Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

The election of Barack Obama sent ripples of hope throughout the United States and the international community and seeded the notion that the country had transformed itself into a postracial utopia. Meanwhile, race itself, and racism, permeated political and social arenas nationwide as the American public grappled with the question of why and how much the president’s, or anyone’s, racial and ethnic identity really mattered. This also led to pertinent discussions on the meaning and significance of race and ethnicity in 21st-century U.S. society. Though unified in our thirst for change, America was divided, not necessarily along racial lines but by where we stood on the position of the importance of race and ethnicity as a concept. Some saw racial and ethnic group divides as an important historic institution that formed the basis of a real social hierarchy; others saw these divides as a false notion and a shameful stain on the otherwise polished face of a great nation.

Both the embracing and the backlash surrounding Barack Obama made evident what were still very salient categories in our daily national discourse and experience: color, race, ethnicity, and nationality. Obama’s political opponents weren’t the only ones who called into question the president’s identity; suspicion was evident on both sides of party lines as political figures and the public evaluated their new leader. Could the new president be trusted to represent mainstream America, or would he underhandedly advance black interests? Did he embody real “American” values despite being raised in a nontraditional family by a single mother? What did it mean that the president was also viewed as part of an educated black elite: Was the president black enough? What did it mean that he was rumored to worship amid an Afrocentric congregation: Was he, perhaps, too black? As a child of an interracial marriage, should he be considered black at all? And with ties to relatives in Africa, was he really even an American?

The very public examination of the president’s identity, the dissection of his identity into distinct facets of his life experience, illustrates a critical connection between our individual and collective identities and the broader narrative on what it means to be a part of this nation, to be an American. It also made clear that while the shape and form of racial and ethnic identity today is ever changing, it plays as important and central a role in our lives today as it has in the past. It is not only the way many people in the United States define themselves, it is still very much the way in which we define one another.

Elsie Achugbue, “Introduction” in Multicultural Perspectives on Race, Ethnicity, and Identity, eds. Elizabeth Pathy Salett and Diane R. Koslow (Washington, D.C., NASW Press, 2015). http://www.naswpress.org/publications/diversity/inside/multicultural-perspectives-intro.html.

Mediating Racial Mixture

Posted in Articles, Census/Demographics, History, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, Social Science, United States on 2011-05-22 02:53Z by Steven

Mediating Racial Mixture

The Journal of Media Literacy
Volume 55, Numbers 1 & 2 (Cultural Diversity) (2008)

Carlos E. Cortés, Professor Emeritus of History
University of California, Riverside

Which one of the following names does not fit in the set? Barack Obama. Mariah Carey. Halle Berry. Tiger Woods. Ann Curry. Soledad O’Brien. Benjamin Jealous. Carlos Cortés.

Oh, that’s too easy. All of the others—a presidential candidate, a pop diva, an Oscar-winning actress, a professional golfer, two national television newspeople, and the newly-elected president of the NAACP—are visible figures of contemporary American popular culture.

But let’s try another question. What characteristic do they have in common? The answer: they are all the offspring of mixed heritages, part of a major U.S. population shift—the relentless growth of ethnically-mixed Americans.

This phenomenon has myriad implications. Not the least, it has challenged traditional U.S. categorical thinking about race and ethnicity. This includes news media conventions for racially and ethnically identifying individuals and groups (Cortés, 2000).

THE ROOTS OF MIXEDNESS

Two historical trends have converged to hypertrophy this challenge. First, the rise of interracial marriage, particularly since the 1967 Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court decision that invalidated the sixteen remaining state-level intermarriage bans. (Mildred Jeter Loving, the African-American woman whose marriage to a white man helped precipitate that landmark decision, died in May of this year.)

Second, the continuous inflow of Latin Americans. Millions are of mixed heritage and come from nations with racial systems quite different than the one that has taken root in the United States. Furthermore, by the third generation, more than half of U.S. Latinos marry non-Latinos, so their children further undermine categorical purity.

The year 2000 census illustrated the impact of these two trends. Through a set of decisions that reflected changing realities, pragmatism, compromise, and external pressure, the Census Bureau addressed mixed heritage in two ways.

First, it repeated the 1990 practice of separating Hispanic heritage (question five on the short form) from race (question six). The result—48 percent of self-identified Hispanics checked white as their racial identity, while 42 percent checked “some other race” (meaning I don’t fit into any of your racial categories).

Second, and for the first time, the 2000 census permitted respondents to indicate more than one “race.” This ended, at least temporarily, the historical “check one” practice that had forced mixed-race respondents to reject either their father or their mother.

These demographic and census category changes have contributed to scholarly dissensus, including deep disagreements over the meaning and use of such terms as “race” and “ethnicity” (Gracia, 2007). They have also raised a challenge for the American news media (Squires, 2007). How should they categorize and label mixed-heritage people?…

Read the entire article here.

Tags: Carlos Cortés, Carlos E. Cortés, The Journal of Media Literacy

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