Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2010

Published In

Journal of Family Life

Abstract

In an increasingly multicultural society interracial families and their biracial or multiracial children are defying stagnant socially constructed concepts of race and racial categorization. In this paper, I present a narrative based on three ninety-minute in-depth phenomenological interviews (Seidman, 2006) focused on one participant’s life history and how he understands and makes meaning of his role as the parent of biracial children. Informed by a hermeneutic framework, the narrative presents a story of how the participant has come to understand himself and his children racially, ethnically, and culturally thorough his own intra- and interpersonal development. Parenting his children emerges as a strong influence on his process of de-constructing the concept of race and co-constructing new meanings for it. The narrative illustrates how, while honoring themselves and their communities, this person and his family dismantle some of the most ubiquitous ideas of our society concerning the construct of race.

Rights

© Cinzia Pica-Smith

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