Mixed Race Studies

“Mixed: Portraits of Multiracial Kids” Exhibition in L.A.

The Huffington Post
2010-04-19

Victoria Namkung, Lifestyle Journalist

Mixed: Portraits of Multiracial Kids from artist, slam poet, UCSB professor and filmmaker Kip Fulbeck, features over 70 framed photographic images of multiracial children along with own their statements or drawings. Also a book by the same name, Mixed has a foreward by Dr. Maya Soetoro-Ng (President Obama’s sister) and afterword by Cher. The family-friendly and timely exhibition is on display at the Japanese American National Museum through September 26, 2010. I recently caught up with author and photographer Kip Fulbeck to chat about Mixed…

Read the entire article here.

Canada’s mixing pot: Multiracial relationships growing at rapid pace

National Post
2010-04-20

Mary Vallis

The number of Canadians in mixed-race relationships and marriages is rising, still primarily a big city phenomenon, but a trend fuelled in part by romances in small cities, according to a new report released by Statistics Canada on Tuesday.

Between 2001 and 2006, mixed unions grew at a rapid pace (33%), more than five times the growth for all couples (6.0%), the agency says in a new report titled “A Portrait of Couples in Mixed Unions.”

According to the 2006 Census, 3.9% of the 7.4 million couples in Canada were “mixed unions,” meaning either one member of the relationship belonged to a visible minority or that both were members of different visible minorities. Fifteen years earlier, mixed unions accounted for 2.6% of all couples.

Residents of small cities with predominantly white populations like Saguenay, Que., Moncton, N.B., and Thunder Bay, Ont., boasted some of the highest percentages of visible minorities in mixed unions. Nearly 63% of all of the visible minorities in Saguenay had spouses or partners from other backgrounds. Saint John, N.B., Kelowna, B.C., Sudbury and Barrie also ranked high…

To read the entire story, click here.

A cross-cultural marriage is an adventure I’d recommend

The Observer
2009-12-27

Anushka Asthana, Education Correspondent

Mixed-race unions in this country are on the increase, a magical journey that benefits all the families involved

One visit to India and a childhood playing cricket was never going to be quite enough to prepare Toby, a white Englishman who grew up in Oxfordshire, for his marriage. After all, you don’t just marry an Indian woman—you marry her large (and often eccentric) family and all that brings with it.

The realisation began to sink in for Toby at the Hindu part of our wedding, three months ago. He got out of arriving on the back of a white horse, but we persuaded him to go along with the rest of it. That included being dressed up from head to toe, with a red turban with white tassels hanging over his face, embroidered scarf, full-length white coat with gold trimmings and his very own pair of what he called “Aladdin” shoes. He took part in the “baraat“, an Indian tradition in which the groom arrives with family and friends dancing around him.

So there they were: swinging their arms to the bhangra beat of a dhol drum with shell-shocked smiles as they were met by the cheering crowd of “aunties” and “uncles” (not real ones—that is how we address any Indian person above the age of 40) and bending down to have garlands draped around their necks and red marks smeared on their foreheads.

The image of a white British groom at the centre of a mass of ecstatic Indian aunties would once have been a rarity. But research released earlier this year found that one in 10 people in Britain with Indian heritage who is in a relationship has a partner of a different race. The study, by the Institute for Social and Economic Research, found the same was true of half of all Caribbean men, one in five black African men and two out of five Chinese women. The result so far: one in 10 children in Britain is living in a mixed-race family…

Read the entire article here.

Biracial Children Learn To Self-Identify

Tell Me More
National Public Radio
2010-04-20

Michel Martin, Host

Interview with:

Kip Fulbeck, Professor of Performative Studies, Video
University of California, Santa Barbara
Author of: Mixed: Portraits of Multiracial Kids

Peggy Orenstein
Author of: Waiting for Daisy: A Tale of Two Continents, Three Religions, Five Fertility Doctors, An Oscar, An Atomic Bomb, A Romantic Night, and One Woman’s Quest to Become a Mother

Heidi W. Durrow
Author of: The Girl Who Fell from the Sky
Co-Host of: Mixed Chicks Chat

An installment of Tell Me More‘s weekly parenting segment focuses on the new book Mixed. It’s a collection of photographs of multiracial children that includes stories celebrating their heritage. Host Michel Martin is joined by the book’s author, Kip Fulbeck, as well as authors Peggy Orenstein and Heidi Durrow, who discuss their own experiences living in multiracial families.

Read the transcript of the interview here.  Listen to the interview here.

Note by Steven F. Riley: The term “Hapa” is incorrectly spelled as “Hoppa” in the transcript.

Parenting children from ‘mixed’ racial, ethnic and faith backgrounds: typifications of difference and belonging

Ethnic and Racial Studies
First Published on: 2009-10-29
Volume 33, Issue 6 (preview)
DOI: 10.1080/01419870903318185

Rosalind Edwards, Professor in Social Policy
Families & Social Capital Research Group
London South Bank University

Chamion Caballero, Senior Research Fellow
Families & Social Capital Research Group
London South Bank University

Shuby Puthussery, Senior Research Fellow
Family and Parenting Institute, London

In this article, we draw on data from an in-depth study of thirty-five parent couples from different racial, ethnic and faith backgrounds to explore how they understood and negotiated difference and belonging in bringing up their children. We identify and abstract three main typifications the mothers and fathers drew on in their accounts: open individualized, mix collective and single collective, and elaborate their constituent discursive motifs. Using in-depth case studies, we then consider the part played by these typifications in how parents negotiate their understandings with their partner where they hold divergent views. We conclude that parents’ understandings are developed and situated in different personal and structural contexts that shape rather than determine their understandings and negotiations.

Read or purchase the article here.

What happens after segmented assimilation? An exploration of intermarriage and ‘mixed race’ young people in Britain

Ethnic and Racial Studies
First Published on: 2010-03-17
Volume 33, Issue 7 (preview)
DOI: 10.1080/01419871003625271

Miri Song, Professor of Sociology
University of Kent 

Theorizing on segmented assimilation has usefully spurred debate about the experiences and positions of the second generation in the US and, more recently, Europe. This theory has focused primarily on how young people fare in secondary school and the crucial role that families and ethnic social networks can play in supporting second-generation individuals. But what happens when young people leave home and enter into mainstream higher education institutions? Theorizing on segmented assimilation does not address either the implications of intermarriage for integration and upward mobility or how we should conceptualize the experiences of the growing numbers of ‘mixed race’ individuals. In this paper, I first consider the question of whether intermarriage is linked with upward mobility in the British context. I then explore the racial identifications and experiences of disparate types of mixed race young people in Britain. How do such young people identify themselves, and what may their identifications reveal about their sense of belonging in Britain?

Read or purchase the article here.

Census reveals history of U.S. racial identity

San Francisco Chronicle
2010-04-18

Sally Lehrman, Fellow
Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University
also Knight Ridder San Jose Mercury News Endowed Chair in Journalism and the Public Interest

Whether or not they can lay claim to a special category, the “Confederate Southern Americans” who want to write themselves into the U.S. census section denoting “race” have a point.

Race, as the social scientists like to say, is “socially constructed.” Since the founding of this country, we have been making it up as we go. Race is a modern idea, historians and anthropologists tell us, a means to categorize and organize ourselves that we constantly adjust.

The U.S. census serves as an archive of this change, a record of classifications that have been “contradictory and confused from the very outset,” says Margo Anderson, a University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, urban studies historian and expert on U.S. census history. Begun in 1790 as a solution to the problem of how to allocate seats in Congress, the survey didn’t mention “race” originally, but the idea as we understand it today was central. How should slaves be counted? Were they entirely property or were they people? What to do with “civilized” Indians?..

…All along, the “race” category of the census has been a powerful social and political tool wielded both to discriminate and to guard against discrimination. At first, survey categories reflected ideas about the divide between black and white, which immigrants were eligible for citizenship, and how to sort categories of “Indians.” Later, after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, its groupings also made it possible to measure compliance with equal treatment under the law…

Read the entire article here.

Mixed-Race People Perceived as ‘More Attractive,’ UK Study Finds

Science Daily
2010-04-14

In the largest study of its kind Dr. Michael Lewis of Cardiff University’s School of Psychology, collected a random sample of 1205 black, white, and mixed-race faces.

Each face was then rated for their perceived attractiveness to others — with mixed-race faces, on average, being perceived as being more attractive.

Dr Lewis, who will present his findings to the British Psychological Society’s annual meeting (April 14) said: “Previous, small scale, studies have suggested that people of mixed race are perceived as being more attractive than non-mixed-race people. This study was an attempt to put this to the wider test.

“A random sample of black, white, and mixed-race faces was collected and rated for their perceived attractiveness. There was a small but highly significant effect, with mixed-race faces, on average, being perceived as more attractive.”..

Read the entire article here.

Why are mixed-race people perceived as more attractive?

Perception
Volume 39, Issue 1 (2010)
pages 136-138
ISSN: 0301-0066 (print), 1468-4233 (electronic)

Michael B. Lewis, Senior Lecturer of Psychology
Cardiff University

Previous, small scale, studies have suggested that people of mixed race are perceived as being more attractive than non-mixed-race people. Here, it is suggested that the reason for this is the genetic process of heterosis or hybrid vigour (ie cross-bred offspring have greater genetic fitness than pure-bred offspring). A random sample of 1205 black, white, and mixed-race faces was collected. These faces were then rated for their perceived attractiveness. There was a small but highly significant effect, with mixed-race faces, on average, being perceived as more attractive. This result is seen as a perceptual demonstration of heterosis in humans—a biological process that may have implications far beyond just attractiveness.

Access to the full article requires a subscription.  Read a pre-publication version here.

Personality Characteristic Adaptations: Multiracial Adolescents’ Patterns of Racial Self-Identification Change

Journal of Research on Adolescence
Volume 20, Issue 2 (June 2010)
Pages 432 – 455
Published Online: 2010-03-08
DOI: 10.1111/j.1532-7795.2010.00638.x

Rodney L. Terry
Statistical Research Division, U.S. Census Bureau

Cynthia E. Winston, Associate Professor of Psychology
Howard University, Washington, DC

For multiracial adolescents, forming a sense of self and identity can be complicated, even at the level of classifying themselves in terms of racial group membership. Using a Race Self Complexity (Winston et al., 2004) theoretical framework, this study used an open-ended question to examine the racial self-identification fluidity of 66 adolescents during the 7th, 8th, and 11th grades. This sample included 22 Black/White1 multiracial adolescents, as well as a matched sample of 22 Black and 22 White adolescents. Seventy-three percent of the multiracial adolescents changed their racial self-identification in the form of two time change patterns with a number of consolidating and differentiating racial self-identification variations. There was no change for the monoracial adolescents. These results suggest that within the lives of multiracial adolescents, the process of racial self-identification may be a personality characteristic adaptation to the meaning of race in American society that may change across time, place, and role.

Read or purchase the article here.