Mixed Race Studies

Scratching the surface: Artist Laylah Ali explores the social dynamics that lie beyond appearances

Boston Globe
2008-08-29

Cate McQuaid, Globe Correspondent

WILLIAMSTOWN – Laylah Ali doesn’t let many people into her studio.

“It’s a private space,” the artist says, welcoming a visitor. “It’s like being in my brain. I’m inviting you into my private brain space – the chaos and the mess.”

As far as chaos goes, this isn’t bad. In the basement of a building on the outskirts of the Williams College campus, where Ali teaches art, an airy studio is filled with white illustrator’s tables. Colored pencils and squat bottles of ink clutter the tables. But what catches the eye are the drawings Ali has tacked to the white walls with pushpins: Portraits, made in her signature cartoon style, of haunted figures with garish headdresses, scarification, and false beards, and smaller drawings that feature ruminative lists with oddly adorned figures drawn over them…

…Growing up in Buffalo as the daughter of an African-American father and a white mother, Ali attuned herself early to social dynamics and covert aggression. The family lived in an all-white neighborhood.

“I was the only black kid in my school,” Ali says. “I’ve been able to negotiate different social places because of that. . . . More people are seeing this now because of Barack Obama, but there have always been biracial people in the US, with the ability to move between these worlds and notice what’s different and what’s not different.

“I developed heightened powers of observation not just from curiosity,” she adds, “but for survival.”

As a child, the artist saw implicit judgment many places, and it wasn’t always black and white.

“It’s not just race. It’s also class,” Ali points out. “My mom’s family had come from some money. It was gone, but they still had the idea of what it’s like to have nice silver, a nice oriental rug. They had an aspiration from what they had lost.

“Dad’s family was from the farming Mississippi South. He grew up working the land. I keep asking him questions and finding out more things. He walked five miles to school and had no electricity at home.”

“My family is very American,” she sums up…

Read the entire article here.

Difference and Belonging, Hopes and Fears: Parenting ‘mixed’ children and the implications for career development

International Center for Guidence Studies (iCEGS)
University of Derby
Occasional Paper
2008
16 pages
3 charts; 1 table

Rosalind Edwards, Professor in Social Policy and Director of the Families & Social Capital Research Group
London South Bank University

From the CeGS 10th Annual Lecture held at the University of Derby on 18th December 2007

I am very pleased to give the International Centre for Guidance Studies 10th annual lecture, and to indicate some of the implications of our research on ‘mixed’ families for your field of career development and guidance. I must stress, though, that I am no expert in your field. My interest and experience lies in people’s family lives in general. So, I will do my best in making links between my interest and yours, and I hope that you will be able to fill in any gaps.

In my lecture, I will address some of the debates about how to refer to children and young people who are from a ‘mixed’ racial or ethnic, and maybe also a ‘mixed’ faith, background, and how these relate to the politics of identity. I hope that this will explain to any of you who are perplexed as to why my lecture title refers to ‘mixed’ children. Having done that, I will be moving on to more important issues. I will give you a picture of ‘mixed’ families across Britain, before looking at the ways that parents from different backgrounds attempt to deal with difference and a sense of belonging for their children, how schools may be a resource in this, and their hopes for their children’s future…

Read the entire paper here.

Mixedness and The Arts

Runnymede Thinkpiece
Runnymede Trust
July 2010
18 pages
ISBN: 978-1-906732-63-9 (online)
EAN: 9781906732639 (online)
ISBN: 978-1-906732-64-6 (print)
EAN: 9781906732646 (print)

Chamion Caballero, Senior Research Fellow
Families & Social Capital Research Group
London South Bank University

This think piece explores the presentation of mixed-race identity in the sphere of arts and culture in the UK.

The piece examines some of the assumptions that surround mixed identity, and places them in a historical, political and policy context.

Taking contributions from practitioners in the arts, many of whom have engaged this issue directly, the report lays out the three key topics that arise from reflection on the debates:

Dr. Caballero frames her argument under the subheadings of Recognition of Experience; Negotiation of Complexity; and Politics of Ownership.

The debates identified by this think piece (and hopefully the ones sparked by it) are highly important to our understanding of racial dynamics in British society today.

Table of Contents

Contents
Foreword
Introduction
A note on terminology
1. Background: discussions of ‘mixedness’
2. The recognition of experiences
3. The negotiation of complexity
4. The politics of ownership
5. Summary and concluding thoughts
References

Foreword

The increasing visibility of mixedness and mixed people has led to a great deal of reflection on the nature of ethnic identities and their significance for society at large. In the light of census data predicting ‘mixed race’ becoming the largest ethnic minority group within two decades, there has been widespread debate about what this means for race and race relations in the 21st century. However debates on this subject rarely engage critically with the complexity that discussions of identity, let alone mixed ethnic identities truly deserve. The statistic above has often been accepted at face value with little thought devoted to teasing out exactly what such a ‘fact’ assumes about the nature of race, and whether these assumptions are ones that a modern, multi-ethnic nation is comfortable with.

In order to address this lack of nuance, Runnymede and the Arts Council have commissioned this thinkpiece by Dr Chamion Caballero. The piece examines some of the assumptions that surround mixed identity in Britain today, and places them in a historical, political and policy context. Taking contributions from practioners in the Arts, many of whom have engaged this issue directly; it lays out the three key topics that arise from reflection on the debates. Dr. Caballero argues that the first such issue is Recognition of Experience and whether the recognition of mixed experience is welcome or even necessary. Following on from this is the Negotiation of Complexity; many of the artists who commented stressed that representation of mixed identity must involve recognising the complex nuances inherent in that identity if it is not to become shallow, reductive, or irrelevant. The final issue, and perhaps the most loaded is the Politics of Ownership; who gets to define ‘mixedness’ and who gets to represent it, are sensitive issues that must be borne in mind, and many of the participants were wary of easy answers to these questions.

The debates identified by this think piece (and hopefully the ones sparked by it) are highly important to our understanding of racial dynamics in British society today. Questions of mixedness open up further questions not just about our concepts of race but of the nature of identity and its construction. Debates rage about the apparent failure of the multicultural project and its policy successors, about biological determinism and the role of genetics, about immigration and nationality, and about the role of art in a society facing economic strictures not seen in a generation. Deeper reflections upon concepts like race and identity, art and culture which underpin so many of these discussions could therefore scarcely be more timely. We publish this paper to encourage, rather than close down debate. We believe that it is important that we reflect on these issues and consider how best to ensure that policy and practice delivers for all if we are to become a successful multi-ethnic society.

Dr Rob Berkeley
Director, Runnymede

Read the entire report here.

“Not belonging” to any single ethnic group and its influence on self-identity formation: An exploratory, qualitative study of the multiracial experience

California Institute of Integral Studies, San Fransisco
2010
150 pages
AAT 3407199
ISBN: 9781109754452

Malia Joiner

A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the California Institute of Integral Studies in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Psychology in Clinical Psychology California Institute of Integral Studies

This qualitative inquiry explored the Multiracial woman’s experience of “not belonging” to any single ethnic group and the consequences for self-identity formation. Interview data were collected from self-identified Multiracial women, at least 18 years of age, who participated in semistructured interviews. Subjects were solicited through snowballing recruitment and searches at universities and websites geared toward Multiracial individuals.

The data were analyzed and grouped into themes according to phenomenological methods, with the goal of identifying common themes among women of Multiracial backgrounds in regard to their experiences around identity formation. The salient themes were (a) Phenotype, (b) Childhood Experiences, (c) Geographical Impact, (d) Sexuality and Self-Esteem, (e) Belonging, and (f) Identity Fluidity. These themes were found to be present in either the majority or all of the narratives, and were therefore likely indicative of a larger collective experience.

The limitations of this study were related to researcher bias and to the geographic and socioeconomic homogeneity of the sample. The sample was also skewed with higher levels of education as well as a strong representation of at least partial Asian ethnicity. Further research could attend to these limitations and build upon the results of this study.

Table of Contents

• Abstract
• Dedication
• List of Tables
• Chapter 1 Introduction
  • Background of the Problem
  • Statement of the Problem
  • Purpose of the Study
• Chapter 2 Literature Review
  • Definition of Terms
    • Race
    • Ethnicity
    • Culture
    • Identity
  • Identity
    • Ethnic identity
      • Ethnic identity formation
        • Phinney’s developmental model of ethnic identity formation
        • Poston’s Biracial Identity Model
        • Kich’s Biracial Identity Development Model
      • Gender and identity formation
        • The Womanist Identity Development Model
        • The womanist consciousness approach
    • The Multiracial Experience
      • Power and guilt
      • Physical appearance
      • Sexualized stereotypes
      • Parental influence and family dysfunction
      • Otherness
    • Counseling Implications
• Chapter 3 Methodology
  • Research Design
  • Data Collection and Participants
  • Data Analysis
  • Verification Procedures
• Chapter 4 Findings
  • Participants
  • Themes
    • Phenotype
    • Childhood experiences
    • Geographical impact
    • Sexuality and self-esteem
    • Belonging
    • Identity fluidity
• Chapter 5 Discussion and Recommendations
  • Discussion
    • Phenotype
    • Childhood experiences
    • Geographical impact
    • Sexuality and self-esteem
    • Belonging
    • Identity fluidity
  • Personal Assumptions and Their Relationship to the Findings
  • Limitations of the Study
  • Recommendations for Future Study
  • Clinical Implications
  • Summary
• References
• Appendix A Informed Consent to Participate in Research
• Appendix B Sample Interview Questions
• Appendix C Sample Interview Transcript
• Appendix D Codes Resulting From Data Analysis Phase 2

Purchase the dissertation here.

Multiethnic Multiracial Experience (Ethnic Studies 199)

University of Oregon
Winter 2010

Anselmo Villanueva, Ph.D.

This course will focus on the multiracial multiethnic experience in the United States, with particular emphasis on the Northwest. This course will provide students with a framework to understand this experience. The course will cover the history and background of the mixed race experience, anti-miscegenation laws and practices, research, identity models, resources, and case studies. The topic of trans-racial adoption will also be included in this course.

Traditionally, the multiracial experience has been defined as literally “Black” and “White” – people, relationships, and marriages that have been between White and African American people. This course will also include the experiences of multiple relationships and people, such as Asian and Latino, Black and Asian, and so on. Multiethnic relationships will also be included, such as Chinese and Korean.

Students will develop a broad understanding of the multiracial multiethnic experience. In the process, students will also have the opportunity to examine their own culture, ethnic identity, and background. Students will also examine attitudes and beliefs related to the mixed race experience.

For more information, click here.

VIS409 Mixed Race Women’s Memoirs

Antioch University, Midwest
Winter 2010

This course is designed as a multidisciplinary exploration of race, gender, and identity utilizing oral and written narratives of Black-white mixed race women from the mid-nineteenth century to the present as source material. Drawing from elements of cultural studies, African American studies, American studies, and women’s studies, students will construct critical and historical contexts for self-identity and perceptions of that identity in women of interracial descent.

Bruno Mars in Ascension

New York Times
2010-10-05

Jon Caramanica

When history books address the pop seismology of the early 21st century, a chapter will have to be set aside for a discussion of the Sheraton Waikiki in the late 1980s. That’s where Bruno Mars, then just a few years old, performed as part of a tourist-trap family band, singing doo-wop, Elvis and more. He even made a cameo as a baby Elvis in the 1992 film “Honeymoon in Vegas,” appearing as a bouffant-haired tyke in a blue jumpsuit, with a fierce hip shake.

“I can’t believe that’s my past,” Mr. Mars said in an interview before his first solo New York performance, a sold-out show at the Bowery Ballroom in late August. “I wish I could tell you me and my rock band were traveling around, strung out. No, we were a family band. Straight Partridge Family.”

Still, there’s something to be said for learning a wide repertory at a young age, and also to feel no shame in people-pleasing. It’s made Mr. Mars, 24, one of the most versatile and accessible singers in pop, with a light, soul-influenced voice that’s an easy fit in a range of styles, a universal donor. There’s nowhere he doesn’t belong…

…But his placelessness hasn’t always been an asset. Born Peter Gene Hernandez, Mr. Mars is primarily of Puerto Rican and Filipino descent, which proved to be an obstacle in his industry dealings. “I was always like, girls like me in school, how come these labels don’t like me?” he said.

An early record deal with Motown went nowhere. Race was always a concern. “Sadly, maybe that’s the way you’ve got to look at it,” he said. “I guess if I’m a product, either you’re chocolate, you’re vanilla or you’re butterscotch. You can’t be all three.” He named his debut EP, released this year, “It’s Better if You Don’t Understand”—a taunt.

“Don’t look at me—listen to my damn music,” he said. “I’m not a mutant.”…

Read the entire article here.

Hybrid Identities: Theoretical and Empirical Examinations

Brill Publishing
2008
412 pages
Hardback ISBN-13: 978 90 04 17039 1; ISBN-10: 90 04 17039 1

Edited by

Keri E. Iyall Smith, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Suffolk University, Boston, Massachusetts

Patricia Leavy, Associate Professor of Sociology
Stonehill College, Easton, Massachusetts

Combining theoretical and empirical pieces, this book explores the emerging theoretical work seeking to describe hybrid identities while also illustrating the application of these theories in empirical research. The sociological perspective of this volume sets it apart. Hybrid identities continue to be predominant in minority or immigrant communities, but these are not the only sites of hybridity in the globalized world. Given a compressed world and a constrained state, identities for all individuals and collective selves are becoming more complex. The hybrid identity allows for the perpetuation of the local, in the context of the global. This book presents studies of types of hybrid identities: transnational, double consciousness, gender, diaspora, the third space, and the internal colony.

Contributors include: Keri E. Iyall Smith, Patrick Gun Cuninghame, Judith R. Blau, Eric S. Brown, Fabienne Darling-Wolf, Salvador Vidal-Ortiz, Melissa F. Weiner, Bedelia Nicola Richards, Keith Nurse, Roderick Bush, Patricia Leavy, Trinidad Gonzales, Sharlene Hesse-Biber, Emily Brooke Barko, Tess Moeke-Maxwell, Helen Kim, Bedelia Nicola Richards, Helene K. Lee, Alex Frame, Paul Meredith, David L. Brunsma and Daniel J. Delgado.

Table of Contents

List of Figures
Acknowledgements

I. THEORETICAL STUDY OF HYBRIDITY
1. Hybrid Identities: Theoretical Examinations, Keri E. Iyall Smith
2. Hybridity, Transnationalism, and Identity in the US-Mexican Borderlands, Patrick Gun Cuninghame
3. DuBois and Diasporic Identity: The Veil and the Unveiling Project, Judith R. Blau and Eric S. Brown
4. Disturbingly Hybrid or Distressingly Patriarchal? Gender Hybridity in a Global Environment, Fabienne Darling-Wolf
5. Gender and the Hybrid Identity: On Passing Through, Salvador Vidal-Ortiz
6. Bridging the Theoretical Gap: The Diasporized Hybrid in Sociological Theory, Melissa F. Weiner and Bedelia Nicola Richards
7. Geoculture and Popular Culture: Carnivals, Diasporas, and Hybridities in the Americas, Keith Nurse
8. The Internal Colony Hybrid: Reformulating Structure, Culture, and Agency, Roderick Bush

PART II. EMPIRICAL STUDIES ON HYBRID IDENTITIES
9. An Introduction to Empirical Examinations of Hybridity, Patricia Leavy
10. Conquest, Colonization, and Borderland Identities: The World of Ethnic Mexicans in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, 1900–1930, Trinidad Gonzales
11. Neither Black nor White Enough – and Beyond Black or White: The Lived Experiences of African-American Women at Predominantly White Colleges, Sharlene Hesse-Biber and Emily Brooke Barko
12. Creating Place from Confl icted Space: Bi/Multi Racial Māori Women’s Inclusion within New Zealand Mental Health Services, Tess Moeke-Maxwell
13. Women Occupying the Hybrid Space: Second-Generation Korean-American Women Negotiating Choices Regarding Work and Family, Helen Kim
14. Hybrid Identities in the Diaspora: Second-Generation West Indians in Brooklyn, Bedelia Nicola Richards
15. Hybridized Korean Identities: The Making of Korean-Americans and Joseonjok, Helene K. Lee
16. One Plus One Equals Three: Legal Hybridity in Aotearoa/New Zealand, Alex Frame and Paul Meredith
17. Occupying Third Space: Hybridity and Identity Matrices in the Multiracial Experience, David L. Brunsma and Daniel J. Delgado

Author Biographies
References
Index

“I am an African American,” says Duana Fullwiley, “but in parts of Africa, I am white.” To do fieldwork as a medical anthropologist in Senegal, she says, “I take a plane to France, a seven- to eight-hour ride. My race changes as I cross the Atlantic. There, I say, ‘Je suis noire,’ and they say, ‘Oh, okay—métisse—you are mixed.’ Then I fly another six to seven hours to Senegal, and I am white. In the space of a day, I can change from African American, to métisse, to tubaab [Wolof for “white/European”]. This is not a joke, or something to laugh at, or to take lightly. It is the kind of social recognition that even two-year-olds who can barely speak understand. ‘Tubaab,’ they say when they greet me.” —Duana Fullwiley

“Race in a Genetic World,” Harvard Magazine, Volume 110, Number 5 (May-June, 2008): http://harvardmagazine.com/2008/05/race-in-a-genetic-world.html.

We Are a People: Narrative and Multiplicity in Constructing Ethnic Identity

Temple University Press
January 2000
304 pages
7×10
5 tables 5 figures
Paper EAN: 978-1-56639-723-0; ISBN: 1-56639-723-5

edited by Paul Spickard, Professor of History
University of California, Santa Barbara

and W. Jeffrey Burroughs, Dean of Math and Sciences and Professor of Psychology
Brigham Young University, Hawaii

As the twentieth century closes, ethnicity stands out as a powerful force for binding people together in a sense of shared origins and worldview. But this emphasis on a people’s uniqueness can also develop into a distorted rationale for insularity, inter-ethnic animosity, or, as we have seen in this century, armed conflict. Ethnic identity clearly holds very real consequences for individuals and peoples, yet there is not much agreement on what exactly it is or how it is formed.

The growing recognition that ethnicity is not fixed and inherent, but elastic and constructed, fuels the essays in this collection. Regarding identity as a dynamic, on-going, formative and transformative process, We Are a People considers narrative—the creation and maintenance of a common story—as the keystone in building a sense of peoplehood. Myths of origin, triumph over adversity, migration, and so forth, chart a group’s history, while continual additions to the larger narrative stress moving into the future as a people.

Still, there is more to our stories as individuals and groups. Most of us are aware that we take on different roles and project different aspects of ourselves depending on the situation. Some individuals who have inherited multiple group affiliations from their families view themselves not as this or that but all at once. So too with ethnic groups. The so-called hyphenated Americans are not the only people in the world to recognize or embrace their plurality. This relatively recent acknowledgment of multiplicity has potentially wide implications, destabilizing the limited (and limiting) categories inscribed in, for example, public policy and discourse on race relations.

We Are a People is a path-breaking volume, boldly illustrating how ethnic identity works in the real world.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
1. We are a People – Paul Spickard and W. Jeffrey Burroughs

Part I: The Indeterminacy of Ethnic Categories: The Problem and A Solution
2. Multiple Ethnicities and Identity Choices in the United States – Mary C. Waters
3. That’s the Story of Our Life – Stephen Cornell

Part II: Construction of Ethnic Narratives: Migrant Ethnicities
4. Black Immigrants in the United States – Violet M. Johnson
5. The Children of Samoan Migrants in New Zealand – Cluny Macpherson and La’avasa Macpherson

Part III: Ethnicities of Dominated Indigenous Peoples
6. Narrating to the Center of Power in the Marshall Islands – Phillip H. McArthur
7. Discovered Identities and American-Indian Supratribalism – Stephen Cornell
8. Racialist Responses to Black Athletic Achievement – Patrick B. Miller
9. I’m Not a Chileno! Rapa Nui Identity – Max E. Stanton and Andrés Edmunds P.

Part IV: Emerging Multiethnic Narratives
10. Multiracial Identity in Brazil and the U.S. – G. Reginald Daniel
11. Mixed Laughter – Darby Li Po Price
12. Punjabi Mexican American Experiences of Multiethnicity –  Darby Li Po Price

Part V: Theoretical Reflections
13. Rethinking Racial Identity Development – Maria P. P. Root
14. The Continuing Significance of Race – Lori Pierce
15. What Are the Functions of Ethnic Identity? – Cookie White Stephan and Walter G. Stephan
16. Ethnicity, Multiplicity, and Narrative – W. Jeffrey Burroughs and Paul Spickard

Read an excerpt of chapter 1 here.