My undergraduate and early graduate research has focused on the experiences and identity of individuals of 'mixed' race as well as the discourse surrounding the American Multiracial Movement and the debate over the US Census race categories. My undergraduate senior research project was an exploratory study of Black biracial experience. I conducted 14 in-depth interviews with Black biracial students at an Historically Black University in the USA and supplemented my primary data with a content analysis of online testimonies. I presented my findings in 2004 at the Graduate Conference on Race, Nationality, and Identity, at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.

My master's thesis expanded upon one of the issues that emerged from my undergraduate project: the role of appearance in Biracial identity. The idea that mixed race individuals are always physically attractive is a pervasive stereotype. I call this the Biracial Beauty Stereotype. For my master's research, therefore, I examined the role of physical attractiveness in the multi-factored, complex process of biracial identity choice. Using quantitative survey data from the Public Use Data Set of the US's National Survey of Adolescent Health (ADD Health), I examined whether level of perceived physical attractiveness was associated with choosing a Biracial versus single race identity. My results showed that only for "double minority" biracials was increasing attractiveness ratings associated with lower log odds of choosing a single race identity; in other words, only Black/non-White biracials' results are consistent with the Biracial Beauty Stereotype. The paper, “Beautiful Stereotypes: The Relationship between Physical Attractiveness and Mixed Race Identity,” was published in April 2012 in the inaugural re-launching issue of the journal Identities (vol 19, issue 1).

I am currently working on my dissertation-- a cross-national (US and UK) qualitative study that explores the role that ambiguous physical appearance plays in mixed race individuals' lives with regard to racial identity, body work and being asking questions such as "where are you from?" and "what race are you?" On a micro level I am interested in the mico-politics of ambiguity via use of specific phenotype management practices that intentionally or unintentionally alter one's racial appearance and responses to racialized inquiries. On a macro level, I am interested in what these individual level actions illuminate about the social construction and understanding of the meaning of race. I am utilizing a dual (inductive and deductive) analytic approach, using both grounded theory methodology (Glaser and Strauss) and examining the phenomena as a case of verbal and non-verbal 'performance' or 'doing' of race (West and Fenstermaker). I conducted a pilot study in Spring 2011 to refine my research questions and pre-test my interview guide before beginning field work proper in London, England (Summer 2011) and multiple cities in the USA (Summer 2012).

last updated 07/30/2012