Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

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  • The controversial connection between race, genetics and medicine

    The controversial connection between race, genetics and medicine

    Minnesota Public Radio News
    Midmorning Broadcast: 2010-02-03, 09:06 CST

    Kerri Miller, Host

    Dorothy Roberts, George A. Weiss University Professor of Law and Sociology; Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights
    University of Pennsylvania

    David Goldstein, Professor of Genetics and Director of the Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy Center for Human Genome Variation
    Duke University

    [From Steven F. Riley: This is an excellent “must listen to” discussion!]

    As scientists explore the human genome and medicines tailored to particular genes, a provocative question emerges about whether there is a genetic marker that could explain why some treatments work better for different racial groups. And some say the narrow focus on race misses the point of social disparities and what we now know about genetics. (00:54:12)

    (Interview suspends at 00:26:40 for a short news update, then restarts at 00:30:23.)

    Download the interview (00:54:12) here.

  • Audio: History professor discusses census

    Audio: History professor discusses census

    The Daily Collegian
    Published Independently by the students at Penn State
    2010-04-09

    Eddie Lau

    Interview with

    Grace Delgado, Assistant Professor of History
    Pennsylvania State University

    Associate Professor of History Grace Delgado, who specializes in Chicano history, said the U.S. census is not sensitive enough to mix-raced residents. She said having mixed-race residents to label themselves as “white,” “black, African-American or negro” or some other categories they don’t belong is not the best approach.

    However, despite the fact that the wordings and categorizations in the census form are not perfect, Delgado encouraged all Penn State students to fill out the form. She said the best option right now is to check “some other race” in Question 9 and print their race in the given box.

    To listen to the short interview, click here.

  • Half-Yella: Mixed Race Asian American Art [Lecture]

    Half-Yella: Mixed Race Asian American Art [Lecture]

    Oberlin College
    King 106
    2010-04-29, 16:30 to 17:30 EDT (Local Time)

    Laura Kina, Professor of Art
    DePaul University

    Laura Kina is an artist, independent curator, and scholar whose research focuses on Asian American art and critical mixed race studies. She is an Associate Professor of Art, Media and Design, Vincent de Paul Professor, and Director of Asian American Studies at DePaul University. She is a 2009-2010 DePaul University Humanities Fellow. She earned her MFA from the school of the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she studied under noted painters Kerry James Marshall and Phyllis Bramson, and she earned her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Born in Riverside, California and raised in Poulsbo, WA, the artist currently lives and works in Chicago, IL. Her work has shown internationally is represented in Miami, Florida by Diana Lowenstein Fine Arts. Her work is currently on display in a solo exhibition “Laura Kina: A Many-Splendored Thing” at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago, IL as well as in group shows at the DePaul Art Museum in Chicago and the Korean Cultural Center in Los Angeles.

    Laura Kina’s work focuses on the fluidity of cultural difference and the slipperiness of identity. Asian American history and mixed race representations are subjects that run through her work. She draws inspiration from popular culture, history, textile design, as well as historic and personal photographs. Critic Murtaza Vali has described her art as “a genre of Pop art with a distinctly postcolonial edge.”

    This event is sponsored by Asian American Alliance as a part of Oberlin College’s Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month 2010.

  • Reinventing the Color Line: Immigration and America’s New Racial/Ethnic Divide

    Reinventing the Color Line: Immigration and America’s New Racial/Ethnic Divide

    Social Forces
    Volume 86, Number 2 (December 2007)
    E-ISSN: 1534-7605 Print ISSN: 0037-7732
    DOI: 10.1353/sof.2008.0024

    Jennifer Lee, Associate Professor of Sociology
    University of California, Irvine

    Frank D. Bean, Chancellor’s Professor of Sociology
    University of California, Irvine

    Contemporary nonwhite immigration from Latin America and Asia, increasing racial/ethnic intermarriage, and the growing number of multiracial individuals has made the black-white color line now seem anachronistic in America, consequently raising the question of whether today’s color line is evolving in new directions toward either a white-nonwhite divide, a black-nonblack divide, or a new tri-racial hierarchy. In order to gauge the placement of today’s color line, we examine patterns of multiracial identification, using both quantitative data on multiracial reporting in the 2000 U.S. Census and in-depth interview data from multiracial individuals with Asian, Latino or black backgrounds. These bodies of evidence suggest that the multiracial identifications of Asians and Latinos (behaviorally and self-perceptually) show much less social distance from whites than from blacks, signaling the likely emergence of a black-nonblack divide that continues to separate blacks from other groups, including new nonwhite immigrants. However, given that the construction of whiteness as a category has been fluid in the past and appears to be stretching yet again, it is also possible that the color line will change still further to even more fully incorporate Asians and Latinos as white, which would mean that the historical black-white divide could again re-emerge.

    Read or purchase the article here.

  • Teaching Race as a Social Construction: Two Interactive Class Exercises

    Teaching Race as a Social Construction: Two Interactive Class Exercises

    Teaching Sociology
    Volume 37, Number 4 (October 2009)
    Pages 369-378

    Nikki Khanna, Assistant Professor of Sociology
    University of Vermont

    Cherise A. Harris, Assistant Professor of Sociology
    Connecticut College

    This paper offers two interactive exercises to teach students about race as a social construction. In the first exercise, “What’s My Race?”, we ask students to sort various celebrities and historical figures into racial categories, giving them the opportunity to see the difficulty of the task first-hand. More importantly, through the process of sorting individuals into various categories, they are introduced to flaws within the current racial classification scheme in the U.S. In the second exercise, “Black or White?”, students are asked to classify photographs of legendary celebrities and historical figures as either black or white. This exercise is used to introduce the concept of the one drop rule; the majority of individuals in the exercise appear racially ambiguous or white, yet all were historically classified as “black” based on the one drop rule. Both exercises, when used together, are designed to visually illustrate to students the ambiguity and arbitrariness of American racial classifications.

    Read or purchase the article here.

  • A cross-cultural marriage is an adventure I’d recommend

    A cross-cultural marriage is an adventure I’d recommend

    The Observer
    2009-12-27

    Anushka Asthana, Education Correspondent

    Mixed-race unions in this country are on the increase, a magical journey that benefits all the families involved

    One visit to India and a childhood playing cricket was never going to be quite enough to prepare Toby, a white Englishman who grew up in Oxfordshire, for his marriage. After all, you don’t just marry an Indian woman—you marry her large (and often eccentric) family and all that brings with it.

    The realisation began to sink in for Toby at the Hindu part of our wedding, three months ago. He got out of arriving on the back of a white horse, but we persuaded him to go along with the rest of it. That included being dressed up from head to toe, with a red turban with white tassels hanging over his face, embroidered scarf, full-length white coat with gold trimmings and his very own pair of what he called “Aladdin” shoes. He took part in the “baraat“, an Indian tradition in which the groom arrives with family and friends dancing around him.

    So there they were: swinging their arms to the bhangra beat of a dhol drum with shell-shocked smiles as they were met by the cheering crowd of “aunties” and “uncles” (not real ones—that is how we address any Indian person above the age of 40) and bending down to have garlands draped around their necks and red marks smeared on their foreheads.

    The image of a white British groom at the centre of a mass of ecstatic Indian aunties would once have been a rarity. But research released earlier this year found that one in 10 people in Britain with Indian heritage who is in a relationship has a partner of a different race. The study, by the Institute for Social and Economic Research, found the same was true of half of all Caribbean men, one in five black African men and two out of five Chinese women. The result so far: one in 10 children in Britain is living in a mixed-race family…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Biracial Children Learn To Self-Identify

    Biracial Children Learn To Self-Identify

    Tell Me More
    National Public Radio
    2010-04-20

    Michel Martin, Host

    Interview with:

    Kip Fulbeck, Professor of Performative Studies, Video
    University of California, Santa Barbara
    Author of: Mixed: Portraits of Multiracial Kids

    Peggy Orenstein
    Author of: Waiting for Daisy: A Tale of Two Continents, Three Religions, Five Fertility Doctors, An Oscar, An Atomic Bomb, A Romantic Night, and One Woman’s Quest to Become a Mother

    Heidi W. Durrow
    Author of: The Girl Who Fell from the Sky
    Co-Host of: Mixed Chicks Chat

    An installment of Tell Me More‘s weekly parenting segment focuses on the new book Mixed. It’s a collection of photographs of multiracial children that includes stories celebrating their heritage. Host Michel Martin is joined by the book’s author, Kip Fulbeck, as well as authors Peggy Orenstein and Heidi Durrow, who discuss their own experiences living in multiracial families.

    Read the transcript of the interview here.  Listen to the interview here.

    Note by Steven F. Riley: The term “Hapa” is incorrectly spelled as “Hoppa” in the transcript.

  • Black by Choice

    Black by Choice

    The Nation
    2010-04-15

    Melissa Harris-Lacewell, Associate Professor of Politics and African American Studies
    Princeton University

    The first black president has created a definitional crisis for whiteness.

    President Obama created a bit of a stir in early April when he completed his Census form. In response to the question about racial identity the president indicated he was “Black, African American or Negro.” Despite having been born of a white mother and raised in part by white grandparents, Obama chose to identify himself solely as black even though the Census allows people to check multiple answers for racial identity.

    This choice disappointed some who have fought to ensure that multiracial people have the right to indicate their complex racial heritage. It confused some who were surprised by his choice not to officially recognize his white heritage. It led to an odd flurry of obvious political stories confirming that Obama was, indeed, the first African-American president…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Parenting children from ‘mixed’ racial, ethnic and faith backgrounds: typifications of difference and belonging

    Parenting children from ‘mixed’ racial, ethnic and faith backgrounds: typifications of difference and belonging

    Ethnic and Racial Studies
    First Published on: 2009-10-29
    Volume 33, Issue 6 (preview)
    DOI: 10.1080/01419870903318185

    Rosalind Edwards, Professor in Social Policy
    Families & Social Capital Research Group
    London South Bank University

    Chamion Caballero, Senior Research Fellow
    Families & Social Capital Research Group
    London South Bank University

    Shuby Puthussery, Senior Research Fellow
    Family and Parenting Institute, London

    In this article, we draw on data from an in-depth study of thirty-five parent couples from different racial, ethnic and faith backgrounds to explore how they understood and negotiated difference and belonging in bringing up their children. We identify and abstract three main typifications the mothers and fathers drew on in their accounts: open individualized, mix collective and single collective, and elaborate their constituent discursive motifs. Using in-depth case studies, we then consider the part played by these typifications in how parents negotiate their understandings with their partner where they hold divergent views. We conclude that parents’ understandings are developed and situated in different personal and structural contexts that shape rather than determine their understandings and negotiations.

    Read or purchase the article here.

  • What happens after segmented assimilation? An exploration of intermarriage and ‘mixed race’ young people in Britain

    What happens after segmented assimilation? An exploration of intermarriage and ‘mixed race’ young people in Britain

    Ethnic and Racial Studies
    First Published on: 2010-03-17
    Volume 33, Issue 7 (preview)
    DOI: 10.1080/01419871003625271

    Miri Song, Professor of Sociology
    University of Kent 

    Theorizing on segmented assimilation has usefully spurred debate about the experiences and positions of the second generation in the US and, more recently, Europe. This theory has focused primarily on how young people fare in secondary school and the crucial role that families and ethnic social networks can play in supporting second-generation individuals. But what happens when young people leave home and enter into mainstream higher education institutions? Theorizing on segmented assimilation does not address either the implications of intermarriage for integration and upward mobility or how we should conceptualize the experiences of the growing numbers of ‘mixed race’ individuals. In this paper, I first consider the question of whether intermarriage is linked with upward mobility in the British context. I then explore the racial identifications and experiences of disparate types of mixed race young people in Britain. How do such young people identify themselves, and what may their identifications reveal about their sense of belonging in Britain?

    Read or purchase the article here.