Skin tone determines which parent segregates which mixed-race sibling.

Evidence

When the parents divorce, they racialize and segregate the siblings by picking a daughter that approximates their skin tone, accentuating the particular racial formations and ideological underpinnings that have informed each parent’s asymmetrical positionalities in US structures. The father takes Cole to Brazil in pursuit of racial equality, while the mother takes Birdie to the various locations of race in the United States, what Birdie identifies as “the underneath,” Caucasia, “a world without names, without pasts, [and] without documents” (p. 115). — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2485

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Physical homeland and language shape how parents classify multiracial children — Tatiana I. Zamora and Amado M. Padilla, Making sense of conflicting messages of…, 123