Mixed Race Studies

10 Thoughts on Anna Holmes’ New York Times Op-Ed ‘Black With (Some) White Privilege’

Very Smart Brothas
The Root
2018-02-13

Panama Jackson, Senior Editor

Scott Olson/Getty Images

Anna Holmes, the founder of Jezebel and editorial director at Topic.com, recently wrote an op-ed for the New York Times titled, “Black With (Some) White Privilege.” Full disclosure: I’m part of a currently running, very interesting and insightful documentary series she executive-produced called The Loving Generation, which explores the lives and identities of kids born of one black and one white parent after the Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court decision in 1967 that struck down state laws banning interracial marriage.

Holmes calls the children of interracial marriage born between 1960 and 1985 “the Loving Generation,” though where I’m from, we just call us mixed. Or black. Mostly black. Or “You know you black, right?”

Anyway, I have quite a few qualms about the piece, especially as a mixed person who identifies as black whose picture is included in the actual op-ed—which, petty or not, makes me feel as if I co-signed the opinions and perspective. I did not. All of us who are pictured in the op-ed are also part of a supplement to the documentary series. I can’t speak for anybody else involved, but I took issue with much of the op-ed because our experiences as mixed people are varied in a way that the piece mutes…

Read the entire article here.

African American populations in the U.S. formed primarily by mating between Africans and Europeans over the last 500 years.

Jessica M. Gross, “Tests of fit of historically-informed models of African American Admixture,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology, (Volume 165), Issue 2, February 2018, 211. https://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.23343.

50 Years of Loving: Interracial Romantic Relationships and Recommendations for Future Research

Journal of Family Theory & Review
Volume 9, Issue 4, December 2017
Pages 557–571
DOI: 10.1111/jftr.12215

Natalie S. de Guzman
Department of Human Development
University of California, Davis

Adrienne Nishina, Associate Professor of Human Development & Family Studies
University of California, Davis

In honor of the 50th anniversary of Loving v. Virginia (1967), the landmark civil rights case that invalidated laws prohibiting interracial marriage in the United States, this review describes the field’s past and future directions for studying interracial romantic relationships. We briefly present history, theories, and research about interracial and interethnic romantic relationships, and provide suggestions for future research. We also highlight the need for flexible racial and ethnic categories as demographics and distinctions shift in the United States by proposing the use of adaptable panethnic (a set of related ethnic groups that have been combined and collectively labeled) categories, rather than racial categories, or the use of more specific ethnic or nationality categories depending on a variety of factors. Finally, we discuss multiracial and multiethnic individuals in the research on romantic relationships, acknowledging that multiracial and multiethnic individuals are both the offspring of such unions and a rapidly growing demographic.

Read or purchase the article here.

Goodbye ‘Racial Democracy’? Brazilian Identity, Official Discourse and the Making of a ‘Black’ Heritage Site in Rio de Janeiro

Bulletin of Latin American Research
Special Issue: Reflections on Repression and Resistance: The Vivid Legacies of Dictatorship in Brazil
Volume 37, Issue 1, January 2018
Pages 73–86
DOI: 10.1111/blar.12636

André Cicalo
King’s College London, London, United Kingdom

This article explores the racial thinking in Brazilian governance exposed during the creation of a Circuit of African Heritage in the port area of Rio de Janeiro from 2011 on. The Circuit and the policy discourses that have surrounded its establishment are visibly framed within a philosophy of ethno-racial recognition and multiculturalism, which apparently suggests a rupture from the long-established discourse of mixture and racial democracy in Brazil. Nonetheless, a careful analysis of the creation of the Circuit of African Heritage indicates that policy discourse is not conclusively unsettling the country’s traditional faith in a shared, colour-blind national identity.

Read the entire article in HTML or PDF format.

Tests of fit of historically-informed models of African American Admixture

American Journal of Physical Anthropology
Volume 165, Issue 2, February 2018
Pages 211–222
DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.23343

Jessica M. Gross
Department of Anthropology
University of New Mexico

African American populations in the U.S. formed primarily by mating between Africans and Europeans over the last 500 years. To date, studies of admixture have focused on either a one-time admixture event or continuous input into the African American population from Europeans only. Our goal is to gain a better understanding of the admixture process by examining models that take into account (a) assortative mating by ancestry in the African American population, (b) continuous input from both Europeans and Africans, and (c) historically informed variation in the rate of African migration over time.

Materials and methods

We used a model-based clustering method to generate distributions of African ancestry in three samples comprised of 147 African Americans from two published sources. We used a log-likelihood method to examine the fit of four models to these distributions and used a log-likelihood ratio test to compare the relative fit of each model.

Results

The mean ancestry estimates for our datasets of 77% African/23% European to 83% African/17% European ancestry are consistent with previous studies. We find admixture models that incorporate continuous gene flow from Europeans fit significantly better than one-time event models, and that a model involving continuous gene flow from Africans and Europeans fits better than one with continuous gene flow from Europeans only for two samples. Importantly, models that involve continuous input from Africans necessitate a higher level of gene flow from Europeans than previously reported.

Discussion

We demonstrate that models that take into account information about the rate of African migration over the past 500 years fit observed patterns of African ancestry better than alternative models. Our approach will enrich our understanding of the admixture process in extant and past populations.

Read or purchase the article here.