A recent Cheerios commercial featuring a Black–White biracial daughter along with her Black father and White mother incited a lot of debate about the implications of multiracial families (Elliot, 2014). Many multiracial families responded by posting their family photos to the “We Are The 15 Percent Tumblr,” showing the beauty and strength, as well as positive change, that they represent. This Cheerios commercial and the consequent national conversation reflect a broader set of discussions about the implications of multiraciality, the resultant assemblage of meanings associated with and attached to the offspring of interracial sexual unions. Since its inception, the US has always been deeply engaged in conversations about race and racisms. As multiraciality continues to enter these debates, it is important to ask questions that force us to think about the various options that multiraciality presents and the potential impacts of these on the contemporary and future realities of race and racism.

Race is a human construction, one whose meanings are debated and defined by society. Thus, the meanings of multiraciality, as a racial category, also vary. Multiraciality is a complex and problematic notion because it both challenges and reifies the socially constructed, but experientially real, notion of race. On the one hand, it directly confronts the power of ascribed monoracial classifications, but, conversely, it still works within the language and ideologies of the racial classification system. We believe multiraciality is an important social and cultural barometer to watch.

Multiraciality within the matrix of race

To understand the importance of multiraciality in any society, one must analyze the relationship among: (1) racialization; (2) racial social structure; (3) racial ideologies and (4) racial policies. Racialization is a complex process—bound with domination, power, and politics—whereby groups of people are ascribed racial identities and ranked within a society, its culture, and its institutions (Bashi, 1998). This ranking system comprises the racial social structure. Those in the top strata are conferred cultural, social, political, and economic benefits (Omi and Winant, 1991; Bonilla-Silva, 1997). The racialization process and changes in the racial social structure are guided by racial ideologies. In the contemporary US, the predominant racial ideologies are “colorblind” and “post-racial.”