Mixed Race Studies

Understanding Race in Sweden: The Racialisation and Deracialisation of Multiethnic and Multiracial Swedes

Nordic Journal of Social Research
2022-02-23
pages 51-66
DOI: 10.18261/njsr.13.1.5

Sayaka Osanami Törngren, Associate Professor in International Migration and Ethnic Relations; Senior Researcher at Malmö Institute for Studies of Migration, Diversity and Welfare
Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden

Mixed populations are becoming increasingly visible in Swedish society, although they are not always recognised as such. In a colour-blind Swedish society, mixed Swedes fall into the dichotomised binary of ‘Swedes’ and ‘immigrants’. The experiences of twenty-one interviewees with multiethnic and multiracial Swedes can be broadly categorised into three types: those who feel that they are not discriminated against or racialised, those who feel that they are not discriminated against but are racialised, and those who feel that they are both discriminated against and racialised. The analysis illustrates interviewed mixed Swedes’ unique position in the racial hierarchy in Sweden and how fluid their racial experiences are. Their different experiences also show how understandings of white and non-white racial groups are formed through the processes of racialisation and deracialisation in Sweden.

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Theorizing People of Mixed Race in the Pacific and the Atlantic

Social Sciences
Volume 11, Issue 3 (Published 2022-03-14)
14 pages
DOI: 10.3390/socsci11030124

Yasuko Takezawa, Professor of Cultural Anthropology and Sociology
Institute for Research in the Humanities, Kyoto University, Kyoto

Stephen Small, Professor
Department of African Diaspora Studies
University of California, Berkeley

The most extensive theoretic and empirical studies of people of mixed racial descent extant today have addressed nations across the Atlantic. This article reveals how this literature on people of mixed racial descent is limited in its claims to represent a “global model”. In contrast, we argue that by juxtaposing institutional factors in the Atlantic region and Japan we can expand our understanding of people of mixed racial descent across a far wider range of social and political terrains. A consideration of Japan uncovers a fascinating combination of factors impactful in the emergence of populations of mixed origins in the Pacific region more generally. By identifying this range of variables, we believe this analysis can be instructive for scholars of race focusing on the Atlantic and can contribute to a more encompassing approach for theorizing people of mixed racial descent.

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Socioemotional wellbeing of mixed race/ethnicity children in the UK and US: Patterns and mechanisms

SSM – Population Health
Volume 5, August 2018
pages 147-159
DOI: 10.1016/j.ssmph.2018.06.010

James Nazroo
Cathie Marsh Institute, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom

Afshin Zilanawala
University College London, London, United Kingdom

Meichu Chen
University of Michigan

Laia Bécares
Cathie Marsh Institute, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom

Pamela Davis-Kean
University of Michigan

James S. Jackson
University of Michigan

Yvonne Kelly
University College London, London, United Kingdom

Lidia Panico
Institut National d’Etudes Demographiques, Paris, France

Amanda Sacker
University College London, London, United Kingdom

Highlights

• Mixed race/ethnicity children are thought to have poorer socioemotional wellbeing
• We find no evidence that mixed race/ethnicity children have poorer socioemotional wellbeing in a study covering children aged 5/6 in the US and UK
• We find that mixed race/ethnicity children do have socio-economic advantage
• This socio-economic advantage is protective for socioemotional wellbeing

Existing literature suggests that mixed race/ethnicity children are more likely to experience poor socioemotional wellbeing in both the US and the UK, although the evidence is stronger in the US. It is suggested that this inequality may be a consequence of struggles with identity formation, more limited connections with racial/ethnic/cultural heritage, and increased risk of exposure to racism.

Using data from the UK Millennium Cohort Study (n = 13,734) and the US Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (n ~ 6250), we examine differences in the socioemotional wellbeing of mixed and non-mixed 5/6 year old children in the UK and US and explore heterogeneity in outcomes across different mixed groups in both locations. We estimate a series of linear regressions to examine the contribution of factors that may explain any observed differences, including socio-economic and cultural factors, and examine the extent to which these processes vary across the two nations.

We find no evidence of greater risk for poor socioemotional wellbeing for mixed race/ethnicity children in both national contexts. We find that mixed race/ethnicity children experience socio-economic advantage compared to their non-mixed minority counterparts and that socio-economic advantage is protective for socioemotional wellbeing. Cultural factors do not contribute to differences in socioemotional wellbeing across mixed and non-mixed groups.

Our evidence suggests then that at age 5/6 there is no evidence of poorer socioemotional wellbeing for mixed race/ethnicity children in either the UK or the US. The contrast between our findings and some previous literature, which reports that mixed race/ethnicity children have poorer socioemotional wellbeing, may reflect changes in the meaning of mixed identities across periods and/or the developmental stage of the children we studied.

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Edward Telles: Afrodescendents and the Project on Race and Ethnicity in Latin America

BYU Kennedy Center
2021-03-04

Edward Telles, Distinguished Professor of Sociology
University of California, Irvine

For Latin America’s 170 million people of indigenous and African heritage, questions of race, ethnicity, and perceptions of skin color impact issues of equality. Dr. Telles will address his work with PERLA (Project on Ethnicity and Race in Latin America), which provides an empirical examination of numerous dimensions of race and ethnicity across Latin America.

Dr. Edward Telles is a Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine, and a member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has reoriented the field of Sociology beyond the black-white paradigm prominent in the United States through his research and writings on color, race, and ethnicity globally, particularly in Latin America and for Latinos in the United States. He is the author or co-author of numerous articles and books, including Pigmentocracies: Ethnicity, Race, and Color in Latin America.

Watch the presentation (00:57:03) here.

Who is black, white, or mixed race? How skin color, status, and nation shape racial classification in Latin America

American Journal of Sociology
Volume 120, Number 3 (November 2014)
pages 864-907
DOI: 10.1086/679252

Edward Telles, Distinguished Professor of Sociology
University of California, Irvine

Tianna Paschel, Associate Professor of Sociology and African American Studies
University of California, Berkeley

Comparative research on racial classification has often turned to Latin America, where race is thought to be particularly fluid. Using nationally representative data from the 2010 and 2012 America’s Barometer survey, the authors examine patterns of self-identification in four countries. National differences in the relation between skin color, socioeconomic status, and race were found. Skin color predicts race closely in Panama but loosely in the Dominican Republic. Moreover, despite the dominant belief that money whitens, the authors discover that status polarizes (Brazil), mestizoizes (Colombia), darkens (Dominican Republic), or has no effect (Panama). The results show that race is both physical and cultural, with country variations in racial schema that reflect specific historical and political trajectories.

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Sociology of Multiracial Identity in the Late 1980s and Early 1990s: The Failure of a Perspective

Journal of Ethnic and Cultural Studies
Volume 8, Number 2 (2021)
pages 106-125
DOI: 10.29333/ejecs/643

Reginald Daniel, Professor of Sociology
University of California, Santa Barbara

Sociologists largely failed to comprehend the emergence of multiracial identities in the United States during the late 1980s and early 1990s. This was due, in part, to hypodescent and the monoracial imperative. These social devices, respectively, categorize offspring of interracial unions between Whites and people of color based exclusively on the background of color, and necessitate single-racial identification. This has prohibited the articulation and recognition of multiracial identities. Hypodescent and the monoracial imperative are so normative that they have been taken for granted by sociologists across the monoracial spectrum, much as the larger society. Sociology’s espoused objectivity blinded sociologists to the standpoint of their own monoracial subjectivity. They provided little critical examination of hypodescent and the monoracial imperative in terms of their impact on multiracial identity formations. Some sociologists challenged theories of marginality, which stressed the psychological dysfunction of multiracials. Yet multiracial identities were considered symptomatic of mainly isolated psychological concerns with personal identity. Sociologists were absent from analyses of collective identity and agency speaking to mixed-race concerns. Consequently, they remained on the periphery of social scientific theorizing of multiracial identities in terms of their wider-ranging implications.

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How Cross-Discipline Understanding and Communication Can Improve Research on Multiracial Populations

Social Sciences
Volume 11, Issue 3, 90
Published online 2022-02-22
13 pages
DOI: 10.3390/socsci11030090

Sarah E. Gaither, Assistant Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience
Duke University, Durham, North Carolina

Jennifer Patrice Sims, Assistant Professor of Sociology
University of Alabama, Huntsville

One of the strengths of Critical Mixed Race Studies is that it represents research methodologies and frameworks from multiple disciplines across the social sciences and humanities. However, if these disciplines are not in dialogue with each other, that benefit may be lost. Here, we use psychological and sociological research on Multiracial populations as examples to argue how strict disciplinarity and methodological trends may limit scientific production. We propose that reading and citing work across disciplines, expanding methodological training, and rejecting hegemonic “white logic” assumptions about what is “publishable” can enhance Multiracial research. First, the ability to cite effectively across disciplines will shorten the time it takes for new theories to be developed that focus on empirically underrepresented populations. Secondly, increasing understanding of both quantitative and qualitative methods will allow more effective reading between disciplines while also creating opportunities to engage with both causality and the richness of experiences that comprise being Multiracial. Finally, these changes would then situate scholars to be more effective reviewers, thereby enhancing the peer-reviewed publication process to one that routinely rejects color evasive racist practices that privilege work on majority populations.

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Inventing Latinos: A New Story of American Racism

The New Press
August 2020
272 pages
5 1/2 x 8 1/2
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-59558-917-0

Laura E. Gómez, Professor of Law; Professor of Sociology; Professor of Chicana/o Studies
University of California, Los Angeles

An NPR Best Book of the Year, exploring the impact of Latinos’ new collective racial identity on the way Americans understand race, with a new afterword by the author

Latinos will comprise a third of the American population in just a matter of decades, but many Americans still struggle with two basic questions: Who are Latinos and where do they fit in America’s racial order? In this “timely and important examination of Latinx identity” (Ms.), Laura E. Gómez, a leading critical race scholar, argues that it is only recently that Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Dominicans, Central Americans, and others are seeing themselves (and being seen by others) under the banner of a cohesive racial identity. And the catalyst for this emergent identity, she argues, has been the ferocity of anti-Latino racism.

In what Booklist calls “an incisive study of history, complex interrogation of racial construction, and sophisticated legal argument,” Gómez “packs a knockout punch” (Publishers Weekly), illuminating for readers the fascinating race-making, unmaking, and re-making processes that Latinos have undergone over time, indelibly changing the way race functions in this country.

The paperback features a new afterword in which the author analyzes results of the 2020 Census, providing “much-needed insight into the true complexity of Latinx identity” (Kirkus Reviews).

Structural Influence on Biracial Identification

Lexington Books (an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield)
May 2021
166 pages
Trim: 6 x 9
Hardback ISBN: 978-1-7936-3051-3
eBook ISBN: 978-1-7936-3052-0

Rachel Butts is Vice President of Market Intelligence and Research at a major financial institution

Stemming from the 2000 Census when respondents could indicate more than one racial category for the first time in history, Structural Influence on Biracial Identification is the first study of its kind to explore how urban environmental dynamics influence biracial identification in the United States.

Several different biracial pairings are incorporated into the analysis. Rachel Butts uses relative model differences to quantify the standing of each racial group on a multi-tiered racial hierarchy. Notably, Butts uses non-White biracial groups to contrast “minority” defined numerically or oppressively.

The analysis successfully extends macrostructural theory from the context of interracial marriage to the context of interracial identification. Much like interracial marriage has been used as evidence of racial integration in the past, Structural Influence on Biracial Identification presents a compelling argument for using interracial identification for measuring interracial integration in contemporary times.

Table of Contents

• Chapter 1: Structural Influence
• Chapter 2: Structural Influence on Black-White Biracial Identification
• Chapter 3: Structural Influence on Asian-White Biracial Identification
• Chapter 4: Structural Influence on Biracial Identification Between Blacks and Asians
• Conclusion: Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner Now

Fading Out Black and White: Racial Ambiguity in American Culture

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
August 2018
224 pages
Trim: 6 x 9
Hardback ISBN: 978-1-78660-254-1
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-78660-255-8
eBook ISBN: 978-1-78660-256-5

Lisa Simone Kingstone, Visiting Scholar, New School for Social Research, New York, New York; Associate Professor at Montclair State University, Montclair, New Jersey.

What happens to a country that was built on race when the boundaries of black and white have started to fade? Not only is the literal face of America changing where white will no longer be the majority, but the belief in the firmness of these categories and the boundaries that have been drawn is also disintegrating.

In a nuanced reading of culture in a post Obama America, this book asks what will become of the racial categories of black and white in an increasingly multi-ethnic, racially ambiguous, and culturally fluid country. Through readings of sites of cultural friction such as the media frenzy around ‘transracial’ Rachel Dolezal, the new popularity of racially ambiguous dolls, and the confusion over Obama’s race, Fading Out Black and White explores the contemporary construction of race.

This insightful, provocative glimpse at identity formation in the US reviews the new frontier of race and looks back at the archaism of the one-drop rule that is unique to America.

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgments
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• Introduction
• Overview of the book
• Terminology
• Chapter 1: Tracing Race: A tour of the Racial Binary
• Chapter 2: The Trial of Rachel Dolezal: The First Transracial
• Chapter 3: Obama as Racial Rorschach: The First Blank President
• Chapter 4: Casting Color: Black Barbie and the Black Doll as Racial Barometer
• Chapter 5: Really Black: Black-ish and the Black Sitcom as Racial Barometer
• Chapter 6: Talking about Race: Black, White and Mixed Focus Groups
• Coda
• Appendix
• Bibliography