Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

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  • Multiracial Men in Toronto: Identities, Masculinities and Multiculturalism

    Multiracial Men in Toronto: Identities, Masculinities and Multiculturalism

    Masters Thesis of Education
    Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education
    Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto
    2009-12-11

    Danielle Lafond
    University of Toronto

    This thesis draws from ten qualitative semi-structured interviews with multiracial men in Toronto. It is an exploratory study that examines how participants experience race, masculinities and identities. Multiracial identities challenge popular notions of racial categories and expose processes of racialization and the shifting nature of social identities. I explore how gender impacts participants’ experiences of multiple, fluid or shifting racial identities, and the importance of context in determining how they identify themselves. Participants also discussed the impact of multiculturalism and their understandings of racism in Canada. There were differences in the experiences of Black multiracial men and non-Black multiracial men in terms of how gender and race impact their lives. These differences imply that the colour line in Canada is shifting and that categories like ‘whiteness’ are being redefined. Analyses of these topics are taken up from an anti-racist and critical mixed race studies perspective.

    Read the entire thesis here.

  • A Question of Blood, Race, and Politics

    A Question of Blood, Race, and Politics

    Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences
    Volume 61, Number 4 (2006)
    pages 456-491
    DOI: 10.1093/jhmas/jrl003

    Michael G. Kenny, Professor of Sociology and Anthropology
    Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia

    This article explores the political and intellectual context of a controversy arising from a proposal made at the 1959 meetings of the American Society of Blood Banks to divide the blood supply by race. The authors, a group of blood-bankers and surgeons in New York, outlined difficulties in finding compatible blood for transfusion during open-heart surgery, which they attributed to prior sensitization of their patient, a Caucasian, by a previous transfusion from an African American donor. Examining the statistical distribution of blood-group antigens among the various races, they concluded that risk of adverse hemolytic reactions and the cost of testing could be reduced by establishing separate donor pools. The media reported the suggestion, which, given the political climate of the day, rapidly became a public issue involving geneticists, blood-bankers, physical anthropologists, and the African American medical community. Liberals condemned it, whereas eugenically inclined segregationists used the finding to support their views concerning evolutionary distance between the races and the dangers of miscegenation. Here we examine the contribution of comparative racial serology to this affair, the arguments and background of the main players, and the relevance of the debate to discussions about the role of “race” in post-genomic medicine.

    Read or purchase the article here.

  • Two or Three Spectacular Mulatas and the Queer Pleasures of Overidentification

    Two or Three Spectacular Mulatas and the Queer Pleasures of Overidentification

    Camera Obscura
    Volume 23, Number 1 67 (2008)
    pages 113-143
    DOI: 10.1215/02705346-2007-026

    Hiram Perez, Assistant professor of English
    Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

    Building on feminist and queer scholarship on the relationship of film spectatorship to subjectivity, this essay conjectures subaltern spectatorships of the two US film adaptations of Fannie Hurst‘s 1933 novel Imitation of Life as a means of tracing the impossibly entangled discourses of race and sexuality, as well as of formulating “queer of color” as a kind of critical modality. Much like Harriet Beecher Stowe‘s Uncle Tom’s Cabin functions, according to Sigmund Freud, as a cultural artifact prized in the form of an idealized beating fantasy by the Victorian (white) child, Imitation of Life stages for black and queer of color spectators originary traumas, in particular the formative (and compounded) experiences of racial and sexual shame. This essay seeks to reconcile the dissonant emotions evoked by Imitation of Life by reading the overidentifications of subaltern spectators with the figure of the tragic mulatto as instances of queer pleasure, both self-shattering and subject forming. In so doing, the essay pays tribute to that tragic mulatto as a spectacular mulata and diva. The spectacular mulata diva summons queer subjectivities; furthermore, she betrays larger national and colonial secrets, locating the racially hybrid genealogies of the classic diva and the universalized subject of psychoanalysis, heretofore presumably white (European).

    Read or purchase the article here.

  • Mixed-ethnic girls and boys as similarly powerless and powerful: embodiment of attractiveness and grotesqueness

    Mixed-ethnic girls and boys as similarly powerless and powerful: embodiment of attractiveness and grotesqueness

    Discourse Studies
    Volume 11, Number 3 (June 2009)
    pages 329-352
    DOI: 10.1177/1461445609102447

    Laurel D. Kamada
    Tohoku University, Japan

    An ongoing study examining the discursive negotiation of ethnic and gendered embodied identities of adolescent girls in Japan with Japanese and `white’ mixed-parentage is extended to also investigate and compare boys . This study draws on Feminist Poststructuralist Discourse Analysis which views women and girls as `simultaneously positioned as relatively powerless within a range of dominant discourses on gender, but as relatively powerful within alternative and competing social discourses’ (Baxter, 2003: 39). Here, this is taken further by also giving voice to boys. Furthermore, ethnic discourses are examined alongside of gender discourses. Not only girls constructed the `idealized Other’, within discourses of femininity, but boys similarly viewed their bodies against a model of idealized masculinity within discourses of masculinities. The boys revealed a feminized, narcissistic body consciousness where they struggled to resist a `discourse of foreign grotesqueness’ and instead worked to embody themselves within a positive `discourse of foreign attractiveness’, as did the girls.

     Read or purchase the article here.

  • Social Work Practice and Lone White Mothers of Mixed-Parentage Children

    Social Work Practice and Lone White Mothers of Mixed-Parentage Children

    British Journal of Social Work
    Volume 40, Number 2
    pages 391-406
    DOI:10.1093/bjsw/bcn164

    Vicki Harman, Lecturer in Social Policy and Social Work
    Royal Holloway, University of London

    This paper reports on empirical research involving focus groups with social workers in order to provide insight into their experiences of working with lone white mothers of mixed-parentage children in England. Social workers’ understandings of key areas of families’ lives are explored, including experiences of racism and adequacy of social support networks. The analysis highlights the need for a greater awareness of racism and social disapproval experienced by mothers, and how this impacts upon their support networks. The contested areas of identity and social and political identification for mixed-parentage children are discussed and key questions are asked about the use of terminology and how this influences social work practice. This paper also considers how social workers felt services could be improved and highlights the need for further training.

    Read or purchase the article here.

  • Race representation in this year’s Common Book

    Race representation in this year’s Common Book

    University of Washington News Laboratory
    Department of Communication
    December 2009

    Kaetlyn Cordingley
    UW News Lab

    Each year, First Year Programs chooses a book as a means to bind the incoming freshman class together. This year’s book was Barack Obama’s “Dreams from My Father.”

    Coincidentally, on the same evening that President Obama addressed a sea of gray-clad cadets at Westpoint, three members of the UW faculty discussed Obama’s candor and his struggles with multiraciality in his autobiography with hundreds of UW freshmen who had read the book.

    The book demands introspection from its readers and frames the “freshman experience” in a whole new way, said University of Washington faculty member Ralina Joseph Dec. 1.

    Panelists were Communication Professor Dr. Joseph and Drs. Luis Fraga and Christopher Parker, of the Political Science Department.

    The professors spoke candidly about their own experiences with multiculturalism and minority identification…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Mixed: An Anthology of Short Fiction on the Multiracial Experience

    Mixed: An Anthology of Short Fiction on the Multiracial Experience

    W. W. Norton & Company
    August 2006
    336 pages
    5.5 × 8.2 in
    Paperback ISBN: 978-0-393-32786-1

    Edited by Chandra Prasad

    With an Introduction by Rebecca Walker

    With a roster of acclaimed fiction writers, Mixed shatters expectations of what it means to be multiracial.

    Globally, the number of multiracial people is exploding. In 10 US states, the percentage of multiracial residents who are of school age—between 5 and 17—is at least 25 percent. In California alone, it is estimated that 15 percent of all births are multiracial or multiethnic. Despite these numbers, mixed-race people have long struggled for a distinct place on the identity map. It was only as recently as 2000 that the U.S. Census Bureau began to allow citizens to check off as many racial categories as are applicable-White, African American, Asian, Hispanic, Native Hawaiian, American Indian, and Alaska Native. Previously, Americans were allowed to check off only one, leaving multiracial people invisible and unaccounted for.

    Though multiracialism has recently become a popular aspect of many memoirs and novels, Mixed is the first of its kind: a fiction anthology with racial overlap as its compass. With original pieces by both established and emerging writers, Mixed explores the complexities of identity that come with being a multiracial person. Every story, crafted by authors who are themselves mixed-race, broaches multiracialism through character or theme. With contributors such as Cristina Garcia, Danzy Senna, Ruth Ozeki, Mat Johnson, Wayde Compton, Diana Abu-Jaber, Emily Raboteau, Mary Yukari Waters, and Peter Ho Davies, and an illuminating introduction by Rebecca Walker, Mixed gives narrative voice to the multiple identities of the rising generation.

  • “There’s No One as Irish as Barack O’Bama”: The Policy and Politics of American Multiracialism

    “There’s No One as Irish as Barack O’Bama”: The Policy and Politics of American Multiracialism

    Weatherhead Center for International Affairs
    Harvard University
    February 2010
    Working Paper
    68 pages

    Jennifer Hochschild, Henry LaBarre Jayne Professor of Government and Professor of African and African American Studies
    Harvard University

    Vesla Weaver, Assistant Professor
    The Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics
    University of Virginia

    Forthcoming publication in Perspectives on Politics, June 2010.

    For the first time in American history, the United States’ 2000 census allowed individuals to choose more than one race. That new policy sets up our exploration of whether and how multiracialism is entering Americans’ understanding and practice of race. By analyzing briefly earlier cases of racial construction, we uncover three factors important to understanding if and how intensely a feedback effect for racial classification will be generated. Using this framework, we find that multiracialism has been institutionalized in the federal government, and is moving toward institutionalization in the private sector and other governmental units. In addition, the small proportion of Americans who now define themselves as multiracial is growing absolutely and relatively, and evidence suggests a continued rise. Increasing multiracial identification is made more likely by racial mixture’s growing prominence in American society – demographically, culturally, economically, and psychologically. However, the politics side of the feedback loop is complicated by the fact that identification is not identity. Traditional racial or ethnic loyalties and understandings remain strong, including among potential multiracial identifiers. Therefore, if mixed race identification is to evolve into a multiracial identity, it may not be at the expense of existing group consciousness. Instead, we expect mixed race identity to be contextual, fluid, and additive, so that it can be layered onto rather than substituted for traditional monoracial commitments. If the multiracial movement successfully challenges the longstanding understanding and practice of “one drop of blood” racial groups, it has the potential to change much of the politics and policy of American race relations.

    O’Leary, O’Riley, O’Hare, and O’Hara
    There’s no one as Irish as Barack O’Bama.
    His mam’s daddy’s grandaddy was one Fulmuth Kearney
    He’s as Irish as any from the lakes of Killarney
    His mam’s from a long line of great Irish mamas;
    There’s no one as Irish as Barack O’Bama.

    –“There’s No One as Irish as Barack O’Bama“, Hardy Drew and the Nancy Boys (Corrigan Brothers)

    Read the entire paper here.

  • Multiracial no longer boxed in by the Census

    Multiracial no longer boxed in by the Census

    USA Today
    2010-03-02

    Haya El Nasser

    Jennifer Harvey was raised by her white mother and white stepfather in what she calls “a Caucasian world.” Harvey never met her father but she knew he was black and Cuban. That made her Hispanic, white and black.

    “Blacks think I’m black,” she says. “Hispanics think I’m Hispanic. Honestly, I don’t identify with either bucket wholeheartedly — Caucasian, black or Hispanic.”…

    …When Barack Obama was elected the nation’s first black president in 2008, some academics and political analysts suggested the watershed event could represent the dawning of a post-racial era in a land that has struggled over race relations for four centuries.

    At the same time, growing ethnic and racial diversity fueled by record immigration and rates of interracial marriages have made the USA’s demographics far more complex. By 2050, there will be no racial or ethnic majority as the share of non-Hispanic whites slips below 50%, according to Census projections.

    “It’s showing that tomorrow’s children and their children will in fact be multiracial, leading to a potential post-racial society,” says William Frey, demographer at the Brookings Institution.

    “The issue isn’t just multirace,” says Census historian Margo Anderson, professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. “It’s the blurring of the very traditional black vs. white. Categories that held until about 1980 are shifting in large numbers. … The clarity is breaking down.”…

    …Why does the government ask about race and ethnicity?

    Federal agencies need the information to monitor compliance with anti-discrimination laws such as the Voting Right Act and the Civil Rights Act, fair employment practices and affirmative action mandates…

    …”For some, the multirace response option represented an opportunity to acknowledge both parents,” says Roderick Harrison, a demographer at Howard University and the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington. “But for a lot of others, it’s like, ‘OK, are you going to turn your back on the rest of us?’ … A lot of the racial and ethnic politics of the Census are that we want the biggest numbers possible for our groups.”..

    Read the entire article here.
    View the photo gallery from the article here.

  • Reimagining The ‘Tragic Mulatto’ [Interview with Author Heidi W. Durrow]

    Reimagining The ‘Tragic Mulatto’ [Interview with Author Heidi W. Durrow]

    All Things Considered
    National Public Radio
    2010-03-02

    Michele Norris, Host
    All Things Considered

    Like so many children of mixed marriages, the author Heidi Durrow has often felt like she’s had to straddle two worlds.

    She is the daughter of a black serviceman and a white Danish mother.

    Her own personal search for identity inspired her debut novel, The Girl Who Fell From The Sky. The story revolves around a girl who moves across the country to live with her grandmother after surviving a family tragedy.

    The book has received breathless critical acclaim, and it was awarded the Bellwether Prize for fiction that addresses issues of social justice…

    Read the entire story and an excerpt from the book here.  Listen to the interview here.