The Relevance of Non-Colorblind Talk Between White Women and Non-White Children in the United States: A Discussion

Abstract

Abstract:The social construction of race in Western, and particularly American, contexts has contributed to white people not having to think about the personal meaning of being white and not needing to understand the relevance of race in the lives of people of color. The implications of this racial dynamic are considered in light of American demographic data documenting that the majority of mothers of black and white biracial children are white women. A number of American national and international research studies and literature reviews from Britain, Canada, and New Zealand that investigate white women's experiences mothering non-white children are reviewed. The majority of the research on interracial families emphasizes black and white families as they represent the largest racial groups. This demographic trend will frame the current discussion. Historical dimensions of race in America are discussed, including the social construction of race, which has implications for the content of racial socialization messages transmitted by white mothers to their non-white children. An overview of cultural forces that contribute to colorblind talk between white mothers and their non-white children is provided.Keywords: Interracial families; white mothers; biraciality; racial socialization; racism; whiteness Tracy L. Robinson-Wood, Ed.D. is a Professor in the Department of Applied Psychology, Bouvé College of Health Sciences at Northeastern University, 360 Huntington Ave., Boston, Massachusetts 02115. E-mail: tr.robinson@neu.edu International Journal of Child, Youth and Family Studies (2015) 6(4.1): 646-661 647 Never in the history of the United States have there been so many white women mothering non-white children, through adoption and by birth. Black and white biracial children are products of both marital and non-marital unions. Since the repeal of miscegenation laws in 1967, black and white marriages have been on the increase in a post-1960s Civil Rights Movement era. Nearly two-thirds of black and white marriages are between black men and white women (U.S. Census Bureau, 2011). Between 1990 and 2010, this dyad saw a 132% increase in biracial births. The black woman-white man dyad, a much smaller group, saw a 152% increase in biracial births in the same period (B. Hamilton, personal communication, January 11, 2013). As shown in Tables 1 and 2, the majority of black and white biracial people have white mothers. Over nine million people, nearly 3% of the U.S. population, report more than one race (Humes, Jones, & Ramirez, 2011). The largest multiple-race category and the one that increased most between 2000 and 2010, is white and black, with 1.8 million people. Between 2000 and 2010, the two or more races population increased 32% total, whereas the U.S. population grew 10% (Jones & Bullock, 2012). Of the nearly 4 million children born in the U.S. each year, 77% were to white women (Martin et al., 2012), and most of these were monoracial. In interracial relationships between white and non-white, gendered and racial patt...

“I had Missionary Grandparents for Christ’s Sakes!”: White Women in Transracial/Cultural Families Bearing Witness to Whiteness

“…While transgressions into new relationships and spaces across differences can create opportunities to bear witness to Whiteness, this is clearly not automatic for all White women in transracial/cultural families (Rauktis et al, 2016;Robinson-Wood, 2015). For instance, there was one participant in particular, Liana, who stated she had never thought about her Whiteness, and not considered or did she appear to want to consider, her Whiteness in relation to power and privilege.…”