Introduction

The federal policy of multiculturalism, in place for the last three decades, was a response to the reality that Canadian society is increasingly made up of many ethnic groups, as opposed to the historical English-French dichotomy. In recent years, however, ethnic minorities, which were historically segregated, are increasingly intermarrying and producing mixed race offspring. In both Canada and the United States, biracial and multiracial individuals are frequently of partial Asian descent due to the large numbers of Asian immigrants in the post-World War II era. The increased numbers of these individuals adds a new dimension to our concept of multiculturalism. Their existence also challenges ingrained beliefs about the meaning of race in our society. Although race is increasingly recognized as a social construct, one of our defining identities continues to derive from our racial or ethnic categorization; individual identities are expected to be formed through identification with only one race or ethnicity. Both the Canadian and American census have a section in which citizens must identify their racial or ethnic origin.

In this context, for individuals who cross cultural and racial lines or who fall somewhere in between full identification, establishing a racial identity is not an easy task. This is particularly the case once individuals become aware of racial discourses and external expectation of racial association. For example, the United States census recently allowed space for individuals to identify themselves as having multiple racial or ethnic origins. Prior to this, however, citizens were expected to simply choose a single category by which to identify themselves. For an individual of mixed race, this type of a situation is highly problematic and serves to reveal some of the issues faced by multiracial people. The existence of people of mixed race confounds racial expectations and requires a re-evaluation of beliefs about racial and ethnic identity. This is an exploratory essay which will contain a discussion of some of these issues, as well as examining some of the experiences of biracial and multiracial individuals in Canada, using research from the American multiracial experience as a basis for comparison. First, the theoretical boundaries of the issues raised by their existence as well as the historical and current views on mixed race people will be discussed. The essay will then specifically examine the implications of past and current research on the experience of mixed race young people in Canada.

Before more fully examining the literature that exists on people of mixed race, it is appropriate to first note that this essay is specifically concerned with people who are of partial Asian descent, or whose parents derive from different ethnicities within the collective Asian racial category. In the United States, although the majority of multiracial people are of partial Asian descent, biraciality is often considered in the context of black and white racial identities. Therefore, much of the academic literature is concerned with these individuals because mixed race status appears to be a more salient feature of the black / white biracial experience than for those of partial Asian descent. This may be partially because of socio-economic legacies that have extensively marginalized blacks in the United States as well as the historical conception of a racial hierarchy within which blacks were typically positioned at the bottom, Caucasians at the top and Asians in the middle. Within the literature, however, there appear to be some commonalities that fall across the lived experiences of the majority of mixed race individuals, which will be discussed later.

It is also useful here to clarify the terms used in this paper. Biracial refers to people "whose parents are of two different socially designated racial groups" (Root, 1996: ix). For example, a person who has a white mother and an Asian father is considered biracial. The term multiracial is a more generally applicable term as it typically identifies those who can claim two or more racial backgrounds. This is a more inclusive term as it can include biracial individuals and is used interchangeably with mixed race. It is important here to point out that, in the discourse on mixed race individuals, there has been some reluctance to use these terms in identifying multiracial people as a group. Racial terminology functions on the assumption that race is an empirically observable and legitimately defined category in society. For some multiracial individuals, who believe that they transcend racial boundaries, creating new labels is perceived as contributing to the reification of race and the maintenance of racial classifications. This was most clear in recent debates in the United States over the significance of creating a new multiracial census category, something opposed by many within the mixed race community as unnecessarily creating a new racial category and legitimizing further racial categorization. The creation of new labels for people of multiple heritages, often delineated on the basis of physical appearance, may actually reproduce the discourse on which the social construction of race is based. While it is important to recognize this debate and appreciate it's legitimacy, it is equally important to realize that race remains an important social category within society. Consequently, for the purposes of this paper, the terminology remains relevant, particularly when considering that there are commonalities of experience among most people of mixed race.