Biracial Children and the School System

Every year I go through the same ordeal with the Henrico County School System. My kids come home from the first day of school with tons of paperwork to fill. Some of the forms require you to fill in your child's race. I would have no problem filling these forms out if I could fill them out correctly. However some of these forms do not have a mult-race box. How am I suppose to fill out the race portion of the form correctly when there is not an option for biracial children?

Each year when I am forced to mark my children as either white or black I chose a different box every year! I do so because I know my children's school record has to be changed. This causes someone to have to manually change my children's record, causing them more work! I'm hoping that someone will realize that not everyone is just from one race. A multi-race box would resolve everything!

I also have a problem marking my child down as a "other". Doesn't that sound like they are an alien? My children are human beings, not an "other". Maybe I am being a little offensive but I truely believe making labeling a child as an "other" could cause low self-esteem. If the school system really wants to keep track of what race is the school system then maybe they need to include all the races! A multi-racial box would be the answer! I read an article stating on recommendations to educators on biracial children. The article I read also stated that educators should assume that a interracial child only has the identity of one parent.

Jennifer Beale

Indentity Problems in Biracial Youth. (n.d.) Fall 2004. Retrieved September 20, 2009 from http://www.cehd.umn.edu/

Biracial Struggles

I have two wonderful children that I could not be more proud of. My kids do well in school, they are active in sports and they participate in many community involvement activities. Yet the very same community where my children live, work, and worship in have faced obstacles and challenges that only certain people could relate to. My children learned at a very young age that sometimes people may not accept them based on their appearance. People have made racist comments towards them and prejudicial treatment. Although many people can relate to racism, my children have had to relate to racism and racial identity problems. In my journey, I will share with you the experiences my children face on a daily basis and how they learned to be proud of themselves and their heritages.

My children are biracial. Their father is Afro-American and I am Italian. My children have learned how to deal with bigotry and racial comments from both the black and white race. Society has sometimes chosen for my children what race they believe my children should be. Imagine how my children must feel going to school and having the school system declare them as an “other”. In many cases biracial children are faced with identity problems, feeling the need to choose only one of their heritages and rejecting the other side to feel like they belong somewhere.

I suggest for everyone to read this great article I found online. It touches the topic of identity problems among biracial children. One line that really struck a core with me was when the author said “We live in a society that sees things as black and white, with no gray areas.” (Identity problems in biracial youth). After reading this article I was upset that many government groups and educators assume that all interracial children should be classified as black. Why can’t they be considered multi-racial? Why should biracial children feel the need to discredit one of their races? My goal for this blog is make people aware of the challenges biracial children face. Society likes to classify everyone. I hope one day people will realize we are all in one, big melting pot and the only label we need to classify people under is the human race.

Jennifer Beale

Identity Problems in Biracial Youth. (Fall, 2009) Regents of University of Minnesota . Retrieved September 5, 2009 from http://www.cehd.umn.edu/EdPa/licensure/leader/2004Fall/identity.html