Mixed Race Studies

In the future, we will be…: Priyank Shah at TEDx Columbus

TEDx Columbus
2012-10-14

Priyank Shah, Demographer, Futurist, Teacher

Dr. Shah is a demographer and a very enthusiastic one. He’ll begin our day with baseline picture of where we are headed as a population so we will better understand ourselves as a society. But no worries, you’ll be entertained with his take on these trends, as he himself is a living example of one of the most prolific ones.

Census Bureau Establishes National Advisory Committee on Racial, Ethnic and Other Populations

United States Census Bureau
News Release
CB12-195
2012-10-12

The U.S. Census Bureau announced today the establishment of the National Advisory Committee on Racial, Ethnic and Other Populations. The Census Bureau has also named the committee’s members and leadership.

The National Advisory Committee will advise the Census Bureau on a wide range of variables that affect the cost, accuracy and implementation of the Census Bureau’s programs and surveys, including the once-a-decade census. The committee, which is comprised of 32 members from multiple disciplines, will advise the Census Bureau on topics such as housing, children, youth, poverty, privacy, race and ethnicity, as well as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and other populations.

“We expect that the expertise of this committee will help us meet emerging challenges the Census Bureau faces in producing statistics about our diverse nation,” said Thomas Mesenbourg, the Census Bureau’s acting director. “By helping us better understand a variety of issues that affect statistical measurement, this committee will help ensure that the Census Bureau continues to provide relevant and timely statistics used by federal, state and local governments as well as business and industry in an increasingly technologically oriented society.”

The [32] members are:…

Read the entire press release here.

Let’s Not Be Boxed in by Color / Other Americans Help Break Down Racial Barriers

“Let’s Not Be Boxed in by Color”
The Washington Post, Outlook
1997-06-08
pages C3

“Other Americans Help Break Down Racial Barriers”
International Herald Tribune
1997-06-10
page 9

Amitai Etzioni, University Professor and Professor of International Affairs; Director, Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies
George Washington University, Washington, D.C.

In 1990, the Census Bureau offered Americans the choice of 16 racial categories. The main groupings were white and black, which 92 percent of the population chose. The remaining categories were Native American, Aleut and Eskimo, 10 variations of Asian and Pacific Islanders, and “Other.” Some 9.8 million Americans, or 4 percent of the total population, chose “Other” rather than one of the established mono-racial categories—as compared to fewer than 1 million in 1970.

This number will continue to expand. Since 1970, the number of mixed-race children in the United States has quadrupled to reach the 2 million mark. And there are six times as many intermarriages today as there were in 1960. Indeed, some sociologists predict that, even within a generation, Americans will begin to look more like Hawaii’s blended racial mix.

It’s time to acknowledge the increasing number of multiracial Americans—not only because doing so gives us a more accurate portrait of the population, but because it will help to break down the racial barriers that now divide this country. And the place to recognize these new All-Americans is with the next census in the year 2000. Although the actual count will not begin for another two years, the decision about which racial categories are to be used will be made this year — and it is already the subject of considerable controversy…

…Introducing a multiracial category would help soften the racial lines that now divide America by making them more like transitory economic differences rather than harsh, immutable caste lines. Sociologists have long observed that a major reason the United States experiences few confrontations along lines of class is that people in this country believe they can move from one economic stratum to another — and regularly do so. For instance, workers become foremen, and foremen become small businessmen, who are considered middle-class. There are no sharp class demarcation lines here, based on heredity, as there are in Britain. In the United States, many manual workers consider themselves middle-class, dress up to go to work, with their tools and lunches in their briefcases.

But confrontations do occur along racial lines in America because color lines currently seem rather rigid: Many members of one racial group simply couldn’t imagine belonging to another.

If the new category is adopted and, if more and more Americans choose it in future decades, it will help make America look more like Hawaii, where races mix freely, and less like India where castes still divide the population sharply. And the blurring of racial lines will encourage greater social cohesiveness overall…

Read the entire essay here.

Classifying racial and ethnic group data in the United States: the politics of negotiation and accommodation

Journal of Government Information
Volume 27, Issue 2 (March-April 2000)
pages 129–156
DOI: 10.1016/S1352-0237(00)00131-3

Alice Robbin, Associate Professor of Library and Information Science
Indiana University, Bloomington

“Standards for Maintaining, Collecting, and Presenting Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity,” formerly known as “Statistical Policy Directive 15,” is a classification system that has formed the basis of the U.S. government’s collection and presentation of data on race and ethnicity since 1977. During the mid-1990s, it underwent a public evaluation to determine whether the racial and ethnic group categories should be revised. This article examines the history of Statistical Policy Directive 15 from its origins through October 1997 and evaluates its consequences on political, economic, and social life. Among the many lessons that government information specialists can take away from the history of Statistical Policy Directive 15 is that classification systems are not neutral tools that objectively reflect and measure the empirical world. Classification systems cannot be isolated from the larger political setting. They are tightly linked to public policies, and, in the case of racial and ethnic group classification, they constitute highly contested social policy about which there is little public consensus.

…The Directive mandated minimum data collection for race and ethnic origin for civil rights compliance monitoring, general program administrative and grant reporting requirements that included racial or ethnic data, and statistical reporting for “federal sponsored statistical data collection where race and/or ethnicity is required.” The Directive cautioned, however, that the standard was not to be used to determine eligibility for participating in any federal program, nor were the categories to be construed as representing biological or genetic racial origins.

Four racial categories (American Indian or Alaskan Native, Asian or Pacific Islander, Black/Negro, and White) and one ethnic origin category (Hispanic) were created, along with rules for nomenclature and membership in the categories. The ethnic category of “Hispanic origin, Not of Hispanic origin” was included to comply with Public Law 94-311 of June 16, 1976 (90 Stat. 688), which required the collection, analysis, and publication of statistics for Americans of Spanish origin or descent. See Table 1 for the category names and definitions that were adopted for the minimum standard and Table 2 for the minimum standard adopted for the combined items of race and Hispanic origin.

People of biracial or multiracial heritage were required to select one category that “most closely reflect[ed] the individual’s recognition in his community”. The Directive recommended, but did not require, that self-identification be the preferred manner of data collection, although it had been standard operating practice for agencies to assign racial and ethnic group identity by observer rather than by respondent self-identification. This recommendation for self-identification established, for the first time in the history of governmental record keeping, the individual respondent as the authoritative source for personal racial identity…

…The release of the July 1997 Notice by OMB altered the public positions of nearly all the major stakeholders. In a complete turn-about, the federal agencies, including the agencies that monitored civil rights compliance, and all the minority population interest groups, expressed unanimous support for the Interagency Committee’s recommendations. Project RACE, the activist multiracial interest group that had successfully mobilized local and state groups throughout the country, stood alone in its rejection of the Interagency Committee’s recommendation of a checkoff for a multiple race response as a solution to the multiracial category. The Project RACE spokeswoman [Susan Graham] argued that the proposed method of tabulating multiple responses to the race item was “discriminatory,” and was designed to “uphold the one-drop rule and satisfy the minority communities”…

Read the entire article here.

MASC’s Thomas Lopez Discusses Mixed Latina/o Identity

Mixed Race Radio
Wednesday, 2012-10-17, 16:00Z (12:00 EDT, 09:00 PDT, 17:00 BST)

Tiffany Rae Reid, Host

Thomas Lopez

Thomas Lopez continues to amaze me. He has held various positions with Multiracial Americans of Southern California (MASC), Los Angeles, CA since 1995 and continues to organize numerous conferences, workshops and events such as “Race In Medicine: A Dangerous Prescription” and “A Rx for the FDA: Ethical Dilemmas for Multiracial People in Race-Based Medicine” at the Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference, DePaul University, 2010.

Thomas is also a filmmaker, having produced, Mixed Mexican: Is Latino a Race? which was shown at the Mixed Roots Film and Literary Festival (2010), Readymade Film Festival (2010), and Hapapalooza Film Festival (2011)

On today’s episode of Mixed Race Radio, Thomas will announce the start of a new program by Multiracial Americans of Southern California (MASC) called: Latinas/os Of Mixed Ancestry (LOMA).

The purpose of the LOMA project is to:

• Provide space for expression of mixed Latina/o identity.
• Provide culturally relevant material to the mixed Latino community.
• Raise awareness of this community to society at large.

This will be accomplished by:

• The establishment of a website with blog and forum discussions.
• Social media campaign.
• Attendance at conferences.
• A public relations awareness campaign.
• MASC seeks to broaden self and public understanding of our interracial, multiethnic, and cross cultural society by facilitating interethnic dialogue and providing cultural, educational, and recreational activities. In 2009 MASC celebrated twenty years of incorporation.

As a part of our mission, MASC has always worked to raise awareness of the impact of multiracial identification. During the 1990’s, we successfully worked to revise the Census to allow multiple racial classifications.

For more information, click here.

Skeptic’s Café: Understanding Popular Uses of Percentages

Pacific Standard
2011-04-30

Peter M. Nardi, Professor Emeritus of Sociology
Pitzer College, Claremont, California

Four New Jersey women in March accused the Campbell Soup Company of misleading customers with claims of lower sodium levels in its “25% Less Sodium Tomato Soup.” Whether the soup has more or less sodium than regular versions is not for me to investigate. I want to focus on the “25% less” phrase — a type of claim we see regularly in ads and new product labels — and in the process provide some numerical literacy skills to our arsenal of skeptical thinking tools.

In an age when quantitative thinking is at a premium and “innumeracy,” as cognitive scientist Douglas R. Hofstadter termed it, is a problem, many people easily misinterpret numbers and become wary about statistics. Sometimes this skepticism is for good reason – remember that oft-cited phrase “there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.”

But turning our backs on numbers is a mistake. We require critical thinking skills to make sense of data that appear in commercials, politician-mediated public opinion polls, official documents and research studies…

Consider this paragraph from a New York Times article about the increase in multiracial people in the latest 2010 U.S. Census: “In North Carolina, the mixed-race population doubled. In Georgia, it expanded by more than 80 percent, and by nearly as much in Kentucky and Tennessee. In Indiana, Iowa and South Dakota, the multiracial population increased by about 70 percent.” A few paragraphs later the article reports a possible national multiracial growth rate of 35 percent, maybe even a 50 percent increase from the last census in 2000 when 2.4 percent of Americans selected more than one race.

With these numbers coming at you fast and furious, it takes a moment to reflect on what is actually being said and what information is missing…

…Going back to the Census figures quoted in The New York Times, it’s one thing to claim that the multiracial population may increase 50 percent, but when the original figure is only 2.4 percent of Americans, a 50 percent increase simply means that the 2010 multiracial population could end up around 3.6 percent of the population. The number 50 surely sounds more impressive than the smaller 3.6 figure. Manipulating these numbers can create misleading impressions, sometimes done with intention…

Read the entire article here.

2010 Census Shows Multiple-Race Population Grew Faster Than Single-Race Population

United States Census Bureau
New Releases
News Release: CB12-182
2012-09-27

The 2010 Census showed that people who reported multiple races grew by a larger percentage than those reporting a single race. According to the 2010 Census brief The Two or More Races Population: 2010, the population reporting multiple races (9.0 million) grew by 32.0 percent from 2000 to 2010, compared with those who reported a single race, which grew by 9.2 percent.

Overall, the total U.S. population increased by 9.7 percent since 2000, however, many multiple-race groups increased by 50 percent or more.

The first time in U.S. history that people were presented with the option to self-identify with more than one race came on the 2000 Census questionnaire. Therefore, the examination of data from the 2000 and 2010 censuses provides the first comparisons on multiple-race combinations in the United States. An effective way to compare the multiple-race data is to examine changes in specific combinations, such as white and black, white and Asian, or black and Asian.

“These comparisons show substantial growth in the multiple-race population, providing detailed insights to how this population has grown and diversified over the past decade,” said Nicholas Jones, chief of the U.S. Census Bureau’s Racial Statistics Branch…

Read the entire news release here.

Afroargentines

The Argentina Independent
2007-03-23

Laura Balfour

As a descendant of two slaves, Maria Lamadrid has a hard time biting her tongue when airport officials think her Argentine passport is not real because ‘there are no blacks in Argentina’.
 
And that was in 2002.
 
The 25th of March marks the landmark 200th anniversary of the 1807 Abolition of the Slave Trade Act. Though the trade continued after this date, it marked the beginning of the end of the transatlantic trafficking of Africans.
 
Ms Lamadrid is fighting to alter the common belief that all blacks who live in Argentina are foreigners. In 1997 she founded Africa Vive, a non-governmental organisation that defends the rights of African descendants. Today, she claims, there are 2m Afroargentines in Argentina.
 
Ms Lamadrid and Miriam Gomez, a history professor at the University of Buenos Aires, have dedicated themselves wholly to the NGO’s cause because “there is so much to do and very few people to do it.”…

…Africa Vive has requested that a separate category for African descendants be reintroduced in the 2010 census. Ms Lamadrid said the most frustrating thing is that there used to be one: 1887 was the final year that Afroargentines were recognised in the census; the results showed that 2% of the residents of Buenos Aires were of African descent at that time. She added that indigenous people, who have also suffered discrimination, have their own category because they have more support…

Read the entire article here.

The reawakening of Afro-Argentine culture

Global Post
2009-08-30

Anil Mundra

Descendants of slaves are starting to assert their identity but it’s not easy in South America’s whitest country.

BUENOS AIRES — “Liberty has no color” read the signs held outside a Buenos Aires city courthouse. “Arrested for having the wrong face,” and “Suspected of an excess of pigment,” said others. And more to the point: “Enough racism.”
 
A black street vendor was allegedly arrested without cause or proper procedure earlier this year, prompting this August hearing of a habeas corpus appeal. But leaders of the Afro-Argentine community say this moment goes beyond any particular man or incident, calling it a watershed case that brings to trial the treatment of blacks in Argentina.
 
“It’s not about this prosecutor or that police officer, but rather an institutionally racist system,” said Malena Derdoy, the defendant’s lawyer.
 
Argentina is generally considered the whitest country in South America — 97 percent, by some counts — possibly more ethnically European than immigrant-saturated Europe. There was once a large Afro-Argentine presence but it has faded over the epochs. Now, for the first time in a century and a half, Argentine descendants of African slaves are organizing and going public to assert their identity…

…At the beginning of the 1800s, black slaves were 30 percent of the population of Buenos Aires, and an absolute majority in some other provinces. The first president of Argentina had African ancestry, and so did the composer of the first tango. Even the word “tango,” like many other words common in the Argentine vocabulary, has an African root; so do many beloved foods, including the national vices of the asado barbecue and dulce de leche.
 
The abolition of slavery was a slow process that spanned the better part of the 19th century. At the same time, under the government’s explicit and aggressive policy of whitening the race — to replace “barbary” with “civilization,” in the famous phrase of the celebrated president Sarmiento — Afro-Argentines were inundated by European immigration, the largest such influx in the Americas outside of the United States. Blacks had dwindled to only 1.8 percent of Buenos Aires by the 1887 census, after which their category was replaced with more vague terms like “trigueno” — “wheaty.”

“It’s part of Argentine common sense that there are no blacks, that their entire culture had disappeared toward the end of the 1800s,” said anthropologist Pablo Cirio. “That’s all a lie.”…
 
…The survey was performed with help from the national census bureau and World Bank funding, at the urging of local Afro-Argentine activists who hoped to have the “Afro-descendant” category re-inserted into the Argentine census in 2010 and count themselves as a distinct segment of the populace after a century missing. Soon afterward, DNA tests of blood samples in several Buenos Aires hospitals bolstered the pilot census’ result with a very similar percentage of genes traceable to Africa. Moreover, a much higher number — about 10 percent — was obtained by testing mitochondrial DNA, which traces maternal ancestry. This is consistent with the historical conjecture that many black men were lost after being sent to the frontlines of 19th-century wars, and Afro-Argentines assimilated into the white population when the
remaining women mixed with the hordes of European males who had come to Argentina to work…

Read the entire article here.

Mixed-race teen in the middle: who will she choose?

Tampa Bay Times
St. Petersburg, Florida
2012-09-23

Leonora LaPeter Anton, Times Staff Writer

Her dark eyes scanned the fluorescent-lit lunchroom, locking onto her friends in the center of the chaos. Her thoughts sprayed in many directions: the upcoming eighth-grade formal, a surprisingly bad grade she recently got on an English paper, her role in the school play.

She passed a table full of white girls and one of them high-fived her. She passed a table full of white boys and one of them called her name. She arrived at a table full of black girls — the table where she sits almost every day. As she set her notebook down, one of her best girlfriends ignored her and moved to another table.

Asianna Williams, 14, wanted to ignore the drama. She is a light-skinned mixed-race girl trying to discover who she is in a society that still carves up territory by race. Nowhere was this more evident than in the lunchroom at Thurgood Marshall Fundamental Middle School. Table after table, as far as the eye could see, white faces congregated around one table, black faces around another.

Asianna’s father is black and her mother is white. Years ago, this might have relegated her to a no-man’s land, not fully welcomed by either blacks or whites. Now, thanks in part to sheer numbers (last year, there were 42 other mixed-race students at Thurgood Marshall), Asianna doesn’t feel ostracism. But she does feel pressure.

Pressure to choose black kids. Pressure to choose white kids. Like the tables in the lunchroom, nearly everything Asianna does — and she does a lot of things — comes with an overlay of race.

But what if you were someone who didn’t want to choose?…

…There have always been people of mixed race in American society. Cultural taboos and prejudice often meant they simply identified themselves as black, or if their skin was sufficiently light-colored, tried to pass as white…

Read the entire article here.