Mixed Race Studies

Carothers McCaslin’s Progeny Tracing the Theme of Redemption Chronologically Through the Multiracial McCaslins

Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects
1999
Paper 211
pages 38-50

Christine Reiss
Western Kentucky University

William Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses (1942) is a novel that depicts the complicated family history of the McCaslins. There are primarily three branches of the family: the white, male-descended McCaslins, the white, female-descended Edmondses, and the multiracial, male-descended Beauchamps. The multiracial line of the family, the Beauchamps, are the progeny of the original McCaslin patriarch, old Carothers McCaslin. His act of miscegenation with one of his slaves produces a daughter, on whom he then fathers a son. This act of miscegenation and incest sets in motion a family line that struggles with the weight of its father’s sin. The individuals seek to live the most liberated lives that they can, given the various social constraints with which they come into contact, and by the end of the novel, they accomplish a fair measure of freedom, perhaps even redemption, from their father’s sin.

Read the entire paper here.

The role of the media in influencing social perceptions of racial relations in Brazil

Wayne State University
2006
126 pages
Publication Number: AAT 3243076
ISBN: 9780542982705

Gildasio Mendes Dos Santos

Based on the tenets of Social Identity Theory (SIT), Self-Categorization Theory (SDT), Cross-Group Relations (CGR) and Inter-Group Contact (IGC), this study examined how media programs depiction of Blacks may alter Whites and Morenos¹ self-perceptions of racial/ethnic relations. This exposure may increase or decrease Whites and Morenos prejudice against Blacks and, because of the negative depiction of the Blacks in the media, the likelihood that Morenos will see themselves as more similar to Whites than with Blacks. The factorial design format of the experiment was 2 x 2. Path analytic procedures were employed to test the extent to which the data were consistent with the hypothesized relationships among the variables. Participants were 260 graduate students from a Brazilian Central University (UCDB), who were male and female, Whites and Morenos, aged 18 to 30, enrolled in classes in the morning and evening, and representing low, middle and high economic classes.

The hypothesis tested suggested that video (induction) has a statistically significant effect on White attitudes towards Blacks, and the path model accounts for the variance in the relationship between video portrayal, Attitudes Towards Blacks (ATB), Whites/Morenos Similarities (WMS), and Moreno Single and Dual Identity (MSDI). Implications for the study of the effect of television on racial relations are discussed.

¹ Moreno is a term for a mixed-race Brazilian. In practice, the word refers primarily to Brazilians of mixed Black and White race (Wikipedia).

Purchase the dissertation here.

International Perspectives on Racial and Ethnic Mixedness and Mixing

Routledge
2012-05-25
224 pages
Hardback ISBN: 978-0-415-59804-0

Edited by

Suki Ali, Senior Lecturer of Sociology
London School of Economics and Political Science

Chamion Cabellero, Senior Research Fellow
Social Capital Research Group
London South Bank University

Rosalind Edwards, Professor of Sociology
University of Southampton

Miri Song, Professor of Sociology
University of Kent

People from a ‘mixed’ racial and ethnic background, and people partnering and parenting across different racial and ethnic backgrounds, are increasingly visible internationally and often construed in diametrically opposed ways. On the one hand, images of racial and ethnic diversity are posed in opposition to unity and solidarity, creating a crisis of cohesive social trust. On the other hand, there are assertions that the portrayals of segregation and conflict ignore the reality of ongoing interactions between a mix of minority and majority racial, ethnic and religious cultures, where multiculture is an ordinary, unremarkable, feature of everyday social life.

This interdisciplinary volume brings internationally well-respected researchers together to explore the different contexts and concepts underpinning discussions about mixedness and mixing. Moving beyond pathologically focused research about confused identities and a dualistic black-white conception of mixedness, the book includes chapters on:

• Multiraciality and race classification
• Mixed race couples
• Mixedness in everyday life
• Mixed race politics

International Perspectives on Racial and Ethnic Mixedness and Mixing develops theoretical perspectives and presents intellectually shaped empirical evidence that can deal with complexity and normalcy in order to move the debate onto more fruitful grounds. It is an important book for students and scholars of race and ethnicity.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction / Suki Ali, Chamion Caballero, Rosalind Edwards and Miri Song
2. Multiraciality and census classification in global perspective / Ann Morning
3. Mixed race across time and place: an international perspective / Ilan Katz
4. Scaling diversity: mixed-race couples, segregation and urban America / Steven Holloway
5. The geography of mixedness in England and Wales / Charlie Owen
6. From ‘Draughtboard Alley’ to ‘Brown Britain’: the ordinariness of mixedness in British life / Chamion Caballero
7. How mixedness is understood and experienced in everyday life / Peter Aspinall and Miri Song
8. Finding value on a council estate in Nottingham: voices of white working class women / Lisa McKenzie
9. How to find mixed people in quantitative datasets / Anne Unterreiner
10. When ethnicity became an important family issue in Slovenia / Mateja Sedmak
11. Same difference? Developing a critical methodological stance in critical mixed race studies / Minelle Mahtani
12. Mixed race politics / Suki Ali

He speaks in your voice: American.

arts & sciences
Boston College
Fall 2009

Tricia Brick

Gene Andrew Jarrett began his 2006 book Deans and Truants with a deceptively simple question: What is African American literature? The term, after all, refers not merely to the subject matter of the works it describes but to literature that both represents the African American experience and is written by authors who are themselves black. But what, then, of black authors who have written works without black characters? Or of those who are of mixed race? “You can’t take this question for granted, because it’s at the heart of so many questions of human identity and, in particular, race,” says Jarrett, an associate professor of English.

The editor of such books as African American Literature Beyond Race: An Alternative Reader and The New Negro: Readings on Race, Representation, and African American Culture, 1892–1938 (with Harvard’s Henry Louis Gates, Jr.), Jarrett has spent his career studying racial representation in American literature—in particular, how African Americans have been understood both as characters in and as authors of literary works over the last two centuries. His Deans and Truants looks at black authors throughout American history who have used literature to challenge beliefs about race that were accepted as truths in their day.

And in his forthcoming book Representing the Race: The Politics of African American Literature from Jefferson to Obama, Jarrett examines the political implications of African American literature—from the role that Phillis Wheatley’s poetry played in Thomas Jefferson’s disparagement of African American political unity to the role that Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father has had in shaping the bipartisan, pragmatic political culture of his presidency…

Read the entire article here.

Being Brown (episode 22)

Hapa Happy Hour: A lively discussion and celebration of the mixed heritage experience.
2011-07-22

The ladies discuss standards of beauty and “white” privilege.

Download the episode (00:22:28) here.

TV Review: Mixed Race Britain – Mixed Britannia

BioNews
Number 630 (2011-10-24)

Anoushka Shepherd

Mixed Race Britain: Mixed Britannia, BBC2, 6-20 October 2011, Presented by George Alagiah

I am mixed race, and thereby a member the fastest growing ethnic minority in the UK. My British dad met my Sri Lankan mum while travelling in the 1970s. They married and settled in Manchester where I grew up. And although I was definitely alive to the fact that their marriage was a joining of two very different cultures, I had no idea of the deep and contentious history of mixed relationships in this country.

In this three-part documentary, George Alagiah recounts the largely untold story of mixed race Britain and the many love stories that overcame extreme social hardship to create it…

…In summary, all three programmes are packed with interviews and are rich in photographs and footage from the archives. This is a very real and intimate recollection of the history of this country told in the refreshingly honest words of those who were there. All the stories told are different, interesting and moving in their own ways…

Read the entire review here.

Book review: What’s the use of race? Modern governance and the biology of difference

BioNews
Number 634 (2011-11-21)

Dr. Rachael Panizzo

Decoding the human genome has revealed details of our evolution and patterns of migration across the world. The study of genetic diversity between ethnic groups can help explain the ways in which race influences our biology and susceptibility to disease. It promises to deliver a new era of personalised medicine, where an individual’s unique DNA profile is used to make predictions about their future health; where specialised drugs are tailored to individual patients, based in part on their genetic ancestry.

But what do we mean by ‘race’, exactly? Is race a relevant biological or medical category, and how is it defined in practice?

These issues are considered in the collection of essays What’s the use of race? Modern governance and the biology of difference, edited by Dr Ian Whitmarsh of the University of California San Francisco, and Dr David Jones at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The contributors explore the use of race in biomedical research and some of the emerging practical applications in medicine and forensic science. Their diverse and sometimes conflicting perspectives result in an engaging book that highlights the complexity of the issue.
 
Genetics has become the foundation of a new ‘biocitizenship’, where it is our civic duty to know and share our own genetic information and engage with our health at a molecular level. Common genetic make-up replaces common social experience, and group identities are carved along lines of shared genetic traits, ‘reinterpreting existing political identities and creating new ones’, says Professor Dorothy Roberts, from Northwestern University. Social and political categories of difference—such as gender or race…

…In the medical setting, subtle statistical differences are often interpreted as blanket differences between races, and individual patients are assumed to reflect the average characteristics of their race. But Jay Kaufman, associate professor of epidemiology at McGill University, and Professor Richard Cooper, of Loyola University, Chicago, demonstrate that in practice, a patient’s ethnic identity adds little to the diagnosis or prognosis of disease and is rarely medically relevant.

The essays of Professor Jonathan Kahn (Hamline University), and Pamela Sankar, associate professor of bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania emphasise how embedded racial categories are in forensic science, giving examples of DNA fingerprinting and phenotyping. Originally, racial information was used in DNA fingerprinting technology to improve accuracy, but as it has improved substantially, Professor Kahn argues it is now superfluous, irrelevant, and risks perpetuating racial stereotypes – ‘conflating race, genes and violent crime’…

…Should race be used at all in medical research? Many authors argue that its inclusion reifies the concept of race as a fundamental human characteristic. But Dr Kaufmann, Professor Cooper, and Harvard School of Public Health Professor Nancy Krieger suggest race does have a place in biomedical research, as a social category—including information about race or ethnicity is a way of documenting health inequalities, which would otherwise be invisible and ignored….

Read the entire review here.