Mixed Race Studies

Making sense of ‘mixture’: states and the classification of ‘mixed’ people

Ethnic and Racial Studies
Avaiable online: 2012-02-01
9 pages
DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2012.648650

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

Diversity and the growth of ‘mixed’ people

In many Western multi-ethnic societies, and increasingly in non-Western societies, ‘super-diversity’ has emerged as a major demographic trend in various metropolitan centres (Vertovec 2007). Contemporary Britain is marked by both super-diversity in urban areas and ‘old’ racial and ethnic cleavages which reflect continuing social divides in many parts of the country. As a result, there is considerable flux in the meanings and significance of race and racial difference across a variety of contexts. Such growing diversity is due to continue, based upon continuing flows of migration, increased interracial and interethnic partnering, and the growth of ‘mixed’ individuals. While I focus on the case of Britain, much of this editorial, I would argue, will be of relevance to what many other multi-ethnic societies will encounter in the coming years.

Notably. while only 2 per cent of marriages are ‘inlerethnic’ in Britain (Office for National Statistics 2005), such marriages are expected to grow rapidly. Black-white partnering is the most common in Britain the direct opposite of the US. where black/white partnering is least common. In a recent analysis of the Labour Force Survey, nearly half of black Caribbean men in a partnership were partnered (married or cohabiting) with someone of a different ethnic group (and about one third of black Caribbean women), while 39 per cent of Chinese women in partnerships had a partner from a different ethnic group (Platt 2009). There are now more children in Britain (under age 5) with one black and one white parent than children with two black parents (Owen 2007)…

Read or purchase the article here.

The Republican primaries: Miscegenation and the South

The Economist
2012-03-13

OVER the weekend the Democratic-affiliated polling organisation Public Policy Polling (PPP) came out with a survey showing that 21% of likely Republican voters in Alabama, and 29% of likely Republican voters in Mississippi, think interracial marriage should be illegal. (It also found about half think Barack Obama is Muslim, and that most don’t believe in evolution.) Michelle Cottle of the Daily Beast, who hails from the South herself, thinks PPP is unfairly singling out southerners for these questions.

[T]his PPP report has all the earmarks of a poll taken with the specific, if perhaps unconscious, goal of confirming all of the nation’s very worst biases about the South. So an average of 1 in 4 respondents still can’t get with that whole ebony and ivory thing. Appallingly racist? You betcha. But can someone please explain to me what this has to do with the current Republican presidential race? Discussions of gay marriage I understand. But interracial marriage—since when is this a relevant topic in American politics?

Similarly, why do we need to know respondents’ views on evolution? Last time I checked, not even Santorum was waving the creationism (or intelligent design) banner in this race. Which could explain why, when I went back and looked through the rest of PPP’s polls from this year, I couldn’t find any other states that were asked about evolution. Ditto questions about whether Obama is a Muslim. And in only one other state did I see voters being asked about interracial marriage: South Carolina. (Surprise!)

Ms Cottle isn’t saying that PPP worded its poll in order to bring out the most racist possible answers. (The question they asked is pretty straightforward: “Do you think that interracial marriage should be legal or illegal?”) She’s just saying that these questions wouldn’t have been asked in any other region of the country. And it’s true: we don’t know the national base rate reply for this question. So we should look for other polls that compare attitudes towards interracial marriage in Alabama and Mississippi, or in the South more generally, to those elsewhere in America…

…How about Alabama and Mississippi specifically? Let’s turn to last month’s Pew report on interracial marriage in America, which breaks down actual intermarriage rates by state. From 2008 to 2010, 15% of all American marriages were mixed-race (where the races are white, Hispanic, black, Asian and “other”). The states with the lowest rates of interracial marriage were as follows:

1. Vermont (4.0%)
2. Mississippi (6.2%)
3. Kentucky (7.1%)
4. Alabama (8.1%)
5. Maine (8.2%)

The salient point here, obviously, is that Vermont and Maine are 95% white and 1% black. Mississippi is 59% white and 37% black. Alabama is 69% white and 26% black. (Kentucky, incidentally, is 88% white and 8% black.) The reasons why Alabama and Mississippi combine such racially mixed populations with such low rates of racial intermarriage are obvious and familiar to any American. These are extremely segregated states, residentially, economically, culturally and politically, and that segregation both produces and is produced by high levels of racial prejudice….

Read the entire article here.

Mix-d: Museum

Mix-d:™
2012-02-27

Chamion Caballero, Senior Research Fellow
London South Bank University

Peter Aspinall, Reader in Population Health at the Centre for Health Services Studies
University of Kent, UK

The overall aim of the project is to explore the potential of translating knowledge through technology. Working together with Mix-d, the team will draw on findings from the British Academy project to develop the ‘Mix-d Museum’, an online repository of material and interactive resources.

Hello and a big welcome to our blog! We are delighted to be working with Mix-d: to share the findings of our research on mixed race people, couples and families in early 20th century Britain through the creation of the Mix-d: Timeline. The Timeline will provide highlight many key events in the history of racial mixing and mixedness in twentieth century Britain, as well provide an insight into the everyday lives and experiences of mixed race people, couples and families during this time.

For this first blog entry, we thought we’d say a bit about why we started the research project that the Timeline will draw on and what we found along the way.

As researchers interested in mixed race people, couples and families, we were aware that the little history that had been told about this group—particularly around the interwar period—had assumed that theirs was an inherently negative or problematic experience. We were also aware that such perceptions continued to influence how mixed people, couples and families were seen in Britain today…

…We had hoped to find some records and personal accounts relating to these families and people, but what we found far exceeded our expectations. The project sourced a fantastic range of archival material, including official documents, autobiographical recordings and photo and film material, which has helped us to understand more about the experiences of these families and the effect that official attitudes to racial mixing and mixedness had on their lives…

Read the entire blog post here.

Studs Terkel’s study of race in the US: 20 years on

The Guardian
2012-03-13

Gary Younge

What have we learned in the two decades since the oral historian Studs Terkel published his classic book Race? In the introduction to a new edition, Gary Younge weighs up what has changed – and what hasn’t

Cultures do not come by their obsessions lightly. They tend them over generations, feeding them with myths, truths, pain, resentment, collective generalisations and individual exceptions. They pick at them like scabs until they bleed, and then mistake the consequent infection for the original wound. And then, like a hardy virus, the obsessions survive all attempts at inoculation by mutating into new and more stubborn strains.

Race in America, as Studs Terkel points out in the subtitle to his book (“What Blacks and Whites Think and Feel About the American Obsession”), published 20 years ago this year, is one such obsession. “No African came in freedom to the shores of the New World,” wrote 19th-century French intellectual Alexis de Tocqueville in his landmark book Democracy in America. “The Negro transmits to his descendants at birth the external mark of his ignominy. The law can abolish servitude, but only God can obliterate its traces.”

By 1992, when Race was published, the laws had been abolished two generations prior, leaving the traces to engrave a deep and treacherous crevice between de jure and de facto. So there was never any risk that in the two decades since Terkel conducted most of these interviews, the book would be relegated to a period piece. True, numerous references to Louis Farrakhan, Harold Washington and Ronald Reagan certainly root the contributions in their time. Remarkable things have also happened to race in America since the book came out: black Americans have been eclipsed by Latinos as the largest minority; the black prison population has increased exponentially; a Republican right wing is on the ascendancy; and there is, of course, a black president…

Read the entire article here.

Multiracial Identity [Film Review by Patricia B. McGee]

Educational Media Reviews Online
2011-07-19

Patricia B. McGee, Coordinator of Media Services
Volpe Library & Media Center
Tennessee Technological University, Cookeville, Tennessee

Multiracial Identity
2010
Distributed by Bullfrog Films, PO Box 149, Oley, PA 19547; 800-543-FROG (3764)
Produced and Directed by Brian Chinhema
DVD, color, 77 min. and 56 min.
Jr. High – General Adult
African American Studies, Anthropology, Multicultural Studies, Sociology

Highly Recommended

Multiracial Identity explores the complexities of what it means to be a person of mixed race heritage in the United States, and how the concept of mixed race “challenges racial perceptions and boundaries.” Race is a concept with its origins in custom and mores; in America persons with both black and white ancestry are viewed as black, a legacy of the ‘one drop rule’ intended to preserve the racial purity of the white race. The film explores the history of how multiracial individuals have been treated in America, how the mixed race class provided a shield between blacks and whites, and how the paper bag, blue vein or comb tests would be used to determine racial membership…

…For multiracial people the lack of a mixed race categorization can be a source of conflict and distress. Many find the categorization “other” on many forms to be dehumanizing, or they feel they “don’t really have a place.” Others, when forced to choose membership in a single group, feel they are denying half their heritage. Sometimes they end up without the strong support of the very cultural group they are forced to identify with. Yet, if the concept of race were eliminated, America would no longer be able to track racial discrimination. Muddying the water still further is the question where to place Hispanics—which is a linguistic rather than a racial group…

Read the entire review here.

Multiraciality Is As Old As This Country: Gender, Sexuality & Race Mixing with Professor Renee Romano

Blogtalk Radio
2012-02-10

Michelle McCrary, Host
Is That Your Child?

Renee Romano, Associate Professor of History
Oberlin College

Last Friday ITYC had an enlightening conversation with Professor Renee Romano from Oberlin College about the ways in which our country’s historical memory about race has served to advance the political interests of institutional whiteness. She noted the erasure of our country’s long history of “race mixing” in all of its complexity as one of the casualties of a national racial memory that seeks to minimize and obfuscate the contributions of people of color to the formation of the United States.

We also talked about how black/white interracial couples tackle issues of white privilege as well as her own personal story about how she negotiates issues of race in her own marriage.

Download the episode here (01:08:19).

Barack Obama is a White Man

The Language Guy
2008-06-09

Michael Geis, Professor Emeritus in Linguistics
Ohio State University

I don’t get it. Obama is seen as a Black man. Why not see him as a White man. He is, if I understand his parentage, 50% White and 50% Black. Moreover, he went to Harvard. This constitutes unimpeachable evidence (sort of) that Obama is a White man. Tiger Woods is 50% Black and 50% Thai. How in hell does that make him into a Black man. His father raised him, it seems, to be White in that he taught him a mostly White sport and sent him to mostly White Stanford University (the last is a guess). I suspect that Tiger has more White friends than Black ones. I hereby claim him as a White man.

Back when I was a full time faculty remember I looked over a class I was about to teach Sociolinguistics for the first time and remarked that it was too bad there were no African Americans in the class since we would be talking about issues of interest to them. A girl right in front of me said, “What makes you think that there aren’t any Blacks in this room?” I took a good look at her essentially White freckled face and her red hair and said, on observing that her hair was “kinky” in the way the hair of Blacks can be and replied, “If you say so.” The next class two relatively clear cases of Black students showed up.

Since that “error” on my part, I have observed all manner of athletes on TV whose race I find it impossible to tell. They could be very light skinned “Black” people or White people. Certainly their skin color is often lighter than that of certain so-called “White” people from Europe…

Read the entire article here.

Obama and the Biracial Factor: The Battle for a New American Majority

Policy Press
February 2012
256 pages
234 x 156 mm
Hardback ISBN-10: 1447301005; ISBN-13: 978-1447301004

Andrew J. Jolivétte, Associate Professor of American Indian Studies (Also see biographies at Speak Out! and Native Wiki.)
Center for Health Disparities Research and Training
San Fransisco State University

Since the election in 2008 of Barack Obama to the Presidency of the United States there have been a plethora of books, films, and articles about the role of race in the election of the first person of color to the White House. None of these works though delves into the intricacies of Mr. Obama’s biracial background and what it means, not only in terms of how the President was elected and is now governing, but what multiraciality may mean in the context of a changing U.S. demographic. Obama and the Biracial Factor is the first book to explore the significance of mixed-race identity as a key factor in the election of President Obama and examines the sociological and political relationship between race, power, and public policy in the United States with an emphasis on public discourse and ethnic representation in his election. Jolivette and his co-authors bring biracial identity and multiraciality to forefront of our understanding of racial projects since his election. Additionally, the authors assert the salience of mixed-race identity in U.S. policy and the on-going impact of the media and popular culture on the development, implementation, and interpretation of government policy and ethnic relations in the U.S. and globally. This timely work offers foundational analysis and theorization of key new concepts such as mixed-race hegemony and critical mixed race pedagogy and a nuanced exploration of the on-going significance of race in the contemporary political context of the United States with international examples of the impact on U.S. foreign relations and a shifting American electorate. Demographic issues are explained as they relate to gender, race, class, and religion. These new and innovative essays provide a template for re-thinking race in a ‘postcolonial’, decolonial, and ever increasing global context. In articulating new frameworks for thinking about race and multiraciality this work challenges readers to contemplate whether we should strive for a ‘post-racist’ rather than a ‘post-racial’ society. Obama and the Biracial Factor speaks to a wide array of academic disciplines ranging from political science and public policy to sociology and ethnic studies. Scholars, researchers, undergraduate and graduate students as well as community organizers and general audiences interested in issues of equity, social justice, cross-cultural coalitions and political reform will gain new insights into critical mixed race theory and social class in multiracial contexts and beyond.

Contents

• Part I
  • Obama and the biracial factor: An introduction – Andrew Jolivette
  • Race, multiraciality, and the election of Barack Obama: Toward a more perfect union? – G. Reginald Daniel
  • “A Patchwork Heritage” Multiracial citation in Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father – Justin Ponder
  • Racial revisionism, caste revisited: Whiteness, blackness and Barack Obama – Darryl G. Barthé, Jr.
• Part II: Beyond black and white identity politics
  • Obama mamas and mixed race: Hoping for “A More Perfect Union” – Wei Ming Dariotis and Grace Yoo
  • Is ‘no one as Irish as Barack O’Bama’? Racial authenticity, cognitive flexibility and the racial Rorschach test – Rebecca Chiyoko King O’Riain
  • Mixed race kin-aesthetics in the Age of Obama – Wei Ming Dariotis
  • Mutt like me: Barack Obama and the mixed race experience in historical perspective – Zebulon Miletsky
• Part III: The battle for a new American majority
  • A different kind of blackness: The question of Obama’s blackness and intraracial variation among African Americans – Robert Keith Collins
  • Obama and race in the recessionary period of the colorblind era – Kathleen Odel Korgen and David L. Brunsma
  • Barack Obama and the rise to power: Emmett Till revisited – Andrew Jolivette

Assimilating to a White Identity: The Case of Arab Americans

International Migration Review
Volume 41, Issue 4, December 2007
pages 860–879
DOI: 10.1111/j.1747-7379.2007.00103.x

Kristine J. Ajrouch, Adjunct Associate Research Professor in the Life Course Development Program
Institute for Social Research
University of Michigan

Amaney Jamal, Associate Professor of Politics
Princeton University

Racial identity is one of the primary means by which immigrants assimilate to the United States. Drawing from the tenets of segmented assimilation, this study examines how the ethnic traits of immigrant status, national origin, religious affiliation, and Arab Americaness contribute to the announcement of a white racial identity using a regionally representative sample of Arab Americans. Results illustrate that those who were Lebanese/Syrian or Christian, and those who felt that the term “Arab American” does not describe them, were more likely to identify as white. In addition, among those who affirmed that the pan-ethnic term “Arab American” does describe them, results illustrated that strongly held feelings about being Arab American and associated actions were also linked with a higher likelihood of identifying as white. Findings point to different patterns of assimilation among Arab Americans. Some segments of Arab Americans appear to report both strong ethnic and white identities, while others report a strong white identity, yet distance themselves from the pan-ethnic “Arab American” label.

Read or purchase the article here.

Educational Inequality by Race in Brazil, 1982–2007: Structural Changes and Shifts in Racial Classification

Demography
Volume 49, Number 1 (February 2012)
pages 337-358
DOI: 10.1007/s13524-011-0084-6

Leticia J. Marteleto, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Population Research Center
University of Texas, Austin

Despite overwhelming improvements in educational levels and opportunity during the past three decades, educational disadvantages associated with race still persist in Brazil. Using the nationally representative Pesquisa Nacional de Amostra por Domicílio (PNAD) data from 1982 and 1987 to 2007, this study investigates educational inequalities between white, pardo (mixed-race), and black Brazilians over the 25-year period. Although the educational advantage of whites persisted during this period, I find that the significance of race as it relates to education changed. By 2007, those identified as blacks and pardos became more similar in their schooling levels, whereas in the past, blacks had greater disadvantages. I test two possible explanations for this shift: structural changes and shifts in racial classification. I find evidence for both. I discuss the findings in light of the recent race-based affirmative action policies being implemented in Brazilian universities.

Read or purchase the article here.