Mixed Race Studies

A Visual and Sociological Study of the Hafus

2010-08-07 Through 2010-08-29
Tue-Thu & Sun 12:00-19:00
Fri&Sat 12:00-20:00
(Closed on Mondays and 14, 15, and 16 August )
3331 Arts Chiyoda 6-11-14 Sotokanda, Chiyoda-Ku,Tokyo, 101-0021

Natalie Maya Willer, Photographer

Marcia Yumie Lise, Researcher

The Hafu Project is a visual and sociological study & representation of the so-called “Hafu”s. This is the first public exhibition in Japan. The work provides an unfolding journey of discovery into the intricacies of what it is to be a hafu in modern day Japan as well as on a global scale in a time where culture, nationhood and identity are increasingly fluid.

View the flyer here.

Racial Quotas and the Culture War in Brazilian Academia

Sociology Compass
Volume 4 Issue 8 (August 2010)
Pages 592 – 604
DOI: 10.1111/j.1751-9020.2010.00295.x

Stanley R. Bailey, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of California, Irvine

Michelle Peria
University of California, Irvine

Dozens of Brazilian universities recently adopted racial quotas for negros, read Afro-Brazilians, in higher education. Anyone familiar with the Brazilian context will recognize this step as a paradigm shift in the state’s approach to ‘race’. State discourse in past decades touted a mixed-race population not beset by overt discriminatory practices. In response to this new approach, two well-defined clusters of professors in Brazil’s universities authored several dueling manifestos supporting and opposing race-based affirmative action. This article suggests a ‘culture war’ framing of the debate and delineates the contrasting historic ideologies of racialism and antiracialism that inform the divergent racial worldviews of each academic camp. It then explores four points of contention from the manifestos that characterize their conflicting perspectives. They differ in terms of (1) their images of the Brazilian nation, (2) their diagnoses of the mechanisms behind non-white underrepresentation in Brazilian universities, (3) their prognoses for a remedy via racial quotas, and (4) their motivations for entering the debate. At the same time, the article locates some possible common ground.

Read or purchase the article here.

Part Asian, Not Hapa

Open Salon
Thoughts from a Third Culture: on being mixed in America
2010-07-27

Mia Nakaji Monnier

My mother is Japanese from Osaka; my father, American from a small town in Western Oregon. There’s a word for people like me, used especially on the West Coast and popularized in recent years, maybe most notably by artist Kip Fulbeck:

Hapa.

From the Hawaiian phrase “hapa haole” (“half white”), the word “hapa” has come to be a label that many multiracial people with some Asian heritage incorporate into their identities, whether they wear it with pride or with ambivalence.

I don’t wear it at all.

It’s not that I think “hapa” is an offensive word, though my parents took issue with it as my brothers and I were growing up, their reason being that it means, literally, “half.” “Haafu,” the Japanese equivalent has the same literal meaning and I’ve even heard people skip over both these words entirely, going straight to “half.” As in, “You look a little Japanese. Are you half?” or “Why do you work at the Japanese American National Museum? OH, are you half?!”…

Read the entire essay here.

Black, White and Other… Worldwide

The Huffington Post
2010-07-27

Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Visiting Scholar
Brown University

Even though the 21st century is seeing an exponential increase in reports of multiracial ancestry worldwide, exactly what makes a person multiracial remains a puzzling concept. According to the Association of Multiethnic Americans and Project RACE, the definition of a multiracial/interracial person is either someone whose parents were of more than one race or racial background, or someone who had parents that were of different racial groups. But what about those who identify with more than one racial background, irrespective of their parents’ identities? Or, those who identify with a racial background completely different from those of their parents?

Case in point: Nmachi Ihegboro, a blond haired and blue-eyed white baby born earlier this month to proud black Nigerian parents Ben and Angela Ihegboro in London UK. Nmachi’s parents are somewhat mystified about how they could create a white child and they are not the only ones. According to the New York Post, genetics experts are also baffled. So far they have offered three theories: (1) Nmachi “is the result of a gene mutation unique to her. If that is the case, Nmachi would pass the gene to her children — and they, too, would likely be white. (2) She’s the product of long-dormant white genes… that might have been carried by” her ancestors “for generations without surfacing until now.” Genetics professor Sykes of Oxford University thinks that some form of mixed race ancestry would seem to be necessary, and notes that sometimes multiracial women can carry some genetic material for white children and some genetic material for black children. It is also conceivable that the same holds true for multiracial men. (3) “While doctors have said Nmachi is not an outright albino, or lacking in all pigment, they added that the child may have some kind of mutated version of the genetic condition — and that her skin could darken over time.”…

Read the entire article here.

A Brief History of Census “Race”

Knol: A unit of knowledge
2010-06-08
4 illustrations

Frank W. Sweet, Independent Research Historian

The U.S. federal census was founded to apportion congressional representation among the states. In order to achieve additional goals, it switched in 1850 from recording households in summary, to recording individuals in detail. It became self-administered in 1960 to reduce costs. It has always been a political instrument of the administration in power. Today, the census encourages identity politics and so wavers between the goal of capturing “race” as a form of ethnic self-identity, and the equally desired but conflicting goal of capturing “race” as involuntary physical trait.

This brief history covers three major topics: The Changes of 1850 and 1960, Politics and Confidentiality, and The “Race” Question. The third topic, the history of the “race” question, is then presented in six sub-topics: Changes in “Racial” Terminology, Changes in “Racial” Categories, Changes in “Racial” Criteria, Changes in Stated “Racial” Goals, The Religion Question Controversy of 1956, and The Legality of Refusal…

Read the entire article here.

How Do Forced-Choice Dilemmas Affect Multiracial People? The Role of Identity Autonomy and Public Regard in Depressive Symptoms

Journal of Applied Social Psychology
Volume 40 Issue 7
Pages 1657 – 1677
Published Online: 2010-07-09
DOI: 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2010.00634.x

Diana T. Sanchez, Assistant Professor of Social Psychology
Rutgers University

The present study reports on correlational data gathered from an Internet survey to explore why forced-choice dilemma situations relate to depressive symptoms among multiracial people (N = 317). Specifically, a model was tested that explored the role of identity autonomy (the extent to which multiracial people feel they can racially identify however they desire) and public regard (the extent to which multiracial people think others value their multiracial identity). The results of the model suggest that forced-choice dilemmas predict greater depressive symptoms because forced-choice dilemmas may promote greater beliefs that their multiracial identity is devalued in society and more generally restrict identity autonomy. Implications are discussed in terms of multiracial health and public policies regarding assessments of racial identities.

Read or purchase the article here.

mix-d™: Walsall Youth Conference: Debate, consultation and fact-find about the UK’s fastest growing population.

mix-d™:
Tuesday, 2010-07-13
County Inn, Walsall

View all of the photographs from the conference here. Photographs courtesy of Cheshire based photographer Rick Milnes.

Hybrid Navigator

Small Axe
Number 32 (Volume 14, Number 2), June 2010
pages 150-159
E-ISSN: 1534-6714
Print ISSN: 0799-0537

Satch Hoyt, Artist/Sculptor

I was born in London to an Afro-Jamaican father and a white English mother in the late 1950s. It was, to say the least, a lonely terra nova, a traumatic neocolonial, cross-cultural terrain, that I was extremely ill equipped to traverse. My unwed mother was ostracized at my birth by her working-class parents. My sister and I never met our grandparents—at their request. So from the outset my stage was lit in a racist hue. As the other’s other, I struggled with my identity, floating in a void of black, white, Jamaican, and Inglanisms. I never felt English—and never will. No one lives a raceless reality. The body and corporeal schema are in effect from birth. Hypo descent, light skinned, half-caste, mulatto, biracial, mixed race—call us what you will. As a hybrid one learns to navigate the marginal seas of difference, to remain intact while floating between the two poles. The biracial paradigm is always looming on a cryptic horizon. Growing up in West London’s Ladbrook Grove, the Jamaican and Trinidadian communities are where I found solace, listening to the narratives and the stories about back-ah-yard…

Read or purchase the article here.

Arts and Mixedness [eConference]

Runnymede Trust
2010-07-09

Runnymede is currently hosting an online debate on mixed-race identity and the arts.

There is a comment from columnist and broadcaster Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: Mixed-Race Britain: Where Next?

Playwright and poet Sabrina Mahfouz also writes about her thoughts on mixed-race identity: A Reflection on Mixedness. 

There are also contributions from noted arts practitioners Patricia Cumper – director of the Talawa theatre company, Jane Earl – Director of the Rich Mix Arts Centre, and Jennifer Williams – Founding Director of the British American Arts Association in our live discussion thread.

They discussed issues of cultural representation in art, the role of funding bodies and policy, the need for specific ‘mixed’ representation and the benefits / dangers of defining mixedness, race or art. Read and contribute to the discussion thread live now.

Discussion thread started by Nina Kelly on 2010-07-09 at 09:43Z.

Read the entire thread here.

A Reflection on Mixedness

Runnymede Trust
July 2010

Sabrina Mahfouz, Poet, Writer and Playwright

On the 27 May Runnymede and the Arts Council held a joint seminar in which they invited a group of arts practioners and policy makers to come and debate the nature of ‘Arts and Mixedness’; as well as what—if anything—the Arts Council should be doing to encourage, fund or facilitate engagement with people racialised as mixed.  Several of the participants subsequently provided reflections on the meeting and on the subject of mixedness and the arts.

The following submission was kindly provided by the writer, playwright and poet Sabrina Mahfouz.

‘Mixedness’ in it’s definition is so complex that it is often shied away from or regarded as being catered for via more specific diversity categories. I think the arts are somewhere to explore the possibility that this is not enough. In a Britain where ‘mixedness’ will one day be the majority minority (if it isn’t already) the arts should be reflecting this in its content, commissioning and – perhaps most importantly, in its casting (without it being a box-ticking exercise). Mixedness of course goes further than race – social class, religion and sexuality are some of the most obvious factors and for the moment it seems that discussion and awareness are much more important than policy and targets…

Read the entire article here.