Mixed Race Studies

American Identities: California Short Stories of Multiple Ancestries

Xlibris Press
2008
263 Pages
ISBN: 1-4363-7705-6 (Trade Paperback 6×9)
ISBN13: 978-1-4363-7705-8 (Trade Paperback 6×9)

Eliud Martínez, Professor Emeritus of Creative Writing and Comparative Literature
University of California, Riverside

In many parts of the country, especially in California, when one passes by a school or strolls across a college or university campus, it is inescapable to the eye that the American student population looks very different from that before the seventies. Young people today are accustomed to seeing people from many ancestral backgrounds. In classrooms, at schools, colleges and universities; at shopping malls, weddings and other social gatherings, young people are aware that they are living in an increasingly multicultural America.

These then, are the voices and stories of today’s young Americans. Diverse, by turns uplifting, insightful, illuminating and heart-warming or heartbreaking, the stories give us moving portrayals of the young authors and their families, mothers and fathers. Some offer shocking depictions of military brutality and political violence. Others recover family stories and make touching tributes to earlier generations. Some stories help us to see how young people perceive themselves and their identities when they are offspring of mothers and fathers from other lands or of different cultures.

The young writers included in this anthology, or their parents and ancestors, come from Egypt, Ethiopia, Korea, China, Japan, Cambodia, Taiwan, India; from East Los Angeles, El Salvador, Mexico, Honduras, Vietnam, Italy, Denmark, the Philippines, Cuba, and other places. Generational differences are inevitable between immigrant parents and their children, who are either American-born or grow up in America. The differences shape many attitudes to the ancestral cultures, customs, language and ways of life. The stories remind us of why some people came to America, of what they left behind, and what persists in ancestral forms adapted to American ways.

The stories provide telling evidence that collectively, there are many varieties of American identity among children of immigrants and their parents from other lands. These California stories tell of young lives that have been shaped by ancestry, time and place, national background, personal and generational experiences, geography, and by American social and immigrant history, conditions in their ancestral lands and lingering perceptions of race.

Many immigrants come in search of a better life or in pursuit of the American dream. Some Americanized children of immigrants struggle self-consciously to fit in. Their experiences invite dramatic literary expression. In two of the most powerful stories in this anthology, Jan Ballesteros and Thien Hoang exorcise their extreme pain, self-consciousness and struggle for acceptance.
In high school Ballesteros is repeatedly humiliated in his classes by four bullies who ridicule his Filipino appearance and his spoken accent. Extremely vulnerable, Ballesteros is perplexed because the bullies are all half-Filipino. In Hoang’s case, he is self-conscious about the Chinese reflection that looks out at him from the mirror. By writing their stories these two vulnerable young men come to terms with being American, and at the same time with being Filipino and Chinese, respectively.

More so than in Ballesteros and Hoang’s case a heightened consciousness of color and the desire to look American leads the Vietnamese mother in Kim Bui’s story—“Asian Eyes Westernized”—to change the shape of her eyes surgically. Ironically, the young author points out, the woman who in Vietnam used to work in the sun daily, here In America, she avoids being out in the sun, and resorts to skin whiteners. Kim Bui is struck by her mother’s advice to be proud of being Vietnamese, but to look American. In their stories Megan E. Chao, Chariya Heang, and Neha Pandey highlight their views of young womanhood in America when parents observe or desire to observe the tradition of arranged marriages. Conflicting points of view and parental cultural norms affect young women. Moving self-portrayals, characterized by thoughtful introspection and injections of irony and humor, attest to their dilemmas.

The Stories in this anthology are important for American education, I believe, so that young people can see themselves in these portrayals. In addition to the moving value of the stories the storytelling is of a high caliber. The storytelling is based on knowledge of ancestral traditions and customs, languages, cultural and social history, geography, family memorabilia, immigration documents, old photographs and family correspondence, materials and family stories that have been passed down from generation to generation. In addition to these sources, the young authors interviewed mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles and grandparents, and in some cases in languages other than English, all to the young writers’ credit…. [T]he titles of the stories tellingly identify major themes, experiences, and issues that invited and received dramatic literary expression. These stories are valuable repositories of human experiences shared by many young people today. These then, are the stories and voices of young Americans. One may safely predict that the experiences of which these young people have written so candidly, and in many cases eloquently, will resonate with other people and invite thoughtful self-awareness and self-understanding, a deeper appreciation for the richness of the many immigrant cultures of America, and an enhanced understanding of people of multiple ancestries.

And according to the prospectus…

The decades of the 1960s and 1970s ushered in a productive, illuminating and prolific body of scholarly research and creative expression in all the arts. Much of that enterprise was devoted to the most admirable task of historiography—the reinterpretation of the past and the rewriting of American history.

These stories add artistic dimensions to American social and immigrant history, and complement the scholarly research and literary expression of individual groups. The subject matter, the themes, cultural issues and the very human drama of young lives, as depicted in these stories, are timely. Also, because many of the stories address the longing to belong, which historically, was denied to some American groups in the past, they illustrate how emotionally complex the task continues to be for vulnerable young people from many countries…. In the case of U.S. minority groups—as African Americans, Chicanos, Asian- and Native Americans were once designated—that past denial resulted in the retroactive recovery of our rich intellectual and cultural histories, creative and artistic roots, our arts, heritages and ancestries.

Imaginative and creative expression in the arts dramatizes scholarship in history and the social sciences…. Personal, emotional, direct and down to earth, these stories drive home the psychological and emotional impact of feeling different with a directness and immediacy that scholarly works can only approximate. As such, the anthology also complements numerous scholarly works about bi-racial, multi-racial and mixed-race people.

To read an excerpt, click here.

Confounding the Color Line: The Indian-Black Experience in North America

University of Nebraska Press
2002
396 pages
Illus., map
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8032-6194-5

Edited by

James F. Brooks, President and Chief Executive Officer
School for Advanced Research, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Confounding the Color Line is an essential, interdisciplinary introduction to the myriad relationships forged for centuries between Indians and Blacks in North America. Since the days of slavery, the lives and destinies of Indians and Blacks have been entwined-thrown together through circumstance, institutional design, or personal choice. Cultural sharing and intermarriage have resulted in complex identities for some members of Indian and Black communities today.

The contributors to this volume examine the origins, history, various manifestations, and long-term consequences of the different connections that have been established between Indians and Blacks. Stimulating examples of a range of relations are offered, including the challenges faced by Cherokee freedmen, the lives of Afro-Indian whalers in New England, and the ways in which Indians and Africans interacted in Spanish colonial New Mexico. Special attention is given to slavery and its continuing legacy, both in the Old South and in Indian Territory. The intricate nature of modern Indian-Black relations is showcased through discussions of the ties between Black athletes and Indian mascots, the complex identities of Indians in southern New England, the problem of Indian identity within the African American community, and the way in which today’s Lumbee Indians have creatively engaged with African American church music.

At once informative and provocative, Confounding the Color Line sheds valuable light on a pivotal and not well understood relationship between these communities of color, which together and separately have affected, sometimes profoundly, the course of American history.

Working with Multiracial Students: Critical Perspectives on Research and Practice

Information Age Publishing
2006
Paperback: 1-59311-250-5
Hardcover: 1-59311-127-4

Edited By:

Kendra R. Wallace
University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Working with Mixed Heritage Students offers a collection of writings that bridges the social science and educational literature related to mixed heritage identity development and schooling in diverse contexts. As such, it is the first book of its kind to provide a direct focus on multiracial/ethnic identity and formal education in the United States based on the scholarship of educational researchers. The two common threads linking the chapters are: the flexible, yet situated nature of ethnic and racial identities among mixed heritage students; and the importance of theorizing social contexts when interpreting and representing identity, community, and belonging. In addition to exploring general themes of identity development, Working with Mixed Heritage Students addresses theoretical and methodological issues in conducting research on topics related to mixed heritage students, as well as implications for teacher preparation and educational practice. Ultimately, the authors brought together in this volume share a focus on recently mixed heritage students of first, or second, or third generation multiracial and multiethnic descent. This diversity of perspectives on such a complex topic creates a tension within the book, one that naturally emerges through interdisciplinary collaboration. But it is hoped that this tension is just one of many that will lead to further reflection, dialogue, and action by researchers and educators working with like populations.

A Reader on Race, Civil Rights, and American Law: A Multiracial Approach

Carolina Academic Press
2001
864 pages
ISBN-10: 0-89089-735-2
ISBN: 978-0-89089-735-5
LCCN: 2001092052

Timothy Davis, W. and Ruth H. Turnage Professor of Law
Wake Forest University

Kevin R. Johnson, Dean and Mabie-Apallas Professor of Public Interest Law and Chicana/o Studies
University of California, Davis

George A. Martinez, Professor of Law
Southern Methodist University, Dedman School of Law

This anthology offers a range of legal and related literature analyzing the major issues of race and civil rights in the modern United States. Unlike previous works, which have tended to focus on the relationship between Caucasians and African Americans, this anthology considers race and civil rights issues from a wide range of minority perspectives — African American, Asian American, Latino, and Native American.

The debate over race issues is examined in numerous contexts, including the role of race in laws affecting education, housing, employment, voting rights, immigration, and the administration of criminal justice. In this anthology, editors Davis, Johnson, and Martinez explore broader themes such as the history of racial subordination of African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans and Latinos; affirmative action; hate speech; and the subordination of women of color. In setting the stage for an examination of race in these diverse contexts, the anthology’s first selections explore the concept of race.

The anthology is geared toward, but not limited to, law school classes focusing on civil rights and race relations. The selections are of such a nature that the anthology should also appeal to anyone interested in foundational readings in this area. Each chapter begins with an introduction that strives to provide a framework from which the reader can analyze the current debates over issues of race in the United States.

View the table of contents here.

The Multiracial Experience: Racial Borders as the New Frontier

SAGE Publications
1995
512 pages
Paperback ISBN: 9780803970595

Edited by Maria P. P. Root

In her bold new edited volume, The Multiracial Experience, Maria P. P. Root challenges current theoretical and political conceptualizations of race by examining the experience of mixed-race individuals. Articulating questions that will form the basis for future discussions of race and identity, the contributors tackle concepts such as redefining ethnicity when race is less central to the definition and how a multiracial model might dismantle our negative construction of race. Researchers and practitioners in ethnic studies, anthropology, education, law, psychology, nursing, social work, and sociology add personal insights in chapter-opening vignettes while providing integral critical viewpoints. Sure to stimulate thinking and discussion, the contributors focus on the most contemporary racial issues, including the racial classification system from the U.S. Census to the schools; the differences between race, ethnicity, and colorism; gender and sexuality in a multicultural context; ethnic identity and identity formation; transracial adoption; and the future of race relations in the United States. The Multiracial Experience opens up the dialogue to rethink and redefine race and social relations in this country. This volume provides discussions key to all professionals, practitioners, researchers, and students in multicultural issues, ethnic relations, sociology, education, psychology, management, and public health.

Table of Contents

The Multiracial Experience: Racial Borders as a Significant Frontier in Race Relations – Maria P. P. Root

PART ONE: HUMAN RIGHTS

• A Bill of Rights for Racially Mixed People –  Maria P. P. Root
• Government Classification of Multiracial/Multiethnic People – Carlos A. Fernandez
• The Real World – Susan R. Graham
• Multiracial Identity in a Color-Conscious World – Deborah A. Ramirez
• Transracial Adoptions: In Whose Best Interest? – Ruth G. McRoy and Christine C. Iijima Hall
• Voices from the Movement: Approaches to Multiraciality – Cynthia L. Nakashima

PART TWO: IDENTITY

• Hidden Agendas, Identity Theories, and Multiracial People –  Michael C. Thornton
• Black and White Identity in the New Millenium: Unsevering the Ties That Bind – G. Reginald Daniel
• On Being and Not-Being Black and Jewish – Naomi Zack
• An `Other’ Way of Life: The Empowerment of Alterity in the Interracial Individual – Jan R. Weisman

PART THREE: BLENDING AND FLEXIBILITY

• LatiNegra Lillian: Mental Health Issues of African –  Lillian Comas-Diaz
• Race as Process: Reassessing the `What Are You?’ Encounters of Biracial Individuals – Teresa Kay Williams
• Piecing Together the Puzzle: Self-Concept and Group Identity in Biracial Black/White Youth – Lynda D. Field
• Changing Face, Changing Race: The Remaking of Race in the Japanese American and African American Communities – Rebecca Chiyoko King and Kimberly McClain DaCosta
• Without a Template: The Biracial Korean/White Experience – Brian Chol Soo Standen

PART FOUR: GENDER AND SEXUAL IDENTITY

• In the Margins of Sex and Race: Difference, Marginality, and Flexibility – George Kitahara Kich
• (Un)Natural Boundaries: Mixed Race, Gender, and Sexuality – Karen Maeda Allman
• Heterosexual Alliances: The Romantic Management of Racial Identity-  Francine Winddance Twine
• Ambiguous Bodies: Locating Black/White Women in Cultural Representations – Caroline A. Streeter

PART FIVE: MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION

• Making the Invisible Visible: The Growth of Community Network Organizations – Nancy G. Brown and Ramona E. Douglass
• Challenging Race and Racism: A Framework for Educators – Ronald David Glass and Kendra R. Wallace
• Being Different Together in the University Classroom: Multiracial Identity as Transgressive Education – Teresa Kay Williams et al
• Multicultural Education – Francis Wardle

PART SIX: THE NEW MILLENIUM

• 2001: A Race Odyssey – Christine C. Iijima Hall

Race Law Stories

Foundation Press
2008
624 pages
ISBN-13: 9781599410012

Edited by

Rachel F. Moran, Michael J. Connell Distinguished Professor of Law
University of California, Los Angeles

Devon Wayne Carbado, Professor of Law
University of California, Los Angeles

Race Law Stories brings to life well-known and not-so-well known legal opinions—hidden gems—that address slavery, Native American conquest, Chinese exclusion, Jim Crow, Japanese American internment, immigration, affirmative action, voting rights and employment discrimination. Each story goes beyond legal opinions to explore the historical context of the cases and the worlds of the ordinary people and larger-than-life personalities who drove the litigation process. The book’s multiracial and interdisciplinary approach makes it useful for courses on race and the law and Critical Race Theory both inside and outside the law school as well as for undergraduate and graduate courses in ethnic studies. Each story illuminates the role that the law has played in both creating and combating racial inequality. Race Law Cases, an edited collection of the cases discussed in the Race Law Stories, will be available as a supplement in 2008.

View the Table of Contents here.
Read the introduction here.

Sex, Love, Race: Crossing Boundaries in North American History

New York University Press
1999
416 pages
Cloth ISBN: 9780814735565
Paperback ISBN: 9780814735572

Edited by

Martha Hodes, Professor of History
New York University

Since pre-colonial days, America has been both torn apart and united by love, sex, and marriage across racial boundaries. Whether motivated by violent conquest, economics, lust, or love, such unions have disturbed some of America’s most sacred beliefs and prejudices.

Sex, Love, Race provides a historical foundation for contemporary discussions of sex across racial lines, which, despite the numbers of interracial marriages and multiracial children, remains a controversial issue today. The first historical anthology to focus solely and widely on the subject, Sex, Love, Race gathers new essays by both younger and well-known scholars which probe why and how the specter of sex across racial boundaries has so threatened Americans of all colors and classes.

Traversing the whole of American history, from liaisons among Indians, Europeans, and Africans to twentieth-century social scientists’ fascination with sex between “Orientals” and whites, the essays cover a range of regions, races, ethnicities, and sexual orientations. In so doing, Sex, Love, Race, sketches a larger portrait of the overlapping construction of racial, ethnic, and sexual identities in America.

Race, Hybridity, and Miscegenation

Thoemme Continuum
2005-06-30
657 pages
ISBN: 1843711044
EAN/ISBN13: 9781843711049

Edited by:

Robert Bernasconi, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Philosophy
Pennsylvania State University

Kristie Dotson, Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Michigan State University

Volumes 1 and 2 of this 3 volume set collect the major contributions to the scientific debate on the unity of the human race in the 1850s, focusing particularly on the idea of hybridity. Volume 3 republishes the major contributions to the political debate on miscegenation.

This set brings together very rare primary sources of two central debates in the USA from the second half of the 19th century and early 20th century. Many of the essays in all three volumes have not been republished since their original publication and are extraordinarily hard to find. Volumes 1 and 2 collect the major contributions to the scientific debate on the unity of the human race in the 1850s focusing particularly on the idea of hybridity, which since Ray and Buffon had been central to species definition. The main book-length contributions to the debate were recently republished in “American Theories of Polygenesis” (Thoemmes Press, 2002). However, alongside these books and feeding off them are passionate debates which helped to define scientific racism for that time, not only in the US, but also Europe, because to a certain extent Europeans were willing to defer to American observers for their knowledge of Africans and particularly the effects of racism. Volume 3 republishes the major contributions to the political debate on miscegenation.The term “miscegenation” was coined in the anonymous text “Miscegenation: The Theory of the Blending of the Races, Applied to the American White Man and Negro”, now attributed to David Croly. Some of the works included are overtly racist in highly objectionable ways and serve to document a context that is too often ignored. A particular feature of this volume is the inclusion of works by African-American authors. Some of the authors and texts included have been forgotten, but even the better-known texts can be properly understood now they are restored to their context. The debates about hybridity and miscegenation are not only of deep historical significance, they are also of interest in the light of the contemporary rehabilitation of the idea of hybridity in the work of Homi Bhabha, as well as the current interest in the idea of “mixed race”.  The set comes with two separate introductions by editor Robert Bernasconi. These substantial essays (5,000-10,000 words each) record the history of the debates including reference to works not here republished, brief biographical information on the authors included, and insights into the larger intellectual and political context.

The Idea Of Race

Hackett Publishing Company
2000
256 pages
Cloth ISBN: 0-87220-459-6, ISBN-13: 978-0-87220-459-1
Paper ISBN: 0-87220-458-8, ISBN-13: 978-0-87220-458-4

Edited by

Robert Bernasconi, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Philosophy
Pennsylvania State University

Tommy L. Lott, Professor of Philosophy
San José State University

A survey of the historical development of the idea of race, this anthology offers pre-twentieth century theories about the concept of race, classic twentieth century sources reiterating and contesting ideas of race as scientific, and several philosophically relevant essays that discuss the issues presented. A general Introduction gives an overview of the readings. Headnotes introduce each selection. Includes suggested further readings.

Table of Contents
Introduction

The Classification of Races

1. Francois Bernier, “A new division of earth, according to the different species or races of men who inhabit it”
2. Francois-Marie Voltaire, “Of the Different Races of Men,” from The Philosophy of History
3. Immanuel Kant, “Of the Different Human Races”
4. Johann Gottfried von Herder, Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Humankind
5. Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, On the Natural Variety of Mankind
6. G. W. F. Hegel, “Anthropology,” from The Encyclopedia of Philosophical Science

Science and Eugenics

1. Arthur de Gobineau, The Inequality of Human Races
2. Charles Darwin, “On the Races of Man,” from The Descent of Man
3. Francis Galton, “Eugenics: Its Definition, Scope and Aims”

Heredity and Culture

1. Franz Boas, “Instability of Human Types”
2. Alain Locke, “The Concept of Race as applied to Social Culture”
3. Ashley Montagu, “The Concept of Race in the Human Species in the Light of Genetics”

Race and Political Ideology

1. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Conservation of Races
2. Anthony Appiah, “The Uncompleted Argument: Du Bois and the Illusion of Race”
3. Leopold Senghor, “What is Negritude?”

Racial Identity

1. Linda Alcoff, “Mestizo Identity”
2. Michael Hanchard, “Black Cinderella? Race and the Public Sphere in Brazil”
3. Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States.

Interracial Relationships in the 21st Century

Carolina Academic Press
2009
160 pp
Paper ISBN: 978-1-59460-571-0
LCCN: 2009001612

Earl Smith, Professor of Sociology and Rubin Professor and Director of Ethnic Studies
Wake Forest University

Angela J. Hattery, Professor of Sociology
Wake Forest University

Interracial Relationships in the 21st Century is a unique set of essays—both personal and research based—that explore a variety of issues related to interracial couplings in the 21st Century United States. Edited by Earl Smith and Angela Hattery, professors of sociology at Wake Forest University, this volume brings together the leading scholars in both the social sciences and the humanities who explore interracialities.

The chapters cover a wide range of topics related to navigating interracial relationships, including a chapter by George Yancey and colleagues that focuses on the tensions around interracial relationships in conservative Christian churches, to the role that racism and patriarchy play in shaping intimate partner violence among interracial couples—Smith and Hattery’s own contribution. Kerry Ann Rockquemore and Tracey A. Laszloffy focus on the children of interracial unions and their attempts to negotiate a racial identity. Wei Ming Dariotis uses a personal narrative to explore the discourse and cooption of the term “Hapa” by a variety of Asian Americans. And, Amy Steinbugler offers an examination of the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality in her chapter on interracial, same sex couples. Other contributors include Kellina M. Craig-Henderson, Emily J. Hubbard and Amy Smith.

In light of the recent election of the first African American president, Barack Obama, himself a bi-racial individual living in a multi-racial family, this book could not be more timely.

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgments