Mixed Race Studies

Stop the finger-wagging about Obama’s Census form

The Washington Post
2010-04-29

Kevin Huffman

It’s tough being president. In the last year, pretty much every constituency has expressed disappointment in some facet of Barack Obama’s work or play.

Now, apparently, the president is even letting down biracial children with his choice of Census categories. Elizabeth Chang writes in a Post op-ed that the president shouldn’t have identified as “black” on the Census given that he is mixed race. She even goes so far as to say that it is “disingenuous” and that “there is an important consequence when our president does not acknowledge half of his heritage, or, more basically, the mother and grandparents who raised him, or even his commonality with his sister, who is also biracial, though with a different mix.”

Let me start by suggesting this may slightly over-value the deep personal meaning of the Census form. I viewed the form as a seven-minute exercise in ensuring that the District of Columbia gets to count my whole family as residents. Maybe we can even get enough funding to fix the Metro escalators. I hadn’t realized the need to express solidarity with my relatives and ancestors, living and dead…

Anyway, like Chang, my kids are half Asian and half white, which led me to identify them on the Census as… Asian. My brother is half black and half white. He went with biracial. Somehow neither of these decisions has resulted in meaningfully different personal connections for my family.

Read the entire op-ed here.

Why Obama should not have checked ‘black’ on his census form

The Washington Post
2010-04-29

Elizabeth Chang, Sunday Magazine Editor

I have always considered Barack Obama to be biracial, and I had hoped that his election would help our country move beyond the tired concept of race. Unfortunately, the president is not getting with my program.

Although I knew Obama self-identifies as African American, I was disappointed when I read that that’s what he checked on his census form. The federal government, finally heeding the desires of multiracial people to be able to accurately define themselves, had changed the rules in 2000, so he could have also checked white. Or he could have checked “some other race.” Instead, Obama went with black alone…

…I am the mother of biracial children (Asian/Caucasian) and believe that multiracial people need to be accepted and acknowledged — even celebrated. The president’s choice disappoints me, and it seems somewhat disingenuous. Obama, who has also referred to himself as a “mutt,” made a big deal during the 2008 campaign of being able to relate to Hawaiians and Midwesterners, Harvard grads and salespeople, blacks, whites, Latinos, whatever — precisely because of his “unconventional” background and multicultural exposure. On the census, however, he has effectively said that when it counts, he is black…

Read the entire article here.

Professor Nikki Khanna to be Featured 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) Hosted by Fanshen Cox and Heidi W. Durrow
Website: TalkShoe™ (Keywords: Mixed Chicks)
Episode: #151 – Professor Nikki Khanna
When: Wednesday, 2010-05-05 21:00Z (17:00 EDT, 14:00 PDT)

Nikki Khanna, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of Vermont

Dr. Khanna’s primary areas of specialization include race/ethnic relations and social psychology. Her current research draws from both areas and she is particularly interested in studying biracial and multiracial identity. She studies how people racially identify and how identity is shaped and negotiated through social interactions with others in their day-to-day lives.

Most Recent Publications:

• “’If You’re Half Black, You’re Just Black’: Reflected Appraisals and the Persistence of the One-Drop Rule”. Sociological Quarterly. Volume 51, Number 1 (Winter 2010).
• “Country Clubs and Hip-Hop Thugs: Examining the Role of Social Class and Culture in Shaping Racial Identity.” In Kathleen Korgen‘s (Ed.). Multiracial Americans and Social Class: The Influence of Social Class on Racial Identity. Routledge.

Download the podcast here.

Artist Kip Fulbeck Is Back Exploring Identity, but This Time With Children

Los Angeles Downtown News
2010-03-26

Richard Guzmán

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES – Upon entering Mixed, the recently opened show at the Japanese American National Museum, one can’t help but smile.

The happy young faces depicted in the 70 photographs that make up the exhibit are filled with joyful innocence. One image shows two girls, one in a ballerina outfit, the other wearing rainbow stockings and a necklace and bracelet to match, engaged in a carefree dance; another portrays a little girl proudly holding up her two colorfully dressed rag dolls; a third depicts a close-up of a smiling boy, his long dreadlocks flowing down his face.

The show, with the full title Mixed: Portraits of Multiracial Kids by Kip Fulbeck, is intended to be playful, interactive and fun. But it also deals with a sensitive subject: identify, and in particular, the identity of people who come from mixed backgrounds. Each of the children in the exhibit is the product of parents of different races or ethnicities…

Read the entire article here.

Do Racist Attitudes Hinder Mothers of Mixed-Race Children?

Science Daily
2010-04-28

Professor Ravinder Barn and Dr. Vicki Harman from the Centre for Criminology and Sociology at Royal Holloway, University of London are carrying out research into white mothers of mixed-race children. It is part of a wider study of mixed-race children and young people that has spanned more than two decades.

Parenting as an activity has become the focus for much concern at a policy and academic level, and the experiences of white women mothering mixed-race children is also receiving considerable attention…

…”In the academic and popular discourse, there is now a concern that ‘mixed families’ have become problematised. White mothers in these settings are often subjected to a racialised critical social gaze in a way that their parenting is placed under scrutiny,” says Professor Barn…

Read the entire article here.

University of Royal Holloway London (2010, April 28). Do racist attitudes hinder mothers of mixed-race children?. ScienceDaily. Retrieved April 28, 2010, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­/releases/2010/04/100428121600.htm

Does ‘race’ matter? A study of ‘mixed race’ siblings’ identifications

Sociological Review
Volume 58, Issue 2 (May 2010)
Pages 265 – 285
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-954X.2010.01903.x

Miri Song, Professor of Sociology
University of Kent

‘Mixed’ people comprise one of the fastest growing populations in Britain today, and their growth refutes the idea that there exist distinct, ‘natural’ races among people in multiethnic societies, such as Britain. In recent years, a large body of scholarship, both in the US and Britain, has begun to investigate the diverse social experiences and racial identifications of mixed people. In this article, I investigate the ways in which mixed siblings perceive and think about race and differences in racial, ethnic, and religious identification within their families. What role do race and the recognition of difference play in sibling relationships and in family life more generally? I draw upon a small number of cases to illustrate the diverse ways in which understandings of race, ethnicity, and religion are (or are not) regarded as important in these families. I also consider whether there are group differences in terms of how disparate types of mixed siblings may perceive pressures to identify in particular ways.

Read or purchase the article here.

Spaces of Multiraciality: Critical Mixed Race Theory

University of Toronto
Geography  (B.A.) Program
2010-2011
Course Number: GGRD19H3
 
From Tiger Woods to Mariah Carey, the popular mixed race phenomenon has captured the popular imagination and revealed the contradictory logic of categorization underpinning racial divisions. We will explore the complexities of racial identity formation to illuminate the experiences of those who fall outside the prevailing definitions of racial identities.

For more information, click here.

Obama Makes It Official: He’s African-American

The Huffington Post
2010-04-05

Earl Ofari Hutchinson, Political Analyst and Social Issues Commentator

President Obama unequivocally and unhesitatingly made it official: he’s African-American. That may sound silly and facile to say that but his checking the box “African-American” on his census form did two things. It made meaningless the incessant chatter of whether Obama should be called mixed race or African-American. It recognized the hard and unchanging reality that race relations and conflict in America are still framed in black and white. The one-drop rule in America renders anyone with even a trace of African ancestry in their genealogy as black. It’s a delusion that calling oneself mixed race, no matter how light complexioned they are, will not earn them a pass from the lash of racial persecution.

…A mere check of the biracial designation on his census form would not spare Obama from any of the routine petty racial harassments and annoyances — the subtle and outright forms of discrimination. The biracial box is a feel-good, paper designation that has no validity in the hard world of American race politics. The instant that Obama tossed his hat in the presidential ring in February 2007, and through his relentless, hyper pressurized presidential battles, the vile, venomous, racial pounding has been non-stop. The Joker Posters, the Confederate and Texas Lone Star flags, the racial taunts, digs, cracks, insults, and slurs, the ape and monkey depictions of him and First Lady Michelle Obama on tens of thousands of web sites is a horrid testament that even a president is not exempt from racial loathing, bi-racial or not…

…Even though Obama has never called himself anything but African-American, and now has made it official on the census form, the sideshow debate over whether Obama is the black president or the biracial president still creeps up. The debate is even more nonsensical since science has long since debunked the notion of a pure racial type. In America, race has never been a scientific or genealogical designation, but a political and social designation. Anyone with the faintest trace of African ancestry was and still is considered black and treated accordingly….

Read the entire article here.

Choosing Racial Sides: Part Two… A Different Perspective

USARiseUp.com
2010-02-20

Cassandra Franklin-Barbajosa

Contrary to popular opinion, the way mixed-race people look is not the primary influence that determines what part of their heritage they identify with, according to Seattle clinical psychologist and independent scholar Dr. Maria P. P. Root. She says a host of other factors comes into play.

“I consider the generation people were born into, the geographical region they came from, the community where they grew up, language, religion, parents’ identity, home values, and even the names they were given,” says Root, who is Filipino and white. “I also look at such things as individual traits. Someone who is very socially skilled and multitalented at a high level—a musician, an athlete, or a scholar, for example—has more identity options.

Race or gender often become secondary to the part of identity associated with the area of talent. It is almost as though people loosen the rules around race and bigotry if an individual has an exceptional skill that society values and gives the OK to look at a person more as an individual. All of these are very critical influences in how someone is going to identify.”

Root’s theory about why multiracial people tend to choose one part of their heritage over another began evolving in the 1980s when she discovered that the available literature on mixed-race people was dated. “With few exceptions, it was very pejorative,” she says. “A lot of it reflected the politics of the time, which was against race mixing, and it just did not match the experiences of the multiracial people who were writing doctoral dissertations.”

That gap led to Root publishing the award-winning book, Racially Mixed People in America, published in 1992. Many consider this highly acclaimed research-based book the definitive contemporary study on the subject, and the first major step in establishing Root as the premiere expert on mixed-race issues.

“Racial identity starts with family and community,” Root says. “People then begin to negotiate their identity for themselves once they go out on their own.”…

Read the entire article here.

Chosing Racial Sides… American Society Forces Its Children To Make Tough Choices

USARiseUp.com
2010-02-20

Cassandra Franklin-Barbajosa

When Jolanda Williams looks in a mirror, the image she sees is a warm peach complexion framed in dark silky hair, high cheekbones beneath almond eyes, and full lips that slip into an easy, radiant smile. She has a face that could belong almost anywhere in the world, Mexico, India, or Indonesia. Yet Williams, the daughter of a white German mother and a black American father, has spent the better part of her 35 years coming to terms with where she fits in.

“In America, it is all about your physical characteristics,” says Williams, a resident of Brooklyn, New York, who, for as long as she can remember, has identified herself on paper as African-American. “If I were to put “white” on a job application and walk into an interview, whoever was interviewing me would assume they had the wrong person. It is unrealistic for me to think I can actually walk through the world identifying as white, considering the way I look.”…

…Dr. Melissa Herman, assistant professor of sociology at Dartmouth College in Hanover, [New Hampshire], understands the reasoning behind the choices made by the more than six million multiracial people in the United States.

“A lot of our choices about identity have to do with phenotype, our physical characteristics, because it is these characteristics that determine how other people perceive us and treat us,” she says. “If you look even slightly black, there is extreme social pressure in American society to be black, which is certainly a vestige of the system of hypodescent, or the one-drop rule. Even though it is no longer legally enforced, it is very much socially enforced. It is ingrained in children from a very early age; not necessarily by their parents, who may want them to have the freedom to choose, but by our society.”..

Read the entire article here.