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This article examines how mixed-race individuals recognize themselves and are recognized by others based on their lived experiences.

May 29, 20260 citationsOpen Access

Recognizing Selves in Others: Maneuvering Dougla and Navigating a Bi-Racial Black/White Racial Identity in the United States. A Duoethnography

ARAleah RanjitsinghCity University of New York BABrandon AbramCity University of New York

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This article examines how mixed-race individuals recognize themselves and are recognized by others based on their lived experiences.
Utilized duoethnography as an epistemological framework to explore mixed-race identities.
Analyzed lived experiences of a Dougla woman and a biracial man in the U.S. context.
Incorporated insights from previous research on mixedness and identity negotiation.
Identified that mixedness is perceived differently in the U.S. and the Caribbean based on cultural contexts.
Demonstrated that identity negotiation is influenced by societal constructs like the one-drop rule and perceptions of purity.
Highlighted that recognizing selves in others fosters understanding and community among mixed-race individuals.

Resumen

In this article, we contemplate how mixed-race persons are recognized and recognize their selves in others. We draw on the examples of our lived experiences—a Trinidadian-born Dougla woman, a Caribbean person of mixed African and Indian descent, and a biracial man, born in the United States to a father of West African descent and a bi-racial mother of mixed European ancestry. In both contexts, there has been a negotiation of identity—both experiences marked by not only mixedness, but also mixedness with Blackness amid the understandings of the one-drop rule which persists in the United States, and of the Dougla as impure, due to dilution of perceived Indian purity in the Caribbean. Drawing on the work of BARRATT and RANJITSINGH (2018), and made salient through the use of duoethnography as an epistemology and a "collaborative research methodology" (NORRIS & SAWYER, 2012, p.9), we argue that "mixedness is a shared ontology," and "the act of recognizing selves in others," rests in the way we enact or perform maneuvering as a means to manage our mixed-race selves (BARRATT & RANJITSINGH, 2018, p.482). Our lives thus present as a curriculum as we move towards a place of transformation in our (re)storying.

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