Mixed Race Studies

Carlos Hoyt 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: #204 – Carlos Hoyt
When: Wednesday, 2011-05-04, 21:00Z (17:00 EDT, 14:00 PDT)

Carlos Hoyt

Carlos Hoyt is the creator the site Race Trancenders which is created for individuals (like himself) who are commonly ascribed to the black or African American race, but who do not subscribe to any notion of race whatsoever.  He is also a researcher seeking to provide a voice for other individuals.

To read more about his study, click here.

Secret Asian Woman

Stage and Studio
with Dmae Roberts
2011-03-03

Independent Producer Dmae Roberts presents Secret Asian Woman, a half-hour personal exploration of identity and Mixed Race. Through her personal story, Dmae charts four decades of a search by multiracial peoples for a name. The politics of calling out racism has changed through the years as has identification. In this half-hour documentary, Dmae talks with other Mixed Race Asian women with identities not easily recognized and addresses with humor the complexities involved in even discussing race.

Secret Asian Woman was produced by Dmae Roberts, with editorial consultation by Catherine Stifter and damali ayo. Original music by Clark Salisbury. Additional music by Teresa Enrico and Portland Taiko. Interviews with Velina Hasu Houston, Rainjita Yang Geesler, Julie Thi Underhill and Patti Duncan. Funded by the Regional Arts and Culture Council Individual Artist program. You can learn more by going to Dmae Roberts’ website.

To listen to the broadcast, click here.

We have noted important analytical distinctions that need to be taken into account when addressing the related but separate social phenomena of intermarriage, miscegenation, multiracial identity, multiracial social movements, and race-mixture ideologies. Whereas all these topics deal, on some level, with racial-boundary crossing, the implications for the boundaries themselves and the racialized social structure are not consistent. For example, intermarriage may be an indicator of healthy race relations, but this is certainly not the case with miscegenation, especially in a context of high racial inequality. Whereas intermarriage has the potential to directly challenge, shift, or loosen racial boundaries, the informal practices of miscegenation are less likely to do so.

Edward E. Telles and Christina A. Sue, “Race Mixture: Boundary Crossing in Comparative Perspective,” Annual Revuew of Sociology, Volume 35 (2009): 129-146. DOI: 10.1146/annurev.soc.34.040507.134657.

Has perception of biracial women changed in modern times?

SMU Daily Campus
Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas
2011-05-03

Victoria Ahmadi

As a biracial woman myself, I find it essential that society become better informed of the life-altering consequences that biracial individuals are forced to deal with.

While the media’s perceptions of identity shift, young women of mixed racial backgrounds are quickly becoming much less of the minority in society. America is in the midst of a demographic shift driven by a change in social views, immigration, and intermarriage. For some time in history, the question of “What Are You?” was much less complicated than it is today. Biracial women struggle with the idea of truly belonging to either race.

According to data collected by the Census in 2008 and 2009, those categorized as “mixed race” are steadily becoming one of the fastest growing demographic groups. In 2010, it has been recorded that 2.9 percent of Americans consider themselves as being two or more races. There has been a 32 percent increase in those in this category since 2000.

What is the significance of these statistics? The growing trend of biracial women feed into the growing trend of a number of other things: including the way the media defines beauty, politics, and religion.

Dr. Angela Gillem and Dr. Cathy Thompson’s Biracial Women in Therapy: Between the Rock of Gender and the Hard Place of Race, examines how physical appearance, cultural knowledge, and cultural stereotypes affect the experience of mixed-race women in belonging to, and being accepted within, their cultures…

The authors implies that people (women) who don’t fit into a defined racial category threaten the psychological and sociological foundations of the “we” and “they” mentality that determines so much of an individual’s social, economic, and political experience in the United States…

Read the entire article here.