Many schools celebrate events that highlight minority cultures, such as Martin Luther King Day, Black History Month, Cinco de Mayo, and the Chinese New Year. And many schools have race- and ethnic-specific student groups. An ever-increasing group of children, however, is at best ignored by this multicultural emphasis and at worse suffers from it: students of mixed-race and mixed-ethnic backgrounds.
New Population
The number of biracial babies is increasing faster than the number of monoracial babies (Root, 1996). More than 100,000 biracial babies have been born every year after 1989—more than 1 million first-generation biracial children. This increase is true across racial and ethnic groups: black/white, Japanese/white, racially mixed Native American, Hispanic mixes, and other Asian American mixes.
We can attribute the increase in biracial births to the 1967 Supreme Court decision outlawing state laws against interracial marriage, increased interaction among the races at school and in the workplace, and an increased acceptance of interracial marriage by Americans (Gallup Poll, 1991). We do not, however, have an accurate count of multiracial and multiethnic students in our schools because we have no agreed-on definition and because the U.S. government does not count children of mixed heritage.
Although several terms label children of mixed parentage, I use biracial and multiracial to discuss children whose parents cross traditional U.S. racial categories and biethnic and multiethnic to discuss children whose parents cross traditional ethnic categories.
Multicultural Education
Multicultural education aspires to help all students develop positive cross-cultural attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors (Banks & Banks, 1993). Multicultural educators believe that identity and positive self-esteem are based on the pride that each child has in his or her cultural group's history, achievements, solidarity, and loyalty (Derman-Sparks, 1989) and that these qualities translate into improved school success (Ogbu, 1987; Phinney, 1991).
Developing a racial identity and concepts about racial and ethnic diversity begins in early childhood (Poston, 1990) and intensifies during adolescence (Gibbs, 1989; Phinney & Rotheram, 1987). Biracial identity models suggest that a child's sense of healthy multiracial or multiethnic identity develops over the entire span of childhood (Wardle, 1992). Therefore, a multicultural education approach that includes multiethnic and multiracial children must start in early childhood and continue through the entire K–12 curriculum.
But multiracial and multiethnic students are placed in a vacuum regarding racial and ethnic self-esteem at school. Educators seldom receive training in teacher preparation courses or school inservice days on the unique needs of these children and their families. Multicultural curriculums ignore them or expect them to identify with the parent of color (Benjamin-Wardle, 1991; Cruz-Janzen, 1997). Few student-support groups exist for multiracial and multiethnic children (Benjamin-Wardle, 1994).
Changing Teacher Training
- Biases held by individual educators and other school professionals;
- Ways to work effectively with multiracial and multiethnic children and their parents;
- The history of multiracial and multiethnic people;
- The similarities and differences between single-race minority issues and issues faced by children of mixed heritage;
- The evolution of racial categories on U.S. census, government, and medical forms and their political function;
- Historical and current multiracial and multiethnic heroes;
- Antibias approaches to empowering multiracial and multiethnic students to change their schools and communities; and
- Limitations of current multicultural approaches that tend to alienate, belittle, and make invisible children of mixed identity.
A central challenge is to find someone to teach these classes and inservice programs. Professors who teach multicultural courses often lack knowledge about multiracial and multiethnic students and do not recognize their unique needs. A school staff member with a multiracial or a multiethnic family history or members of local interracial support groups make good trainers.
Recording Heritage with Sensitivity
A difficult school-related activity for multiracial and multiethnic children is filling out official school forms. Reinforcing the importance of racial and ethnic identity is the fact that school is the first place to require students to formally select a racial category for their official identity. Most forms include just the five traditional categories; some include an "other" choice. Students or parents who refuse to designate a single race or who select an alternative response may be harassed, accused of being uptight about their racial identity, or denied entrance into a program (Wardle, 1991). Educators need to understand that these forms are discomforting to parents and students; to many, the "other" choice is not acceptable because it perpetuates the notion that multiracial children don't fit in.
Parents of elementary school children often find this official invisibility of their children the first government challenge to their child's full multiracial heritage. Educators must develop sensitive ways to address this discomfort. Although the U.S. Census Bureau will allow respondents to the year 2000 census to select as many racial and ethnic categories as they want, it is not clear how these data will be counted or whether federal school forms will reflect this change.
Historically, our schools have viewed these children as having the racial or ethnic identity of their parent of color. We now believe that these students constitute a distinct group with unique needs and that multicultural education, broadly speaking, is about equity and empowerment.
Assessing the Formal Curriculum
Curriculum materials should describe the history and contributions of multi-racial Americans since colonial times (Spickard, 1989). Course content should include when and why antimiscegenation laws were passed, the genesis and continual support of the one-drop rule, the development of specific racial categories, and information about blood quantums for Native Americans (Wilson, 1992). Historical examples of cross-racial and cross-ethnic collaborations should also be covered, such as Native American acceptance of blacks during the Civil War and Hispanic–Native American collaboration in the Southwest. Content should also present historical examples of successful interracial and interethnic unions.
Multiethnic and multiracial students need heroes with whom they can identify. They need to know that multiracial and multiethnic people are successful. James Audubon (black-white ornithologist), Maria Tallchief (white-Osage ballet dancer), and Betty Okino (Romanian-Nigerian Olympic gymnast) are just a few examples of these heroes.
Because curriculum materials for this population hardly exist, educators must be creative in changing and adapting curriculum content.
Reviewing the Informal Curriculum
Many aspects of the informal school climate make multi-racial and multiethnic students feel invisible and uncomfortable: a lack of familiar visual images in textbooks and materials; no interracial doll families; posters, marketing and public relations materials, and parent hand-outs that ignore them; and counseling intervention that often insists that multiracial and multiethnic students embrace the heritage of the parent of color or of one parent of color.
Many schools have official student groups dedicated to a single race or ethnicity. This need of minority students for peer support seems obvious. However, their official existence reinforces single-race attitudes and often troubles multiethnic and multiracial students. One solution is for mixed-heritage students to create their own groups, although many multiracial students reject the entire concept of race-specific activities. Another approach is to emphasize nonracial and nonethnic student groups: language clubs, honor societies, sports, chess clubs, and computer clubs. It is crucial for schools to understand that by officially sanctioning race- or ethnic-specific clubs, they may create problems for multiracial students.
Revising Ethnic and Racial Celebrations
The teacher of a friend's biracial 7-year-old son assigned him to research the background of a relative. He chose his grandfather, the former leader of a Caribbean country. The child spent considerable time and energy preparing his project. After previewing his materials, the teacher told him that he could not present it to the class because it did not meet the teacher's intended activity for Black History Month. The child's grandfather was white-Carib.
Multiracial and multiethnic students often feel left out during holidays and celebrations dedicated to single identity groups. Worse, they are forced to celebrate the heritage of one parent while rejecting that of their other parent. Some ethnic celebrations put down one side of the child's heritage (usually the white side) to enhance the other. This practice is destructive to the self-esteem of the mixed-heritage child.
We need to include all children in all festivals and celebrations and to view these activities within the broad historical context of struggle, sacrifice, victory, and fulfilment. No child should ever feel—or physically be—excluded from official or informal school activities because of his or her heritage. Teachers can encourage full inclusion by helping mixed-race children celebrate the part of their heritage and culture covered by the holiday or event, without having to belittle, hide, or disown the other parts.
Addressing Harassment
Children of mixed heritage are students of color and students with unique concerns. These children want to be accepted both as minorities and as multiracial and multiethnic humans. Their complex identity needs include those of minority students.
In today's schools and society, these children experience harassment from mainstream society and from members of minority groups (Wardle, 1992). Mixed-heritage students with one white parent experience a reality different from that of students whose parents represent several communities of color. The harassment that multiethnic and multiracial children experience includes direct assaults on their identity from students and insensitive, hostile interactions from educators.
Teachers must be aware of their own biases and prejudices, intercede when they observe harassment, and be cautious before referring students to school psychologists and counselors. They should also learn about these children.
Promoting Antibias Activities
Many multicultural experts advocate models that include antibias components (Banks & Banks, 1993; Derman-Sparks, 1989). Antibias means that students, educators, and maybe the whole school engage in activities to correct injustices in the classroom, school, or community. Antibias activities for children of mixed heritage include writing letters to legislators on subcommittees that decide census categories, lobbying state governments to include a multiracial category on school forms, exploring alternatives to race- or ethnic-specific groups and celebrations, pressuring publishers of school materials to provide appropriate materials, and responding to biased reports in the media concerning interracial families and multiracial children. Another idea is to celebrate specific multiracial celebrations—such as the 1967 Virginia v. Loving Supreme Court decision, which outlawed state laws against interracial marriage.
Multiracial curriculums have become an integral part of many of our school programs; additionally, race- and ethnic-specific celebrations and instructional units occur in many of these programs. Although these activities support students whose ethnic and racial identity fit within the U.S. Census Bureau's racial categories, they often alienate children of mixed racial and ethnic parentage. Educators need to find ways to include this population in multicultural curriculums, activities, and celebrations. Educators can ensure the full inclusion of multiracial and multiethnic children in the overall program with specific staff training, changes in the formal and informal curriculums, and support and understanding.
