Mixed Race Studies

Who is Latino?

The Washington Post
2013-06-21

Carlos Lozada, Editor of Outlook, The Washington Post’s Sunday section for opinion, analysis

‘Shut up, you stupid Mexican!”

The words spewed from the mouth of a pale, freckle-faced boy, taunting me on our elementary school playground.

I wish I could recall what I said to inspire the insult. But more than three decades later, I remember only my reply. “Stupid Peruvian,” I pointed out, wagging my finger.

My family had emigrated from Lima to Northern California a few years earlier, so my nationality was a point of fact (whereas my stupidity remains a matter of opinion). The response so confused my classmate that my first encounter with prejudice ended as quickly as it started. Recess resumed.

Today, my grade-school preoccupation with nationality feels a bit quaint. Peruvian or Mexican — does it even matter? We’re all Latinos now…

…If all ethnic identities are created, imagined or negotiated to some degree, American Hispanics provide an especially stark example. As part of an effort in the 1970s to better measure who was using what kind of social services, the federal government established the word “Hispanic” to denote anyone with ancestry traced to Spain or Latin America, and mandated the collection of data on this group. “The term is a U.S. invention,” explains Mark Hugo Lopez, associate director of the Pew Hispanic Center. “If you go to El Salvador or the Dominican Republic, you won’t necessarily hear people say they are ‘Latino’ or ‘Hispanic.’ ”

You may not hear it much in the United States, either. According to a 2012 Pew survey, only about a quarter of Hispanic adults say they identify themselves most often as Hispanic or Latino. About half say they prefer to cite their family’s country of origin, while one-fifth say they use “American.” (Among third-generation Latinos, nearly half identify as American.)

The Office of Management and Budget defines a Hispanic as “a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race” — about as specific as calling someone European.

“There is no coherence to the term,” says Marta Tienda, a sociologist and director of Latino studies at Princeton University. For instance, even though it’s officially supposed to connote ethnicity and nationality rather than race — after all, Hispanics can be black, white or any other race — the term “has become a racialized category in the United States,” Tienda says. “Latinos have become a race by default, just by usage of the category.”…

Read the entire opinion piece here.

Whither White America?

The American Prospect
2013-06-13

Jamelle Bouie

More thoughts on the future of white people.

“Majority-minority” is an unusual term—by definition, minorities are no longer such if they’re in the majority—but it’s a convenient shorthand for what most people expect to happen in the United States over the next few decades. A growing population of nonwhites—driven by Asian and Latino immigration—will yield a country where most Americans have nonwhite heritage, thus “majority-minority.”

The most recent analysis from the Census Bureau seems to bear this out. Last year was the first year that whites were a minority of all newborns, and based on current rates of growth, they’ll become a minority of the under–five set by next year, if not the end of this one. Overall, the government projects that within five years, minorities will compromise a majority of all Americans under the age of eighteen, something to keep in mind when trying to project future political support for both parties…

…One fact stands out in all of this, however. The fastest growing group of Americans—by far—fall under the “multiracial category.” If past research is any indication, these Americans are likely the product of intermarriage between whites and Hispanics (the most common interracial pairing) or whites and Asians (the next most common one). While we identify them as nonwhite, we don’t know how they’ll identify themselves in the future.

My hunch is that—as (certain groups of) Latinos and Asians integrate themselves into American life—a good number will identify themselves as white, with Hispanic or Asian heritage, in the same way that many white Americans point to their Irish or Italian backgrounds…

Read the entire article here.

Are Mixed Race Couples and Families Still Fighting for Acceptance in Alberta?

Alberta Primetime
Edmonton, Alberta
2013-06-12

Jennifer Martin, Host

Monica Das, Registered Psychologist

Yvonne Breckenridge
University of Alberta

Alberta Primetime is a daily current affairs show airing weeknights from 7pm MST to 8pm MST. Airing across Alberta on CTV Two Alberta, Alberta Primetime drills through the surface of current issues to explore the ideas and concerns of Alberta’s real energy sector – its people.

The face of Alberta families is changing, but are Albertans still struggling to catch up?

We talk to Monica Das, registered psychologist and Yvonne Breckenridge, from the University of Alberta.

Watch the video here.

More Americans consider themselves multiracial

The Los Angeles Times
2013-06-12

Emily Alpert

The number of mixed or multiracial people in the United States jumped 6.6% between 2010 and 2012, according to the Census Bureau. Their ranks will only continue to grow, experts say.

The number of Americans who consider themselves multiracial has grown faster than any other racial group nationwide, new Census Bureau data reveal, a sign of slow but momentous shifts in the way that Americans think about race.

Mixed or multiracial people are still just a small slice of the American public, but their numbers jumped 6.6% between 2010 and 2012 — four times as fast as the national population, according to new estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. Experts say their ranks will only continue to swell.

…Mingling of races “has been with us forever in this country, and it has been erased and denied,” said G. Reginald Daniel, professor of sociology at UC Santa Barbara. Today, “that has begun to unravel. That is what you’re seeing with these figures.”…

…For African Americans, in particular, the “one drop rule” that historically defined blackness is relaxing. Sixteen years ago, when golfer Tiger Woods dubbed himself “Cablinasian” — Caucasian, black, American Indian and Asian — critics said Woods was denying his black heritage, said New York University associate professor of sociology Ann Morning…

…”For mixed Latinos there’s no answer,” said Thomas Lopez, director of Latinas and Latinos of Mixed Ancestry, a project of the nonprofit Multiracial Americans of Southern California. When the Census Bureau ran an experiment three years ago giving people a chance to claim Hispanic along with at least one other race, 6.8% did so…

…”Americans are becoming more nuanced in their understanding of race,” said Carolyn Liebler, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota. “But I don’t think race is becoming less important in our society.”

Read the entire article here.

Pacific Islanders: a Misclassified People

The Chronicle of Higher Education
2013-06-03

Kawika Riley, Chief Executive and Founder
Pacific Islander Access Project
also adjunct lecturer at George Washington University

Imagine that you’re a parent, teacher, or counselor who helped a promising student apply for financial aid. She’s an underrepresented minority, so you encouraged her to apply to several scholarships for minority students. A few weeks later, she receives a wave of responses from them, all saying the same thing: She’s not eligible to apply. Why? Because the colleges have misclassified her; even though she’s an underrepresented minority student, they’ve decided to treat her as if she’s not.

Now imagine that instead of one student’s being misclassified, this is happening to every student who belongs to one of the fastest-growing minority groups in America. Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders don’t need to imagine any of this. This is their reality.

For more than 20 years, U.S. Census data have shown that Pacific Islanders are far less likely to graduate from college than is the general population. The statistics have fluctuated slightly over time, but the trend is that Pacific Islanders are about half as likely as the general population to hold bachelor’s degrees, and even less likely to receive advanced degrees.

…Before 1997, the federal standard for racial classification grouped Asians and Pacific Islanders together. But 16 years ago, the standards were updated, and Pacific Islanders and Asians were recognized as two distinct groups. Unfortunately, the myth of a homogeneous “Asian Pacific” race persists, and the use of “API” data suggests that statistics on “Asian Pacific Islanders” reflect the conditions of both Asians and Pacific Islanders.

They don’t….

Read the entire article here.

OMB’s Preliminary Recommendation & an IV Commentary

Interracial Voice [1995-2003]
July 1997

Charles Michael Byrd

The Office of Management and Budget announced last Wednesday (07-09-97) that Americans could choose more than one racial category on Census and other federal forms but would have no new “multiracial” box to check under new rules the agency proposed. OMB rejected creation of a multiracial category because “there is no general understanding of what the term means,” said the federal task force that made the recommendation in a report being published in last Wednesday’s Federal Register. OMB has also called for a sixty-day public comment period, during which you may voice your support or opposition for this proposal. The OMB website has detailed information concerning email and snail-mail addresses to which you may forward messages.

This is not a multiracial category per se, rather a scheme where the government requires the individual to parcel out portions of his or her identity to two or more of the established racial groups. Not only is there no consideration or understanding that the individual may not recognize these groups as valid in terms of identity and affiliation, there is no symbol or icon—specifically a multiracial header—representative of a self-determined, integral being who self-identifies other than monoracially.

Even for those of mixed-race who do view the current racial groups as valid, there is still no specific multiracial designation. According to OMB, “When the data are reported, counts should be provided of the number of persons who checked two races, three races or four races, and information on the combinations should also be provided.” In other words, the government will effectively disperse the individual’s identity in two or more directions and at day’s end will have reduced it to a mere mathematical computation—a cleverly negotiated line segment along the political color continuum.

To not be totally cynical and negative, let me add that this “check all that apply” format is a step toward a recognition of multiraciality—albeit not a huge one…

Read the entire article here.

Why the multiracial community must march on July 20!

Interracial Voice [1995-2003]
July 1996

Charles Michael Byrd

Any group needs and deserves to know why someone makes a particular decision, especially when that person asks them to act upon that decision, to contribute and participate. So, too, you need to understand the reasons behind the calling for a march—the Multiracial Solidarity March—scheduled for Saturday, July 20, 1996, on the Mall in Washington, D.C.

There has never been an attempt to bring together large numbers of mixed-race individuals to petition the government for anything—in this case, a multiracial Census category that would allow millions of Americans to, for the first time, legally self-identify. This march will be the first ever devoted to multiracial rights and to offering the perspective of racially mixed people on racial issues…

Read the entire article here.

Backlash greets Cheerios ad with interracial family

The Washington Post
2013-05-31

Mary C. Curtis

Here we go again, with more proof, if anyone needed it, that the post-racial American society some hoped the election of an African American president signified is far from here.

Who would have thought that breakfast cereal would trigger the latest racial battle line? In this case, a Cheerios ad much like every other homespun Cheerios ad — with a heart healthy message and loving family – ran into trouble from some commenters because of the kind of family it featured. Mom is white, dad is black and their cute little daughter is a mix of the both of them.

That’s it.

Cheerios had to disable comments on YouTube – I’m not going to repeat them but you can imagine the general witless racism with stereotypes about minorities and warnings of race-mixing as the end of civilization.

I didn’t take any of it personally, though my family’s morning breakfast ritual – black mom, white dad, son who is a mix of both of us – looks a lot like the ad if you subtract the general cheeriness before we get that first cup of coffee down…

Read the entire article here.

A “Mulatto Escape Hatch” in the United States? Examining Evidence of Racial and Social Mobility During the Jim Crow Era

Demography
Published Online: 2013-04-20
DOI: 10.1007/s13524-013-0210-8

Aliya Saperstein, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Stanford University

Aaron Gullickson, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of Oregon

Racial distinctions in the United States have long been characterized as uniquely rigid and governed by strict rules of descent, particularly along the black-white boundary. This is often contrasted with countries, such as Brazil, that recognize “mixed” or intermediate racial categories and allow for more fluidity or ambiguity in racial classification. Recently released longitudinal data from the IPUMS Linked Representative Samples, and the brief inclusion of a “mulatto” category in the U.S. Census, allow us to subject this generally accepted wisdom to empirical test for the 1870–1920 period. We find substantial fluidity in black-mulatto classification between censuses—including notable “downward” racial mobility. Using person fixed-effects models, we also find evidence that among Southern men, the likelihood of being classified as mulatto was related to intercensal changes in occupational status. These findings have implications for studies of race and inequality in the United States, cross-national research on racial classification schemes in the Americas, and for how demographers collect and interpret racial data.

Introduction

More than 40 years ago. historian Carl Degler outlined a provocative comparison of race relations in Brazil and the United States. The crux of his argument about then-contemporary differences between the two countries rested on the relative status of “mulattos.” Specifically, Degler claimed that the progeny of unions between black and white Brazilians were accorded an intermediate position in the social and racial hierarchy: “The mulatto in Brazil represents an escape hatch for the Negro, so to speak, which is unavailable in the United States” (Degler 1971:107). More controversial, still, is the related and oft-repeated assertion that Afro-Brazilians can avail themselves of this “escape hatch” not only across generations by marrying lighter-skinned spouses but thanks to “the ability of wealth and education to whiten” within a single generation. As Degler put it: “Once ‘whitened’ by money, a ‘Negro’ becomes a ‘mulato’ or ‘pardo’ regardless of his actual color” (Degler 1971:107-08; emphasis in the original).

The ensuing scholarly debate has focused on whether Degler’s notion of an escape hatch was an accurate description of the Brazilian racial hierarchy, with its absence in the United States largely taken for granted. Researchers have come to varying conclusions regarding whether the situation of lighter-skinned or mixed-race Afro-Brazilians represents a meaningful improvement, materially or otherwise, compared with that of their darker-skinned counterparts (Loveman et al. 2012; Sheriff 2001; Idles 2004). Consensus regarding the claim that “money whitens” has also been elusive because of the lack of nationally representative, longitudinal data on race and socioeconomic status (SES) in Brazil (although, sec Schwartzman 2007). In the United States, some “passing“—that is, when people with African ancestry hide their full family history to take advantage of their “white” appearance—was and is publicly acknowledged (e.g.. Gates 1997; Johnson 1925), but it has generally been considered the exception rather than the rule of racial classification and social mobility. Yet, nationally representative, longitudinal data on the racial classification and SES of individuals do exist in the United States that could provide direct, systematic evidence on these issues. Research using the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) shows that social status and racial fluidity are linked in contemporary America: increases in status increase the odds of being classified as white and decrease the odds of being classified as black, and decreases in status decrease the odds of being classified as white and increase the odds of being classified as black (Saperstein and Penner 2012). Thus, regardless of whether the “mulatto escape hatch” is—or ever was—an accurate description of racial stratification in Brazil, it has become pertinent to ask whether increases in social position ever led to increases in racial position among Americans of African ancestry.

Recently released historical linked census samples from the Minnesota Population Center allow us to answer this question. These data provide fresh insight into the era of racial retrenchment following the Civil War and Reconstruction, and bracketing the turn of the twentieth century—a period when “Jim Crow” laws and the “one-drop rule” dictating racial classification were slowly building up steam in the South, even as the U.S. Census was going to great lengths to count the mixed ancestries of Americans. In this context, we find substantial fluidity in mulatto classification between censuses. We also find evidence for a recursive relationship between racial…

Read or purchase the article here.

US Census: Rationalizing Race in US History

Crossing Borders, Bridging Generations
Brooklyn Historical Society, Othmer Library
Brooklyn, New York
2013-04-18, 19:00-21:00 EDT (Local Time)
View the full video of the event here.

What boxes do you mark on the U.S. Census to describe your heritage?

Prior to the year 2000, multiracial people could only check one box in the Race category of the U.S. Census. Now, according to the 2010 U.S. Census, multiracial Americans are the fastest growing demographic group.

Speakers

• Nicholas A. Jones, chief of the U.S. Census Bureau’s Racial Statistics Branch in the Population Division
• Ann Morning, Associate Professor of Sociology, New York University, author of The Nature of Race and “Toward a Sociology of Racial Conceptualization for the 21st Century”
• Josh Begley, creator of Racebox.org, an online archive of U.S. Census forms from 1790 to the present
• Jonathan Soma, creator of A Handsome Atlas, a new digital way to explore US Statistical Atlases of the 19th Century

Moderated by Eric Hamako, doctoral candidate in Social Justice Education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

This event is part of Crossing Borders, Bridging Generations, an oral history project and public programming series, which examines the history and experiences of mixed-heritage people and families, cultural hybridity, race, ethnicity, and identity.

View the full video of the event here. View photographs from the event here.