Carmen Ballard

Dr. Angela Mitchell

UWRIT 1104

21 September 2017

Annotated Bibliography Draft

A Prescription for Racial Imposter Syndrome. Code Switch from NPR, 8 June 2017,

http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/06/08/462395722/racial-impostor-

syndrome-here-are-your-stories

This podcast was published earlier this year on June 8 from the NPR radio show Code

Switch, which discusses race and identity. It tells the stories of those that struggle to

identify with a racial group because they are mixed race. They coined the term racial

imposter syndrome to describe this situation (RIS from now on). Included are authentic

stories from people concerning their struggle with racial identity. Throughout the

podcast, they also talk to several different experts in the field: Dr. Sarah Gaither, a

psychologist at the Identity and Diversity Lab at Duke University, Amelia Tseng, a social

linguist with the Smithsonian Institution, and Heidi Durrow, American author of The Girl

Who Fell from the Sky and founder of the Mixed Remixed Festival. These individuals,

claiming RIS themselves talk about their studies on this identity crisis. Mainly, people

suffering from RIS described feeling like an outcast, and not feeling like they deserve to

claim their racial background because they arent black enough or white enough;

whatever the case may be. This could be due to several factors, including physical

appearance and the language they speak. The idea is also brought up that there are rules
 to being able to claim a racial identity as your own, however, they are ambiguous and no

one is sure what determines them. One thing is certain, all people desire to belong to a

shared group identity, and for multiracial people, finding a shared identity can be very

difficult. This subject matter is extremely relevant to my topic interest on racial identity.

It highlights important experiences that make the topic relatable and interesting. I would

like to enrich my writing with the experiences of the people that spoke in this podcast.

Grinberg, Emanuella. Multiracial Identity: Study Looks at Role of Money, Gender and

Religion. CNN, Cable News Network, 28 Jan. 2016,

www.cnn.com/2016/01/28/living/biracial-self-identity-study-feat/index.html.

This news article, published by CNN on January 28, 2016, discusses factors that might

lead a multiracial individual to self-identify a certain way. Instead of discussing the

factors that make it difficult to identify with a racial group, as NPRs Code Switch did,

CNN discusses census data on how multiracial people choose to identify the way they do.

Studies show that by using wealth, gender and religion, you can predict which of their

races a mixed person will most identify with. However, there are also findings that more

and more people are feeling comfortable identifying as multiracial. This source takes the

subject away from the personal perspective to discuss a demographic. This source will

appear in my topic by backing up claims with statistical evidence.

Song, Miri. "Generational Change and How We Conceptualize and Measure Multiracial People

and Mixture. Ethnic & Racial Studies, vol. 40, no. 13, 15 Oct. 2017, 2333-2339.

EBSCOhost.
 Professor of sociology Miri Song discusses the changing multiracial demographic in her

journal article. She talks about how the ways censuses have had to adapt to include more

options for racial identification. After several generations, it is hard to determine who

officially classifies as multiracial, because there are no official determining factors on

how to measure that. I will use this source to connect my two previous sources by

discussing this demographic in relation to the question: who makes the rules?.

Swanson, Mahogany L. So What Are You Anyway? American Psychological Association,

American Psychological Association, Aug. 2013,

www.apa.org/pi/families/resources/newsletter/2013/08/biracial-identity.aspx.

Mahogany Swanson from the American Psychological Association talks specifically

about part African, part white multiracial people. Something that these individuals are

able to do is race switch where they can choose to identify with different parts of their

racial background in different situations. She also discusses the one-drop rule, a case

where these biracial individuals self-identify solely as their minority race. Similarly to

CNNs article, Swanson talks about different factors that may influence a person to

identify a certain way, adding education and a few others to the mix. Finally, she adds

commentary on her personal experience with identifying as multiracial. The information

she presents will flow cohesively with the information I have gathered from other

sources.