Mixed Race Studies

Identity, dislocation and belonging: Chinese/European narratives of mixedness in Aotearoa/New Zealand

Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power
Published online: 2012-12-14
DOI: 10.1080/1070289X.2012.752369

Zarine L. Rocha, Research Scholar
Department of Sociology
National University of Singapore

With over 10% of the population identifying with multiple ethnic groups, identities in New Zealand are increasingly complex. This article explores identifications of individuals of mixed Chinese and European descent: the ways in which personal location, classification and race influence feelings of belonging within and between multiple ethnic groups. The fluidity and diversity of the New Zealand context and the resulting positioning of ‘mixed race’ provide an interesting counterpoint to the comparatively well-studied American and British contexts. Drawing on 20 interviews with individuals of mixed descent, this research highlights how individual identity diverges from official classification and how this dissonance is understood through experiences of dislocation and belonging. ‘Mixedness’ is negotiated and enacted in many ways, as individuals find ways to belong in the face of wider dislocation, intertwining aspects of heritage, experience, community and nation.

Introduction

With over 10% of the New Zealand population identifying with more than one ethnic group (Statistics New Zealand 2006), identities in New Zealand are becoming increasingly complex. Following shifts in immigration policy, the population has become more diverse and understandings of ethnic identity and belonging have developed and changed. Similar changes have occurred in other multicultural societies around the world and as a result, the concepts of ‘mixed race’ and ‘mixed ethnicity’ are of increasing academic and political concern, particularly in the American and British contexts (see Ifekwunigwe 2004, Parker and Song 2001b).

The New Zealand population provides an illuminating case study in this field, highlighting the intersections and divergences between ethnic identifications and systems of ethnic and racial classification. The increasing prominence of ”mixed race’ identities challenges traditional racial categorisation, and changes in the American and British censuses in 2000/2001 allowed respondents to acknowledge ‘mixed race’ in official classification (Aspinall 2009. Perlmann and Waters 2002). New Zealand is important in comparison, as a context where multiple identities have been formally recognised for an extended period of time: both historically in categorisations of ‘half-castes‘ and more recently as multiple, self-ascribed identities in the census since 1991 (Callister and Kukutai 2009. Morning 2008). Despite the official recognition of multiplicity, social conceptions of racial singularity…

Read or purchase the article here.

On adoption, race does matter

The Guardian
2012-12-21

Oona King

Like Michael Gove, I used to believe a loving family was all. But I’ve heard from too many black adoptees who are struggling with their identity

“My social worker is racist,” said a softly-spoken 10-year-old white boy. “She says I shouldn’t stay with my foster carer because my carer is black.” This child was one of 20 in the care system who told the Lords select committee on adoption legislation about their experiences, during a review of proposed changes to the Adoption and Children Act 2002.

The government, spurred on by the education secretary, Michael Gove (himself adopted as a baby), is determined to ensure “race doesn’t matter” when it comes to finding families for children in care. While Gove’s motives are understandable, the Lords committee, on which I sit, decided this week that his main proposal – the end to the obligation on social workers to give “due consideration” to race, religion and ethnicity when assessing adoptions – should be scrapped.

We would all agree with Gove in principle that race shouldn’t matter – and certainly in the specific case of the young boy in foster care it should not. But for many black and mixed-race children, ethnicity shapes their experience. To imagine it doesn’t is to imagine the earth is flat. I’ve lived that experience and I know it’s real…

…The fact that we were – on the surface – separated by race, nagged me as a child. It fed into other vague feelings around being different and “not belonging”. I was the only mixed race child in my class, both in primary and secondary school, although in those days I was often called, at best, half-caste, at worst, mongrel. But it still wasn’t such a terrible thing. After all, I had a loving, capable parent. And that’s what I want for all Britain’s kids languishing in our care system…

Read the entire article here.

Medicating Race: Heart Disease and Durable Preoccupations with Difference

Duke University Press
October 2012
280 pages
5 illustrations
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8223-5344-7
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8223-5329-4

Anne Pollock, Assistant Professor of Science, Technology and Culture
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia

In Medicating Race, Anne Pollock traces the intersecting discourses of race, pharmaceuticals, and heart disease in the United States over the past century, from the founding of cardiology through the FDA’s approval of BiDil, the first drug sanctioned for use in a specific race. She examines wide-ranging aspects of the dynamic interplay of race and heart disease: articulations, among the founders of American cardiology, of heart disease as a modern, and therefore white, illness; constructions of “normal” populations in epidemiological research, including the influential Framingham Heart Study; debates about the distinctiveness African American hypertension, which turn on disparate yet intersecting arguments about genetic legacies of slavery and the comparative efficacy of generic drugs; and physician advocacy for the urgent needs of black patients on professional, scientific, and social justice grounds. Ultimately, Pollock insists that those grappling with the meaning of racialized medical technologies must consider not only the troubled history of race and biomedicine but also its fraught yet vital present. Medical treatment should be seen as a site of, rather than an alternative to, political and social contestation. The aim of scholarly analysis should not be to settle matters of race and genetics, but to hold medicine more broadly accountable to truth and justice.

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Racial Preoccupations and Early Cardiology
• 2. Making Normal Populations and Making Difference in the Framingham and Jackson Heart Studies
• 3. The Durability of African American Hypertension as a Disease Category
• 4. The Slavery Hypothesis beyond Genetic Determinism
• 5. Thiazide Diuretics as a Nexus of Associations: Racialized, Proven, Old, Cheap
• 6. BiDil: Medicating the Intersection of Race and Heart Failure
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index

What My Mother Gave Me

Mixed Dreams: towards a radical multiracial/ethnic movement
2012-09-27

Nicole Asong Nfonoyim

“To lose your mother was to be denied your kin, country, and identity. To lose your mother was to forget your past.”
—Dr. Saidiya Hartman

I am the spitting image of my mother.

Three years ago I learned the ‘truth’ about my origin story. The ‘truth’, however, didn’t make the myth of my early life any less real–any less a rooted marker of who I was and who I am or will become. And that, I owe to my mother.

You see, three years ago I was told that I was kinda, sorta adopted– not legally with paperwork and red tape, not brought from some far off place to an entirely different family, but taken in quietly, seamlessly, secretly by the love and determination of a woman who loved my father very much. That woman became the only mother I have ever known.

My father, who I write about in “Native Speaker,” has always been a very strong and visible part of my identity. The Cameroonian name I inherited from him, make my African identity proud and visible against a face that is sometimes hard to place. My Cameroonian family is large and spread all over the world and the blackness I share with them is rooted in a vibrant ancestral past  and a contemporary post-colonial African present.

And yet, in key ways it was my mother who gave me kin, country and identity…

Read the entire article here.

The Mixed Race of India

Sacramento Daily Union
Volume 84, Number 71
1892-11-11
page 4, column 3
Source: California Digital Newspaper Collection

Eurasia has no boundaries. It lies, a varying social fact, all over India, thick in the great cities, thickest in Calcutta, where the conditions of climate and bread-wining are most suitable; where, moreover, Eurasian charities are most numerous. Wherever Europeans have come aud gone, these people have sprung up in weedy testimony of them—these people who do not go, who have received somewhat in the feeble inheritance of their blood that makes it possible for them to live and die in India. Nothing will ever exterminate Eurasia; it clings to the sun and the soil, and is marvelously propagative within its own borders. There is no remote chance of its ever being reabsorbed by either of its original elements; the prejudices of both Europeans and natives are tar too vigorous to permit of much intermarriage with a jat of people who are neither the one nor the other. Occasionally an up-country planter, predestined to a remote and “jungly” existence, comes down to Calcutta and draws his bride from the upper circles of Eurasia—this not so often now as formerly. Occasionally, too, a young shopman with the red of Scotland fresh in his cheeks is carried off by his landlady’s daughter; while Tommy Atkins fall a comparatively easy prey. The sight of a native with a half-caste wife is much rarer, for there Eurasian as well as native antipathy comes into operation. The whole conscious inclination of Eurasian life, in habits, tastes, religion, and, most of all in ambition, is toward the European and away from the native standards. —Popular Science Monthly.

A Sad Case of Amalgamation

The Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Volume 19, Number 211
1860-09-05
page 1, column 6
Source: Brooklyn Public Library’s Brooklyn Collection

The reporter of the Philadelphia Press has been around among the colored folks of Philadelphia, and In the course of his peregrination he met with the following case of practical amalgamation:

We were next gratified with something previously new to us—a case of practical amalgamation. We had wrought up our feelings to such abhorrence of the intermarriage of races, that nothing short of the absolute misery of families so produced was expected. The chronicle, however, must be true to the experience, and we are compelled to state that this single case of wedded amalgamation was not so repulsive in its effects as we bad wished it to be.

Being cautioned by the officer to say nothing of our prejudices, we passed through a cleanly-arched alley, and trod by a row of rear brick buildings. Hastily glancing through an open door, we saw a thin, neat-looking white woman industriously sewing. At her feet a negro child was playing and she stooped to kiss it as the door post hid her from view.  A black man was chopping wood in the yard. Three yellow children clustered around him, and at the moment the child which bad been gambolling at the woman’s feet tottered from the house and called him ‘Pappy!’

The man looked angrily at us, but he said nothing.

‘Do your children still help you at the market, Tom?’ said the officer.

‘Yes, sir,’ said the man, chopping away at the stick of wood. As he seemed adverse to making any reply, the officer said:

‘Such children as these I never knew—up at 5 o’clock every morning, and wheeling a heavy go-cart through the streets; they are going someday to be richer than their father.’

‘I hope so,’ said the man.  ‘God knows I am poor enough.’ He continued to chop.

‘Nonsense,’ said the officer. ‘Why, Tom, you take care of your money, never drink. How much better off are vou than your neighbors?’

‘I know that,’ said the man, interestedly, leaning upon his axe, ‘but I want to be rich enough to leave this street. I don’t want these boys to grow up with low people or to live in this unhealthy neighborhood. They are good boys, but I don’t like to tell them so. They make—the three of them—as much wages as I do.’

We understood from our guide that the negro and the woman were legally married; that she had been poor, and his attentions to her in poverty had placed her under obligations which ended in wedlock. As we passed out and peeped stealthily again at the woman, fondling her negro babe, she espied us and looked straightforwardly into our faces. There was no shame upon her cheeks.  She seemed to clasp her child still closer, and as we passed out of view we heard her singing.

‘After all,’ said the officer, ‘these children are better off than those miserable mulattoes who have no recognised fathers. If amalgamation is to become an institution, I prefer it sanctioned by marriage.’

We looked forward to that woman’s career. With the existing feelings of society, thrift and integrity will benefit her little; for the life she has chosen will ever cling to her, and every social advance she may make with her dusky husband will make her more opprobrious and abhorred. It is a hard case.

The question of course which naturally suggests itself to every right-minded white man and woman, is. Where is this thing to end? Whither are we tending? What is to be done to stop this most unnatural and detestable movement. For it is as plain as a pikestaff that if it continues, there will be soon no whites left in this once great and prosperous country. We shall all be mulattoes, and be afflicted with all the peculiarities both mental and physical of that unhappy race. The signs of this great and terrible change already begin to make themselves manifest in our streets; for the most careless observer who walks down Broadway, can hardly fail to observe the appearance on a vast number of faces of the well-known brownish tinge. Let that tinge once become general, and then “farewell, a long farewell to all our whiteness!”

“What Are We Coming To, and When Shall We Reach It?,” The New York Times, March 26, 1864. http://www.nytimes.com/1864/03/26/news/what-are-we-coming-to-and-when-shall-we-reach-it.html.

The Chalk Circle: Intercultural Prizewinning Essays

Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing
2012-05-15
220 pages
5 x 8
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-936214-71-6

Tara L. Masih, Writer & Editor

Award-winning editor Tara L. Masih put out a call in 2007 for Intercultural Essays dealing with the subjects of “culture, race, and a sense of place.” The prizewinners are gathered for the first time in a ground-breaking anthology that explores many facets of culture not previously found under one cover. The powerful, honest, thoughtful voices—Native American, African American, Asian, European, Jewish, White—speak daringly on topics not often discussed in the open, on subjects such as racism, anti-Semitism, war, self-identity, gender, societal expectations. Their words will entertain, illuminate, take you to distant lands, and spark important discussions about our humanity, our culture, and our place within society and the natural world.

• Winner of a 2012 Skipping Stones Honor Award
• A Featured NewPages.com New & Noteworthy Book, February 2012
• An Amazon Hot New Release, debuting at #2 on the essay bestseller list

Table of Contents

• Foreword by Tara L. Masih
• Introduction by David Mura
• THE CHALK CIRCLE: IDENTITY, HOME, AND BORDERLANDS
  • If Grandmother Had Married a Peasant Li Miao Lovett
  • Fragments: Finding Center Sarah J. Stoner
  • Giiwe: go home Christine Stark
• AS I AM: LETTERS OF IDENTITY
  • Bufferhood: An Autoethnography Emma Sartwell
  • Valentine and This Difficult World Tilia Klebenov Jacobs
• THE TONGUE OF WAR: A CLASH OF CULTURES
  • Reflecting on Dragons and Angels Shanti Elke Bannwart
  • Tongue-Tied Kelly Hayes-Raitt
  • Tightrope Across the Abyss Shanti Elke Bannwart
• THE TRAGEDY OF THE COLOR LINE
  • A Dash of Pepper in the Snow Samuel Autman
  • “Miss Otis Regrets” Mary Elizabeth Parker
  • Signatures Lyzette Wanzer
• EYEWITNESS: AS SEEN BY ANOTHER
  • Winter Seagull Toshi Washizu
  • Itam Jeff Fearnside
  • High Tech in Gaborone M. Garrett Bauman
  • Triptych: Paradise Gretchen Brown Wright
• THE OTHER
  • Assailing Otherness Katrina Grigg-Saito
  • Fried Locusts Kamela Jordan
  • Israel: Devour the Darling Plagues Bonnie J. Morris
• THE CULTURE OF SELF AND SPIRIT
  • Connections Betty Jo Goddard
  • Palo del Muerte Simmons B. Buntin
• QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
  • Intercultural Considerations
  • Intercultural Connections
  • Quotation Exploration
• About the Editor, Tara L. Masih
• Acknowledgments
• About the Introduction Author, David Mura
• Index of Contributors

Obaloba, The Whale Island

Innovative Transmedia Productions
2012

Matteo Stanzani, Creative Director

‘OBALOBA, the whale island’, is an original project whose purpose is to educate and entertain children aged 4-8 through an innovative transmedia ecosystem made of: online and mobile community and videogames, web and tv cartoon animation series, interactive eBooks, live events, toys and a wide range of sustainable merchandising products.

Main Content

Obaloba, the Whale Island, is a community of super-cute creatures who live in a lush, Hawaii-inspired, uncontaminated island on the back of a whale.

The creatures are created by mixing – in a magic blender – human DNA with animal and vegetal elements from Nature. They’re hundreds and counting, and each one has a unique personality and attitude, like you and me.

The stories of Obaloba, the whale island, unfold through the adventures of the one-of-a-kind characters who live in peace and joy, foster love for diversity and embrace the value of individuality. But, to maintain their community, they are forced to outsmart a super villain who wants to seize the magic-blender to turn them into all-identical – and therefore controllable – creatures…

For more information, click here.

What Are We Coming To, and When Shall We Reach It?

The New York Times
1864-03-26

The pressure on our space of other matter has prevented us from recurring to the serious and important topic of “Miscegenation.” We regret very much, however, having allowed our attention to be even temporarily diverted from it, as we find from the earnest discussion which it is receiving at the hands of our cotemporaries, that it has lost none of its importance. In fact, if we are to believe what we hear, especially from the recognized and authoritative organs of the Democratic party, the rage for marrying black people, which has taken possession of the Republican party, is rather on the increase. It is said, we know not with what truth, that the Union League Club has fitted up a night-bell at its door in Union-square, and keeps a black minister on the premises, who marries all couples of different colors at any hour of the day or night. An effort is said to have been made by the leaders of the party to stave off these alliances until after the meeting of the Convention next July, when the campaign would have fairly commenced; but it was all in vain. The radicals have carried everything before them, and, if things go on at their present rate, it is feared that in three months every white man who is not connected by marriage with a colored family, will be “read out” of the party…

…The question of course which naturally suggests itself to every right-minded white man and woman, is. Where is this thing to end? Whither are we tending? What is to be done to stop this most unnatural and detestable movement. For it is as plain as a pikestaff that if it continues, there will be soon no whites left in this once great and prosperous country. We shall all be mulattoes, and be afflicted with all the peculiarities both mental and physical of that unhappy race. The signs of this great and terrible change already begin to make themselves manifest in our streets; for the most careless observer who walks down Broadway, can hardly fail to observe the appearance on a vast number of faces of the well-known brownish tinge. Let that tinge once become general, and then “farewell, a long farewell to all our whiteness!”…

Read the entire article here.