Mixed Race Studies

Race and Mixed Race

University of Michigan
College of Literature, Science, and the Arts
American Culture
AMCULT 311 –  Topics in Ethnic Studies
Section 001
Fall 2011

Evelyn Azeeza Alsultany, Assistant Professor of American Culture

This course examines how conceptions of race and mixed race have been historically shaped through law, science, and popular culture. In addition to examining the ways in which race has been socially constructed and how its meanings have changed over time, the course also explores the politics of interracial marriage, contemporary mixed race identities, and cross-racial adoption. Through an examination of historical, sociological, and autobiographical texts, the course explores a variety of themes including: census classifications, affirmative action, notions of colorblindness, questions of appearance, “authenticity,” community belonging, and the debates around the mixed race movement. Course requirements include posting a weekly discussion question, two in-class exams, and a final group project.

For some, question of race a struggle

The Providence Journal
Providence, Rhode Island
2011-04-05

Karen Lee Ziner, Journal Staff Writer

Face to face with the question of racial identity, Providence lawyer Kas R. DeCarvalho chose a write-in option under “Other” in the 2010 census form.

“I put in mixed and called it a day,” said DeCarvalho, whose father is from Angola in southwest Africa, and whose mother is an American of Scottish-Irish descent.

“It has been my entire life, something of a struggle to figure out exactly what to do,” DeCarvalho said. “Only in recent years have any sorts of government forms offered an option, mixed race. Until then, you had to pick one or the other, or neither.”

He added, “I could have put white, and I suppose I could have [also] filled in black. I identify as a black American. That’s how I’m perceived but, culturally, I’m much more complicated than that. I don’t think there’s really a way to encapsulate that in some sort of census document.”

DeCarvalho is one of 9 million people, or 2.9 percent of the population, who selected or indicated more than one race on their 2010 Census forms, a roughly 32-percent increase since 2000. Some 3.3 percent of Rhode Islanders did so, slightly above the national average. He said, “I wish we lived in a world where we didn’t have to fill in anything.”

DeCarvalho isn’t alone…

Read the entire article here.

Living in the Borderlands

EthicsDaily.com
2007-01-19

Miguel A. De La Torre, Professor of Social Ethics
Iliff School of Theology, Denver, Colorado

De La Torre La Torre says U.S.-Mexico border isn’t only barrier facing Latinos.

From Tijuana on the Pacific Ocean to Matamoros on the Gulf of Mexico runs a 1,833-mile border separating the United States from Latin America. Around the halfway point on this border is Ciudad Juárez. Flowing southeastwardly from Ciudad Juárez to Matamoros is the Rio Grande, literally the Big River.

Ironically, the word “grande” (big) is a misnomer. The river is narrow and shallow in several places, allowing for easy crossing for those who are impoverished and dream of simply surviving in “el Norte,” the North. 
 
The rest of the border, from Ciudad Juárez toward the west, comprises of little more than a line drawn upon the ground. Part of this line is demarcated by a 15 foot-high wall. Landing strips used during the First Iraqi War were recycled in 1994 by Immigration and Naturalization Service to construct this wall.
 
The hope of INS was to stem the flow of mainly Mexican immigrants through the San Diego area and Nogales, Ariz. But the flow continues, only now through miles of hazardous deserts where many fall victims to the elements.
 
This artificial line is more than just a border between two countries. Some Latino/as have called it a scar caused by where the First and Third World rub-up against each other…

…But the borderlands are more than just a geographical reality–they also symbolize the existential reality of U.S. Latina/os. Most Hispanics, regardless as to where they are located or how they or their ancestors found themselves in the United States, live on the borders.

Borders separating Latina/os from other Americans exist in every state, every city and almost every community, regardless as to how far away they may be from the 1,833 mile line. Borders are as real in Chicago, Ill., Topeka, Kan., Seattle, Wash., or Chapel Hill, N.C., as they are in Chula Vista, Calif., Douglas, Ariz., or El Paso, Texas.

To be a U.S. Hispanic is to constantly live on the border—that is, the border that separates privilege from disenfranchisement, that separates power from marginalization, and that separates whiteness from “colored.” Most U.S. Hispanics, regardless as to where they live, exist in the borderlands.
 
To live on the borders throughout the U.S. means separation from the benefits and fruits society has to offer its inhabitants. Exclusion mainly occurs because Hispanics are conceived by the dominant Euroamerican culture as being inferior. They are perceived as inferior partly due to the pervasive race-conscious U.S. culture. For centuries Euroamericans have been taught to equate nonwhites, specifically mixed-race persons, as inferior. Seen derogatorily as “half-breeds,” a mixture of races and ethnicities (Caucasian, African, Amerindian or any combination thereof) means limited access to education and social services.

But while U.S. Hispanics are treated with equal disdain, it would be an error to assume the U.S. Latina/os are some type of monolithic group. Quite the contrary, Hispanics are a mestizaje (mixture) or combination of ethnicities, a mestizaje of races, and a mestizaje of cultures…

Read the entire article here.

The One Drop Rule: How Black Is “Black?”

Psychology Today
Blogs: In the Eye of the Beholder: The science of social perception
2011-04-07

Jason Plaks, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Psychology
University of Toronto

The perception of race is subjective.

Many biracial people publicly identify themselves with only one race (for example, either black or white, but not both). President Obama raised eyebrows when he checked only one box on his 2010 Census form: “Black, African American, or Negro.” Halle Berry (who is biracial), in discussing her one-quarter black daughter, Nahla, has stated, “I feel she’s black. I’m black and I’m her mother, and I believe in the one-drop theory.” When pressed on why Nahla, who is 75 percent white, should be considered black, she conceded that Nahla may ultimately have some choice in the matter, but added, “I think, largely, that will be based on how the world identifies her.” In other words, according to Berry, regardless of how she may choose to self-identify, as long as she has “one drop” of black blood, the world will see her as black.

Is this true? Clearly, there is a good deal of idiosyncratic variation from person to person in terms of how prototypical they are of a particular race. But if you average across many people, what do observers generally view as the threshold where one race ends and the other race begins?

A team of researchers led by Arnold Ho of Harvard University recently examined this question by using a face-morphing computer program. In one study, participants were presented with faces on a computer screen. They were told that each time they pressed the “continue” button the face currently on the screen would morph slightly (in reality, 1 percent increments) into a different race. They were further instructed to keep pressing “continue” until the exact moment they felt that the person on the screen now belonged to another race…

…The legal definition of race membership has a checkered history. Although the precise figure differed from state to state, many U.S. states outlined specific fractions of blackness a person needed to possess in order to be considered legally black (and therefore ineligible for rights and privileges that were exclusive to whites). Similar rules existed for Native Americans. Nowadays, the tables have turned in some respects. Because in some cases being black or Native American can be an advantage (for example, some affirmative action policies), many are motivated to see the threshold lowered so that the category is more inclusive, not less. In other words, we see some movement in the direction back toward the one-drop rule…

Read the entire article here.

Census Says There Are More Biracial People, But That Depends On Your Definition of Mixed

The Black Snob
2011-04-07

Danielle C. Belton

Since 2000, the population of biracial and multiracial people has boomed by 50 percent according to 2010 Census data. The New York Times recently ran a story saying that because of changes in Census reporting, more people reported they are more than one race, but has our multiracial population actually boomed or is it just that both our government and society are more accepting of multiracial people?

There have always been biracial and multiracial people, especially among America’s most common mix—African American and white American, which makes up more than 20 percent of the mixed race population. And you could easily argue that those African Americans mixing with whites were mixed themselves, the results of other mixed African Americans who were part of that original mix of black slave and white slavemaster. But no one ever called themselves mixed as in America, post-Reconstruction, you were just black.

In America, people understood the concept of mixed race until the exact minute slavery ended. Many Southern states considered you to be white if you were only 1/8 or a quarter black. Entire groups of mixed race people were at times absolved into the majority white culture. There were such concepts of mulatto, quadroon and octaroon. There were Creoles and free people of color and various social groups and class differences among those with some African bloodline. But once slavery ended, anyone who had black blood was isolated from society in a brown muddle of dreaded otherness…

…Because of this, most black Americans are mixed—with something—from somewhere at some time. But the mix happened a long time ago and generations of mixed black people were only marrying or having children with other people of African descent, hence why a black Americans’ looks can be as diverse as Clarence Thomas and Thurgood Marshall.

But I realize that this is confusing to people who come from places where there were no such “black or white” divisions. Most Americans, black and white, struggle with the concept of mixed race, even in the face of so many mixed race people self-defining. Even the President, who describes himself as a black man of mixed race, sometimes deals with the irony of being called someone who hates white people (even though he was raised by them) or that he’s denying his whiteness (in a country that constantly tells biracial black people they must do this because they sure as hell aren’t “accepting” that whiteness)…

Read the entire article here.

On being mixed-race

New Statesman
2011-04-07

Samira Shackle

I grew up thinking of myself as equally English and Pakistani, writes Samira Shackle. Was I wrong?

When I meet people for the first time, it’s not unusual for them to ask, “Where are you from?” If I reply, “London,” they say, “Oh, no, where are you from from,” or, “Where are you actually from?” It’s a polite way of seeking an explanation for my colour. Most of the time, I don’t find it offensive—I am half Pakistani and half English and look racially ambiguous.

If you are mixed-race (as one in ten British children now is), you don’t slot neatly into racial or national categories. The conversation above tends to continue, “Do you go back home often?”—which feels strange, as until now I have visited Pakistan only as a baby and “home” is Queen’s Park in north London. Having one English parent makes you as much English as anything else—arguably more English than not, if you live here—yet most people’s default position is to define you by your difference.

It isn’t necessarily a bad thing to show interest in someone’s background. It becomes corrosive only when it is tied to a non-inclusive sense of Englishness that is hostile to “the other” and suggests that, because you have a mixed heritage, you cannot share ownership of the place where you live…

Read the entire article here.