Mixed Race Studies

Tío Tomás’s Cabin: Marco Rubio and White Cubanidad

Latino Rebels
2016-01-14

Jason Nichols, Lecturer in African American Studies
University of Maryland

Last semester I had a young man turn in an assignment in which students were instructed to write to a current presidential candidate. This particular student had been outspoken and one of the more socially aware and progressive students in the class. He has a leadership position in a Latino fraternity, and often attempted to find commonality between the plight of African Americans and people of Latino (Latinx) origin.

His paper was interesting to say the least. He directed his letter toward Marco Rubio and expressed disgust that Rubio could be the one to break the glass ceiling for Latinos in this country. He went as far as to refer to Rubio as a ‘sellout.” My comments to him may seem obvious to some, but fundamentally call into question the designation of “Latino” and whether brownness conflicts with whiteness. The young man who completed the assignment is of Brazilian descent, but identifies as strongly as Latino, which is evidence that Latinos are not bound by language. In addition, Latinos are of many different racial backgrounds, and many identify as multiracial. Many Latinos are politically astute, but are far from a political monolith unlike African Americans, who tend to vote as a solid bloc…

Read the entire article here.

César Vargas: How I Became Black

Okayafrica. Giving you true notes since 247,000 BC
2016-01-08

César Vargas

This is me my Junior year of high school.

During my first day of school in the United States I was told by a fellow classmate to watch out for the morenos. I was taken aback by the warning and in my bewilderment asked how to tell them apart. As a teenager trying to find his place in a new country, race was a difficult concept. I couldn’t tell people apart based on it. This gave me a disadvantage navigating 90s pre-gentrified Bed-Stuy. My high school, I.S. 33, was an all Black school with the exception of a few American-born Latinos—mostly Nuyoricans—and the bilingual class that I was placed in.

Sosua in the Dominican Republic where I was raised is a small tourist town with a very diverse population. Back then I was already exposed to white Americans, Europeans, and Black Haitians. All who, phenotypically speaking, looked like relatives since my family fell within the spectrum of Black to White. Which might be the reason why I couldn’t tell morenos apart from the rest of my classmates and family. Some of them were the same color as those morenos they were so apprehensive of.

My bilingual class was their punching bag. We were bullied relentlessly. For being foreigners. For speaking Spanish. For being different. That all stopped when two fresh-of-the-boat Dominican brothers that were brought to our class started fighting back. Both were as dark as the African American kids they fought. These two (Santiaguero city-slickers, it should be noted) emboldened the rest of us to do the same. So it was chaos for a couple of months.

Soon enough I understood why my classmates were fearful of morenos…

Read the entire article here.

Counseling the Culturally Diverse: Theory and Practice, 7th Edition

Wiley
December 2015
832 pages
7.2 x 1.7 x 9.6 inches
Hardcover ISBN-13: 978-1119084303

Derald Wing Sue, Professor of Psychology and Education
Department of Counseling and Clinical Psychology
Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, New York

David Sue, Professor Emeritus of Psychology
Western Washington University, Bellingham, Washington

The standard bearing guide for multicultural counseling courses now enhanced with research-based, topical, and pedagogical refinements

Counseling the Culturally Diverse: Theory and Practice, 7th Edition is the new update to the seminal work on multicultural counseling. From author Derald Wing Sue – one of the most cited multicultural scholars in the United States – this comprehensive work includes current research, cultural and scientific theoretical formations, and expanded exploration of internalized racism. Replete with real-world examples, this book explains why conversations revolving around racial issues remain so difficult, and provides specific techniques and advice for leading forthright and productive discussions. The new edition focuses on essential instructor and student needs to facilitate a greater course-centric focus.

In response to user feedback and newly available research, the seventh edition reflects:

• Renewed commitment to comprehensiveness. As compared to other texts in the field, CCD explores and covers nearly all major multicultural counseling topics in the profession. Indeed, reviewers believed it the most comprehensive of the texts published, and leads in coverage of microaggressions in counseling, interracial/interethnic counseling, social justice approaches to counseling, implications of indigenous healing, the sociopolitical nature of counseling, racial identity development, and cultural use of evidence-based practice.
• Streamlined Presentation to allow students more time to review and analyze rather than read more detailed text
• New advances and important changes, such as expanded coverage of internalized racism, cultural humility, expansion of microaggression coverage to other marginalized groups, social justice/advocacy skills, recent research and thinking on evidence-based practice, and new approaches to work with specific populations.
• Most current work in multicultural mental health practice including careful consideration of the multicultural guidelines proposed by the American Psychological Association and the draft guidelines for Multicultural and Social Justice Counseling Competencies (MSJCC) (2015) from the American Counseling Association’s Revision Committee.
• Expanded attention to the emotive nature of the content so that the strong emotive reaction of students to the material does not prevent self-exploration (a necessary component of cultural competence in the helping professions).
• Strengthened Pedagogy in each chapter with material to facilitate experiential activities and discussion and to help students digest the material including broad Chapter Objectives and more specific and oftentimes controversial Reflection and Discussion Questions. Every chapter opens with a clinical vignette, longer narrative, or situational example that previews the major concepts and issues discussed in the chapter. The Chapter Focus Questions serve as prompts to address the opening ‘course objectives,’ but these questions not only preview the content to be covered, but are cast in such a way as to allow instructors and trainers to use them as discussion questions throughout the course or workshop. We have retained the ‘Implications for Clinical Practice’ sections and added a new Summary after every chapter. Instructor’s Handbook has been strengthen and expanded to provide guidance on teaching the course, anticipating resistances, overcoming them, and providing exercises that could be used such as case studies, videos/movies, group activities, tours/visits, and other pedagogy that will facilitate learning.
• Easier comparison between and among groups made possible by updating population specific chapters to use common topical headings (when possible).

Offering the perfect blend of theory and practice, this classic text helps readers overcome the discomfort associated with discussions of race, provides real-world examples of how to discuss diversity and difference openly and honestly, and closely examines the hidden and unwritten rules that dictate many aspects of diversity in today’s world.

Table of Contents

• Preface
• About the Authors
• Section One the Multiple Dimensions of Multicultural Counseling and Therapy
  • Part I: The Affective and Conceptual Dimensions of Multicultural Counseling and Therapy
    • Chapter 1 Obstacles to Cultural Competence: Understanding Resistance to Multicultural Training
      • Emotional Self-Revelations and Fears: Majority Group Members
      • Emotional Invalidation versus Affirmation: For Marginalized Group Members
      • A Word of Caution
      • Recognizing and Understanding Resistance to Multicultural Training: For Trainees and Trainers
      • Cognitive Resistance—Denial
      • Emotional Resistance
      • Behavioral Resistance
      • Conclusions
      • Summary
      • References
    • Chapter 2 The Superordinate Nature of Multicultural Counseling and Therapy
      • Culture Universal (Etic) versus Culture Specific (Emic) Formulations
      • The Nature of Multicultural Counseling Competence
      • A Tripartite Framework for Understanding the Multiple Dimensions of Identity
      • Individual and Universal Biases in Psychology and Mental Health
      • The Impact of Group Identities on Counseling and Psychotherapy
      • What Is Multicultural Counseling/Therapy?
      • What Is Cultural Competence?
      • Cultural Humility and Cultural Competence
      • Social Justice and Cultural Competence
      • Summary
      • References
    • Chapter 3 Multicultural Counseling Competence for Counselors and Therapists of Marginalized Groups
      • Counselors from Marginalized Groups Working with Majority and Other Marginalized Group Clients
      • The Politics of Interethnic and Interracial Bias and Discrimination
      • The Historical and Political Relationships between Groups of Color
      • Differences between Racial/Ethnic Groups
      • Counselors of Color and Dyadic Combinations
      • Summary
      • References
  • Part II The Political Dimensions of Mental Health Practice
    • Chapter 4 The Political and Social Justice Implications of Counseling and Psychotherapy
      • The Education and Training of Mental Health Professionals
      • Definitions of Mental Health
      • Counseling and Mental Health Literature
      • Need to Treat Social Problems—Social Justice Counseling
      • The Foci of Therapeutic Interventions: Individual, Professional, Organizational and Societal
      • Social Justice Counseling
      • Summary
      • References
    • Chapter 5 Impact of Systemic Oppression
      • Therapist Credibility and Client Worldviews
      • The Rest of the Story
      • Therapist Credibility and Attractiveness
      • Formation of Individual and Systemic Worldviews
      • Formation of Worldviews
      • Summary
      • References
    • Chapter 6 Microaggressions in Counseling and Psychotherapy
      • Contemporary Forms of Oppression
      • Evolution of the “Isms”: Microaggressions
      • The Dynamics and Dilemmas of Microaggressions
      • Therapeutic Implications
      • Summary
  • Part III The Practice Dimensions of Multicultural Counseling/Therapy
    • Chapter 7 Barriers to Multicultural Counseling and Therapy: Individual and Family Perspectives
      • Identifying Multicultural Therapeutic Issues
      • Generic Characteristics of Counseling/Therapy
      • Culture-Bound Values
      • Class-Bound Values
      • Language Barriers
      • Patterns of “American” Cultural Assumptions and Multicultural Family Counseling/Therapy
      • Conclusions
      • Summary
      • References
    • Chapter 8 Culturally Appropriate Intervention Skills and Strategies
      • Cultural Expression of Mental Disorders
      • Communication Styles
      • Sociopolitical Facets of Nonverbal Communication
      • Counseling and Therapy as Communication Style
      • Summary
      • References
    • Chapter 9 Multicultural Evidence-Based Practice
      • Evidence-Based Practice and Multiculturalism
      • Evidence-Based Practice and Diversity Issues in Therapy
      • Summary
      • References
    • Chapter 10 Non-Western Indigenous Methods of Healing: Implications for Multicultural Counseling and Therapy
      • Legitimacy of Culture-Bound Syndromes: Nightmare Deaths and the Hmong Sudden Death Phenomenon
      • The Principles of Indigenous Healing
      • Conclusion
      • Summary
      • References
  • Part IV Racial/Cultural Identity Development in Multicultural Counseling and Therapy
    • Chapter 11 Racial/Cultural Identity Development in People of Color: Therapeutic Implications
      • Racial Awakening
      • Racial/Cultural Identity Development Models
      • A Racial/Cultural Identity Development Model
      • Therapeutic Implications of the R/ CID Model
      • Conclusions
      • Summary
      • References
    • Chapter 12 White Racial Identity Development: Therapeutic Implications
      • What Does It Mean to Be White?
      • The Invisible Whiteness of Being
      • Understanding the Dynamics of Whiteness
      • Models of White Racial Identity Development
      • The Process of White Racial Identity Development: A Descriptive Model
      • Developing a Nonracist and Antiracist White Identity
      • Summary
• Section Two Multicultural Counseling and Specific Populations
  • Part V Understanding Specific Populations
    • Chapter 13 Culturally Competent Assessment
      • Therapist Variables Affecting Diagnosis
      • Cultural Competence and Preventing Diagnostic Errors
      • Contextual and Collaborative Assessment
      • Infusing Cultural Competence into Standard Clinical Assessments
      • References
  • Part VI Counseling and Therapy with Racial/Ethnic Minority Group Populations
    • Chapter 14 Counseling African Americans
      • Characteristics and Strengths
      • Specific Challenges
      • References
    • Chapter 15 Counseling American Indians and Alaska Natives
      • Characteristics and Strengths
      • Specific Challenges
      • Alcohol and Substance Abuse
      • References
    • Chapter 16 Counseling Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders
      • Characteristics and Strengths
      • Specific Challenges
      • References
    • Chapter 17 Counseling Latinos
      • Characteristics and Strengths
      • Specific Challenges
      • References
    • Chapter 18 Counseling Individuals of Multiracial Descent
      • Multiracialism in the United States
      • Specific Challenges
      • A Multiracial Bill of Rights
      • Multiracial Strengths
      • References
  • Part VII Counseling and Special Circumstances Involving Racial/Ethnic Populations
    • Chapter 19 Counseling Arab and Muslim Americans
      • Arab Americans
      • Muslim Americans
      • Characteristics and Strengths
      • Specific Challenges
      • References
    • Chapter 20 Counseling Jewish Americans
      • Characteristics and Strengths
      • Specific Challenges
      • References
    • Chapter 21 Counseling Immigrants and Refugees
      • Challenges and Strengths
      • Counseling Refugees
      • References
  • Part VIII Counseling and Therapy with Other Multicultural Populations
    • Chapter 22 Counseling LGBT Individuals
      • Understanding Sexual Minorities
      • Specific Challenges
      • References
    • Chapter 23 Counseling Older Adult Clients
      • Characteristics and Strengths
      • Specific Challenges of Older Adults
      • References
    • Chapter 24 Counseling Women
      • Specific Challenges
      • Embracing Gender Strengths
      • References
    • Chapter 25 Counseling and Poverty
      • Demographics: Who Are the Poor?
      • Strengths of People Living in Poverty
      • Suggested Guidelines for Counselors
      • References
    • Chapter 26 Counseling Persons with Disabilities
      • Understanding Disabilities
      • The Americans with Disabilities Act
      • Specific Challenges
      • Supports for Individuals with Disabilities
      • Counseling Issues with Individuals with Disabilities
• References
• Author Index
• Subject Index

Exhibit by Penn cultural anthropologist showcases Afro-Latinos in Philadelphia

Penn Current: News, ideas and conversations from the University of Pennsylvania
2015-12-10

Jacquie Posey

Free and enslaved Africans shaped and built Latin America and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean. Their descendants, known as Afro-Latinos, are featured in a new photo exhibition by cultural anthropologist Sandra Andino, associate director of the Latin American and Latino Studies Program at Penn.

“Afro-Latino in Philadelphia: Stories from El Barrio,” which opened on Dec. 4 at Taller Puertorriqueño, a community-based multidisciplinary arts organization in North Philadelphia, explores the intersection of African heritage and Latino identity.

Visitors can view the photographs and listen to an audio tour of the exhibit on their smartphone by scanning a designated QR code or going to the artist’s website and clicking the audio tour link…

Read the entire article here.

White Latino Racism on the Rise: It’s Time for a Serious Conversation on Euro-Diasporic Whiteness

Latino Rebels
2015-12-21

Wiliam Garcia

A common misconnection that exists today rests on the notion that there are no racial hierarchies in Latin American countries or within the Latino communities in the United States. In other words, Latino (or Hispanic) is itself a race. For many, this conversation is a pointless squabble that halts the true need for unity amongst marginalized groups in the United States. Unfortunately, overlooking the importance of this issue has in fact delineated separation and a lack of interest in each other’s problems.

The shooting of unarmed African-American teenager Trayvon Martin by a half-Peruvian and half-White man named George Zimmerman, the rise of so-called Hispanic conservatives like Ted Cruz, Al Cardenas and Marco Rubio, and the examples of racist comments by Latinos in the media like Rodner Figueroa, have made it impossible to have a conversation of Latinos and race. It is becoming clear that Whites from Latin America, although marginalized by Anglo-Whites, have been able to pass as honorary Whites and benefit from the inequalities formed by White Supremacy. This is not new, and it has a history.

Many people who neglect to explore the history of Latin Americans in the United Sates fail to analyze people like the famous white Cuban Ricky Ricardo (Desi Arnaz), who penetrated the American television series “I Love Lucy” (1951) at a time when Black people were not even allowed to perform next to White actors. Lucy (Lucille Ball) was Arnaz’ real wife, and both enjoyed a long and prosperous career in the film industry. In 1954 Arnaz was even able to get a role as the famous Don Juan…

…While many invoke the idea of mestizaje (racial mixing) and the one-drop rule, it did not determine Latin American identity racially. The false idea that you were non-White if any of your ancestors was not White has been a common belief that undergirded racial categories and Whiteness as passing in the United States. Regardless if Arnaz was considered White or not, his Whiteness allowed him to pass and have access to Hollywood. Arnaz benefited from the system of White Supremacy. While Arnaz was able to remain Cuban (while also being marginalized), Hernández was not able to be Puerto Rican because he was Black…

Read the entire article here.

17 Of The Most Powerful Things Latinos Said In 2015 That Got Us Thinking

The Huffington Post
2015-12-22

Carolina Moreno, Latino Voices Editor

Diversity, immigration, feminism and more — these celebrities covered it all.

Latinos gave us plenty to think about in 2015, and it’s time to revisit some of the best mic drop moments of the year.

From pointing out Hollywood’s lack of diversity to exemplifying the importance of redefining masculinity, there was no shortage of food for thought from wise Latinos. Take a look at what John Leguizamo, Zoe Saldana, America Ferrera, Gina Rodriguez and many more Latinos said that really got us thinking in 2015…

Read the entire article here.

Houston Bound: Culture and Color in a Jim Crow City

University of California Press
November 2015
320 pages
Hardback ISBN: 9780520282575
Paperback ISBN: 9780520282582

Tyina Steptoe, Assistant Professor of History
University of Arizona

Beginning after World War I and continuing throughout the twentieth century, Houston was transformed from a black-and-white frontier town into one of the most ethnically and racially diverse urban areas in the United States. Houston Bound draws on social and cultural history to show how, despite Anglo attempts to fix racial categories through Jim Crow laws, converging migrations—particularly those of Mexicans and Creoles—complicated ideas of blackness and whiteness and introduced different understandings about race. This migration history is also a story about music and sound, tracing the emergence of Houston’s blues and jazz scenes in the 1920s as well as the hybrid forms of these genres—like zydeco and Tejano soul—that arose when migrants forged shared social space and carved out new communities and politics. Houston’s location on the Gulf Coast, poised between the American South and the West, yields a particularly rich examination of how the histories of colonization, slavery, and segregation produced divergent ways of thinking about race.

This interdisciplinary book provides both an innovative historiography about migration and immigration in the twentieth century and a critical examination of a city located in the former Confederacy.

Blaxican: The Revolutionary Identity of Black Mexicans

teleSUR
2015-07-29

“The Afro-Latino term felt like home. There was finally a term that described what all of this was. It was a group of people who felt like I was feeling. I was finally able to identify with a group of people and it was a relief.”

Walter Thompson-Hernandez shares with teleSUR English the often-forgotten faces and stories of Black Mexicans, or Blaxicans, in the United States.

Walter Thompson-Hernandez often sees a reflection of himself in the stories his camera captures. Boldly staring into the lens of his camera, Black Mexican, or Blaxican, men and women slowly unveil a bit of themselves to him.

“I ethnically identify as Afro-Mexican. Racially, I embrace my Blackness as here in LA that is typically how I am read and what my experience is,” reads one of the photo stories now available on Instagram gallery known as “Blaxicans of Los Angeles.”

“The identity of Afro-Mexican acknowledges my African roots as well as the land we live on, though claimed by America, belongs historically to indigenous Mexican peoples.”

As the child of an African-American father and a non-black Mexican mother, the stories resonate with Thompson-Hernandez who started the Instagram page as an academic research project for the University of South Carolina, but found himself personally drawn to the project to understand the complexities of race and ethnicity in a country that often sees both as one and the same thing…

Read the entire article here.

Afro-Latinas Work for Cultural Survival

teleSUR
2015-03-20

Mai’a Williams
Quito, Ecuador

In recent years, there has been a resurgence of Afro-Latino youth in the U.S. rooting themselves, their families and their communities in their African heritages as a way to create cultures of resistance to the dominant narratives of colonization and white supremacy.

These movements have been for the most part led by Afro-Latina women who live within the intersections of oppression, gender, class, race, and immigration. They take inspiration from the past, as well as the future. And they work to co-create cultures that can fight against the overwhelming tide of erasure of their own African diasporic existences.The work of embracing Afro-Latino identity is a work for cultural survival and connection.

The U.S. Census Bureau reported that in 2010, 2.5 percent of the 54 million Latinos living in the United States co-identified as black. Many Latinos say that number is a significant undercount. Nicholas Jones, chief of the Bureau’s Racial Statistics Branch said, “I believe that what we’re hearing from the Afro-Latino community is that they do not believe that those numbers accurately illustrate the Afro-Latino community presence in the United States, and that’s the dialogue that we’re having.”

In the same census, over half of Latinos also identified themselves as white and 36 percent marked themselves as “some other race.”…

Read the entire article here.

Shades of Race: How Phenotype and Observer Characteristics Shape Racial Classification

American Behavioral Scientist
Published online before print 2015-10-28
DOI: 10.1177/0002764215613401

Cynthia Feliciano, Associate Professor of Sociology; Associate Professor of Chicano/Latino Studies
University of California, Irvine

Although race-based discrimination and stereotyping can only occur if people place others into racial categories, our understanding of this process, particularly in contexts where observers categorize others based solely on appearance, is limited. Using a unique data set drawn from observers’ assessments of photos posted by White, Black, Latino, and multiracial online daters, this study examines how phenotype and observer characteristics influence racial categorization and cases of divergence between self-identities and others’ classifications. I find that despite the growth in the multiracial population, observers tend to place individuals into monoracial categories, including Latino. Skin color is the primary marker used to categorize others by race, with light skin associated with Whiteness, medium skin with Latinidad, and, most strongly, dark skin with Blackness. Among daters who self-identify as Black along with other racial categories, those with dark skin are overwhelmingly placed solely into a Black category. These findings hold across observers, but the proportion of photos placed into different racial categories differs by observers’ gender and race. Thus, estimates of inequality may vary depending not only on how race is assessed but also on who classifiers are. I argue that patterns of racial categorization reveal how the U.S. racial structure has moved beyond binary divisions into a system in which Latinos are seen as a racial group in-between Blacks and Whites, and a dark-skin rule defines Blacks’ racial options.

Read or purchase the article here.