Mixed Race Studies

Slimy subjects? Barack Obama, Mixed-Race Metaphors & Neoliberal Multiculturalism

The Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation
University of Hull
Oriel Chambers
27 High Street, Hull, HU1 1NE [Map]
Thursday, 2010-12-02, 16:30-18:00Z

Daniel McNeil, Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies
University of Newcastle

Public Lecture.  For more information, click here.

University of Kent research reveals diversity of multiracial identification and experience in Britain today

University of Kent
Press Office
2010-11-04

Research from the University has revealed that while there is evidence of a growing consciousness and interest in mixed race identities among 18-25 year olds in Britain today, Britain cannot yet speak of a coherent or unified mixed group or experience.

The research, which was conducted by Peter Aspinall, Dr. Miri Song and Dr. Ferhana Hashem from the University’s School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research (SSPSSR), set out to explore the ways in which mixed race young adults thought about and understood their ethnic and racial identifications.

Key Findings Include:…

• …In a ‘forced choice’ question (where respondents were forced to choose the group, or ‘race’, which was most important to them), many were not able (or unwilling) to prioritise only one group. This suggests the growing prominence of ‘mixed’, hybrid identification. Furthermore, some respondents who refused to choose claimed to transcend racial identification and categorization completely.
• In general, the identity options perceived and experienced by Black/White mixed young people were more constrained than those of other mixes involving ‘White’, such as ‘Chinese and White’ , ‘South Asian and White’, and ‘Arab and White’. Many, though not all, part-Black respondents reported that they were seen as monoracially Black. This finding is interesting, since Britain has never had a codified ‘one-drop rule’ (in which anyone with a known Black ancestor was known as Black) as in the USA. The differences were statistically significant…

Read the entire article here.

There is a smugness associated with this valorization of contemporary racial mixture that is palpable if one is not party to the celebration, a smugness that is a complement to the rejection of the mulatto of history that I considered toward the end of Chapter 6.  It is in that regard a double insult to American mulattoes today and to their voiceless precursors of past decades and centuries.  I am therefore moved to provide a name for what has thus far been only a feeling, something I have responded to and reacted against, but until now has remained nameless.  I therefore introduce the concept of miscentrism, by which I mean an ideology that holds multiraciality to be superior to all monoraces with the exception, naturally, of whites.  This exception is necessary to note, for the American Multiracial Identity Movement is invested at a deep philosophical level in the perpetuation and the veneration of whiteness as purity and superiority.  In a perverse way, the American Multiracial Identity Movement’s clear stances of mulattophobia and Negrophobia are counterpoised against its own miscentrism in a kind of isometric logical fallacy.

Rainier Spencer, Reproducing Race: The Paradox of Generation Mix, (Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Reinner, 2011), 167.

Race Mixture among Northeastern Brazilian Populations

American Anthropologist
Volume 64, Issue 4 (August 1962)
pages 751–759
DOI: 10.1525/aa.1962.64.4.02a00050

P. H. Saldanha
Laboratória de Genética Humana
Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil

Northeastern Brazilian populations are extremely interesting for racial studies. These populations are derived from the intermixture of Negroes, Whites (Portuguese), and Indians and seem to be very stable ethnic groups of which representatives are promptly recognizable because of their unique physical appearances. The “Nordestino” populations inhabit a very hostile region, arid almost throughout the year. Because of the poor conditions there, they often emigrate to southern regions of the country. The emigration flow of “Nordestino” is fairly organized, and migrants stay some days at the State Hostelry in São Paulo before they are directed to job centers.

About one year ago an investigation of blood groups, simple genetical traits, physical measurements, and other anthropological characteristics of “Nordestino” immigrants was initiated by two laboratories in the State of São Paulo. A preliminary report of these investigations will be published elsewhere. The present paper is concerned with some general problems of race admixture.

Read the entire article here.