Mixed Race Studies

Construction of Race and Class Buffers in the Structure of Immigration Controls and Laws

Oregon Law Review
Volume 76 (1997)
pages 731-764

Tanya Katerí Hernández, Professor of Law
Fordham University

In the midst of current anti-immigration sentiment, which is motivating dramatic changes in the United States immigration laws, there exists the myth that prior immigration laws were more equitable and humanitarian. Yet historical analysis reveals that immigration law has been put to uses far from idyllic, and has always been concerned with the racial makeup of the nation. Specifically, national preoccupation with the maintenance of a “White country” is reflected in immigration law. The continued national preference for White immigrants is explicitly featured in the visa profiling codes of U.S. embassies and consulates. This Essay employs a race-conscious lens to analyze the way in which immigration law has been structured to perpetuate a racial hierarchy which privileges Whiteness, primarily by preferring White immigrants to immigrants of color, and secondarily by drafting immigrants of color to form a middle-tier buffer and, alternatively, to provide a bottom-tier surplus labor supply.

Read the entire article here.

Why white liberals need to figure out how to talk about race

KUOW.org: 94.9 FM, Seattle News & Information
2017-01-06

By Katherine Banwell & Jamala Henderson

Professor Ralina Joseph at the University of Washington says to just start talking about race. University of Washington

Why is race so hard to discuss? Ralina Joseph, founding director of the University of Washington’s Center for Communication, Difference, and Equity, talked about coded racial language, from Seattle liberals to Trump. This is a transcript from her interview, lightly edited for clarity…

Listen to the interview (00:04:12) here.

The (Un)Happy Objects of Affective Community

Cultural Studies
Volume 30, Issue 1 (2016)
pages 24-46
DOI: 10.1080/09502386.2014.899608

Alexandre Emboaba Da Costa, Assistant Professor, Theoretical, Cultural and International Studies in Education
University of Alberta, Canada

Affect permeates understandings of racial and cultural mixture as well as racial democracy in Brazil. Sentiments of interconnectedness, harmony and conviviality shape the ways in which Brazilians of diverse races/colours feel identity and belonging. These sentiments also drive hopeful attachments to possibilities for moving beyond race, influencing how people encounter and relate to racism and inequality. However, studies of race in Brazil tend to either take the affective for granted as positive unifying force or ignore its role in shaping the appeal of dominant racial discourses on identity, nation and belonging. Through an examination of the different ways people feel, experience and live orientations towards mixture and racial democracy as the dominant affective community, this paper analyzes the role the affective plays in constituting racial ideologies and shaping anti-racist action. I explore the ways histories of race, racism, privilege and disadvantage generate unequal attachments to and experiences of mixture and racial democracy as what Sara Ahmed calls ‘happy objects’, those objects towards which good feeling are directed, that provide a shared horizon of experience, and that shape an affective community with which all are assumed to be aligned. Not everyone attaches themselves to the same objects in the same way and for the same reasons – the affective community involves positive, hopeful attachments for some and an unhappy, alienating and unequally shared burden for others. These affective states demonstrate that histories of race and racism cannot be wished away through commonly asserted attachments to abstract ideals of shared belonging. At the same time, examining these affective states provides deeper understanding of the ways unequal attachments move people towards action or inaction in relation to race, racism and discrimination.

Read or purchase the article here.