Mixed Race Studies

The Cumulative Effects of Colorism: Race, Wealth, and Skin Tone

Social Forces
Published online: 2023-03-13
DOI: 10.1093/sf/soad038

Alexander Adames, Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Sociology
University of Pennslyvania

Researchers have long documented a persistent Black–White gap in wealth. These studies, however, often treat race as a discrete category, eluding its socially constructed nature. As a result, these studies assume that the “effect of race” is consistent across all individuals racialized as Black. Studies that make this assumption potentially obscure heterogeneity in the size of the Black–White wealth gap. Research on skin color stratification suggests that it is possible that the Black–White wealth gap varies by the extent to which a racial subgroup is deemed to fit the broader racial umbrella. In turn, I adopt a more complex operationalization of race that is based on both racial and skin tone appraisals. Drawing on data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, I find that the Black–White wealth gap does vary by the Black skin tone subgroup. Generally, the Black–White gap in assets is smallest when focusing on lighter-skin Black people and largest when focusing on darker-skin Black people. These differences are not only the result of initial disadvantage but also cumulative disadvantage in the rate of wealth accumulation. Lastly, the findings suggest that the Black–White wealth gaps grow at a faster rate than the skin tone wealth gaps. I found that differences were robust to adjustments for parental socioeconomic status, childhood background, and interviewer characteristics. I conclude by discussing the theoretical implications for our understanding of the mechanisms undergirding Black–White disparities in wealth attainment.

Read or purchase the article here.

Invitation to Contribute to The Routledge International Handbook of Interracial Relationships and Mental Health

2023-01-10

We, Shivon Raghunandan, Roy Moodley and Kelley Kenney are writing to you as editors of The Routledge International Handbook of Interracial Relationships and Mental Health, to be published by Routledge as part of their International Handbook series. We are inviting colleagues globally who have an academic, teaching, research, and publication interest in this topic to contribute to this text. More specifically, we are seeking authors for the following chapters.

Chapter 2: Interracial Mixing: A Threat to White Supremacy and Colonial Structures
Chapter 5: Historical Retrospectives of Interracial Relationships: Mixed-Race Movement and Impact
Chapter 11: Interracial Relationships in Latin Communities
Chapter 16: Intercultural/Mixed Race Relationships (and marriages) in the Caribbean
Chapter 30: Gender in Intercultural Relationships
Chapter 32: Interracial Relationships and Religion
Chapter 33: Interracial Relationships and Socio-Economic Status
Chapter 34: Interracial Relationships and Disability
Chapter 35: Interracial Relationships Across the Lifespan

Please allow us to offer a brief synopsis of the book. The Routledge International Handbook of Interracial Relationships and Mental Health will present critical theoretical, empirical, and psychological accounts of interracial and intercultural intimacies. This book is in response to the iniquitous underrepresentation of intercultural couples in psychology theory, research and practice and will challenge the pervasive Eurocentric discourse that currently guides the field of mental health. The book will offer current, scholarly, practical, equitable, global and intercultural responsive philosophies, theories, clinical frameworks and practices to clinicians, educators and students in the field of mental health and well-being, sociology and other related disciplines. Moreover, this handbook will explore how the social, cultural and geo-political histories and philosophies of intercultural relationships evolved.

The book will examine the evolution of these partnerships within the context of coloniality, heteropatriarchy, white supremacy and endogamy and explore how these discourses shaped the lived experiences and psychological well-being of intercultural couples globally. It will also provide a comprehensive analysis of intercultural relationships inclusive of diverse cross-racial pairings, global and international perspectives, intersectional identities, and transnational unions; and, indeed, 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.

To meet the deadline of a June 2024 submission to Routledge, first draft chapters will be submitted to the editors by August 2023. Editors will provide feedback by the end of October 2023 and final chapters will be submitted to the editors by the end of March 2024.

We are happy to provide further details if you are interested in contributing to this text.
If you are interested, please contact Shivon Raghunandan at shivon.raghunandan@humber.ca

With Best Wishes,

Shivon Raghunandan, Ed.D., Humber College, Canada
Roy Moodley, Ph.D., University of Toronto, Canada
Kelley Kenney, Ed.D., DeSales University, United States

Seeking Participants for High School Senior Project on Experiences of Mixed-Race Individuals

Valasone O’Neal, GSWLA Student
Tallwood High School, Virginia Beach, Virginia

2023-01-25

My name is Valasone O’Neal and I am a senior in the Global Studies and World Language Academy at Tallwood High School in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

As a requirement for graduation, I have to complete a senior project consisting of a research paper and action. For this project, I intend to collect the experiences of mixed-race people in order to highlight societal treatment and attitudes towards multiracial people in America. I want to conduct a series of interviews and create a short film that will be shown to Virginia Beach City Public Schools administration and students. If you or someone you know is interested, over the age of eighteen, not associated with Virginia Beach Public Schools, and identify as mixed-race, please contact me as at your earliest convenience at madelynevaloneal@gmail.com.

Thank you for your consideration of my request.

Multiracial: The Kaleidoscope of Mixedness

Polity
2022-12-27
232 pages
152 x 229 mm / 6 x 9 in
Hardback ISBN: 9781509534654
Paperback ISBN: 9781509534661
ebook ISBN: 9781509534678

Hephzibah V. Strmic-Pawl, Associate Professor of Sociology
Manhattanville College, Purchase, New York

The year 2000 was the first time the US Census permitted respondents to choose more than one race. Although the US has long recognized that a “mixed-race” population exists, the contemporary “multiracial population” presents different questions and implications for today’s diverse society.

This book is the first overview to bring a systematic critical race lens to the scholarship on mixedness. Avoiding the common pitfall of conflating “mixed” with “multiracial,” the book reveals how identity forms and fluctuates such that people with mixed heritage may identify as mixed, monoracial, and/or multiracial throughout their lives. It analyzes the dynamic and various manifestations of mixedness, including at the global level, to reveal its complex impact on both the structural and individual levels. Multiracial critically examines topics such as family dynamics and racial socialization, multiraciality in media and popular culture, and intersections of race, gender, class, and sexual orientation.

Integrating diverse theories, qualitative research, and national-level data, this accessible and engaging book is essential for students of race and those looking to understand the new field of multiraciality.

Table of Contents

• Detailed Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• CHAPTER 1: MULTIRACIAL AMERICA
• CHAPTER 2: DEFINING MIXED-RACE & MULTIRACIAL
• CHAPTER 3: RACE AND FAMILY
• CHAPTER 4: INTERSECTIONAL IDENTITIES & GLOBAL MIXEDNESS
• CHAPTER 5: MULTIRACIALISM IN THE MEDIA
• CHAPTER 6: NEW, SHIFTING, OR REBOUNDING BOUNDARIES
• References
• Notes
• Index

Mexico’s new racial reckoning: A movement protests colorism and white privilege

The Los Angeles Times
2022-10-20

Kate Linthicum, Staff Writer

MEXICO CITY — A few months ago, several employees of an upscale Mexico City steakhouse came forward with a damning allegation: The restaurant had a policy of segregation in which the best tables were reserved for the customers with the lightest skin.

The notion of whiter Mexicans getting preferential treatment was not surprising in a country where darker-skinned people have long earned less money, received less schooling and been all but invisible in the media. But the ensuing public outrage was.

Within days, activists mounted a boycott and the city launched an investigation into the restaurant, Sonora Grill Prime, which denied the accusations. Multiple public figures highlighted the scandal as evidence of pervasive bigotry. “Racism is real,” Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum told reporters, using a word long regarded as taboo. “We have to accept that it exists and fight it.”.

For the vast stretch of Mexico’s modern history, many denied that racism existed here at all.

They embraced the nation’s foundational myth that its people are mestizos, a single blended race of indigenous and Spanish blood, insisting that there could be no prejudice if all Mexicans were the same.

But a growing social movement is challenging that thinking, thrusting discussions of discrimination based on skin color to the fore…

Read the entire article here.

Racial Innocence: Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias and the Struggle for Equality

Beacon Press
2022-08-23
208 pages
5.5 x 8.5 Inches
Hardcover ISBN: ISBN: 978-080702013-5

Tanya Katerí Hernández, Archibald R. Murray Professor of Law
Fordham University School of Law, New York, New York

The first comprehensive book about anti-Black bias in the Latino community that unpacks the misconception that Latinos are “exempt” from racism due to their ethnicity and multicultural background.

Racial Innocence will challenge what you thought about racism and bias, and demonstrate that it’s possible for a historically marginalized group to experience discrimination and also be discriminatory. Racism is deeply complex, and law professor and comparative race relations expert Tanya Katerí Hernández exposes “the Latino racial innocence cloak” that often veils Latino complicity in racism. As Latinos are the second largest ethnic group in the US, this revelation is critical to dismantling systemic racism. Based on interviews, discrimination case files, and civil rights law, Hernández reveals Latino anti-Black bias in the workplace, the housing market, schools, places of recreation, criminal justice, and in Latino families.

By focusing on racism perpetrated by communities outside those of White non-Latino people, Racial Innocence brings to light the many Afro-Latino and African American victims of anti-Blackness at the hands of other people of color. Through exploring the interwoven fabric of discrimination and examining the cause of these issues, we can begin to move toward a more egalitarian society.

Mixed Race in Nordic Europe

Journal of Critical Mix Race Studies
Volume 1, Issue 2 (2022)
287 pages

Cover Image: Stein Egil Liland

Numerous scholarly works have been published on the topic of multiraciality and mixed-race experiences in the United States and Great Britain. There has historically been limited research on Nordic Europe. These analyses seek to help further research on Nordic Europe in terms of critical mixed race studies.

Read the entire issue here.

Do Conceptualisations of ‘Mixed Race’, ‘Interracial Unions’, and Race’s ‘Centrality to Understandings of Racism’ Challenge the UK’s Official Categorisation by Ethnic Group?

Peter J. Aspinall, Emeritus Reader in Population Health
Centre for Health Services Studies
University of Kent, Canterbury

Genealogy
Volume 6, Issue 2 (2022-06-13)
pages 52-74
DOI: 10.3390/genealogy6020052

A focus on ‘mixed race’ and mixedness in Britain has revived a debate around the central question of whether the decennial census and other official data collections should be capturing ‘race’ rather than ethnic group and producing ‘racial’ outputs. The British practice may seem out of step by some commentators, given that ‘mixed race’ is the term of choice amongst those it describes, and given scholarly interest in interracial unions. Moreover, the resurgence of interest in ‘race’ and racisms in the context of the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement and concern over the down-playing in a UK Government-commissioned report of the role of structural racism has enlivened the debate. However, this paper argues against a shift to ‘race’ in official data collection and for continued use of the conceptually preferable ‘ethnic group’ in the census question title, the section label ‘mixed/multiple ethnic groups’, and the ongoing provision of data on unions at the pan-ethnic and granular levels. A measure of socially constructed ‘race’ is already available in all but name in the pan-ethnic section labels (White, Asian, Black, Mixed, and Other) and the tick boxes under the ‘mixed/multiple’ heading. Ethnic group has been the conceptual basis of the question since the field trials for the 1991 Census, and its position has been strengthened by the increasing granularity of the categorisation (19 categories in the 2021 England and Wales Census) and by substantial distributed free-text provision that underpins the question’s context of self-identification. The wider understanding of ‘race’ identifications invokes ascription, imposition, and social categorisation rather than self-identification and subscription. There is also evidence of the unacceptability of ‘race’ in the context of the census amongst the wider society.

Read the entire article in PDF or HTML format.

Regimes beyond the One-Drop Rule: New Models of Multiracial Identity

Genealogy
Volume 6, Issue 2, (2022-06-20)
pages 57-80
DOI: 10.3390/genealogy6020057

Sarah Iverson, Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology
New York University

Ann Morning, Professor of Sociology
New York University

Aliya Saperstein, Associate Professor of Sociology; Benjamin Scott Crocker Professor in Human Biology
Stanford University, Stanford, California

Janet Xu, Postdoctoral Fellow
Inequality in America Initiative
Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts

The racial classification of mixed-race people has often been presumed to follow hypo- or hyperdescent rules, where they were assigned to either their lower- or higher-status monoracial ancestor group. This simple framework, however, does not capture actual patterns of self-identification in contemporary societies with multiple racialized groups and numerous mixed-race combinations. Elaborating on previous concepts of multiracial classification regimes, we argue that two other theoretical models must be incorporated to describe and understand mixed-race identification today. One is “co-descent”, where multiracial individuals need not align with one single race or another, but rather be identified with or demonstrate characteristics that are a blend of their parental or ancestral races. The other is the “dominance” framework, a modern extension of the “one-drop” notion that posits that monoracial ancestries fall along a spectrum where some—the “supercessive”—are more likely to dominate mixed-race categorization, and others—the “recessive”—are likely to be dominated. Drawing on the Pew Research Center’s 2015 Survey of Multiracial Adults, we find declining evidence of hypo- and hyperdescent at work in the United States today, some support for a dominance structure that upends conventional expectations about a Black one-drop rule, and a rising regime of co-descent. In addition, we explore how regimes of mixed-race classification vary by racial ancestry combination, gender, generation of multiraciality, and the time period in which multiracial respondents or their mixed-race ancestors were born. These findings show that younger, first-generation multiracial Americans, especially those of partial Asian or Hispanic descent, have left hypo- and hyperdescent regimes behind—unlike other young people today whose mixed-race ancestry stems from further back in their family tree.

Read the entire article in HTML or PDF format.

Asian-White Mixed Identity after COVID-19: Racist Racial Projects and the Effects on Asian Multiraciality

Genealogy
Volume 6, Issue 2, (2022-06-15)
pages 53-68
DOI: 10.3390/genealogy6020053

Hephzibah Strmic-Pawl, Assistant Professor, Sociology and Anthropology
Manhattanville College, Purchase, New York

Erica Chito Childs, Professor of Sociology
Hunter College, City University of New York, New York, New York

Stephanie Laudone, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Borough of Manhattan Community College, New York, New York

With the onset of the Coronavirus and racist statements about the origins of COVID-19 in China there has been a surge in anti-Asian discrimination in the United States. The U.S. case is worthy of special focus because of former President Trump’s explicit racist rhetoric, referring to the Coronavirus as the “China virus” and “Kung-flu”. This rise in anti-Asian discrimination has led to a heightened awareness of racism against Asians and a corollary increase in AAPI activism. Based on survey and in-depth interview data with Asian-White multiracials, we examine how recent spikes in anti-Asian hate has shifted Asian-White multiracials to have a more heightened awareness of racism and a shift in their racial consciousness. We theorize how multiracials intermediary status on the racial hierarchy can be radically shifted at any moment in relation to emerging racist racial projects, which has broader implications for the status of mixed people globally.

Read the entire article in HTML or PDF format.