Brooklin Flaugher
Pronouns: she/her/hers
Research Mentor(s): Deborah Rivas-Drake
Research Mentor School/College/Department: / 0
Program:
Authors:
Session: Session 4: 1:40 pm – 2:30 pm
Poster: 60
Abstract
The Critical Multiracial Ethnic-racial Identity (CMERI) project aims to create a measure to quantify the shared experience of multiracial youth and young adults from across the United States to examine how they come to understand both who they are and systemic oppression during adolescence and young adulthood. Although those of a multiracial background are the fastest growing racial/ethnic group in the country (U.S. Census Bureau, 2021), our society was created to accommodate monoracial people. Our socially constructed monoracial categories cause many mulitracial people to be made aware of their racial identity and the racist structures present in our society starting at a young age. Thus we posit that these conditions create a particular motivation in multiracial youth to change the monoracial social constructions that we have formed as a society. To approach this problem from a research perspective, the CMERI team is pulling information from literature in ethnic-racial identity development (ERI; youths’ understanding of their ethnic/racial backgrounds; Rivas-Drake & Umaña-Taylor, 2019), multiracial theory (Harris, 2016), and critical consciousness (Diemer et al., 2020) to form a strong theoretical grounding from which the measure will be rooted. Critical Multiracial Theory, or MultiCrit, was developed by Harris (2016) and challenges the monoracial society we have created and aims to bring focus to the people of multiracial backgrounds and their experiences in hopes of enacting social justice. Critical consciousness, (CC; Diemer et al., 2020) is defined as a person’s capacity to reflect on racialized oppression and motivation to take action. With these guiding theories and the completion of focus groups with multiracial young people, the CMERI team will embark on a research endeavor that will revolutionize how psychology conceptualizes multiracial identity.
