Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

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  • Mixed Roots: Writers on Multiracial Identity and Both/And Belonging

    Mixed Roots: Writers on Multiracial Identity and Both/And Belonging

    Beacon Press
    2026-10-13
    Cloth ISBN: 978-080702136-1
    6 x 9 Inches

    Anne Liu Kellor, Editor

    29 personal essays exploring mixed identity, belonging, family, racism, community and the paradoxical ways of being in the world

    Mixed people carry lifelong embodied knowledge about existing in non-binary, intersectional worlds. Mixed Roots presents 29 personal essays that complicate the narrative around race and identity—dispelling narrow ideas that there is ever one “right” or singular way for folks to identify.

    Born out of a community of writers formed through editor Anne Liu Kellor’s annual writing workshop, Mixed Roots is filled with pieces infused with a deep examination of privilege, microaggressions, whiteness, ancestral trauma, internalized racism, and paradoxical truths—going beyond common tropes found in many mixed-race narratives. Highlighting various Asian, Black, Native, Latine, and Arab mixed voices from writers ranging from their 20s to 70s, Mixed Roots invites more multiracial and mixed roots people in to actively contribute to the dialogue around race, whether or not they publicly identify as “mixed.”

    A powerful collection of personal truths and cultural insight, Mixed Roots reveals how community and narrative can be useful tools to see how alike we are. We all carry in our bodies the historical legacies, confusion, trauma, and harm caused by racialized experiences—Mixed Roots says we are multilayered, not easily defined or contained by one story, and as such, can speak to us all.

  • The Routledge International Handbook of Interracial and Intercultural Relationships and Mental Health

    The Routledge International Handbook of Interracial and Intercultural Relationships and Mental Health

    Routledge
    2025-07-07
    Hardcover ISBN 9781032473154
    592 Pages

    Edited by:
    Shivon Raghunandan
    Roy Moodley
    Kelley Kenney

    The Routledge International Handbook of Interracial and Intercultural Relationships and Mental Health presents critical, theoretical, empirical, and psychological accounts of intercultural intimacies.

    It challenges pervasive Eurocentric discourse and ideas and offers current, scholarly, practical, equitable, global, and intercultural responsive philosophies, theories, clinical frameworks, and practices. The chapters in this text offer critical perspectives on the mental health and well‑being of intercultural couples, inclusive of multi‑cultural, multi‑ethnic, multi‑faith, multi‑sexual, multi‑racial, multi‑gendered, multi‑abled couples, and their intersections. A diverse range of international contributors present an intersectional analysis of traditional and contemporary cultural ideas and relationship philosophies and explore multiple global and cultural psychologies that shape the health and well‑being of intercultural couples and their families.

    This handbook is essential for students, educators, mental health clinicians, and researchers in counselling, psychotherapy, clinical psychology, psychiatry, and social work programmes.

  • Loving Across Racial and Cultural Boundaries: Interracial and Intercultural Relationships and Mental Health Conference

    Loving Across Racial and Cultural Boundaries: Interracial and Intercultural Relationships and Mental Health Conference

    Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
    252 Bloor Street West
    Toronto, Ontario M5S 1V6, Canada
    2025-10-24 through 2025-10-25

    We are pleased to announce an upcoming conference exploring the intersections of interracial and intercultural relationships, mental health and well-being! As societies become increasingly diverse, romantic partnerships that cross racial, ethnic, and cultural boundaries present a complex and multifaceted reality, full of both unique challenges and profound enrichment. This conference seeks to create a collaborative, engaging and inclusive space to share research, clinical practices, personal narratives, and community-based insights on the psychological, emotional, and relational dimensions of mixedness and cultural hybridity.

    For more information, click here.

  • Call for Proposals: 2026 Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference at UCLA

    Call for Proposals: 2026 Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference at UCLA

    The 2026 CMRSA Conference Programming Committee
    Critical Mixed Race Studies Association
    2025-06-12

    Critical Mixed Race Studies (CMRS) is a biennial conference, field of study, and scholarly and activist community. The CMRS conference draws over 500 multiracial scholars, artists, students, activists, clinicians, community organizations and advocates from all over the world. The CMRS conference was the first, and remains one of the only, counterspaces for those interested in critically exploring constructions of race through a multiracial lens.

    Greetings!

    We are thrilled to announce the Call for Proposals for the 8th Biennial Critical Mixed Race Studies Association Conference, taking place February 19–21, 2026, at UCLA in Los Angeles, California. This year’s theme is:

    Critical Healing: Honoring Resilience and Disrupting Power through Diverse Critical Mixed Race Perspectives

    As we gather in the face of shifting laws, policies, and social climates, the 2026 CMRS Conference offers a powerful space to build community, share knowledge, and engage in critical healing practices. Drawing inspiration from Resmaa Menakem’s work on racialized trauma and healing, we aim to cultivate spaces for disruption, solidarity, and sustained justice.

    We’re especially proud to launch this call for proposals on Loving Day, which commemorates the 1967 Supreme Court decision in Loving v. Virginia. This symbolic date reminds us of the ongoing struggles and triumphs of mixed race communities—and grounds our conference in a legacy of resistance, love, and transformation.

    We invite proposals from academics, artists, clinicians, practitioners, students, advocacy groups, and community members. Sessions may take the form of papers, panels, performances, workshops, visual art, film, and other creative or community-centered formats.

    Proposals should connect to one or more of the following areas:

    • Healing rooted in Multiracial experience
    • Disruption of systemic oppression
    • Intersectional and intergenerational strategies
    • National and global Multiracial solidarity
    • Critical practices for social and political change

    Timeline:

    • Proposal Submission Deadline: Wednesday, 2025-10-01 @ 23:59 PST
    • Review Deadline: Tuesday, 2025-10-14
    • Notifications Sent: Saturday, 2025-11-01
    • Presenter Registration Deadline: Monday, 2025-12-01

    To submit a proposal, click here.

  • Participants Needed for a Paid Research Study: Up to $100

    Participants Needed for a Paid Research Study: Up to $100

    Dominique Callahan
    University of California, Los Angeles

    2025-03-10

    Hello! My name is Dominique, and I am a graduate student at UCLA. I am currently recruiting participants for my dissertation, which explores how Black parents talk to their biracial Black-White children about race and racial identity in the United States. I am a biracial Black-White young adult myself, and I am hoping to learn more about this topic by speaking with Black parents and their biracial children. I would appreciate if you would consider participating and/or forward this information to other potential participants.

    Eligibility requirements:

    • You identify as a Black/African American parent.
    • You have at least 1 biological biracial Black/White child who is between the ages 11-18.
    • You are available to participate in one 60-to-90-minute virtual interview about how you talk to your child about race and racial identity. Parents will be compensated $50 via a paper check sent to their home address.
    • You agree to allow your child to participate in one 30-to-45-minute virtual interview about similar topics. The compensation for this interview will be $25 in the form of an electronic Amazon gift card.
    • Optional: You are available to participate in one 15-minute virtual observation and discussion task that includes both you and your biracial child. The compensation for this activity will be $25 in the form of an electronic Amazon gift card.

    For all studies, participation is completely voluntary, and all of your responses will be kept confidential. If you are interested in participating, please first fill out this brief (5 minute) eligibility survey: We will proceed with scheduling the virtual data collection sessions after you complete the survey.

    If you have any questions or concerns, please contact me at dcdissertationproject@gmail.com. Thank you in advance for your interest!

  • You were either Black or white. To claim whiteness as a mixed child was to deny and hide Blackness. Our families understood that the world we were growing into would seek to denigrate this part of us and we would need a community that was made up, always and already, of all shades of Blackness.

    Though I am younger than Ms. Harris by six years, in her Blackness, I recognize my own. It is a Blackness born not in slavery but much later, in a whole other context, in the wake of the civil rights and Black Power movements, when there was no mixed-race category. You were either Black or white. To claim whiteness as a mixed child was to deny and hide Blackness. Our families understood that the world we were growing into would seek to denigrate this part of us and we would need a community that was made up, always and already, of all shades of Blackness. The big secret I knew — and Ms. Harris surely knows it as well — is that our Blackness was born not out of something lost but out of something gained.

    Danzy Senna, “In Kamala Harris’s Blackness, I See My Own,” The New York Times, August 4, 2024. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/04/opinion/kamala-harris-biracial.html.

  • Frederick Douglass, A Life in American History

    Frederick Douglass, A Life in American History

    Bloomsbury
    2025-02-06
    320 pages
    235 x 156 mm
    Hardback ISBN: 9798216170464
    Ebook (PDF) ISBN: 9798216170471
    Ebook (ePub & Mobi) ISBN: 9798216170488

    Mark Christian, Professor, Urban Education, Africana Studies
    Lehman College, City University of New York

    Meet one of the most influential men in the United States’ history of emancipation and Black rights.

    Chronicling Frederick Douglass’s life in an accessible way, this biography engages with history and wrestles with biases, falsehoods, and unknown facts in order to tell Douglass’s story as accurately as possible. Taking a comprehensive look at Douglass’s life from birth to death, the book delves into Douglass’s time as an enslaved African American, his escape, his experiences as a prominent orator and champion of Black rights, his writings and publications, and the influence he had on shaping society of the time. A detailed timeline allows students to quickly reference and recall major points in Douglass’s history, and the book is further augmented by the inclusion of primary documents, which include samples of Douglass’s own copious works, as well as words written about Douglass by his contemporaries. Readers will walk away with not only a better understanding of American history but an appreciation for Frederick Douglass’s impact in his own time and his lasting relevance for all those who continue to fight for a more equal society today.

    Table of Contents

    • Series Foreword
    • Preface
    • Acknowledgements
    • 1. Historical Context
    • 2. Born in Bondage with Dreams of Liberty
    • 3. Finding Freedom and the Abolitionist Cause
    • 4. No More Master and Mastering Self-Determination Abroad
    • 5. A Man of Independence in Public and Private Life
    • 6. The Erudite Douglass in Letters, Speech, and Prose
    • 7. Why Frederick Douglass Matters
    • Timeline
    • Primary Documents
    • Bibliography
    • Index

  • In Kamala Harris’s Blackness, I See My Own

    In Kamala Harris’s Blackness, I See My Own

    The New York Times
    2024-08-04

    Danzy Senna

    By Pedro Nekoi

    We seem to be beginning yet another season of a perennially popular American spectacle, “How Much Is That Mulatto in the Window?” I frequently think that, after 400 years, this show is about to go off the air — jump the shark, as it were. But then it returns, with ever more absurd plot lines. Yet even as a so-called mulatto myself, I can’t stop watching.

    The Hollywood pitch goes something like this: Put racially ambiguous Black people in the public eye — Kamala, Meghan, Barack. Have them declare themselves Black. Count down the minutes before the world erupts into outrage, distress and suspicion. People scream their confusion and doubt, accusing the figures of lying about who they really are. It makes for good TV.

    On last week’s episode, Donald Trump got his cameo, accusing Vice President Kamala Harris of switching races. “She was Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden she made a turn and she became a Black person,” he said during an appearance in front of the National Association of Black Journalists. His staged bewilderment, implying that she was practicing some sort of sinister racial sorcery, felt wild for 2024, when mixed-race people are everywhere, visually overrepresented in Target commercials and Kardashian family reunions. Yet even in the midst of our fetishization, a stubborn strain of mulattophobia remains widespread. And no matter what answer we give to the ubiquitous question — What are you? — someone, somewhere, will accuse us of lying, of being a grifter trying to impersonate another race, a more real race.

    Multiracial, mulatto, mixed-nuts, halfies — whatever you want to call us today, we remain the fastest-growing demographic in our country. When we enter the spotlight, we are often treated as specimens, there to be dissected, poked, debated, disputed and disinherited. We are and always have been a Rorschach test for how the world is processing its anxiety, rage, confusion and desire about this amorphous construction we call race…

    Read the entire essay here.

  • Contested Bodies: Pregnancy, Childrearing, and Slavery in Jamaica

    Contested Bodies: Pregnancy, Childrearing, and Slavery in Jamaica

    University of Pennsylvania Press
    June 2017
    328 Pages
    6.00 x 9.00 in, 10 illus.
    Hardcover ISBN: 9780812249187
    Paperback ISBN: 9780812224603
    eBook ISBN:

    Sasha Turner, Associate Professor of History
    The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland

    It is often thought that slaveholders only began to show an interest in female slaves’ reproductive health after the British government banned the importation of Africans into its West Indian colonies in 1807. However, as Sasha Turner shows in this illuminating study, for almost thirty years before the slave trade ended, Jamaican slaveholders and doctors adjusted slave women’s labor, discipline, and health care to increase birth rates and ensure that infants lived to become adult workers. Although slaves’ interests in healthy pregnancies and babies aligned with those of their masters, enslaved mothers, healers, family, and community members distrusted their owners’ medicine and benevolence. Turner contends that the social bonds and cultural practices created around reproductive health care and childbirth challenged the economic purposes slaveholders gave to birthing and raising children.

    Through powerful stories that place the reader on the ground in plantation-era Jamaica, Contested Bodies reveals enslaved women’s contrasting ideas about maternity and raising children, which put them at odds not only with their owners but sometimes with abolitionists and enslaved men. Turner argues that, as the source of new labor, these women created rituals, customs, and relationships around pregnancy, childbirth, and childrearing that enabled them at times to dictate the nature and pace of their work as well as their value. Drawing on a wide range of sources—including plantation records, abolitionist treatises, legislative documents, slave narratives, runaway advertisements, proslavery literature, and planter correspondence—Contested Bodies yields a fresh account of how the end of the slave trade changed the bodily experiences of those still enslaved in Jamaica.

    Contents

    • Introduction. Transforming Bodies
    • Chapter 1. Conceiving Moral and Industrious Subjects: Women, Children, and Abolition
    • Chapter 2. “The Best Ones Who Are Fit to Breed”: The Quest for Biological Reproduction
    • Chapter 3. When Workers Become Mothers, Who Works? Motherhood, Labor, and Punishment
    • Chapter 4. “Buckra Doctor No Do You No Good”: Struggles over Maternal Health Care
    • Chapter 5. “Dead Before the Ninth Day”: Struggles over Neonatal Care
    • Chapter 6. Mothers Know Best? Maternal Authority and Children’s Survival
    • Chapter 7. Raising Hardworking Adults: Labor, Punishment, and Slave Childhood
    • Conclusion. Transforming Slavery
    • Notes
    • Sources
    • Index
    • Acknowledgments

  • On Turning Black

    On Turning Black

    The New York Times
    2024-08-01

    Esau McCaulley, Contributing Opinion Writer

    Illustration by The New York Times; Photo: Erin Schaff/The New York Times

    During his interview before the National Association of Black Journalists this week, Donald Trump was asked if he would call upon his fellow Republicans to refrain from labeling Vice President Kamala Harris a “D.E.I. candidate” for the presidency. Rather than condemn his party’s increasingly troubling language on the topic, Mr. Trump took the opportunity to question Ms. Harris’s racial identity.

    “She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage,” he said. “I didn’t know she was Black, until a number of years ago, when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black. So I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black? I respect either one, but she obviously doesn’t.”

    This is all clearly untrue. Ms. Harris graduated from Howard University, a historically Black university, and she is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, a historically Black sorority. Her biographies and self-descriptions throughout her career have cited both her Black and Indian identities.

    My wife is white, so we have multiracial children. Depending on the context, they can refer to themselves as Black or multiracial. When my children describe themselves using the latter term, they are acknowledging that their mother is a part of their story as well. Does Mr. Trump really expect interracial people to deny half of their families?…

    Read the entire essay here.