Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

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  • Social Construction and the Concept of Race

    Social Construction and the Concept of Race

    Philosophy of Science
    Volume 72, Number 5 (December 2005)
    pages 1208-1219
    DOI: 10.1086/508966

    Edouard Machery, Associate Professor of History and Philosophy of Science
    University of Pittsburgh

    Luc Faucher, Professor of Philosophy
    Université du Québec, Montréal

    There has been little serious work to integrate the constructionist approach and the cognitive/evolutionary approach in the domain of race, although many researchers have paid lip service to this project. We believe that any satisfactory account of human beings’ racialist cognition has to integrate both approaches. In this paper, we propose to move toward this integration. We present an evolutionary hypothesis that rests on a distinction between three kinds of groups—kin-based groups, small scale coalitions, and ethnies. Following Gil-White (1999, 2001a, 2001b), we propose that ethnies have raised specific evolutionary challenges that were solved by an evolved cognitive system. We suggest that the concept of race is a byproduct of this mechanism. We argue that recent theories of cultural transmission are our best hope for integrating social constructionists’ and cognitive/evolutionary theorists’ insights.

    1. Introduction. A dominant view about races today is the so called “social constructionist” view. Social constructionists propose that the concept of race—i.e., the belief that a classification based on skin color and other skin-deep properties like body shape or hair style maps onto meaningful, important biological kinds—is a pseudo-biological concept that has been used to justify and rationalize the unequal treatment of groups of people by others.

    Social constructionism became prevalent mainly because from the 1970s on, it has been widely recognized that the biological concept of subspecies, that is, of populations of conspecifics that are genetically and morphologically different from each other, could not be applied to humans. For one thing, it has been shown that there is more genetic variability within human racial groups than between them (Lewontin 1972; Brown and Armelagos 2001). Moreover, assigning an individual to a race does not buy the inferential power you are usually warranted to expect from a biological kind term. Finally, classifications based on different phenotypic traits (skin color, body shape, hair, etc.) usually cross-cut each other (Brown and Armelagos 2001). Thus, the racialist tenet that skin color and other skin-deep properties pick up different biological groups has been assumed to be false.

    Biology has thus fuelled the recent racial skepticism of social constructionists, that is, the view that races do not exist. But social constructionists about race are not mere skeptics. They usually underscore the instability and diversity of human beings’ concepts of races. For instance, Omi and Winant note that an “effort must be made to understand race as an unstable and ‘decentered’ complex of social meanings constantly being transformed by political struggle” (2002, 123; see also Root 2000). Others suggest that the notion is a modern invention, rooted in the eighteenth century taxonomies of Linnaeus and Blumenbach. For them, there were times or places where people did not have any concept of race (Banton 1970).

    The constructionist contribution to the understanding of racialism is important (for a critical review, see Machery and Faucher 2005). It rightly suggests that human beings’ concepts of race do not occur in a social vacuum: social environments are important to explain the content of our concepts of race. It also correctly emphasizes the diversity of human beings’ concepts of race across cultures. Any account of racialism has to be consistent with these facts. However, it is not without difficulties either. First, it does not explain why many cultures have developed some concept of race and some classification based on phenotypic features. Moreover, the social constructionist approach does not explain the commonalities between the culture-specific concepts of race, e.g., the concepts of race in contemporary North America, in nineteenth-century France, in Germany during the Nazi era, and so on. Some aspects of the folk concepts of race vary little across cultures (Hirschfeld 1996), while others vary much more. This should be explained.

    In recent years, there has been a growing literature in evolutionary psychology and evolutionary anthropology about racialism. Although no consensus has yet emerged, several proposals have recently attempted to describe the underlying cognitive mechanisms responsible for the production of racial concepts (e.g., Hirschfeld 1995, 1996, 1997, 2001; Gil-White 1999, 2001a, 2001b; Kurzban et al. 2001; Cosmides et al. 2003; Machery and Faucher 2005). Researchers agree that racialism has not been selected for: it is a byproduct of an evolved cognitive system, which was selected for another function. However, they disagree on the nature of this system.

    The cognitive and evolutionary approach to racialism is a needed supplement to the social constructionist approach. The recurrence of racial classification across cultures and the commonalities between them suggest that racial classifications are the product of some universal psychological disposition. However, evolutionary theorists face a challenge that is symmetric to the challenge faced by social constructionists. Since they posit a species-typical cognitive system to explain racial categorization, they have a hard time explaining the cultural diversity of the concepts of race. It has to be shown that the claim that a species-specific human cognitive system underlies racialism is consistent with the evidence that racial concepts vary across cultures and times and are influenced by culture-specific beliefs.

    Thus, we are confronted with two explanatory approaches to racial categorization that are symmetrically incomplete. This point has been recognized by several evolutionary-minded researchers. Indeed, they have paid lip service to the project of integrating the constructionist approach and the cognitive/evolutionary approach in the domain of race (e.g., Hirschfeld 1996). However, in the domain of race, few have walked their talk.

    In this paper, we propose that the theory of cultural evolution is the proper framework for integrating both approaches to racialism. In line with the social constructionists’ emphasis on the social environment, we claim that the concept of race—how race membership is thought of—is culturally transmitted: one acquires the concept of race from one’s social environment. However, we insist that social learning is determined by several factors. Following Gil-White (1999, 2001a, 2001b), we emphasize particularly the importance of an evolved, canalized disposition to think about ethnies in a biological way. We argue that our proposal accounts for the similarities between culture-specific concepts of race as well as for their differences.

    Our strategy is the following. In Section 2, we distinguish three kinds of groups, kin-based groups, small-scale coalitions, and ethnies. Following Gil-White (1999, 2001a, 2001b), we propose that ethnies have raised specific evolutionary challenges that were solved by an evolved cognitive system. The concept of race is shaped by this mechanism. We thereby meet the challenge faced by the social constructionist view: we account for the similarities between concepts of race. In Section 3, we build on Boyd and Richerson’s theory of cultural evolution (Boyd and Richerson 1985; Richerson and Boyd 2004) in order to integrate social constructionists’ insights and cognitive/evolutionary theorists’ insights.We thereby meet the challenge faced by the cognitive/evolutionary approach: we account for the differences between concepts of race…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Aren’t they just black kids? Biracial children in the child welfare system

    Aren’t they just black kids? Biracial children in the child welfare system

    Child & Family Social Work
    Volume 15, Issue 4 (November 2010)
    pages 441-45
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2206.2010.00690.x

    Rachel A. Fusco, Assistant Professor of Social Work
    University of Pittsburgh

    Mary E. Rauktis, Research Assistant Professor of Social Work
    University of Pittsburgh

    Julie S. McCrae, Research Scientist
    Butler Institute for Families
    University of Denver

    Michael A. Cunningham, Research Specialist
    University of Pittsburgh

    Cynthia K. Bradley-King, Field Assistant Professor and Academic Coordinator, Child Welfare Education for Baccalaureates (CWEB)
    University of Pittsburgh

    In the USA, African-American children are overrepresented in the child welfare system. However, little is known about the child welfare system experiences of biracial children, who are predominately both White and African-American. To better understand this population, data from public child welfare in a US county were used to examine biracial children in the child welfare system. Results showed significant racial differences between children in the child welfare system. Despite the common belief that biracial children will have experiences similar to African-American children, the child welfare system seems to view them differently. Biracial children are more likely to be referred, rated as high risk and investigated compared with White or African-American children. Their mothers were younger, and were more often assessed as having physical, intellectual or emotional problems. These caregivers were also considered to have lower parenting skills and knowledge compared with White or African-American caregivers. Although the disproportionate representation of African-American children in the system has been well documented, this study provides evidence that biracial children are also overrepresented. Despite the fact that this is a rapidly growing population in the USA, there is little research available about biracial children and their families.

    Read or purchase the article here.

  • Classes You May Have Missed: On Modern Brazilian Literature

    Classes You May Have Missed: On Modern Brazilian Literature

    Pitt Magazine
    January, 1995

    Bobby J. Chamberlain, Associate Professor of Brazilian Culture and Literature
    University of Pittsburgh

    Brazilian culture has always been considered a fusion of three different races: the Europeans (specifically Portuguese), the Indians, and the Africans who were taken to Brazil as slaves. But it is wrong to see this culture as some kind of happy hybridization: There is always a hierarchy in this type of fusion. A much larger percentage of whites, descendants of the Europeans, are in the upper classes, and the great majority of blacks and mulattos, those of mixed race, are in the lower classes. Brazilian literature itself began, as did Spanish-American literature, as a specifically European phenomenon in the New World, with a certain inferiority complex that Brazilians, even those of European descent, were not as good as the Europeans in Europe. I’d like to discuss how several writers dealt with the problem of adapting influences from Europe and the United States to a Brazilian literature.

    Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, who wrote at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of this one, is often considered the greatest figure in Brazilian literature. He was a mulatto who rose from the lower classes to become the first president of the Brazilian Academy of Letters. The narrators of his novels, middle-class Brazilians, often distort what they tell you to serve their own ends. You start off believing them, but their interpretations of social signs and gestures become strained and paranoid. For instance, in Dom Casmurro (1900), Bento Santiago tells of his childhood with Capitu, whom he later marries and then spurns, accusing her of adultery. From the beginning, he portrays her as a crafty manipulator and himself as her victim, but the evidence of her adultery is flimsy, and Santiago’s coldness to her seems to spring solely from his own neurosis and cruelty…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Adjustment Problems in Adolescence: Are Multiracial Children at Risk?

    Adjustment Problems in Adolescence: Are Multiracial Children at Risk?

    American Journal of Orthopsychiatry
    Volume 70, Issue 4 (October 2000)
    pages 433–444
    DOI: 10.1037/h0087744

    M. Elise Radina, Associate Professor of Family Studies & Social Work
    Miami University, Ohio

    Teresa M. Cooney, Associate Professor of Human Develpopment and Family Studies
    University of Missouri

    Data from a national survey were used to compare adjustment between a group of multiracial adolescents and two groups of single-race adolescents, grades seven to twelve. Significant differences were found on fewer than half of the school, behavioral, and psychological dimensions that were assessed. Implications for research and school interventions are discussed.

    Read or purchase the article here.

  • Relationship Quality Between Multiracial Adolescents and Their Biological Parents

    Relationship Quality Between Multiracial Adolescents and Their Biological Parents

    American Journal of Orthopsychiatry
    Volume 70, Issue 4 (October 2000)
    pages 445–454
    DOI: 10.1037/h0087763

    M. Elise Radina, Associate Professor of Family Studies & Social Work
    Miami University, Ohio

    Teresa M. Cooney, Associate Professor of Human Develpopment and Family Studies
    University of Missouri

    National survey data were used to compare single-race white and minority adolescents with multiracial adolescents in terms of relationships with their parents. Three relational dimensions were considered: association/interaction, communication, and emotional closeness. Comparable relationship quality was found between parents and adolescents in all three groups, except that multiracial boys and their fathers were found to be less emotionally close and communicative. Implications for research are discussed.

    Read or purchase the article here.

  • Africa’s Legacy in Mexico: The Photographs of Tony Gleaton

    Africa’s Legacy in Mexico: The Photographs of Tony Gleaton

    Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles
    Laband Art Gallery
    2007-09-09 through 2007-11-18

    Africa’s Legacy in Mexico features forty-five black and white photographs from a series of portraits of African Mexicans by Tony Gleaton. Taken in the late 1980s and early 1990s, primarily in three villages along the southwestern coast of Mexico, Gleaton’s photographs offer insight into a little-known aspect of Mexican culture. These poignant images focus on the present-day descendants of African slaves who were brought to Mexico by the Spanish colonialists beginning in the 1500s. Though Africans have been part of the cultural fabric of Mexico for five centuries, the official policy of the Mexican government has been to only highlight the country’s mestizo [mixed race] heritage that has resulted from the mixing of indigenous and European peoples. Miriam Jimenez Roman writes that Gleaton’s photographs “force us to rethink many of our preconceptions not only about our southern neighbor but more generally about issues such as race, ethnicity, culture, and national identity.”

    View some of the photographs here.

  • Laughing To Keep From Crying: Resisting “Race” Through Irony

    Laughing To Keep From Crying: Resisting “Race” Through Irony

    Tympanum: A Journal of Comparative Literary Studies
    Number 4, (2000)
    issn# 1522-7723

    Ronald Sundstrom, Director and Associate Professor of African American Studies
    University of San Francisco

    He wanted to rise-a malicious, ironic voice insisted that he rise-and, at once, to leave this temple and go out into the world.

    “Race,” whatever it may be, is something that we are not yet done with. We may never be done with it. It may be a category that we will always be present in some form or another in our societies. Or, it may be the case that the category is on the verge of extinction, and that it will fade as its social usefulness, importance, and its descriptive and explanatory power fades. Whatever its future is, a case can be made that at present “race” is descriptive of social life and organization in the U.S., as well as other parts of the globe. This is a descriptive, and not a normative claim.

    As a human category “race” is invaluable part our attempts to explain and understand the history and realities of oppression, bigotry, and violence in the U.S. Deprived of the use of “race” as a social category, the social sciences would not be able to provide nuanced and insightful explanations of U.S. history and this society’s social landscape. This history and social landscape is what I refer to as the American “racial” politic. In addition plays a role in our attempts to organize communities in our struggle to redress “racial” wrongs, and to end racism and “racial” oppression. For the limited purposes of social science and politics, “race” is legitimate and ought to be conserved. That “race” is useful, descriptive, or explanatory now is not to say that will always be true. The future of “race” is going to be determined by future forms of social organization. What I have argued for above is a pragmatic and limited role for race.

    A pragmatic and limited role for “race,” however, does not placate those, like myself, who are leery of it. The conservation of “race,” in any form, is worrisome. Social identities are powerful elements of our social worlds. They are thickly wrapped in complicated and often troublesome histories. Their durations and the twists and turns they make through our worlds during their tenures are unpredictable. Such is the case with “race.” The history of “race” in the U.S. is soaked in blood. Yet, and for good reasons, “race” is the centerpiece of identity for many individuals and communities. Still, worries and doubts remain about the social utility of “race.”…

    Read the entire essay here.

  • Racial Ambiguity and Relationship Formation in the United States: Theoretical and Practical Considerations

    Racial Ambiguity and Relationship Formation in the United States: Theoretical and Practical Considerations

    Journal of Social and Personal Relationships
    Volume 20, Number 2 (April 2003)
    pages 153-169
    DOI: 10.1177/02654075030202002

    Angela D. James, Associate Professor of African American Studies
    Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles

    M. Belinda Tucker, Social Psychologist and Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences
    University of California, Los Angeles

    This article explores in conceptual terms the nature of romantic relationship formation and maintenance when a potential or actual partner does not fit into the dominant racial schema – a situation we define as ‘racial ambiguity.’ When a potential other cannot be classified according to one’s existing notions of racial organization, how does this ambiguity affect approach and maintenance? In the discussion, we first explore the concept of racial ambiguity as a function of the peculiar and distinctive American construction of race. Next, we examine conceptual perspectives that can be used to understand the role of racial classification and racial ambiguity in personal relationship formation and maintenance. And, finally, we discuss strategies for incorporating more fluid understandings of race into research on personal relationships.

    Read or purchase the article here.

  • Racial Etiquette: Nella Larsen’s Passing and the Rhinelander Case

    Racial Etiquette: Nella Larsen’s Passing and the Rhinelander Case

    Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism
    Volume 5, Number 2, 2005
    pages 1-29
    E-ISSN: 1547-8424
    Print ISSN: 1536-6936
    DOI: 10.1353/mer.2005.0013

    Miriam Thaggert, Associate Professor of English and African-American Studies
    University of Iowa

    In Passing Nella Larsen seems to suggest that identity is a hazy fiction one tells that outward appearances and surface events only partly confirm. Rather than directly stating their thoughts, characters communicate through an exchange of looks—particularly her two light-skinned female characters, Irene and Clare. These subtle forms of expression heighten the sense of uncertainty throughout the novel. The reader never learns explicitly the reason for Clare’s fall out of a window, the reality of a homosexual longing between Clare and Irene, or the true nature of the relationship between Clare and Irene’s husband. This indeterminacy extends to the racial identity of Larsen’s characters, an identity not always easily discernible because of the characters’ mixed racial background and their inclination to “pass.”  Without adequate markings or clues, any reading, whether of identities or situations, is flawed or incorrect.

    A brief, almost offhand, remark Irene makes refers to a legal trial in which these issues of knowledge, passing, and the gaze combined in a process to interrogate the race and veracity of a woman. The Rhinelander case was an annulment proceeding in which wealthy, white Leonard Kip Rhinelander sued his wife, Alice Beatrice Jones, for fraud. Leonard claimed he did not know that his light-skinned wife was “colored,” the daughter of a white woman and a dark-skinned cab driver.  Larsen’s reference to the Rhinelanders occurs only once, near the end of the novel, after Irene suspects that her husband, Brian, is having an affair with Clare…

    Read or purchase the article here.

  • Gothic Discourse Meets Hybridity in the United States [Book Review]

    Gothic Discourse Meets Hybridity in the United States [Book Review]

    H-net Reviews
    July 2003

    Jeanne Cortiel

    Justin D. Edwards. Gothic Passages: Racial Ambiguity and the American Gothic. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2003. xxxiii + 145 pp., ISBN 978-0-87745-824-1.

    In the past decade, gothic studies have produced a number of new readers, research handbooks, and student guides, and launched a new scholarly journal, Gothic Studies, developments which have, among other things, consolidated and somewhat stabilized the field (if one can speak of stability in the context of the gothic). At the same time, however, the question of what “gothic” really means routinely comes up for fundamental scrutiny and reevaluation in scholarly debates{which the above-mentioned guides also gleefully participate in. This is a good moment, therefore, to be moving in new directions with well-tried problems: the field provides solid theoretical and methodological grounding, yet the new definitional openness of the “gothic” also allows explorations of unfamiliar “gothicisms” and “gothicizations.”

    Justin Edwards’s Gothic Passages makes use of precisely this possibility by intersecting two established fields, the scholarly exploration of the American Gothic and the analysis of passing and racial ambiguity in American literature and culture. Thoroughly researched and well argued, the book identities the “gothicization of race” and the “racialization of the gothic” as two interrelated phenomena throughout the nineteenth century. Edwards’s intersection of scholarly concerns suggests that recent reconsiderations of the “gothic” may require further complication, particularly in the study of the American literary and cultural gothic…

    Read the entire review here.