Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

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  • Between Black and Brown: Blaxican (Black-Mexican) Multiracial Identity in California

    Between Black and Brown: Blaxican (Black-Mexican) Multiracial Identity in California

    Journal of Black Studies
    Published online before print on: 2011-02-22
    DOI: 10.1177/0021934710376172

    Rebecca Romo
    University of California, Santa Barbara

    This article explores the racial/ethnic identities of multiracial Black-Mexicans or “Blaxicans.” In-depth interviews with 12 Blaxican individuals in California reveal how they negotiate distinct cultural systems to accomplish multiracial identities. I argue that choosing, accomplishing, and asserting a Blaxican identity challenges the dominant monoracial discourse in the United States,in particular among African American and Chicana/o communities. That is, Blaxican respondents are held accountable by African Americans and Chicanas/os/Mexicans to monoracial notions of “authenticity.” The process whereby Blaxicans move between these monoracial spaces to create multiracial identities illustrates crucial aspects of the social construction of race/ethnicity in the United States and the influence of social interactions in shaping how Blaxicans develop their multiracial identities.

    Read or purchase the article here.

  • Civil War Fires Up Literary Shootout

    Civil War Fires Up Literary Shootout

    The New York Times
    2009-07-29

    Michael Cieply

    LOS ANGELES — History repeats itself. But sometimes it needs a little polishing up from Hollywood.

    Over the last few weeks, the writers of a pair of Civil War-era histories about the anti-Confederate inhabitants of Jones County, Miss., have been trading barbs in an unusual public spat. It began when the author of one book, rights to which had been sold to Universal Pictures and the filmmaker Gary Ross, discovered that Mr. Ross had spurred the publication of a new and somewhat sexier work on the same subject.

    The encounter has created unexpected bad blood over incidents that occurred—or not—more than 100 years ago. And it offers a glimpse of the way that show business and its values have become entwined with the academic book world and its decision-making process.

    On June 23 Doubleday published “The State of Jones: The Small Southern County That Seceded From the Confederacy,” a narrative history by the Harvard scholar John Stauffer and the Washington Post writer Sally Jenkins. The book, which on Monday was ranked No. 83 on Amazon’s best-seller list, presented Newton Knight, the leader of the renegade county, as a morally driven hero in the mold of John Brown—but whose appeal was enhanced by his romance with an ex-slave who, in the book’s account, became the love of his life as relations with his white wife cooled.

    In the book’s acknowledgments, the authors thanked Mr. Ross, who they said had brought the idea to their editor, Phyllis Grann at Doubleday, and whose screenplay had served as “our impetus and our inspiration.”

    This all came as a surprise to Victoria Bynum, a history professor at Texas State University, San Marcos. Her own book on the subject—“The Free State of Jones: Mississippi’s Longest Civil War”—had been published eight years earlier by the University of North Carolina Press, which sold the film rights to Universal as material for Mr. Ross’s project in 2007…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Blurring the color line: the new America

    Blurring the color line: the new America

    The Tufts Daily
    Medford, Massachusetts
    2011-02-22

    Sylvia Avila

    Students identify as multiracial more than ever before

    Once considered a black and white issue, racial identity is hazier than ever.

    According to findings released in June 2010 by the Pew Research Center, the current generation of American college students is the most multi−racial in history. One out of every 19 children born in the United States is the product of parents of different races or ethnicities and one out of every seven marriages today is between people of different races or ethnicities—a particularly noteworthy statistic considering interracial unions were illegal in some states as recently as 1967.

    But the marked expansion in numbers brings unique complexities to the lives of mixed−race Americans. Issues can range from the trivial—indicating racial background on documents—to the critical, such as why and how to self−classify one’s race. President Barack Obama, perhaps the most prominent individual of mixed descent in the world, considers himself African−American rather than biracial.

    Senior Jeewon Kim said that he doesn’t face a dilemma when asked about his race on paperwork.

    “Nowadays you can always do multiple ones, so I always put ‘Caucasian/White’ and ‘Asian−American,’ and specifically ‘Korean’ if it lets me,” he said.

    Kim explained that he has been at peace with his dual identity since high school…

    …According to Lecturer in Anthropology Cathy Stanton, the reversal of the stigmatization of multiracial identity has been a long time coming.

    “It seems like social thinking about this has finally come around to reflecting that fact and a lot of people are just saying, race doesn’t work for me as a category to capture who I am,” Stanton said.

    Kim sees the potential for greater awareness of the distinctions and similarities both within and between racial groups.

    “I hope that it means that there will be less ignorance… The question of ‘who are you?’ is more complicated than guessing it by sight and you would actually have to stop and learn something about that person,” he said.

    Stanton, however, is less optimistic.

    “If we’re in a moment where socially people are saying, ‘I don’t need the construct of race anymore to describe who I am politically and in a broader social context,’ are we at a point where we can stop talking about it?” she said. “Probably not, because of the historical injustices and divisions and hierarchies are still in place and their effects are still in place.”

    Professor of Sociology Susan Ostrander expanded upon these inequalities.

    “Research shows that individuals who are perceived to be black or Latino (whether they actually are or not) get fewer call−backs on job interviews, are arrested more often, have shorter life expectancies, are less likely to go to college,” Ostrander said in an e−mail to the Daily. “You can’t stop any of those events by shouting, ‘But I’m not really black. I’m half−white!’”…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Containing Multitudes

    Containing Multitudes

    Mixed Dreams: towards a radical multiracial/ethnic movement
    2011-02-21

    Nicole Asong Nfonoyim

    “Communities had to be created, fought for, tended like gardens. They expanded or contracted with the dreams of men– and in the civil rights movement those dreams had seemed large. In the sit-ins, the marches, the jailhouse songs, I saw the African-American community becoming more than just the place where you’d been born or the house where you’d been raised. Through organizing, through shared sacrifice, membership had been earned. And because membership was earned–because this community I imagined was still in the making, built on the promise that the larger American community, black, white, and brown, could somehow redefine itself—I believed that it might over time, admit the uniqueness of my own life.”

    Barack Obama from Dreams From My Father

    Alright, I know, I know, talking about Obama and multiraciality is like beating a dead horse. But, I swear, I have a really good point (or two) to make!

    Point 1: NO IDENTITY IS MONOLITHIC

    It sounds simple enough: Race is not biological, it’s a social construct. Identities are fluid, they change and even expand over time. But most of U.S. society hasn’t caught on yet. And ultimately we need to ask, who gains from keeping these strict boundaries around identities?

    In the U.S. we’ve gotten pretty good at essentializing identities into strictly defined, carefully bound, digestible boxes. The black American community, in particular, has long been seen as a monolith—a static and unassimilable one at that—and yet nothing could be further from the truth. I recently watched the Kobina Aidoo documentary film The Neo African-Americans.  The film aims to explore issues facing Caribbean and continental African immigrant communities and their descendants in the U.S. Though, it was at best an introduction to some very deeply rooted issues concerning black people in the Diaspora, the film definitely brings up some provocative points around identity, authenticity and community. The film got me thinking about the (often invisible) multitudes racial and ethnic identities contain and how crucial and yet limiting the process of “self-naming” can be for historically marginalized groups. As people of color, many of us live on the “hyphen”—as hyphen “Americans” in a way that members of white ethnic groups do not.

    Indeed, many of the issues faced by mixed people, mirror those faced by many “monoracial” people of color, especially as our society becomes increasingly defined by it’s heterogeneity while migration, gender, socioeconomic class and sexuality further shape and shift our identities over time. We’re all struggling to define and (re)define who we are as individuals and as collectives. Thus, crises of authenticity, legitimacy, community, progress and belonging are not the sole domain of one particular ethnic or racial group. In significant ways, we can say that they have become woven into the very fabric of our racial inheritance in this country and as such we are all implicated:  black, brown and (perhaps especially) white in tackling these issues head on…

    Read the entire essay here.

  • Columns: Racial lines no longer just black and white

    Columns: Racial lines no longer just black and white

    The Minnesota Daily
    University of Minnesota, Minneapolis-St. Paul
    2011-02-21

    Lolla Mohammed Nur

    Clear-cut racial categories restrict how multiracial Americans identify themselves.

    Based on her appearance, you wouldn’t easily be able to guess University of Minnesota sophomore Mary Taylor‘s racial or ethnic heritage. But if you ask the communications studies major what her ethnicity is, she’d tell you she is three-quarters white, 12.5 percent black and 12.5 percent Native American—a heritage she makes sure to represent when filling out surveys.

    The current generation of college students encompasses the largest group of mixed-race people to come of age in the U.S., according to a recent New York Times series on multiracial identity.

    Although young Americans increasingly identify themselves as multiracial, they often feel that their fluid identities are restricted when asked to self-identify on paper.

    Under new requirements set by the U.S. Department of Education, which will take effect this year, multiracial non-Hispanic students who choose multiple races on surveys will be placed in a “two or more races” category. The justification for this is to offer students of mixed heritage more options to self-identify, and some say it demonstrates the U.S.’s greater appreciation of the fluidity of racial identity.

    However, many sociologists fear it will lump all multiracial groups into one category, ignoring the different life experiences and the varying levels of discrimination that members of various multiracial subgroups face.

    “It’s like the ‘other’ category or the ‘multiracial’ category because everyone get’s glommed together and you can’t even interpret it,” said sociology faculty member Carolyn Liebler. “It’s a battle whenever you’re trying to compile information about people’s race. On the one hand, institutions want to know who you are, they want you to self-identify … but on the other hand, the entities that want to create statistics would really prefer if you could give a simple answer.”…

    Read the entire article here.

  • The Race Classification Gap

    The Race Classification Gap

    The Huffington Post
    2011-02-17

    Daniel Arrigg Koh, MBA Student
    Harvard Business School

    Growing up as a person of Korean and Lebanese descent, I was proud of my heritage and enjoyed discussing it with my peers. While few had ever met anyone with such an ethnic background before, people were always eager to learn more. I always felt that it was a valued part of my identity—something that could happen in few other places but the United States. However, when it came time to apply to colleges, I quickly realized that conveying who I was would not be so easy.

    On many of the applications I read, the choices were limited to “Caucasian,” “Black or African-American,” “Asian,” “Native American,” and “Other.” Some offered the opportunity to “write-in” specific races. On the whole, a significant portion of colleges did not allow me to represent myself accurately on the application. This issue symbolizes a significant problem with race identification in America, one that, with the increasing diversity in this country, deserves to be addressed with all possible expediency.

    University admissions often state that their reasons for asking demographic information are legal and informational only. From a research and sociological perspective, it is understandable. However, the current system falls far short of the detail that educational institutions could and should collect. For example, many schools prohibit “ticking” more than one race category, or instead provide a category entitled “multiracial.” This forces someone like me to either “choose” a race to be represented as or indicate “multiracial,” which on its own means very little—nearly every person in America is “multiracial” by some standard…

    …This “classification gap” has other serious implications. For example, a 2007 study by Princeton and University of Pennsylvania researchers revealed that black students from immigrant families (defined as those who have emigrated from the West Indies or Africa) represented 41% of the black population of Ivy League schools vs. 13% of the black population of 18-19 year-olds in the United States. This information is striking and important in our nation’s focus on closing the achievement gap; however, the status quo of race classification leaves us unable to track such statistics on a uniform, nationwide level…

    Read the entire article here.

  • The Racial Identification of Biracial Children with One Asian Parent: Evidence from the 1990 Census

    The Racial Identification of Biracial Children with One Asian Parent: Evidence from the 1990 Census

    No. 96-370
    Population Studies Center Research Report Series
    Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan
    August 1996

    Yu Xie, Otis Dudley Duncan Distinguished University Professor of Sociology
    University of Michigan

    Kimberly A. Goyette, Associate Professor of Sociology
    Temple University

    This paper examines the socioeconomic and demographic correlates that are associated with whether biracial children with an Asian parent are racially identified with their Asian parent or with their non-Asian parent. With data extracted from the 5 percent Public Use Microdata Sample of the 1990 Census, we take into account explanatory variables at three levels: child’s characteristics, parents’ characteristics, and locale’s racial composition. Our results indicate that the racial identification of biracial children with an Asian parent is to a large extent an arbitrary option within today’s prevailing racial classification scheme. We find empirical evidence in support of the theoretical proposition that both assimilation and awareness of Asian heritage affect the racial identification of biracial children with an Asian parent. Of particular interest is our new finding that the Asian parent’s education increases the likelihood of Asian identification only for third-generation children. In general, we find demographic factors, such as the Asian parent’s ethnicity, to play a far more important role than socioeconomic factors approximating assimilation and awareness processes. In light of these results, we advance the thesis that, like ethnic options among whites, racial options are available for the racial identification of biracial children with an Asian parent.

    Read the entire report here.

  • “Two or More Races” or Just Another Category?

    “Two or More Races” or Just Another Category?

    Open Salon
    2011-02-20

    Ulli K. Ryder, Ph.D.

    The Department of Education’s “two or more races” category may appeal to some people but this is a slippery slope towards ignoring race altogether. Race still matters. Combating racism still matters. Acknowledging multiracial identities or agreeing to be placed in a “two or more races” category does not remove our responsibility to fight against the ways race—and racism—have impacted our lives in many, and sometimes violent, ways.

    The recent debate about the Department of Education’s “two or more races” category demonstrates both the importance of race today and the absurdity of racial categories. As Rainier Spencer rightly reminds us, racism is alive and well in the 21st century. The only way we have found to combat institutional racism is through the accurate reporting of racial data and our ability to make connections between race, class, gender and other factors such as employment and housing. Without this information we will not be able to measure discrimination or make policies that help create equality for all Americans…

    Read the entire article here.

  • The President, the Census and the Multiracial “Community”

    The President, the Census and the Multiracial “Community”

    Open Salon
    2011-02-20

    Ulli K. Ryder, Ph.D.

    What is the connection between Obama, the 2010 U.S. Census and multiracials?  Not as much as some may think. While it is tempting to look to Obama as a mixed race icon and to see the Census as publicly acknowledging a multiracial “community,” we may need to rethink these ideas. 

    The 2010 Census data is being released a few states at a time but already the data suggests a large increase in those identifying as “more than one race.”… …What does this data tell us? First, all states that have been released so far have shown an increase in those who identify as more than one race. Second, even with this increase, the actual percentage of people who identify as more than one race is still a relatively small percentage of the population.

    Yet, multiracials are a growing and highly visible population. Multiracials, specifically the mixed race Millennials, are everywhere asserting their right to check more than one box and have all their heritages respected, counted and acknowledged.  Public discussions of multiracial identity demonstrate  the importance of this group to current debates about race in the United States.  Whether in popular culture such as Halle Berry and Gabriel Aubry’s daughter or in the world of academia such as the recent New York Times article exploring multiracial students, we seem determined to understand multiracial identities and what they mean about race relations in the United States. In these debates, President Obama is frequently evoked as an icon of multiraciality.  However, on the 2010 Census, he chose to identify as “Black” and only “Black.” Multiracial discomfort with Obama’s choice seems to speak less about Obama and his views of race (either public or private) and more about multiracials’ desire for public acknowledgement of private identities. Is this how we should develop and create our identities?  Is self-affirmation driven by external forces or internal comfort and wholeness?…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Race Crossing in Man (Eugenics Lab. Mem. XXXVI) [Review]

    Race Crossing in Man (Eugenics Lab. Mem. XXXVI) [Review]

    American Journal of Human Genetics
    Volume 6, Number 1 (March 1954)
    pages 195–196

    Kenneth S. Brown
    University of Chicago

    By J. C. Trevor, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1953, Pp. 45

    This brief monograph is a mixed blessing. On one hand it demonstrates what a wealth of metrical material has been collected on human hybrid populations, while on the other it presents methods of analysis which are both inefficient and ineptly applied.

    In his preferatory note, Dr. L. S. Penrose points out that this work was done prior to the start of hostilities in 1939, but that the value of the data presented is timeless. This is very true, however the analysis made of the data is rapidly showing signs of age. The data are a compilation of published records of nine outstanding cases of biracial crossing; Hybrid American Negroes, Jamaican ‘Browns’, Half-Blood Sioux, Ojibwa-Whites, Yucatecans, Rehoboth Bastaards, Kisar Mestizos, Norfolk Islanders, and Anglo-Indians. The mean and standard error are recorded for stature and seven cranial measures for most of these populations. Additional measurements are noted for many. In each population studied the sample includes 25 or more adult (20 years or over) individuals of each sex. The values for each sex are recorded separately.

    The mean of the hybrid population is compared with that of each of its propositus population groups by the use of Student’s t test. Unfortunately this test requires the assumption that the variances of the populations being compared be the same. Nowhere in the presentation is this recognized. It would have been eminently desirable to determine the significance of the variance ratio for each parameter for each pair of populations compared before the t test was applied. For cases of significant difference in variance between the populations the Fisher-Behrens method for the use of t with samples of unequal variance would be applicable.

    The variability of the propositus and hybrid populations is considered separately by the method of Mourant in which the variance ratio of each character for each population pair is found and then the mean variance ratio for each pair determined. This analysis indicated that the variance of the hybrid population is greater, but was found, by a t test, to be significantly greater in only two cases. Here it would have seemed desirable to look up the values in a table of F to get a more powerful estimate of the difference between these populations.

    The material presented in this monograph provides a good addition to the blood group, dermatoglyphic, and taster frequency data which are currently used in the analysis of population dynamics, and should serve to attract the attention of interested workers to this relatively undeveloped body of information.