Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

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  • Racial Boundary Formation at the Dawn of Jim Crow: The Determinants and Effects of Black/Mulatto Occupational Differences in the United States, 1880

    Racial Boundary Formation at the Dawn of Jim Crow: The Determinants and Effects of Black/Mulatto Occupational Differences in the United States, 1880

    Department Colloquium Series
    University of Washington, Department of Sociology
    Savery Hall
    2009-10-06 15:30 PDT (Local Time)

    Aaron Gullickson, Assistant Professor
    University of Oregon

    Much of the literature within sociology regarding mixed-race populations focuses on contemporary issues and dynamics, often overlooking a larger historical literature. This paper provides a historical perspective on these issues by exploiting regional variation in the United States in the degree of occupational differentiation between blacks and mulattoes in the 1880 Census, during a transitionary period from slavery to freedom. The analysis reveals that the role of the mixed-race category as either a “buffer class” or a status threat depended upon the class composition of the white population. Black/mulatto occupational differentiation was greatest in areas where whites had a high level of occupational prestige and thus little to fear from an elevated mulatto group. Furthermore, the effect of black/mulatto occupational differentiation on lynching varied by the occupational status of whites. In areas where whites were of relatively low status, black/mulatto differentiation increased the risk of lynching, while in areas where whites were of relatively high status, black/mulatto differentiation decreased the risk of lynching.

  • Students Create Course About Mixed Identities

    Students Create Course About Mixed Identities

    A&S Perspectives
    College of Arts and Sciences
    University of Washington
    Editor: Nancy Joseph
    July 2009

    Last fall, students in the UW Mixed Club—a campus group for students of mixed race—discussed how rarely mixed-race issues were being addressed in their courses. Then they decided to do something about it.

    That experience whet the students’ appetite for a more formal offering. They developed a proposal for a student-led course, “Mixed Identities and Racialized Bodies,” and floated the idea by several department chairs. The first to respond with an enthusiastic “yes” was Women Studies Chair David Allen, who agreed to offer the course as Women Studies 256, a course number reserved for credit/no-credit student-led courses.

    With Women Studies on board, the students moved into high gear. “It was like, ‘Remember that great idea we had? Now we need to follow through,’” recalls Jessica Norberg, one of the students who developed and facilitated the course.

    Coming up with assigned readings was particularly daunting. “There’s no mixed-race canon, so we had to come up with that,” says Norberg, who credits classmate Samantha Gonzalez with taking the lead on reviewing the available literature. “Samantha was kind of our librarian,” says Norberg. “The girl can read a book in half an hour. She did a lot of the research.”…

    …Of course, everyone in class felt they knew at least one person with a mixed-race identity: President Obama. “This class really came together at an awesome time,” says Norberg, referring to Obama bringing greater visibility to mixed race issues. Norberg is quick to add that mixed race is among the fastest-growing demographic in the U.S…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Identity and Health in the Narratives of People of Mixed Race

    Identity and Health in the Narratives of People of Mixed Race

    Center for the Advancement of Health Disparities Research
    2nd Annual Teach-In: Health Disparities Awareness
    2004-05-21

    Cathy J. Tashiro, PhD, MPH, RN
    Nursing Program
    University of Washington, Tacoma

    …Why Study People of Mixed Race?

    • A rapidly growing part of the population
    • Seldom acknowledged in studies, though this is improving with new census rules.
    • Represent a challenge to existing constructions of race.
    • Recent study showed increased health and behavioral risk factors for mixed adolescents. (Udry, et al, AJPH, November 2003)

    View the entire presentation here.

  • Salt-sweat & Tears

    Salt-sweat & Tears

    Cinnamon Press
    March 2007
    80 pages
    21 x 14 x 0.8 cm
    Paperback ISBN 10: 1905614187; ISBN-13: 978-1905614189

    Louisa Adjoa Parker

    Of Ghanaian-British descent Louisa Adjoa Parker explores issues of identity, belonging, family and relationships in raw, honest, but crafted pieces.

    Mulatto Girl

    See the mulatto girl walking
    down country lanes and fields, her
    head held high, her skin the colour
    of caramel boiling on the stove.  See her smile
    in the knowledge she is not the first
    to walk this green and pleasant
    countryside, she has history stirring within her limbs
    she has Africa’s heat and England’s cold rain
    pumping through her blood, her
    DNA a beautiful mix of gene pools
    scattered across continents.  She is strong.
    She show Africa in a way the English hide.
    She shows an eighteenth century master’s love for slaves.
    She shows a slave’s contempt.
    She shows twentieth century people brave enough
    to cross a line made of different tones of skin,
    to love in spite of hate.

    See the mulatto girl walking
    down country lanes and fields, her head
    held high, her quadroon baby girls
    held on her hips, her hair thick and frizzed, lips
    half full, there are no
    white men dressing her in robes and jewels,
    but see her smile, see her sway, as she walks
    with her head held high.

  • Toward a Sociology of Racial Conceptualization for the 21st Century

    Toward a Sociology of Racial Conceptualization for the 21st Century

    Social Forces
    Volume 87, Number 3, 2009
    Pages: 1167-1192
    DOI: 10.1353/sof.0.0169

    Ann J. Morning, Associate Professor of Sociology
    New York Univeristy

    Despite their longstanding interest in race, American sociologists have conducted little empirical research on sociodemographic patterns or longitudinal trends in “racial conceptualization” – that is, notions of what race is, how races differ, and the origins of race. This article outlines key empirical, methodological and theoretical considerations for a research agenda on racial conceptualization. Drawing on in-depth interviews with more than 50 college students, I describe the variety of race concepts among respondents, illustrate the importance of using multiple measures of conceptualization, and demonstrate the malleability of conceptualization, linking it to demographic context and thereby raising the question of its future evolution in the changing United States of the 21st century.

    The color line, “problem of the twentieth century” as Du Bois (1986[1903]) famously put it, has long been a prominent concern of American sociologists (Calhoun 2007).  The ways in which they have engaged the topic of race, however, reflect the preoccupations of their times. Early work on “race relations” (Park 1949) gave way to theories of “racism” in the civil-rights era, drawing new attention to institutional structures of racial oppression (Winant 2000). Large-scale surveys began to track attitudes – toward groups and policies – that might pose obstacles to achieving racial equality (Schuman, Steeh, Bobo and Krysan 1997). And in the wake of diversifying immigration inflows and rising intermarriage rates, scholars have revisited longstanding assumptions about racial identity and classification, launching new research on the categorization of mixed-race people and immigrant groups (Lee and Bean 2004).  By the end of the 20th century, American sociology had acquired a significant body of knowledge on race relations, attitudes, stratification and classification…

    Read the entire article here.

  • The multiple-race population of the United States: Issues and estimates

    The multiple-race population of the United States: Issues and estimates

    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)
    2000-05-23
    vol. 97 no. 11
    pages 6230-6235

    Joshua R. Goldstein

    Ann J. Morning, Assistant Professor of Sociology
    New York University

    This paper presents national estimates of the population likely to identify with more than one race in the 2000 census as a result of a new federal policy allowing multiple racial identification. A large number of race-based public policies—including affirmative action and the redistricting provisions of the Voting Rights Act—may be affected by the shift of some 8–18 million people out of traditional single-race statistical groups. The declines in single-race populations resulting from the new classification procedure are likely to be greater in magnitude than the net undercount in the U.S. census at the center of the controversy over using census sampling. Based on ancestry data in the 1990 census and experimental survey results from the 1995 Current Population Survey, we estimate that 3.1–6.6% of the U.S. population is likely to mark multiple races. Our results are substantially higher than those suggested by previous research and have implications for the coding, reporting, and use of multiple response racial data by government and researchers. The change in racial classification may pose new conundrums for the implementation of race-based public policies, which have faced increasing criticism in recent years.

    Read the entire article here.

  • A Contested Identity: An Exploration of the Competing Social and Political Discourse Concerning the Identification and Positioning of Young People of Inter-Racial Parentage

    A Contested Identity: An Exploration of the Competing Social and Political Discourse Concerning the Identification and Positioning of Young People of Inter-Racial Parentage

    British Journal of Social Work
    Volume 36, Number 8 (2006)
    pages 1309-1324
    DOI: 10.1093/bjsw/bch390

    Ravinder Barn, Professor of Social Policy and Social Work
    Royal Holloway, University of London

    Vicki Harman, Lecturer in the Centre for Criminology and Sociology
    Royal Holloway, University of London

    The development of racial and ethnic identity of minority ethnic children and young people in contemporary multi-racial Western society remains an important academic concern. More recently, a relatively new debate about the identity and ‘correct’ labelling of children of inter-racial relationships has been brewing in British academic literature. Nowhere is this more vociferous and intense than in the field of social work. This paper identifies two competing perspectives vying for position in this ideological and political battle. It is argued that whilst overall consensus may not be possible or even desirable, it is important to explore these ideological positions as they play a key role in influencing social work policy and practice.

  • Mixed Race Literature

    Mixed Race Literature

    Stanford University Press
    2002
    256 pages
    8 illustrations
    Cloth Edition: ISBN-10: 0804736391; ISBN-13: 9780804736398
    Paperback Edition ISBN-10: 0804736405; ISBN-13: 9780804736404

    Edited by

    Jonathan Brennan, Professor of English
    Mission College, Santa Clara, California

    This collection presents the first scholarly attempt to map the rapidly emerging field of mixed-race literature, defined as texts written by authors who represent multiple cultural and literary traditions—African-European, Native-European, Eurasian, African-Asian, and Native-African American. It not only allows scholars to engage a wide variety of mixed race literatures and critical approaches, but also to situate these literatures in relation to contemporary fields of literary inquiry.

    The editor’s introduction provides a historical context for the development of mixed-race identity and literature, summarizing existing scholarship on the subject, interrogating the social construction of race and mixed race, and arguing for a literary (rather than literal) inquiry into mixed-race texts.

    The essays examine such subjects as mythmaking and interpreting; the illustration of mixed-race texts; the mixed-race drama of Velina Hasu Houston; race, gender, and transnational spaces; the meaning and negotiation of identity; the theory of kin-aesthetic in Asian-Native American literatures; and Maori-Pakeha mixed-race writing in New Zealand.

    The editor’s conclusion argues that rather than following the tragic employment assigned to mulattos, octoroons, and half-bloods, the evolution of mixed-race texts has been from tragedy to trickster. The role of the tragic trickster facilitates a shift in which new and distinct literary strategies and forms emerge. These models represent critical sites from which to theorize the overall formation of American literature and to complicate its formation in ways that unfold our usual notions of race, gender, and culture.

  • Understanding the Educational Needs of Mixed Heritage Pupils

    Understanding the Educational Needs of Mixed Heritage Pupils

    University of Bristol
    June 2004
    ISBN: 1844782646
    121 pages

    Leon Tikly, Professor in Education and Deputy Director of Research
    University of Bristol

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

    Jo Haynes, Lecturer in Sociology
    University of Bristol

    John Hill
    Birmingham LEA

    in association with
    Birmingham Local Education Authority

    Introduction

    In March 2003, a team from the University of Bristol working in association with Birmingham Local Education Authority (LEA) was commissioned by the DfES (Department for Education and Skills) to conduct research into the educational needs of mixed heritage pupils with specific reference to the barriers to achievement faced by White/Black Caribbean pupils. Qualitative research was carried out in fourteen schools in six LEAs (primary schools with more than 10% of mixed heritage pupils and secondary schools with more than 5% of mixed heritage pupils). Quantitative data from the DfES National Pupil Database are also reported.

    Key findings

    • The attainment of White/Black Caribbean pupils is below average, the attainment of White/Black African pupils is similar to average in primary schools and slightly below average in secondary schools and the attainment of White/Asian pupils is above average.
    • The key barriers to achievement facing pupils of White/Black Caribbean origin are in many cases similar to those faced by pupils of Black Caribbean origin. They are more likely to come from socially disadvantaged backgrounds; are more likely to experience forms of institutionalised racism in the form of low teacher expectations; and, are more likely to be excluded from school.
    • White/Black Caribbean pupils also face specific barriers to achievement. Low expectations of pupils by teachers often seem based on a stereotypical view of the fragmented home backgrounds and ‘confused’ identities of White/Black Caribbean pupils. These pupils often experience racism from teachers and from their White and Black peers targeted at their mixed heritage. This can lead to the adoption of what are perceived to be rebellious and challenging forms of behaviour.
    • The barriers to achievement experienced by White/Black Caribbean pupils operate in a context where mixed heritage identities (including those of White/Black Caribbean, White/Black African and White/Asian pupils) are not recognised in the curriculum or in policies of schools and of LEAs. In the case of White/Black Caribbean pupils, their invisibility from policy makes it difficult for their underachievement to be challenged.
    • In those schools where White/Black Caribbean pupils achieve relatively highly they often benefit from inclusion in policies targeted at Black Caribbean learners, with whom they share similar barriers to achievement and with whom they often identify.
    • Even in these schools, however, the specific barriers to achievement faced by White/Black Caribbean learners are rarely explicitly addressed.

    In our 2004 report from the DfES, our analysis indicated that 2.5% of the national school age population were identified as belonging to the overall ‘Mixed’ ethnic group, with large regional variations. The largest proportion of these pupils could be found in the Inner London area – they constituted 7.3% of school pupils. The smallest was in the North East – 0.7%.

    Read the entire report here.

  • Mixed Race America and the Law: A Reader

    Mixed Race America and the Law: A Reader

    New York Univeristy Press
    2003-02-01
    512 pages
    ISBN: 9780814742570

    Edited by:

    Kevin R. Johnson, Mabie-Apallas Professor of Public Interest Law and Chicano/a Studies
    University of California Davis

    For the first time in United States history, the Year 2000 census allowed people to check more than one box to identify their race. This new way of gathering data and characterizing race and ethnicity reflects important changes in how racial identity is understood in America. Besides acknowledging the presence of mixed race citizens, this new understanding promises to have major implications for American law and policy.

    With this anthology, Kevin R. Johnson brings together ground-breaking scholarship on the mixed race experience in America to examine the impact of law on these citizens. The foundational essays that comprise the collection present the historical, social, and political contexts surrounding the body of law that addresses race while analyzing the implications of multiracialism. Divided into 12 sections, the reader includes an introduction by Johnson and essential essays by contributors such as Garrett Epps, Judith Resnick, Richard Delgado, Ian Haney López, Randall Kennedy, and Patricia Hill Collins. Selections address miscegenation, racial classification, interracial adoption, the 2000 census, “passing,” and other topics; each section includes questions to promote further discussion. This book is an invaluable resource for examining the complexities of racial categories in modern America.

    Read the entire introduction here.