The Multiracial Experience: Racial Borders as the New Frontier

In her bold new edited volume, The Multiracial Experience, Maria P. P. Root challenges current theoretical and political conceptualizations of race by examining the experience of mixed-race individuals. Articulating questions that will form the basis for future discussions of race and identity, the contributors tackle concepts such as redefining ethnicity when race is less central to the definition and how a multiracial model might dismantle our negative construction of race. Researchers and practitioners in ethnic studies, anthropology, education, law, psychology, nursing, social work, and sociology add personal insights in chapter-opening vignettes while providing integral critical viewpoints. Sure to stimulate thinking and discussion, the contributors focus on the most contemporary racial issues, including the racial classification system from the U.S. Census to the schools; the differences between race, ethnicity, and colorism; gender and sexuality in a multicultural context; ethnic identity and identity formation; transracial adoption; and the future of race relations in the United States. The Multiracial Experience opens up the dialogue to rethink and redefine race and social relations in this country. This volume provides discussions key to all professionals, practitioners, researchers, and students in multicultural issues, ethnic relations, sociology, education, psychology, management, and public health. "Dr. Maria P. P. Root′s . . . discussions are thoughtful, analytical, and informative. Root argues that the emergence of a racially mixed population is transforming the racial character of the United States and that the increasing presence of multiracial people necessitates Americans to ask questions about their identity." --Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism "Finally, in one volume, ammunition for the informed debate about what multiculturalism means in the United States." --Lise Funderburg, author of Black, White, Other: Biracial

Table of Contents:
The Multiracial Experience - Maria P P Root Racial Borders as a Significant Frontier in Race Relations PART ONE: HUMAN RIGHTS A Bill of Rights for Racially Mixed People - Maria P P Root Government Classification of Multiracial/Multiethnic People - Carlos A Fernández The Real World - Susan R Graham Multiracial Identity in a Color-Conscious World - Deborah A Ramirez Transracial Adoptions - Ruth G McRoy and Christine C Iijima Hall In Whose Best Interest? Voices from the Movement - Cynthia L Nakashima Approaches to Multiraciality PART TWO: IDENTITY Hidden Agendas, Identity Theories, and Multiracial People - Michael C Thornton Black and White Identity in the New Millenium - G Reginald Daniel Unsevering the Ties That Bind On Being and Not-Being Black and Jewish - Naomi Zack An `Other′ Way of Life - Jan R Weisman The Empowerment of Alterity in the Interracial Individual PART THREE: BLENDING AND FLEXIBILITY LatiNegra - Lillian Comas-Díaz Mental Health Issues of African Latinas Race as Process - Teresa Kay Williams Reassessing the `What Are You?′ Encounters of Biracial Individuals Piecing Together the Puzzle - Lynda D Field Self-Concept and Group Identity in Biracial Black/White Youth Changing Face, Changing Race - Rebecca Chiyoko King and Kimberly McClain DaCosta The Remaking of Race in the Japanese American and African American Communities Without a Template - Brian Chol Soo Standen The Biracial Korean/White Experience PART FOUR: GENDER AND SEXUAL IDENTITY In the Margins of Sex and Race - George Kitahara Kich Difference, Marginality, and Flexibility (Un)Natural Boundaries - Karen Maeda Allman Mixed Race, Gender, and Sexuality Heterosexual Alliances - Francine Winddance Twine The Romantic Management of Racial Identity Ambiguous Bodies - Caroline A Streeter Locating Black/White Women in Cultural Representations PART FIVE: MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION Making the Invisible Visible - Nancy G Brown and Ramona E Douglass The Growth of Community Network Organizations Challenging Race and Racism - Ronald David Glass and Kendra R Wallace A Framework for Educators Being Different Together in the University Classroom - Teresa Kay Williams et al Multiracial Identity as Transgressive Education Multicultural Education - Francis Wardle PART SIX: THE NEW MILLENIUM 2001 - Christine C Iijima Hall A Race Odyssey

About the Author :
Maria P. P. Root, Ph.D., born in Manila, Philippines, grew up in Los Angeles, California. She graduated from the University of California at Riverside in 1977 with degrees in Psychology and Sociology. She subsequently attended Claremont University in Claremont, California receiving her Master’s degree in Cognitive Psychology in 1979. She completed her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at the University of Washington in Seattle in 1983 with an emphasis in minority mental health. Dr. Root resides in Seattle, Washington where she is an independent scholar and clinical psychologist. She has been in practice for over 20 years. Her general practice focuses on adult and adolescent treatment therapy, which includes working with families and couples. Dr. Root’s working areas of knowledge are broad with emphasis on culturally competent practice, life transition issues, trauma, ethnic and racial identity, workplace stress and harassment, and disordered eating. In the early 1980s, she established a group treatment program for bulimia that grew out of her dissertation work. Subsequently, she trained other professionals to recognize and treat people with a range of disordered eating symptoms. She continues to treat people with eating disorders. Dr. Root’s practice also includes formal psychological evaluation. She works as a consultant to several law enforcement departments. She also works as an expert witness in forensic settings performing evaluations and offering expert testimony in matters that require cultural competence and/or knowledge of racism or ethnocentrism. Dr. Root is a trainer, educator, and public speaker on the topics of multiracial families, multiracial identity, cultural competence, trauma, work place harassment, and disordered eating. She has provided lectures and training in New Zealand, England, the Netherlands, Canada, and the United States for major universities, professional organizations, grassroots community groups, and student organizations. Dr. Root’s publications cover the areas of trauma, cultural assessment, multiracial identity, feminist therapy, and eating disorders. One of the leading authorities in the field of racial and ethnic identity, Dr. Root published the first contemporary volume on mixed race people, Racially Mixed People in America (1992). Including this book, she has edited two award-winning books on multiracial people and produced the foundational Bill of Rights for Racially Mixed People. The U.S. Census referred to these texts in their deliberations that resulted in an historic ‘check more than one’ format to the race question for the 2000 census. Dr. Root is past-President of the Washington State Psychological Association and the recipient of national and international awards from professional and community organizations.