Thesis help!?

Question

I need advice on my thesis about biracialism and racial categorization. This is what i have so far:
The race-based aspects of the American culture reflects the degrading barriers society has placed. Our obsession with race and racial categorization have many negative affects on biracial groups in America. Many of the mixed-race people are vulnerable to racial discrimination and demeaning stereotypes. A number of them often face identity struggles and alienation.
I'm having problem focusing my thesis. Myteacher wants a precise, single thesis involving race, yet it has to be broad enough for 5 pages. Any suggestions on what my thesis should be? I also need to support it with my sources. The book i got is a collection of essay from diff. biracial people dealing with self-identity,fitting in,prejudice,etc. Im having hard time outlining how my essay should be. Should i find a new simpler and more specific topic? If so, plz give some suggestions.

These are the sources i have:
1-What are you? by Pearl Fuyo Gaskins
2-Half and Half: Writers on Growing Up Biracial and Bicultural by Claudine C. O'Hearn
If you can please look up the brief summaries of these books and let me know what kind of thesis I can develop that can be supported by these two books.

Answer 1

The "check all that apply" approach to race on the 2000 census has ignited a conceptual debate over the meaning and usefulness of racial categories. This debate is most intense over the category "black" because of the historically unique way that blackness has been defined. Though the lived reality of many people of color has changed over the past three decades, we question whether the construct black has mirrored these changes and if "black" remains a valid analytic or discursive unit today. While black racial group membership has historically been defined using the one-drop rule, we test the contemporary salience of this classification norm by examining racial identity construction among multiracial people. We find that that the one-drop rule has lost the power to determine racial identity, while the meaning of black is becoming increasingly multidimensional, varied, and contextually specific. Ultimately, we argue that social, cultural and economic changes in post-Civil Rights America necessitate a re-evaluation of the validity of black as social construct and re-assessment of its' continued use in social science research.

Notions of a racial identity for persons with one Black and one White parent have assumed the existence of only a singular identity (first Black and later biracial). Emerging empirical research on racial identity formation among members of this group reveals that multiple identity options are possible. In terms of overall health, the level of social invalidation one encounters with respect to racial self-identification is more important than the specific racial identity selected. Here a relational narrative approach to therapy with Black–White mixed-race clients who experience systematic invalidation of their chosen racial identity is presented through a detailed case illustration.

Our findings support recent qualitative work on multiracial adolescents that finds both benefits and drawbacks associated with a multiracial heritage. Although we do find that multiracial adolescents, especially American Indian-whites, have some negative outcomes compared to white students, we do not find evidence that Park’s “marginal man” hypothesis is true today. Our results show no pervasive “special” disadvantages of being multiracial. With regard to social and psychological well-being, multiracial students fall well within the range of other adolescents who identify as part of a minority group. Indeed, for some outcomes and some ancestry groups, biracial adolescents actually have more positive outcomes than whites.








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Along with the evidence from qualitative studies, our findings suggest that the racial terrain of the United States may be changing for multiracial youth. No longer does being multiracial mean being isolated and rejected on the basis of a mixed race ancestry. However, it is also evident that multiracial youth do not escape the effects of the larger racial structure in the United States. Like other minority groups, they experience negative outcomes as adolescents


(compared to white students); these outcomes are related to issues such as the level of racial


prejudice in the environment.
While our results provide no consistent evidence to support Park’s strongly negative predictions for biracial individuals, they also offer little evidence that multiracial youth are facing environments free of psychological and social barriers. Similar to other minority groups, multiracial youth have higher rates of depression and are more likely to consider suicide. Feelings of social acceptance are also lower for some groups. Therefore, while our study does
not find pervasive negative outcomes for multiracial youth, we are not suggesting that multiracial Americans should receive no sociological attention. Multiracial individuals are an important part of the population, and their unique experiences deserve serious sociological analysis.
We note that any study of the multiracial population must take into account the varying definitions or aspects of multiracial identity. Our study illustrates that results may change depending on how respondents are racially categorized. Each method of racial categorization


(observed race, expressed race, internal race) may be equally valid, but researchers must specify


which method they use and discuss its implications for their findings.
We conclude that to fully understand the differences we found for the detailed heritage groups, more studies of individual groups are needed. First, although researchers have conducted many interview studies for Black-white youth, there have been relatively few for the





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other detailed heritage groups. In-depth interviews can obtain nuanced information that is simply not accessible through surveys. However, future studies must deal with the problem of biased sample selection and small sample sizes, a formidable task indeed.
Second, longitudinal studies would allow scholars to understand how the experiences of multiracial adolescents change throughout their lives, and help us to understand whether there is a causal effect of multiracial identification on outcomes, or whether that effect might operate in the opposite direction. Tracking individuals can help researchers to see how racial identification and outcomes change over time would give us better insight into the real effects over the life course. Similarly, studies like ours but with adult populations would be a valuable addition to the literature. Though adolescence is a particularly interesting life period to investigate the


possible effects of multiracial identity, it is important to know what effects remain (or emerge) in


the adult multiracial population.

Answer 2

Family is the most crucial influence on the development of a child's cognition. Biracial children may face conflict, as any child does but they face prejudicial feeling among family members. Love, sex and procreation does not always erase feelings of stereotype, bigotry, and prejudice. Sometimes racially bigoted people make children with people they as a whole despise. What happends to the Kids?

Answer 3

Compose a Thesis Statement

http://members.tripod.com/~lklivingston/essay/thesis.html

How to Write a Book Review

These links are essentially the same, just choose the one that makes the most sense to you..!!!

The book report you write should be four paragraphs long. Remember to use correct conventions (margins, indent paragraphs, capitalization, punctuation etc.)

http://www.kyrene.k12.az.us/staff/gmeade/how_to_write_a_book_report.htm

http://www.ehow.com/how_11249_write-book-report.html

How to Write a Book Report (Upper Elementary School level)

http://www.infoplease.com/homework/wsbookreportelem.html

How to Write a Book Report (Middle and High School level.)

http://www.infoplease.com/homework/wsbookreporths.html

Book Reports and Summaries

http://homeworktips.about.com/od/writingabookreport/a/report.htm

Basic Structure

http://members.tripod.com/~lklivingston/essay/

Literary Terms

http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/lit_terms/

Good luck.

Kevin, Liverpool, England.

Answer 4

just add what you think about the topic.
srry if that doesn't help.
i don't know what if my answer doesn't help.

:^( / :^) - i hope that i helped.