Introduction
Multiracial individuals often struggle in terms of their identity as they face societal pressures to choose a single race rather than embrace their multiple backgrounds. They may also feel marginalized by the racial group(s) to which one or both of their parents belong. Some scholars have developed models to trace the identity development of biracial/multiracial individuals.
Poston’s Biracial Identity Development Model
In 1990, W.S. Carlos Poston claimed that biracial identity development had not been given adequate attention. He viewed previous identity development models (e.g., Cross’s model of identity development for African Americans, Morten and Atkinson’s Minority Identity Development Model, and Stonequists’s Marginal Person Model) as flawed when applied to biracial individuals.
In response, Poston developed his own tentative biracial identity development model, noting that the model was based on the limited research that had been conducted on biracial individuals as...
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Suggested Reading
Hall, C. C. I. (1980). The ethnic identity of racially mixed people: A study of Black-Japanese. University of California, Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Los Angeles.
Jacobs, J. H. (1992). Identity development in biracial children. In M. P. P. Root (Ed.), Racially mixed people in America (pp. 190–206). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Phinney, J. S., & Rotherham, J. J. (Eds.) (1987). Children’s ethnic socialization: Pluralism and development. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Poston, W. S. (1990). The biracial identity development model: A needed addition. Journal of Counseling and Development, 69, 152–155.
Root, M. P. P. (1990). Resolving “other” status: Identity development of biracial individuals. In L.S. Brown & M.P.P. Root (Eds.), Diversity and complexity in feminist theory (pp. 185–205). Binghamton, NY: Haworth.
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Kleinman-Fleischer, B. (2010). Biracial/Multiracial Identity Development. In: Clauss-Ehlers, C.S. (eds) Encyclopedia of Cross-Cultural School Psychology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-71799-9_45
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-71799-9_45
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