Ann Phoenix

Black, white, or mixed race? : race and racism in the lives of young people of mixed parentage

The number of people in racially mixed relationships is steadily growing, yet their children are still often stigmatized and assumed to feel confused and unhappy about their racial identities. Social workers argue that they need to acquire a black identity, and hence should not be placed with white foster or adoptive parents. Tizard and Phoenix question these beliefs in an exploration of mixed-race identity. They show that many young people have a very positive dual identity, as both black and white, and resist prescriptions from others about the kind of identity they should have. The book is based on recent research with young people from a range of social backgrounds, all of whom had one white and one Afro-Caribbean or African parent. Black, White or Mixed Race? contains many quotations from interviews with both children and parents and examines their attitudes towards identity, their cultural origins, their attitudes to black and white people, and their experiences of racism. This is the first study to concentrate on adolescents of black and white parentage and is intended for all lecturers, students and professionals in social work and social policy.

Young people’s constructions of self: notes on the use and analysis of the photo-elicitation method

The article examines the use of photo‐elicitation methods in an ESRC‐funded study of young consumers. Participants were asked to take photographs of consumer items that were significant to them. These were subsequently used in recorded interviews as a trigger to elicit the discussion of the relationship between consumer goods and identity. The analysis focuses on how the features of visual representation influence the versions of identity that are presented. We show how participants both accommodate to and exploit aspects of the photographic image in creating their accounts. This is achieved by using the visual image to bolster identity claims and employing the verbal accounts to edit and contextualise the identity implications of the visual image. We suggest that the photo interview offers participants an opportunity to show rather than ‘tell’ aspects of their identity that might have otherwise remained hidden. It may therefore be a useful tool for researching contentious or problematic identity positions.

Style failure: Consumption, identity and social exclusion

Recent studies of youth culture suggest that consumption is central to the construction of adolescent identities. Many of these studies have focused on the links between consumption, style and identity, and have concluded that style is a crucial means of sustaining and defining group boundaries. Drawing on a series of group interviews with young people from an ESRC-funded study of young consumers, we focus here on the causes and consequences of being seen as a ‘style failure’. We argue that the link between styles and branded and designer goods makes the maintenance of a style identity economically costly. However, there are also social costs associated with failing to maintain such an identity. We examine the consequences of such ‘style failure’ for young people in relation to issues of social exclusion and status loss.

Dealing with difference: the recursive and the new

In recent years theories of difference have become increasingly complex as they have shifted away from unitary, essentialist constructions of ‘race’ and ethnicity. The resulting conceptualizations of ‘race’ and ethnicity - as dynamic and multiple - provide new perspectives on difference, identities, subjectivities and power relations. This article argues that concepts of racialized and ethnicized difference have been taken up or resisted in diverse ways in academia, within feminisms and by some groups. Some of these have reproduced old, unitary notions of racialized hierarchy, while others have helped to disrupt racism. Although some recurrent notions of difference are problematic in continually treating difference as free floating and abstracted from power relations, many new conceptions incorporate older ideas. The article argues that there is no simple good/bad duality between the recurrent and the new.

But it's racism I really hate: Young masculinities, racism and psychoanalysis

This article addresses the issue of how discursive analyses revealing the way personal accounts of masculinities are constructed can be supplemented by theories providing plausible explanations of how individuals take up particular subject positions. It is suggested that psychoanalytic concepts are helpful in this regard. An analysis is presented of material from a participant in a study of emergent masculinities among boys in London schools. This material concerns the cross cutting of gendered and racialized identity positions. The use of psychoanalytic constructs enables the production of an account of this boys narrative in which reasons for his adoption and defense of particular positions, despite their contradictory and conflictual character, can be proposed

Lads, machos and others: developing ‘boy-centred’ research

This chapter provides some background to our project by investigating recent research which has explored the construction of masculine ‘identities’ through ethnographic, observational and interview methods. We are particularly interested in research that addresses the topic of boys’ experiences by allowing them to speak about it openly and in detail, rather than research which, for example, measures achievements, attitudes or behaviours. We are also concerned to maintain a view of masculinity in its relational aspects — that is, to understand how it comes to be constructed in relation to femininity- and how, in the context of ‘masculinity’ itself, there might be many varied ‘masculinities’, alternative ways of ‘doing boy’. Other key topics explored in research on masculinities and gendered identities include the ways in which what counts as being female or male is contested and resisted and how gendered identities are differentiated by, for example, social class and ‘race’.

Black identity and transracial adoption

Much of the opposition to transracial adoption depends on unvalidated assumptions about the identity of black and mixed race children living with their own families. We know little, however, about the ways in which these families help their children to cope with racism. Research moreover suggests that young black children often have a negative view of their racial identity. On the other hand, research also shows that black adolescents tend to have high self-esteem. Self-esteem and racial identity may derive from different contexts and relationships, and a negative attitude to ones race may not necessarily be associated with low self-esteem. Further, the concept of a ‘positive black identity’ requires critical analysis, since each of its three constituent terms is problematic. Social identities are complex phenomena, and the ways in which people perceive and think about themselves often fail to correspond to prescribed pigeonholes. This is evident, for example, in the growing number of children of mixed parentage who see themselves as having a separate identity, distinct from both black or white groups. Transracially adopted children are likely to have a different identity from that of children growing up in a black family, but we argue that there are not yet well-grounded reasons for believing that the practice is damaging to children.

Thinking through class: The place of social class in the lives of young Londoners

Current debates about the utility of the concept of social class for social analysis have been helpful in illuminating the shortcomings of traditional theories and traditional methods of assessment of social class. Yet, social class continues to have an important impact on life chances and worldviews. This article uses data from an interview study of 248 young Londoners (young women and men; black, white and of `mixed-parentage) to examine the place of social class in young peoples lives. The young peoples accounts indicated that they did not necessarily use occupational groupings in defining social class and that the majority considered themselves to be middle class. Nonetheless, social class was important to the ways in which they thought about themselves. They differentiated themselves from others on the basis of differences in lifestyle, housing, money, speech, dress and behaviour. Some disliked and/or feared people they considered to be from other social classes.

‘Race’ in psychology: Teaching the subject

This article addresses the ways in which the subject of ‘race’ is discussed in psychology and the issues this raises for teaching. It argues that psychological work provides contrary possibilities. On the one hand, it helps to reproduce negative racialized constructions of those constructed as Other (particularly black people). On the other, it allows challenges to such constructions. For example, the ‘race’ and IQ controversy, and the periodic recurrence of racialized hereditarianism, place teachers and students within narratives that both assert and rebut biological racism. The social psychology of prejudice and discrimination at times reifies culturally constructed racial difference and tacitly justifies subtle, cultural or ‘new’ forms of racism, while analyses of racist discourses demystify practices of (de)racialization. Aspects of wider social and institutional context, and different teacher and student positionings in the classroom, create fractures and ambiguities that further complicate the process of teaching the subject of ‘race’.

Negotiating Multicultures, Identities and Intersectionalities:

timely in three ways. First, international debates about multiculturalism over the last decade have sharpened thinking about the challenge of living in what Cohen (1988) has termed ‘multicultures’ and the identity issues arising from this. Families, as both microcosms of society and pioneers of new ways of living, are (often implicitly) central to this. Second, ‘transracial’ and ‘trans national’ adoption have been and con tinue to be the focus of longstanding debates in the USA and UK. Over time, these have broadened from a predomin ant focus on whether or not it is damag ing and should be stopped (a perspective that continues to exercise many) to understanding how adoptive families live their lives and how their intimate day-to-day discourses around transracial or transnational adoption often construct contradictory positions around belong ing, identity and sameness. Third, the strong feelings that transracial adoption has recurrently generated over the last 40 years have led to a fresh round of political and legislative attention to adoption in the UK. For these reasons, the call for papers for this special issue was broad based and included attention to current political debates on multicul tural ism as well as ethnic matching, identities and legislative change. The response to our call for papers was substantial enough to merit a double issue that includes articles from Europe and the USA, as well as reflections informed by Maori philosophy from New Zealand. The articles have different objects of study: families, children and adults from a variety of ethnicised groups; policy documents; adoptees and non-adoptees. Together, they constitute a rich mix that we hope will give readers a good understanding of the current issues at play in family placement across racialised and ethnicised groups.