Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

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  • Homelands and Waterways: The American Journey of the Bond Family, 1846-1926

    Homelands and Waterways: The American Journey of the Bond Family, 1846-1926

    Vintage Press an imprint of Random House
    1999
    720 pages
    Paperback ISBN: 978-0-679-75871-6 (0-679-75871-2)

    Adele Logan Alexander, Professor of History
    George Washington University

    Winner for the top non-fiction prize of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association

    This monumental history traces the rise of a resolute African American family (the author’s own) from privation to the middle class. In doing so, it explodes the stereotypes that have shaped and distorted our thinking about African Americans–both in slavery and in freedom.

    Beginning with John Robert Bond, who emigrated from England to fight in the Union Army during the Civil War and married a recently freed slave, Alexander shows three generations of Bonds as they take chances and break new ground.

    From Victorian England to antebellum Virginia, from Herman Melville‘s New England to the Jim Crow South, from urban race riots to the battlefields of World War I, this fascinating chronicle sheds new light on eighty crucial years in our nation’s troubled history. The Bond family’s rise from slavery, their interaction with prominent figures such as W. E. B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington, and their eventual, uneasy realization of the American dream shed a great deal of light on our nation’s troubled heritage.

    See Adele Logan Alexander of speak about tracing her racial identity through her family roots in her book “Homelands and Waterways” in an interview on the Charlie Rose Show from 1999-10-26 here.

  • Black History Month play explores interracial issues

    Black History Month play explores interracial issues

    Orlando Sentinal
    2010-02-20

    Rosalind Jennings, Special To The Orlando Sentinel

    Leesburg, [Florida] – Dolores Sandoval’s paternal grandmother was an African slave on a plantation, and that ancestor’s father was the white plantation owner.

    So she was mixed racially – an “octoroon,” which is one-eighth African.

    “Her father owned the plantation,” Sandoval said. “She was freed by the Civil War.”

    In celebration of Black History Month, Sandoval will perform a play that traces her ancestry on both sides as they struggle with issues of race and especially the mixing of races and ethnicities. It will take place at 6 p.m. Monday at the Leesburg Public Library. The play is part of a series of lectures on global awareness sponsored by Beacon College in Leesburg.

    “My family is interracial, bi-racial, tri-racial, quad-racial…right through to today,” said Sandoval, a Canadian resident.

    The one-hour play, “Coloured Pictures in Family Frames,” will include Sandoval’s ancestors as characters in short episodes that will fit together to tell her family’s story. It will have 20 characters, with Sandoval’s narration being the strongest element as she explains her ancestors’ predicaments and struggles…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Socially Embedded Identities: Theories, Typologies, and Processes of Racial Identity among Black/White Biracials

    Socially Embedded Identities: Theories, Typologies, and Processes of Racial Identity among Black/White Biracials

    Sociological Quarterly
    Volume 43 Issue 3, (2002)
    Pages 335 – 356
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1533-8525.2002.tb00052.x

    David L. Brunsma, Professor of Sociology
    Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

    Kerry Ann Rockquemore, Associate Professor of Sociology
    University of Illinois at Chicago

    Current research on racial identity construction among biracial people derives primarily from small convenience samples and assumes that individuals with one black and one white parent have only two options for racial identity: “black” or “biracial.” Rockquemore’s (1999) taxonomy of racial identity options is used as a framework to synthesize existing research and to generate hypotheses that are explored using survey data from a sample of 177 biracial respondents. The findings support a multidimensional view of racial identity by illustrating that biracial people make various identity choices, albeit “choices” that are differentially available due to an individual’s structural iocation.

    Read the entire article here.

  • Public Categories, Private Identities: Exploring Regional Differences in the Biracial Experience

    Public Categories, Private Identities: Exploring Regional Differences in the Biracial Experience

    Social Science Research
    Volume 35, Issue 3, September 2006
    Pages 555-576

    David L. Brunsma, Professor of Sociology
    Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

    Empirical research on multiraciality and the development of richer models of racial identity have increased in the last decade. Increased attention to such phenomena has lead to the “check all that apply” modification to the 2000 Census—an official recognition of an historical reality not before reflected on the United States’ Census. However, “identity” and “identification” are different phenomena. Using Place-level data from Census 2000 as well as data from the Survey of Biracial Experience (Rockquemore and Brunsma, 2001), this paper will reveal the geographic distribution of black–white biracial individuals via the Census and compare it to the geographic distribution of biracials’ racial self-understandings from survey methods. The findings illuminate the multifaceted relationship between public categorization and private racial identification. Finally, the implications for utilizing the new Census data for studying black–white and other mixed populations are considered.

    Article Outline
    1. Introduction
    2. Research on mixed-race identity: the case of black–white biracials
    3. Methodologies
    3.1. Census 2000 data
    3.2. The survey of biracial experience
    3.3. Measurement of key variables
    3.3.1. Biracial identity
    3.3.2. Census 2000 identification (South and East samples only)
    4. The distribution of mixed-race individuals: the census results
    5. Geographic differences in the survey of biracial experience
    6. Racial identification versus racial identity
    7. A brief thought experiment
    8. Discussion and conclusion
    Acknowledgements
    References

    Read the entire article here.

  • What Does “Black” Mean? Exploring the Epistemological Stranglehold of Racial Categorization

    What Does “Black” Mean? Exploring the Epistemological Stranglehold of Racial Categorization

    Critical Sociology
    Vol. 28, No. 1-2 (2002)
    pages 101-121
    DOI: 10.1177/08969205020280010801

    David L. Brunsma, Professor of Sociology
    Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

    Kerry Ann Rockquemore, Associate Professor of Sociology
    University of Illinois at Chicago

    The “check all that apply” approach to race on the 2000 census has ignited a conceptual debate over the meaning and usefulness of racial categories. This debate is most intense over the category “black” because of the historically unique way that blackness has been defined. Though the lived reality of many people of color has changed over the past three decades, we question whether the construct black has mirrored these changes and if “black” remains a valid analytic or discursive unit today. While black racial group membership has historically been defined using the one-drop rule, we test the contemporary salience of this classification norm by examining racial identity construction among multiracial people. We find that that the one-drop rule has lost the power to determine racial identity, while the meaning of black is becoming increasingly multidimensional, varied, and contextually specific. Ultimately, we argue that social, cultural and economic changes in post-Civil Rights America necessitate a re-evaluation of the validity of black as social construct and re-assessment of its’ continued use in social science research.

    Read the entire article here.

  • The relationship between binge eating and weight status on depression, anxiety, and body image among a diverse college sample: A focus on Bi/Multiracial women

    The relationship between binge eating and weight status on depression, anxiety, and body image among a diverse college sample: A focus on Bi/Multiracial women

    Eating Behaviors
    Volume 11, Issue 1, January 2010
    Pages 18-24
    DOI: 10.1016/j.eatbeh.2009.08.003

    Valentina Ivezaj
    Eastern Michigan University

    Karen K. Saules
    Eastern Michigan University

    Flora Hoodin
    Eastern Michigan University

    Kevin Alschuler
    Eastern Michigan University

    Nancy E. Angelella
    Eastern Michigan University

    Amy S. Collings
    Eastern Michigan University

    David Saunders-Scott
    Eastern Michigan University

    Ashley A. Wiedemann
    Eastern Michigan University

    Binge eating is associated with a host of adverse outcomes, but little is known about sex and racial differences among those who binge eat. The present study examined sex and racial group differences in binge eating based on weight status within a college-student population. It was hypothesized that White women would endorse higher rates of binge eating, depression, anxiety, and body image dissatisfaction than other groups. Participants completed a web-based survey assessing depression, anxiety, body image, weight history, physical activity, smoking, and body mass index. Participants included White, Black, and Bi/Multiracial college students. Findings highlighted sex and racial differences based on binge eating and weight status. Notably, Bi/Multiracial women who endorsed binge eating behavior and who were overweight reported greater levels of anxiety than all other groups and greater levels of depression than White women and White men. Additionally, Bi/Multiracial women and White women who endorsed binge eating behavior and who were overweight reported greater body image dissatisfaction relative to Black women and White men. Future research should further explore the nature and impact of sex and race differences on binge eating.

    Read the entire article here.

  • Obama gives hope to multiracial families

    Obama gives hope to multiracial families

    The Connecticut Record-Journal
    2009-01-24

    George Moore

    Three-year-old George Garner used to introduce himself as ‘George Barack Obama’ when his mother took him to political events. For George, an energetic boy of a mixed racial background, Barack Obama’s presidency will serve as proof that he, too, can be president, said his mother, Jean Garner.

    “I can tell this guy, ‘If you want to be president, go for it,’” she said in her Cheshire living room Thursday, as George bounced around with his Batman figurine.

    Three years ago, Jean and Tim Garner, both white, adopted George, who is part Canadian, Native American and African-American. Garner said she hopes that Obama, the son of a white mother and a Kenyan father, will inspire more people to consider people for who they are, rather than what they look like.

    Obama not only shows that a black man can become president, but that someone of a multiracial background can lead the country.

    While Obama calls himself black, observers interviewed Friday said he has been so open about his parents and his upbringing that the entire nation is aware of his multiracial heritage. Sociologist Jenifer Bratter said Obama shatters stereotypes that people of mixed race have strained life experiences…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Parallel Worlds: The Remarkable Gibbs-Hunts and the Enduring (In)significance of Melanin

    Parallel Worlds: The Remarkable Gibbs-Hunts and the Enduring (In)significance of Melanin

    University of Virginia Press
    February 2010
    384 pages
    6 1/8 x 9 1/4
    40 b&w illustrations
    Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8139-2887

    Adele Logan Alexander, Professor of History
    George Washington University

    When William Henry Hunt married Ida Alexander Gibbs in the spring of 1904, their wedding was a glittering Washington social event that joined an Oberlin-educated diplomat’s daughter and a Wall Street veteran who could trace his lineage to Jamestown. Their union took place in a world of refinement and privilege, but both William and Ida had mixed-race backgrounds, and their country therefore placed severe restrictions on their lives because at that time, “one drop of colored blood” classified anyone as a Negro. This “stain” of melanin pushed the couple’s achievements to the margins of American society. Nonetheless, as William followed a career in the foreign service, Ida (whose grandfather was probably Richard Malcolm Johnson, a vice president of the United States) moved in intellectual and political circles that included the likes of Frederick Douglass, J. Pierpont Morgan, Booker T. Washington, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and Mary Church Terrell.

    Born into slavery, William had an adventurous youth, including a brief career as a jockey and an interlude at Williams College; ultimately he succeeded Ida’s father as consul. The diplomat’s “expatriate” life provided him with a distinguished career and a stage on which to showcase his talents throughout the world, as well as an escape from racial stigmas back home. Free of the diplomatic hindrances her husband faced, Ida advocated openly against race and gender inequities, and was a major participant in W. E. B. Du Bois‘s post-World-War I Pan-African Congresses which took her to stimulating European capitals that were largely free of racial oppression.

    In this, William and Ida’s unique dual biography, Adele Logan Alexander gracefully traces an extraordinary partnership with a historian’s skills and insights. She also presents a nuanced account of the complex impact of race in the early twentieth-century world.

    Listen to National Public Radio‘s Michel Martin interview Adele Logan Alexander about the book on Tell Me More (on  2010-02-10) here.

  • American Mestizo: Filipinos and Antimiscegenation Laws in California

    American Mestizo: Filipinos and Antimiscegenation Laws in California

    University of California, Davis Law Review
    Volume 33, Number 44 (2000)
    pages 795-835

    Leti Volpp, Professor of Law
    University of California, Berkeley

    This essay interprets the legal history of efforts to prohibit intermarriage between Filipino men and white women in the state of California in the 1920s and 30s. I do this through examining both public discourse and legal discourse, in the form of advisory opinions of the California State Attorney General and the Los Angeles County Counsel, litigation in Los Angles Superior Court and the California Court of Appeals, and state legislation.

    Much scholarship examines antimiscegenation laws through the lens of presumptive heterosexuality, and gives enormous explanatory power to race in a way that ignores the role of class and gender. This paper argues that we need to examine the mutually constitutive nature of these forces in shaping antimiscegenation laws. Thus, I examine how the racial identity of Filipinos was shaped by assumptions about racialized sexuality, colonial relations between the United States and the Philippines, the importation of exploitable laborers without political rights, and the intertwining of gender and nationalism.

    The question of whether Filipinos should be prohibited from marrying white women reached the California Court of Appeals in 1933 in the guise of the query as to whether Filipinos should be considered “Mongolian.” The state in 1880 and 1905 had prohibited the licensing of marriages between “Mongolians” and “white persons” and invalidated all such marriages. Subsequent legal challenges involving the right of Filipinos to marry whites betray enormous confusion as to whether Filipinos should be classified as “Mongolian,” or as a separate ethnological group, as “Malay.” This racial classification was put at issue in cases where Filipino/white couples sought to marry, and who therefore asserted that Filipinos were not “Mongolians”; in a case where a mother sought to stop her daughter’s marriage; in two cases where annulment of marriage was sought, one by a white woman, the other by a Filipino man; and in one case in which a prosecutor sought to void a marriage so a white wife could testify against her Filipino husband.

    The positioning of Filipinos as “Mongolian,” or in opposition to “Mongolians” as the ethnologically different “Malay,” provides a narrative within which the contemporary identity of Filipinos is created. This history demonstrates that there is nothing natural or preordained about racial classification, and provides an example of how race is made.

    Read the entire article here.

  • The Chinese in the Caribbean

    The Chinese in the Caribbean

    Markus Wiener Publishers
    November 2004
    240 pages
    Hardcover ISBN 10: 1-55876-314-7; ISBN 13: 978-1-55876-314-2
    Paperback ISBN 10: 1-55876-315-5; ISBN 13: 978-1-55876-315-9

    Edited by

    Andrew R. Wilson, Professor
    Strategy and Policy Department
    United States Naval War College

    The history of the Caribbean is a history of migrations. The peoples of the region came as conquerors and planters, slaves and indentured laborers from all parts of the globe. Each group contributed to the social fabric, culture, and commerce of the region. The Chinese diaspora has spread Chinese people and culture around the world, including to the Caribbean, where Chinese exist both as distinct ethnic groups within Caribbean societies and as shapers of unique Caribbean cultures.

    The book describes not merely the arrival and experience of Chinese in the Caribbean but also the ways in which Chinese have adapted to and altered the region. Included are the histories of Chinese people in Cuba, Jamaica, Panama, and the British West Indies, and overcame, their slow rise to economic independence and success, their contribution to art, theater, cuisine, and literature, their roles in the region’s national revolutions, their place in post-colonial politics, and the subsequent remigrations of individuals, families, and entire communitites to North America.