Mixed Race Studies

Columns: Racial lines no longer just black and white

The Minnesota Daily
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis-St. Paul
2011-02-21

Lolla Mohammed Nur

Clear-cut racial categories restrict how multiracial Americans identify themselves.

Based on her appearance, you wouldn’t easily be able to guess University of Minnesota sophomore Mary Taylor‘s racial or ethnic heritage. But if you ask the communications studies major what her ethnicity is, she’d tell you she is three-quarters white, 12.5 percent black and 12.5 percent Native American—a heritage she makes sure to represent when filling out surveys.

The current generation of college students encompasses the largest group of mixed-race people to come of age in the U.S., according to a recent New York Times series on multiracial identity.

Although young Americans increasingly identify themselves as multiracial, they often feel that their fluid identities are restricted when asked to self-identify on paper.

Under new requirements set by the U.S. Department of Education, which will take effect this year, multiracial non-Hispanic students who choose multiple races on surveys will be placed in a “two or more races” category. The justification for this is to offer students of mixed heritage more options to self-identify, and some say it demonstrates the U.S.’s greater appreciation of the fluidity of racial identity.

However, many sociologists fear it will lump all multiracial groups into one category, ignoring the different life experiences and the varying levels of discrimination that members of various multiracial subgroups face.

“It’s like the ‘other’ category or the ‘multiracial’ category because everyone get’s glommed together and you can’t even interpret it,” said sociology faculty member Carolyn Liebler. “It’s a battle whenever you’re trying to compile information about people’s race. On the one hand, institutions want to know who you are, they want you to self-identify … but on the other hand, the entities that want to create statistics would really prefer if you could give a simple answer.”…

Read the entire article here.

The Race Classification Gap

The Huffington Post
2011-02-17

Daniel Arrigg Koh, MBA Student
Harvard Business School

Growing up as a person of Korean and Lebanese descent, I was proud of my heritage and enjoyed discussing it with my peers. While few had ever met anyone with such an ethnic background before, people were always eager to learn more. I always felt that it was a valued part of my identity—something that could happen in few other places but the United States. However, when it came time to apply to colleges, I quickly realized that conveying who I was would not be so easy.

On many of the applications I read, the choices were limited to “Caucasian,” “Black or African-American,” “Asian,” “Native American,” and “Other.” Some offered the opportunity to “write-in” specific races. On the whole, a significant portion of colleges did not allow me to represent myself accurately on the application. This issue symbolizes a significant problem with race identification in America, one that, with the increasing diversity in this country, deserves to be addressed with all possible expediency.

University admissions often state that their reasons for asking demographic information are legal and informational only. From a research and sociological perspective, it is understandable. However, the current system falls far short of the detail that educational institutions could and should collect. For example, many schools prohibit “ticking” more than one race category, or instead provide a category entitled “multiracial.” This forces someone like me to either “choose” a race to be represented as or indicate “multiracial,” which on its own means very little—nearly every person in America is “multiracial” by some standard…

…This “classification gap” has other serious implications. For example, a 2007 study by Princeton and University of Pennsylvania researchers revealed that black students from immigrant families (defined as those who have emigrated from the West Indies or Africa) represented 41% of the black population of Ivy League schools vs. 13% of the black population of 18-19 year-olds in the United States. This information is striking and important in our nation’s focus on closing the achievement gap; however, the status quo of race classification leaves us unable to track such statistics on a uniform, nationwide level…

Read the entire article here.

Diversity is Me (survival guide for mixed race people)

Lulu Publishing
2010
212 pages
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-557-54051-8
Also available in PDF Format

Vanessa Girard

As human beings we all share a spirit that demands identity, acknowledgment and regard. It is in the attempts to meet these demands that we encounter road blocks toward self-discovery. Who am I? Why am I here? What is my purpose? As we seek answers to these questions, perceptions come alive and often trick us. The results: We form nebulous identities. Our self-esteem becomes skewed. We stereotype. We oppress and thus cultivate oppressors. Compound these innate human tendencies with the confusion and uncertainty we people of mixed ancestry face, and the challenge can become emotionally insidious. The purpose of this book is to acknowledge people of mixed race and to encourage you to embrace every part of yourself, and in the process cultivate a healthy self-esteem and inner peace. This book is not about passing; it is about Being.

Counting by Race Can Throw Off Some Numbers

The New York Times
2009-02-11

Susan Saulny, National Correspondent

Race Remixed: The Pigeonhole Problem. Articles in this series explore the growing number of mixed-race Americans.

The federal Department of Education would categorize Michelle López-Mullins—a university student who is of Peruvian, Chinese, Irish, Shawnee and Cherokee descent—as “Hispanic.” But the National Center for Health Statistics, the government agency that tracks data on births and deaths, would pronounce her “Asian.” And what does Ms. López-Mullins’s birth certificate from the State of Maryland say? It doesn’t mention her race.

Ms. López-Mullins, 20, usually marks “other” on surveys these days, but when she filled out a census form last year, she chose Asian, Hispanic, Native American and white.

The chameleon-like quality of Ms. López-Mullins’s racial and ethnic identification might seem trivial except that statistics on ethnicity and race are used for many important purposes. These include assessing disparities in health, education, employment and housing, enforcing civil rights protections, and deciding who might qualify for special consideration as members of underrepresented minority groups.

But when it comes to keeping racial statistics, the nation is in transition, moving, often without uniformity, from the old “mark one box” limit to allowing citizens to check as many boxes as their backgrounds demand. Changes in how Americans are counted by race and ethnicity are meant to improve the precision with which the nation’s growing diversity is gauged: the number of mixed-race Americans, for example, is rising rapidly, largely because of increases in immigration and intermarriage in the past two decades. (One in seven new marriages is now interracial or interethnic.)…

…Under Department of Education requirements that take effect this year, for instance, any student like Ms. López-Mullins who acknowledges even partial Hispanic ethnicity will, regardless of race, be reported to federal officials only as Hispanic. And students of non-Hispanic mixed parentage who choose more than one race will be placed in a “two or more races” category, a catchall that detractors describe as inadequately detailed. A child of black and American Indian parents, for example, would be in the same category as, say, a child of white and Asian parents.

The new standards for kindergarten through 12th grades and higher education will probably increase the nationwide student population of Hispanics, and could erase some “black” students who will now be counted as Hispanic or as multiracial (in the “two or more races category”). And reclassifying large numbers of white Hispanic students as simply Hispanic has the potential to mask the difference between minority and white students’ test scores, grades and graduation rates—the so-called achievement gap, a target of federal reform efforts that has plagued schools for decades.

“They’re all lumped together—blacks, Asians and Latinos—and they all look the same from the data perspective,” said Daniel J. Losen, a policy expert for the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, referring to the Department of Education aggregation. “But the reality is much different. There are different kinds of discrimination experienced by these subgroups.”

“It’s a big problem for researchers,” Mr. Losen continued, “because it throws a monkey wrench in our efforts at accountability, student tracking and the study of trends.”…

…The Census Bureau’s solution may have added layers of complexity for demographers—creating 63 categories of possible racial combinations—but it laid to rest fears from civil rights advocates that adding a multiracial category would diminish the number of blacks, Asians or American Indians in official government counts, since multiracial people are counted in the ranks of all of the races they check. (This does not distort the total population of the United States because that number is based on how many people answer the census questionnaire, not on adding the totals from each racial column.)

Even the Census Bureau acknowledges that accurately counting the multiracial population is a challenge and says it continues to explore ways to do it better, said Nicholas A. Jones, chief of the racial statistics branch. Some people of mixed race were fickle about their racial identifications in early tests of the new, more expansive methods, changing their answers from interview to interview.

Moreover, because the census in 2000 began allowing respondents to mark as many races as they wanted, today’s numbers are not directly comparable with those before 2000…

Read the entire article here.

Halle Berry and Nahla: Not So Mixed, Not So Happy

The Huffington Post
2011-02-09

Marcia Dawkins, Visiting Scholar
Brown University

As we await the results of the 2010 Census it’s tempting to think that our growing comfort with categorizing people as multiracial has erased racism and the fear of interracial relations. But in a recent interview with Ebony Magazine, Halle Berry says that we’re neither as mixed nor as happy as we’d like to think.

In the interview Berry addressed her ugly custody battle with Gabriel Aubry over their 2-year-old daughter, Nahla. Allegations are circulating about the couple’s different racial philosophies, including the use of racial slurs, and their anxiety over Nahla’s racial categorization in the press. Berry told Ebony that “I feel like [Nahla is] black” because of the one drop rule. In other words, Berry sees herself and her daughter as black because they are of partial African American ancestry. Other sources say that Aubry sees Nahla as white and that he thinks Berry should demand a retraction whenever Nahla is identified otherwise…

…Note the word “naturally.” If we take a step back in time we will find that many, including the U.S. Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson, used the word “naturally” to justify and promote racial segregation and inequality. Now, many are using this same terminology to suggest that mixed race people are, by nature, non-racist and capable of promoting large-scaled racial healing. Some even suggest that multiracial families can promote the end of race and racism because of their biological backgrounds. The beauty of thinking this way is that it allows culture to masquerade as human nature without any justification.

This popular-but-flawed way of thinking equates racial progress with racial mixing and ignores the fact that interracial romantic relationships still experience higher rates of failure and different kinds of challenges than same-race relationships. That’s why we can have multiracial families selling car insurance, pasta, and video games on one hand and, on the other, have Halle Berry and Gabriel Aubry’s rancorous custody battle…

Read the entire article here.

Multiracial People of Black-White Backgrounds needed for Dissertation on the Effects of Racial Microaggressions

Hello! My name is Claire Anne (“Daanee”) Touchstone, and I am a doctoral student at Loyola Marymount University, writing a dissertation on the effects of racial microaggressions on multiracial black-white university students between the ages of 18-25. While I am most interested in people of black-white mixed backgrounds, I will gladly accept any applicant who is of mixed black background.

Racial microaggressions are defined by Derald Wing Sue and colleagues (2007) as: “brief, everyday exchanges that send denigrating messages to people of color because they belong to a racial minority group.” Some examples include (Sue et al, 2007):

• Alien in Own Land: When assumed to be foreign-born based on race: “Where are you from?” “Where were you born?” “You speak good English.”
• Ascription of Intelligence: “You are a credit to your race.” “You are so articulate.”
• Color Blindness: Statements that indicate that a person does not want to acknowledge race: “When I look at you, I don’t see color.” “There is only one race, the human race.”
• Assumption of Criminal Status: A person of color is presumed to be dangerous, criminal, or deviant on the basis of their race: For example, a man or woman clutching their purse or checking their wallet as a person of color approaches or passes. Also, a store owner following a customer of color around the store.
• Denial of Individual Racism: A statement made when people deny their racial biases: “I’m not racist. I have several Black friends.” “As a woman, I know what you go through as a racial minority.”

Can you think of a microaggression that has happened to you in your life, particularly as a result of being of mixed racial backgrounds?

For this study, I am particularly interested in multiracial microaggressions, defined by Johnston and Nadal (2010) as “daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, enacted by monoracial person that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative slights toward multiracial individuals or groups.” Some examples include:

• “What are you?
• “You have to choose, you can’t be both.”
• “One day, everybody will be mixed.”
• “Were you adopted? Is that your mother, father?”
• Being accused of “acting white”
• Forms that allow only one racial choice
• Tokenism: being the racial spokesperson for your minority race: “Why do all black people ______ (fill in the blank)?”
• Subjected to minority stereotypes and microaggressions

Study Procedures:

This three-part study consists of reading a vignette of a microaggressive experience and discussing in a focus group interview (of 6-8 people), three individualized interviews (each to take place 3-7 days apart), and writing a short narrative/reflection (1-2 pages) of a personal microaggressive experience based on being of mixed backgrounds.

Participation is voluntary and anonymous, and participants may withdraw at any time from the study without penalty. All participants will be given an Informed Consent Form and Subject’s Bill of Rights. All participants will be compensated with a gift card to either Starbuck’s or Target; the amount of the gift card will vary depending on partial or complete participation (up to $25.00 USD), but all participants will receive some compensation for their time.

If you are a person of African-American mixed heritage (particularly with one African-American parent and one Caucasian parent) and are interested in participating in this study, please contact me at daancer@hotmail.com. Thank you for your consideration and I look forward to hearing from you!

Ms. Claire Anne (“Daanee”) Touchstone, Ed.D. Candidate
Loyola Marymount University

In Census, Young Americans Increasingly Diverse

The New York Times
2011-02-04

Sabrina Tabernise

WASHINGTON — Demographers sifting through new population counts released on Thursday by the Census Bureau say the data bring a pattern into sharper focus: Young Americans are far less white than older generations, a shift that demographers say creates a culture gap with far-reaching political and social consequences.

Mississippi, Virginia, New Jersey and Louisiana all had declines in their populations of white residents ages 18 and under, according to the bureau’s first detailed report on the 2010 Census.

…Growth in the number of white youths slowed sharply in the 1990s, up by just 1 percent in the decade, as the number of white women of childbearing age fell, according to Kenneth M. Johnson, a demographer at the University of New Hampshire.

More recently, it has dipped into a decline. The number of whites under the age of 20 fell by 6 percent between 2000 and 2008, Mr. Johnson said, citing countrywide census estimates.

Instead, growth has come from minorities, particularly Hispanics, as more Latino women enter their childbearing years. Blacks, Asians and Hispanics accounted for about 79 percent of the national population growth between 2000 and 2009, Mr. Johnson said.

The result has been a changed American landscape, with whites now a minority of the youth population in 10 states, including Arizona, where tensions over immigration have flared, said William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution…

…Even in Virginia, a largely suburban state whose white adult population rose considerably over the decade, the young white population registered a decline.

In contrast, the number of mixed-race children doubled, Hispanic children doubled, and Asian children were up by more than two-thirds, according to Mr. Johnson…

Read the entire article here.

The Other Hafu of Japan

Rafu Shimpo: Los Angeles Japanses Daily News
2011-01-14

Brett Fujioka, Rafu Intern

A new documentary examines the lives of racially mixed individuals as they explore their own identities.

Is a ship the same if you take it apart piece by piece and replace its frame? No simple answer exists, as anyone who has tackled this philosophical Rubik’s cube knows.

The ethno-national equivalent to this riddle grows exceedingly more complicated with the swelling number of international unions each year. Statistics in 2004 chart that 1 in 15 marriages in Japan were international and that 1 in 30 children born there possesses a parent of non-Japanese descent. Japan’s ethnic constituency is rapidly changing and its people may need to rethink what it means to be Japanese in a country where blood and national identity are considered one and the same.

The same applies for the hafu (mixed Japanese) community. The lives for each individual half-Japanese vary from person to person and the filmmakers for the upcoming documentary, “Hafu,” and their subjects best represent this.

“Hafu” is the tentative title for an upcoming documentary in Japan following the lives of several half-Japanese individuals as they explore their identities.

Both Megumi Nishikura and Lara Perez Takagi spent most of their lives away from Japan. Takagi is half Spanish and stayed in Madrid, Sydney, Washington D.C., and Ottowa due to her diplomat father’s itinerant career. She eventually completed her higher education at the Francisco de Vitoria, Complutense and Waseda Universities before finally returning to Japan.

Nishikura, likewise, lived her childhood spread throughout the world. She stayed in Beijing, Manila, Honolulu, DC, Berlin, London, and Los Angeles and graduated from New York University.

“Lara and I have unusual stories and come from international backgrounds,” said Nishikura in an interview with the Rafu. “I don’t know if that’s representative of a lot of the mixed Japanese community.”

There’s a reason why they’re so hesitant to pinpoint a grand narrative for the hafu experience. There is no all-encompassing hafu story and the eclectic subjects of the documentary are indicative of this…

Read the entire article here.

Crossing borders, erasing boundaries: Interethnic marriages in Tucson, 1854-1930

University of Arizona
392 pages
Publication Number: AAT 3398995
ISBN: 9781109735864

Salvador Acosta

A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Department of History In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate College The University of Arizona

This dissertation examines the interethnic marriages of Mexicans in Tucson, Arizona, between 1854 and 1930. Arizona’s miscegenation law (1864-1962) prohibited the marriages of whites with blacks, Chinese, and Indians—and eventually those with Asian Indians and Filipinos. Mexicans, legally white, could intermarry with whites, but the anti-Mexican rhetoric of manifest destiny suggests that these unions represented social transgressions. Opponents and proponents of expansionism frequently warned against the purported dangers of racial amalgamation with Mexicans. The explanation to the apparent disjuncture between this rhetoric and the high incidence of Mexican-white marriages in Tucson lies in the difference between two groups: the men who denigrated Mexicans were usually middle- and upper-class men who never visited Mexico or the American Southwest, while those who married Mexicans were primarily working-class westering men. The typical American man chose to pursue his own happiness rather than adhere to a national, racial project.

This study provides the largest quantitative analysis of intermarriages in the West. The great majority of these intermarriages occurred between whites and Mexicans. Though significantly lower in total numbers, Mexican women accounted for large percentages of all marriages for black and Chinese men. The children of these couples almost always married Mexicans. All of these marriages were illegal in Arizona, but local officials frequently disregarded the law. Their passive acceptance underscores their racial ambiguity of Mexicans. Their legal whiteness allowed them to marry whites, and their social non-whiteness facilitated their marriages with blacks and Chinese.

The dissertation suggests the need to reassess two predominant claims in American historiography: first, that Mexican-white intermarriages in the nineteenth-century Southwest occurred primarily between the daughters of Mexican elites and enterprising white men; and second, that the arrival of white women led to decreases in intermarriages. Working-class whites and Mexicans in fact accounted for the majority of intermarriages between 1860 and 1930. The number of intermarriages as total numbers always increased, and the percentage of white men who had the option to marry—i.e., those who lived in Arizona as bachelors—continued to intermarry at rates that rivaled the high percentages of the 1860s and 1870s.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• LIST OF FIGURES
• LIST OF TABLES
• ABSTRACT
• INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER 1: ARIZONA’S MISCEGENATION LAW AND THE VULNERABILITY OF ILLICIT MARRIAGES
• CHAPTER 2: THE DISCOURSE OF MANIFEST DESTINY AND THE MEXICAN QUESTION
• CHAPTER 3: UNDERMINING MANIFEST DESTINY: AMERICAN TRAVEL NARRATIVES
• CHAPTER 4: THE MEXICAN QUESTION REACHES ARIZONA
• CHAPTER 5: INTERMARRIAGES IN TUCSON, 1860-1930
• CHAPTER 6: MARRIAGES BETWEEN MEXICANS AND NON-WHITES
• CHAPTER 7: MARITAL EXPECTATIONS: PROPERTY, NETWORKS, AND VIOLENCE AMONG INTERETHNIC COUPLES
• CONCLUSION
• APPENDIX A
• APPENDIX B
• REFERENCES

LIST OF FIGURES

• Figure 5.1. Interethnic unions for men and women of white ancestry and men and women of Mexican ancestry, Tucson, 1860-1930
• Figure 5.2. Average number of years by which men were older than their interethnic partners, Tucson, 1860-1930
• Figure 5.3. Occupations of men involved in interethnic relationships, excluding those listed as retired or with no occupation, Tucson, 1860-1930
• Figure 5.4. White man-Mexican woman couples versus other kinds of interethnic unions between whites and Mexicans, Tucson, 1860-1930
• Figure 5.5. Interethnic unions involving white, Mexican, and mixed (white-Mexican) men and women, 1930. N=279
• Figure 5.6. Ethnic background of the spouses of men of white-Mexican ancestry, Tucson, 1900-1930
• Figure 5.7. Ethnic background of the spouses of women of white-Mexican ancestry, Tucson, 1900-1930
• Figure 5.8. Mexican (M) and white (W) households as a percentage of total households in each census district, Tucson, 1920 (citywide: white 53.6%, Mexican 36.7%)
• Figure 5.9. Interethnic couples as a percentage of all couples in each census district, Tucson, 1920 (citywide: 7%; 228 of the 236 couples were between Mexicans and whites)
• Figure 5.10. Mexican-white couples as a percentage of all couples involving people of white ancestry in each census district, Tucson, 1920 (citywide: 12%)
• Figure 5.11. Mexican-white couples as a percentage of all couples involving people of Mexican ancestry in each census district, Tucson, 1920 (citywide: 18.2%)
• Figure 5.12. Geographic distribution of Mexican households, 1930. N=2304
• Figure 5.13. Single white women as percentage of the total population, United States and Tucson, 1870-1930
• Figure 5.14. Single white women sixteen years and over as a percentage of the total population in each census district, Tucson, 1920 (citywide: n=574 or 2.8%, average age=26.6 years; nationwide for whites: 4.9%)
• Figure 5.15. Probable marital status of white men in endogamous relationships, Tucson, 1910. N=927
• Figure 5.16. Percentage of interethnic unions for white men according to probable marital status when residing in Arizona, Tucson, 1910
• Figure 5.17. Probable marital status of foreign white men involved in endogamous relationships, Tucson, 1910. N=166
• Figure 5.18. Percentage of interethnic unions for foreign white men according to probable marital status when residing in Arizona, Tucson, 1910
• Figure 6.1. Distribution of black and Chinese residents per census district, Tucson, 1930. Citywide: 484 black men (BM), 477 black women (BW), 152 Chinese men (CM), and 60 Chinese women (CW)
• Figure 7.1. Charges cited in divorce petitions of intermarried couples, Pima County, 1873-1930

LIST OF TABLES

• Table 1.1 Interethnic unions involving blacks, Chinese, Mexicans, and descendants of these combinations, Pima County, 1860-1930
• Table 5.1. Population, couples, and single men and women, Tucson, 1860-1880
• Table 5.2. Interethnic couples as percentages of all couples, Tucson, 1860-1880
• Table 5.3. Population, households, and single white women, Tucson, 1900-1930
• Table 6.1. Black men and women and interethnic couples, Tucson, 1860-1930
• Table 6.2. Chinese immigrants to the United States by decade, and Chinese residents in Tucson by census year, 1870-1930
• Table 6.3. Chinese adult residents and interethnic couples, Tucson, 1860-1930
• Table 6.4. Chinese men sixteen years old and over, Tucson, 1880-1930
• Table 6.5. Racial classification for people of Mexican ancestry, Tucson, 1930
• Table 7.1. Intermarriages and divorce cases among intermarried couples, Pima County, 1873-1930

Purchase the dissertation here.

The Great Unraveling [Book Review of “Disintegration: The Splintering of Black America”]

The New York Times
2010-12-29

Raymond Arsenault, Visiting Scholar, Florida State University Study Center in London
and John Hope Franklin Professor of Southern History, University of South Florida

Eugene Robinson, Disintegration: The Splintering of Black America (New York: Doubleday, 2010).

When Henry Louis Gates Jr. told Sgt. James Crowley of the Cambridge police, “You don’t know who you’re messing with,” he was speaking truth to power, albeit in a manner more akin to arrogance than erudition. The big shock here, according to the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Eugene Robinson, is not that a Harvard professor misused the subjective case (“who” for “whom”) and inelegantly ended a sentence with a preposition; it is, rather, that Gates belongs to an elite enclave beyond the sergeant’s experience or imagination. Gates’s life as an academic superstar places him among a select group of black Americans aptly labeled “Transcendent” by Robinson. Think of Oprah Winfrey, Beyoncé, Kobe Bryant, Vernon Jordan and Richard Parsons, the retired chief executive of Time Warner…

…These Transcendent men and women, Robinson tells us at the outset, live and work in a privileged world of wealth and power. Despite the color of their skin, they do not belong to the black community.

Fair enough, but Robinson does not stop there. Over the next 200 pages, he demonstrates rather convincingly that no one belongs to the black community anymore…

…During the past four decades, Robinson persuasively argues, black America has splintered into four subgroups: the Transcendent elite; the Mainstream middle class, which now accounts for a majority of black Americans; an Emergent community made up of mixed-race families and black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean; and the Abandoned, a large and growing underclass concentrated in the inner cities and depressed pockets of the rural South…

Read the entire article here.