Mixed Race Studies

Counting Multiracial People in the Census: The Unfulfilled Wish for More Data

Racism Review
2010-03-26

Jenifer L. Bratter, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Associate Director of the Institute for Urban Research
Rice University

People who study the multiracial population are constantly confronted with the problem of small numbers to work with.  A recent article I co-authored on the multiracial health (Bratter, Jenifer and Bridget K. Gorman. Forthcoming. “Does Multiracial Matter? A Study of Racial Disparities in Self Rated Health.” Demography)  required combining seven years of data from a health survey (over 1.7 million cases) to get 20,000 mixed-race folks for analysis.  The 2000 Census, with its “check all that apply” race question, remains the database with the largest number of cases and the 2010 Census will be the first to count race the same way as the preceding installment. While this may sound like a mundane detail, this will allow us to gauge growth, decline, or stability of this population and whether this will affect the population bases of single-race communities.  If the sheer anticipation doesn’t shake you to your core, perhaps you have forgotten the history of introducing this option into the Census…

Read the entire article here.

Biracial Youth and Their Parents: Counseling Considerations for Family Therapists

The Family Journal
Volume 12, Number 2 (2004)
pages 170-173
DOI: 10.1177/1066480703261977

Laurie McClurg
University of Virginia

In spite of recent developments in the area of multicultural family therapy, interracial families and their biracial children remain a neglected population in the mental health field. Very little research exists, and few suggestions have been made for working with this unique population. This article addresses the developmental needs of such families and provides suggestions for family counselors and therapists.

Read or purchase the article here.

Jared Sexton: People of Color-Blindness: Notes on the Afterlife of Slavery

University of Northern Arizona
Gardner Auditorium, W.A. Franke College of Business, NAU
2010-03-25, 17:30 to 19:00 CDT (Local Time)

Jared Sexton, Associate Professor of African American Studies and Film & Media Studies
University of California, Irvine
 
This lecture explores the significance of the ongoing shift in the color line from a white/non-white to black/non-black configuration in the post-civil rights era United States. It asks how we might reframe discussions of immigration, multiracialism (race mixture), and coalition-building among people of color in this context.

For more information, click here.

Crises of Whiteness and Empire in Colonial Indochina: The Removal of Abandoned Eurasian Children From the Vietnamese Milieu, 1890–1956

Journal of Social History
Volume 43, Number 3 (Spring 2010)
pages 587-613
E-ISSN: 1527-1897 Print ISSN: 0022-4529
DOI: 10.1353/jsh.0.0304

Christina Firpo, Assistant Professor of History
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo

From 1890–1956, non-governmental welfare agencies worked with the French colonial government in Indochina to remove Eurasian children, who had been abandoned by their French fathers, from their Vietnamese mothers and the Vietnamese cultural environment. In an era marked by historical exigencies, perceived threats to white prestige, and inherent challenges to the colonial patriarchy, such children were believed to be a threat to colonial security and white prestige. The racial formations of abandoned Eurasian children in colonial Indochina changed repeatedly in response to these threats. Drawing from the rhetoric of racial sciences and led by anxieties over changes colonial security, French civilians increasingly and colonial government administrators increasingly made the case that these children where white and must be removed from their Vietnamese mothers’ care, using force if necessary.

Read the entire article here.