Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

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  • Multiracial in a Monoracial World: Interaciality Informing Academic Work

    Multiracial in a Monoracial World: Interaciality Informing Academic Work

    University of Michigan Hatcher Graduate Library
    Gallery (Room 100)
    913 S University Ave
    Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109
    2015-10-26

    Martha Jones, Prof. of History and Afroamerican & African Studies, co-director of the Michigan Law Program in Race, Law & History. Dr. Jones’ scholarly interests include the history of race, citizenship, slavery, and the rights of women in the United States and the Atlantic world.

    Edward West, Thurnau Prof. of Art and Design. Professor West’s photographs and writing examine the lives and experiences of multiracial people around the world. His recent exhibit and publication, So Called, drew from his travels around the world photographing multiracial people.

    Mark Kamimura-Jimenez, Director, Graduate Student Success, Rackham Graduate School, Lecturer, Oakland University. Dr. Kamimura-Jimenez’s research examines the college experience for multiracial students.

    What Does it Mean to be Multiracial in a Monoracial World? Part of a year-long series of events that explore what it means to be multiracial in a monoracial world. This faculty panel includes: Martha Jones, Prof. of History and Afroamerican & African Studies, co-director of the Michigan Law Program in Race, Law & History. Dr. Jones’ scholarly interests include the history of race, citizenship, slavery, and the rights of women in the United States and the Atlantic world. Edward West, Thurnau Prof. of Art and Design. Professor West’s photographs and writing examine the lives and experiences of multiracial people around the world. His recent exhibit and publication, So Called, drew from his travels around the world photographing multiracial people. Mark Kamimura-Jimenez, Director, Graduate Student Success, Rackham Graduate School, Lecturer, Oakland University. Dr. Kamimura-Jimenez’s research examines the college experience for multiracial students.

    Watch the entire video (01:34:22) here.

  • The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation After the Genome

    The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation After the Genome

    Beacon Press
    2016-01-12
    216pages
    6 x 9 Inches
    Cloth ISBN: 978-080703301-2

    Alondra Nelson, Dean of Social Science; Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies
    Columbia University, New York, New York

    The unexpected story of how genetic testing is affecting race in America

    We know DNA is a master key that unlocks medical and forensic secrets, but its genealogical life is both revelatory and endlessly fascinating. Tracing genealogy is now the second-most popular hobby amongst Americans, as well as the second-most visited online category. This billion-dollar industry has spawned popular television shows, websites, and Internet communities, and a booming heritage tourism circuit.

    The tsunami of interest in genetic ancestry tracing from the African American community has been especially overwhelming. In The Social Life of DNA, Alondra Nelson takes us on an unprecedented journey into how the double helix has wound its way into the heart of the most urgent contemporary social issues around race.

    For over a decade, Nelson has deeply studied this phenomenon. Artfully weaving together keenly observed interactions with root-seekers alongside illuminating historical details and revealing personal narrative, she shows that genetic genealogy is a new tool for addressing old and enduring issues. In The Social Life of DNA, she explains how these cutting-edge DNA-based techniques are being used in myriad ways, including grappling with the unfinished business of slavery: to foster reconciliation, to establish ties with African ancestral homelands, to rethink and sometimes alter citizenship, and to make legal claims for slavery reparations specifically based on ancestry.

    Nelson incisively shows that DNA is a portal to the past that yields insight for the present and future, shining a light on social traumas and historical injustices that still resonate today. Science can be a crucial ally to activism to spur social change and transform twenty-first-century racial politics. But Nelson warns her readers to be discerning: for the social repair we seek can’t be found in even the most sophisticated science. Engrossing and highly original, The Social Life of DNA is a must-read for anyone interested in race, science, history and how our reckoning with the past may help us to chart a more just course for tomorrow.

  • The US presidency was not designed for a man of Obama’s racial background.

    The US presidency was not designed for a man of Obama’s racial background. Instead, it was conceived by and for White males, particularly privileged Christian, heterosexual White males. Hence, how might it feel to be the first African-American commander in chief of an imperial and White hegemonic state? Only Obama can answer this question. Only he knows, for example, how it feels to be undermined and called names by conservative Whites, including White males in the US Congress. Due to the social construction of race, which is linked to the lasting legacy of slavery, colonization, and White supremacy, Blacks are represented and treated as less intelligent and less competent than Whites.

    Pierre Wilbert Orelus, Race, Power, and the Obama Legacy. (Oxford, New York: Routledge, 2015) 18.

  • Blackness didn’t originate with my ancestors’ feelings about how they wanted to self-identify.

    Blackness didn’t originate with my ancestors’ feelings about how they wanted to self-identify. It was created over a period of centuries through very specific, deliberate constructions in European and white American schools of biology, phrenology, philosophy, anthropology, and political and legal systems to uphold the intrinsic superiority of whiteness and corresponding black inferiority.

    Malaika Jabali, “Shaun King Is Not Rachel Dolezal: What the Media Gets Wrong About Race in America,” For Harriet, August 29, 2015. http://www.forharriet.com/2015/08/shaun-king-is-not-rachel-dolezal-what.html.

  • The Free State of Jones Movie to be released May 13, 2016

    The Free State of Jones Movie to be released May 13, 2016

    Renegade South: Histories of Unconventional Southerners
    2016-01-05

    Vikki Bynum, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History
    Texas State University, San Marcos


    The Free State of Jones Movie poster

    Victoria E. Bynum is author of the book The Free State of Jones, Movie Edition: Mississippi’s Longest Civil War from which the move is based.

  • Race, Power, and the Obama Legacy

    Race, Power, and the Obama Legacy

    Routledge
    2015-10-09
    174 pages
    Hardback ISBN: 9781612058788
    Paperback ISBN: 9781612058795

    Pierre Wilbert Orelus, Associate Professor of Curriculum and Instruction
    New Mexico State University

    This book critically examines Obama’s presidency and legacy, especially in regard to race, inequality, education, and political power. Orelus depicts an “interest convergence factor” that led many White liberals and the corporate media to help Obama get elected in 2008 and 2012. He assesses Obama’s political accomplishments, including parts of his domestic policies that support gay rights and equal pay for women. Special attention is given to Obama’s educational policies, like Race to the Top, and the effects of such policies on both the learning and academic outcome of students, particularly linguistically and culturally diverse students. In a race and power framework, Orelus relates domestic policies to the effects of Obama’s foreign policies on the lives of people in poorer countries, especially where innocent children and women have been killed by war and drone strikes authorized by Obama’s administration. The author invites readers to question and transcend the historical symbolism of Obama’s political victory in an effort to carefully examine and critique his actions as reflected through both his domestic and foreign policies.

    Table of Contents

    • Foreword by Mike Cole
    • Introduction by Curry Malott
    • 1. Race, Power, Obama’s Presidency and Legacy
    • 2. Obama Dancing with Voucher Capitalism and White Hegemony
    • 3. Obama Caught at the Crossroad of Black Masculinity and White Patriarchy
    • 4. Obama: A Black Face of the US Imperialist and Neocolonial Power?
    • 5. Obama Trapped in Professor Luis Gates’s and Sgt. Crowley’s Racial Storm
    • 6. Beyond Obama’s Historical Symbolism: A Conversation with Eduardo Bonilla-Silva
    • 7. Obama’s Foreign Policy and Its Implications for His legacy
    • Afterword by Paul R. Carr

  • But my sons aren’t any less loveable for being mixed, and while one is darker than the other, both of them will have a right to sing the songs of my nation and stand with me in honor.

    I understand the need to keep our blood. It’s scary to see fewer of us. But my sons aren’t any less loveable for being mixed, and while one is darker than the other, both of them will have a right to sing the songs of my nation and stand with me in honor.

    Terese Mailhot, “‘Here Comes Honky!’: Why I Married a White Guy,” Indian Country Today Media Network, January 6, 2016. http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2016/01/06/here-comes-honky-why-i-married-white-guy.

  • Shaun King Is Not Rachel Dolezal: What the Media Gets Wrong About Race in America

    Shaun King Is Not Rachel Dolezal: What the Media Gets Wrong About Race in America

    For Harriet
    2015-08-29

    Malaika Jabali

    As they have in the past, the conservative truth spinners behind the online media outlet Breitbart News Network have initiated an attack against yet another person of color fighting for civil and human rights. The target this time is activist Shaun King, who has been vocal about the police abuse that has permeated our consciousness for over a year. In likening Shaun King to Rachel Dolezal, the network accused King of lying about being half black in order to receive a “Sons of Oprah” scholarship to attend Morehouse College, a historically Black college and university.

    There are some obvious logical deficiencies we could point to as to why BNN needs to have a seat. For starters, few Black people could look at Shaun King and identify him as being a completely white man. Race construction involves a composite of man-made ideas, but phenotype is a key feature among them. Plenty of African-Americans and Black people throughout the Diaspora have light-skinned relatives who look like King. While some may have taken a double take, we accepted his identity and let him do him. Even when Rachel Dolezal’s family revealed that she was lying about her race, many Black Americans were more amused than betrayed and took to Twitter to share in a collective laugh…

    …Blackness didn’t originate with my ancestors’ feelings about how they wanted to self-identify. It was created over a period of centuries through very specific, deliberate constructions in European and white American schools of biology, phrenology, philosophy, anthropology, and political and legal systems to uphold the intrinsic superiority of whiteness and corresponding black inferiority…

    Read the entire article here.

  • What’s the Difference with “Difference”?

    What’s the Difference with “Difference”?

    University of Washington
    Kane Hall, Room 120
    4069 Spokane Lane
    Seattle, Washington 98105
    2016-01-14, 19:30 PST (Local Time)

    Ralina L. Joseph, Associate Professor
    Department of Communication
    (also adjunct associate professor in the Departments of American Ethnic Studies and Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies)
    University of Washington

    Language is power. The words we use and the names we say count, both individually and institutionally. This is particularly true when it comes to minoritized, identity-based nomenclature, such as the language of a racialized and gendered naming. The movement from “colored” to “negro” to “black” to “African-American” signifies important historical shifts in the state and community-naming processes. In other words, the words we use matter in terms of how we assess, frame, and ultimately understand difference.

    But what about the naming of “difference” itself? Difference is a term that late 20th and early 21st century scholars of race, gender, and sexuality have claimed and yet left largely untheorized. We use the word difference almost reflexively. Difference replaces—or rather revises—diversity, multiculturalism, or a long-connected string of descriptors such as race, gender, sexuality, class, nationality, and ability. But what does this shift in language mean and why is it significant for the ways in which we assess, inhabit, and perhaps even change our world? Does a change to “difference” lead to a change in identity and inequality?

    Registration opens December 2015.

    You do not need to be an alum of the University of Washington to attend or register.

    For more information, click here.

  • ‘Here Comes Honky!’: Why I Married a White Guy

    ‘Here Comes Honky!’: Why I Married a White Guy

    Indian Country Today Media Network
    2016-01-06

    Terese Mailhot

    When my sister’s dates pulled into our driveway my mother would yell, “Here comes Honky!” My sister was always livid, embarrassed, but still, she went out with white men most of her adult life. I always thought she was a traitor. I thought someday my Indian prince would come: the son of an activist in braids, with a mind full of theory and a stoic wisdom. But surprisingly I fell in love with a white man, with dusty blond hair and blue eyes.

    I was always told we were a dying breed. “Meet a Native man,” my mother said. Blood quantum is important where I’m from. Land rights, healthcare, housing, and assistance all deal with blood quantum and how Indian one is ‘officially.’ Besides that, marrying Native was always what I dreamed of.

    For generations Native women could not govern their own bodies, because white men and officials dictated we were their wards. We were subject to exploitation, objectification, and degradation at the hands of white people. Why would I ever want to give my body or love to a white man, a man who could never understand my grief or lineage?…

    Read the entire article here.