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This chapter considers a narrative attuned to the tensions of bicultural performativity (blackness and whiteness) and how that performance relates to the politics of dislocation within the context of pursuing an advanced degree at a prestigious university. It does so by providing moments from my own narrative of self that focuses on an interrupted and hybridized racial project. In this chapter, I attempt to engage the reader by communicating the subjectivity of such moments in a provocative, fragmented, and emotionally charged self-reflexive manner. My own narrative, its performative element, and its racialized nature, are then considered in relation to larger sociological contexts and forces that present bicultural racial formations and their boundary transgression as a regulatory mechanism. Out of these narrative examples, I emphasize the growing centrality of performance studies as a frame of analysis.

The idea of biculturalism or multiculturalism has come into sharper focus due to changing intra-national and international demographic shifts, expanding global economic markets, and persistent ethnic and religious warfare across many continents. These global political, cultural, and economic dynamics have forced us to deal with two intensely reverberating, and conflicting, cultural themes and tradition that threaten to unravel many social and political units deemed heretofore strong and unbreakable. One tradition supports and justifies a monocultural view of the world. This perspective asserts that a nation-state functions best when it is defined and controlled by one dominate cultural framework. The logic and justification for such a view is mirrored in the history and philosophy of societies and nation states which have waged relentless wars of conquest; in such wars, victors have attained and often maintained both political power and cultural hegemony over the defeated. Whether the initial causes of warfare were grounded in disputes over religious differences, land disputes, control of the seas, or overseas colonies, the reality is the victory of one nation or society over another would result in the submergence and subservience of one culture over another, as reflected in the victor's religion, language, political system, etc. The laws and rules of conquest and defeat reverberate throughout human history and whether in Africa, Asia, Europe, or North and South America and are deeply rooted in human, tribal, and clan differences. The various religions have historically justified the conquest by their zealots over non-believers, but it is only in recent history that a new and devastating logic was proffered to justify the domination of one group over another. The combination of European colonialism and imperialism, aided by the scientism of Social Darwinism and the nationalistic ideas of Manifest Destiny gave support to the ideals of White supremacy. Despite subtle political and religious differences between Western nations what they held in common was the belief that they represented the destiny of world civilization, and thus had an obligation to conquer the “uncivilized” world in order to save and perpetuate Western values and ideals. Thus, the growth and evolution of European and American social, political, economic and religious history and thought was not one in which conquering countries and groups sought to “understand” the conquered, nor would it be predicated on any cultural equality, or cultural equivalency between the victors and the vanquished. For example, in the United States the colonial government and the young republic fought Native Americans, the French, Spain (twice), the British (twice), then Mexico, for cultural, political, economic, and social hegemony over what is currently the landmass of the United States.

How we become a part of group, identify with the group, and acquire a “we” feeling is both simple and complex. We may absorb groupness either because we were born into the group, or because we have made a decision to choose membership into the group. In this subsection the former will be our focus, and since we have already broached the African American theme we will explain collective identity matters from this perspective.

Williams was a black feminist pragmatist who contributed to and drew on the ideas and practices of the “Hull-House school of race relations” (HHSRR). This American theory unites liberal values and a belief in a rational public with a co-operative, nurturing, and liberating model of the self, the other, and the community, based on the historical ideas and commitments of abolitionists and Abraham Lincoln. Education and democracy are emphasized as significant mechanisms to organize and improve society, especially the relations between black and white people. This school had a distinct institutional influence, structure, and status (Deegan, 2002b). As an African American women who wrote and spoke using feminist pragmatism as it applied to the black experience viewed from her lived standpoint, she developed black feminist pragmatism (Deegan, 2002a). I concentrate here on her writings on biculturalism, especially her (Williams, 1907) essay on the perils of “a White Negro.” She wrote about this anomalous racial category in a number of other pieces that I also analyze here.

To study biculturalism in the United States is to look into how racial and ethnic boundaries are defined, maintained, and contested in this society. In everyday life in the United States, it is a pervasive tendency to classify individuals into existing cultural groupings according to their “lineage,” and to assume little or no variation within the categories. In the meantime, much academic research repeatedly points to racial and ethnic groups being socially constructed, and that therefore, racial and ethnic identities are contextual and multi-layered, and members within a group are far from monolithic. This chapter adds to this debate against the deceptively simplistic, yet prevailing, view that regards racial and ethnic groups as largely impermeable and static, by underlining the dynamism and multiplicity of cultural identities perceived by a group of transnational migrants.

This story crosses two continents and takes place in Russia and the United States. It is unique as it follows my emotional responses to events that took place first, during my childhood and later, during transformational and volatile periods in the history of Russia. Simultaneously, the story should resonate with any woman who experienced adversity, was rerouted from her native place, had to witness collective upheavals of her people, and came to realize a strong connection between her experiences and her leadership path. This is the story of a bicultural woman’s courage, hope, and resilience.

This research examines the impact of biculturalism on the decision making, identity perceptions, and consumption patterns of children of parents from different countries of origin and different cultural and ethnic backgrounds (i.e., biculturals from birth).

This research uses semi-structured depth interviews with the adult children of binational households. We use our Cross Ball and Jar (CBJ) projective technique, which utilizes a tactile, hands-on sorting and ranking process to facilitate discussion of the multifaceted identities and cultural affiliations of bicultural consumers.

Our findings reveal that these “true” biculturals, growing up within a bicultural and binational home, have a more fluid, less clear-cut perception of their identity. Four emergent themes are examined: “Openness,” “Splitness,” “Outside the Mainstream,” and “Badge of Honor.”

Based on these findings, the complexity of identity perceptions is revealed. Participants’ discussion of their struggles to fit in adds to our efforts to better understand multiculturalism’s impact, an understanding facilitated by the use of our CBJ projective technique.

This study raises awareness about the consumption behavior of multicultural consumers and their ongoing interaction with mainstream society. Second, our research extends the current literature on multiculturalism and biculturalism, by focusing on this particular type of bicultural consumer. Finally, this research tests the innovative CBJ projective technique, as a simple and flexible interactive tool to assist researchers in exploring complex, multifaceted identities.

The study investigated the relevance of psychosocial variables and how they interact with socio economic status (SES) as it relates to the persistence of African-American students at the major US public universities. The study analyzed the responses of 327 web survey participants attending a major public university in the eastern region of the United States. The results suggest that students from higher SES backgrounds, more than likely, have already acquired or are more easily able to adopt characteristics that are ideal for persistence (e.g., commitment to personal goals, and biculturalism) than students from lower SES backgrounds.

Previous studies have shown that – even after controlling for precollege performance – students who come from families with higher-income levels and parental education persist to graduate at higher rates and earn higher-grade point averages (Bowen & Bok, 1998; Pascarella, 1985). This study purports to provide the context for reflecting on the ways in which current student persistence theories might be modified to account more directly for how SES may influence psychosocial variables that contribute to the process of African-American student persistence in major US universities.

At times the self may be bicultural only in ideas and thought, for the individual lacks the opportunity to actual live biculturally. Very recent immigrants who are barely learning the language of the new country, and have yet to fully understand social cues and the deeper nuances of the language and social customs of the new country would fall into this category. Indeed, the chapter on becoming musically bicultural is an example of the bicultural self as ideas and thoughts, and we could extend Simmel's analogy to include, in this case, living musically in one world while socially restricted by segregation from living in some of the situations which provided the creative fuel for the world from which one is excluded. It is in this same sense that millions of teenagers in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America may experience Black American musical culture hip-hop and rap, and attempt to sing, dress, and act as if they are in an environment similar to the ones they have seen in American movies and videos. Their bicultural selves are rooted in images and are fed by their youthful imagination, but the social structural background where theses, at least some of them, middle class youth, play out the drama of rap and hip-hop reside in the bicultural self as idea and thought. In a Kantian mode, also may be Schopenhauerian, it might be suggested that the idea and thought always precede the actual doing or living.