ABSTRACT
Feminist analyses are replete with ambivalent recognition of the primacy of the mothering role in the social rather than biological reproduction of gendered identities. From the cradle, métisse women who have been mothered by White women are potentially equipped with the social tools for understanding White feminists and building coalitions across the Black/White feminist divide. For métis(se) individuals, many of whom have grown up in primarily White English environments, "Black-washing" threatens to erode a substantial part of their psychosocial foundation, which at the contested time is often exclusively socially and culturally White and métis(se). To let the Blackness and Whiteness wash through is to embrace — among others — a re-defined identity that is crafted from the annals of each métis(se) person's particular multidimensional histories.
