Mixed Race or Adopted?: How Gender Influences Strangers' Perceptions of Parent/Child Relationships.

U.S. immigration since 1965 has changed the racial and ethnic landscape of the country, and with such changes, racial and ethnic relations have also undergone transformations. Current discussions with regard to race and ethnicity tend to focus on the importance of a reinvigorated sense of racial or ethnic identity asserted by each individual. While the emphasis on identity assertion in current scholarship grants agency to the individual, what is often less discussed is how racial and ethnic identity are ascribed by members of the dominant society. In this paper, I attempt to demonstrate how racial differences are ascribed, reinforce and reified through strangers' commenting to adoptive parents about their mixed-race families. Moreover, I find that the commenting is highly gendered, which suggests that racialization is a nuanced and gendered process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]