Naming and (re)Claiming- what's in a name?

text on a neutral background with red, pink, and blue accents stating: A good question: Who gets to decide?

As a person of mixed heritage, you may be (very) familiar with the question,

"What are you?".

I spent the first few years of my young life offering an answer that I felt the asker could understand (usually: My mom's white and my dad is Black."). The label biracial was one that I heard as a young person, and began to use through my teen years.

As an adult, it's been important for me to find a way to self identify that doesn't require the label of someone else. I don't need to offer the race of my parents, or reflect back the asker's identity to them. When then the term mixed emerged, I liked it- less emphasis on the split that the term biracial implies. As opposed to an emphasis of 2 separate races or identities, the term mixed implies a bringing together of 2 or more things.

When beginning my private practice as a therapist, I considered about who I would have wanted to work with when I was looking for a therapist.

I decided to work with mixed folks: individuals with parents from different racial and cultural backgrounds, and those who grew up in different cultures and communities now navigating between these cultures, labels, and categories.

As my practice evolved, I began offering groups for individuals who often feel isolated and "othered" in their identity to come together to unpack and explore their experience in community.

In 2020, I created a Mixed Race Identity group. In the group, we talked about labels- how folks identified personally, how others identified them, and how they'd like to identify and be identified. Over the course of my own reading and research, discussions with colleagues, and conversations that were happening within these groups, my own thinking, language, and labeling continued to evolve, and I began to question my use of the term mixed race.

2 main reasons emerged in my thinking:

1) race is a social construct that was created to label and categorize people

2) Individuals have the right to decide how they identify, versus having to identify according to what others decide/see/think/feel

So, in 2022, I changed the name of the group from the Mixed Race Identity Group to Mixed/Multi-Heritage Identity Group. I'm including an excerpt from an article that helped solidify this decision.

"Identifying people strictly by race has limited our understanding of the challenges faced by people who have multiple heritage backgrounds... By using the term multiple heritage, we are able to address the many facets of an individual’s heritage as well as other characteristics, including sexual orientation, and how they affect development. In addition, this term allows the multiple heritage individual to self-define the important aspects of himself or herself." ~Richard C. Henriksen Jr. and Derrick A. Paladino from Counseling Multiple Heritage Individuals, Couples & Families, 2009

Ultimately, each of us have the right to decide the way they'd like to identify. When my daughter was about 2 years old, she began asking my about race, skin tone, and labels. I chatted with her for a bit and then asked, "What do you think you are?"

She paused for a bit, considering before answering: "I'm a little brownie".

I love and appreciate how we are continuing to expand our understanding, our thinking, and our language. I love witnessing the evolution in these groups, with colleagues that I have in the Critical Mixed Race Studies caucus, and even within my own family.

Language changes, evolves, and shapes our understanding of ourselves and the world we live in. The more ways we have to understand not just what we are, but who we are, the better.