Mixed Race Studies

Race in Mind: Critical Essays

University of Notre Dame Press
2015
408 pages
ISBN: 978-0-268-04148-9

Paul Spickard, Professor of History
University of California, Santa Barbara

With contributions by Jeffrey Moniz and Ingrid Dineen-Wimberly

Race in Mind presents fourteen critical essays on race and mixed race by one of America’s most prolific and influential ethnic studies scholars. Collected in one volume are all of Paul Spickard’s theoretical writings over the past two decades. Ten of the articles have been revised and updated from previous publications. Four appear here for the first time. Spickard’s work embraces three overarching themes: race as biology versus race as something constructed by social and political relationships; race as a phenomenon that exists not just in the United States, but in every part of the world, and even in the relationships between nations; and the question of racial multiplicity.

These essays analyze how race affects people’s lives and relationships in all settings, from the United States to Great Britain and from Hawaiʻi to Chinese Central Asia. They contemplate the racial positions in various societies of people called Black and people called White, of Asians and Pacific Islanders, and especially of those people whose racial ancestries and identifications are multiple. Here for the first time are Spickard’s trenchant analyses of the creation of race in the South Pacific, of DNA testing for racial ancestry, and of the meaning of multiplicity in the age of Barack Obama.

When black is white and vice versa

The New Tri-State Defender
Memphis, Tennessee
2015-12-23

Brittney Gathen, Special to The New Tri-State Defender

Dr. Allyson Hobbs signed copies of her book, “A Chosen Exile: AHistory of Racial Passing in American Life,” during an event called “Book Talk” at the National Civil Rights Museum. (Photo: Merritt Gathen)

Stanford professor and author shines light on racial ‘passing’ at NCRM event.

“Passing” – living as a part of one race despite being born into another – is often full of complexity and consequences, so much so that author and Stanford history professor Dr. Allyson Hobbs calls it a type of “exile.”

Hobbs, author of “A Chosen Exile: AHistory of Racial Passing in American Life,”examined the topic of racial passing during “Book Talk” at the National Civil Rights Museum last week (Dec. 17). During the event, Hobbs discussed topics such as the negative side of passing and her perception of former Spokane, Washington NAACP president Rachel Dolezal, who, despite being born white, lived as (and still identifies as) a black woman…

Read the entire article here.

White Latinos need to own up to their Whiteness because we just can’t continue to afford this to continue any further. We also need African-Americans to understand that Latin America has over 200 million Afro-descendants and that going to Africa also entails going to Colombia, Brazil, Cuba and Puerto Rico, among other countries. Blackness does not have to solely mean African-American and Whiteness does not have to solely mean Anglo-white.

Wiliam Garcia, “White Latino Racism on the Rise: It’s Time for a Serious Conversation on Euro-Diasporic Whiteness,” Latino Rebels, December 21, 2015. http://www.latinorebels.com/2015/12/21/white-latino-racism-on-the-rise-its-time-for-a-serious-conversation-on-euro-diasporic-whiteness/.

Skin color is historically the locally adaptive trait most commonly considered by European cultures as a “racial trait” in humans. Skin color is an adaptation to the amount of ultraviolet (uv) radiation in the environment: dark skins are adaptive in high uv environments in order to protect from radiation damage that can kill and burn cells and damage DNA if not protected by melanin, and light skins are adaptive in low uv environments in order to make sufficient vitamin D, which requires uv (Hochberg & Templeton, 2010; Jablonski & Chaplin, 2010). The geographical distribution of skin color follows the environmental factor of uv intensity. Skin color differences do not reflect overall genetic divergence. For example, the native peoples with the darkest skins live in tropical Africa and Melanesia. The dark skins of Africans and Melanesians are adaptive to the high uv found in these areas. Because Africans and Melanesians live on opposite sides of the world, they are more highly genetically differentiated than many other human populations (Figure 2) despite their similar skin colors. Europeans, who are geographically intermediate between Africa and Melanesia, are likewise intermediate at the molecular genetic level between Africans and Melanesians, even though Europeans have light skins that are adapted to the low uv environment of Europe. Skin color differences in humans are not a reliable indicator of overall genetic differentiation or evolutionary history. Moreover, skin color varies continuously among humans in a clinal fashion rather than categorical ecotypes (Relethford, 2009). Hence, there is a compelling biological reason to exclude skin color as the racially-defining adaptive trait under the ecotype concept of race.

Alan R. Templeton, “Biological races in humans,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Volume 44, Issue 3, September 2013. 262–271. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsc.2013.04.010.