Episode 36: "Biracial or Bye Rachel?"- A Conversation About Biracial Identity w/ Dr. Sarah

With the rise of interracial relationships and marriage, discussions centered around biracial children and identities have received increased attention within the media and among researchers and policymakers. Today, we seek to gain a better understanding of biracial identity research by interviewing Dr. Sarah Gaither, an Assistant Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University and expert on biracial and social identities, interracial interactions, racial categorizations, and social development. We begin the interview by defining race as a social construct (25:54) and the importance of understanding race from the perspective of biracial and multiracial individuals (28:30). We then have a conversation about the history of biracial identity and the one drop rule (32:20), minority-bias in the racial categorization of Black-White biracials (34:56), biracial identity, the Census, and push for acknowledgement (36:57) and identity flexibility of biracial people and its implications for interracial interaction (38:42). We close by raising the question of whether the growing biracial population can improve racial relations in the United States (46:55), discussing Rachel Dolezal, “transracial” identity, and “passing” (50:09), and gaining insight into how parents of biracial children can foster positive identity development (55:33).