Being “Other” in Berlin

Germany is considered a relatively recent country where multiraciality has become a recognised phenomenon. Yet, Germany still considers itself a monoracial state, one where whiteness is conflated with “Germanness”. Based on interviews with seven people who are multiracial (mostly Korean–German) in Berlin, this article explores how the participants construct their multiracial identities. My findings show that participants strategically locate their identity as diasporic to circumvent racial “othering”. They utilise diasporic resources or the “raw materials” of diasporic consciousness in order to construct their multiracial identities and challenge racism and the expectations of racial and ethnic authenticity. I explored how multiracial experiences offer a different way of thinking about the actual doing and performing of diaspora.

Sociology of Multiracial Identity in the Late 1980s and Early 1990s: The Failure of a Perspective

Sociologists largely failed to comprehend the emergence of multiracial identities in the United States during the late 1980s and early 1990s. This was due, in part, to hypodescent and the monoracial imperative. These social devices, respectively, categorize offspring of interracial unions between Whites and people of color based exclusively on the background of color, and necessitate single-racial identification. This has prohibited the articulation and recognition of multiracial identities. Hypodescent and the monoracial imperative are so normative that they have been taken for granted by sociologists across the monoracial spectrum, much as the larger society. Sociology’s espoused objectivity blinded sociologists to the standpoint of their own monoracial subjectivity. They provided little critical examination of hypodescent and the monoracial imperative in terms of their impact on multiracial identity formations. Some sociologists challenged theories of marginality, which stressed the psychological dysfunction of multiracials. Yet multiracial identities were considered symptomatic of mainly isolated psychological concerns with personal identity. Sociologists were absent from analyses of collective identity and agency speaking to mixed-race concerns. Consequently, they remained on the periphery of social scientific theorizing of multiracial identities in terms of their wider-ranging implications.

Hidden Among the Hidden: Transracially Adopted Korean American Adults Raising Multiracial Children

The parenting practices of both transracially adopted Korean American adults and multiracial families are often overlooked in developmental science, yet are important to address given that the majority of Korean adoptees are now adults with families of their own and given rapid increases in the multiracial population. This qualitative study examined the cultural socialization beliefs and practices among transracially adopted Korean Americans who are parents of multiracial Asian-White children. Drawing upon interviews with 31 Korean adoptee parents (29 female; Mage = 41.26), we identified four themes that capture parents’ understanding of their children’s multiracial identities, how that understanding subsequently shapes their cultural socialization practices, and how parents’ socialization beliefs and practices vary by developmental stage. These themes described the ways that parents’ cultural socialization practices were shaped by their children’s phenotypes, parents’ understanding of their children’s multiracial identities, geographic location, and the multiracial family context. This study also demonstrated how multiracial couples in our sample engaged in cultural socialization together. Results suggest that Korean adoptee parents largely acknowledged their children’s multiracial identities through labels, but primarily socialized children as monoracial minorities.

Being “Other” in Berlin: German Koreans, Multiraciality, and Diaspora

Germany is considered a relatively recent country where multiraciality has become a recognised phenomenon. Yet, Germany still considers itself a monoracial state, one where whiteness is conflated with “Germanness”. Based on interviews with seven people who are multiracial (mostly Korean–German) in Berlin, this article explores how the participants construct their multiracial identities. My findings show that participants strategically locate their identity as diasporic to circumvent racial “othering”. They utilise diasporic resources or the “raw materials” of diasporic consciousness in order to construct their multiracial identities and challenge racism and the expectations of racial and ethnic authenticity. I explored how multiracial experiences offer a different way of thinking about the actual doing and performing of diaspora.