Mixed Race Studies

OMB Launches New Public Listening Sessions on Federal Race and Ethnicity Standards Revision

The White House
Washington, D.C.
2022-08-30

Dr. Karin Orvis, Chief Statistician of the United States

The first step in the formal review process for OMB’s statistical standards for collecting race and ethnicity data is well underway – and the public can now share their perspectives and input.

What we are reviewing: In June, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) announced that my office would begin formal review to revise OMB’s Statistical Policy Directive No. 15 (Directive No. 15): Standards for Maintaining, Collecting, and Presenting Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity. This Directive provides minimum standards that ensure the Federal Government’s ability to compare race and ethnicity information and data across Federal agencies, and also helps us to understand how well Federal programs serve a diverse America…

Read the entire press release here.

Racial Innocence: Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias and the Struggle for Equality

Beacon Press
2022-08-23
208 pages
5.5 x 8.5 Inches
Hardcover ISBN: ISBN: 978-080702013-5

Tanya Katerí Hernández, Archibald R. Murray Professor of Law
Fordham University School of Law, New York, New York

The first comprehensive book about anti-Black bias in the Latino community that unpacks the misconception that Latinos are “exempt” from racism due to their ethnicity and multicultural background.

Racial Innocence will challenge what you thought about racism and bias, and demonstrate that it’s possible for a historically marginalized group to experience discrimination and also be discriminatory. Racism is deeply complex, and law professor and comparative race relations expert Tanya Katerí Hernández exposes “the Latino racial innocence cloak” that often veils Latino complicity in racism. As Latinos are the second largest ethnic group in the US, this revelation is critical to dismantling systemic racism. Based on interviews, discrimination case files, and civil rights law, Hernández reveals Latino anti-Black bias in the workplace, the housing market, schools, places of recreation, criminal justice, and in Latino families.

By focusing on racism perpetrated by communities outside those of White non-Latino people, Racial Innocence brings to light the many Afro-Latino and African American victims of anti-Blackness at the hands of other people of color. Through exploring the interwoven fabric of discrimination and examining the cause of these issues, we can begin to move toward a more egalitarian society.

Back to race, not beyond race: multiraciality and racial identity in the United States and Brazil

Comparative Migration Studies
Volume 10, Article Number 22 (2022)
DOI: 10.1186/s40878-022-00294-0

Jasmine Mitchell, Associate Professor of American Studies and Media
State University of New York-Old Westbury, Old Westbury, New York

In contrast to discourses of multiraciality as leading to a future beyond race, this commentary looks at how multiracial discourses and symbols underline race. Taking an overview of multiracial discourses and identities in relation to Blackness in the United States and Brazil, this commentary examines the deployment of multiraciality to maintain white supremacy. Under global capitalism, United States multicultural discourses, and Latin American foundational narratives, multiracial peoples are often propped up as a solution to racism, the eradication of race, or reduced to racial binaries centering whiteness. The section ends with considerations of how fears of racial passing and fraud coincide with multiracial identities. Questions for further consideration on the nexus of political identities and racial identities are proposed in relation to multiraciality.

Read the entire article in HTML or PDF format.

Asian-White Mixed Identity after COVID-19: Racist Racial Projects and the Effects on Asian Multiraciality

Genealogy
Volume 6, Issue 2, (2022-06-15)
pages 53-68
DOI: 10.3390/genealogy6020053

Hephzibah Strmic-Pawl, Assistant Professor, Sociology and Anthropology
Manhattanville College, Purchase, New York

Erica Chito Childs, Professor of Sociology
Hunter College, City University of New York, New York, New York

Stephanie Laudone, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Borough of Manhattan Community College, New York, New York

With the onset of the Coronavirus and racist statements about the origins of COVID-19 in China there has been a surge in anti-Asian discrimination in the United States. The U.S. case is worthy of special focus because of former President Trump’s explicit racist rhetoric, referring to the Coronavirus as the “China virus” and “Kung-flu”. This rise in anti-Asian discrimination has led to a heightened awareness of racism against Asians and a corollary increase in AAPI activism. Based on survey and in-depth interview data with Asian-White multiracials, we examine how recent spikes in anti-Asian hate has shifted Asian-White multiracials to have a more heightened awareness of racism and a shift in their racial consciousness. We theorize how multiracials intermediary status on the racial hierarchy can be radically shifted at any moment in relation to emerging racist racial projects, which has broader implications for the status of mixed people globally.

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Replication Data for: Do Voters Prefer Just Any Descriptive Representative? The Case of Multiracial Candidates

Perspectives on Politics
Volume 19, Issue 4: Special Issue: Race and Politics in America (December 2021)
pages 1061-1081
DOI: 10.1017/S1537592720001280

Danielle Casarez Lemi, Tower Center Fellow
John G. Tower Center for Political Studies, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas

While scholars of representation have examined variation in voter support conditional on shared demographic traits, we know little about how voters respond to candidates who belong to multiple racial categories. I study responses to multiracial candidates, who challenge how we think about and study representation. I theorize that multiracial categories provide mixed information about how well a candidate adheres to group norms of identity, resulting in a multiracial advantage across groups, but a disadvantage within groups. A conjoint survey experiment on 787 White, Black, Asian, and Hispanic voters and a separate analysis of support for a multiracial candidate in a real-world election support these claims. Thus, multiracial candidates have the advantage of building coalitions with voters from other groups, but they are disadvantaged when appealing to co-racials with strong racial identities. These findings demonstrate that future research on representation must engage multiracial elites.

Read or purchase the article here.

Multiracial Heritage Week: June 7-14, 2022

United States Census Bureau
2022-06-07
Release Number CB22-SFS.85

From the Congressional Record, 117th Congress, HON. JIM COSTA OF CALIFORNIA, June 7, 2021. HONORING MULTIRACIAL HERITAGE WEEK, “Multiracial Heritage Week is an opportunity to celebrate the contributions and achievements of the multiracial community. Multiracial individuals are not only parts of other populations, but they are also a growing population in and of itself.”

From Census.gov > Topics > Population > Race > About Race

What is Race?

The data on race were derived from answers to the question on race that was asked of individuals in the United States. The Census Bureau collects racial data in accordance with guidelines provided by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and these data are based on self-identification.

The racial categories included in the census questionnaire generally reflect a social definition of race recognized in this country and not an attempt to define race biologically, anthropologically, or genetically. In addition, it is recognized that the categories of the race item include racial and national origin or sociocultural groups. People may choose to report more than one race to indicate their racial mixture, such as “American Indian” and “White.” People who identify their origin as Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish may be of any race.

OMB requires five minimum categories: White, Black or African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, and Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander…

Read the entire release here.

The Burdened Virtue of Racial Passing

The Boston Review
2022-05-13

Meena Krishnamurthy, Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada

Though a means of escaping and undermining racial injustice, the practice comes with own set of costs and sacrifices.

In Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel Passing, adapted by Rebecca Hall and distributed on Netfli­x last fall, Clare Kendry—a light-skinned Black woman—decides to pass as white. Clare grows up poor in Chicago; after her alcoholic father dies, she is taken in by her racist white aunts. When she turns eighteen she marries a rich white man who assumes she is white. Clare makes a clean escape until, some years later, she runs into her childhood friend, Irene Redfield, at a whites-only hotel; Irene, it turns out, sometimes passes herself, in this case to escape the summer heat. The storyline traces their complex relationship after this reunion and ends in tragedy for Clare.

Hall’s film adaptation joins several other recent representations that dramatize the lived experience of passing. The protagonist of Brit Bennett’s best-selling novel The Vanishing Half (2020), for example, decides to start passing as white in the 1950s at age sixteen after responding to a listing in the newspaper for secretarial work in a New Orleans department store. Much to her surprise, after excelling at the typing test, Stella is offered the position; her boss assumes she is white. Initially Stella keeps up the ruse just to support her and her sister, but passing also becomes a way for her to escape the trauma of her father’s lynching and the prospect of her own…

Read the entire article here.

Mana Tangatarua: Mixed heritages, ethnic identity and biculturalism in Aotearoa/New Zealand

Routledge
2017-11-16
236 Pages
14 B/W Illustrations
Hardcover ISBN: 9781138233362
Paperback ISBN: 9780367885304
eBook ISBN: 9781315309811

Edited By:

Zarine L. Rocha, Affiliated Researcher
Department of Sociology
National University of Singapore, Singapore

Melinda Webber, Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education and Social Work
University of Auckland

This volume explores mixed race/mixed ethnic identities in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Mixed race and mixed ethnic identity are growing in popularity as research topics around the world. This edited collection looks at mixed race and mixed ethnic identity in New Zealand: a unique context, as multiple ethnic identities have been officially recognised for more than 30 years.

The book draws upon research across a range of disciplines, exploring the historical and contemporary ways in which official and social understandings of mixed race and ethnicity have changed. It focuses on the interactions between race, ethnicity, national identity, indigeneity and culture, especially in terms of visibility and self-defined identity in the New Zealand context.

Mana Tangatarua situates New Zealand in the existing international scholarship, positioning experiences from New Zealand within theoretical understandings of mixedness. The chapters develop wider theories of mixed race and mixed ethnic identity, at macro and micro levels, looking at the interconnections between the two. The volume as a whole reveals the diverse ways in which mixed race is experienced and understood, providing a key contribution to the theory and development of mixed race globally.

Table of Contents

• Foreword Paul Spoonley
• Introduction: Situating mixed race in New Zealand and the world. Zarine L. Rocha and Melinda Webber
• Section one: Mixedness and classifications across generations
  • Chapter One: A history of mixed race in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Zarine L. Rocha and Angela Wanhalla
  • Chapter Two: Reflections of identity: ethnicity, ethnic recording and ethnic mobility. Robert Didham
  • Chapter Three: Is ethnicity all in the family? How parents in Aotearoa New Zealand identify their children. Polly Atatoa Carr, Tahu Kukutai, Dinusha Bandara and Patrick Broman
  • Chapter Four: Lives at the intersections: multiple ethnicities and child protection. Emily Keddell
• Section two: Mixed identifications, indigeneity and biculturalism
  • Chapter Five: Raranga Wha: Mana whenua, mana moana and mixedness in one Māori/Fijian/Samoan/Pākehā whānau. Rae Si‘ilata
  • Chapter Six: Beyond Appearances: Mixed ethnic and cultural identities among biliterate Japanese-European New Zealander young adults. Kaya Oriyama
  • Chapter Seven: Love and Politics: Rethinking Biculturalism and Multiculturalism in Aotearoa-New Zealand. Lincoln I. Dam
  • Chapter Eight: Māori and Pākehā encounters of difference – the realisation that we’re not the same. Karyn Paringatai
• Section three: Mixing the majority/Pākehā identity
  • Chapter Nine: Multidimensional intersections: the merging and emerging of complex European settler identities. Robert Didham, Paul Callister and Geoff Chambers
  • Chapter Ten: Hauntology and Pākehā: disrupting the notion of homogeneity. Esther Fitzpatrick

Between Brown and Black: Anti-Racist Activism in Brazil

Rutgers University Press
2022-05-13
190 pages
1 b&w iillustration
6 x 9
Paperback ISBN: 9781978808522
Cloth ISBN: 9781978808539
EPUB ISBN: 9781978808546
PDF ISBN: 9781978808560
Kindle ISBN: 9781978808553

Antonio José Bacelar da Silva, Assistant Professor
Center for Latin American Studies
University of Arizona, Tucson

With new momentum, the Brazilian black movement is working to bring attention to and change the situation of structural racism in Brazil. Black consciousness advocates are challenging Afro-Brazilians to define themselves and politically organize around being black, and more Afro-Brazilians are increasingly doing so. Other segments of the Brazilian black movement are working to influence legislation and implement formal mechanisms that aim to promote racial equality, including Affirmative Action Racial Verification Committees. For advocates of these committees, one needs to be phenotypically black enough to be a more likely target of racism to qualify for Affirmative Action programs. Paradoxically, individuals are told to identify as black but only some people are considered black enough to benefit from these policies. Afro-Brazilians are presented with a whole range of identity choices, from how to classify oneself, to whether one votes for political candidates based on shared racial experiences. Between Brown and Black argues that Afro-Brazilian activists’ continued exploration of blackness confronts anti-blackness while complicating understandings of what it means to be black. Blending linguistic and ethnographic accounts, this book raises complex questions about current black struggles in Brazil and beyond, including the black movements’ political initiatives and antiracist agenda.

Table of Contents

• List of Illustrations
• 1. Black into Brown, Brown into Black: Afro-Brazilians Grapple with Racial Categorization
• 2. The Language of Afro-Brazilian Antiracist Socialization
• 3. Performing Ancestors, Claiming Blackness
• 4. Becoming an Antiracist or “As Black as We Can Be”
• 5. Who Can Be Black for Affirmative Action Programs in Brazil?
• 6. The Complex Calculus of Race and Electoral Politics in Salvador
• Conclusion: Afro-Brazilians’ Black and Brown Antiracism
• Acknowledgements
• Notes
• References
• Index

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.