Mixed Race Studies

‘I Am Latino, I Am Also White’: Why A Latino Of Mixed Ancestry Struggles Each Time He Fills Out A Form

LAist
2020-12-06

Thomas Lopez

“Mr. Lopez, we need you to turn in the form declaring your son’s race,” said the administrator from my son’s school.

In second grade, we transferred him to LAUSD from his parochial school and filed the necessary stack of paperwork, save one form. That was the statement of racial identity.

It wasn’t intentional, just an honest mistake. But it wasn’t one the school would easily overlook. They called my wife and me individually to obtain the form.

Completing this form was not easy. My son is multiracial — Black, white and Native American. I too am multiracial white and Latino. My wife and I are Mexican American…

Read the entire article here.

Identity Wars: Mixed Separatists v. Black Gatekeepers

Mixed Auntie Confidential
2023-03-16

TaRessa Stovall

Does this fight or fuel racism?

A growing trend has Mixed-race Separatists on one side, insisting that we have to identify ONLY as Mixed or we’re criticized as “One-Droppers” for refusing to separate our Mixedness from our Blackness, and rejected as problematic, inauthentic enemies of “true” Mixed identity.

On the other side, there’s a growing number of young Black folks—seemingly mostly women—who proudly self-identify as Gatekeepers. They’re adamant that Mixed-Black people aren’t Black, can’t call themselves Black, and aren’t welcome in Black spaces. This gatekeeping includes Mixed-Black people who very much identify with Black culture and community…

Read the entire article here.

The Cumulative Effects of Colorism: Race, Wealth, and Skin Tone

Social Forces
Published online: 2023-03-13
DOI: 10.1093/sf/soad038

Alexander Adames, Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Sociology
University of Pennslyvania

Researchers have long documented a persistent Black–White gap in wealth. These studies, however, often treat race as a discrete category, eluding its socially constructed nature. As a result, these studies assume that the “effect of race” is consistent across all individuals racialized as Black. Studies that make this assumption potentially obscure heterogeneity in the size of the Black–White wealth gap. Research on skin color stratification suggests that it is possible that the Black–White wealth gap varies by the extent to which a racial subgroup is deemed to fit the broader racial umbrella. In turn, I adopt a more complex operationalization of race that is based on both racial and skin tone appraisals. Drawing on data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, I find that the Black–White wealth gap does vary by the Black skin tone subgroup. Generally, the Black–White gap in assets is smallest when focusing on lighter-skin Black people and largest when focusing on darker-skin Black people. These differences are not only the result of initial disadvantage but also cumulative disadvantage in the rate of wealth accumulation. Lastly, the findings suggest that the Black–White wealth gaps grow at a faster rate than the skin tone wealth gaps. I found that differences were robust to adjustments for parental socioeconomic status, childhood background, and interviewer characteristics. I conclude by discussing the theoretical implications for our understanding of the mechanisms undergirding Black–White disparities in wealth attainment.

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