Biracial identity: more than just Black and White

Abstract

This article draws on the insights of research on nine Indian-White biracial young adults to consider how they interpret their social reality. Life-history research was used to discover the complexities that make up the participants’ everyday lives and to understand what they believe about themselves. The key findings reveal that the participants’ struggles with identity indicate the complexity of identity, but those struggles are not always related to race. Their descriptions of their identity formation reveal an ongoing dialectical process that involved the making of choices amongst various social identities as they moved from one circumstance to another.