Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

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  • Even discussing ‘angry black man’ stereotype provokes anger

    Even discussing ‘angry black man’ stereotype provokes anger

    CNN
    2010-06-16

    John Blake

    (CNN) — Here are some sound bites from the post-racial era:

    “The long legged Mac Daddy in the White House is angry this morning. Seems to me we should change the name to the Black House for the next few years. Your news organization obviously is very racist.”

    And:

    “I don’t care what anyone says. If Obama takes to heart the calls for anger in this crisis all bets are off! White America will dump him right on his black a#s.”

    Last week, CNN published an article entitled “Why Obama doesn’t dare become the ‘angry black man’ ” after critics complained that President Obama had not displayed enough anger in response to the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster.

    The article quoted scholars on race relations who said many white Americans would be unsettled by Obama losing his temper because he would evoke the stereotype of the angry African-American man.

    …The phrase comes as no surprise to Rainier Spencer, director of Afro-American Studies Program at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas.

    Spencer said the angry black man stereotype has its origins in slavery. During slavery, white men feared black men like Nat Turner who resisted slavery. They were the black men who led slave insurrections and were sold further South. They were called Bucks.

    “There’s the image of the minstrel, the happy, silly Negro who is fun to watch and laugh at. But the other one—the Buck—is the one you have to be careful about,” Spencer said.

    The angry black man stereotype persisted after the end of slavery, Spencer said. Black militants in the civil rights movement; today’s black male rap artists—all are equated with some variation of the angry black man, Spencer said.

    But Spencer said the angry black man stereotype doesn’t have the bite it once had. Certain black male public figures—Obama, Colin Powell—can display anger…

    Why do we have to talk so much about race?

    But who says a black man is running the country?

    Some readers got miffed because CNN identified Obama as a black president. He’s biracial, they say.

    “CNN get your facts straight—he is an angry half-black man! CNN you are a bunch of idiot race-baiters.”

    Another:

    “Maybe the 50 percent white part of him keeps the 50 percent angry black part calm and collected and on an even keel. Hmmm, that might be worthy of a university study! Could be ground-breaking science here! I’ll bet the guvment’ would even pay for it!”

    Spencer, the race scholar from UNLV, said that Obama has already made his identity choice. He identified himself as black on his census form. He is perceived and accepted as black my most African-Americans.

    Obama’s racial background doesn’t make him unlike most blacks; it makes him similar to most blacks, Spencer said.

    Spencer, who is writing a book on mixed race, said an estimated 90 percent of African-Americans have white ancestors, including Michelle Obama, the first lady.

    “It doesn’t make sense to talk about mixed race unless you’re going to include all 30 million African-Americans,” said Spencer, author of the upcoming book, “Reproducing Race: The Paradox of Generation Mix.”…

    Read the entire article here.

  • U.S. far from an interracial melting pot

    U.S. far from an interracial melting pot

    CNN
    2010-06-16

    Daniel T. Lichter, Ferris family professor in the Department of Policy Analysis and Management, and Professor of Sociology
    Cornell University

    Ithaca, New York (CNN)—According to a recent report by the Pew Research Center, one of every seven new marriages in 2008 was interracial or interethnic—the highest percentage in U.S. history. The media and blogosphere have been atwitter.

    Finally, it seems, we have tangible evidence of America’s entry into a new post-racial society, proof of growing racial tolerance. Intermarriage trends are being celebrated as a positive sign that we have come to think of all Americans as, well, Americans…

    …It’s time for everyone—on all sides of this issue—to relax and take a deep breath. The reality is that racial boundaries remain firmly entrenched in American society. They are not likely to go away anytime soon.

    We are still far from a melting pot where distinct racial and ethnic groups blend into a multi-ethnic stew…

    Read the entire article here.

  • “A Black Girl Should Not be With a White Man”: Sex, Race, and African Women’s Social and Legal Status in Colonial Gabon, c. 1900–1946

    “A Black Girl Should Not be With a White Man”: Sex, Race, and African Women’s Social and Legal Status in Colonial Gabon, c. 1900–1946

    Journal of Women’s History
    Volume 22, Number 2, Summer 2010
    E-ISSN: 1527-2036
    Print ISSN: 1042-7961
    DOI: 10.1353/jowh.0.0140

    Rachel Jean-Baptiste, Associate Professor of African History
    University of California, Davis

    This article reviews representations and lived experiences of interracial sex and métissage in twentieth-century colonial Gabon to argue that African communities and colonial societies debated over “the métis problem” as question of how to demarcate African women’s sexuality, and socioeconomic and political power in the urban locale. These discourses and social realities reflected ambiguous and contradictory colonial discourses and polyvalent struggles among Gabonese populations to recast gender and respectability in the colonial capital city. Mpongwé women’s participation in interracial relationships, frequently brokered by male kin, had unintended consequences that threatened colonial order and reordered gender hierarchies within Mpongwé communities. Following World War I through the 1950s, shifting coalitions of elite African men, colonial officials, and private French citizens—anxious of the social mobility black and mixed race women achieved and sought to maintain—frowned upon and sought to restrict interracial liasons. Mpongwé women, both black and métis, involved in interracial relationships struggled to maintain control over their property, their labor, and insist upon their respectability in the precarious urban milieu. Using oral and written sources, this article addresses a gap in the scholarship on gender, sexuality, and colonialism by foregrounding how African women and men engaged in and reflected on miscegenation at the center of analysis. Furthermore, this article emphasizes the colonial encounter as a dialectic in which the actions of African women shaped colonial perceptions and policies.

    Read or purchase the article here.

  • Washington College students awarded summer fellowships

    Washington College students awarded summer fellowships

    The Star Democrat
    Easton, Maryland
    2010-06-02

    CHESTERTOWN, MARYLAND Six Washington College students were awarded Comegys Bight Summer Research Fellowships supported by the Comegys Bight Fellows Program, which invites scholars to design independent research projects and internships built around their particular interests. These projects include field research on the ghost tour industry, a study of the relationship between military service and political behavior, and an exploration of biracial identity in America.

    The program, conceived and sustained by Drs. Thomas and Virginia Collier of Chestertown and administered by the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, offers stipends for students to pursue independent projects with the guidance of faculty mentors…

    The program has served 38 students since its advent in 2003.

    “One of the most exciting things about this program has been seeing how the students’ experiences as Comegys Bight Fellows continue to resonate in their lives throughout college and far beyond,” said Adam Goodheart, Hodson Trust-Griswold director of the Starr Center…

    ..Drawn from a range of academic majors, the 2010 Fellows include:…

    …English major Kristine Sloan, Class of 2012, will explore biracial identity in America through a nonfiction writing project about her Filipino-American family and her own sense of dual identity. She will travel to the Philippines…

    Read the entire article here.

  • In Search of Nella Larsen: A Biography of the Color Line

    In Search of Nella Larsen: A Biography of the Color Line

    Harvard University Press
    May 2006
    624 pages
    6-3/8 x 9-1/4 inches
    37 halftones
    Hardcover ISBN: 9780674021808

    George Hutchinson, Newton C. Farr Professor of American Culture
    Cornell University

    • 2006 Booklist Editor’s Choice
    • 2006 Honorable Mention of the Professional/Scholarly Publishing Annual Award Competition, Biography & Autobiography
    • Finalist, 2007 Independent Publisher Book Awards, Biography Category
    • 2007 Christian Gauss Award for literary scholarship or criticism, Phi Beta Kappa Society
    • Choice Magazine A Best Academic Book of the Year

    Born to a Danish seamstress and a black West Indian cook in one of the Western Hemisphere’s most infamous vice districts, Nella Larsen (1891-1964) lived her life in the shadows of America’s racial divide. She wrote about that life, was briefly celebrated in her time, then was lost to later generations–only to be rediscovered and hailed by many as the best black novelist of her generation. In his search for Nella Larsen, the “mystery woman of the Harlem Renaissance,” George Hutchinson exposes the truths and half-truths surrounding this central figure of modern literary studies, as well as the complex reality they mask and mirror. His book is a cultural biography of the color line as it was lived by one person who truly embodied all of its ambiguities and complexities.

    Author of a landmark study of the Harlem Renaissance, Hutchinson here produces the definitive account of a life long obscured by misinterpretations, fabrications, and omissions. He brings Larsen to life as an often tormented modernist, from the trauma of her childhood to her emergence as a star of the Harlem Renaissance. Showing the links between her experiences and her writings, Hutchinson illuminates the singularity of her achievement and shatters previous notions of her position in the modernist landscape. Revealing the suppressions and misunderstandings that accompany the effort to separate black from white, his book addresses the vast consequences for all Americans of color-line culture’s fundamental rule: race trumps family.

  • What’s at stake in claims of “post-racial” media?

    What’s at stake in claims of “post-racial” media?

    FlowTV
    Department of Radio, Television, and Film at the University of Texas at Austin
    2010-06-03

    Mary C. Beltrán, Associate Professor of Media Studies
    University of Texas, Austin

    Tracy Morgan, comedic actor best known for his role as comedic performer Tracy Jordan on the NBC series 30 Rock (2006+), trumpeted America’s supposed post-racial identity at the Golden Globe Awards in January 2009. When 30 Rock was awarded Best Musical or Comedy Television Series, he gleefully snatched the statuette from Tina Fey, creator and star of the series, quipping, “Tina Fey and I had an agreement that if Barack Obama won, I would speak for the show from now on.” He continued, “Welcome to post-racial America! I am the face of post-racial America. Deal with it, Cate Blanchett! We’d like to thank the Hollywood Foreign Press … especially me, ’cause a black man can’t get no love at the Emmys. I love you, Europe! That’s what’s up!”…

    …Unsurprisingly, when used in description of media trends, post-racial has taken on differing meanings both for scholars and media professionals. For one, it’s been used as shorthand to describe purported progress in ethnic/racial inclusion in employment and casting, as appears to be at least part of what Morgan had in mind in his claim that he is the face of post-racial America. In fact, a fair number of television series and films now integrate a few characters of color into their casts (notably, this was described recently by the Hollywood Reporter as perhaps due in part to an “Obama effect”), and we’ve witnessed a growing number of non-white and mixed race stars. Important to note and study, a major catalyst of these shifts is a turn away from niche productions targeting African American or Latina/o audiences to media texts that aim instead to appeal to a broad, multicultural audience. Arguably this does not make these texts post-racial (Dale Hudson’s concept of “multicultural whiteness” comes closer to describing this trend in relation to the continuing centrism of whiteness), but does raise the need for new methodological tools and theoretical frameworks for studying ethnic and racial representation in this supposed post-racial era. Also important to take into consideration is the continuing and sometimes growing underrepresentation of creative professionals of color behind the screen in tandem with “post-racial” shifts.

    There is a need in such study to also take note of the casting and portrayal of mixed-race actors and individuals in Hollywood media productions. I’ve noted in my own work that the rhetoric of post-race has followed in the wake of the rising vogue for mixed-race and racially ambiguous actors and models since the 1990s. The “raceless” or “ethnically ambiguous” aesthetic (as I and journalist Ruth La Ferla described this trend, respectively), particularly noticeable in contemporary tween programming and stardom, is an important strand of contemporary media formations that at times falls into descriptions of post-racial trends. Given that mixed-race representation does offer the potential to highlight the constructed nature of race and fissures in racial boundaries, as Camilla Fojas and I discuss in the introduction to Mixed Race Hollywood, this will be an important site of study in relation to the implications of contemporary trends in ethnic and racial representation…

    Read the entire article here.

  • What Does “White” Mean? Interpreting the Choice of “Race” by Mixed Race Young People in Britain

    What Does “White” Mean? Interpreting the Choice of “Race” by Mixed Race Young People in Britain

    Sociological Perspectives
    Volume 53, Number 2 (Summer 2010)
    Pages 287–292
    DOI: 10.1525/sop.2010.53.2.287

    Miri Song, Professor of Sociology
    University of Kent

    Ferhana Hashem, Research Fellow
    Centre for Health Services Studies
    University of Kent

    Despite the often cited idea that racial identities are socially constructed, and potentially fluid, much public policy is still based on surveys that elicit only one measure of racial identity. A number of U.S. studies have employed “best single race” questions on racial identification, in which multiracial respondents are asked to choose only one race to describe themselves. We extend some American studies by examining responses to a “best single race” survey question posed to a small sample of multiracial young people in Britain. In-depth interviews with British multiracial respondents are employed to investigate the extent to which a “best single race” (BSR) question captures someone’s sense of attachment and belonging to a particular ethnic or racial group. In particular, we focus on how we should interpret East Asian/white respondents’ choice of “white” as their BSR.

    Read or purchase the article here.

  • Race in an Era of Change: A Reader

    Race in an Era of Change: A Reader

    Oxford University Press
    September 2010
    544 pages
    ISBN13: 9780199752102
    ISBN10: 0199752109

    Edited By:

    Heather Dalmage, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Mansfield Institute
    Roosevelt University

    Barbara Katz Rothman, Professor of Sociology
    Baruch College of the City Univerity of New York

    Featuring a wide range of classic and contemporary selections, Race in an Era of Change: A Reader is an affordable and timely collection of articles on race and ethnicity in the United States today. Opening with coverage of racial formation theory, it goes on to cover “racial thinking” (including the challenging and compelling concept of “whiteness”) and the idea of “assigned and claimed” racial identities. The book also discusses the relationships between race and a variety of institutions—including healthcare, economy and work, housing and environment, education, policing and prison, the media, and the family—and concludes with a section on issues of globalization, immigration, and citizenship.

    Editors Heather Dalmage and Barbara Katz Rothman have carefully edited the selections so that they will be easily accessible to students. A detailed introduction to each article contains questions designed to help students focus as they begin reading. In addition, each article is followed by a “journaling question” that encourages students to share their responses to the piece. Offering instructors great flexibility for course use—the selections can be used in any combination and in any order—Race in an Era of Change: A Reader is ideal for any undergraduate course on race and ethnicity.

    Table of Contents

    PART I: RACIAL FORMATION THEORY

    1. Michael Omi and Howard Winant, from Racial Formation in the United States
    2. Eva Marie Garroutte, “The Racial Formation of American Indians”
    3. Nicholas DeGenova and Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas, “Latino Racial Formations in the United States: An Introduction”

    PART II: RACIAL THINKING

    Essentialism

    4. Joanne Nagel, “Sex and Conquest: Domination and Desire on Ethnosexual Frontiers”
    5. Janell Hobson, “The “Batty” Politics: Towards an Aesthetic of the Black Female Body”
    6. Barbara Katz-Rothman, from The Book of Life: A Personal Guide to Race, Normality, and the Implications of the Genome Project
    A Voice from the Past: Franz Boas, “Race and Progress”

    The Social Construction of Race

    7. Eduardo Bonilla Silva, David Embrick, Amanda Lewis, “‘I did not get that job because of a Black man…’ The storylines and testimonies of color-blind racism”
    8. Margaret Hunter, “The Beauty Queue: Advantages of Light Skin”
    9. Heather Dalmage, “Discovering Racial Borders”
    A Voice from the Past: W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Conservation of the Races”

    Outing Whiteness

    A Special Introduction by the Editors
    10. France Winddance Twine and Charles Gallagher, “Introduction: The Future of Whiteness: A Map of the ‘Third Wave’”
    11. Troy Duster, “The Morphing Properties of Whiteness”
    12. Jennifer L. Eichstedt, “Problematic Identities and a Search for Racial Justice”
    A Voice from the Past: Frederick Douglass, “The Color Line”

    PART III: RACIAL IDENTITIES

    A Special Introduction by the Editors
    13. Joy L. Lei, “(Un) Necessary Toughness?: ‘Those Loud Black Girls’ and Those ‘Quiet Asian Boys’”
    14. Nada Elia, “Islamophobia and the ‘Privileging’ of Arab American Women”
    15. Nina Asher, “Checking the Box: The Label of ‘Model Minority’”
    16. Patty Talahongva, “Identity Crisis: Indian Identity in a Changing World”
    17. Juan Flores, “Nueva York – Diaspora City: U.S. Latinos Between and Beyond”
    18. Nancy Foner, “The Social Construction of Race in Two Immigrant Eras”

    PART IV: RACIALIZED AND RACIALIZING INSTITUTIONS

    Economy and Work

    19. Sherry Cable and Tamara L. Mix, “Economic Imperatives and Race Relations: The Rise and Fall of the American Apartheid System”
    20. Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan, “Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination”

    Housing & Environment

    21. Benjamin Howell, “Exploiting Race and Space: Concentrated Subprime Lending as Housing Discrimination”
    22. Mary Patillo, “Black Middle Class-Class Neighborhoods”
    23. Kari Marie Norgaard, “Denied Access to Traditional Foods Including the Material Dimension to Institutional and Environmental Racism”

    Education

    24. Linda Darling-Hammond, “Race, Inequality, and Educational Accountability: The Irony of ‘No Child Left Behind’”
    25. Amanda E. Lewis, Mark Chesler, and Tyrone Forman, “The Impact of ‘Colorblind’ Ideologies on Students of Color: Intergroup Relations at a Predominantly White University”

    Policing and Prison

    26. Loic Wacquant, “Deadly Symbiosis: When Ghetto and Prison Meet and Mesh”
    27. David Harris, “U.S. Experiences with Racial and Ethnic Profiling: History, Current Issues, and the Future”

    Media

    28. Jose Antonio Padin, “The Normative Mulattoes: The Press Latinos. And the Racial Climate on the Moving Immigration Frontier”
    29. Jonathan Markovitz, “Anatomy of a Spectacle: Race, Gender, and Memory in the Kobe Bryant Rape Case”

    Family

    30. Dorothy Roberts, from Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare
    31. Krista M Perreira, Mimi V Chapman, and Gabriela L Stein, “Becoming an American Parent: Overcoming Challenges and Finding Strength in a New Immigrant Latino Community”

    Healthcare

    32. Mathew R. Anderson, Susan Moscou, Celestine Fulchon and Daniel R. Neuspiel, “The Role of Race in the Clinical Presentation”
    33. Susan Starr Sered and Rushika Fernandopulle, “Uninsured in America: Life and Death in the Land of Opportunity”

    PART V: GLOBALIZATION, IMMIGRATION AND CITIZENSHIP

    34. Anupam Chander, “Flying the Mexican Flag in Los Angeles”
    35. Patricia Hill Collins, “New Commoditites, New Consumers: Selling Blackness in a Global Marketplace”
    36. William I. Robinson, “‘Aqui estamos y no nos vamos!’: Global capital and immigrant rights”

  • Ushering children away from a “light grey world”: Dr. Daniel Hill III and his pursuit of a respectable Black Canadian community.

    Ushering children away from a “light grey world”: Dr. Daniel Hill III and his pursuit of a respectable Black Canadian community.

    Ontario History
    2007-03-22

    Daniel R. McNeil, Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies
    Newcastle University, United Kingdom

    This paper is about Dr. Daniel Hill III, the first director of the Ontario Human Rights Agency. Paying particular attention to Dr Hill’s work with the Committee for the Adoption of Coloured Youngsters and the Ontario Black History Society, I argue that he fashioned himself as “Negro race man”, a masculinist term assigned to people who sought to lead a Black community in North America and lay to rest the infantilised and feminized image of the “tragic mulatto” trapped in a “light grey world”.

    Read or purchase the article here.

  • 3rd Annual Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival

    3rd Annual Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival

    2010-06-12 through 2010-06-13
    Japanese American National Museum
    69 East 1st Street
    Los Angeles, California

    The 3rd Annual Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival will take place at the Japanese American National Museum, 369 East 1st Street, June 12-13, 2010, in downtown Los Angeles.

    In the Obama age, this free public event celebrates storytelling of the Mixed racial and cultural experience including that of transracial/cultural adoption and interracial/cultural relationships.

    The Festival, a fiscally sponsored project of the New York Foundation for the Arts, a non-profit organization, brings together film and book lovers, innovative and emerging artists, and multiracial families and individuals for two days of workshops, readings, film screenings and live performance including music, comedy and spoken word.

    Today, 7 percent of all marriages are interracial, according to the Census. More than 6.8 million individuals identify as Mixed.

    The Festival highlights include:

    • The largest West Coast Loving Day party, a nationwide celebration of the Supreme Court decision which affirmed the right of people of different races to marry
    • Family fun
    • Mixed Unplugged: Comedy, Music, Performance and Spoken Word, a live performance
    • Loving Prize Presentation honoring celebrated storytellers and community leaders