Mixed Race Studies

AAS 550: Asian Americans of Mixed Heritages

San Francisco State University
Spring 2012

Wei Ming Dariotis, Associate Professor of Asian American Studies

This is an interactive, dynamic course taught in a seminar style with an expectation of active student participation. Group work and interaction are emphasized in order to provide students with real life problem solving opportunities. Creative and analytical approaches are both emphasized through Reading Response Essays, a Midterm Group Play, Research Portfolio and related Presentation, and Final Class Project (creating a Hapa Children’s Book). Topics covered in this course may include a selection of the following:

• The history of anti-miscegenation in the US, particularly as such laws relate to the Asian Pacific American experience; stereotypes of APIs [Asian-Pacific Islanders] of mixed heritage
• the history of US and European war and colonialism in relation to APIs of mixed heritage
• the “war bride” phenomenon
• TransRacial/transnational adoption; Hapas in Hawai’i
• Double Minority Hapas
• Queer Hapas
• Hapa Bodies (body image and health issues)
• Hapa Creative/Cultural expression
• Mixed Heritage activism and social and political organizations

This course explores the Historical, Cross-Cultural and Global Contexts relevant to Asian Pacific Americans of mixed heritage. AAS 550 is designed to present students with cross cultural and historical perspectives which will permit students to empathize with Asians Pacifics of mixed heritage, across a wide variety of historical circumstances and personal experiences. The inherently multiethnic nature of the subject matter allows students to develop an appreciation of an emerging sub-dominant group (APIs of mixed heritage or Hapas) and recognition of the fundamental unity of humankind…

For more information, click here.

The Case for Transracial Adoption

American University Press
1994
150 pages
6 x 0.5 x 9 inches
Paperback ISBN-10: 1879383209; ISBN-13: 978-1879383203

Rita J. Simon, University Professor Emerita
Department of Justice, Law and Society
American University, Washington, D.C.

Howard Altstein, Professor of Social Work
University of Maryland, Baltimore

Marygold S. Melli, Professor of Law Emerita
University of Wisconsin Law School

This timely study analyzes the issue of adoptions that cross racial and national lines, and assesses their success and appropriateness. The book’s centerpiece is a comprehensive long-term study of the transracial adoption conducted by Rita Simon and Howard Altstein, the result of twenty years of research and analysis. The authors discuss the case often made against transracial adoption and explain the laws that govern these adoptions.

This is a Time for Hope and Change

Indiana Law Journal
Volume 87, Issue 1 (2012)
Article 23
pages 431-444

Kevin D. Brown, Richard S. Melvin Professor of Law
Indiana University Maurer School of Law

I have agreed to comment on the paper delivered by Professors Angela Onwuachi-Willig and Mario Barnes at a conference titled Labor and Employment Law Under the Obama Administration: A Time for Hope and Change? In his victory speech on the night of November 4, 2008, Barack Obama, the first black (African American, biracial?) President reaffirmed the themes of “hope and change” that were central to his campaign. He stated that his election was the answer “that led those who have been told for so long by so many to be cynical, and fearful, and doubtful of what we can achieve, to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.” He went on to point out that “[i]ts [sic] been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America.” So with his reelection just a year away, now is an appropriate time to reflect on whether this truly is a time for hope and change.

Professors Onwuachi-Willig and Barnes entitled their piece The Obama Effect: Understanding the Emerging Meanings of “Obama” in Anti-Discrimination Law.
They reject the idea that this is a time for either hope or positive change. They close their introduction with the following summary:

[W]e conclude that having a biracial, black-white president has had very little effect on the enforcement of anti-discrimination law. Indeed, we contend that Obama’s campaign and election have, to an extent, had the opposite effect in the work environment. Rather than revealing that racism is over or that racial discrimination is diminishing in the workplace, Obama’s presence and prominence have developed a specialized meaning that has signaled an increase in or at the very least a continuation of regular discrimination and harassment within the workplace.

To support their conclusion Onwuachi-Willig and Barnes point to “Obama’s own identity performance during his campaign, studies regarding the psychology of whites who supported Obama, and studies concerning implicit bias.” Onwuachi-Willig and Barnes note that during his campaign, Obama engaged in a number of racial-comfort strategies. He avoided discussions of race as much as possible and “black people [like Louis Farrakhan and Al Sharpton] . . . deemed to be ‘too’ racially defined.” Obama worked to produce an identity that countered stereotypes of blacks as too consumed with race and downplayed his status as a black man during the campaign. Onwuachi-Willig and Barnes also point out that Obama’s opponents used his race against him and his wife, often publicizing negative stereotypes about blacks. These attacks continued even after the election, including the highly publicized use of stereotyped images by the Tea Party. Onwuachi-Willig and Barnes mention studies that demonstrate that some whites voted for Obama as a means to make a statement about the irrelevancy of race to them and society. They indicate that psychologists have noted that some white voters who supported Obama did so simply in order to congratulate themselves for backing a black person. This statement, however, might provide persons with a license to support racism, because supporting Obama gave them the moral credentials to express their true feelings about race. Onwuachi-Willig and Barnes go on to contend that these psychological studies suggest that Obama’s election may actually increase racial discrimination, thereby requiring, but not necessarily resulting in, greater enforcement of anti-discrimination law.

It is impossible to ground an evaluative judgment, using definitive measures of universally agreed upon objective and measurable criteria, that Obama’s election may have increased racial discrimination and had a negative effect on the work environment. To reach such a conclusion, scholars have to decide among innumerable possible factors which ones are worthy of consideration, and how much weight should be given to the particular aspects chosen. Alternatively, scholars could arrive at a conclusion like this motivated by particular concerns. Thus, the evaluative conclusion that Obama’s election may increase racial discrimination could represent a response to these concerns…

Read the entire article here.

A separate category for mixed race is necessary to redress the unique harms targeting mixed-race persons. In order to be most effective any scheme proposing such a category must address many pitfalls and complexities in Title VII doctrine. Any categorization must be flexible, just as race can be fluid and contextual. The general argument against a separate category for mixed race ignores the fact that courts are in the midst of selectively choosing where to embrace it and that society already constructs such a category for some individuals. Instead, we must examine the treatment of individuals based on belonging to this category, not the harm of merely being categorized. Many participants of the contemporary discourse argue for why the category is beneficial as a general matter, and these arguments demonstrate possible benefits to adopting such a category in Title VII.

Scot Rives, “Multiracial Work: Handing Over the Discretionary Judicial Tool of Multiracialism,” UCLA Law Review, Volume 58, Number 5 (2011): 1334-1335.

Mixed Race Across the Pacific

University of Southern California
Freshman Seminars
Spring 2013

Duncan Williams, Associate Professor of Religion

In an era when a mixed-race President of the United States proudly proclaims himself as the first Pacific President of America, how might we rethink the study of race in a global, rather than merely a regional, perspective? With the recent changes to the U.S. Census that allows for multiple racial identifications, how might race and race relations be recast when multiplicity, hybridity, and creolization marks everyone from Obama’s half-American/half-Indonesian half-sister to the so-called black golfer Tiger Woods, who is actually primarily Asian?

This course investigates how shifting the paradigm of race studies to the Asia Pacific Americas (Transpacific) experience of race disrupts and reorients the traditionally binary, black/white or white/colored Transatlantic model of race studies in the United States that emerged from a focus on the Transatlantic slave trade. By examining the legacies of Western and Japanese empires in Korea, Taiwan, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Islands and the legacies of disaporic communities in North and South Americas we will reframe the lens through which we approach race studies. Our second focus is to look at miscegenation, creolization, and how mixed race disrupts simplistic racial category formations. We will study comparative anti-miscegenation laws across transnational boundaries and the role of the offspring of mixed race unions that emerged through migrations, trade flows, and the impact of wars.

Duncan Williams is the chair of the School of Religion and director of the USC Center for Japanese Religions and Culture and the founder of the Hapa Japan Project (a database of mixed-race Japanese people from 1500s to the present) and the Mugen Project (the world’s first online bibliographical database on Buddhism).

Letter documenting the struggle of two children’s attempt to attend school

Special Collections
University of Southern Mississippi Libraries
Item of the Month
March 2010

Jennifer Brannock, Special Collections Librarian

The Mississippi Department of Archives and History: Sovereignty Commission Online

[Note from Steven F. Riley: For more on Newton Knight, Rachel Knight, and the “Free State of Jones,” please read Victoria E. Bynum’s excellent monograph, The Free State of Jones: Mississippi’s Longest Civil War.]

In 1964, 9-year-old Edgar and 8-year-old Randy Williamson had never attended a day of school. The debate over their admittance stems from the fact that they are 1/16 or 1/32 African American. They are the great, great grandchildren of Newt Knight and a slave woman, Rachel. Newt Knight is a well-known historical figure who was the man behind the “Free State of Jones.” Rachel was a slave owned by Knight’s uncle. Even though Knight was married, it is believed that he left his wife and lived with Rachel until her death.

Edgar and Randy Williamson’s great, great grandmother was African American which meant that they were 1/16 African American. According to Mississippi law at the time, a person had to be less than 1/8 African American to be considered white. In the case of the Edgar and Randy, their mother, a direct descendant of Newt and Rachel, was listed as black on her birth certificate (she was 1/8 African American) with Edgar and Randy as white (their father was white). The people in Stringer, a community in Jasper County, considered the children to be African American since their mother was. Due to these beliefs, school officials at the white school in Stringer anticipated strong objections and possible violence if the children were admitted…

Read the entire article here.

Brazil’s affirmative action law offers a huge hand up

The Christian Science Monitor
2013-02-12

Sara Miller Llana, Latin America Bureau Chief and Staff Writer

Public universities in Brazil will reserve half their seats to provide racial, income, and ethnic diversity – a law that goes the furthest in the Americas in attempting race-based equality. It will most greatly affect the large Afro-Brazilian population.

Rio de Janeiro—Thaiana Rodrigues, the daughter of an esthetician in Rio de Janeiro, tried to get into college three times. But having spent most of her childhood in poor public schools – her anatomy teacher in seventh grade never showed up to class so she simply never learned the subject – Ms. Rodrigues was unable to pass the entrance exam.

It was not until her fourth try, when she applied as a quota recipient based on her race and socioeconomic status, that she won a spot at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), a public university that pioneered a quota system for public school students.

Rodrigues graduated in August 2011 with a degree in social sciences and now has a job working as an administrative assistant in an educational exhibit in the state legislature. Although only in her first year, already she is earning what her mother makes and is positioning herself for a career in public policy.

Now, many more marginalized Brazilians may be able to reap the same benefit. A system that was an experiment at scores of universities like UERJ over the past decade has become law: public federal universities must reserve half of their spots for underprivileged students hailing from public schools, disproportionately attended by minorities.

The law, signed in August and set to be completely implemented within four years, will have the widest impact on Afro-Brazilians, who make up more than half of the nation’s population.

“Without the law, many black students could not get into the system,” says Rodrigues, who is Afro-Brazilian…

…Affirmative action has long been resisted in Latin America, which considered it an import of the US, where it was first tried. After abolishing slavery, Latin America never implemented the segregation policies of its neighbor to the north, and has intermixed racially and ethnically far more than has the US. But fuzzy definitions of race don’t preclude racism.

“The main problem is this idea that this is a mestizo country where mixed-blood people are the majority, and mixing bloods gave us democracy,” says Jaime Arocha, an anthropologist and expert on Afro-Colombians.

“This is the founding myth in most Latin America countries. [Many believe] that our systems are not as segregationist as those in the north,” Mr. Arocha says. “But if you go to a national university in Colombia, the amount of professors of African descent is not more than 2 percent. In terms of students, we do not have more than 5 percent. [Universities] should reflect the demographic profiles of the country.” (Some 10 percent of Colombia’s population is of African descent.)…

Read the entire article here.

Canada’s Métis win 142-year-old land ruling

BBC News
2013-03-08

Canada’s Supreme Court has ruled the government failed to hand out land grants properly to the Métis indigenous group 142 years ago.

In a 6-2 ruling, the top court said the failure was “not a matter of occasional negligence, but of repeated mistakes and inaction”.

The Métis are descendants of indigenous people and European immigrants.

The land was promised in a 1870 law, to settle a rebellion of existing Métis amid a wave of settlement in Manitoba.

After delays, it was eventually distributed via a lottery that largely benefited European settlers.

The Manitoba Métis Federation (MMF), which brought the suit, celebrated the end of three decades of legal challenges over the land-grant provision…

Read the entire article here.

“Multiracial” Discourse: Racial Classifications in an Era of Color-blind Jurisprudence

Maryland Law Review
Volume 57, Issue 1 (1998)
pages 97-173

Tanya Katerí Hernández, Professor of Law
Fordham University

• INTRODUCTION
• I. THE BACKGROUND AND MOTIVATION OF THE MULTIRACIAL CATEGORY MOVEMENT
• II. THE ADVERSE CONSEQUENCES OF MULTIRACIAL DISCOURSE
  • A. The Reaffirmation of the Value of Whiteness in Racial Hierarchy
  • B. The Dissociation of a Racially Subordinated Buffer Class from Equality Efforts
  • C. The Continuation of the Color-Blind Jurisprudence Trajectory
    • 1. The Historical Meaning of Race Expelled from Analysis of Racial Discrimination
    • 2. Societal Discrimination Expelled from Analysis of Racial Discrimination
    • 3. The Judicial View of Race-Conscious Equality Measures as Harmful Stereotyping
    • 4. The Judicial Excision of Race from Racial Discrimination Discourse
  • D. Measurement of Racial Progress Hindered
• III. A RACE-CONSCIOUS RACIAL CLASSIFICATION PROPOSAL
• CONCLUSION

Introduction

The debate, in short, is really not so much about a multiracial box as it is about what race means-and what it will come to mean as the society approaches the millennium.
—Ellis Close

For the past several years, there has been a Multiracial Category Movement (MCM) promoted by some biracial persons’ and their parents for the addition of a “multiracial” race category on the decennial census. The stated aim of such a new category is to obtain a more specific count of the number of mixed-race persons in the United States and to have that tallying of mixed-race persons act as a barometer and promoter of racial harmony. As proposed, a respondent could choose the “multiracial” box in lieu of the presently listed racial classifications of American Indian or Alaskan Native, Asian or Pacific Islander, Black, White, or Other. The census schedule also includes a separate Hispanic Origin ethnicity question. On October 29, 1997, the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) adopted a federal Interagency Committee recommendation to reject the multiracial category in favor of allowing individuals to check more than one racial category. Some MCM proponents are not satisfied with the OMB’s decision, because multiple box checking does not directly promote a distinct multiracial identity.  These MCM proponents are committed to continue lobbying for a multiracial category on the 2010 census. Further, an OMB official has indicated that the issue of a multiracial category might be reconsidered with an increase in mixed-race persons. Yet, the significance of the MCM extends beyond the actual decision of whether and how mixed-race persons should be counted.

The discourse surrounding the advocacy for a census count of mixed-race persons has social and legal ramifications apart from the limited context of revising a census form. The principle underlying this Article is that the law should be understood in terms of its social consequences. From a legal-realist perspective, it is important to scrutinize the neutral discourse characteristic among those proposing a legally mandated mixed-race census count. Such analysis exposes its moral and political significance and ramifications. “[L]anguage… can powerfully evoke and enforce hidden signs of racial superiority, cultural hegemony, and dismissive ‘othering’ of people.” The power of discourse arises from its ability to construct a public narrative and
then obstruct counter-explanations for social reality.

Multiracial discourse contends that a mixed-race census count is necessary because race has become too fluid to monitor. The theory posits that the inability to identify psychologically with just one racial category is inherent to mixed-race persons alone and that the growing number of mixed-race persons demonstrates the futility of racial categorization as a practice. For instance, MCM proponents often refer to the growing numbers of persons who choose the “Other Race” category to support the premise that the racial categories are inadequate for mixed-race persons. The multiracial narrative of modern race being more fluid than in the past corresponds with and reinforces the color-blind jurisprudence presentation of race as devoid of meaning. Thus, “multiracial discourse” has an immediate meaning as the rhetoric deployed in the campaign for a specific count of mixed-race persons, and a more expansive meaning as the approach to race that views the increasing diversity of society as deconstructing and transcending race. Multiracial discourse misconstrues the meaning of race used in the group measurement of racial disparity, with an individual focused assessment of fluid cultural identity. Such a view of race negates its sociopolitical meaning26 and thereby undermines effective legal mechanisms to ameliorate racial discrimination. In fact, the MCM can be viewed as a metonym for the more general colorblind approach to race evident in recent Supreme Court cases.

Both the immediate and expansive meanings of “multiracial discourse” are interrelated and involve a highly politicized discourse. Accordingly, this Article shall question the assumptions that underlie both levels of meaning in order to assess the continuing significance of the racial classifications that multiracial discourse challenges. This analysis reveals that although multiracial discourse may seem benign and appealing on a humanitarian level, its implementation will produce counter-egalitarian results in the struggle for racial equality. The MCM’s campaign for color-blind treatment of racial hierarchy cloaks the racial significance of ostensibly race-neutral laws, as the Supreme Court’s recent movement toward color-blind anti-discrimination jurisprudence has done.

Because of the manner in which the census context highlights the dangers of multiracial discourse to racial justice efforts, this Article will focus upon the census as a well-known paradigm for the way racial classifications function. In particular, to demonstrate the folly of color-blind approaches to race issues, the author enlists the debate centered on the demand for a census count of mixed-race persons. Because the census is the cornerstone of the federal statistical system, the battle over the reform of the census racial classifications is significant and far-reaching.The census reflects in large measure the nation’s struggle over how human beings will be known politically in a racially stratified society.  The debate over a multiracial category reveals an intriguing aspect about how we conceptualize race. An examination of multiracial discourse reveals that multiracial-category proponents misperceive the meaning of race relevant to the census inquiry by conflating a cultural approach to race with a sociopolitical approach to race. Therefore, this Article analyzes the widespread legal ramifications of the MCM and assesses whether the MCM’s proposal effectively advances its stated goal of promoting racial equality. After analyzing the legal import of multiracial discourse, the Article determines that the MCM misperception of race and its fluidity inadvertently furthers the progression of color-blind jurisprudence in direct contravention of the MCM goal of promoting racial equality. Part I provides background and identifies the motivating forces behind the MCM as a color-blind movement. Part II critiques the MCM for its adverse effects upon racial justice efforts in furthering the manner in which color-blind jurisprudence disregards actual experiences of racial discrimination in the promotion of White supremacy. Part III proposes a race-conscious classification system, which reflects the sociopolitical nature of race, to monitor racial discrimination more effectively and to dislodge the force of multiracial discourse…

Read the entire article here.

Notorious in the Neighborhood: Sex and Families across the Color Line in Virginia, 1787-1861

University of North Carolina Press
March 2003
360 pages
6.125 x 9.25, 1 genealogical chart, 4 maps, notes, bibl., index
Paper ISBN  978-0-8078-5440-2

Joshua D. Rothman, Associate Professor of History
University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa

Winner of the 2004 Outstanding Book Award, Organization for the Study of Communication, Language, and Gender.

Laws and cultural norms militated against interracial sex in Virginia before the Civil War, and yet it was ubiquitous in cities, towns, and plantation communities throughout the state. In Notorious in the Neighborhood, Joshua Rothman examines the full spectrum of interracial sexual relationships under slavery—from Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings, and the intertwined interracial families of Monticello and Charlottesville to commercial sex in Richmond, the routinized sexual exploitation of enslaved women, and adultery across the color line. He explores the complex considerations of legal and judicial authorities who handled cases involving illicit sex and describes how the customary toleration of sex across the color line both supported and undermined racism and slavery in the early national and antebellum South.

White Virginians allowed for an astonishing degree of flexibility and fluidity within a seemingly rigid system of race and interracial relations, Rothman argues, and the relationship between law and custom regarding racial intermixture was always shifting. As a consequence, even as whites never questioned their own racial supremacy, the meaning and significance of racial boundaries, racial hierarchy, and ultimately of race itself always stood on unstable ground—a reality that whites understood and about which they demonstrated increasing anxiety as the nation’s sectional crisis intensified.