Mixed Race Studies

Bleach in the Rainbow: Latin Ethnicity and Preference for Whiteness

Transforming Anthropology
Volume 13, Issue 2 (October 2005)
Pages 103-109
DOI: 10.1525/tran.2005.13.2.103

William A. Darity, Jr., Samuel DuBois Cook Distinguished Professor of Public Policy
Duke University, Durham, North Carolina

Jason Dietrich, Section Chief, Compliance Analytics and Policy
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Washington, D.C.

Darrick Hamilton, Henry Cohen Professor of Economics and Urban Policy
Milano School of Policy, Management, and Environment
The New School, New York, New York

The conventional wisdom is that race is constructed in vastly different ways in the United States and throughout Latin America. Race is ostensibly understood as genotypical in the United States, while race ostensibly is understood as phenotypical in Latin America. Furthermore, the conventional wisdom, represented by the rainbow people metaphor, characterizes racial identity as far less a source of stigma in Latin America than in the United States. In contrast, research reported in this article indicates strong similarities in the construction and the operation race the entire Americas. Genotype, or African ancestry, is shown to matter in Latin America; phenotype, or appearance, is shown to matter in the United States. Race is strongly associated with social exclusion and inequality throughout all of the Americas, with Latinos demonstrating a strong preference for Whiteness and an aversion toward a Black identity. African Americans’ tendency to be Black identified may be the result of the social selection effects the phenomenon “passing.”

Read or purchase the article here.

Episode 205: Understanding our Multiple Identities

Shifting Our Schools
2022-04-11

Jeff Utecht, Host

Sarah Gaither, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience
Duke University, Durham, North Carolina

Dr. Gaither is a social & developmental psychologist studying social identities. She runs the Duke University Identity and Diversity Lab.

Listen to the episode (00:18:53) here.

Colin Kaepernick’s New Children’s Book Encourages Black Children To Embrace Their Identities

Mademenoire
2022-04-11

Natasha Decker

Colin Kaepernick’s I Color Myself Different is a new children’s book based on the football player’s true and inspiring journey as a child learning the value of embracing and celebrating their Black identity “through the power of radical self-love” and knowing their inherent worth.

In the book, illustrated by Eric Wilkerson, a young, adopted Colin goes on a journey of unpacking his identity and its uniqueness.

“When I was 5-years-old, I was given an assignment in school: ‘draw a picture of yourself and your family.’ I drew my white adoptive family with a yellow crayon and then picked up a brown crayon to draw myself,” the former San Franciso 49ers player told PEOPLE.

Highlighting that assignment’s impact, the 34-year-old athlete said the “revelatory moment taught me an important lesson about embracing my Black identity through the power of self-love and eventually helped me to understand how my brown skin was connected to my Blackness.”

“Above all, I hope that I Color Myself Different can inspire young people to embrace their power, love themselves and walk in the truth of their own path,” the activist continued…

Read the entire article here.

June Shagaloff Alexander, School Desegregation Leader, Dies at 93

The New York Times
2022-04-06

Clay Risen

She helped Thurgood Marshall prepare for his Supreme Court fight and later took on de facto school segregation across the North and West.

June Shagaloff Alexander, whose work for the N.A.A.C.P. and its legal arm in the 1950s and ’60s put her at the forefront of the nationwide fight for school integration and made her a close confidante of civil rights figures like Thurgood Marshall and James Baldwin, died on March 29 at her home in Tel Aviv. She was 93…

…Although she was white, her dark complexion sometimes led people to assume she was Black, to the point of barring her from certain whites-only public spaces, an experience that she said shaped her early commitment to civil rights.

But this ambiguity proved to be an asset in her work. When investigating a segregated school district, she would visit a white school pretending to be a prospective white parent, then do the same at a Black school, pretending to be a prospective Black parent — a ruse that gave her a unique, unvarnished view of the district’s education inequities…

Read the entire obituary here.