Mixed Race Studies

The Cumulative Effects of Colorism: Race, Wealth, and Skin Tone

Social Forces
Published online: 2023-03-13
DOI: 10.1093/sf/soad038

Alexander Adames, Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Sociology
University of Pennslyvania

Researchers have long documented a persistent Black–White gap in wealth. These studies, however, often treat race as a discrete category, eluding its socially constructed nature. As a result, these studies assume that the “effect of race” is consistent across all individuals racialized as Black. Studies that make this assumption potentially obscure heterogeneity in the size of the Black–White wealth gap. Research on skin color stratification suggests that it is possible that the Black–White wealth gap varies by the extent to which a racial subgroup is deemed to fit the broader racial umbrella. In turn, I adopt a more complex operationalization of race that is based on both racial and skin tone appraisals. Drawing on data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, I find that the Black–White wealth gap does vary by the Black skin tone subgroup. Generally, the Black–White gap in assets is smallest when focusing on lighter-skin Black people and largest when focusing on darker-skin Black people. These differences are not only the result of initial disadvantage but also cumulative disadvantage in the rate of wealth accumulation. Lastly, the findings suggest that the Black–White wealth gaps grow at a faster rate than the skin tone wealth gaps. I found that differences were robust to adjustments for parental socioeconomic status, childhood background, and interviewer characteristics. I conclude by discussing the theoretical implications for our understanding of the mechanisms undergirding Black–White disparities in wealth attainment.

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Invitation to Contribute to The Routledge International Handbook of Interracial Relationships and Mental Health

2023-01-10

We, Shivon Raghunandan, Roy Moodley and Kelley Kenney are writing to you as editors of The Routledge International Handbook of Interracial Relationships and Mental Health, to be published by Routledge as part of their International Handbook series. We are inviting colleagues globally who have an academic, teaching, research, and publication interest in this topic to contribute to this text. More specifically, we are seeking authors for the following chapters.

Chapter 2: Interracial Mixing: A Threat to White Supremacy and Colonial Structures
Chapter 5: Historical Retrospectives of Interracial Relationships: Mixed-Race Movement and Impact
Chapter 11: Interracial Relationships in Latin Communities
Chapter 16: Intercultural/Mixed Race Relationships (and marriages) in the Caribbean
Chapter 30: Gender in Intercultural Relationships
Chapter 32: Interracial Relationships and Religion
Chapter 33: Interracial Relationships and Socio-Economic Status
Chapter 34: Interracial Relationships and Disability
Chapter 35: Interracial Relationships Across the Lifespan

Please allow us to offer a brief synopsis of the book. The Routledge International Handbook of Interracial Relationships and Mental Health will present critical theoretical, empirical, and psychological accounts of interracial and intercultural intimacies. This book is in response to the iniquitous underrepresentation of intercultural couples in psychology theory, research and practice and will challenge the pervasive Eurocentric discourse that currently guides the field of mental health. The book will offer current, scholarly, practical, equitable, global and intercultural responsive philosophies, theories, clinical frameworks and practices to clinicians, educators and students in the field of mental health and well-being, sociology and other related disciplines. Moreover, this handbook will explore how the social, cultural and geo-political histories and philosophies of intercultural relationships evolved.

The book will examine the evolution of these partnerships within the context of coloniality, heteropatriarchy, white supremacy and endogamy and explore how these discourses shaped the lived experiences and psychological well-being of intercultural couples globally. It will also provide a comprehensive analysis of intercultural relationships inclusive of diverse cross-racial pairings, global and international perspectives, intersectional identities, and transnational unions; and, indeed, offer critical perspectives on the mental health and well-being of intercultural couples, inclusive of multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-faith, multi-sexual, multi-racial, multi-gendered, multi-abled couples, and their intersections.

To meet the deadline of a June 2024 submission to Routledge, first draft chapters will be submitted to the editors by August 2023. Editors will provide feedback by the end of October 2023 and final chapters will be submitted to the editors by the end of March 2024.

We are happy to provide further details if you are interested in contributing to this text.
If you are interested, please contact Shivon Raghunandan at shivon.raghunandan@humber.ca

With Best Wishes,

Shivon Raghunandan, Ed.D., Humber College, Canada
Roy Moodley, Ph.D., University of Toronto, Canada
Kelley Kenney, Ed.D., DeSales University, United States

Métis Rising: Living Our Present Through the Power of Our Past

University of British Columbia Press
2022-04-30
280 pages
6 x 9
3 b&w illus., 2 maps, 8 charts, 3 tables
Hardcover ISBN: 9780774880749

Yvonne Boyer and Larry Chartrand

Métis Rising draws on a remarkable cross-section of perspectives to tell the histories, stories, and dreams of people from varied backgrounds, demonstrating that there is no single Métis experience – only a common sense of belonging and a commitment to justice.

The contributors to this unique collection, most of whom are Métis themselves, examine often-neglected aspects of Métis existence in Canada. They trace a turbulent course, illustrating how Métis leaders were born out of the need to address abhorrent social and economic disparities following the Métis–Canadian war of 1885. They talk about the long and arduous journey to rebuild the Métis nation from a once marginalized and defeated people; their accounts ranging from personal reflections on identity to tales of advocacy against poverty and poor housing. And they address the indictment of the jurisdictional gap whereby neither federal nor provincial governments would accept governance responsibility towards Métis people.

Métis Rising is an extraordinary work that exemplifies how contemporary Métis identity has been forged by social, economic, and political concerns into a force to be reckoned with.

A must-read not only for scholars and students of Métis and Indigenous studies but for lawyers, policymakers, and all Canadians who wish a broader understanding of this country’s colonial past.

Bleach in the Rainbow: Latin Ethnicity and Preference for Whiteness

Transforming Anthropology
Volume 13, Issue 2 (October 2005)
Pages 103-109
DOI: 10.1525/tran.2005.13.2.103

William A. Darity, Jr., Samuel DuBois Cook Distinguished Professor of Public Policy
Duke University, Durham, North Carolina

Jason Dietrich, Section Chief, Compliance Analytics and Policy
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Washington, D.C.

Darrick Hamilton, Henry Cohen Professor of Economics and Urban Policy
Milano School of Policy, Management, and Environment
The New School, New York, New York

The conventional wisdom is that race is constructed in vastly different ways in the United States and throughout Latin America. Race is ostensibly understood as genotypical in the United States, while race ostensibly is understood as phenotypical in Latin America. Furthermore, the conventional wisdom, represented by the rainbow people metaphor, characterizes racial identity as far less a source of stigma in Latin America than in the United States. In contrast, research reported in this article indicates strong similarities in the construction and the operation race the entire Americas. Genotype, or African ancestry, is shown to matter in Latin America; phenotype, or appearance, is shown to matter in the United States. Race is strongly associated with social exclusion and inequality throughout all of the Americas, with Latinos demonstrating a strong preference for Whiteness and an aversion toward a Black identity. African Americans’ tendency to be Black identified may be the result of the social selection effects the phenomenon “passing.”

Read or purchase the article here.

René Jones, one of 4 Black CEOs in the Fortune 500, on his ‘secret’ for success: ‘You have to tell your story’

CNBC
2022-02-27

Jade Scipioni, Senior Reporter, Make It

This story is part of the Behind the Desk series, where CNBC Make It gets personal with successful business executives to find out everything from how they got to where they are to what makes them get out of bed in the morning to their daily routines.

René Jones says banking executives have a “bad rap.” His reason might surprise you.

“I think it’s because we’re not really good storytellers,” Jones, 56, tells CNBC Make It.

Jones, who has served as the chairman and CEO of Buffalo, New York-based regional bank M&T since 2017, is currently one of only four Black CEOs in the Fortune 500. He started there as an executive associate in 1992, and today oversees its 17,000-plus employees and market valuation of $23 billion.

Over time, he says, he’s learned to lean into his own personal story as his “secret weapon” — sharing it with employees has helped him form deeper and more meaningful workplace relationships. Growing up with five siblings in a biracial family, for example — especially as the lightest-skinned of his siblings — taught him early on not to form stereotypes about people…

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Who is black, white, or mixed race? How skin color, status, and nation shape racial classification in Latin America

American Journal of Sociology
Volume 120, Number 3 (November 2014)
pages 864-907
DOI: 10.1086/679252

Edward Telles, Distinguished Professor of Sociology
University of California, Irvine

Tianna Paschel, Associate Professor of Sociology and African American Studies
University of California, Berkeley

Comparative research on racial classification has often turned to Latin America, where race is thought to be particularly fluid. Using nationally representative data from the 2010 and 2012 America’s Barometer survey, the authors examine patterns of self-identification in four countries. National differences in the relation between skin color, socioeconomic status, and race were found. Skin color predicts race closely in Panama but loosely in the Dominican Republic. Moreover, despite the dominant belief that money whitens, the authors discover that status polarizes (Brazil), mestizoizes (Colombia), darkens (Dominican Republic), or has no effect (Panama). The results show that race is both physical and cultural, with country variations in racial schema that reflect specific historical and political trajectories.

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Majority of Latinos Say Skin Color Impacts Opportunity in America and Shapes Daily Life

Pew Research Center
Washington, D.C.
2021-11-04
63 pages

Latinos with darker skin color report more discrimination experiences than Latinos with lighter skin color

The perceived impact of skin color in the lives of U.S. Latinos is broad. From impacting their ability to get ahead in the country to shaping their daily life experiences to dealing with discrimination, skin color is seen by Latinos as an important factor affecting their lives and life chances.

A majority (62%) of Hispanic adults say having a darker skin color hurts Hispanics’ ability to get ahead in the United States today at least a little. A similar share (59%) say having a lighter skin color helps Hispanics get ahead. And 57% say skin color shapes their daily life experiences a lot or some, with about half saying discrimination based on race or skin color is a “very big problem” in the U.S. today, according to Pew Research Center’s National Survey of Latinos, a bilingual, national survey of 3,375 Hispanic U.S. adults conducted in March 2021.

Colorism is a form of discrimination based on skin color, usually, though not always, favoring lighter skin color over darker skin color within a racial or ethnic group. While it can be tied to racism, it is not necessarily the same. (Racism is prejudice directed at members of a racial or ethnic group because of their origin.) For example, Hispanics in the U.S. may face discrimination because they are Hispanic (a form of racism), but the degree of discrimination may vary based on skin color, with those of darker shades experiencing more incidents (a form of colorism). And because of colorism’s deep roots in the histories of Latin America and the United States, discrimination based on skin color can occur among Hispanics just as much as it can be directed at Hispanics by non-Hispanics.

To measure this dimension of Latino identity in the United States, the survey asked respondents to identify the skin color that best resembled their own using a version of the Yadon-Ostfeld skin-color scale. Respondents were shown ten skin colors that ranged from fair to dark (see text box below for the images and scale used). Fully 80% of Latino adults selected a color between one and four, or lighter skin colors, while 15% selected a color between five and ten on the scale, or darker skin colors.¹…

Table of Contents

• Majority of Latinos Say Skin Color Impacts Opportunity in America and Shapes Daily Life
  • Discrimination and skin color
  • Impact of race, skin color is a topic of conversation with relatives and friends for Hispanics
  • Half of Latinos say there is too little national attention on racial issues concerning Latino people
  • Hispanics often hear other Hispanics make racially insensitive comments and jokes about Hispanics and non-Hispanics alike
  • While Hispanics say skin color affects their ability to get ahead in America, other factors are seen as important as well
  • For Latinos, discrimination experiences and views about skin color and race are linked
• 1. Half of U.S Latinos experienced some form of discrimination during the first year of the pandemic
• 2. For many Latinos, skin color shapes their daily life and affects opportunity in America
• 3. Latinos divided on whether race gets too much or too little attention in the U.S. today
• 4. Measuring the racial identity of Latinos
• Acknowledgments
• Methodology
• Appendix: Additional tables

Read the entire report in PDF or HTML format.

Is There Racism in the Deed to Your Home?

The New York Times
2021-08-17

Sara Clemence

Kyona and Kenneth Zak found a racial covenant in the deed to their house in San Diego that barred anyone “other than the White or Caucasian race” from owning the home. Although now illegal across the country, the covenant would have prevented Ms. Zak, who is Black, from owning the home. John Francis Peters for The New York Times

Racial covenants were designed to keep neighborhoods segregated. Some states are now making it easier to erase them from legal documents.

Last year, to celebrate the centennial of their charming Craftsman home, Kyona and Kenneth Zak repainted it in historically accurate colors — gray, bronze green and copper red. They commissioned beveled-glass windows to complement the original stained glass. And they visited the San Diego County Recorder, to have a line drawn through a sentence in their deed that once would have prohibited Ms. Zak, who is Black, from owning the home.

“I’ve referred to it as the ultimate smudge stick to the house,” said Ms. Zak, an ayurvedic health counselor and yoga therapist, drawing parallels to the Indigenous practice of purifying a place by burning sacred herbs.

Buried in the fine print of the Zaks’ deed was a racial covenant, a clause that barred anyone “other than the White or Caucasian race” from owning the home. For much of the 20th century, it was common practice to insert such restrictions into deeds. The covenants targeted people who were Asian, Latino and Jewish, but especially those who were Black…

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Afro-Latinos in the U.S. Economy

Lexington Books
May 2021
174 pages
Trim: 6½ x 9
Hardback ISBN: 978-1-4985-4624-9
eBook ISBN: 978-1-4985-4625-6

Michelle Holder, Associate Professor of Economics
John Jay College, City University of New York

Alan A. Aja, Professor of Puerto Rican and Latino Studies
Brooklyn College, City University of New York

Afro-Latinos in the U.S. Economy outlines the current position and status of Afro-Latinxs in the economy of the United States. Very little research has thus far been disseminated in the field of economics on the contributions of Afro-Latinxs regarding income and wealth, labor market status, occupational mobility, and educational attainment. On the other hand, cultural studies, literary criticism, and social science fields have produced more research on Afro-Latinxs; the discipline of economics is, thus, significantly behind the curve in exploring the economic dimensions of this group. While the Afro-Latinx community constitutes a comparatively small segment of the U.S. population, and is often viewed as the nexus between two of the country’s largest minority groups—African Americans and Latinxs, who comprise 13 percent and 17 percent, respectively, of the U.S. population—Holder and Aja outline how the group’s unique economic position is different than non-black Latinxs. Despite possessing higher levels of education relative to the Latinx community as a whole, U.S. Afro-Latinxs do not experience expected returns in income and earnings, underscoring the role anti-Blackness plays in everyday life regardless of ancestral origin. The goal of this book is to provide a foundation in the economic dimensions of Afro-Latinxs in the U.S. which can be used to both complement and supplement research conducted on this group in other major disciplines.

Table of Contents

• Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION –DEMOGRAPHIC AND HISTORICAL CONTEXT
• Chapter 2: INCOME, POVERTY AND WEALTH AMONG AFRO LATINXS
• Chapter 3: THE LABOR MARKET STATUS OF AFRO-LATINXS
• Chapter 4: AFRO-LATINAS IN THE U.S.
• Chapter 5: AFRO-LATINXS AND INCARCERATION
• Chapter 6: AFRO–LATINXS, DISCRIMINATION AND THE NEED FOR BOLD POLICIES AND MOVEMENTS

To Escape Jim Crow–Era Discrimination and Violence, Some Black Men Passed as White. But How Many?

Kellogg Insight
Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University
Evanston, Illinois
2021-04-01

Based on the Research of:

Ricardo Dahis, Ph.D. Candidate in Economics
Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois

Emily Nix, Assistant Professor of Finance and Business Economics
University of Southern California, Los Angeles

Nancy Qian, James J. O’Connor Professor of Managerial Economics & Decision Sciences
Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois

Lisa Röper

Hundreds of thousands, according to a new study of Census data. Doing so provided some economic benefits but came at a great personal cost.

In the 1920s, a doctor named Albert Johnston had trouble finding a medical residency. Johnston was biracial, with Black ancestry, and hospitals at the time often did not permit Black physicians to treat white patients. But when a Maine hospital allowed him to apply without specifying his race, Johnston finally secured a position. He and his wife Thyra, who was one-eighth Black, started a new life as a white couple.

Johnston’s decision was an example of “passing”: identifying as a different race. During the Jim Crow era, when Black people were systematically denied opportunities and lived under the threat of lynching, some who were able to pass chose to do so in order to avoid the economic, physical, and social injustices of the time. And while historians and biographers have documented many instances of passing, researchers have not had a clear idea of how common this behavior was.

“The big question is, can we quantify this?” says Ricardo Dahis, a PhD student in economics at Northwestern University, who coauthored a study on this topic with Nancy Qian, a professor of managerial economics and decision sciences at Kellogg, and Emily Nix at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business.

To come up with numbers, the researchers searched detailed U.S. census records taken from 1880 to 1940. They were able to thus track specific people through time and note if their race changed from one census to the next. (Women were too difficult to track because they usually changed their last names after marriage.) The team estimated that, on average, at least 1.4 percent of Black men under age 55 started passing as white per decade, adding up to more than 300,000 men over the study period. However, the estimate is very conservative, and the actual rate could be as high as 7–10 percent, the researchers say.

Men who passed often moved to other counties or states. Census records suggest that in some cases, the men passed without their Black wives or children; in others, the entire family may have passed as white.

“Racial discrimination was so extreme that in order to escape it, people redefined themselves,” Qian says. “They changed their own identity.”…

Read the entire article here.