions of the developmental context for racial-ethnic minority children, including those who are multiracial. Minority parents have the added responsibility of transmitting messages to their children about their racial status in order to orient them towards a racialized society that may be hostile to them. Parental racial socialization is critical to teaching children how to effectively navigate a racialized and racially biased society and has been identified as essential for well-being and health among racial-ethnic minorities across the life course.

While racial socialization has been identified as being important for teaching monoracial minority children how to cope with racism, little is known about how racial socialization effects multiracials, especially dual-minority multiracials. This paper provides a better understanding of the racial socialization process as it occurs in dual-minority multiracial families. It draws attention to how parents in these types of families prepare their children to deal with a range of inequalities based on their ascribed racial category.

Methods:

Forty in-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with thirteen non-adoptive dual-minority multiracial families. Parent interviews elicited information on participants’ upbringing and own experience with racial socialization and discrimination, experiences as a multiracial family, and plans for teaching their child about race. Child interviews focused on the participants’ understanding of race, how they’ve learned about it, and how they identify. Eleven of the thirteen families that participated had one Black parent. These participants represent the racial-ethnic combinations in the Chicago area. Participants were recruited via word of mouth and online postings. Interviews were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim and coded thematically using Atlas.ti qualitative software, guided by the principles of grounded theory.

Results:

Data analysis reveals that children in multiracial families with one Black parent are taught more about race than families where there isn’t a Black parent. These families placed a significant emphasis on teaching their multiracial child about how they will be perceived as Black and the racial injustices they may encounter (i.e., being stopped by police; being stereotyped as threatening) despite the fact that they are multiracial. Findings highlight the presence of black exceptionalism – the view that African Americans are fundamentally different from other non-European people of color – in these families. Additionally, findings indicate that the one-drop rule, which was originally used to maintain White supremacy, impacts families where both parents are minorities.

Conclusion and Implications:

The experiences that many dual-minority multiracials have challenges the assumption that multiracial people have transcended the color line. As we move forward and work on solving the grand social work challenge of ending racial injustice, it is important that we also consider the experiences of dual-minority multiracials. Additionally, this paper can help the social work profession better comprehend the range of experiences of multiracials. In doing so we can begin to develop new culturally relevant practice models that aren’t embedded in traditional discourses of race and culture.