Reevaluation of the Influence of Appearance and Reflected Appraisals for Mixed-Race Identity

Abstract

Developed from Cooley’s looking-glass self, the theory of reflected appraisals is frequently used to explain how appearance influences the racial identity development of mixed-race people. However, postulating that racial identity develops via the internalization of the perception of what race one thinks others assume him or her to be rests on the assumption that others consistently perceive the individual in the same manner. Although true for many people, the appearance of mixed-race people is often ambiguous and changeable and is perceived differently depending on context, which results in mixed-race people’s being ascribed to, and interacted with as if a member of, a variety of different races and ethnicities. This fact illuminates a gap in our knowledge of how appearance influences racial identity absent consistent perception by others. Drawing on 30 interviews with mixed-race adults from a variety of racial backgrounds in the United States and United Kingdom, the author examines not only the particular experiences with differential racial perception that mixed-race people have but also the mechanisms by which appearance influences identity when one experiences varying perceptions from others. This work ultimately extends the theory of reflected appraisals by advancing the idea that, under certain conditions, identity can form from experiences being consistently inconsistently perceived when that consistent inconsistency itself functions as a reflected appraisal of a particular identity.

Black mixed-race men’s perceptions and experiences of the police

“…Firstly, many of those who are born to black and white parents, self-identify as black, and are identified by others as black. This is especially true for men (Sims, 2016;. Therefore, mixedrace men may be recorded as black due to their own preferred identity, or through the 6+1 IC recording classification used if the police officer is unable to obtain self-defined ethnicity.…”

Racial Identity Contestation: Mapping and Measuring Racial Boundaries

“…Rockquemore 1999; Rockquemore and Brunsma 2004;Rockquemore et al 2009;Sims forthcoming). The literature draws theoretically from Du Bois' notion of double consciousness (1899), Cooley's (1902) 'looking-glass self,' and symbolic interaction theory (Mead 1934) which all explicate the challenges associated with discordant internal and external identities.…”

The Political Implications of Colorism Are Gendered

“…For Black women, skin tone and discrimination shape perceptions of linked fate. We suggest two explanations at the individual and the societal levels (Felson 1985;Sims 2016a). First, there is something about darker skin that shapes how connected Black women feel to Black people.…”