Mixed Race Studies – Page 539 – Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

The Cost of Color: Skin Color, Discrimination, and Health among African-Americans

2015-10-11

The Cost of Color: Skin Color, Discrimination, and Health among African-Americans

American Journal of Sociology
Volume 121, Number 2 (September 2015)
pages 396-444
DOI: 10.1086/682162

Ellis P. Monk Jr., Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Sociology
University of Chicago

In this study, the author uses a nationally representative survey to examine the relationship(s) between skin tone, discrimination, and health among African-Americans. He finds that skin tone is a significant predictor of multiple forms of perceived discrimination (including perceived skin color discrimination from whites and blacks) and, in turn, these forms of perceived discrimination are significant predictors of key health outcomes, such as depression and self-rated mental and physical health. Intraracial health differences related to skin tone (and discrimination) often rival or even exceed disparities between blacks and whites as a whole. The author also finds that self-reported skin tone, conceptualized as a form of embodied social status, is a stronger predictor of perceived discrimination than interviewer-rated skin tone. He discusses the implications of these findings for the study of ethnoracial health disparities and highlights the utility of cognitive and multidimensional approaches to ethnoracial and social inequality.

Read or purchase the article here.
Light in the Shadows: Staying at the Table When the Conversation about Race Gets Hard

2015-10-11
Light in the Shadows: Staying at the Table When the Conversation about Race Gets Hard

World Trust Films
2010
DVD, 00:45:00
United States

Shakti Butler, Director and Producer

Light in the Shadows: Staying at the Table When the Conversation about Race Gets Hard records a frank dialogue among two white women and several women of color. The film uses their conflict as a learning tool to illumine how conversations on race often break down along lines of race and power.

When the cross-racial conversation gets hard during diversity initiatives & equity efforts, emotions can arise and people may walk away discouraged. This film & its conversation guide are designed to support inquiry:
- How can we recognize the patterns and obstacles that cause people, who are committed to working together, to leave the table?
- How can white activists stay at the table when confronted with the pain caused by privilege?
- How can people of color be empowered in cross-cultural relationships?
This film is challenging. As such, it is designed for those who are ready to take another step in learning, or wish to develop facilitation skills that invite deeper listening and truth-telling. ”The conversation in this film takes place around a metaphorical round table at which everyone has an equal seat. This challenges the power dynamics of white culture,” says the filmmaker, Shakti Butler.

Light in the Shadows is a frank conversation about race among ten women who participated in the ground-breaking film The Way Home. These American women of Indigenous, African, Arab/Middle Eastern, European, Jewish, Asian, Latina and Mixed Race descent, use authentic dialogue to crack open a critical door of consciousness.

What lies behind it is a perspective on race that is often unseen/ unnoticed within the dominant culture. With clear language, open hearts and a willingness to engage – even when it gets hard – these women travel over roads that demonstrate why valuable discourse on race is so laden with emotion, distrust and misunderstanding. Light in the Shadows is a springboard for critical self-inquiry and inter-ethnic dialogue.

Read the conversation guide here.
The Persistent Problem of Colorism: Skin Tone, Status, and Inequality

2015-10-11

The Persistent Problem of Colorism: Skin Tone, Status, and Inequality

Sociology Compass
Volume 1, Issue 1 (September 2007)
pages 237-254
DOI: 10.1111/j.1751-9020.2007.00006.x

Margaret Hunter, Mary S. Metz Professorship for Excellence and Creativity in Teaching Professor of Sociology
Mills College, Oakland, California

Colorism is a persistent problem for people of color in the USA. Colorism, or skin color stratification, is a process that privileges light-skinned people of color over dark in areas such as income, education, housing, and the marriage market. This essay describes the experiences of African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans with regard to skin color. Research demonstrates that light-skinned people have clear advantages in these areas, even when controlling for other background variables. However, dark-skinned people of color are typically regarded as more ethnically authentic or legitimate than light-skinned people. Colorism is directly related to the larger system of racism in the USA and around the world. The color complex is also exported around the globe, in part through US media images, and helps to sustain the multibillion-dollar skin bleaching and cosmetic surgery industries.

Read the entire article here.
In fact, there’s no evidence that Native Americans are more biologically susceptible to substance use disorders than any other group…

2015-10-11

In fact, there’s no evidence that Native Americans are more biologically susceptible to substance use disorders than any other group, says Joseph Gone, associate professor of psychology at the University of Michigan. American Indians don’t metabolize or react to alcohol differently than whites do, and they don’t have higher prevalence of any known risk genes.

Maia Szalavitz, “No, Native Americans aren’t genetically more susceptible to alcoholism,” The Verge, October 2, 2015. http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/2/9428659/firewater-racist-myth-alcoholism-native-americans.
The Invisible Asian

2015-10-11

The Invisible Asian

The New York Times
2015-10-07

George Yancy, Professor of Philosophy
Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia

David Haekwon Kim, Associate Professor of Philosophy
University of San Francisco

This is the latest in a series of interviews about philosophy of race that I am conducting for The Stone. This week’s conversation is with David Haekwon Kim, an associate professor of philosophy and the director of the Global Humanities initiative at the University of San Francisco and the author of several essays on Asian-American identity. — George Yancy

George Yancy: A great deal of philosophical work on race begins with the white/black binary. As a Korean-American, in what ways does race mediate or impact your philosophical identity?

David Haekwon Kim: In doing philosophy, I often approach normative issues with concerns about lived experience, cultural difference, political subordination, and social movements changing conditions of agency. I think these sensibilities are due in large part to my experience of growing up bicultural, raced, and gendered in the U.S., a country that has never really faced up to its exclusionary and often violent anti-Asian practices. In fact, I am sometimes amazed that I have left so many tense racialized encounters with both my life and all my teeth. In other contexts, life and limb were not at issue, but I did not emerge with my self-respect intact.

These sensibilities have also been formed by learning a history of Asian-Americans that is more complex than the conventional watered-down immigrant narrative. This more discerning, haunting, and occasionally beautiful history includes reference to institutional anti-Asian racism, a cultural legacy of sexualized racism, a colonial U.S. presence in East Asia and the Pacific Islands, and some truly inspiring social struggles by Asians, Asian-Americans, and other communities of color…

Read the entire interview here.
DNA from 4,500-year-old Ethiopian reveals surprise about ancestry of Africans

2015-10-11

DNA from 4,500-year-old Ethiopian reveals surprise about ancestry of Africans

The Los Angeles Times
2015-10-08

Karen Kaplan, Science & Medicine Editor

DNA from a man who lived in Ethiopia about 4,500 years ago is prompting scientists to rethink the history of human migration in Africa.

Until now, the conventional wisdom had been that the first groups of modern humans left Africa roughly 70,000 years ago, stopping in the Middle East en route to Europe, Asia and beyond. Then about 3,000 years ago, a group of farmers from the Middle East and present-day Turkey came back to the Horn of Africa (probably bringing crops like wheat, barley and lentils with them).

Population geneticists pieced this story together by comparing the DNA of distinct groups of people alive today. Since humans emerged in Africa, DNA from an ancient Africa could provide a valuable genetic baseline that would make it easier for scientists to track genome changes over time…

Read the entire article here.
I belong everywhere and nowhere.

2015-10-11

Like many TCKs [third culture kids] and persons of mixed ancestry, I have searched all my life for “home”. In late 2012 I relocated to the Los Angeles area after more than two decades in the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City. L.A.’s a good place for in-between-ers like me. In this sprawling metropolis with no center, a place that’s in a perpetual state of fragmentation, disintegration, and transformation and whose population represents every culture and nation, I can enjoy a sense of internal and external spaciousness. But it’s a restless city and its vast size lends itself to tribalism. As a relative newcomer, it’s been challenging to find a place of belonging. But then I’m reminded that, as an adult TCK who’s moved over 40 times since my birth, I’ve always felt this way, no matter where I’ve lived. I belong everywhere and nowhere.

Mari L’Esperance, “Liminality as Inheritance: On Being Mixed and Third Culture,” Mixed Roots Stories, October 7, 2015. http://mixedrootsstories.com/liminality-as-inheritance-on-being-mixed-and-third-culture/.
Groundbreaking New Series – ‘Mister Brau’ – Gives Afro-Brazilians Representations to Cheer Despite Flaws

2015-10-11

Groundbreaking New Series – ‘Mister Brau’ – Gives Afro-Brazilians Representations to Cheer Despite Flaws

Shadow and Act: On Cinema Of The African Diaspora
2015-10-07

Kiratiana Freelon

Lázaro Ramos and Taís Araújo

Brazilian television is very white, but most Brazilians aren’t.

Brazil’s population is more than 50 percent black, but the television news and entertainment shows rarely reflect such diversity. So when a “black” television show debuts, it’s groundbreaking. And when Brazil’s top black female and male actors star in it, it’s a miracle.

Two weeks ago Globo television premiered “Mister Brau,” a weekly comedic show starring Lázaro Ramos and Taís Araújo as a successful pop music couple. They are also married in real life…

…For black Americans, the union between Ramos and Araújo appears to be a perfect match. For Afro-Brazilians, it’s a match that they rarely see. For the most part, rich and successful Afro-Brazilians do not marry black people. Soccer stars marry white women. Black Brazilian models marry white men. Militant black Brazilians always debate the reasons for this. But sociologists have concluded that rich Afro-Brazilians are usually exchanging status when they marry white. They provide the high socioeconomic status in exchange for whiteness, which has a high racial status in Brazil. (See: Race in another America: the significance of skin color in Brazil)…

Read the entire review here.
No, Native Americans aren’t genetically more susceptible to alcoholism

2015-10-11

No, Native Americans aren’t genetically more susceptible to alcoholism

The Verge
2015-10-02

Maia Szalavitz

Time to retire the ‘firewater‘ fairytale

When Jessica Elm, a citizen of the Oneida Tribe of Indians of Wisconsin, was studying for her master’s degree in social work, she frequently heard about how genes were responsible for the high risk of alcoholism among American Indians. But her own family’s experience — and the research, she discovered — tells a very different story.

The “firewater” fairytale that Elm came to know all too well goes like this: Europeans introduced Native Americans to alcohol, which they were genetically unprepared to handle. That happenstance led to alcoholism rates that are around twice as high as those seen in whites — and alcohol-related death rates, which are at least tripled. In this view, colonization didn’t make conquered people susceptible to heavy drinking — genes did…

…In fact, there’s no evidence that Native Americans are more biologically susceptible to substance use disorders than any other group, says Joseph Gone, associate professor of psychology at the University of Michigan. American Indians don’t metabolize or react to alcohol differently than whites do, and they don’t have higher prevalence of any known risk genes…

Read the entire article here.
“That’s one of the fundamental paradoxes of Obama’s presidency — that we have the Black Lives Matter movement under a black president…”

2015-10-09

“That’s one of the fundamental paradoxes of Obama’s presidency — that we have the Black Lives Matter movement under a black president,” says Fredrick Harris, a political scientist at Columbia University. “Your man is in office, and you have this whole movement around criminal-justice reform asserting black people’s humanity?”

Jennifer Senior, “The Paradox of the First Black President,” New York Magazine, October 7, 2015. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/10/paradox-of-the-first-black-president.html.

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