Mixed Race Studies

The Multiracial Experience: Racial Borders as the New Frontier

SAGE Publications
1995
512 pages
Paperback ISBN: 9780803970595

Edited by Maria P. P. Root

In her bold new edited volume, The Multiracial Experience, Maria P. P. Root challenges current theoretical and political conceptualizations of race by examining the experience of mixed-race individuals. Articulating questions that will form the basis for future discussions of race and identity, the contributors tackle concepts such as redefining ethnicity when race is less central to the definition and how a multiracial model might dismantle our negative construction of race. Researchers and practitioners in ethnic studies, anthropology, education, law, psychology, nursing, social work, and sociology add personal insights in chapter-opening vignettes while providing integral critical viewpoints. Sure to stimulate thinking and discussion, the contributors focus on the most contemporary racial issues, including the racial classification system from the U.S. Census to the schools; the differences between race, ethnicity, and colorism; gender and sexuality in a multicultural context; ethnic identity and identity formation; transracial adoption; and the future of race relations in the United States. The Multiracial Experience opens up the dialogue to rethink and redefine race and social relations in this country. This volume provides discussions key to all professionals, practitioners, researchers, and students in multicultural issues, ethnic relations, sociology, education, psychology, management, and public health.

Table of Contents

The Multiracial Experience: Racial Borders as a Significant Frontier in Race Relations – Maria P. P. Root

PART ONE: HUMAN RIGHTS

• A Bill of Rights for Racially Mixed People –  Maria P. P. Root
• Government Classification of Multiracial/Multiethnic People – Carlos A. Fernandez
• The Real World – Susan R. Graham
• Multiracial Identity in a Color-Conscious World – Deborah A. Ramirez
• Transracial Adoptions: In Whose Best Interest? – Ruth G. McRoy and Christine C. Iijima Hall
• Voices from the Movement: Approaches to Multiraciality – Cynthia L. Nakashima

PART TWO: IDENTITY

• Hidden Agendas, Identity Theories, and Multiracial People –  Michael C. Thornton
• Black and White Identity in the New Millenium: Unsevering the Ties That Bind – G. Reginald Daniel
• On Being and Not-Being Black and Jewish – Naomi Zack
• An `Other’ Way of Life: The Empowerment of Alterity in the Interracial Individual – Jan R. Weisman

PART THREE: BLENDING AND FLEXIBILITY

• LatiNegra Lillian: Mental Health Issues of African –  Lillian Comas-Diaz
• Race as Process: Reassessing the `What Are You?’ Encounters of Biracial Individuals – Teresa Kay Williams
• Piecing Together the Puzzle: Self-Concept and Group Identity in Biracial Black/White Youth – Lynda D. Field
• Changing Face, Changing Race: The Remaking of Race in the Japanese American and African American Communities – Rebecca Chiyoko King and Kimberly McClain DaCosta
• Without a Template: The Biracial Korean/White Experience – Brian Chol Soo Standen

PART FOUR: GENDER AND SEXUAL IDENTITY

• In the Margins of Sex and Race: Difference, Marginality, and Flexibility – George Kitahara Kich
• (Un)Natural Boundaries: Mixed Race, Gender, and Sexuality – Karen Maeda Allman
• Heterosexual Alliances: The Romantic Management of Racial Identity-  Francine Winddance Twine
• Ambiguous Bodies: Locating Black/White Women in Cultural Representations – Caroline A. Streeter

PART FIVE: MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION

• Making the Invisible Visible: The Growth of Community Network Organizations – Nancy G. Brown and Ramona E. Douglass
• Challenging Race and Racism: A Framework for Educators – Ronald David Glass and Kendra R. Wallace
• Being Different Together in the University Classroom: Multiracial Identity as Transgressive Education – Teresa Kay Williams et al
• Multicultural Education – Francis Wardle

PART SIX: THE NEW MILLENIUM

• 2001: A Race Odyssey – Christine C. Iijima Hall

Author Dr. Bonnie M. Davis Guest on Mixed Chicks Chat

Mixed Chicks Chat (The only live weekly show about being racially and culturally mixed.  Also, founders of the Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival)
Website: TalkShoe™ (Keywords: Mixed Chicks)
Episode: #135 – Bonnie M. Davis, Ph.D.
When: Wednesday, 2010-01-06, 22:00Z

Bonnie M. Davis, Ph.D., Author and Educator
Educating For Change^®

Bonnie M. Davis is a veteran teacher of 37 years who is passionate about education. She has taught in middle schools, high schools, universities, homeless shelters, and a men’s prison. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including Teacher of the Year, the Governor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, and the Anti-Defamation League’s World of Difference Community Service Award. Davis has presented at numerous national conferences and provides services to schools through her consulting firm, A4Achievement. Her publications include The Biracial and Multiracial Student Experience: A Journey to Racial Literacy (2009), How to Coach Teachers Who Don’t Look Like You (2007), How to Teach Students Who Don’t Look Like You (2006), African-American Academic Achievement: Building a Classroom of Excellence (2001) and numerous articles on literacy instruction. Dr. Davis will be the keynote and featured speaker at the National Association of African-American Studies (NAAAS) 2010 Teacher Summer Conference, June 27-30, 2010 in Orlando, Florida.  She received her BS in education, her MA in English, her MAI in communi­cations, and her PhD in English.

Danzas Nacionalistas: The representation of history through folkloric dance in Venezuela

Critique of Anthropology
(2002)
Vol. 22, No. 3
pages 257-282
DOI: 10.1177/0308275X02022003758

Iveris Luz Martínez
Johns Hopkins University

In this article I argue that the nation is not only invented or imagined, but depends on activities and practices in order to be invented and imagined. Here, the focus is on dance in Venezuela, where a number of groups use what they call `folkloric dance’ to construct and depict the national `culture’. This article considers the case of Danzas Típicas Maracaibo (DTM), a dance company founded in 1976 under the auspices of the government of the state of Zulia in Venezuela. DTM presented a carefully crafted and selective stylized repertoire of `folk’ dances from throughout the country. These re-created dances are called danzas nacionalistas, although the dances are often interchangeably referred to as `folkloric’. They are used to make statements about ethnic and cultural authenticity, and in their own way contribute to the discourse of mestizaje. In Venezuela, as in much of Latin America, there is entwined in nationalist rhetoric the idea of `race’ and cultural mixing, or mestizaje. Here, mestizaje does not only or necessarily imply a `racial’ mixing or a mixing of `blood’, but it also refers to `culture’. History, and discourses of the past generally, are especially implicated in these activities and representations.

Pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican demography approximates the present-day ancestry of Mestizos throughout the territory of Mexico

American Journal of Physical Anthropology
Volume 139 Issue 3
Pages 284 – 294
Published Online: 2009-01-12

Rodrigo Rubi-Castellanos
Instituto de Investigación en Genética Molecular, Centro Universitario de la Ciénega, (CUCiénega-UdeG), Ocotlán, Jalisco, México

Gabriela Martínez-Cortés
Instituto de Investigación en Genética Molecular, Centro Universitario de la Ciénega, (CUCiénega-UdeG), Ocotlán, Jalisco, México

José Francisco Muñoz-Valle
Instituto de Investigación en Reumatología y del Sistema Músculo-Esquelético, Centro Universitario de Ciencias de la Salud (CUCS-UdeG), Guadalajara, Jalisco, México

Antonio González-Martín
Departamento de Zoología y Antropología Física, Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM), 28040 Madrid, Spain

Ricardo M. Cerda-Flores
Departamento de Genética de Poblaciones y Bioinformática, Centro de Investigación Biomédica del Noreste (CIBN-IMSS), Monterrey, Nuevo León, México

Manuel Anaya-Palafox
Laboratorio de Genética Forense, Instituto Jalisciense de Ciencias Forenses (IJCF), Tlaquepaque, Jalisco, México

Héctor Rangel-Villalobos
Instituto de Investigación en Genética Molecular, Centro Universitario de la Ciénega, (CUCiénega-UdeG), Ocotlán, Jalisco, México

Rodrigo Rubi-Castellanos and Héctor Rangel-Villalobos contributed equally to this work.

Over the last 500 years, admixture among Amerindians, Europeans, and Africans, principally, has come to shape the present-day gene pool of Mexicans, particularly Mestizos, who represent about 93% of the total Mexican population. In this work, we analyze the genetic data of 13 combined DNA index system-short tandem repeats (CODIS-STRs) in 1,984 unrelated Mestizos representing 10 population samples from different regions of Mexico, namely North, West, Central, and Southeast. The analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) test demonstrated low but significant differentiation among Mestizos from different regions (F_ST = 0.34%; P = 0.0000). Although the spatial analysis of molecular variance (SAMOVA) predicted clustering Mestizo populations into four well-delimited groups, the main differentiation was observed between Northwest when compared with Central and Southeast regions. In addition, we included analysis of individuals of Amerindian (Purepechas), European (Huelva, Spain), and African (Fang) origin. Thus, STRUCTURE analysis was performed identifying three well-differentiated ancestral populations (k = 3). STRUCTURE results and admixture estimations by means of LEADMIX software in Mestizo populations demonstrated genetic heterogeneity or asymmetric admixture throughout Mexico, displaying an increasing North-to-South gradient of Amerindian ancestry, and vice versa regarding the European component. Interestingly, this distribution of Amerindian ancestry roughly reflects pre-Hispanic Native-population density, particularly toward the Mesoamerican area. The forensic, epidemiological, and evolutionary implications of these findings are discussed herein.

“If Races Don’t Exist, Then Why Am I White?”: The Race Concept Within Contemporary Forensic Anthropology

Focus Anthropology: A Publication of Undergraduate Research
Issue VIII: 2009
Kenyon University
20 pages

M. Todd Gross
Western Michigan University

It is fundamental for human beings to ask why and how things happen. Looking across the globe it is clear that this human tendency to explore our world manifests itself in a multitude of ways and in response to a variety of experiences. Among those who partake in the exploration of our world, some think the most honest way to answer the questions of “why” and “how” are through science. Broadly speaking, science is stated as analysis based upon observations made of an objective, observable reality. Since it involves the exploration of an objective reality, the accuracy of the labels and terms used to describe that reality are of utmost importance. In this paper, various issues will be examined in the biological and social sciences to show that the use of the race concept for Homo sapiens by forensic anthropologists is inaccurate and is both biologically and socially irresponsible. Available to forensic anthropologists are more responsible alternatives for assessing human skeletal remains, such as matching various morphological characteristics to those individuals found on missing person reports.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1
Race as Biology? 1
Race as Culture 3
Race in Forensic Anthropology 6
Misperceptions of Race in Forensic Anthropology 10
Alternatives to “Racial” Assessment of Human Skeletal Remains 13
Keeping Things in Perspective 15
Conclusion 15
Bibliography 16

Read the entire article here.