Mixed Race Studies

Mixed-Race People Fastest Growing Group, Census Data Shows

KPIX 5 (CBS)
San Francisco, California
2013-06-14

Elizabeth Cook, Co-Anchor

Ryan Takeo, Reporter

The face of the nation is changing rapidly, as Census data shows mixed-race people are the fastest-growing ethnic group. Ryan Takeo reports.

Note from Steven F. Riley:

• Features San Francisco State University Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies and American Indian Studies, Andrew Jolivétte.
• Reporter Elizabeth Cook incorrectly states that 15% of all marriages are mixed. According to a 2012 Pew Research Center report, 15% of all new marriages in 2010 were mixed.  Pew reports that in 2010, 8.4% of all married couples were mixed regardless of when they married.

Whither White America?

The American Prospect
2013-06-13

Jamelle Bouie

More thoughts on the future of white people.

“Majority-minority” is an unusual term—by definition, minorities are no longer such if they’re in the majority—but it’s a convenient shorthand for what most people expect to happen in the United States over the next few decades. A growing population of nonwhites—driven by Asian and Latino immigration—will yield a country where most Americans have nonwhite heritage, thus “majority-minority.”

The most recent analysis from the Census Bureau seems to bear this out. Last year was the first year that whites were a minority of all newborns, and based on current rates of growth, they’ll become a minority of the under–five set by next year, if not the end of this one. Overall, the government projects that within five years, minorities will compromise a majority of all Americans under the age of eighteen, something to keep in mind when trying to project future political support for both parties…

…One fact stands out in all of this, however. The fastest growing group of Americans—by far—fall under the “multiracial category.” If past research is any indication, these Americans are likely the product of intermarriage between whites and Hispanics (the most common interracial pairing) or whites and Asians (the next most common one). While we identify them as nonwhite, we don’t know how they’ll identify themselves in the future.

My hunch is that—as (certain groups of) Latinos and Asians integrate themselves into American life—a good number will identify themselves as white, with Hispanic or Asian heritage, in the same way that many white Americans point to their Irish or Italian backgrounds…

Read the entire article here.

Not Quite White: Arabs, Slavs, and the Contours of Contested Whiteness

Typecast Releasing
2012
USA
English
24 minutes

Jamil Khoury, Director and Writer

Stephen Combs, Director

Inspired by Jamil Khoury’s short play WASP: White Arab Slovak Pole, Not Quite White: Arabs, Slavs, and the Contours of Contested Whiteness is a thought-provoking documentary that explores the complicated relationship of Arab and Slavic immigrants to American notions of whiteness.

The film integrates scenes from WASP alongside interviews with Arab American and Polish American academics who reflect upon contested and probationary categories of whiteness and the use of anti-Black racism as a “whitening” dye.

In Not Quite White, Jamil Khoury (Artistic Director of Chicago’s Silk Road Rising) draws upon his own Arab (Syrian) and Slavic (Polish and Slovak) heritage as the lens through which to investigate the broader issue of immigrants achieving whiteness and hence qualifying as “fully American.” The film advances society’s on-going conversations about the meaning of whiteness and efforts at redefining whiteness.

Not just for white people, and not just for Arabs and Slavs, Not Quite White proceeds from the assumption that whiteness affects all our lives and that we all need to critically engage whiteness. “Whiteness has everything to do with melanin and pigmentation and it has nothing to do with melanin and pigmentation,” Khoury observes. “Whiteness is about power and borders and authorship. And whiteness can, and does, change.”

The academics featured in Not Quite White include: Roxane Assaf, Adjunct Faculty, School of the Art Institute of Chicago; Ann Hetzel Gunkel, Director of Cultural Studies, Columbia College Chicago; John Tofik Karam, Assistant Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies, De Paul University; Dominic A. Pacyga, Professor of History, Columbia College Chicago.

DVD copies also include On Whiteness, a 16-minute video essay in which writer and co-director Jamil Khoury discusses the themes and ideas presented in his film. Khoury’s short film both/and is also available from Typecast here.

Dr. J .T. Mills: Helping Students Explore Concepts of Race

Mixed Race Radio
Blog Talk Radio
2013-06-19, 16:00Z (12:00 EDT)

Tiffany Rae Reid, Host

John T. Mills, Assistant Director of Multicultural Affairs
Rowan University, Glassboro, New Jersery

Legitimate knowledge regarding the construction of race in America is absent in today’s youth and college aged students. It is imperative to have an understanding of the fluidity of race in America and its context to the systems that perpetuate the ongoing racial divisions in communities and disparities in health care, economic prosperity, and everyday interactions, for example.

Such clarity for these issues is overshadowed by the notion of post racialism in this society that teaches us to avoid or suppress such discussions in the axiom of “political correctness.”  One only needs to look to the President of the United States who is described as the first African American/Black man to hold that office when he is in reality bi-racial. Moreover, the complexity of race in the United States can further be interrogated in his self identification because he is aware of the social, political, and global lenses that identify him as a man of color over his White ancestry.

It is in this context that Dr. Mills works to create environments and opportunities for students to explore the nuances of race and race relations in America in the hopes of creating an awareness that would bring about greater understanding among and between all people.

These discussions then must begin with analyzing why and how race came about in this country during the 17th and 18th centuries during the economic development of the United States when there was much more cross racial cooperation and even harmony at one point than our history books tell us. Blacks, Whites, and Native American Indians intermingled to create a nation and have had more historical commonalities that is being taught and that needs to be addressed to expose the modern forms of raced based oppression that exists today.

For more information, click here.

Are you a biracial/mulitraical individual?

Tufts University
Social Psychology Program at Tufts University
2013-06-18

Sarah Gaither, M.S. (E-Mail)

Are you biracial/multiracial or mixed race? We are looking for people to complete a short online study (around 10 minutes long) in exchange for a chance at $25.00 USD. The study will involve providing some ratings about a hypothetical person. We need mixed-race people in particular.

To begin the online study, click here.

Thanks so much for your interest in our study!

A Continent Divided: The U.S.-Mexico War

Center for Greater Southwestern Studies
University of Texas at Arlington
2013-06-18

The Center for Greater Southwestern Studies at the University of Texas at Arlington announces the launch of a new website, A Continent Divided: The U.S.-Mexico War. Drawn from the holdings of UT Arlington’s Special Collections, long recognized as one of the premier archives on the war, the website features a broad range of primary source materials, as well as explanatory text on the events of 1846-1848. Dedicated to presenting the war as a bi-national conflict, the website currently features more than 50 translated Mexican broadsides, dealing with such topics as the fall of the Herrera government in 1845, the Polkos Revolt, and the post-war occupation of Mexico City.

A Continent Divided is an ongoing, multi-year digital humanities project which, when completed, will offer one of the most comprehensive internet resources available on the U.S.-Mexico War.

For more information, click here.