Mixed Race Studies

Jessica Ennis, Mo Farah and Identity Language in the British Press: A Case Study in Monitoring and Analysing Print Media

Migration Observatory
University of Oxford
2012-12-11
10 pages

William Allen, Senior Researcher

Scott Blinder, Senior Researcher

Introduction and context

Since July 2012, the Migration Observatory has been building the framework for a Media Monitoring Project. Its aim is to improve understanding of the coverage of migration and related issues in the British press. We are gathering a comprehensive set of articles from Britain’s national newspapers beginning in 2005 and to be continuously updated to the present on a weekly basis. These articles will include all mentions of migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers in British newspapers. From this large database (or ‘corpus’ of texts), we will get a sense not only of how much attention the press devotes to migration, but also the nature of coverage. This will include the general tone of coverage and the specific ways in which migrants are portrayed. We are interested in knowing, for example, if press is currently contributing to the widespread public perception of immigrants as asylum seekers (see the Migration Observatory report – Thinking behind the Numbers). This image may stem from high levels of asylum applications in the early 2000’s, or it may be partly the product of continued media coverage even with asylum numbers declining. Of course, simply describing and monitoring press coverage does not demonstrate a connection to public perceptions, but it can help us determine whether or not such a connection is plausible.

The media project will also be designed to respond flexibly to other questions, including those raised by organisations working on migration or related issues, from a wide range of perspectives. In this document we present results from the first such effort. The Observatory was commissioned by the think-tank British Future to investigate media use of languages of identity and origins in association with Jessica Ennis and Mo Farah.

Ennis and Farah were among the most discussed and admired British gold medallists in the Games. While clearly they were discussed mainly as athletes, their racial, ethnic, and religious background and relationships to migration were sometimes a matter of public discussion as well. Ennis is the British-born child of a white British mother and father of Jamaican/Afro-Caribbean origins (thus sometimes referred to as ‘mixed race’, although this term like many racial categories is inherently difficult to define precisely and may or may not be frequently used as a self-description). Farah, meanwhile, was born in Somalia and came to Britain as a child. He is also known to be Muslim, whereas Ennis’ religion does not appear to be a matter of public discussion. In the context of the London Olympics, a period widely thought to have produced an outpouring of national pride, their backgrounds seemed to figure in some discussions of the relationships among race, ethnicity, religion, national origins and British/English national identities.

The Migration Observatory was commissioned to attempt to quantify these trends in press coverage of both athletes, to help in discerning what sorts of identity language were most frequently used in connection with each of them. In particular, in commissioning this research, British Future were interested in finding out whether Ennis was described more in terms of her local origins (i.e. the ‘girl from Sheffield’) than her racial/ethnic background, and whether Farah described more as Somali-born than in terms of his more local origins after arriving in Britain as a child. Therefore, quantifying the presence of certain kinds of words in different types of coverage could help indicate the nature of discourses surrounding identity in British public life. The results presented below come from an analysis of the frequency of a set of identity-related words in press coverage mentioning Ennis and/or Farah. Although the words chosen were specified in advance by British Future to represent their hypotheses about the public identities of these two figures, the analysis was conducted independently by the Migration Observatory.

The analysis highlighted a few basic findings. In articles mentioning Ennis, her local origins in Sheffield were mentioned more frequently than her ethnic background, whether captured in terms of her father’s origins in Jamaica or in racial/ethnic terms such Afro-Caribbean, ‘black’, or ‘mixed race’. In articles mentioning Farah, Somalia was indeed much more common than any local origin terms. Notably, explicitly racial or ethnic terms were quite rare in these sets of articles, relative to other sorts of identity terms. There was some discussion of the so-called ‘mixed race’ category in articles mentioning Ennis, while race—at least as identified by the term ‘black’—did not arise in any significant measure in describing Farah. National identity terms appeared frequently in articles mentioning either or both athletes: ‘British’ was used in numerous ways, while ‘English’ often referred to the English language rather than English national identity, in relation to Farah’s arrival in Britain with no knowledge of the English language. Even in the absence of positive net migration, the population is projected to grow significantly in the future. Assuming net migration of zero at every age, the UK population is projected to reach 66 million by 2035 an increase of 6% from the 2010 level…

Read the entire report in HTML or PDF format.

The melting pot generation: How Britain became more relaxed on race

British Future
2012-12-12
26 pages

Rob Ford, Lecturer in Politics
University of Manchester

Rachael Jolley, Editorial Director and Director of Communications
British Future

Sunder Katwala, Director
British Future

Binita Mehta, Intern
British Future

As the 2011 census results show an ever larger number of Britons from mixed race backgrounds, this new British Future report The Melting Pot Generation: How Britain became more relaxed about race examines how these changes might affect the way that we think about race and identity.

When the parents of Olympic champion Jessica Ennis, who are from Jamaica and Derbyshire, met in Sheffield in the 1980s, a majority of the public expressed opposition to mixed race relationships. In 2012, concern has fallen to 15%—and just one in twenty of those aged 18–24. Jessica Ennis is from a generation that worry less about race and mixing than their parents did, and who mostly see mixed Britain as the everyday norm that they grew up with.

Inside this report…

• Rob Ford of the University of Manchester traces how the rise of mixed Britain changed attitudes over recent decades;
• Rachael Jolley explores new Britain Thinks polling on what we think about race and relationships today.
• New Oxford University research reports how media coverage of Olympic medal winners Jessica Ennis and Mo Farah balanced their ethnic origins and local identities.
• Binita Mehta selects ten twenty-something stars who reflect the changing face of their generation.
• Andrew Gimson talks to young Britons about how far being mixed race mattered to their experience of growing up.
• Leading thinkers assess the opportunities and pitfalls of changing how we talk about race.
• Sunder Katwala wonders if his children’s generation will see racial identity as increasingly a matter of choice.

Read the entire report here.

2011 Census: Key Statistics for England and Wales, March 2011 (Ethnic Group)

Office for National Statistics (ONS)
Census 2011
Ethnic Group: Part of 2011 Census, Key Statistics for Local Authorities in England and Wales Release
Release Date: 2012-12-11

Figure 3: Ethnic groups by English regions and Wales, 2011

Ethnicity across the English regions and Wales
Figure 3: Ethnic groups by English regions and Wales, 2011

For more information, click here.

The Métis

Métis National Council
Ottowa, Ontario, Canada
2011

Prior to Canada’s crystallization as a nation in west central North America, the Métis people emerged out of the relations of Indian women and European men. While the initial offspring of these Indian and European unions were individuals who possessed mixed ancestry, the gradual establishment of distinct Métis communities, outside of Indian and European cultures and settlements, as well as, the subsequent intermarriages between Métis women and Métis men, resulted in the genesis of a new Aboriginal people—the Métis.

Distinct Métis communities emerged, as an outgrowth of the fur trade, along part of the freighting waterways and Great Lakes of Ontario, throughout the Northwest and as far north as the McKenzie river…

Read the entire report here.

Playing the Gene Card? A Report on Race and Human Biotechnology

Center for Genetics and Society
2009
95 pages

Osagie K. Obasogie, Associate Professor of Law
University of California, San Francisco
Also: Senior Fellow
Center for Genetics and Society

Preface by:

Dorothy Roberts, George A. Weiss University Professor of Law and Sociology; Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights
University of Pennsylvania

Executive Summary

Race has become a prominent focus for human biotechnology. Despite often good intentions, genetic technologies are being applied in a manner that may provide new justification for thinking about racial difference and racial disparities in biological terms—as if social categories of race reflect natural or inherent group differences.

The Human Genome Project (HGP) and subsequent research showed that there is less than 1% genetic variation among all humans. Patterns of mating and geographic isolation over thousands of years have conferred genetic signatures to certain populations. Yet scientists have found little evidence to support lay understandings that social categories of race reflect discrete groups of human difference. While HGP findings initially led many to conclude that race (as it is commonly conceived and used) is not genetically significant, the hope that science would promote racial healing has largely not materialized.

In fact, trends in life science research have shifted the other way. There are increasing efforts to demonstrate the genetic relevance of race by mapping this less than 1% of variation onto social categories of race to find genetic explanations for racial disparities and differences.

From page 21

Figure 2: The essentialist and population concepts of race contrasted with the actual patterns of genetic variation (simplified to three geographic categories). Based on the work of Dr. Jeffrey Long at the University of Michigan and depictions created by the Race—Are We So Different? project of the American Anthropological Association.

A Essentialist concepts of race that were popular throughout the 19th and early 20th century held that the human species was divided into several mutually exclusive yet tangentially overlapping groups based largely upon physical features such as skin color and facial features.

B Population approaches treat race as clusters of local populations that differ genetically from one another, whereby each group is considered a race. As depicted, this concept suggests an outer periphery of unshared distinctiveness as well as substantial genetic similarity that is highlighted by the overlapping regions.

C Contemporary data on human diversity supports a “nested subset” approach to race. This reflects the fact that “people have lived in Africa far longer than anywhere else, which has allowed the population in Africa to accumulate more of the small mutations that make up [human] genetic variation. Because only a part of the African population migrated out of Africa, only part of Africa’s genetic variation moved with them. For this reason, most genetic variation found in people living outside Africa is a subset of that found among Africans.”

Many celebrate these developments as an opportunity to learn more about who we are and why certain groups are sicker than others. Yet some are struck by the extent to which these new conversations aimed at benefiting minority communities communities echo past discussions in which the science of biological difference was used to justify racial hierarchies.

Although this new research is rapidly evolving and is fraught with controversy, it is being used to develop several commercial and forensic applications that may give new credence to biological understandings of racial difference—often with more certainty than is supported by the available evidence. This unrestrained rush to market race-specific applications and to use DNA technologies in law enforcement can have significant implications for racial minorities:

• Race-based medicines have been promoted as a way to reduce inequities in healthcare and health outcomes. Yet the methodological assumptions behind them raise as many issues as the questionable market incentives leading to their development.
• Genetic ancestry tests rely on incomplete scientific methods that may lead to overstated claims. The companies that sell them often suggest that biotechnology can authoritatively tell us who we are and where we come from.
• DNA forensics have been used to exonerate those who have been wrongly convicted and can provide important tools for law enforcement. However, some forensic applications of genetic technologies might undermine civil rights—especially in minority communities.

While each of these applications has been examined individually, this report looks at them together to highlight a fundamental concern: that commercial incentives and other pressures may distort or oversimplify the complex and discordant relationship between race, population, and genes. Applications based on such distortions or oversimplifications may give undue legitimacy to the idea that social categories of race reflect discrete biological differences.

The concerns raised in this report should not be read as impugning all genetic research that implicates social categories of race. There is evidence that socially constructed notions of race may loosely reflect patterns of genetic variation created by evolutionary forces, and that knowledge about them may ultimately serve important social or medical goals. Yet, given our unfortunate history of linking biological understandings of racial difference to notions of racial superiority and inferiority, it would be unwise to ignore the possibility that 21st century technologies may be used to revive long discredited 19th century theories of race.

Advances in human biotechnology hold great promise. But if they are to benefit all of us, closer attention should be paid to the social risks they entail and their particular impacts on minority communities.

Contents

• Executive Summary
• About the Author
• Acknowledgments
• Preface by Dorothy Roberts, Kirkland & Ellis Professor of Law, Northwestern Law School
• Race Cards and Gene Cards: A Note About the Report’s Title
• Introduction | Are 21st Century Technologies Reviving 19th Century
  • Theories of Race?
  • How Have New Genetic Theories of Racial Difference Developed?
  • Context: After the Human Genome Project
  • Key Concern: Will Commercial and Forensic Applications Revive Biological Theories of Race?
  • In This Report
  • Sidebar: What Does It Mean to Say that Race Is Not Biologically Significant or that It Is a Social Construction?
• Chapter 1 | Race-Based Medicine: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back?
  • Pharmacogenomics: The Concept Behind Race-Based Medicine
  • First on the Scene: BiDil
  • Concerns about BiDil
  • Addressing Disparities in Health Through Race-Specific Pharmaceuticals
  • Conclusion: Evaluating Race-Based Medicine
  • Recommendations
  • Sidebars: Major Projects on Human Genetic Variation
    • Why Genetic Variations Matter
    • Top-Down Marketing to the Black Community
    • Historical Theories of Race
    • Are More Race-Based Medicines Around the Corner?
    • The Slavery Hypothesis
• Chapter 2 | Ancestry Tests: Back to the Future?
  • African American Ancestry
  • Context: Population Genetics
  • From Groups and Populations to Individuals
  • Techniques Used by Ancestry Tests
  • Concerns about the Genetic Ancestry Industry
  • Conclusion: Resisting Racial Typologies
  • Recommendations 30
  • Sidebars: Native Americans and Ancestry Tests
    • Race, Intelligence, and James Watson
    • Bioprospecting and Biopiracy
    • From Race to Population and Back
    • The Business of DNA Ancestry Testing
    • Special Types of DNA
    • Human Genetic Variation—A Work in Progress
• Chapter 3 | Race and DNA Forensics in the Criminal Justice System
  • How Does It Work?
  • How Reliable Are DNA Forensic Technologies?
  • DNA Databases
  • Cold Hits and Partial Matches
  • Whose DNA Is in These Databases?
  • Sifting DNA Databases to Catch Family Members
  • Predicting Criminality
  • Using DNA to Build Racial Profiles
  • Conclusion: Effects on Minority Communities
  • Recommendations
  • Sidebars: DNA Entrapment?
    • The Scandal in Houston
    • The Innocence Project
    • “The Informer in Your Blood”
    • Juking Stats
    • “The Birthday Problem” and the Limits of Forensic Database Matches
    • Minority Communities and the War on Drugs
    • Civil Liberties and DNA Databases
    • Phrenology, a Classic Pseudo-Science
• Conclusion
  • Racial Categories in Human Biotechnology Research
  • Race Impact Assessments
  • Responsible Regulation
• Endnotes
• About the Center for Genetics and Society

Read the entire report here.

Shifting Discourses: Exploring the Tensions between the Myth of Racial Democracy And the Implementation of Affirmative Action Policies in Brazil

Center for Latin American Social Policy – CLASPO
Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies
Summer Research Report
University of Texas at Austin
September 2005
29 pages

Raquel Luciana de Souza

1. INTRODUCTION

Are the recent debates surrounding the controversial topic of Affirmative Action in Brazil changing the racial landscape of the country? What impact will these laws have on issues of race, race relations, and racial identity? Will Brazil experience a shift in its racial paradigms and a restructuring of its socio-economic and political organizations in light of these latest developments. This paper is part of an ongoing research about the process of implementation of Affirmative Action policies in Brazil and the possible impacts that these laws may have in discourses about race and racial identity in that country. Those are guiding questions that I will be exploring throughout the text, but they could not possibly be answered fully in such early stages of my research. Therefore, I intend to use these questions to briefly discuss some of the pertinent issues, as well as some events concerning this momentous historical development. In this text, I also point out to the some of the implications of these developments in Brazilian politics, particularly as it relates to their possible impact on traditional discourses about race relations as well as the role of race in Brazilian society. Furthermore, I intend to place these debates within the context of a nation that has been perceived nationally and internationally as a raceless country, or, in other words, a country that does not struggle with the legacy of legally sanctioned barriers that granted or denied benefits to different groups according to their racial ancestry.

Scholars such as France W. Twine, Michael Hanchard, Anthony Marx, and others have focused on the weakness of black organizations in Brazil, especially when combating the alleged overwhelming influence of the ideology of the myth of racial democracy in the country. This myth is viewed by many as the overarching framework that shapes and informs the perceptions of Brazilians of all racial backgrounds. However, I argue that the polemics and the controversy generated by the ongoing implementation of affirmative action policies constitute a major force in the reshaping of discourses and perceptions about the role of race, racial identity, as well as racism and racial prejudice. I contend that the politically charged debates generated by these measures constitute a powerful transformative force in the traditional narratives about the harmonious nature of race relations in the country on several levels. In this paper, I also highlight the key role that black organizations have had in demanding and debating the implementation of laws that aim at compensating for centuries of socio-economic and educational opportunities. Black militants have systematically struggled and challenged traditional discourses that have historically masked Brazil as a ‘racially democratic nation’. The efforts of black organizations and their struggles for the rights of people of African descent in Brazil tend to be obliterated by mainstream narratives that usually emphasize the role of ruling elite. These discourses aim at perpetuating myths about the benevolence of ruling elites and their predisposition to “granting” rights to popular classes and minorities or oppressed sectors of its population.

Slavery and race relations in Brazil have generated an enormous amount of research, especially comparative research, in particular works that tried to establish comparisons between Brazil and the US. Many scholars across disciplines have looked at the various factors that may influence the way in which discourses around race, race relations and discrimination shift according to specific historical moments and settings. Therefore, it is my strong belief that the current controversial process of implementing affirmative action policies in Brazil will certainly contribute to the production of new original scholarship about that country…

…AFFIRMATIVE ACTION: CONTEXTUALIZING THE DEBATE

In order to shed some light into the controversy generated by the implementation of affirmative action policies in Brazil, it is necessary to contextualize them. They must be located within the parameters of a country that has historically placed great importance on the miscegenation and the whitening of its population. Such contextualization will provide the background for the arguments employed to dismiss the validity and the applicability of these policies in the country. The following session provides an overview of the discourses and historical processes that have informed and shaped historically prevailing notions about the role and the relevance of race in the country. In particular, these debates must be placed within the context of prevailing traditional ideologies and narratives about what constitutes the Brazilian. In this session, I will also elaborate on the traditional views about the institution of slavery in Brazil…

Read the entire article here.

Ireland and African-America

Clinton Institute for American Studies
University College Dublin, Ireland
2012-03-09 through 2012-03-11

Report

On the 9 – 10 March 2012, The Clinton Institute for American Studies held a two day international conference entitled Ireland and African-America.  Unfortunately, the main keynote speaker Ishmael Reed had to withdraw from the conference on the 6 March due to the passing of his mother.  Reed passed along his sincere regrets and though he was much missed he was very much there in spirit.  However, other auspicious plenaries included Professor Luke Gibbons, Professor Eric Lott and Professor Diane Negra.  The conference drew together a community of international scholars and academics whose research interests speak towards the crossover between Ireland and African-America.

Friday afternoon kicked off with parallel sessions entitled ‘Identity and Belonging’ and ‘The Bod[ies] Politic’ respectively.  Papers included productive discussions on representations of Irish and Africa-American identity on film, stage and through the motif of music in literature, and on Isaac Nelson and Slavery, The African Blood Brotherhood and the Easter Rebellion and on Crosscurrents of the Green and Black Atlantics in New York City in 1920.  Friday afternoon was brought to a close with a rousing lecture by Professor Luke Gibbons on Slavish Representations in the work of controversial Cork artist James Barry.  Gibbons’ sweeping lecture drew together Barry’s largely eighteenth century body of work with twentieth century political theories regarding the power of the state and the rights of the citizen.

Saturday morning sessions began with panels on Irish national and ethnic attitudes on race and further papers on the Green and Black Atlantic (with a specific focus on black abolitionist Fredrick Douglass).  The latter panel was very kindly rounded out at the last minute by Ann Coughlan, a PhD student in University College Cork after the withdrawal of two planned speakers.  Following a catered lunch, Professor Diane Negra gave the conference’s second plenary on The Tragicomic Irish-America Personae of Denis Leary and Kathy Griffin which examined the manner in which Leary and Griffin access African-American tropes in order to communicate an analogous working class Irish identity which might otherwise be at odds with their celebrity status…

Read the entire report here.

“Which box am I?”: Towards a Culturally Grounded, Contextually Meaningful Method of Racial and Ethnic Categorization in Puerto Rico

Institute of Interdisciplinary Research
University of Puerto Rico, Cayey
August 2009
59 pages

Isar P. Godreau
Institute of Interdisciplinary Research
University of Puerto Rico, Cayey

Carlos Vargas-Ramos, Research Associate
Center for Puerto Rican Studies
Hunter College, City University of New York

This report represents a first step in attempting to ascertain a culturally valid and efficient method of racial and ethnic categorization for Puerto Rico, which may be used to document and track discrimination on the basis of race and ethnicity in employment. Research conducted for this study was developed in close collaboration with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), in support of their efforts to ascertain the extent of race and ethnic discrimination in the workplace in Puerto Rico. Results outlined herein summarize the views of 33 experts on the subject on race and racial discrimination in Puerto Rico who were interviewed for these purposes. Findings are preliminary and draw on the analysis of 33 individual questionnaires and 3 focus groups coordinated by Dr. Godreau at the Institute of Interdisciplinary Research of the University of Puerto Rico at Cayey in March 2009.

Read the entire report here.

2010 Census Shows Asians are Fastest-Growing Race Group

United States Census Bureau
2012-03-21

The U.S. Census Bureau today released a 2010 Census brief, The Asian Population: 2010 [PDF], that shows the Asian population grew faster than any other race group over the last decade. The population that identified as Asian, either alone or in combination with one or more other races, grew by 45.6 percent from 2000 to 2010, while those who identified as Asian alone grew by 43.3 percent. Both populations grew at a faster rate than the total U.S. population, which increased by 9.7 percent from 2000 to 2010.

Out of the total U.S. population, 14.7 million people, or 4.8 percent, were Asian alone. In addition, 2.6 million people, or another 0.9 percent, reported Asian in combination with one or more other races. Together, these two groups totaled 17.3 million people. Thus, 5.6 percent of all people in the United States identified as Asian, either alone or in combination with one or more other races…

Read the entire press release here.

Guidance document 10: Dual Heritage pupils

Ethnic Minority Services
Nottingham City Council Children Services
November 2005
20 pages

Jane Daffé, Senior EMA Consultant
Nottingham City, LA

Contents

1. Introduction
2. Terminology
3. Statistics
4. Identity
5. Dual Heritage Voice
6. Educational research
7. Curriculum, resources, role models
8. Conclusion
9. Appendix
   1. Recommended Resources Reflecting the Lives of Dual Heritage Children and Families
   2. Poem: Blended
   3. Dual Heritage Quiz

Introduction

The primary focus of this document are children of Dual Heritage who have one White parent and the other of African Caribbean background. Although pupils of Dual Heritage in our schools have a much wider range of ethnic backgrounds (White/Asian etc), the specified target group is our most significant Dual Heritage group in Nottingham, both in terms of numbers and concerns related to underachievement and exclusion. Some factors and experiences will be of relevance to other pupils of differing Dual Heritage, some of relevance to other Black pupil groups.

I hope to have produced a guidance document that will be of practical use to teachers in schools; within each sub-section are highlighted actions and recommendations which will enable schools to audit their current situation, develop their practice and create an increasingly inclusive whole-school ethos that is supportive and relevant for Dual Heritage pupils and families.

Terminology

The term Dual Heritage will be employed throughout this document; although labels are rarely unanimously agreed upon, it is currently considered by many to be a more acceptable and positive description than the still frequently used ‘mixed race’ (our pupils in schools often use the latter, and sometimes still the term ‘half-caste’).

Why not ‘mixed race’?
It is scientifically agreed that different ‘races’ do not exist, only one Human Race, therefore a shift from using the term ‘race’ seems to be the common order. Further, the word ‘mixed’ can have negative connotations in relation to identity e.g. ‘mixed up’, implying confusion and also that the original elements from both heritages are inevitably lost or changed.

Why not half-caste?
‘Caste’ is derived from the Portuguese word ‘casta’, meaning lineage or breed. In human culture, it refers to rigid social divisions, as in the Hindu caste system. Societies with a low degree of social mobility such as South Africa under apartheid and the practice of slavery in the Southern United States could be described as caste-based societies – the connotations of oppression are clear. Moreover, ‘half’ clearly implies lacking and incomplete, indicating inferiority…

Read the entire report here.