Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

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  • Mark One or More: Civil Rights in Multiracial America

    Mark One or More: Civil Rights in Multiracial America

    University of Michigan Press
    2006
    208 pages
    6 x 9; 11 Tables & 8 Figures.
    Paper ISBN: 978-0-472-03280-8

    Kim M. Williams, Associate Professor of Political Science; Academic Director of the Center for Women, Politics & Policy at the Hatfield School of Government
    Portland State University, Portland, Oregon

    The little-known story of the struggle to include a multiracial category on the U.S. census, and the profound changes it wrought in the American political landscape.

    Mark One or More tells the little-known story of the struggle to include a multiracial category on the U.S. census, and the profound changes it wrought in the American political landscape.

    The movement to add a multiracial category to the 2000 U.S. Census provoked unprecedented debates about race. The effort made for strange bedfellows.  Republicans like House Speaker Newt Gingrich and affirmative action opponent Ward Connerly took up the multiracial cause. Civil rights leaders opposed the movement on the premise that it had the potential to dilute the census count of traditional minority groups. The activists themselves—a loose confederation of organizations, many led by the white mothers of interracial children—wanted recognition. What they got was the transformation of racial politics in America.

    Mark One or More is the compelling account of how this small movement sparked a big change, and a moving call to reassess the meaning of racial identity in American life.

  • The Politics of Multiracialism: Challenging Racial Thinking

    The Politics of Multiracialism: Challenging Racial Thinking

    State University of New York Press
    June 2004
    263 pages
    Hardcover ISBN-10: 0-7914-6153-X; ISBN-13: 978-0-7914-6153-2
    Paperback ISBN-10: 0-7914-6154-8; ISBN13: 978-0-7914-6154-9

    Editor:

    Heather M. Dalmage, Professor of Sociology and Director
    Mansfield Institute for Social Justice
    Roosevelt University

    A provocative analysis of current thought and discourse on multiracialism.

    This is the first book to critically look at the political issues and interests surrounding the broadly defined Multiracial Movement and at what is being said about multiracialism. Many of the multiracial family organizations that exist across the United States developed socially, ideologically, and politically during the conservative Reagan years. While members of the Multiracial Movement differ widely in their political views, the concept of multiracialism has been taken up by conservative politicians in ways that are often inimical to the interests of traditionally defined minorities.

    Contributors look at the Multiracial Movement’s voice and at the political controversies that attend the notion of multiracialism in academic and popular literature, internet discourse, census debates, and discourse by and about pop culture celebrities. The work discusses how multiracialism, hybridity, and racial mixing have occurred amidst existing academic discussions of authenticity, community borders, identity politics, the social construction of race, and postmodern fragmentation. How the Multiracial Movement is shaping and transforming collective multiracial identities is also explored.

    Contributors include Erica Chito Childs, Kimberly McClain DaCosta, Heather M. Dalmage, Abby L. Ferber, Charles A. Gallagher, Terri A. Karis, Rebecca Chiyoko King-O’Riain, Kerry Ann Rockquemore, Barbara Katz Rothman, Rainier Spencer, Eileen T. Walsh, and Kim M. Williams.

    Table of Contents

    Part One: Context of the Multiracial Movement

    1. All in the Family: The Familial Roots of Racial Divisions
    Kimberly McClain DaCosta

    2. Defending the Creation of Whiteness: White Supremacy and the Threat of Interracial Sexuality
    Abby L. Ferber

    3. Racial Redistricting: Expanding the Boundaries of Whiteness
    Charles A. Gallagher

    4. Linking the Civil Rights and Multiracial Movements
    Kim M. Williams

    Part Two: Discourses of the Multiracial Movement

    5. Beyond Pathology and Cheerleading: Insurgency, Dissolution, and Complicity in the Multiracial Idea
    Rainier Spencer

    6. Deconstructing Tiger Woods: The Promise and Pitfalls of Multiracial Identity
    Kerry Ann Rockquemore

    7. Multirace.com: Multiracial Cyberspace
    Erica Chito Childs

    8. “I Prefer to Speak of Culture”: White Mothers of Multiracial Children
    Terri A. Karis

    Part Three: Lessons from the Multiracial Movement

    9. Model Majority? The Struggle for Identity among Multiracial Japanese Americans
    Rebecca Chiyoko King-O’Riain

    10. Transracial Adoption: Refocusing Upstream
    Barbara Katz Rothman

    11. Protecting Racial Comfort, Protecting White Privilege
    Heather M. Dalmage

    12. Ideology of the Multiracial Movement: Dismantling the Color Line and Disguising White Supremacy?
    Eileen T. Walsh

    List of Contributors

    Index

  • octoroon

    Quadroon, octoroon and, more rarely, quintroon were historically racial categories of hypodescent used to describe proportion of African ancestry of mixed-race people in the slave societies of Latin America and parts of the 19th century Southern United States, particularly Louisiana…

    Octoroon means a person of fourth-generation black ancestry. Genealogically, it means one-eighth black. Typically an Octoroon has one great-grandparent who is of full African descent and seven great-grandparents who are not.

    hexadecaroon (1/16th)
    dotriacontaroon (1/32)
    tetrahexacontaroon (1/64)
    octaicosahectaroon (1/128)
    hexapentacontadictaroon (1/256)
    dodecapentactaroon (1/512)
    tetraicosakiliaroon (1/1,024)
    octatetracontadiliaroon (1/2,048)
    hexanonacontatetraliaroon (1/4,096)
    dinonacontahectaoctaliaroon (1/8,192)

    See IUPAC numerical multipliers.

  • quadroon

    Quadroon, octoroon and, more rarely, quintroon were historically racial categories of hypodescent used to describe proportion of African ancestry of mixed-race people in the slave societies of Latin America and parts of the 19th century Southern United States, particularly Louisiana…

    …Quadroon usually referred to someone of one-quarter black ancestry; that is, with three white grandparents but also refers to a person of one-quarter caucasian ancestry and three-quarters black ancestry.  A quadroon has a biracial (mulatto) parent (black and white) and one white parent or black parent…

    From Wikipedia.

  • Biracial Women in Therapy: Between the Rock of Gender and the Hard Place of Race

    Biracial Women in Therapy: Between the Rock of Gender and the Hard Place of Race

    Routledge
    2004-03-04
    280 pages
    Hardback ISBN: 9780789021441; Hardback ISBN-10: 0789021447
    Paperback ISBN: 9780789021458; Paperback ISBN-10: 0789021455

    Editor: Cathy A. Thompson, Psychologist
    Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS)
    University of California at San Diego

    Editor: Angela R. Gillem, Professor & Clinical Psychologist
    Arcadia University

    Get a unique perspective on the female biracial experience!

    Biracial Women in Therapy: Between the Rock of Gender and the Hard Place of Race examines how physical appearance, cultural knowledge, and cultural stereotypes affect the experience of mixed-race women in belonging to, and being accepted within, their cultures. This unique book combines empirical research, theoretical papers, and first-person narrative to address issues relevant to providing therapy to biracial women and girls, helping therapists and counselors develop a treatment framework based on sociocultural factors. Researchers, practitioners, and academics provide insight into the biracial reality, taking multiple aspects of clients’ lives into account rather than looking for simple hierarchies of well-being based on race.

    Biracial Women in Therapy is a building block for mental health practitioners in the construction of theory and practice in working with biracial females. The book examines how a biracial women’s racial/ethnic identity intersects with her gender and sexual identity to affect her sense of belonging and acceptance, addressing issues of appearance, social class, disability, power and guilt, and dating and marriage. Topics addressed in the book include:

    • the complexities of multiple minority status
    • how ethnic differences affect biracial adolescents
    • issues encountered by biracial women from a sociohistorical context
    • biracial women’s attitudes toward counseling
    • stereotypes of marginalization and identity confusion
    • a multicultural feminist approach to counseling
    • and a first-person narrative of one author’s racial and sexual identity development

    Table of Contents

    • Introduction: Biracial Women in Therapy: Between the Rock of Gender and the Hard Place of Race
    • From Exotic to a Dime a Dozen – Maria P. P. Root
    • Utilizing the Strengths of Our Cultures: Therapy with Biracial Women and Girls
    • Biracial (Black/White) Women: A Qualitative Study of Racial Attitudes and Beliefs and Their Implications for Therapy
    • Understanding and Assisting Black/White Biracial Women in Their Identity Development
    • Negotiating Racial Identity: Biracial Women and Interactional Validation
    • Dating Practices, Racial Identity, and Psychotherapeutic Needs of Biracial Women
    • When Face and Soul Collide: Therapeutic Concerns with Racially Ambiguous and Nonvisible Minority Women
    • Counseling Biracial Women: An Intersection of Multiculturalism and Feminism
    • Depressive Symptoms and Attitudes Toward Counseling as Predictors of Biracial College Women’s Psychological Help-Seeking Behavior
    • Biracial Lesbian and Bisexual Women: Understanding the Unique Aspects and Interactional Processes of Multiple Minority Identities
    • Conversations, Not Categories: The Intersection of Biracial and Bisexual Identities
    • Out of the Closet but Still in Hiding: Conflicts and Identity Issues for a Black-White Biracial Lesbian
    • Therapeutic Considerations in Work with Biracial Girls
    • Fitting In and Feeling Good: Patterns of Self-Evaluation and Psychological Stress Among Biracial Adolescent Girls
    • Mixed Race Women: One More Mountain to Climb
    • Index
    • Reference Notes Included

  • Portraits of the New Negro Woman: Visual and Literary Culture in the Harlem Renaissance

    Portraits of the New Negro Woman: Visual and Literary Culture in the Harlem Renaissance

    Rutgers University Press
    2006
    224 pages
    b&w illustrations
    Paper ISBN: 978-0-8135-3977-5
    Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8135-3976-8

    Cherene Sherrard-Johnson, Professor of English
    University of Wisconsin-Madison

    Of all the images to arise from the Harlem Renaissance, the most thought-provoking were those of the mulatta. For some writers, artists, and filmmakers, these images provided an alternative to the stereotypes of black womanhood and a challenge to the color line. For others, they represented key aspects of modernity and race coding central to the New Negro Movement. Due to the mulatta’s frequent ability to pass for white, she represented a variety of contradictory meanings that often transcended racial, class, and gender boundaries.

    Portraits of the New Negro Woman investigates the visual and literary images of black femininity that occurred between the two world wars. Cherene Sherrard-Johnson traces the origins and popularization of these new representations in the art and literature of the Harlem Renaissance and how they became an ambiguous symbol of racial uplift constraining African American womanhood in the early twentieth century.

    In this engaging narrative, the author uses the writings of Nella Larsen and Jessie Fauset as well as the work of artists like Archibald Motley and William H. Johnson to illuminate the centrality of the mulatta by examining a variety of competing arguments about race in the Harlem Renaissance and beyond.

  • Black, Jewish, and Interracial: It’s Not the Color of Your Skin, but the Race of Your Kin, and Other Myths of Identity

    Black, Jewish, and Interracial: It’s Not the Color of Your Skin, but the Race of Your Kin, and Other Myths of Identity

    Duke University Press
    1997
    232 pages
    Cloth – ISBN13 978-0-8223-1975-7
    Paperback – ISBN13 978-0-8223-1971-9

    Katya Gibel Azoulay [Mevorach], Professor
    Anthropology and American Studies
    Grinnell College, Grinnell Iowa

    How do adult children of interracial parents—where one parent is Jewish and one is Black—think about personal identity?  This question is at the heart of Katya Gibel Azoulay’s Black, Jewish, and Interracial.  Motivated by her own experience as the child of a Jewish mother and Jamaican father, Gibel Azoulay blends historical, theoretical, and personal perspectives to explore the possibilities and meanings that arise when Black and Jewish identities merge. As she asks what it means to be Black, Jewish, and interracial, Gibel Azoulay challenges deeply ingrained assumptions about identity and moves toward a consideration of complementary racial identities.

    Beginning with an examination of the concept of identity as it figures in philosophical and political thought, Gibel Azoulay moves on to consider and compare the politics and traditions of the Black and Jewish experience in America. Her inquiry draws together such diverse subjects as Plessy v. Ferguson, the Leo Frank case, “passing,” intermarriage, civil rights, and anti-Semitism. The paradoxical presence of being both Black and Jewish, she argues, leads questions of identity, identity politics, and diversity in a new direction as it challenges distinct notions of whiteness and blackness.  Rising above familiar notions of identity crisis and cultural confrontation, she offers new insights into the discourse of race and multiculturalism as she suggests that identity can be a more encompassing concept than is usually thought. Gibel Azoulay adds her own personal history and interviews with eight other Black and Jewish individuals to reveal various ways in which interracial identities are being lived, experienced, and understood in contemporary America.

  • American Anthropological Association Statement on “Race”

    American Anthropological Association Statement on “Race”

    1998-05-17

    The following statement was adopted by the Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association, acting on a draft prepared by a committee of representative American anthropologists. It does not reflect a consensus of all members of the AAA, as individuals vary in their approaches to the study of “race.”  We believe that it represents generally the contemporary thinking and scholarly positions of a majority of anthropologists.

    In the United States both scholars and the general public have been conditioned to viewing human races as natural and separate divisions within the human species based on visible physical differences. With the vast expansion of scientific knowledge in this century, however, it has become clear that human populations are not unambiguous, clearly demarcated, biologically distinct groups. Evidence from the analysis of genetics (e.g., DNA) indicates that most physical variation, about 94%, lies within so-called racial groups. Conventional geographic “racial” groupings differ from one another only in about 6% of their genes. This means that there is greater variation within “racial” groups than between them. In neighboring populations there is much overlapping of genes and their phenotypic (physical) expressions. Throughout history whenever different groups have come into contact, they have interbred. The continued sharing of genetic materials has maintained all of humankind as a single species….

    Read the entire statement here.

  • ‘Mixed Race’ Studies: A Reader

    ‘Mixed Race’ Studies: A Reader

    Routledge
    2004-06-17
    352 pages
    Trim Size: 246mm x 174mm
    Binding(s): Hardback, Paperback
    ISBN13: 9780415321631; ISBN-10: 0415321638

    Editor:  Jayne O. Ifekwunigwe, Visiting Associate Professor of African and African American Studies
    Duke University

    Mixed race studies is one of the fastest growing, as well as one of the most important and controversial areas in the field of race and ethnic relations. Bringing together pioneering and controversial scholarship from both the social and the biological sciences, as well as the humanities, this reader charts the evolution of debates on ‘race’ and ‘mixed race’ from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century. The book is divided into three main sections:

    • tracing the origins: miscegenation, moral degeneracy and genetics
    • mapping contemporary and foundational discourses: ‘mixed race’, identities politics, and celebration
    • debating definitions: multiraciality, census categories and critiques.

    This collection adds a new dimension to the growing body of literature on the topic and provides a comprehensive history of the origins and directions of ‘mixed race’ research as an intellectual movement. For students of anthropology, race and ethnicity, it is an invaluable resource for examining the complexities and paradoxes of ‘racial’ thinking across space, time and disciplines.

    Table of Contents

    • Part 1:  Tracing the Origins: Miscegenation, Moral Degeneracy, and Genetics
    • Part 2:  Mapping Contemporary and Foundational Discourses: ‘Mixed Race’, Identities Politics, and Celebration
    • Part 3:  Debating Definitions: Multiraciality, Census Categories, and Critique.  Index.

  • Spurious Issues: Race And Multiracial Identity Politics In The United States

    Spurious Issues: Race And Multiracial Identity Politics In The United States

    Westview Press
    1999-08-12
    240 pages
    Hardcover ISBN-10: 0813336775; ISBN-13: 978-0813336770

    Rainier Spencer, Director and Professor of Afro-American Studies; Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies
    University of Nevada, Las Vegas

    Recent times have seen the rise of a movement lobbying for explicit recognition of multiracial identity as separate from any other racial category. Factions in this movement have petitioned the government for the addition of a federal multiracial category to the census and to other official forms. While these attempts have as yet been unsuccessful, the potential impact of such a change cannot be overstated. Rainier Spencer takes up the claims of multiracial activists, subjecting their arguments to a level of scholarly rigor they have heretofore not been required to meet. Demonstrating that the twin justifications for a federal multiracial category—accuracy and self-esteem—are inherently contradictory, Spencer presents an absorbing analysis of race, multirace, and categorization that shakes the very foundations of racial identity on all sides. Spurious Issues is a critical examination of multiracial identity politics in the United States, and of the specific issues surrounding federal racial classification. It is also a book about race generally, an extended argument that invites and challenges its readers to assume a skeptical position in regard to one of the most widely accepted but rarely analyzed components of life in the United States.