Mixed Race Studies

Celebrating Japan’s multicultural Olympians

The Japan Times
2016-08-17

Naomi Schanen, Staff Writer

Meet the athletes flying the flag and challenging traditional views of what it is to be Japanese

Japan and Brazil’s ties go back to the early 20th century, when the first Japanese immigrants arrived as farmers in the South American country. Brazil is home to the largest Japanese community outside Japan — 1.5 million of the country’s 205 million people identify themselves as Japanese-Brazilian, including a handful of members of the Brazilian Olympic team.

But although the host countries of the current and next Summer Olympics share cultural bonds, compared to Brazil, where nearly half of people consider themselves mixed-race, multiculturalism remains elusive in Japan, where ethnic homogeneity is often held up as something to be proud of.

Though Japan is home to the second-largest Brazilian community outside of Brazil, only 2 percent of the country’s population was born overseas. Compared to most other developed countries, immigration to Japan is negligible. However, despite having to deal with an aging, shrinking population, the majority of Japanese seem to prefer it this way. In a recent Yomiuri Shimbun poll, only 37 percent said they felt that more non-Japanese should be accepted to fill the gaps in the country’s labor market…

Read the entire article here.

Seattle’s multiracial identity evolves along with census

The Seattle Times
2016-08-18

Gene Balk

Now that Americans can select more than one racial category, we rank high nationally in terms of multiracial population and percentage.

TODAY — WHEN NEARLY 10 million Americans identify as multiracial — it’s strange to think that just a few decades ago, this community was practically invisible.

That’s because it wasn’t until 2000 that the Census Bureau allowed Americans to choose more than one racial category to describe themselves. Before that, you could pick only one, and people with mixed backgrounds often struggled over the decision about which box to check.

When the Census Bureau made that change, it had an especially profound impact in Seattle. That’s because even though Seattle ranks only 15th in size among U.S. metropolitan areas, our population of multiracial people — about 233,000 — is the fourth-largest. New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco are the top three, in order…

Read the entire article here.

Indian, African-Guyanese numbers continue to decline, census finds

Stabroek News
Georgetown, Guyana
2016-07-19

Staff Writer

– mixed race, Amerindian populations still growing

Although the country’s two largest ethnic groups, East Indian and African-Guyanese, continued to decline in their numbers between 2002 and 2012, the drop was offset by continued growth in the mixed race and Amerindian populations, according to the last census.

However, the 2012 National Population and Housing Census also found that despite the shifts, which include the decline in the East Indian-Guyanese population from 326,277 or 43.4% to 297,493 or 39.8%—a drop of 28,784 or 3.6%—the overall ethnic distribution pattern remained unchanged from the 1980s.

The Bureau of Statistics yesterday announced the release of two Compendiums that further detail the findings of the four-year-old census, including the ethnic composition of the population…

Read the entire article here.

Meet Anthony Ocampo, the Professor Who Wrote a Book on Why Latinos and Filipinos are Primos

Remezcla
2016-07-12

Kevin Nadal

Anthony Ocampo

As one of the few Filipino American psychology professors in the US, it can get lonely. I am the only Filipino American professor on my campus and one of the few tenured Filipino American professors in New York City (and on the East Coast in general). When I first started writing about Filipino American issues over a decade ago, I found myself constantly fighting with scholars (especially peer reviewers) who argued that I should concentrate on issues affecting the pan-ethnic Asian American community, instead of focusing specifically on Filipino Americans. Whenever I wrote journal articles or essays, I always had to explain who Filipino Americans were – outlining colonial history, phenotypical appearances, and socioeconomic experiences in the US. I relied on interdisciplinary readings because there was so little written about Filipino Americans in social sciences. I turned to Latinx and Black American mentors, who validated my feelings of marginalization within the Asian American community. And I was fortunate to work with one Chinese American mentor who encouraged me to pursue my interests in writing about Filipino American Psychology.

While there have been several amazing Filipino American scholars who have emerged across multiple disciplines in the past ten years or so, it is still a rarity to see a Filipino American professor — in a tenure or tenure-track position — who studies issues of concern for Filipino American people. In fact, in a study that I conducted with Dr. Dina Maramba in 2010, we found that there were only 113 tenured or tenure-track Filipino American professors in social sciences, education, and humanities in all of the U.S. As a reference point, there are 45 full-time professors in my Psychology Department alone (mostly white) and 415 full-time professors on my campus with 15,000 students. So, to only have a little over 100 Filipino American full-time professors in the US across these disciplines (when there are over 4 million Filipino Americans in the US), is both disproportionate and unfortunate.

Because of all of this, I was so excited when I first learned about Dr. Anthony Ocampo and his research on deconstructing race for Filipino Americans. Dr. Ocampo is a tenure-track assistant professor of sociology at Cal Poly Pomona. His first book, The Latinos of Asia: How Filipino Americans Break the Rules of Race describes how Filipino Americans’ experiences with race and racism is influenced by social context (e.g., friendships, neighborhoods and communities, or even school environments). His research answers many of the questions that I had when I was first a student trying to understand Filipino American identity- unpacking issues related to Spanish and American colonialism, whether or not Filipinos are “Asian enough”, and whether or not Filipinos should continue to be classified under this pan-Asian umbrella…

Read the entire article here.

NYC AfroLatino Fest Comes at an Important Time

Sounds and Colours
2016-07-05

Gina Vergel

It seems the fourth edition of AfroLatinoFest in New York City comes at a crucial time.

A survey by the Pew Research Center, released in March, points to a disconnect in how some Afro-Latinos living in the United States report their race. It found that while 24 percent of U.S.-based Latinos identify as Afro-Latino, just 18 percent of that group reports its race as “Black.”

According to an article in Colorlines, “when asked directly about their race, only 18% of Afro-Latinos identified their race or one of their races as black. In fact, higher shares of Afro-Latinos identified as white alone or white in combination with another race (39%) or volunteered that their race or one of their races was Hispanic (24%). Only 9% identified as mixed race.”

And so Afro-Latino Fest, taking place from the 8th to the 10th of July, is offering a series of intellectually engaging panels, documentary screenings, and keynote speakers about AfroLatinidad, along with music and food, of course…

Read the entire article here.

Multiracial People and the Socialization of Their Children in Britain

The Futures We Want: Global Sociology and the Struggles for a Better World
3rd ISA Forum of Sociology
2016-07-10 through 2016-07-14
Vienna, Austria

Tuesday, 2016-07-12, 14:15 CEST (Local Time)
Room: Hörsaal 31

Oral Presentation

Miri Song, Professor of Sociology
University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, United Kingdom

Since ‘Mixed’ was first offered as an option in the ethnicity question in the 2001 England and Wales Census, Britain’s recognition of, and interest in, ‘mixed race’ (or ‘multiracial’) people and families has not abated. Recent studies have focused primarily upon how mixed (young) people identify themselves, or how parents racially identify their multiracial children. But Britain now has a population of multiracial individuals who are themselves parents, about whom we know very little. Despite the growing commonality of mixed people and families, such families can still be subject to forms of racial pathologzation and scrutiny in various settings. Extant studies of multiracial family life (especially in the US) have tended to focus upon interracial couples and their multiracial children, but we now need to look a further generation down – at their grown children. What are the particular concerns which arise for multiracial individuals in Britain who are parents? How do multiracial people who are parents experience and negotiate forms of objectification and/or prejudice from others? Do multiracial people (who are parents) want to steer their children toward a particular kind of socialization, and if so, toward what (and why)? This paper is an in-depth exploration of the ways in which different types of mixed people (South Asian/White, Black/White, East Asian/White) in Britain think about and engage in parenting.

For more information, click here.

The 2020 Census and the Re-Indigenization of America

Truthout
2016-06-26

Roberto Rodriguez
Mexican American & Raza Studies Department
University of Arizona

As the 2020 US census looms, this arcane ritual will once again result in the painting of a false picture of the demographic makeup of the United States. While the nation has been getting “browner” for many decades, the US Census Bureau has actually been complicit in obfuscating this change, which I have long described as demographic genocide. Yet this time around, due to a long-overdue change in the census, rather than being corralled against their will into the “white” category, many Mexican, Central American, Andean and Caribbean peoples will no longer be checking the white racial box.

Countering the delusions of previous generations, we know that simply checking the white box has never meant being treated as white anyway. This time around, per this change, many of us will instead (again) be checking the American Indian box, while rejecting the bureaucratically imposed Hispanic/Latino box. Others will check and affirm both.

This change however, will not alter the historic de-Indigenization schemes of this society, including those of the Census Bureau, which has always been an ideological instrument of empire. The census does not just count people, but actually helps to shape the nation’s self-image, character and national narrative. It helps tell the world “who we are” — who the United States is.

And just precisely who or what is the United States supposed to be? God’s chosen people?…

Read the entire article here.

Babies Of Color Are Now The Majority, Census Says

National Public Radio
2016-07-01

Kendra Yoshinaga

Today’s generation of schoolchildren looks much different than one just a few decades ago. Nonwhites are expected to become the majority of the nation’s children by 2020, as our colleague Bill Chappell reported last year. This is now the reality among the very youngest Americans: babies.

Babies of color now outnumber non-Hispanic white babies (1 year or younger), according to new estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. The newest estimate shows that on July 1, 2015, the population of racial or ethnic minority babies was 50.2 percent…

…NPR could not reach any babies for comment.

Read the entire article here.

Afro-Mexicans still struggle for recognition in Mexico

The Seattle Globalist
2016-06-22

Mayela Sánchez, Senior Reporter, Country Coordinator

Adriana Alcázar González, Reporter

María Gorge, Reporter

Luz María Martínez Montiel, 81, shown at home in Cuernavaca, the capital of Morelos state in central Mexico, is a specialist in African languages and culture. She works to promote the recognition of Afro-descendants in Mexico.(Photo by Mayela Sánchez for GPJ Mexico)

“It is latent racism. Nobody wants to be the descendant of black people,” Luz María Martínez Montiel says from her home in Cuernavaca, the capital of Morelos state in central Mexico.

Martínez Montiel says this was confirmed for her at an early age. When she was 9, she went to live with her paternal grandparents in Veracruz, a state on the country’s east coast. Even though there were people in her family who were dark-skinned, they didn’t identify as descendants of Africans, she says.

“‘Black’ always was the ‘other,’” says Martínez Montiel, now 80 years old.

Afro-descendants are defined as people whose ancestors were enslaved Africans who integrated into the places where they were transported, or to where they escaped, according to the Consejo Nacional para Prevenir la Discriminación (CONAPRED) the national council in charge of promoting policies for equality and inclusion…

Read the entire article here.

Sumter County, Fla., is Nation’s Oldest, Census Bureau Reports

United States Census Bureau
Washington, D.C.
2016-06-23
Release Number: CB16-107

Only County in Nation With Majority of Population Age 65 or Older

JUNE 23, 2016 — The nation’s only county with a majority of the population age 65 or older remains Sumter, Fla., where 54.8 percent had reached retirement age in 2015, up from 53.0 percent in 2014. Part of the nation’s fastest growing metro area (The Villages), Sumter County had a median age of 66.6 years on July 1, 2015, according to new U.S. Census Bureau population estimates released today.

The new detailed estimates by age, sex, race and Hispanic origin show the nation’s 65-and-older population grew from 46.2 million in 2014 to 47.8 million in 2015. This group continues to show rapid percentage growth, even as baby boomers and previous generation groups that make up this age group decline in population.

“Sumter County is unique as the only county with a majority age 65-and-older population,” said Jason Devine, assistant division chief for Population Estimates and Projections, “As the nation’s 65-and-over population grows, other counties with retirement communities like The Villages will get closer to this threshold.”…

…Two or More Races

Those who identify as two or more races had a total population of 8.2 million, up 3.1 percent from 2014. This was the second-fastest growing race group in the nation. Their growth is primarily due to natural increase.

This group had the youngest median age of any other race group at 20.0 years…

Read the entire news release here.