Mixed Race Studies

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 Husband Is?,” The Ethicist, The New York Times Magazine, January 27, 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/magazine/can-i-call-my-nonbiological-twins-black-because-my-husband-is.html.

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 young women are much more likely to call themselves multiracial than young men are.

Since 1967, when the Supreme Court declared state laws against interracial marriage unconstitutional in Loving vs.Virginia, the rate of interracial marriages in the United States has climbed from below one percent to 10% of all new marriages today.

And by 2050, as those numbers continue to rise, social scientists estimate that one out of every five Americans will be mixed-race.

How will this growing population choose to identify themselves? Will they embrace one parent’s background more than the other? Will they create a blend of the two? Or will they create something completely new?

To find out, Lauren Davenport, professor of political science at Stanford, sifted data from tens of thousands of incoming college freshmen with multi-racial backgrounds across the country…

Read the entire article here.

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 really find white women more attractive? Have you experienced colourism in the dating game? Do you only date a certain ‘type’? I am exploring all of these issues for a forthcoming piece of research so do please get in touch at ed5@soas.ac.uk.

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

American Sociological Review
Volume 81, Number 1, February 2016
pages 57-84
DOI: 10.1177/0003122415623286

Lauren D. Davenport, Assistant Professor of Political Science
Stanford University

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, a rapidly growing population who have multiple labeling options. Examining national surveys of more than 37,000 respondents of Latino-white, Asian-white, and black-white parentage, I disentangle how gender, socioeconomic status, and religious identity influence racial labeling decisions. Across biracial subgroups and net of all other influences, economic affluence and Jewish identity predict whiter self-identification, whereas belonging to a religion more commonly associated with racial minorities is associated with a minority identification. Gender, however, is the single best predictor of identification, with biracial women markedly more likely than biracial men to identify as multiracial. These findings help us better understand the contextual nature of racial identification and the processes via which social identities interact with racial meanings in the United States.

Read the entire article here or here.

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 in the woods. The soldier called for his attention. Receiving no answer, he killed him.

Upon closer inspection, the man was identified as a “new negro” gathering wood to sell in town. Death was not the end for the “negre nouveau.” Once he was dead, his body was placed in a cage hung from a gallows planted at a busy intersection in town. His body remained “for all to see” at that crossroads–somewhere between Montgomery’s Corner, near a road named Rockport, and close to One Mile Stone. After two years, he/it was called ‘Fortune,” and the black men, women, and children who passed treated the body as a relic, an item with spiritual powers or import…

Read the entire article here.

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 issues. Each video is centered on a theme, from personal experiences of being othered and how being mixed race has factored into love lives to more general reflections on how mixed identities destabilize race as we know it.