Scholars have increasingly acknowledged that race is composed of multiple dimensions and that these dimensions do not always match. For example, an individual’s sense of personal identity can differ from the race they mark on surveys and/or how others interpret their racial identity based on appearance. The potential for racial mismatch is even greater for multiracial individuals, who are commonly asked racial identity inquiries by others wanting to know their racial background. In this article, I focus on multiracial individuals’ responses to racial identity inquiries to examine how these instances of expressed race may “mismatch” their internal race. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 30 multiracial young adults, I find that despite the wide range of identity options that multiracial Americans are presumed to have, participants typically responded to inquiries about race with consistent scripts that did not necessarily align with their personal identities. I refer to these scripts as “racial elevator speeches,” and discuss how they are primarily constructed not to express personal identity but to meet the expectations of others and mitigate the microaggressive nature of these questions. However, by constructing racial elevator speeches designed to be legible to others, individuals’ scripts inadvertently reify U.S. racial structures.

Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, many U.S. schools, childcare centres, and non-essential workplaces closed or moved to a virtual, remote format. As a result, many families were forced to combine childcare, schooling, and paid work responsibilities within the home. This shift had unequal consequences, with employed mothers often bearing the brunt of additional childcare and household labour. In this visual essay, we draw from in-depth interviews with mothers of young children (N = 65), conducted in the early stages of the pandemic (April-May 2020) to produce three illustrations. As an analytic tool and form of data representation, these illustrations portray the experiences of employed mothers, situate these experiences within the broader institutional contexts of the pandemic, and use visual elements designed to leave layers of meaning up to audience interpretation.

Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, many U.S. schools, childcare centres, and non-essential workplaces closed or moved to a virtual, remote format. As a result, many families were forced to combine childcare, schooling, and paid work responsibilities within the home. This shift had unequal consequences, with employed mothers often bearing the brunt of additional childcare and household labour. In this visual essay, we draw from in-depth interviews with mothers of young children (N = 65), conducted in the early stages of the pandemic (April-May 2020) to produce three illustrations. As an analytic tool and form of data representation, these illustrations portray the experiences of employed mothers, situate these experiences within the broader institutional contexts of the pandemic, and use visual elements designed to leave layers of meaning up to audience interpretation.

No abstract

Scholars have increasingly acknowledged that race is composed of multiple dimensions and that these dimensions do not always match. For example, an individual’s sense of personal identity can differ from the race they mark on surveys and/or how others interpret their racial identity based on appearance. The potential for racial mismatch is even greater for multiracial individuals, who are commonly asked racial identity inquiries by others wanting to know their racial background. In this article, I focus on multiracial individuals’ responses to racial identity inquiries to examine how these instances of expressed race may “mismatch” their internal race. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 30 multiracial young adults, I find that despite the wide range of identity options that multiracial Americans are presumed to have, participants typically responded to inquiries about race with consistent scripts that did not necessarily align with their personal identities. I refer to these scripts as “racial elevator speeches,” and discuss how they are primarily constructed not to express personal identity, but to meet the expectations of others and mitigate the microaggressive nature of these questions. However, by constructing racial elevator speeches designed to be legible to others, individuals’ scripts inadvertently reify U.S. racial structures.