ABSTRACT
This chapter will address some methodological challenges I have faced while conducting research in mixed-race studies, paying particular attention to the use of interviews as a way of acquiring information about mixed-race experiences. While we have witnessed the publication of important new work analyzing novels, drama, and art installations on multiraciality (Elam 2011; McNeil 2010), media representations of multiracial people (Squires 2007), tabulating the diverse voices and stories of mixed-race people (De Rango-Adem and Thompson 2010; Hill 2001; O’Hearn 1998; Funderburg 1994) and the critical evaluation of the ontology and epistemology of critical mixed-race studies (Rockquemore, Brunsma and Delgado 2009; Sexton 2008; Spencer 2011), much research in contemporary mixed-race analysis in the social sciences has relied on relatively small samples of open-ended, qualitative interviews. Rockquemore, Brunsma and Delgado (2009: 20) note that:
the past 10 years of research on the multiracial population has been marked by a move from reliance on case studies, observation of multi-racial support groups, and small-scale interview studies, to a broader and more robust stage of data collection and analysis.
In paying attention to the former (small-scale interview studies), rather than the latter sphere, this chapter raises fundamental questions regarding the limitations of the interview in the research process. What difference does it make if a person who identifies as mixed race conducts the interview? What kinds of hierarchical assumptions and racial logics are understood as normative in the research process? What constitutes an insider position in critical mixed-race research? And finally, how might one’s own subconscious desires and experiences influence the stories we feel compelled to tell in critical mixed-race theory?