Mixed Race Studies

Mixed Race in Britain: A Survey of the Preferences of Mixed Race People for Terminology and Classifications (Interim Report)

Centre for Health Services Studies (CHSS)
University of Kent at Canterbury
July 2006

Peter Aspinall, Senior Research Fellow
Centre for Health Services Studies (CHSS)
University of Kent

Miri Song, Professor of Sociology
University of Kent

Ferhana Hashem, Research Fellow
Centre for Health Services Studies (CHSS)
University of Kent

…This research project into the preferences for terminology and classifications was initiated in 2004 and put into the field in summer 2005.  Its main purposes were: (i) to help inform terminology and classifications for ethnic group for the upcoming 2011 Census and (ii) to serve as a pilot study for an ESRC application: ‘The ethnic options of mixed race people in Britain’ (which also had a focus on official terminology and classifications).  This application was funded by ESRC and the project began on 1st March 2006.  A small dataset on official terminology and classifications is also accruing via this route…

…On issues of terminology, the salient general term of choice amongst respondents was ‘mixed race’.  The only other terms that attracted significant support were ‘mixed heritage’ and ‘mixed parentage’. Very few preferred ‘dual heritage’.  Respondents identified eleven different terms as offensive, most frequently ‘dual heritage’, ‘half-caste’ and ‘mixed origins’.  The reasons for the dislike of ‘dual heritage’ focussed mainly on its limitation to two groups.  ‘Half-caste’ was regarded as pejorative by several respondents, on the ground of partial recognition & historical connotations.  The largest number of respondents felt that terms like ‘mixed race’ and ‘mixed parentage’ should refer to ‘people who are mixes of white and any minority racial/ethnic group’.  Significant numbers also felt that the terms should refer to people who are mixes of minority racial/ethnic groups, people who are mixes of white and black groups only, and people of disparate ethnic origins…

Read the entire report here.

Tilting at Windmills: The Paradox of Researching Mixed-Race

Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (New Orleans, LA,  2000-04-24 through 2000-04-28)

Kristen A. Renn, Associate Professor
Michigan State University

This paper addresses the growing interest among social scientists in studying the experiences of so-called mixed-race (or multiracial, biracial, or mixed heritage) individuals, when the study of multiraciality risks reinforcing the notion of fixed races.  Distinguishing mixed-race people as a category assumes that there are pure races to begin with and that there are people who are not mixed-race.  The paper begins with a brief review of the history of the study of multiraciality, then it poses questions raised by the study of the experiences of mixed-race people.  It presents five alternative philosophical approaches to addressing this question, and it suggests how the study of multiraciality might be done without further reinforcing the notion of static racial categories. The paper maintains throughout that race does not exist except as a social construction. (Contains 69 references.)

Read the entire paper here.

From the University of Kent: ‘Invisible’ history of mixed race Britain becomes the subject of a major study

A major new study, jointly undertaken by Peter Aspinall, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Kent, and Chamion Caballero, Senior Research Fellow at London South Bank University, will investigate who was considered to be mixed race in Britain between 1920 and 1950, and how this population was perceived and treated by officialdom, the media and wider society.

Titled The Era of Moral Condemnation: mixed race people in Britain 1920 – 1950, the study will use first-hand accounts, autobiographical recordings and a range of archival material to understand how these perceptions emerged and the impact they may have had on the conceptualisation of mixed race people in Britain today….