Mixed Race Studies

We have grown tired of the pressure to claim one side of our heritage over another. The antiquated social and legal principle that one drop of blood determines if we’re Black or that complexion, hair texture or facial features decides whether someone of mixed ancestry is more White, Asian or Latino has been harmful.

Steve Majors, “A birth certificate masked my multiracial truth. For me and 33 million others, the 2020 Census asserts it.” The Washington Post, August 31, 2021. https://www.washingtonpost.com/s/nation/2021/08/31/its-about-time-2020-census-caught-up-with-my-multiracial-life/.

The assumption that more racial diversity equals more racial equality is a dangerous myth. Racial diversity can function as a cloaking device, concealing the most powerful forms of White supremacy while giving the appearance of racial progress.

John Blake, “White supremacy, with a tan,” CNN, September 4, 2021. https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/04/us/census-browning-of-america-myth-blake/index.html.

I am a descendant of slaves and slave owners. My mixed heritage extends back as far as I can trace my ancestry. I have light beige skin, loosely curly brown hair, an angular nose, a small mouth, and brown almond-shaped eyes. I never know how others read my racially ambiguous appearance. On rare occasions, when my skin contrasts with a white shirt, or the humidity enhances the curliness of my hair, people might recognize me as the Black man that I am. Most of the time, they accept me as an ethnic variant of a broadly conceived whiteness. People are occasionally curious, and they try to press me for details.

Herb Harris, “I Was Expecting a Black Guy by Herb Harris,” Hippocampus Magazine, January 8, 2021. https://hippocampusmagazine.com/2021/01/i-was-expecting-a-black-guy-by-herb-harris/.

Richard Alba, a sociologist who has written about race categorization and the census, said that typically, a large share of Hispanic Americans check the box for white in the race question. Now, he said, they were given the chance to describe their backgrounds more fully, an addition, he said, that could have flipped them into the multiracial category.

Sabrina Tavernise, Tariro Mzezewa and Giulia Heyward, “Behind the Surprising Jump in Multiracial Americans, Several Theories,” The New York Times, August 13, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/13/us/census-multiracial-identity.html.

If doctors and clinical educators rigorously analyze algorithms that include race correction, they can judge, with fresh eyes, whether the use of race or ethnicity is appropriate. In many cases, this appraisal will require further research into the complex interactions among ancestry, race, racism, socioeconomic status, and environment. Much of the burden of this work falls on the researchers who propose race adjustment and on the institutions (e.g., professional societies, clinical laboratories) that endorse and implement clinical algorithms. But clinicians can be thoughtful and deliberate users. They can discern whether the correction is likely to relieve or exacerbate inequities. If the latter, then clinicians should examine whether the correction is warranted. Some tools, including eGFR and the VBAC calculator, have already been challenged; clinicians have advocated successfully for their institutions to remove the adjustment for race.^43,44 Other algorithms may succumb to similar scrutiny.⁴⁵ A full reckoning will require medical specialties to critically appraise their tools and revise them when indicated.

Darshali A. Vyas, Leo G. Eisenstein, and David S. Jones, “Hidden in Plain Sight — Reconsidering the Use of Race Correction in Clinical Algorithms,” The New England Journal of Medicine, Volume 2020, Number 383, 882. https://dx.doi.org/10.1056/NEJMms2004740.

Race and ethnicity highlights:

• The White population remained the largest race or ethnicity group in the United States, with 204.3 million people identifying as White alone. Overall, 235.4 million people reported White alone or in combination with another group. However, the White alone population decreased by 8.6% since 2010.
• The Two or More Races population (also referred to as the Multiracial population) has changed considerably since 2010. The Multiracial population was measured at 9 million people in 2010 and is now 33.8 million people in 2020, a 276% increase.
• The “in combination” multiracial populations for all race groups accounted for most of the overall changes in each racial category.
• All of the race alone or in combination groups experienced increases. The Some Other Race alone or in combination group (49.9 million) increased 129%, surpassing the Black or African American population (46.9 million) as the second-largest race alone or in combination group.
• The next largest racial populations were the Asian alone or in combination group (24 million), the American Indian and Alaska Native alone or in combination group (9.7 million), and the Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone or in combination group (1.6 million).
• The Hispanic or Latino population, which includes people of any race, was 62.1 million in 2020. The Hispanic or Latino population grew 23%, while the population that was not of Hispanic or Latino origin grew 4.3% since 2010.

It is important to note that these data comparisons between the 2020 Census and 2010 Census race data should be made with caution, taking into account the improvements we have made to the Hispanic origin and race questions and the ways we code what people tell us.

United States Census Bureau, “2020 Census Statistics Highlight Local Population Changes and Nation’s Racial and Ethnic Diversity,” Release Number CB21-CN.55, August 12, 2021. https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/population-changes-nations-diversity.html.

One of [Richard] Lewontin’s pathbreaking works was to find out how much genetic diversity exists within species. This was at a time when we did not know how many genes humans had. Lewontin’s inspired guess was 20,000, far smaller than what most biologists thought then and remarkably close to what is known today. Most biologists then also believed that races had significant biological differences, which was one of the reasons why they thought that there was a much larger number of genes carrying different traits. Lewontin and geneticist John Hubby used a technique, protein gel electrophoresis, developed by Hubby, to quantify the genetic diversity in fruit flies. At that time, fruit flies were the favorite target for testing genetic theories in the laboratory. This pathbreaking exercise traced evolution at the species level to changes at the molecular level—a foundation for the field of molecular evolution—using statistical methods. The result was startling. Contrary to what most biologists believed, the exercise showed a surprising amount of genetic diversity within a given population and further revealed that evolution led to stable and diverse populations within a species. Later on, Lewontin used this method on human blood groups, to show that the result of stable genetic diversity held true for humans as well. The other result of the human blood group study was that it showed that 85.4 percent of the genetic diversity in humans was found within a population, and only 6.3 percent between ‘races.’ Race was not a biological construct but a social one.

Prabir Purkayastha/Globetrotter, “The great scientific crusader who debunked the biological myths about race,” AlterNet, August 5, 2021. https://www.alternet.org/2021/08/richard-lewontin/.

Interracial worlds, friendships, marriages—Black and white lives inextricably linked, for good and for bad, with racism and with hope—are all but erased by [Courtney E.] Martin and [Robin] DiAngelo, and with them the mixed children of these marriages, who are the fastest-growing demographic in the country. I found nothing of my own multiracial family history in these books; my husband’s Black middle-class family is nowhere to be found either, inconvenient for being too successful, too educated, too adept over generations to need Martin’s handouts or DiAngelo’s guidance on dealing with white people. The world these writers evoke is one in which white people remain the center of the story and Black people are at the margins, poor, stiff, and dignified, with little better to do than open their homes and hearts to white women on journeys to racial self-awareness.

Danzy Senna, “Robin DiAngelo and the Problem With Anti-racist Self-Help,” The Atlantic, September 2021. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/09/martin-learning-in-public-diangelo-nice-racism/619497/.

But God was only getting started. It was at this time, in 1783, that [Lemuel] Hayne’s ministry began to grow. A young white woman, good friend and schoolteacher, Elizabeth Babbitt, moved from her home in order to be near Haynes. Just 21 years old, she proposed to Haynes, breaking several barriers and cultural norms in the process. She waited to propose until they had reached Connecticut because of the several miscegenetic laws that Massachusetts had. He joyfully accepted and they had 10 children together.

Thaddeus Tague, “Historical Reformer – Lemuel Haynes,” Nations, December 12, 2020. https://nationsmedia.org/historical-reformer-lemuel-haynes.

But in the past year, off the track [Lewis] Hamilton has started to find a voice about his racial identity. He has been taking a knee; raising a clenched fist. Long dormant concerns about racism and discrimination have been rudely awakened following the Black Lives Matter uprisings. In the process, Hamilton has transformed the way he sees himself: from a compliant go-with-the-flow character to a change agent who is determined to make waves. He has shaped the way others see him too, going from an inoffensive, if gaffe-prone, socialite focused only on his sport, to a politically aware role model conscious of his wider cultural significance. Now, he is about to take on the sport that brought him fortune and fame, with a commission demanding racial diversity and meaningful outreach to underrepresented groups – as well as more racial equality in general.

Gary Younge, “Lewis Hamilton: ‘Everything I’d suppressed came up – I had to speak out’,” The Guardian, July 10, 2021. https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/jul/10/lewis-hamilton-everything-id-suppressed-came-up-i-had-to-speak-out.