Mixed Race Studies

How Should I Think About Race When Considering a Sperm Donor?

The Ethicist
The New York Times Magazine
2020-06-16

Kwame Anthony Appiah, Professor of Philosophy, Law
New York University

Illustration by Tomi Um

I am an American woman, of Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry, and I strive to live my life as an active agent against racism and white supremacy. I am beginning to consider having children and am open to bearing a child as a single mother. It is possible to sort through sperm donors by race, eye color, education level and so on. If I choose a donor of color, am I condemning my child to be born into a system designed not to serve them? Or can I use my white privilege to help them fight that system? Would my future child of color feel separated from their heritage with me as their mother? If I choose a white donor, am I succumbing to racist ideas of what traits are “desirable,” or taking the “easy road” in knowing my child will look more like me? What do you think? Name Withheld

Women have been making choices about their children’s possible appearance and identity from the beginning of human history. Long before genetics, people knew that parental characteristics show up in their offspring. With modern technologies, the prospects for trying to fix your child’s heritable characteristics are expanding, raising plenty of ethical issues. Race, however, is not a biological fact but a social fact — a social fact that, for example, Americans who are known to have African ancestry are regarded as African-American. What’s more, having an African-American donor doesn’t tell you what your child’s skin or hair will look like. You can be socially black without looking black, like Walter White, the longtime head of the N.A.A.C.P.

I’m spelling all this out because your question about having a child with a sperm donor of color presupposes that it will produce a child who won’t look “white,” and that’s not necessarily the case. Suppose you have a white-looking son with an African-American sperm donor. Then you and your child will have a choice to make about whether he or she should identify as African-American. Some people think that failing to do so — “passing for white” — is somehow dishonest. Yet to hold that you must identify as black in those circumstances would be to accede to a longstanding American notion (“the one-drop rule”) that one black ancestor makes you black. You could reasonably reject that notion, which is rooted in the history of slavery and the nonsensical racial theories that grew up with it…

Read the entire article here.

My Wife Is Black. My Son Is Biracial. But White Supremacy Lives Inside Me

Cognoscenti
WBUR
Boston, Massachusetts
2020-06-22

Calvin Hennick

The author and his son (Courtesy)

My son is 9 years old. He’s big and beautiful and biracial, and although my wife and I have always known we would need to prepare him to face racism, we’ve never talked to him or his little sister about police violence against Black people. Not until now.

He wept when we told him about George Floyd. His voice shaking, he asked whether the same thing would one day happen to him.

My wife and I told him to draw about his feelings, and what he brought back to us broke both our hearts. In pen, he’d drawn a white police officer standing in front of a cruiser, holding up a smoking gun and looking down at an unseen corpse. My son had written the words “Killed Me,” with an arrow pointing down at his own body, lying lifeless just outside the frame of the page.

There’s nothing my son can do to prevent this nightmare from becoming a reality. There’s nothing he can do to change the way the world will see him when he grows into a tall, broad-shouldered Black man.

To protect my son, and every other Black boy and girl in America, white people must change the way our own eyes see the world. We must do the work of stamping out white supremacy where it lives: in our systems, and in ourselves…

Read the entire article here.

As a White Mom to Black Children, I Question Other Parents’ Intentions 24/7

Working Mother
2020-06-12

Audrey Goodson Kingo, Deputy Editor

I must protect my 4-year-old son and 9-month-old daughter.

To be a good mom to my kids, I must be their fiercest advocate at all times, because the world won’t be.

I remember my biggest parenting mistake with perfect clarity. The shame still turns my stomach when I recall the moment I sided with white parents, who look like me, instead of my Black son…

Read the entire article here.

Are you raising a Biracial child? If so – we want to learn more about their experiences in your family!

McKenzie N. Stokes, B.S., Doctoral Candidate
Applied Social and Community Psychology
North Carolina State University

2020-06-15

We are currently conducting a research study on if and how multiracial families communicate about race and culture. We are reaching out to ask if your child could participate in our study which will include completing 2 brief surveys and partaking in a 1-hour group discussion with other Biracial youth on Zoom.

Participation is completely voluntary, and their answers will be confidential. They will receive a $10 (USD) Amazon gift card for participating. Information from this project will help researchers and family psychologists understand how to best serve Biracial youth and multiracial families like yours.

In order to participate, your child must be:

• Between the ages of 12 and 17
• Biracial Black-White (e.g. the biological child of 1 White parent and 1 Black parent)
• Live with 1 at least of their biological parents in the United States

If you are interested, please click on this link for our brief eligibility questionnaire https://tinyurl.com/ProjectBASES. Once we confirm eligibility, we will send you an email with more information about the study and the activities your child will participate in. If your child is not eligible to participate, the data will be destroyed.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me by phone (919) 438-3176 or email: mnstokes@ncsu.edu.

Thank you!

How to Talk to Multiracial Kids About Race

KQED News
San Francisco, California
2020-06-12

Lakshmi Sarah, Digital Producer

Eva Lourdes, 7 Stella Marèsol, 3, at a table in their garage filled with art and books on June 11, 2020. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)

June 12 is celebrated as “Loving Day,” a day commemorating Loving v. Virginia — the landmark 1967 Supreme Court case that declared laws against interracial marriage unconstitutional in the United States. With this in mind, we spoke with a few Bay Area families and experts on the importance of talking about race in multiracial families.

Sarah Baltazar-Pinheiro identifies as Filipino American and works in the education field. She lives in Walnut Creek with her husband, who is Afro-Brazilian, and their two daughters, ages 7 and 3-years-old.

“What is the right way to educate a 7-year-old who’s, like, half farts, half losing her teeth? And also 10% attention span?” she said.

At home, they are doing history lessons she calls “American heroes are Black women.” Baltazar-Pinheiro calls to her daughter to see if she remembers who they talked about the last few days — Rosa Parks, Ida B. Wells and Shirley Chisholm. Her daughter recounts the names, with a few small hints…

…“If you think your whiteness will protect your mixed kids from this country as it currently stands, you’re misguided,” she said. “We have words and we have language to talk about … race and class and gender — and gender fluidity and how we all want to live in this world. I just want to teach her the words that she needs so that she can always express herself.”…

…We also spoke with Mark and Kelley Kenney, who are both counselors teaching and working in academic settings. They co-authored the book Counseling Multiracial Families and led the writing of Competencies for Counseling the Multiracial Population.

“It’s kind of interesting to me that, on some level, things have shifted,” Kelley Kenney said, when thinking back on their years of studying the topic. “But, you know, we’re still dealing with the same inherent issue of racism and bias and lack of understanding. … I’m hoping that we’re moving forward in at least starting to dialogue more about it.”

Kelley Kenney said talking about race within family is not just a singular event. “It’s not just a one time conversation, but it’s very, very, very much a part of the whole family dynamic.”…

…“In cases where the relationship involves a white partner for whom this is perhaps their first interactions … dealing with issues of slavery, it is important to spend some time being honest with folks and really talking about what that all means in terms of how they want to proceed in a relationship and a family and all of those things.” — Mark Kenney, counselor…

Read the entire article here.

My dad was in prison throughout my childhood. I navigated a white world alone

The Guardian
2020-06-10

Whitney Bradshaw
Portland, Oregon

Collage of family photos from Whitney Bradshaw. Photograph: Courtesy Whitney Bradshaw

Three days after my third birthday, my father was arrested for armed robbery and sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Starting around age five, whenever I saw a shooting star, I’d make a wish that my dad could come home. Eventually, that wish became “I wish he could be released for just one day”. As I grew, I stopped wishing.

Fast-forward to last week. More than 20 years later, for the first time in my life, I was happy my dad is in prison. Because he’s safer as an inmate than as a free black body walking the streets…

Read the entire article here.

Raising Multiracial Children: Tools for Nurturing Identity in a Racialized World

Penguin Random House Canada
2020-04-07
224 pages
Paperback ISBN: 9781623174491
Ebook ISBN: 9781623174507

Farzana Nayani

The essential guide to parenting multiracial and multiethnic children of all ages—and learning to nourish, support, and celebrate their multiracial identity.

While the fastest growing demographic in the US is comprised of people who identify as two or more races, parents of muliethnic kids still lack practical, concrete resources written just for them. In a world where people are more likely to proclaim colorblindness than talk openly about race, how can we truly value, support, and celebrate our kids’ identity? How can we assess our own sense of racial readiness, and develop a deeper understanding of the issues facing multiracial children today?

Raising Multiracial Children gives parents the tools for exploring race with their children, offering practical guidance on how to initiate conversations; consciously foster multicultural identity development; discuss issues like microaggressions, intersectionality, and privilege; and intentionally cultivate a sense of belonging. It provides an overview of key issues and current topics relevant to raising multiracial children and offers strategies that can be implemented in the classroom and at home, with developmentally appropriate milestones from infancy through adulthood. The book ends with resources and references for further learning and exploration.

Skimmed: Breastfeeding, Race, and Injustice

Stanford University Press
December 2019
304 pages
Cloth ISBN: 9781503601123
Digital ISBN: 9781503610811

Andrea Freeman, Associate Professor of Law
William S. Richardson School of Law
University of Hawai’i, Mānoa

Born into a tenant farming family in North Carolina in 1946, Mary Louise, Mary Ann, Mary Alice, and Mary Catherine were medical miracles. Annie Mae Fultz, a Black-Cherokee woman who lost her ability to hear and speak in childhood, became the mother of America’s first surviving set of identical quadruplets. They were instant celebrities. Their White doctor named them after his own family members. He sold the rights to use the sisters for marketing purposes to the highest-bidding formula company. The girls lived in poverty, while Pet Milk’s profits from a previously untapped market of Black families skyrocketed.

Over half a century later, baby formula is a seventy-billion-dollar industry and Black mothers have the lowest breastfeeding rates in the country. Since slavery, legal, political, and societal factors have routinely denied Black women the ability to choose how to feed their babies. In Skimmed, Andrea Freeman tells the riveting story of the Fultz quadruplets while uncovering how feeding America’s youngest citizens is awash in social, legal, and cultural inequalities. This book highlights the making of a modern public health crisis, the four extraordinary girls whose stories encapsulate a nationwide injustice, and how we can fight for a healthier future.

President John F. Kennedy visits with Mary Alice Fultz, Mary Louise Fultz, Mary Anne Fultz, and Mary Catherine Fultz, a set of quadruplets from Milton, North Carolina, 2 August 1962. Robert Knudsen. White House Photographs. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston, 1962-08-02.

Contents

• 1. Introduction: A Formula for Discrimination
• 2. The Famous Fultz Quads
• 3. Black Breastfeeding in America
• 4. The Bad Black Mother
• 5. When Formula Rules
• 6. Legalizing Breast Milk
• 7. The Fultz Quads after Pet Milk
• Conclusion: “First Food” Freedom

Creole Son: An Adoptive Mother Untangles Nature and Nurture

LSU Press
March 2020
216 pages
5.50 x 8.50 inches / 6 halftones
Paperback ISBN: 9780807173107

E. Kay Trimberger, Professor Emerita of Women’s and Gender Studies
Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, California

Introduction by:

Andrew Solomon, Professor of Clinical Psychology
Columbia University Medical Center, New York, New York

Creole Son is the compelling memoir of a single white mother searching to understand why her adopted biracial son grew from a happy child into a troubled young adult who struggled with addiction for decades. The answers, E. Kay Trimberger finds, lie in both nature and nurture.

When five-­day-­old Marco is flown from Louisiana to California and placed in Trimberger’s arms, she assumes her values and example will be the determining influences upon her new son’s life. Twenty-­six years later, when she helps him make contact with his Cajun and Creole biological relatives, she discovers that many of his cognitive and psychological strengths and difficulties mirror theirs. Using her training as a sociologist, Trimberger explores behavioral genetics research on adoptive families. To her relief as well as distress, she learns that both biological heritage and the environment—and their interaction—shape adult outcomes.

Trimberger shares deeply personal reflections about raising Marco in Berkeley in the 1980s and 1990s, with its easy access to drugs and a culture that condoned their use. She examines her own ignorance about substance abuse, and also a failed experiment in an alternative family lifestyle. In an afterword, Marc Trimberger contributes his perspective, noting a better understanding of his life journey gained through his mother’s research.

By telling her story, Trimberger provides knowledge and support to all parents—biological and adoptive—with troubled offspring. She ends by suggesting a new adoption model, one that creates an extended, integrated family of both biological and adoptive kin.

Episode 281 – Dr. Kelly Jackson and Dr. Gina Miranda Samuels: Multiracial Attunement: Shifting Social Work Towards a Culture of Inclusivity

inSocialWork^® Podcast Series
School of Social Work
State University of New York, Buffalo
2020-02-25

Interviewer: Josal Diebold, Ph.D. Candidate

Kelly Jackson, MSW, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Social Work
Arizona State University

Gina Miranda Samuels, Ph.D., MSW, Associate Professor at the School of Social Service Administration; Faculty Affiliate of the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture
University of Chicago

In this episode, our guests Dr. Kelly Jackson and Dr. Gina Miranda Samuels discuss the topic of multiracial cultural attunement and deliberate why the issue of multiraciality lacks prominence in social work literature and research. Given the growing multiracial population, the importance of going beyond the black-white dichotomy is emphasized in order to address the disproportionate challenges and risks multiracial individuals and families face. The episode concludes with a discussion on Multiracial Cultural Attunement, a book designed to help social workers apply skills and tools to leverage the strength and resilience of multiracial individuals and families.

Listen to the interview (00:40:54) here. Download the interview here. Read the transcript here.