Mixed Race Studies

For the Movement: Community Education Supporting Multiracial Organizing

Equity & Excellence in Education
Volume 38, Issue 2, 2005
pages 145-154
DOI: 10.1080/10665680590935124

Eric Hamako
University of Massachusetts, Amherst

The multiracial people’s movement in the United States has expanded significantly in the last 10 years (Douglass, 2003). Historically, community-based education programs have supported social movements in the United States (Collins & Yeskel, 2000; Sarachild, 1974/1978), yet little has been written about how educational programs might serve the social and political movements of mixed-race people. This case study describes two community-based multiracial education programs by and for mixed-race people and suggests ways that each supports multiracial community organizing. The conclusion offers recommendations for shaping future multiracial education programs for multiracial people.

The 2000 United States Census revealed numerous demography surprises, among them, that there are seven million multiracial people—almost 3% of the total U.S. population (Jones & Smith, 2001). Never before had the Census allowed multiracial people to check one or more boxes to indicate their multiple racial heritages. The Census results also indicate clearly that multiraciality is an issue relevant to educators, as almost half of the multiracial population are of school age (Lopez, 2003). While the U.S. Census Bureau has found ways to account for multiracial people In allowing the option of checking one or more races, multicultural educational efforts continue to flounder when attempting to educate multiracial people or address multiracial issues in school and community settings (Williams, Nakashima, Kich, & Daniel 1996).

In institutional curricula and pedagogy, multicultural educators have given little attention to the existence and needs of multiracial people (Chiong, 1995; Glass & Wallace, 1996, Scholl, 2001; Wardle, 1996). Worse, multicultural education has sometimes distorted, invalidated, or demonized the existence of multiracial people (Wardle, 2000; Williams et. al., 1996). The small amount of literature that exists about teaching to or about multiracial people has been written primanly by and for monoracial educators, often with an inappropriate monoracial bias (Pao, Wong. & Teuben-Rowe, 1997; Schwartz, 1998), while the voices and insights of multiracial people have largely been absent. Recent community organizing and community-based education efforts by multiracial people and multiracial organizations may change this trend of silencing and marginalization. In this article, I examine some ways that community-based multiracial education may support multiracial community organizing.

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

Historically, community-based education has served an important role in numerous political movements. During the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, Freedom Schools supported community organizing efforts by bringing community members together, helping them name then social problems, and teaching literacy and organizing skills (Howe, 1964/1984; Rachal, 1998). Similarly, consciousness raising groups supported second wave US. feminism, bringing women together to process the systemic nature of sexism and to begin organizing to take action (Evans, 1979; Sarachild, 1974/1978). Internationally, Paolo Freire’s (1970/2003) community-based popular education pedagogy has expanded far beyond its initial application to poor peoples movements in Brazil. As a model for community education, Freirean popular education suggests a series of steps through which community organizers can help community members recognize their common experiences, codify them, analyze their root causes, and take action to resolve common problems (Ferreira & Ferreira, 1997). Community education may support community organizing by politicizing and mobilizing community members, developing analyses and a sense of purpose, and helping to steer political movement (Collins & Yeskel, 2000; Williams et al., 1996)…

Read or purchase the article here.

Race as International Identity? ‘Miscegenation’ in the U.S. Occupation of Japan and Beyond

Amerikastudien / American Studies
Volume 48, Number 1, Internationalizing U.S. History (2003)
pages 61-77

Yukiko Koshiro

The article attempts to retrieve the story of the little-known fate of so-called mixed-blood children, those born to American GIs and Japanese women in the aftermath of World War II, which had long vanished in a confluence of American and Japanese historical narratives. By shedding new light on the convergence of American and Japanese racisms and especially their mutual taboo on miscegenation, the article chronicles American and Japanese obsessions with “racial purity” as a national ideology during and after the U.S. Occupation of Japan. While the article highlights the adverse impact of racist thinking, its primary attempt is to break the silence on the mutual issue of miscegenation and provide a prelude to the story as part of a mainstream narrative of both nations. Only by internationalizing history is it possible to trace a nation’s trans-national Odysseys and relate them to American and Japanese postwar history. Furthermore, the article refers to cases of bi-racial children born in West Germany during and after U.S. Occupation, thus suggesting the extension of the study on the basis of empirical sources from Europe.

Afro-Mexicans and Winston-Salem Photo Gallery

Winston-Salem Journal
Winston-Salem, North Carolina
November 2007

Ted Richardson, Photographer

Irma Gonzales Alvarado prays before a shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe at her Winston-Salem home. She invited several neighbors to her home on the last night of La Cuarentena, a 40-night observance of the Virgin leading up to Dec. 12th, the day an apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared to Juan Diego.

View all of the photographs here.

Bengali Harlem

The Brian Lehrer Show
WNYC 93.9 FM/ 820 AM
2013-01-11

Brian Lehrer, Host

Vivek Bald, Assistant Professor of Writing and Digital Media
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Vivek Bald, documentary director and assistant professor of writing and digital media at MIT and the author of Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America, reveals the little known history of early South Asian immigrants, from Tremé to Harlem.

→explore the Bengali Harlem website, including an excerpt from Aladdin Ullah’s one-man show here.

Download the interview here. Stream m3u here. (00:14:12).

The Negro Race and European Civilization

American Journal of Sociology
Volume 11, Number 2 (September 1905)
pages 145-167

Paul S. Reinsch  (1869-1923), Professor
University of Wisconsin

While in the past century populations and racial elements which had formerly been far distant from each other have been brought into intimate contact, the twentieth century will witness the formation of new mixed races and the attempt to adjust the mutual relations of all the various peoples that inhabit the globe. The recent great advance in the safeness and rapidity of communication has made the whole world into a community whose solidarity of interests becomes more apparent day by day. Closer contact with the more advanced nations of the Orient will have a profound influence upon European civilization, because these nations, though ready to adopt our industrial methods, are determined to maintain their national beliefs and customs. Though from the races that stand on a lower level of civilization no such deep-going influence upon European and American life is to be expected, their relations to the peoples of more advanced culture will nevertheless be a matter of great moment. Some of them, the weakest and lowest in organization, may indeed continue to fade away before the advance of European power; but this is not likely to be the fate of the negro race. The negroes have come in contact with the worst side of European civilization; yet their buoyant, vigorous constitution and their fundamental common sense carry them safely through dangers which have proved fatal to other races. They are therefore destined to be a permanent element in the composite population of the future, and when we consider the extent and fertility of the regions which they hold, the necessity of their ever-increasing co-operation in the economic life of the world becomes apparent…

…The physiological aspects of race-mixture have lately attracted much attention. Mr. James Bryce, in his recent lecture on “The Relations of the Advanced and Backward Races,” carefully reviews the experience of mankind in this matter, and adds his support to the current assumption that mixed breeds are morally and physically weak when the parents belong to widely disparate races and civilizations. However, it would seem that this assumption is true only in cases where the two societies to which the parents respectively belong maintain a repugnant attitude to each other, so that the mestizos form an outcast class and suffer a total loss of morale. Where friendly relations exist, the mixed races produced by Europeans and negroes exhibit some very fine qualities. The rich yet delicate beauty of the mulatto women in Martinique, their sweetness of temper and kindness of heart, so excited the admiration of visitors that they all, lay and clerical, French and British, join in the chorus of admiration and declare the women of Martinique the most charming in the world. Intellectually, the mulatto race has produced a number of remarkable men, and the liberality of mind among the leaders of this class in Martinique is certainly most noteworthy. Still it is generally true that the men of a mixed race will exhibit fewer pleasing qualities of character than the women: they must make themselves useful often by activities not conducive to sweetness of temper and honesty of mind; while the women naturally develop more gentle and attractive characteristics…

Read the entire article here.