Mixed-racebending as adaptation: rethinking multiracial casting in college-related young adult screen media

Abstract Media adaptations, whether of narratives, identities, or racial constructs, shape how audiences interpret shifting social realities. Despite rapid growth of the multiracial youth population, scholarship on multiracial representation in college-related screen media remains limited. Multiracial characters are often deployed as narrative props in educational or racial discourse, reinforcing monoracial paradigms. This article introduces mixed-racebending as an interpretive framework that conceptualizes multiracial casting as a mode of adaptation that reconfigures the racial ‘text’ of characters. Building on debates around racebending, the practice of recasting Characters of Colour with white actors, as seen in adaptations such as The Last Airbender (2010), we argue that such practices reinforce rigid racial categories and obscure the fluidity of multiracial identities. Focusing on public debates surrounding the casting of multiracial actors in young adult, college-centred television and film, we use mixed-racebending to examine how media adaptations either constrain or expand understandings of racial identity. Approaching multiraciality through adaptation studies highlights how racial categories themselves are adapted, reworked, and contested across media forms. Ultimately, this framework positions race and identity as central sites of adaptation, with implications for how multiracial identities are negotiated, validated, and developed in college-going contexts.