Mixed Race Studies

Racial Socialization, Identity, and Adjustment in Black and Biracial Youth

National Council on Family Relations
73rd NCFR Annual Conference (“Families and the Shifting Economy”)
Rosen Centre Hotel, Orlando, Florida
2011-11-16 through 2011-11-19

Session ID# 330
2011-11-08, 15:30-17:30 EST (Local Time)

Chair: Annamaria Csizmadia, Assistant Professor, Human Development & Family Studies
University of Connecticut, Stamford

Ethnic Identity Development and its Association With Behavioral Functioning During Early Childhood

Catherine Anicama
Departments of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (Inst for Prevension Sci)
Langone Medical Center
New York University

Esther J. Calzada, Assistant Professor
Departments of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (Inst for Prevension Sci) and Psychiatry
Langone Medical Center
New York University

An Examination of Biracial Identity Development Using a Qualitative Research Design

Shannon Bert, Professor of Human Relations
University of Oklahoma

Racial Socialization, Identification, and Black-White Biracial Children’s Behavior Trajectories

Annamaria Csizmadia

This symposium examines ethnic identity, socialization, and adjustment among Black and part-Black youth. The first paper investigates ethnic identity, socialization, and behavior problems among Black and Afro-Caribbean elementary-age children. Using a cross-sectional qualitative design, the second paper investigates personal and contextual predictors of Black-White biracial youth’s biracial identity development. The third paper uses growth modeling to study racial identification, cultural socialization, racial discussions, and Black-White children’s internalizing and externalizing behavior trajectories K through 5th grade. Together these papers highlight the dynamic interplay between ethno-racial identity, socialization practices, and adjustment in mono-and multiracial Black youth between the elementary and adult years.

For more information, click here.

PSY 519B: Social Psychology of Biracial Identity

Antioch University, Los Angeles

This workshop explores the idea of race as a social construction and its psychological impact on individuals, particularly as it relates to the concept of a biracial or multiracial identity in the U.S. Among other issues, we will investigate how a bi- or multi-racial identity develops for individuals and how it evolves historically. Students must have access to The AULA email system as some online postings and readings are required.

For more information, click here.

Victoria Bynum 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 Jennifer Frappier
Website: TalkShoe™ (Keywords: Mixed Chicks)
Episode: #220-Victoria Bynum
When: Wednesday, 2011-08-10, 21:00Z (17:00 EDT, 16:00 CDT, 14:00 PDT)

Victoria E. Bynum, Emeritus Professor of History
Texas State University, San Marcos

Professor Victoria Bynum, a graduate of the University of California, San Diego, is a historian of gender, race, and class relations in the Civil War Era South. Her blog, Renegade South, and her numerous publications feature true stories about mixed-race families, anti-Confederate guerrillas, and other unconventional Southerners.

Listen to the episode here or download it here (00:35:59, 14.4 MB).

Selected Bibliography

• The Long Shadow of the Civil War: Southern Dissent and Its Legacies. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010.
• The Free State of Jones: Mississippi’s Longest Civil War.  The Fred W. Morrison Series in Southern Studies.  Chapel Hill & London: The University of North Carolina Press, 2001.  xvi + 316 pp. Tables, maps, notes, bibliography, and index. (hardcover).  ISBN 0-878-2636-7.
• “Race and the ‘One Drop Rule’ in the Post-Reconstruction South,” Renegade South: Histories of Unconventional Southerners on March 17, 2009, http://renegadesouth.wordpress.com/2009/03/17/race-and-the-one-drop-rule-in-the-post-reconstruction-south/.
• “‘White Negroes’ in Segregated Mississippi: Miscegenation, Racial Identity, and the Law,” The Journal of Southern History, Volume 64, Number 2 (May, 1998): 247-276.

Conversations with Artists… Between Races

In the Mix: Conversations with Artists… Between Races
Public Radio International
2009-01-31

Dmae Roberts, Host

Actor Lou Diamond Phillips, poet Robert Krimi, musican Phillip Blanchett and others talk about what it means to be of Mixed Race.

Mixed Race is the fastest growing minority in America. The arts have opened up new ideas through colorblind casting, fusion in music, the visual arts and literature. Just as each racial/ethnic group influences and changes artistic styles and movements, Mixed Race artists help to create fusion and bridges cultural and traditional differences.

Hosted and produced by Dmae Roberts, “In the Mix: Conversations with Artists… Between Races” is a personal exploration of Mixed Race. This hour-long documentary explores how artists and performers of Mixed Race deal with issues of identity, history and perspective, and how their art reflects these issues in different ways.

The idea that people can be of many races and also claim any of them, that our President is mixed race and African-American, is a stumbling block to many people’s understanding of what it means to be a person of color.

Through the voices of artists who have dedicated their lives to building bridges and bringing to light interracial issues and themes, Roberts takes listeners on a journey to understanding what it means to be of Mixed Race…

Download the interview here (00:59:00, 27MB).

Roundtable with Fanshen Cox, Dr. Ulli Ryder, and Dr. Marcia Dawkins

Blogtalk Radio
Tuesday, 2011-08-09, 22:00Z (18:00 EDT)

Michelle McCrary, Host
Is That Your Child?

Fanshen Cox, Actress, Educator, Founder and Producer of the Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival, co-host Mixed Chicks Chat

Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Visiting Scholar
Brown University

Ulli K. Ryder, Visiting Scholar
Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America
Brown University

From the New York Times to CNN to Hollywood actresses, it seems that everyone is talking about mixed race people and interracial relationships. Amidst the celebratory tones of much of this coverage and ill-advised celebrations of a “post-racial” America,  there seems to be a slow-burning backlash. 

The mainstream’s problematic framing of mixed race identity and of the “mixed experience” seems to be stoking the fires of this discontent.  In this podcast roundtable hosted by ITYC, we hope analyze the mainstream coverage of mixedness and multiracial identity to find out where it goes off the rails and what, if anything, it gets right.  This podcast roundtable is only a small piece of the kind of meaningful exchange we hope that people will continue to have about the issue both on and offline.

Each of our panelists will share their personal experiences with the mainstream treatment of multiracial/mixed identity as well as any backlash they’ve experienced.   They’ll also offer some strategies for having more nuanced, contextual  conversations about “the mixed experience.”

To download the audio of the roundtable discussion, click here (01:01:12, 14MB).