Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/interracial-families-and-biracial-children/5009045/
Most traditional approaches to multicultural education view each child as existing within an exclusive, unique cultural group. The child's total reality - and the way he perceives the world - is determined by membership in this group: he is as different from a child belonging to another group as one culture is, collectively, from another.A biracial child does not fit into one of the traditional cultural groups. Many biracial children hear at an early age, "What are you, anyway?" How should teachers respond to these children and their families? Most multicultural books and curriculums take one of two approaches: ignore the existence of these children or assume biracial children belong with the cultural group of their minority parent.
Neither approach is acceptable. Estimates suggest there are from 1 to 10 million biracial children (under 18) in this country. (We really don't know, because officially biracial children do not exist.) Many of these children are not being raised as products of their minority parent's culture. Some - often in single, white, female-headed households - have almost no exposure to their minority heritage; others are raised as products of a truly integrated biracial cultural ...