Mixed Race Studies

The Myth of Post-Racialism: Hegemonic and Counterhegemonic Stories About Race and Racism in the United States

Critical Race and Whiteness Studies
Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association
Volume 7, Issue 1 (2011) (Special Issue: Post-Racial States)
pages 2-25

Babacar M’Baye, Associate Professor of Pan-African Literature and Culture
Kent State University

In the United States, hegemonic narratives reproduce post-racial ideals by developing popular myths that either minimise the prevalence of racial inequalities or blame their persistence on African Americans, who are represented as dysfunctional and resistant to mainstream American culture. Hegemonic narratives are not only racist and prejudiced but also deceptive because they move race away from the unequal policies that produce structural-level inequities for lower and working class African Americans, putting the latter at a greater disadvantage in relationships to middle and upper class white Americans and African Americans. Hegemonic stories are misleading since they claim that racial equality is possible even when the majority of white Americans have a claim to socioeconomic and political privilege and have a vested interest in maintaining that advantage at the expense of others. Using both past and recent critical race theories, this article critically analyses the major differences between hegemonic stories which accept the myth of post-racialism in the United States and counterhegemonic stories which contest this myth. By analysing these stories, the essay reveals the racially disadvantageous conditions the majority of blacks in the United States continue to face despite the 2008 election of a black president. The essay identifies persistent structural racism that the myth of post-racialism seeks to efface. It also suggests that American social and economic institutions work to entrap African Americans and other non-white minorities into a racist prison industrial complex, limited education and health facilities and rampant poverty which drastically reduce their opportunities in the United States.

Read the entire article here.

Walking a Tightrope: Towards a Social History of the Coloured Community of Zimbabwe [Review]

H-net Reviews
H-SAfrica
April 2007

Elizabeth Schmidt, Professor of History
Loyola University Maryland

James Muzondidya. Walking a Tightrope: Towards a Social History of the Coloured Community of Zimbabwe. Trenton: Africa World Press, 2005. xviii + 323 pp. (cloth), ISBN 978-1-59221-246-0.

Based on a wide range of archival sources and more than two dozen interviews, James Muzondidya’s book provides a major historical reassessment of Zimbabwe’s colored community from the early twentieth century to 1980. This small community has largely been ignored in Southern African historiography. The few works focusing on the colored population generally have perpetuated a distorted view, arguing that the mixed-race community had no authentic identity. Rather, they posit that “colored” was a state-imposed category without roots in popular experience or consciousness. According to this view, coloreds were merely a product of the colonial state’s divide-and-rule tactics. While Africans viewed them as dupes, collaborators, and beneficiaries of the colonial system, Europeans dismissed them as a marginal population that was more African than European and, as such, unworthy of European rights and privileges.

In this important contribution to the historical literature, Muzondidya reassesses the construction of colored identity, rejecting the proposition that colored social and political identities were solely state-imposed. He argues instead that these complex and contested identities were the product of colored historical agency and the political, economic, and social structures in which the actors operated. He disaggregates the mixed-race category, too often viewed as homogeneous, in terms of gender, generation, class, culture, and historical background. In a particularly fascinating section, he explores the deep divisions between South African-born Cape Coloreds (or Cape Afrikanders) and the indigenous “EurAfrican” population. Cape Colored immigrants to colonial Zimbabwe were predominantly Muslim, Afrikaans-speaking descendants of African and Asian slaves, the Cape’s original Khoikhoi inhabitants, and Afrikaner settlers. Generations removed from their exclusively African or European past, they belonged to the Western-educated middle and professional classes…

Read the entire review here.

Ben-Ur awarded study grant by Hadassah-Brandeis Institute

In the Loop: News for Staff and Faculty
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
2012-12-13

Associate professor Aviva Ben-Ur of the Department of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies has been awarded a Senior Grant in History from the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute for her book project “Eurafrican Identity in a Jewish Society: Suriname, 1660-1863.”
 
Ben-Ur’s book project focuses on slave society in the former Dutch colony of Suriname in South America, where Jews of Iberian origin were among the earliest colonists. She examines the ever-shifting boundaries and bridges of Jewish communal belonging in Suriname and focuses on the special role enslaved and free Eurafrican women played in expanding the definition of Jewishness and collapsing the social hierarchies that distinguished whites from non-whites. Ben-Ur argues that from the start of Jewish settlement in the colony in the 1650s, females of African descent were key to both Jewish community building and the transformative adaptation of Jewish culture to a multi-ethnic slave society…

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Referential Ambiguity in the Calculus of Brazilian Racial Identity

Southwestern Journal of Anthropology
Volume 26, Number 1 (Spring, 1970)
pages 1-14

Marvin Harris (1927-2001)

Categorizations elicited from 100 Brazilian informants through the use of a standardized deck of facial drawings suggests that the cognitive domain of racial identity in Brazil is characterized by a high degree of referential ambiguity. The Brazilian calculus of racial identity departs from the model of other cognitive domains in which a finite shared code, complementary distribution, and intersubjectivity are assumed. Structurally adaptive consequences adhere to the maximization of noise and ambiguity as well as to the maximization of shared cognitive order.

THE COMPARATIVE STUDY OF RACE RELATIONS in Brazil and the United States has brought to light important differences in culturally controlled systems of “racial” identity. Many observers have pointed out the partial subordination of “racial” to class identity in Brazil exemplified in the tendency for individuals of approximately equal socio-economic rank to be categorized by similar “racial” terms regardless of phenotypic contrasts, and by the adage, “money whitens” (Pierson 1942, 1955; Wagley 1952; Harris 1956; Azevedo 1955). Other aspects of the Brazilian calculus of “racial” identity lead to categorizations that are inconceivable in the cognitive frame of the descent rule which underlies the bifurcation of the United States population into “whites” and “negroes” (now, more politely, “blacks”). Experimental evidence indicates that phenotypically heterogeneous full siblings are identified by heterogeneous “racial” terms. Children of racially heterogeneous Brazilian marriages are not subject to the effects of hypodescent; where the phenotypes are sharply contrastive, full siblings may be assigned to contrastive categories (Harris and Kottak 1963). It has also long been observed that the inventory of terms which defines the Brazilian domain of “racial” types exceeds the number of terms in the analogous domain used by whites in the United States (and probably by blacks as well).

The suggestion has been made that the most distinctive attribute of the Brazilian “racial” calculus is its uncertain, indeterminate, and ambiguous output. Subordination of race to class, absence of descent rule, and terminological efflorescence all contribute to this result (Harris 1964a, 1964b). Several different indications of the absence of a common shared calculus should be noted: ego lacks a single socio-centric racial identity; the repertory of racial terms varies widely from one person to another (holding region and community constant); the referential meaning of a given term varies widely (i.e., the occasions in which one term rather than another will be used); and the abstract meaning of a given term (i.e., its elicited contrasts with respect to other terms) also varies over a broad range even within a single community.

Clarification of the nature of the ambiguity in the Brazilian “racial” calculus awaits the development of cross-culturally valid methods of cognitive analysis. In this essay I report on a preliminary attempt to employ a test instrument to elicit the Brazilian lexicon of “racial” categories and to provide a measure of referential ambiguity and consensus with respect to the elicited terms…

Read the entire article here.

Racial Identity in Brazil

Luso-Brazilian Review
Volume 1, Number 2 (Winter, 1964)
pages 21-28

Marvin Harris (1927-2001)

According to the 1950 census, the population of Brazil consisted of 61.66% brancos, 26.54% pardos, and 10.6% pretos. In the I.B.G.E.’s 1961 review of these facts, the following caution is registered:

In order to avoid erroneous interpretation, it must be remembered that there is no barrier of racial prejudices in Brazil which divides whites from non-whites as in the United States and that in Rio the label “white” is bestowed with a liberality that would be inconceivable in Washington. One must presume that a study made in conformity with objective criteria would show the proportion of whites to be inferior to that indicated by the census. However, it would be extremely difficult to clearly separate brancos morenos from pardos de matiz claro and pardos de matiz escuro from pretos. (IBGE 1961:169).

The unreliability of Brazilian racial statistics has nothing to do with the alleged absence of “barriers of racial prejudice.” The myth that Brazilians have no racial prejudices has been exposed by numerous studies carried out in both northeastern and southern portions of the country (Bastide and Fernandes 1959; Costa Pinto 1953; Wagley 1951; Harris 1956; Hutchinson 1958, etc.). It has by now been convincingly demonstrated that Negroes throughout Brazil are abstractly regarded as innately inferior in intelligence, honesty and dependability; that negroid features are universally (even by Negroes themselves) believed to be less desirable, less handsome or beautiful than caucasoid features; that in most of their evaluations of the Negro as an abstract type, the whites are inclined to deride and slander; and that prejudiced stereotyped opinions about people of intermediate physical appearance are also common. One may speak in other words of an ideal or abstract racial ranking gradient in Brazil in which the white physical type occupies the favorable extreme, the Negro type the unfavorable extreme, and the mulatto type the various intermediate positions…

Pigmentocracy in the Americas: How is Educational Attainment Related to Skin Color?

Latin American Pubic Opinion Project
AmericasBarometer Insights
Number 73 (2012)
Vanderbilt University
2012-02-20
Number 73 (2012)
9 pages

Edward Telles, Professor of Sociology
Princeton University

Liza Steele
Department of Sociology
Princeton University

Executive Summary: This Insights report addresses the question of whether educational attainment, a key indicator of socioeconomic status, is related to skin color in Latin America and the Caribbean. Based on data from the 2010 AmericasBarometer, our analysis shows that persons with lighter skin color tend to have higher levels of schooling than those with dark skin color throughout the region, with few exceptions. Moreover , these differences are statistically significant in most cases and, as we show in a test of several multiracial countries, the negative relation between skin color and educational attainment occurs independently of class origin and other variables known to affect socioeconomic status. Thus, we find that skin color, a central measure of race, is an important source of social stratification throughout the Americas today.

Read the entire report here.

Ethnicity and Earnings in a Mixed-Race Labor Market

Economic Development and Cultural Change
Volume 55, Number 4 (July 2007)
pages 709-734

Hugo Ñopo
Inter-Amerian Development Bank

Jaime Saavedra
World Bank

Máximo Torero
International Food Policy Research Institute

This study examines the relationship between earnings and racial differences in a context in which various races have coexisted and mixed during several centuries, as is true in many parts of the postcolonial world and specifically urban Peru. Coarse indicators of racial differences do not suffice in capturing this relationship; therefore, we introduce a score-based procedure of white and indigenous racial intensities that allows us to approximate these mixed racial heritages. We introduce a score-based procedure of white and indigenous racial intensities that allows us to approximate the heterogeneity within the mestizo population. We construct two types of indicators of racial intensities using a score-based procedure: a single-dimensional indicator of degrees of whiteness and a two-dimensional indicator combining degrees of both whiteness and indigenousness. This second indicator allows us to study nonlinearities in earning differences across mixed white and indigenous racial characteristics. Our estimates from a semiparametric model show evidence of a race premium for whiteness on earnings, statistically significant among wage earners but not among the self-employed. These results may be consistent with a story of employer discrimination.

Despite the race-mixers’ predictions, both past and present, the official encouragement and popular embrace of mixed-race practices and identities have not ended race or racism in Latin America. To be sure, blackness and Indianness as habitable identities have been dramatically weakened; however, this café con leche reality has not led to the demise of race. As one Afro-Cuban doctor noted: ‘Race is a problem here. Race mixture only creates other categories and a means to whiten your children. But everyone knows that it is best to be white and worst to be black’ (Sawyer, 2006: 124). Similarly, in Venezuela, despite the pride of a café con leche mixed race identity, Venezuelans want to have as little café and as much leche as possible (Herrera Salas, 2007; Wright, 1990). In other words, far from diminishing racism, mixed-race identities have been claimed as a strategic measure to escape blackness and Indianness (Burdick, 1998a; Degler, 1971; Goldstein, 2003; Sue, 2010; Twine, 1998).

Furthermore, scholars of race in Latin America have argued that the region’s emphasis on race mixture has masked race-based inequalities and discrimination (Hasenbalg and Huntington, 1982; Twine, 1998), allowed prejudice to go unchecked (Robinson, 1999; Sagrera, 1974), and produced a feeling of relief among whites, exempting them from the responsibility of addressing racial inequities (Hasenbalg, 1996). Additionally, others believe it has inhibited demands for indigenous and black rights and access to resources (Mollett, 2006). To take one example, Charles Hale (1999) found that discourses of mestizaje and hybridity closed discussions of collective rights and racism just when these discussions were beginning to make a difference in Guatemala. Confirming Hale’s observations, Tilley noted that the budding Mayan movement has stimulated a more politically potent backlash anchored in the widely accepted belief that race mixing has eroded racial distinctions. That is, ‘collective Mayan protest was [portrayed as] nonsensical and specious, even racist [because] Indian and Spanish races had long ago been ‘forged’ into one’ (Tilley, 2005).

Unfortunately, then, the promotion of race mixture, as well as identification as mestizo and white by individuals of African and indigenous descent, have not delivered the blow to racism that many have predicted. Studies of Latin America show that race continues to be socially significant even though racial identifications and locations are smooth gradations rather than entrenched positions (Martinez Novo, 2006; Sawyer, 2006; Telles, 2004; Wade, 1993). Racial inequalities flourish despite the fact that race mixture and interracial marriage have been commonplace and officially encouraged for more than a century.

Jonathan Warren and Christina A. Sue, “Comparative racisms: What anti-racists can learn from Latin America,” Ethnicities, Volume 11, Number 1, (March 2011) 32–58.

Black German Heritage and Research Association Annual Convention 2013

Black German Heritage and Research Association
2013-01-29

The third annual convention of the Black German Heritage and Research Association (formerly the Black German Cultural Society NJ) will be held on August 8-11, 2013, at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts. This year’s convention will focus on Black Germans in Diaspora. The conference will feature a keynote address by Maisha Eggers, Professor of Childhood and Diversity Studies at the University of Magdeburg, a screening of the 1952 film “Toxi” at the Amherst Cinema, with an introduction and Q & A by Professor Angelica Fenner of the University of Toronto, author of “Race Under Reconstruction in German Cinema” (2011), and presentations by guest artists Sharon Dodua Otoo and Sandrine Micossé-Aikins, editors of “The Little Book of Big Visions: How To Be an Artist and Revolutionize the World,” published by the Berlin publishers Edition Assemblage in October 2012.

The BGHRA Review Committee invites proposals for papers that engage the multiplicity and diversity of the experiences of Blacks of German heritage and on Blackness in Germany. We welcome submissions for twenty-minute presentations on three academic panels and two sessions devoted to life writing, oral history, and memoir…

…SUBMISSION DEADLINE: March 15, 2013

For more information, click here.

Obama and the Biracial Factor: The Battle for a New American Majority [Andrews Review]

Ethnic and Racial Studies
Volume 36, Issue 5 (May 2013)
pages 918-919
DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2012.758864

Matthew T. M. Andrews
Department of Sociology
University of Michigan

Andrew J. Jolivétte (ed), Obama and the Biracial Factor: The Battle for a New American Majority, Bristol: Policy Press. 2012. v+237 pp. (paper)

In Obama and the Biracial Factor, Andrew Jolivétte edits a collection of essays that critically explore the role of U.S. President Barack Obama’s biracial background not only in his 2008 election and first term in office but also in the context of an increasingly multiracial USA. This volume is part of a multidisciplinary body of scholarship on ‘mixed race’ or multiracialily that has grown exponentially in the USA and the UK over the past two decades. However, it also departs from this scholarship’s tendency to focus exclusively on the topics of identity formation and racial classification on government forms. Instead, utilizing the timely case of President Obama ‘the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas’ the book examines what Jolivétte terms ‘mixed race hegemony’, the assertion that ‘biracial and multiracial individuals and families will lead to the end of a race-conscious and racially-discriminatory society in the United States’ (p. 4). Through various disciplinary lenses, the volume’s authors more or less expound on this concept to imagine a ‘post-racist’ rather than ‘post-racial’ USA.

The book’s first section. ‘The Biracial factor in America’, explores how narratives of ‘mixed race’ have shaped the past and present US race relations. In his chapter. G. Reginald Daniel situates Obama’s 2008 election within Daniel’s body of influential work on multiracial identity and considers the egalitarian possibilities of a ‘critical multiraciality’, which emphasizes cross-racial, coalition building and shared ancestral and cultural connections. Next, in ‘A Patchwork Heritage’, Justin Ponder offers an insightful close reading of Obama’s autobiography Dreams from My Father and argues that its rhetorical appeal lies less in Obama’s “accurate* portrayal of himself as African American than in his indeterminate citation of others, especially his white mother, complicating easy representations of his racial identity. Finally. Darryl Barthé,  Jr. charts the historical origins of ‘whiteness’ and ‘blackness’ in the USA to challenge the ‘racial revisionism’ in debates surrounding President Obama’s black identity.

The volume’s second section. “Beyond Black and While Identity Polities’, considers the gendered, global and cultural implications of President Obama’s biraciality beyond black white racial politics. Wei Ming Dairiotis and Grace Yoo draw on a nation-wide survey of ‘Obama Mamas’ or mothers who supported Obama’s 2008 campaign and show how many perceived him as a potential ‘bridge builder’ that could provide a more peaceful future for their children. In her perceptive chapter. ‘Is “No One as Irish as Barack O’Bama?”‘, Rebecca Chiyoko King-O’Riain contends that Ireland’s embrace of Obama’s Irish heritage illustrates an unprecedented decoupling of ancestry and phenotype in contemporary racial thinking. This section also includes an additional essay by Dariotis. in which she extends her notion of ‘mixed race kin aesthetic’ to explain Obama’s global appeal, and a chapter by Zebulon Vance Miletsky. who uses Obama’s ‘mutt like me’ comment as an entry point into a historically informed analysis of questions around his ‘racial authenticity’.

The book’s final section, ‘The Battle for the New American Majority’, addresses existing challenges for President Obama and Americans more generally in realizing a truly diverse American majority. In his essay, Robert Keith Collins employs person-centred ethnography to critique monolithic conceptions of ‘blackness’ that undergird debates around Obama’s…

Read or purchase the article here.