Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

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  • Fulbeck inspires students to be proud of their heritage

    Fulbeck inspires students to be proud of their heritage

    The State Hornet
    The Voice of Sacramento State
    2010-02-09

    Jennifer Siopongco

    Kip Fulbeck will launch the Multi-Cultural Center’s mixed-heritage series at 7 p.m. Feb. 18 in the Sac[ramento] State’s University Union with his lecture titled “Race, Sex and Tattoos: The Kip Fulbeck Experience.”
     
    Spring semester at the Multi-Cultural Center is being spiced up with an innovative idea for a mixed heritage series.

    The series will be launched with a premiere performance titled “Race, Sex, and Tattoos: The Kip Fulbeck Experience” by Kip Fulbeck at 7 p.m., Feb. 18 in Sacramento State’s University Union.

    Fulbeck is a professor, slam poet, filmmaker and author who focuses on embracing heritage. Fulbeck himself is of English, Welsh and Chinese descent.

    He will be speaking about topics dealing with race, sex and tattoos, while exploring the issues of mixed race and identity through comedy and various art media.

    “They will see a lot of funny images, how lots of people are seen, spoken word, stuff that’s inspiring and sad,” Fulbeck said.

    This idea for a focus on heritage was created by Liz Redford, Sac State student and newsletter and marketing intern at the Multi-Cultural Center, who is proud to be a quarter Japanese…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Ambiguity and Ambivalence in the Voting Booth and Beyond: A Social-Psychological Perspective on Racial Attitudes and Behavior in the Obama Era

    Ambiguity and Ambivalence in the Voting Booth and Beyond: A Social-Psychological Perspective on Racial Attitudes and Behavior in the Obama Era

    Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race
    Volume 6, Issue 01, March 2009
    pages 71-82
    DOI: 10.1017/S1742058X09090067

    Destiny Peery
    Department of Psychology
    Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois

    Galen V. Bodenhausen, Lawyer Taylor Professor of Psychology in the Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences
    Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois

    The issue of race has followed Barack Obama since he emerged on the national political scene, continuing unabated throughout his successful 2008 presidential campaign. Although the issue of race is not always explicitly acknowledged or discussed by Obama himself, the implications of his successful candidacy for U.S. politics and the ways people in the United States think about race more generally have been of great interest to media pundits, social scientists, and laypersons alike. Race has been considered a substantial barrier to the electoral success of previous non-White political candidates; therefore Obama’s success requires reconsideration of how race can be expected to influence political outcomes in the future. In addition, his biracial identity also raises questions about how his role as a prominent cultural figure will affect existing racial categories in the United States. A review of social psychological evidence highlights the importance of understanding the ambivalence that characterizes contemporary racial attitudes, as well as the ways in which definitions of race and racial categories may be changing, in order to understand the impact that Obama could have on the future of racial politics. We conclude that Obama’s victory represents a large step in the direction of increasingly positive racial attitudes and more sophisticated public conceptualizations of race, but steady progress in the coming years is not guaranteed. We consider some of the opportunities and obstacles that may affect the trajectory of future gains in the struggle for racial equality in the Obama era.

    INTRODUCTION

    President Obama considers himself a Black man with mixed racial heritage. His mother was a White Kansan, his father was Kenyan. Obama is now the president of the United States and the first person of color elected to the highest office in a nation previously led exclusively by White men. Obama’s electoral success has rightfully been regarded as an indication of important progress in the struggle for racial equality. Nevertheless, Obama’s success may raise more questions than it answers about the role of race in the United States. When Obama emerged on the national political scene and an entry into the 2008 presidential race became a possibility, the issue of race followed him. A full year before announcing his candidacy for president, but long after the rumblings of his possible candidacy began, pollsters were already asking people about Obama’s race (White 2006). What did they think his race was? Did it matter that he had a White mother? The media’s fascination with Obama’s racial identity reflects the historical and continued salience of race as a social category and the importance racial issues have acquired in U.S. politics.

    Here we explore the implications of recent social psychological research on racial attitudes and behavior for understanding the politics of race in the Obama era. We begin with a brief review of evidence regarding the ambivalence underlying racial attitudes and discuss in particular the complex structure that is likely to characterize many White voters’ racial attitudes. As we will show, there is an ample empirical basis for assuming that the right question about racial discrimination is not whether it still exists, but when and how it exists. Next, we consider the important and intriguing question of how our understanding of racial bias is complicated when multiracial people, such as Obama, enter the picture. We consider whether such individuals are better positioned to avoid discrimination by potentially defying simplistic, habitual racial classifications. Finally, we consider the implications of these issues for understanding the changing landscape of race in U.S. politics and U.S. life…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Research Report: Black + White = Black: Hypodescent in Reflexive Categorization of Racially Ambiguous Faces

    Research Report: Black + White = Black: Hypodescent in Reflexive Categorization of Racially Ambiguous Faces

    Psychological Science
    Volume 19, Number 10 (2008)
    pages 973-977

    Destiny Peery
    Department of Psychology, Northwestern University

    Galen V. Bodenhausen, Lawyer Taylor Professor of Psychology in the Weinberg College of Arts & Sciences
    Northwestern University

    Historically, the principle of hypodescent specified that individuals with one Black and one White parent should be considered Black. Two experiments examined whether categorizations of racially ambiguous targets reflect this principle. Participants studied ambiguous target faces accompanied by profiles that either did or did not identify the targets as having multiracial backgrounds (biological, cultural, or both biological and cultural). Participants then completed a speeded dual categorization task requiring Black/not Black and White/ not White judgments (Experiments 1 and 2) and deliberate categorization tasks requiring participants to describe the races (Experiment 2) of target faces. When a target was known to have mixed-race ancestry, participants were more likely to rapidly categorize the target as Black (and not White); however, the same cues also increased deliberate categorizations of the targets as ‘‘multiracial.’’ These findings suggest that hypodescent still characterizes the automatic racial categorizations of many perceivers, although more complex racial identities may be acknowledged upon more thoughtful reflection.

    After being told that Barack Obama’s mother was White and father was Black, a majority of White and Hispanic interviewees said they considered him multiracial (White, 2006). Does this result highlight the inadequacy of monoracial categories in understanding multiracial people, or does it merely reflect a superficial semantic distinction, with Obama still largely viewed and evaluated in terms of his Black heritage? The categories applied to multiracial persons carry important implications for their self-esteem and experiences of discrimination (Herman, 2004). Thus, it is important to understand how multiracial people are categorized by others…

    Read the entire report here.

  • New Group Embraces Diversity

    New Group Embraces Diversity

    Daily Nexus
    University of California, Santa Barbara
    Issue 76, Volume 90
    2010-02-10

    Ali Limonadi, Reporter

    A new student organization at UCSB hopes to create a safe space and open forum for multicultural, mixed-race and mixed-ethnicity students.

    The Mixed Student Union registered as an official group with the Office of Student Life roughly two weeks ago, after the founding members returned from the Students of Color Conference 2010, held at UC San Diego. According to its members, the MSU is a club dedicated to opening dialogue amongst mixed-heritage UCSB students about their personal experiences in relation to their varied ancestry…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Ethnic and Urban Intersections in the Classroom: Latino Students, Hybrid Identities, and Culturally Responsive Pedagogy

    Ethnic and Urban Intersections in the Classroom: Latino Students, Hybrid Identities, and Culturally Responsive Pedagogy

    Multicultural Perspectives
    Volume 9, Issue 3 (July 2007)
    pages 21-28
    DOI: 10.1080/15210960701443599

    Jason G. Irizarry, Assistant Professor of Multicultural Education
    Neag School of Education, University of Connecticut

    Drawing from data collected through classroom observations and in-depth interviews, this article describes and analyzes practices identified as culturally responsive by Latinos students in an urban, multiethnic/racial context. The findings suggest that culturally responsive pedagogy must be more broadly conceptualized to address the cultural identities of students who have complex identities because of their experiences with peers of many varied identities, those whose urban roots have resulted in hybrid identities, and those who are multiethnic/multiracial. Based on these findings, the article forwards the concept of “cultural connectedness” as a framework for practicing a non-essentializing, dynamic approach to culturally responsive pedagogy that acknowledges the hybrid nature of culture and identity.

    Read or purchase the article here.

  • The Impossibility of Return: Black Women’s Migrations to Africa

    The Impossibility of Return: Black Women’s Migrations to Africa

    Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies
    Volume 27, Number 2, 2006
    pages 54-86
    E-ISSN: 1536-0334 Print ISSN: 0160-9009
    DOI: 10.1353/fro.2007.0009

    Piper Kendrix-Williams, Professor of African-American Studies
    The College of New Jersey

    I was on an international flight, traveling from New York to Paris, when an older French woman inquired about my origins. She began with the questions about where I was from that seem to attend many trans-Atlantic encounters, deftly moving from geography to race when seemingly exasperated by my answers of America, Connecticut, and, finally, the place of my birth, Atlanta, Georgia. She finally asked, “But where were your people from before that?” Clearly she was asking about social or racial origins, not national ones. I told her I was African American with African, European, and Native American ancestry, but because I could trace back seven generations in the U.S., I could not tell her where “my people were from before,” although Africa seemed a good if not vague and oversimplified answer. Of course, I had to wonder, “before” what, the Atlantic slave trade, miscegenation, (un)forced migrations, returns and departures? This woman’s need to know my race exemplifies the preoccupation many people have with origins, other people’s as well as their own. It is as if she felt that when she could identify me within an established place or origin, she could then “know” me. Thinking of it in this way almost immediately becomes problematic, for it revolves around fictions of identifiable origins and consequently complicates for personal, individual identities that recognize the intersectional nature of race and gender.

    The idea that people’s origins are somehow clear and not clouded by diverse histories, migrations, and relationships is for me a romantic (read: unrealistic) one, especially for blacks in the African diaspora, for whom “Africa” the continent, and not a particular nation, must be the answer to the question: “Where were your people from before?” As complicated a notion as the idea of identifiable origins is for me, many people who locate themselves in a larger diaspora engage in just this kind of thinking…

    Read or purchase the entire here.

  • But One Race: The Life of Robert Purvis

    But One Race: The Life of Robert Purvis

    State University of New York Press
    January 2007
    293 pages
    Hardcover ISBN10: 0-7914-7007-5; ISBN13: 978-0-7914-7007-7
    Paperback ISBN13: 978-0-7914-7008-4

    Margaret Hope Bacon (1921-2011)

    Biography of famous black abolitionist and voting rights advocate, Robert Purvis.

    Born in South Carolina to a wealthy white father and mixed race mother, Robert Purvis (1810–1898) was one of the nineteenth century’s leading black abolitionists and orators. In this first biography of Purvis, Margaret Hope Bacon uses his eloquent and often fierce speeches to provide a glimpse into the life of a passionate and distinguished man, intimately involved with a wide range of major reform movements, including abolition, civil rights, Underground Railroad activism, women’s rights, Irish Home Rule, Native American rights, and prison reform. Citing his role in developing the Philadelphia Vigilant Committee, an all black organization that helped escaped slaves secure passage to the North, the New York Times described Purvis at the time of his death as the president of the Underground Railroad. Voicing his opposition to a decision by the state of Pennsylvania to disenfranchise black voters in 1838, Purvis declared “there is but one race, the human race.” But One Race is the dramatic story of one of the most important figures of his time.

    Table of Contents

    • Acknowledgments
    • Ancestral Chart of the Purvis Family
    • Introduction
    • 1. Of Southern Birth
    • 2. The City of Brotherly Love
    • 3. Present at the Beginning
    • 4. World Traveler
    • 5. “We are Not Intruders Here”
    • 6. To Aid the Fleeing Slave
    • 7. A Time of Loss
    • 8. Gentleman Farmer
    • 9. “This Wicked Law”
    • 10. “Are We Not Men?”
    • 11. “A Proud Day for the Colored Man”
    • 12. “Equality of Rights for All”
    • 13. The Freedmen’s Savings Bank
    • 14. “We are To the Manner Born”
    • 15. “His Magnificent Record”
    • Notes
    • Bibliography
    • Index

    Read the first chapter here.

  • Two researchers reflect on navigating multiracial identities in the research situation

    Two researchers reflect on navigating multiracial identities in the research situation

    International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education
    Volume 23, Issue 3 (June 2010)
    pages 259 – 281
    DOI: 10.1080/09518390903196609

    Erica Mohan
    University of British Columbia

    Terah T. Venzant Chambers, Professor of Education and Human Development
    Texas A&M University
     
    Despite the increasing interest in the experiences of multiracial individuals, as evidenced by the emergent body of literature and research related to multiracial experiences, we lack an understanding of methodological concerns related to research with multiracial individuals. Here, we seek to (1) investigate the applicability of theories of insider/outsider status to research conducted by and with multiracial individuals, (2) interrogate our own research experiences as multiracial scholars conducting research with multiracial students, and (3) identify implications from our analysis for other researchers. We conclude that understandings of methodological terms related to monoracial populations are limited in their applicability to research with multiracial individuals. Additionally, we conclude that navigating multiracial identities in research situations is a particularly complicated process aided less by a shared sense of identity or community between researcher and participants and more by experiences that stem from a similar need to engage in micronegotiations of racial and ethnic identities.

    Read or purchase the article here.

  • Racial Identity in Balance

    Racial Identity in Balance

    The Chronicle of Higher Education
    2004-01-07

    Naomi J. Miller, Professor of English and the Study of Women and Gender; Director of Institutional Diversity and Assistant to the President
    Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts

    I consider myself multiracial. Technically, I am half Japanese, a quarter Czech, and a quarter English-Dutch. By definition, then, I am an “other” in American society. Or at least I am according to conventional definitions of race and ethnicity, which require people to check the box marked “other” when they don’t fit into one of the pre-established categories.

    And yet, every day those of us who are multiracial live “outside the box,” as tired as that phrase may be. We are not “other” to ourselves. And we need not allow ourselves to be defined in contrast to, or in opposition to, an assumed standard of racial singularity. But we do need to educate those around us about the reality of feeling boxed in by definitions of racial identity that confront not only multiracial individuals, but every individual who checks a box whose category is not an adequate definition of his or her identity…

    …I’m writing from where I live, as a multiracial parent in a “mixed-race marriage,” that has produced mega-multi-racial children. To me, these issues are not abstractions for a campus diversity report: they are, fundamentally, my responsibility and my life.

    My husband is half black, half German-Jewish, and so my four children are a veritable rainbow coalition among themselves.  Interestingly enough, partly because we live in Arizona, some of the racial/ethnic identities that are not included in their background (such as Hispanic and Native American) are ones that are associated with their multiracial appearance…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Emerging whole from Native-Canadian relations: mixed ancestry narratives: a thesis

    Emerging whole from Native-Canadian relations: mixed ancestry narratives: a thesis

    University of British Columbia
    1999-04-25

    Dawn Marsden

    Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts in the Department of Educational Stuides.

    After hundreds of years of contact, the relationships between the people of Native Nations and the Canadian Nation are still filled with turmoil. This is common knowledge. What isn’t well known, are the personal consequences for children who have Native and non-Native ancestors. This thesis is written with the assistance of eight people of mixed ancestry, who share their experiences, ideas, strategies and dreams, to help others who are dealing with similar issues. This thesis has been organized around the dominant themes and commonalities that have emerged out of eight interviews, into four sections: CONTEXT, CHALLENGES, STRATEGIES & GIFTS. The context that mixed ancestry individuals are born into is complex. Euro-Canadian designs on Native lands and resources resulted in policies that had, and continue to have, a devastating effect on Native people. Legal manipulations of Native identity, in particular, have resulted in the emergence of hierarchies of belonging. Such hierarchies are maintained by enduring stereotypes of “Indianness” and “Whiteness”. For some mixed ancestry individuals, negotiating the polarized hierarchies of Native and Canadian societies can result in feelings of being split, and the need to harmonize aspects of the self, with varying social environments. Various strategies are used to deal with such issues, internally and externally. Ultimately, through choices, strategies and transformations, it is possible to transcend the challenges of mixed ancestry, and to lead more fulfilling lives. My hope is that this thesis will be of assistance to people of mixed ancestry and to those trying to understand the complexities of Native- Canadian relations, at least to the point of inspiring more discussions and research.

    Read the entire thesis here.