Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

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  • Being ‘hafu’ in Japan: Mixed-race people face ridicule, rejection

    Being ‘hafu’ in Japan: Mixed-race people face ridicule, rejection

    Al Jazeera America
    2015-09-09

    Roxana Saberi

    Among Japanese, the perception of pure ethnic background is a big part of belonging to the culture

    TOKYO — Ariana Miyamoto was born and raised in Japan and speaks fluent Japanese. But she said most people in her homeland see her as a foreigner.

    “My appearance isn’t Asian,” she said, “[but] I think I’m very much Japanese on the inside.”

    Miyamoto, 21, was born to a Japanese mother and an African-American sailor who left Japan when she was a child. In Japan she’s considered a hafu, or half-Japanese. Some people prefer the term daburu to signify double heritage, but Miyamoto said she’s not offended by the word hafu.

    “I don’t think the equivalent word for hafu exists overseas, but in Japan you need it to explain who you are,” she said.

    In March she became the first half-black, half-Japanese woman to be named Miss Universe Japan. Many people in Japan cheered, tweeting messages such as “She represents Japan! Being hafu is irrelevant.”

    But others complained on social media that she didn’t deserve the title…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Police Tactics in Harsh Glare After Arrest of James Blake

    Police Tactics in Harsh Glare After Arrest of James Blake

    The New York Times
    2015-09-10

    Benjamin Mueller, Al Baker and Liz Robbins

    A New York Police Department officer was stripped of his gun and badge as Mayor Bill de Blasio and Police Commissioner William J. Bratton issued swift apologies on Thursday for the rough arrest of James Blake, the retired tennis star, after he was misidentified as a suspect in a fraudulent credit card ring.

    Criticism swirled over the possibility that Mr. Blake, who is biracial, had been racially profiled in the episode on Wednesday. But it was Mr. Bratton’s acknowledgment that Mr. Blake may have been treated too aggressively when an officer threw him to the ground that put a renewed focus on the everyday arrest tactics long criticized by the city’s minority residents.

    The incongruity of a Harvard-educated professional athlete being manhandled by six white plainclothes officers on a sidewalk in Midtown Manhattan quickly became an embarrassment for the Police Department and a headache for Mr. de Blasio, exposing the kind of unprovoked aggression that he and elected leaders across the country have sought to stamp out.

    The officer’s decision to throw an unarmed, compliant man to the ground added to the sense that black people are often roughed up by the police out of view, with few resources to bring attention to their grievances. Mr. Bratton said the officers had failed to report the arrest, as they were required to do.

    In a sign of the shifting discourse on race and policing, Mr. de Blasio and Mr. Bratton moved with unusual speed to contact Mr. Blake to apologize. But the gestures also raised questions about whether they would have moved so swiftly if the encounter had not involved a well-known figure…

    …“I do think most cops are doing a great job keeping us safe, but when you police with reckless abandon, you need to be held accountable,” Mr. Blake, whose mother is white and whose father was black, said in an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”…

    …Mr. Sanders said he saw the officers shove Mr. Blake face-first into a large, mirrored building support beam near the Hyatt. With his head wrenched to the side and his hands cuffed behind him, Mr. Blake tried to talk.

    Mr. Sanders said he saw the officers shove Mr. Blake face-first into a large, mirrored building support beam near the Hyatt. With his head wrenched to the side and his hands cuffed behind him, Mr. Blake tried to talk….

    Read the entire article here.

  • Multiracial and Proud: Meet the Americans Who Check More Than One Box

    Multiracial and Proud: Meet the Americans Who Check More Than One Box

    The Daily Good
    2015-09-10

    Demetria Irwin

    Millennials are the largest, most educated, and most diverse generation to date: 58 percent are white, 21 percent are Hispanic, 14 percent are Black, and 6 percent identify as Asian/Pacific Islander. They’re also the most multiracial. The median age of multiracial Americans is 19, compared with 38 for single-race Americans.

    Yet, America’s most open-minded generation isn’t the only one whose racial makeup is in a state of transformation. Since the Census Bureau first started allowing people to check multiple boxes for race in the year 2000, the number of Americans who self-identify as being of two or more races has doubled. America’s multiracial population is growing at a rate three times faster than the overall population, according to a Pew Research Center study released this summer. The study also found that 60 percent of multiracial Americans are “proud of their heritage.”

    Yet nearly as many—55 percent—have also admitted to being the subject of racial slurs or jokes. Nearly a quarter have expressed annoyance that people make assumptions about them based on their presumed ethnicity. Human beings are much more complicated than any checklist or survey could capture. What is it really like being multiracial in America today?…

    Read the entire article here.

  • All Mixed Up: examining mixed children and unions

    All Mixed Up: examining mixed children and unions

    The Source
    Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
    Volume 16, Issue 5 (September 8-22, 2015)

    Florence Hwang

    Sharon Chang says she embodies “mixedness.” Chang’s thoughtful examination about growing up multiracial at this year’s Hapapalooza festival: “Raising Mixed Kids: Family Workshop” will be at the Heartwood Community Café, Sept. 19 from 6–8 p.m. The Hapapalooza festival celebrates mixed heritage and hybrid cultural identity.

    “I bring my lived life to the table. I also now bring the experiences of my family (my husband and son are also mixed) to the table,” says Chang, a mixed-race parenting expert and activist.

    Children and race

    Every single experience Chang has had with others is inevitably a multiracial exchange. Her father is from Taiwan and her mother is Caucasian American of Slovakian, German and French Canadian descent.

    “But what does all this mean for mixed-race children growing up across racial boundaries? How can we raise multiracial kids to feel good about themselves in a raced world?” asks Chang, who will be sharing some of her findings from her new book Raising Mixed Race, which will be released later this fall.

    According to Chang, children have used racial reasoning to discriminate against their peers by the ages of four or five. Children see and hear everything and racism is woven into the very fabric of society. Research also shows children as young as six months are able to categorize people by race…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Spirituality can help us to transcend race consciousness

    Spirituality can help us to transcend race consciousness

    The Orlando Sentinel
    Orlando, Florida
    2015-09-02

    Charles Michael Byrd, Guest columnist

    As someone whom society views as racially mixed, traversing a spiritual path was indispensable for me to achieve happiness by resolving the internal conflicts arising from America’s obsession with the politics of racial identity..

    Ultimately the question of how multiracial individuals should identify comes down to the level of individual spiritual consciousness. Does one see himself as the body or the spark of consciousness animating that body? Is one obligated to accept the label society issues at birth, or should one be able to freely name oneself?

    Against that backdrop, the Sentinel’s Jeff Weiner’s June 4 article, “Orlando faith leaders: Improving race relations means building relationships” caught my eye and compelled me to reflect on just how inextricably blended race and religion are in America, particularly in the black community.

    With Sunday mornings remaining this country’s most segregated time slot, not only have mainstream religions not allowed individuals of all colors to build transcendent interpersonal relationships, but many Americans have soured on the Abrahamic belief systems in favor of innate spirituality. The soul exists beyond racial-identity politics and does not impute value and character onto skin color…

    Read the entire article here.

  • The Lives of Frederick Douglass

    The Lives of Frederick Douglass

    Harvard University Press
    February 2016
    350 pages
    5-1/2 x 8-1/4 inches
    9 halftones
    Hardcover ISBN: 9780674055810

    Robert S. Levine, Professor of English and a Distinguished University Professor
    University of Maryland

    Frederick Douglass’s fluid, changeable sense of his own life story is reflected in the many conflicting accounts he gave of key events and relationships during his journey from slavery to freedom. Nevertheless, when these differing self-presentations are put side by side and consideration is given individually to their rhetorical strategies and historical moment, what emerges is a fascinating collage of Robert S. Levine’s elusive subject. The Lives of Frederick Douglass is revisionist biography at its best, offering new perspectives on Douglass the social reformer, orator, and writer.

    Out of print for a hundred years when it was reissued in 1960, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) has since become part of the canon of American literature and the primary lens through which scholars see Douglass’s life and work. Levine argues that the disproportionate attention paid to the Narrative has distorted Douglass’s larger autobiographical project. The Lives of Frederick Douglass focuses on a wide range of writings from the 1840s to the 1890s, particularly the neglected Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881, 1892), revised and expanded only three years before Douglass’s death. Levine provides fresh insights into Douglass’s relationships with John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, William Lloyd Garrison, and his former slave master Thomas Auld, and highlights Douglass’s evolving positions on race, violence, and nation. Levine’s portrait reveals that Douglass could be every bit as pragmatic as Lincoln—of whom he was sometimes fiercely critical—when it came to promoting his own work and goals.

    Table of Contents

    • Introduction: Lives after the Narrative
    • 1. The Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society Narrative
    • 2. Taking Back the Narrative: The Dublin Editions
    • 3. Heroic Slaves: Madison Washington and My Bondage and My Freedom
    • 4. Tales of Abraham Lincoln (and John Brown)
    • 5. Thomas Auld and the Reunion Narrative
    • Epilogue: Posthumous Douglass
    • Notes
    • Acknowledgments
    • Index

  • Blended Families

    Blended Families

    Mixed Roots Stories
    2015-09-02

    Tru Leverette, Associate Professor of English
    University of North Florida, Jacksonville, Florida

    What does it mean to call a family blended? The term still refers to families formed after divorce and remarriage—step-parents and step-children and step-siblings pieced together in new patterns. The term can also encompass families that are interracial; in these families, blending takes on additional permutations that certainly have puzzled some throughout history.

    Like other interracial families, those that are also blended through remarriage contend with external assumptions and judgments—the confused looks and questioning glances, the “ah-ha” moments or oblivious denial. When I was married to my daughter’s father—who, like me, has both a black and a white parent—I slipped into the ease of relative inconspicuousness for the first time in my life…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Characterizing Race/Ethnicity and Genetic Ancestry for 100,000 Subjects in the Genetic Epidemiology Research on Adult Health and Aging (GERA) Cohort

    Characterizing Race/Ethnicity and Genetic Ancestry for 100,000 Subjects in the Genetic Epidemiology Research on Adult Health and Aging (GERA) Cohort

    Genetics
    August 1, 2015, Volume 200, Number 4
    pages 1285-1295
    DOI: 10.1534/genetics.115.178616

    Yambazi Banda
    Mark N. Kvale
    Thomas J. Hoffmann
    Stephanie E. Hesselson
    Dilrini Ranatunga
    Hua Tang
    Chiara Sabatti
    Lisa A. Croen
    Brad P. Dispensa
    Mary Henderson
    Carlos Iribarren
    Eric Jorgenson
    Lawrence H. Kushi
    Dana Ludwig
    Diane Olberg
    Charles P. Quesenberry Jr.
    Sarah Rowell
    Marianne Sadler
    Lori C. Sakoda
    Stanley Sciortino
    Ling Shen
    David Smethurst
    Carol P. Somkin
    Stephen K. Van Den Eeden
    Lawrence Walter
    Rachel A. Whitmer
    Pui-Yan Kwok
    Catherine Schaefer
    Neil Risch

    Using genome-wide genotypes, we characterized the genetic structure of 103,006 participants in the Kaiser Permanente Northern California multi-ethnic Genetic Epidemiology Research on Adult Health and Aging Cohort and analyzed the relationship to self-reported race/ethnicity. Participants endorsed any of 23 race/ethnicity/nationality categories, which were collapsed into seven major race/ethnicity groups. By self-report the cohort is 80.8% white and 19.2% minority; 93.8% endorsed a single race/ethnicity group, while 6.2% endorsed two or more. Principal component (PC) and admixture analyses were generally consistent with prior studies. Approximately 17% of subjects had genetic ancestry from more than one continent, and 12% were genetically admixed, considering only nonadjacent geographical origins. Self-reported whites were spread on a continuum along the first two PCs, indicating extensive mixing among European nationalities. Self-identified East Asian nationalities correlated with genetic clustering, consistent with extensive endogamy. Individuals of mixed East Asian–European genetic ancestry were easily identified; we also observed a modest amount of European genetic ancestry in individuals self-identified as Filipinos. Self-reported African Americans and Latinos showed extensive European and African genetic ancestry, and Native American genetic ancestry for the latter. Among 3741 genetically identified parent–child pairs, 93% were concordant for self-reported race/ethnicity; among 2018 genetically identified full-sib pairs, 96% were concordant; the lower rate for parent–child pairs was largely due to intermarriage. The parent–child pairs revealed a trend toward increasing exogamy over time; the presence in the cohort of individuals endorsing multiple race/ethnicity categories creates interesting challenges and future opportunities for genetic epidemiologic studies.

    Read or purchase the article here.

  • Privilege And Pressure: A Memoir Of Growing Up Black And Elite In ‘Negroland’

    Privilege And Pressure: A Memoir Of Growing Up Black And Elite In ‘Negroland’

    Code Switch: Fronties of Race, Culture and Ethnicity
    National Public Radio
    2015-09-08

    Terry Gross, Host
    Fresh Air

    Growing up in the 1950s, Margo Jefferson was part of Chicago’s black upper class. The daughter of a prominent doctor and his socialite wife, Jefferson inhabited a world of ambition, education and sophistication — a place she calls “Negroland.”

    That afforded her many opportunities, the Pulitzer Prize-winning cultural critic says. But life was also undercut by the fear that her errors and failures would reflect poorly on her family and, subsequently, her race.

    “It was very important that you show yourself a bright, lively, well-spoken person,” Jefferson tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. “If you go back and read editorials in black magazines — even in white magazines — watch television, this attitude is everywhere: ‘Jackie Robinson, he’s advancing the race!’ ‘Marion Anderson, she’s advancing the race!’ This was the way America … [viewed] blacks: The individual was a collective symbol.”

    In her memoir, Negroland, Jefferson describes the social pressures of her upbringing, as well as the sense of separation that it engendered. She writes that she and other members of the black elite thought of themselves as a “Third Race, poised between the masses of Negroes and all classes of Caucasians.”

    Ultimately, it was the Black Power movement that led Jefferson to question some of the tenets that she had grown up with: “Black Power was really a major challenge to the social privileges and structures of the kind of privilege that I had grown up with,” she says. “That whole belief … that you will only be able to advance if you are perfectly behaved, if you present yourself as what white people would consider an ideal of whiteness … all of that just began to burst open.”…

    Listen to the story (00:34:47) here. Download the story here. Read the transcript here.

  • ‘Negroland’ by Margo Jefferson

    ‘Negroland’ by Margo Jefferson

    The Boston Globe
    2015-09-05

    Donna Bailey Nurse

    While a student at University High in Chicago in the early 1960s, Margo Jefferson was introduced to the essays of James Baldwin. The future New York Times drama critic and Pulitzer Prize winner was struck by passages in “Notes of a Native Son’’:

    “‘One must say that the Negro in America does not really exist except in the darkness of our minds.’

    ‘One’: a pronoun even more adroitly insidious than ‘we.’ An ‘I’ made ubiquitous. ‘Our’: say it slowly, voluptuously. Baldwin has coupled and merged us in syntactical miscegenation.’’

    Jefferson devotes the first chapters of her memoir to explaining the secret of that group’s success, which has a lot to do with the privileges their light skin bestowed. Like Betsey Keating, for example, who was freed by her master before giving birth to his five children. He died leaving money to educate his black sons, setting them up for the future.

    She also tells of a biracial slave named Frances Jackson Coppin whose aunt purchased her freedom. Eventually Frances was able to work, save money, and attend Oberlin College. These mostly mixed-race blacks became teachers, writers, artisans, and abolitionists. They were careful to intermarry, establishing a color line between themselves and darker members of the race.

    Jefferson herself is a descendant of slaves and slave masters from Kentucky, Virginia, and Mississippi, individuals who clawed their way into the elite milieu she calls Negroland…

    Read the entire book review here.