Mixed Race Studies

Profile: Sheena Gardner

Our People
Mississippi State University
2012-01-02

With a Japanese mother and an African-American father, Gardner has lived in Japan and Mississippi, experiencing a world of two cultures. Her dark skin complemented by her long, thick and curly hair distinguishes her from most other people almost everywhere she goes. Her background of growing up in a military family exposed her to many mixed-race families.

Through the years, Sheena Gardner has become comfortable answering the question, “What are you?”

While awkwardly phrased, she understands what they mean, and the Ocean Springs native loves talking about it. However, many people still feel uncomfortable having serious discussions on race…

Read the entire article here.

Psychology Major Publishes Analysis of Racial Dynamics in the Wizarding World

James Madison University, Harrisonburg, Virginia
Department of Psychology
2011-10-20

Jordan Pye

When a fan asked her about the political allegories in her book series, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling said, “I wanted Harry to leave our world and find exactly the same problems in the wizarding world.”

By exploring this idea, one senior psychology student, Christina Thai, put her love for Harry Potter to use in a comparison of how societies perceive people of mixed racial backgrounds. Her work will be published in “A Wizard of Their Age: Critical Essays from the Harry Potter Generation,” a compilation by students who applied concepts in the series to their own fields of study. Thai’s chapter is called “Harry Potter and Blood Status: A Psychological Look at Blood Stratification in the Wizarding World,” which she compares the racial dynamics in Harry Potter’s wizarding world to the historical relationship between European Americans and African Americans in the United States…

…Thai, a native of Fairfax, Va. with a second major in biology, found inspiration for the topic during her first semester of research in the Cultural and Racial Diversity Studies lab with Dr. Matthew Lee. After studying racial identity and discrimination, Thai built upon alumnus Candace Vanderpoel’s honors thesis research on hypodescent among African Americans and Asians. This concept is the belief that a bi-racial person has both minority and majority race heritage, but their minority identity overshadows their majority status, so their community considers them a minority.

Thai translated this idea to social hierarchy in the Harry Potter series, where witches and wizards of “pure blood” descent have a higher status than Muggles, who have no magical heritage, and the “mudbloods,” who have a mix of wizard and Muggle parents. Harry himself had a wizard father and a witch mother who was born a Muggle. Thai mainly focused on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the last book in the series where Voldemort assumes power of the Ministry of Magic and enacts laws that promote pure blood status and discriminate against Muggles and mudbloods…

Read the entire article here.

Some Asians’ college strategy: Don’t check ‘Asian’

The Associated Press
2011-12-04

Jesse Washington, National Writer/Race and Ethnicity

Lanya Olmstead was born in Florida to a mother who immigrated from Taiwan and an American father of Norwegian ancestry. Ethnically, she considers herself half Taiwanese and half Norwegian. But when applying to Harvard, Olmstead checked only one box for her race: white.

“I didn’t want to put ‘Asian’ down,” Olmstead says, “because my mom told me there’s discrimination against Asians in the application process.”

For years, many Asian-Americans have been convinced that it’s harder for them to gain admission to the nation’s top colleges.

Studies show that Asian-Americans meet these colleges’ admissions standards far out of proportion to their 6 percent representation in the U.S. population, and that they often need test scores hundreds of points higher than applicants from other ethnic groups to have an equal chance of admission. Critics say these numbers, along with the fact that some top colleges with race-blind admissions have double the Asian percentage of Ivy League schools, prove the existence of discrimination.

The way it works, the critics believe, is that Asian-Americans are evaluated not as individuals, but against the thousands of other ultra-achieving Asians who are stereotyped as boring academic robots.

Now, an unknown number of students are responding to this concern by declining to identify themselves as Asian on their applications.

For those with only one Asian parent, whose names don’t give away their heritage, that decision can be relatively easy. Harder are the questions that it raises: What’s behind the admissions difficulties? What, exactly, is an Asian-American — and is being one a choice?…

…Susanna Koetter, a Yale junior with an American father and Korean mother, was adamant about identifying her Asian side on her application. Yet she calls herself “not fully Asian-American. I’m mixed Asian-American. When I go to Korea, I’m like, blatantly white.”

And yet, asked whether she would have considered leaving the Asian box blank, she says: “That would be messed up. I’m not white.”

“Identity is very malleable,” says Jasmine Zhuang, a Yale junior whose parents were both born in Taiwan…
…Steven Hsu, a physics professor at the University of Oregon and a vocal critic of current admissions policies, says there is a clear statistical case that discrimination exists…

Hsu, the physics professor, says that if the current admissions policies continue, it will become more common for Asian students to avoid identifying themselves as such, and schools will have to react.

“They’ll have to decide: A half-Asian kid, what is that? I don’t think they really know.”…

Read the entire article here.

Professor Alcira Dueñas: Illuminating the Andes: Indigenous and Mestizo Intellectuals in Colonial Peru

¿Qué Pasa, OSU?
Ohio State University
Autumn 2009

Michael J. Alarid

A citizen of Colombia, Professor Alcira Dueñas is a historian who conducts research on the cultural and intellectual history of Amerindians and other subordinated groups of the Peruvian Andes during the colonial era. Professor Dueñas earned her Bachelor of Arts from Universidad de Bogotá, Jorge Tadeo Lozano in Economics, and her Master of Art and Doctorate in History from The Ohio State University, where she focused on the history of Latin America. For more than twenty years, professor Dueñas has taught courses on Colonial and Modern Latin America, Women’s history of Latin America, and modern World History. Professor Dueñas has had a distinguished career: she is a Fulbright scholar, recipient of the OSU Graduate School Alumni Research Award, and, along with a group of faculty of color from the History Department, she has recently been honored with the Distinguished University Diversity Enhancement Award from the University Senate, as well as with an equivalent distinction from the College of Humanities. …

…Professor Dueñas continues to feel indebted to OSU for her intellectual flowering, and through her OSU education she has infused an interdisciplinary approach into her historical methodology as well. Her first book, which hits shelves in the spring of 2010, utilizes tools of literary criticism and ethnohistory to highlight the presence and practices of indigenous and mestizo intellectuals in colonial Peru. She develops a textual analysis of Andean manifestos, memoriales (petitions), reports, and letters to identify the rhetorical strategies these intellectuals utilized to reach out to the royal powers. Dueñas explains, “I place such analysis in the historical context of the major critical conjunctures of Spanish colonialism in the Andes, particularly the insurrections that intersected with some of the writings under study. I apply anthropological methods, as I examine issues of identity, religion, and Andean political culture.”

Professor Dueñas’ creative approach to research has resulted in her manuscript being picked up by a major academic press; the book is complete and in production with the University Press of Colorado. Her book reconstructs the history of indigenous and mestizo intellectuals in mid and late colonial Peru, illuminating the writing practices and social agency of Andeans in their quest for social change. Dueñas elucidates, “I conclude that Andean scholarship from mid-and-late colonial Peru reflects the cultural changes of the colonized ethnic elites at the outset of modernity in Latin America. Their intellectual and political struggles reveal them as autonomous subjects, moving forward to undo their colonial condition of “Indians,” while expanding the intellectual sphere of colonial Peru to educated ‘Indios ladinos.’ They used writing, Transatlantic traveling, legal action, and even subtle support to rebellions, as means to improve their social standing and foster their ethnic autonomy under Spanish rule.” Dueñas concludes, “They attempted to participate in the administration of justice for Indians and seized every opportunity to occupy positions in the ecclesiastical and state bureaucracy.”…

Read the entire article here.

“So what are you…?”: Life as a Mixed-Blood in Academia

The American Indian Quarterly
Volume 27, Numbers 1 & 2 (Winter/Spring 2003)
pages 369-372
E-ISSN: 1534-1828 Print ISSN: 0095-182X
DOI: 10.1353/aiq.2004.0038

Julie Pelletier, Associate Professor of Indigenous Studies and Director of the Aboriginal Governance Program
University of Winnepeg

My mentor, Loudell Snow, and I were standing in the anthropology department’s shabby little lounge, discussing the merits of French wine. Lou was teasing me for being partial to French wine since I am French American (I have always disliked the term “Franco-American,” which brings to mind bad canned pasta, so I say “French American” instead). “Hey, I thought that you’re an American Indian, but now you are saying you are French? Make up your mind!” Lou and I looked at each other in amazement when my anthropological theory professor interrupted our conversation with this comment. I am not insensitive to the complicated nature of my identity. I was appalled, however, to be addressed in such a way by a man who, in the classroom, reveled in discussions of postmodernity and the permeability of boundaries, including the boundaries of identity. Lou had the presence of mind to point out this contradiction to the professor with a snappy comeback of some kind. This conversation become one of those moments that many of us have: we linger over the memory and come up with one cutting retort after another, none of which come to mind during those stunned, seemingly endless seconds after we have been verbally assaulted.

I am French and Native American, or perhaps I should say Native Canadian, since my father was born in Quebec. Of course, in Canada I am labeled “Métis” a term used to describe people of mixed Indigenous and French ancestry. If my paternal grandfather had been Indian and his wife white, instead of the reverse, I would be a First Nations person. To make matters just a bit more interesting, I am descended from two tribal groups, the Mi’kmaq and the Maliseet. I also have dual Canadian and U.S. citizenship…

Read or purchase the entire article here.

Redefining their races: More students choosing to identify as mixed

The Western Front
Western Washington University
Bellingham, Washington
2011-11-18

Casey Malloy

When Western Washington University junior Emily Goronkin applied to the university three years ago, she came to a point in the application at which she was asked for her racial identity. She checked Hispanic because she is 25 percent Mexican.

Goronkin said she doesn’t always select Hispanic when she is asked for her race. The other three quarters that make up her ethnicity — Norwegian, Russian and Scottish — are considered white. She said she usually has trouble deciding what to choose.
 
“I’ve definitely selected just white on some forms,” Goronkin said. “I’ve also done mixed or chose both Mexican and Caucasian, if I could.”
 
Goronkin doesn’t celebrate any traditions of Mexican culture, but she believes selecting multiple races represents her accurately.

…When political science professor Vernon Johnson looks out his office window into Western’s Red Square, he doesn’t physically see these statistics represented on campus.
 
“If you’re walking across campus with a mass amount of people, you will pass people that consider themselves of mixed races, and with a quick observation of those particular students you could think they are white,” Johnson said. “However, they could be Hispanic, and they might have checked that box.”…

Read the entire article here.

Outside the box: The multiracial/multiethnic student experience

University of Colorado, Boulder
Main Campus – University Memorial Center (UMC)
1669 Euclid Avenue
Boulder, Colorado
Room: 415
2011-11-08, 15:30-16:45 MST (Local Time)

For the multiracial student, college is often a time of consolidating and exploring identity. Through a combination of research, personal stories, and facilitated discussion, this session offers models of multiracial and multiethnic identity development, and explores the unique challenges and strengths of multiracial students at CU. One of the goals of this session is to develop strategies for improving the climate for multiracial students at CU.

For more information, click here.

Interview with Zara Paul: A Future Leader

London School of Economics
2011-10-26

Zara Paul recently graduated from LSE. She has been listed among the top 100 black graduates of the UK in the Future Leaders magazine 2011-12. In this interview she talks about her time at LSE, her passion for music, what being mixed race means to her and how she sees herself as being ‘massive’ in the next 10 years.

How did you feel when you heard that you had been selected among the top 100 black graduates of the country?

I felt absolutely brilliant! It didn’t sink in until I went to the actual Future Leaders event. I was surrounded by so many intellectuals and academics and politicians. I thought it was a great privilege. I couldn’t believe it…

…Tell us about your family history. Where do you trace your ‘roots’ to and are those ‘roots’ part of your identity?

My mum is Scottish-Irish and my dad is Jamaican. In my school, as a mixed race person coming from a council estate, I always stood out. I think that made me a bit stubborn, it made me think I am still going to be a little nightmare but I am also going to be smart and get my A levels and GCSEs behind me. I think being stubborn is a really good thing, to a degree. I did my dissertation on whether your identity changes dependent on your location. In a rural area, you may be black; in a multicultural area, you are who you are.

Do you believe in celebrating your mixed race status?

I love being mixed race. I can fit into so many social groups, most people can’t do that; so it’s something I think I should embrace. For example, when I did research into the riots, people found talking to me easier because of my mixed race status. In my heart however, I did think that when we are talking about equality why do we have to have separate awards for ‘black graduates’?…

Read the entire interview here.

New Book Explores Georgetown Inside and Out

Georgetown Alumni Online
Georgetown University
2010-11-2010

Historian R. Emmett Curran discusses his recently published book, a three-volume history of Georgetown that uncovers little known facts about the university.

True or false?

1. In Georgetown’s first decade of existence, nearly 20 percent of its students came from outside the United States.

2. Georgetown was not actually founded in 1789.

A History of Georgetown University: The Complete Three-Volume Set, 1789-1989, released this month, sheds new light on these and other little known facts about Georgetown, as well as offers a broad perspective on the university’s identity and place in American culture.

Here, author R. Emmett Curran, a historian and member of the Georgetown community for more than three decades, talks about the book’s evolution and surprising discoveries he made during its research. Copies of the three-volume set are available in the Georgetown University bookstore.

(The answer to both of the above questions is “true.”)…

…Q: What is your favorite story from Georgetown’s past that people might not have heard?

Curran: The manner by which Patrick Healy became president of Georgetown is a good story. In 1870 the Jesuits were struggling to come up with a suitable candidate for the presidency of Georgetown. After Rome rejected the first slate of candidates that the Jesuits in the United States sent them, Jesuit officials in the Maryland Province (then encompassing most of the eastern United States) sent a new slate that listed Patrick Healy as the preferred candidate.

“Clearly Healy is the best qualified,” the regional superior stated, “despite the difficulty that perhaps can be brought up about him.” That ambiguous reference concerned either Healy’s illegitimate background (as the son of parents [Irish planter and mixed-race slave] who, by Georgia law, could not marry) or his biracial identity.

Rome ended up choosing no one on the list and reappointed John Early, who had earlier held the office. When Early’s latest term came to an end in 1873, the regional superior proposed an interesting deal. He suggested to the superior general in Rome that John Bapst, then president of Boston College, be made president of Georgetown and Patrick Healy replace Bapst in Boston. That suggests that the “difficulty” had actually been Healy’s biracial background and so-called slave status. The regional superior was calculating that mixed race would not have the potential for problems in New England (where Patrick Healy’s two brothers had important positions among the clergy in the Archdiocese of Boston) that it might well pose in Washington.

Before Rome could respond, John Early died suddenly in May 1873. The regional superior immediately appointed Healy as acting rector, and the following day the directors of the university chose him as president. Rome, obviously unhappy about developments, took more than a year to confirm his appointment as rector.

Read the entire article here.

Note from Steven F. Riley: For more information on the Healy brothers, read James M. O’Toole’s book, Passing for White: Race, Religion, and the Healy Family, 1820–1920.

Biracial Student Voices

University of Georgia
2008
140 pages

Willie L. Banks Jr., Associate Dean of Student Life
Cleveland State University

A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILISOPHY

The purpose of this study was to examine the experiences of biracial students with one parent of African American heritage attending Predominantly White Institutions (PWI) in the South. This study utilized a basic qualitative research design and was comprised of three phases: semi-structured individual interviews, responses to written prompts and a photo elicitation project. Twelve participants from two southern institutions participated in this study.

Through an analysis of data four themes emerged that encapsulated the experiences of the students in this study: 1) The Search – the pre-collegiate experience, 2) Finding a Voice – the collegiate experience, 3) Breaking Free – dealing with labels from society, and 4) Here’s Where I am for Now – the evolving identity of biracial students. These themes illustrated how complex and personal biracial student development can be. The biracial students in this study used their experiences with family and friends to define their identity. Once they reached college, their circle of friends, involvement in student organizations, and finding safe spaces on campus all contributed to the students defining and redefining their biracial identity. These experiences all contributed to a generally positive experience for students in this study. Additionally, participants in this study were able to define their place in society as a biracial individual and what role society should or should not play in their identity choices. Results from this study showed that biracial identity was a complex process that started before college and that continued through college.

The findings in this study have implications for student affairs professionals. The implications include: understanding that biracial identity is complex and situational, programs and services for students of color are needed and can be beneficial for biracial students, spaces on campus need to be welcoming to all students and student affairs professionals need to structure and provide spaces that welcome and support all students, student affairs professionals need to be cognizant of the different experiences biracial students have from other students of color and will need to ensure that biracial students are provided with the options and choices provided to all students.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• LIST OF TABLES
• LIST OF FIGURES
• CHAPTER
  • 1. INTRODUCTION
    • Statement of the Problem
    • Theoretical Framework
    • Research Questions and Methodology
    • Limitations of the Study
    • Significance of the Study
    • Definition of Terms
    • Summary
  • 2. REVIEW OF LITERATURE
    • Race
    • Biracial Identity Development
    • Bases, Borders, Identities, Patterns and Quadrants
    • Factors Influencing Racial Identity Choices
    • Multiracial Students at Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs)
    • Recommendations from the Research
    • Summary
  • 3. METHODOLOGY
    • Design
    • Sample Selection
    • Site Selections
    • Ethical Considerations
    • Data Collection
    • Data Analysis
    • Validity and Reliability
    • Researcher Bias and Assumptions
    • Summary
  • 4. SEARCHING, FINDING A VOICE, BREAKING FREE AND HERE’S WHERE I AM FOR NOW
    • Participants
    • Presentation of Data
    • The Search
    • Finding a Voice
    • Breaking Free
    • Here’s Where I am for Now
    • Summary
  • 5. DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS
    • Analysis of Findings
    • Implications for Practice
    • Limitations of the Study
    • Recommendations for Future Research
    • Conclusion
• REFERENCES
• APPENDICES
  • A. Student Solicitation Email
  • B. Consent Form
  • C. Participation Information
  • D. Individual Interview Protocol
  • E. Directions for Written Prompt
  • F. Directions for Photo Elicitation

LIST OF TABLES

1. Five Patterns of Multiracial Identity
2. Placement of Participants in the Five Patterns of Multiracial Identity
3. Detailed Participant Information

LIST OF FIGURES

1. Representation of my Parents
2. Basil
3. My bedroom
4. BAM
5. The Black Hole
6. UoS Hall
7. Theater
8. UoS Stadium
9. Holding Hands
10. An Unquiet Mind
11. Camouflage

Read the entire dissertation here.