Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

This assimilation should disabuse us of the fantasy of the imminent demise of the white majority and its loss of power. Not all the newcomers to the mainstream will identify as whites, and its visibly growing diversity will be a key development of the early 21st century, as the election of the nation’s first black president unmistakably signals. “Whiteness,” however, has never been fixed; it is a malleable concept, and it is on its way to changing again, as it has before.

Yet it is critical not to lapse immediately into another fantasy, namely, the belief that assimilation will prove a panacea for still-glaring ethno-racial disparities. Contemporary assimilation is simply not on the same scale as that of the mid-20th century, when, for example, Italians caught up to other whites in education and socioeconomic attainment in just a 25-year period after World War II. Assimilation today is crimped by greatly heightened inequalities and is leaving many outside its reach, including many Hispanics, such as the undocumented and their children, even those who are U.S. citizens because they were born here. In one respect, however, the earlier and current patterns of assimilation are similar: African Americans are participating only to a limited extent. Indeed, one could even say they are being bypassed.

Richard Alba, “The Likely Persistence of a White Majority,” The American Prospect, Winter 2016, Volume 27, Number 1 (January 11, 2016). http://prospect.org/article/likely-persistence-white-majority-0.

hypodescent

Posted in Definitions, Social Science on 2009-06-16 21:17Z by Steven

Hypodescent is the practice of determining the classification of a child of mixed-race ancestry by assigning the child the race of his or her more socially subordinate parent. Because Caucasians were historically socially dominant in the Western world, mixed-race children in slave societies were most frequently assigned the status of their non-Caucasian parent. This was also to keep them classified as property, which slaves were. In some colonial societies, however, especially the Catholic Portuguese, Spanish and French, a third class of “people of color” developed.

Wikipedia

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Mix-d:

Posted in Definitions, United Kingdom on 2009-06-16 21:10Z by Steven

mix-d: (pronounced “mixed”) Describes a position of pride and place where one can bring all sides of their cultural identity together and express an identity which is similar to but not specifically like either. By dropping the term race we make a step forward and begin to talk about a fully lived experience rather than constantly referring to an outdated social construct which keeps us trapped in the past.

Bradley Lincoln, The Multiple Heritage Project

race

Posted in Definitions, Excerpts/Quotes, United States on 2009-06-13 21:10Z by Steven

“…’race’ as it is understood … was a social mechanism invented in the eighteenth century to refer to those populations brought together in colonial America: … European settlers, conquered Indians, and Africans brought in to supply slave labor… [Race] … subsumed a growing ideology of inequity devised to rationalize European attitudes and the treatment of the conquered and enslaved peoples…”

American Anthropological Association 1998 Statement on Race

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Mixed Race Studies

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