Mixed Race Studies

The day my daughter realized she isn’t white

The Washington Post
2015-11-03

Lisa Papademetriou

“Mama,” my 4-year-old daughter said. “Did you know that darks and lights didn’t used to be able to go to the same places?”

“What?” I asked. It was bedtime, and I was tired. I wondered vaguely how Zara knew so much about laundry.

“There are some people who have dark skin color,” she said. “Lights would go one place, and darks would go another,” Zara went on, indignant. “There were signs saying the darks couldn’t go into where the lights were!”

“Who told you about that?” I asked, and she explained that a special visitor had come to her classroom to talk about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. She very earnestly explained the Civil Rights movement and Dr. King’s message to me. “He said that everyone should be able to go into the same places. He said people should take down the signs that kept the darks out.” Growing more passionate, Zara cried, “Kylie and I agreed that we wouldn’t go anywhere if there was a sign that said, ‘Lights Only!’ We would rip up that sign and say, ‘Everyone can go here!’” Kylie has blue eyes and curly blond hair.

“Zara, honey, I’m so glad you feel that way,” I told her. “But do you realize that you’re not white?”

Stunned silence.

And then: rage. “I am white!” she shouted. “You’re white!”

“Yes,” I told her. “I’m white, so you are part white. But Daddy is from Pakistan. He’s brown. And that means that, in those times, you would have been considered brown, not white.”

“I am white!” Zara wailed. “I’m everything!” And she burst into tears…

Read the entire article here.

Vanishing Eden: White Construction of Memory, Meaning, and Identity in a Racially Changing City

Temple University Press
November 2015
198 pages
6 x 9
Paper ISBN: 978-1-43991-119-8
Cloth ISBN: 978-1-43991-118-1
eBook ISBN: 978-1-43991-120-4

Michael T. Maly, Associate Professor of Sociology; Director of the Policy Research Collaborative
Roosevelt University, Chicago, Illinois

Heather M. Dalmage, Professor of Sociology; Director of the Mansfield Institute for Social Justice and Transformation
Roosevelt University, Chicago, Illinois

For many whites, desegregation initially felt like an attack on their community. But how has the process of racial change affected whites’ understanding of community and race? In Vanishing Eden, Michael Maly and Heather Dalmage provide an intriguing analysis of the experiences and memories of whites who lived in Chicago neighborhoods experiencing racial change during the 1950s through the 1980s. They pay particular attention to examining how young people made sense of what was occurring, and how this experience impacted their lives.

Using a blend of urban studies and whiteness studies, the authors examine how racial solidarity and whiteness were created and maintained—often in subtle and unreflective ways. Vanishing Eden also considers how race is central to the ways social institutions such as housing, education, and employment function. Surveying the shifting social, economic, and racial contexts, the authors explore how race and class at local and national levels shaped the organizing strategies of those whites who chose to stay as racial borders began to change.

Diversity Committee Workshop: Loretta Staples, LCSW: “Both & Neither: Biracial Identities”

The Connecticut Society of Psychoanalytic Psychology
Mt. Carmel Medical & Professional Building
3074 Whitney Avenue, Bldg 1
Hamden, Connecticut 06518
2015-11-14, 10:30-12:30 EST (Local Time)

Loretta Staples, LCSW

The CSPP Diversity Work Group Announces a New Workshop in our series: Through An/Other Lens: Multicultural Perspectives

Loretta Staples, LCSW maintains a private practice in New Haven and is a therapist in addiction services at Rushford in Meriden. She specializes in working with clients on issues of race, class, and gender as they impact identity and well-being.

Despite claims of a “post-racial” society, race persists as a salient cultural dimension through which private and public identities are formed. While public discourse about race in the U.S. continues to focus on black/white racial tension, biracial individuals—representing a varied mix of racial backgrounds—occupy a fast-growing segment of the population, as defined by the U.S. Census.

Individuals of mixed race occupy a realm in which they are “both and neither,” affording unique challenges and opportunities in navigating social realities. These particular adaptive demands impact identity formation, social functioning, and well-being, sometimes adversely, sometimes advantageously.

Therapists, especially those identifying as monoracial, may not recognize biracial clients, or may incorrectly assume certain racial allegiances. Moreover, they may overlook the effects of multivalent racialized experiences on the lives of biracial clients, and on the specific concerns these clients bring to treatment. This workshop provides an informal opportunity to explore biracial identity and considerations for clinical work…

For more information, click here.

“Mixed Race” Identities in Asia and the Pacific: Experiences from Singapore and New Zealand

Routledge
2015-10-28
188 pages
2 B/W Illus.
Hardback ISBN: 978-1-13-893393-4

Zarine L. Rocha, Managing Editor
Current Sociology and The Asian Journal of Social Science

“Mixed race” is becoming an important area for research, and there is a growing body of work in the North American and British contexts. However, understandings and experiences of “mixed race” across different countries and regions are not often explored in significant depth. New Zealand and Singapore provide important contexts for investigation, as two multicultural, yet structurally divergent, societies. Within these two countries, “mixed race” describes a particularly interesting label for individuals of mixed Chinese and European parentage.

This book explores the concept of “mixed race” for people of mixed Chinese and European descent, looking at how being Chinese and/or European can mean many different things in different contexts. By looking at different communities in Singapore and New Zealand, it investigates how individuals of mixed heritage fit into or are excluded from these communities. Increasingly, individuals of mixed ancestry are opting to identify outside of traditionally defined racial categories, posing a challenge to systems of racial classification, and to sociological understandings of “race”. As case studies, Singapore and New Zealand provide key examples of the complex relationship between state categorization and individual identities. The book explores the divergences between identity and classification, and the ways in which identity labels affect experiences of “mixed race” in everyday life. Personal stories reveal the creative and flexible ways in which people cross boundaries, and the everyday negotiations between classification, heritage, experience, and nation in defining identity. The study is based on qualitative research, including in-depth interviews with people of mixed heritage in both countries.

Filling an important gap in the literature by using an Asia/Pacific dimension, this study of race and ethnicity will appeal to students and scholars of mixed race studies, ethnicity, Chinese diaspora and cultural anthropology.

Contents

• 1. Finding the “Mixed” in “Mixed Race”
• 2. Mixed Histories in New Zealand and Singapore
• 3. The Personal in the Political
• 4. Being and Belonging
• 5. Roots, Routes and Coming Home
• 6. Conclusion

Minelle Mahtani is the New Host of “Sense of Place” on Roundhouse Radio 98.3 Vancouver

Sense of Place
Roundhouse Radio 98.3 Vancouver
98.3 FM
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
2015-07-14

Minelle Mahtani is an author, journalist and professor. She is an Associate Professor of Human Geography and Planning, and the Program in Journalism, at University of Toronto-Scarborough. She has written two books, “Mixed Race Amnesia: Resisting the Romanticization of Multiraciality” and “Global Mixed Race.” She has worked in the not-for-profit sector in Vancouver for the former firm IMPACS – Institute for Media, Policy and Civil Society and sits on the steering committee of UBC’s journalism school. She is former President of the Association for Canadian Studies and has won several awards, including a Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Award for her contributions to journalism. She is a former CBC TV journalist who worked on “The National.”

I’m on leave from the university to take on this exciting role. I’m taking it on because of what Roundhouse represents and exemplifies. Roundhouse is about active community citizenry. Roundhouse’s commitment to solutions-oriented programming echoes my own professional passions – thinking about ways to encourage a heightened sense of human flourishing for all Vancouver residents. Roundhouse hopes to be a conduit for so many underrepresented groups in this city. As a person of colour, of mixed race descent, I’m obviously supportive of that project. I’m personally committed to entertaining audiences, but also educating and inspiring our listeners to shed light on the complexities of city life today.

For more information, click here.

In school, there were rules. You stuck with the kids from your neighborhood. In the instances when we were forced to interact with Eastie kids, especially the black kids, it was confusing for everybody—I know I’m supposed to hate you but I have to pick you for my kickball team. So then we would be friends for that brief period of time, but it was a distant, temporary friendship. I was aware that I couldn’t get too close to them. I figured if I were friends with a black kid, it would confirm to everyone that I was really black. I was managing an already teetering identity in Southie, and I couldn’t afford it. Besides, they didn’t want to be friends with me either. They saw me as a race traitor, a white wannabe, a defector.

Any new kid I met—black, white, or ­whatever—had just one question for me: “What are you?” Always. I learned quickly that my mother’s answer didn’t work. “I’m Irish” was met with skepticism, laughter, or confusion: “And what else?” Even adults would give me a fake smile, and I knew they didn’t believe me. Black kids would say, “Oh, you think you’re white, bitch?” Spanish kids just spoke Spanish to me—“¿Cómo se llama?”—and when I stood there in silence, they called me “puta,” sucked their teeth, and walked away.

Jennifer J. Roberts, “One of Us,” Boston Magazine, November 2014. http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/article/2014/10/28/jennifer-roberts-irish-black-race-southie/.

A growing body of evidence from anecdotes, historians, and recent studies suggests that this [racial and ethnic identities are fixed and exogenous] is not always true. In fact, there may be reason to believe that race is, to some extent, a choice made by an individual because of social-economic and political factors. For example, historians have long noted that Americans with African ancestry often chose to ‘pass’ for white to obtain better economic and political opportunities (e.g. O’Toole 2003 and Sharfstein 2011). Mill and Stein (2012) find that amongst mixed-race siblings, those that identify as white later in life earn significantly higher wages. Recent studies have also documented that individuals have responded to political-economic incentives and changed castes in India (Cassan 2013), manipulated their racial appearance for higher wages in Brazil (Cornwell et al. 2014), or have strategically chosen the official ethnicity of mixed children in China (Jia and Persson 2013). More generally, studies of identity, such as the theoretical work of Akerlof and Kranton (2000), argue that “choice of identity may be the most important ‘economic’ decision people make. Individuals may – more or less consciously – choose who they want to be … Previous economic analyses of, for example, poverty, labor supply, and schooling have not considered these possibilities”.

Emily Nix and Nancy Qian, “Is race a choice?” VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal, January 26, 2015. http://www.voxeu.org/article/race-choice.

All mixed people are entitled to self-identify how they please. But, for some, it is very simple: you are mixed, but you are Black – not in a reductive sense, but in a reflection of a structural reality. In my case, whilst I recognise that I am mixed (my father is white), I have always been brought up with an awareness that I live in a structurally racist society and therefore am engaged with on the spectrum of blackness. Accordingly, I politically align myself to Blackness. I am Black.

Sekai Makoni, “I Am Mixed And I Am Whole,” Ain’t I A Woman Collective, October 19, 2015. http://www.aintiawomancollective.com/i-am-mixed-and-i-am-whole/.

Even though my skin is fair, not once have I considered what it would be like to somehow transform myself into “being white.” I wouldn’t even know where to begin. By the time I was in the seventh grade, I exclusively sat at the “black lunch table,” not as a guest, but as a resident. I’ve been sitting there ever since.

Shaun King, “Shaun King: I’ve been called the N-word since I was 14, but now those same people want me to be white,” The New York Daily News, November 3, 2015. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/king-people-call-n-word-white-article-1.2421243.

“Today,” [Larry] Sabato said, “a mixed-race family is a political plus. Without saying a word, you project an image of progress and modernity.”

Michael Paul Williams, “Williams: A positive among the attack ads in the Gecker-Sturtevant race,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, November 2, 2015. http://www.richmond.com/news/local/michael-paul-williams/article_6b52ef50-c465-5bc0-a03f-fa1789661a0c.html.