Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

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  • Wuthering Heights realises Brontë’s vision with its dark-skinned Heathcliff

    Wuthering Heights realises Brontë’s vision with its dark-skinned Heathcliff

    The Guardian
    Film Blog
    2011-10-21

    Tola Onanuga, Freelance Subeditor and Writer

    At last, Andrea Arnold has bucked the trend of casting white actors in the role of Emily Brontë’s ‘gypsy’ foundling hero

    Andrea Arnold’s forthcoming adaptation of Emily Brontë’s classic 1847 novel Wuthering Heights, will see, for the first time, the character of Heathcliff played on screen by a mixed race actor.

    The casting of unknown actor James Howson, who is in his early 20s and from Leeds, shouldn’t be surprising given that Heathcliff was described in the original book as a “dark-skinned gypsy” and “a little lascar“—a 19th-century term for Indian sailors. Among the many screen adaptations of Wuthering Heights—which include musicals, TV serials, a Mexican version directed by Luis Buñuel and an ill-conceived teen romcom produced by MTV—a dark-skinned actor has never been given the role.

    Even though Brontë passed away in 1848, one can easily imagine the writer turning in her grave at the prospect of so many white actors portraying her “little lascar” throughout history. As any Briton who’s ever watched an American war film knows, it’s common practice for history to be rewritten during the film-making process, with writers often pushing the boundaries of artistic licence to its very limits…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Mixed Britannia [Reveiw]

    Mixed Britannia [Review]

    Caliban in London: a postcolonial subject in an imperial capital
    2011-10-10

    Anindya Raychaudhuri, Post-Doctoral Fellow
    Department of English Language and Literature
    University College London

    Caliban in London has previously reviewed part of the BBC’s new Mixed Race season. Thursday evening saw the screening of the first of a 3 part documentary called Mixed Britannia presented by George Alagiah. Using a mixture of archive footage, interviews with members of the community, and interviews with (unfortunately mainly White) academics and other experts, the programme attempts to trace the origins and development of mixed-race communities in Britain.

    Mixed Britannia encapsulates both the best and the worst of the BBC. Great use of archival footage and old photographs, meticulously researched, apparently sympathetic interviewing – one knows the strengths of this type of BBC programming, and this example certainly does not disappoint in that area. The producers of the programme clearly attempt to at least appear to b as inclusive as possible, though partly the nature of archive footage means that when profiling mixed-race families, it is the White bit of the family that gets more of the spotlight. For example, what was noticeably lacking was any sense of the lives of these people before they came to Britain, and what ties they and their mixed-race families might or might not have kept with their ‘homelands’.

    The bigger problems with this programme are, however, in the narrative. This episode ranged from 1910 to 1939, so it is not yet clear what narrative of current race-relations will be told in future episodes, but in this instance at least, it was very definitely one of ‘we used to be racist, and now we’re all better’. At multiple points in the programme, Alagiah read out excerpts from racist official documents, and invited the audience to share in the typically BBC self-righteous sense of superiority which can leave no room for the recognition that there are strong remnants of such thinking in today’s official policy…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Multiracial Politics or the Politics of being Multiracial?: Racial Theory, Civic Engagement, and Socio-political Participation in a Contemporary Society

    Multiracial Politics or the Politics of being Multiracial?: Racial Theory, Civic Engagement, and Socio-political Participation in a Contemporary Society

    University of Southern California
    August 2010
    376 pages

    Jungmiwha Suk Bullock

    A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (AMERICAN STUDIES AND ETHNICITY)

    This dissertation examines the impacts of historical and contemporary racial theories, socio-political movements, and grassroots mobilization efforts of community-based organizations in transforming the politics to define multiracial identity and the “two or more races” population in the United States. Using an interdisciplinary and mixed methods research approach, I investigate the shifting and contested ways the multiracial population is defined in public and private discourses, paying particular attention to the complexities this community raises within and among monoracial identified communities. Examining the multiracial population in the U.S. has a significant and critical place in the larger trajectory of social scientific scholarship on race, gender, class, and other intersecting identities. This body of research counters the argument that multiple identity formation is inconsequential to theory, civic engagement, and socio-political participation in a contemporary society. This study urges scholars to (re)examine how race and ethnicity continues to be framed, analyzed, interrogated, and understood in ways that are restricted by historically racist/racialized moments that still linger today. These moments, I argue, are sharpened and more pronounced when centering the politics of what it means to claim a multiracial identity in America in the twenty-first century.

    Three primary research questions examined in this study are: 1) How do we define the multiracial population in the United States and what do these definitions offer about racial and ethnic ideologies and the future for public policy post-Census 2000?; 2) What critical insights can centering the experiences of multiracial Americans and the efforts to define them on the local, state, and/or national levels (publicly and privately), offer for other groups in American society?; and 3) Under what conditions is it possible to politically mobilize around this shifting and contested category and what are the unmet needs of this emerging population?

    The theoretical model for this study was Grounded Theory. Principle data collection methods were the “insider-outsider” and case study research approaches using extensive face-to-face audio and/or photographed interviews; participant and field observations of key local, state, and national events, including U.S. Census proceedings and California Senate Judiciary hearings; and content analysis of primary and secondary documents, including media coverage and organizational archives. Data was collected between 2004 and 2009 in Los Angeles, Washington DC, Chicago, New York, and Sacramento. These cities exhibited the most heightened multiracial activity across the country in this timeframe. I also investigated exclusive, never before documented, behind the scenes initiatives to recognize the unmet needs of this emerging population through an in-depth case study of the Association of MultiEthnic Americans (AMEA)—one of the oldest leading national advocacy organizations for multiracial, multiethnic, and transracially adopted individuals, families, organizations, and allies.

    Table of Contents

    • Dedication
    • Acknowledgements
    • List of Tables
    • List of Figures
    • Abstract
    • Introduction/Chapter 1: Multiracial Politics or the Politics of Being Multiracial?: The Challenge of Racial Biology and Hegemonoracial Ideology in a Contemporary Society
      • Endnotes
    • Chapter 2: The Multi-Whos?: Unpacking the Historical Discourseon Defining the Multiracial Population in the United States Census and in Social Science Research, 1850 to 2000
      • Endnotes
    • Chapter 3: Simultaneous Identities: Comparative Interviews Among a Diverse Combination of Multiracial Experiences
      • Endnotes
    • Chapter 4: From Manasseh to AMEA: A Case Study of Multiracial Community Building and Grassroots Activism through the Association of MultiEthnic Americans
      • Endnotes
    • Chapter 5: Civically Engaging Identities: Keys to Effective Mobilization Toward Building a Collective Multiracial Community
      • Endnotes
    • Chapter 6/Conclusion: Beyond the Politics of Being Multiracial: Toward a Revised Theoretical and Pragmatic Approach to Multiracial Presence in the U.S.
      • Endnotes
    • Bibliography

    List of Tables

    1. Racial Designations to Classify Multiracial Identity on U.S. Census Enumeration Schedules (1850 to 2000)
    2. Racial Designations to Classify Multiracial Identity on U.S. Census Enumeration Schedules (1850 to 2000) and a Historical Trajectory of Racial and Ethnic Theories in the United States
    3. Participants Reported Self-Identification
    4. Self-Reported Descriptions Given By Participants on Where Primarily Raised
    5. Timeline of the Formation of Multiracial Organizations by Decade

    List of Figures

    1. Multiracial Births in California, 1997
    2. Population Projection Excluding Multiracial Identity in California
    3. Intersectionality Diagram
    4. Intersectionality + Race/Ethnicity/Culture/Nationality Diagram
    5. Multiracial Identity + Intersectionality Flowchart Diagram
    6. Multi/Monoracial Identity + Intesectionality Venn Diagram
    7. Flowchart of “Mulatto” Identity Formation as Depicted by Michael Davenport in “Heredity in Relation to Eugenics” (1911)
    8. AMEA Organizational Structure
    9. Multiracial Complexity Web of Identity/ies

    Read the entire dissertation here.

  • How Puerto Rico Became White: Boundary Dynamics and Intercensus Racial Reclassification

    How Puerto Rico Became White: Boundary Dynamics and Intercensus Racial Reclassification

    American Sociological Review
    Volume 72, Number 6 (December 2007)
    pages 915-939
    DOI: 10.1177/000312240707200604

    Mara Loveman, Professor of Sociology
    University of California, Berkeley

    Jeronimo O. Muniz
    Department of Sociology
    University of Wisconsin, Madison

    According to official census results, the Puerto Rican population became significantly whiter in the first half of the twentieth century. Social scientists have long speculated about the source of this trend, but until now, available data did not permit competing hypotheses of Puerto Rico’s whitening to be evaluated empirically. This article revisits the question of how Puerto Rico whitened using newly available Public Use Micro-Samples from the 1910 and 1920 U.S. Censuses of Puerto Rico. Demographic analysis reveals that racial reclassification between censuses generated a “surplus” of nearly 100,000 whites in the 1920 enumerated population. Previous studies of intercensus change in the racial composition of populations have demonstrated that racial reclassification occurs. Going beyond previous studies, we investigate empirically the underlying social mechanisms that fueled change in categorical membership. Reclassification between censuses may reflect the movement of individuals across racial boundaries (boundary crossing), the movement of racial boundaries across individuals (boundary shifting), or both of these boundary dynamics simultaneously. Operationalization of these conceptually distinct boundary dynamics shows that Puerto Rico whitened in the second decade of the twentieth century primarily through boundary shifting-an expansion of the social definition of whiteness itself. Our analysis helps advance general sociological understanding of how symbolic boundaries change.

    Read the entire article here.

  • Interview with Zara Paul: A Future Leader

    Interview with Zara Paul: A Future Leader

    London School of Economics
    2011-10-26

    Zara Paul recently graduated from LSE. She has been listed among the top 100 black graduates of the UK in the Future Leaders magazine 2011-12. In this interview she talks about her time at LSE, her passion for music, what being mixed race means to her and how she sees herself as being ‘massive’ in the next 10 years.

    How did you feel when you heard that you had been selected among the top 100 black graduates of the country?

    I felt absolutely brilliant! It didn’t sink in until I went to the actual Future Leaders event. I was surrounded by so many intellectuals and academics and politicians. I thought it was a great privilege. I couldn’t believe it…

    …Tell us about your family history. Where do you trace your ‘roots’ to and are those ‘roots’ part of your identity?

    My mum is Scottish-Irish and my dad is Jamaican. In my school, as a mixed race person coming from a council estate, I always stood out. I think that made me a bit stubborn, it made me think I am still going to be a little nightmare but I am also going to be smart and get my A levels and GCSEs behind me. I think being stubborn is a really good thing, to a degree. I did my dissertation on whether your identity changes dependent on your location. In a rural area, you may be black; in a multicultural area, you are who you are.

    Do you believe in celebrating your mixed race status?

    I love being mixed race. I can fit into so many social groups, most people can’t do that; so it’s something I think I should embrace. For example, when I did research into the riots, people found talking to me easier because of my mixed race status. In my heart however, I did think that when we are talking about equality why do we have to have separate awards for ‘black graduates’?…

    Read the entire interview here.

  • New Categories Listings for MixedRaceStudies.org

    New Categories Listings for MixedRaceStudies.org

    2011-10-02

    Steven F. Riley

    Over the next few days, I will be removing three frequently used tags (indexed items) and converting them into categories (which are listed on the right-hand side).

    Thanks to Dr. G. Reginald Daniel for letting me flush out my ideas with him.

    Slavery

    Over three centuries of human bondage of peoples of African decent in the Americas has and continues to have an immense impact on the lives of people of color today.  At the time of the first recorded, black/white “mixed-race” birth in 1620, according to historian Audrey Smedley, “the concept of race did not exist.” In the American colonies, the institutionalization of slavery necessitated the creation of laws that would attempt to prevent the unions between African and European colonists.  It is perhaps not a stretch to state that without slavery there would be no “race,” and of course, no “mixed-race.”

    Brazil

    Because of the long history of miscegenation in Brazil, the country is often thought of—erroneously—as a racial democracy.  This is a well-documented myth.  As Joan R. Dassin puts it, “Traditionally celebrated in Brazil as the means to ensure the tranquil mingling of the Portuguese, indigenous, and African races, miscegenation has long been glorified as the basis of the “cordial” national character.”

    Barack Obama

    I created this site in early 2009 in anticipation of an increased number of discourses surrounding multiraciality (and race) as a direct result of the election of Barack Obama, the first black president of the United States. I was not disappointed. What I did not anticipate though, was the the sheer number of discourses about Obama not just ones inspired by Obama.  As reluctant as I am to add a person as a category, the influence of Barack Obama cannot be dismissed.

  • Globalizing a Race to Publish an Encyclopedia

    Globalizing a Race to Publish an Encyclopedia

    American Nineteenth Century History
    Volume 11, Issue 1 (2010)
    pages 79-94
    DOI: 10.1080/14664651003616966

    Michael Benjamin, Independent Scholar
    African American Print Culture
    Cleveland, Ohio, USA

    In 1912, Daniel Alexander Payne Murray published a prospectus for his “Historical and Biographical Encyclopedia of the Colored Race throughout the World.” He promised to publish what literary historian Henry Louis Gates Jr., would describe as the “Grail” for black scholars. As Murray planned his encyclopedia in the first decade of the twentieth century, persons of African descent in the United States were killed and assaulted because of their race, and racial identification was as critical an issue as it was also ambiguous. Moreover, despite its ambiguity, or perhaps, because of it, race, in 1912 and since the Naturalization Act of 1790, had everything to do with American citizenship. In Murray’s time, whether a person was identified on the one hand as “white” or “octoroon” versus an identity as “black,” “Negro,” “mulatto,” or “quadroon” influenced whether or not that person could exercise his rights as an American citizen (with her rights barely entering the question). However, race, as Murray understood with its skin color codes shading the meaning of American citizenship, was much more a social construction than it was biological evidence of a person’s hereditary origins. Formulating a strategy in support of black American citizenship, Murray developed a global interpretation of the black American experience from a pragmatically ambiguous cultural practice to compose an identity for himself, his people, and his proposed encyclopedia.

    Read or purchase the article here.

  • Black devils, white saints and mixedrace femme fatales: Philippa Schuyler and the winds of change

    Black devils, white saints and mixedrace femme fatales: Philippa Schuyler and the winds of change

    Critical Arts
    Volume 25, Issue 3 (2011)
    Special Issue: The Afropessimism Phenomenon
    pages 360-376
    DOI: 10.1080/02560046.2011.615140

    Daniel R. McNeil, Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies
    Newcastle University, United Kingdom

    This article sheds new light on abstract definitions of Afropessimism by analysing the self-fashioning of Philippa Schuyler in southern and central Africa during the Cold War. Schuyler had achieved prominence as an African-American child prodigy in the 1930s and 40s, and a peripatetic concert pianist in the 1950s, before becoming an ultra-conservative writer who opposed African decolonisation in the 1960s. Rather than relying on the tired cliché of the American tragic mulatto to explain Schuyler’s existential choices, or limiting the scope of her story to an (Afro)Americocentric frame, this article argues that her virulent anti-black racism threatened purportedly respectable forms of colonial whiteness. In doing so it uses a New Historicist approach to contend that pessimistic positions about resistance can be combined with the study of practices that unveil the ironies and limits of power. In addition, it addresses Frantz Fanon’s diagnosis of ‘the woman of colour and the white man,’ and argues that Fanon’s work in the 1950s and 60s can be used to question Schuyler’s desire to 1) condemn the ‘force vitale’ of Negritude, 2) praise white colonialists and 3) adopt an ‘off-white’ identity.

    Read or purchase the article here.

  • The pot that called the kettle white: Changing racial identities and U.S. social construction of race

    The pot that called the kettle white: Changing racial identities and U.S. social construction of race

    Identities
    Volume 5, Issue 3 (1998)
    Special Issue: Foundational Concepts: Gender, Race, and Locality
    pages 379-413
    DOI: 10.1080/1070289X.1998.9962622

    Norberto Valdez, Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies
    Colorado State University

    Janice Valdez
    Continuing Education Department
    Colorado State University

    Ethnic and racial identities are deeply enmeshed in broader social processes of change. While ethnicity and race are important factors in consciousness and behavior, they are profoundly affected by the material conditions of life. Conceptually, ethnicity and race are often reified and essentialized, that is, they are attributed qualities that presumably give them independent explanatory power. This study analyzes primary sources to trace how descendants of freed slaves in colonial Virginia emerged as three apparently distinct racial populations. Factors such as national formation, the rise of slavery, and racial typologies all contributed to a restrictive social structure. Yet some individuals and families negotiated aspects of their racial identities through intermarriage, migration, legal processes, and revised genealogies in the search for opportunity. This study attempts to demystify thinking about race and ethnicity by revealing the social forces that influence the form and content of racial and ethnic identity.

    Read or purchase the article here.

  • Reproducing Race: The Paradox of Generation Mix [Review: Harman]

    Reproducing Race: The Paradox of Generation Mix [Review: Harman]

    Ethnic and Racial Studies
    Available online: 2011-10-21
    DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2011.623133

    Vicki Harman, Lecturer in the Centre for Criminology and Sociology
    Royal Holloway, University of London

    Rainier Spencer. Reproduction Race: The Paradox of Generation Mix, Boulder, CO: Lyne Rienner Publishers, 2010, 355 pp.

    From the outset, Reproducing Race promised to be a controversial read. The repeated use of the term ‘mulatto’ (not confined to historical discussions, as is conventional) stood out and created a sense of anticipation at the arguments to follow. This book centres on the significance of Generation Mix, defined as ‘people (typically, but not necessarily, young people) who consider themselves to be the immediately mixed or first generation offspring of parents who are members of different biological racial groups’ (p. 2). Young people who have parents from different racial backgrounds have been celebrated in the media and within much sociological literature as representing a more tolerant and potentially post-racial future. This book offers a critique of celebratory accounts of multi-racialism in the USA and the ideas underpinning the American Multiracial Identity Movement. Rainier Spencer argues that ‘racial ambiguity, in and of itself, is no guarantee of political progressiveness, racial desiabilisation, or, indeed, of anything in particular’ (p. 3). Furthermore, Generation Mix does not radically change the racial order; it simply adds another category because whiteness is still at the top of the racial hierarchy while African-Americans remain at the bottom.

    The book is divided into three parts representing different temporal spaces. In part one, ‘The Mulatto Past’, Spencer considers historical portrayals of mulattoes in the USA from the late nineteenth century, drawing on novels, plays, films and academic literature. Chapter 4 is an absorbing discussion of literature by mulatto writers about marginality and racial passing. Such accounts are used to critique the adoption of the marginal man thesis by sociologists, such as Park, Reuter and Stonequist…

    The second part, ‘The Mulatto Present’, introduces more contentious arguments about the current racial landscape. Spencer contends that Generation Mix is not new and is in fact indistinguishable from mulattoes, although the American Multiracial Identity Movement attempts to deny ‘mulattoness’. Furthermore, despite celebratory media and academic accounts, members of Generation Mix are not special because African-Americans are also mulattoes, and there is no real difference between those who are recently and historically mixed…

    …Notwithstanding the caricature of white mothers, this is a challenging and thought-provoking book, presenting a number of intellectually stimulating and sometimes unusual arguments. In teaching the sociology of race and ethnicity, such a text is likely to act as a useful stimulus. It has the potential to encourage critical engagement with competing perspectives on the significance of racial categories and racial mixing in the past, present and future contexts.

    Read or purchase the review here.