Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

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Month: January 2016

  • When it comes to race, confusion is the most intellectually defensible position.

    Ethics generally commends telling the truth. But in a situation in which our ordinary ways of thinking are at odds with reality, there can be no easy truth to be had. When it comes to race, confusion is the most intellectually defensible position. Kwame Anthony Appiah, “Can I Call My Nonbiological Twins Black Because My…

  • Daughters of Interracial Couples are More Likely To Say They are Multiracial

    Daughters of Interracial Couples are More Likely To Say They are Multiracial TIME Magazine 2016-01-28 Carey Wallace Study suggests it’s because they’re considered “intriguing.” One of the fastest growing racial groups in the country isn’t a single racial group–it’s people from multiracial backgrounds, the children of interracial unions. A new study has found however, that…

  • Dating stories project

    Dating stories project Black Girl Dancing at Lughnasa 2016-01-28 Emma Dabiri In continuing on the work of Who Stole All the Black Women from Britain?, I am collecting stories about race and dating for an exciting new project. I want to hear your experiences of dating within and outside your racial group. Do black men…

  • The Role of Gender, Class, and Religion in Biracial Americans’ Racial Labeling Decisions

    Racial attachments are understood to be socially constructed and endogenous to gender, socioeconomic, and religious identities. Yet we know surprisingly little about the effect of such identities on the particular racial labels that individuals self-select. In this article, I investigate how social identities shape the racial labels chosen by biracial individuals in the United States,…

  • Black Death: Gore, Geographies and the Gallows in Jamaica

    Black Death: Gore, Geographies and the Gallows in Jamaica African American Intellectual History Society 2015-10-12 Jessica Marie Johnson, Assistant Professor of History Michigan State University Pierre Eugène du Simitière, ca. 1757-1774 One evening, on a road in Jamaica, a soldier belonging to the “Mulatto Company” made his evening rounds. He came upon a black man…

  • Voices from Mixed Asian America

    Voices from Mixed Asian America MJ Engel Columbia University, New York, New York 2016-01-27 Hearing the unfiltered voices of the mixed Asian experience remains a novelty. “Voices from Mixed Asian America” is a compilation of interviews conducted with eight mixed race individuals. This series amplifies and connects the personal experiences of mixed Asian voices and…

  • Can I Call My Nonbiological Twins Black Because My Husband Is?

    Ethics generally commends telling the truth. But in a situation in which our ordinary ways of thinking are at odds with reality, there can be no easy truth to be had. When it comes to race, confusion is the most intellectually defensible position.

  • Realist Historiography and the Legacies of Reconstruction in Charles Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition

    Realist Historiography and the Legacies of Reconstruction in Charles Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition American Literary Realism Volume 48, Number 2, Winter 2016 pages 147-165 Peter Zogas Charles W. Chesnutt had high hopes for his novel The Marrow of Tradition (1901). He thought that his retelling of the 1898 race riot and Democratic coup in…

  • I always identified as black. That was, I think, the only choice for me. The other choice wasn’t psychologically healthy for me, because my whole family didn’t have that option.

    “I always identified as black. That was, I think, the only choice for me. The other choice wasn’t psychologically healthy for me, because my whole family didn’t have that option. So I think black was my identity, and in many ways still is, though I think of black and mixed as related in a complicated…

  • Author Junot Díaz Packs Thorne Hall

    Author Junot Díaz Packs Thorne Hall Oxy Newsroom Occidental College, Los Angeles, California 2015-09-23 Media Contact: Jim Tranquada / (323) 259-2990 Marc Campos/Occidental College Ranging from profane to profound, from wisecracking to wistful, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Díaz discussed the complexities and heartbreak of race and identity in America with a capacity crowd at Occidental…