Out of Place?

Abstract

This article discusses the identity formation of mixed-race children in Ghana. We recognize the cultural, historical, and geographic specificities in conceptions of race and focus in this piece on exploring the processes by which individuals with parents from two racial groupings come to a sense of their identity in a context where their epidermal visibility makes them markedly different. Using the life histories of eight individuals with mixed-race identity who live in Ghana as a case study, we find that in Ghana, mixed-race individuals claim one of two identities. One group claims both identities leading to the formation of what Rocquemore (1998) would call a protean identity, that is, they are equally linked to both of their parents’ societies. We take Rocquemore’s concept one step further by highlighting one of the mechanisms by which this identity is produced in Ghana, a global South context; close ties to both sides of their family made possible by socio-economic circumstances. Protean identity formations are more likely for young and middle-aged Ghanaian individuals who grew up in the 1990s and beyond where improvements in travel and communication made it much easier to maintain multi-stranded transnational connections across borders. These individuals live and spend an equal amount of time in both societies thus maintaining close ties to both sides of their family. The older group who had less access to the communities of their non-Ghanaian/white parent are more likely to claim what Rocquemore and Brunsma (2002) would call a singular identity, only Ghanaianness. However, for both groups, their epidermal visibility marks them as different, and Ghanaians respond to both groups as the other.