Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

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  • Because the Numbers Matter: Transforming Postsecondary Education Data on Student Race and Ethnicity to Meet the Challenges of a Changing Nation

    Because the Numbers Matter: Transforming Postsecondary Education Data on Student Race and Ethnicity to Meet the Challenges of a Changing Nation

    Educational Policy
    Volume 18, Number 5 (November 2004)
    pages 752-783
    DOI: 10.1177/0895904804269941

    Kristen A. Renn, Associate Professor of Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education
    Michigan State University

    Christina J. Lunceford, Professor of Education
    California State University, Fullerton

    In 1997, the Office of Management and Budget revised guidelines for treatment of racial and ethnic data, adding a requirement to allow respondents to indicate more than one race and mandating a change in all federal data collection and reporting by January 1, 2003. Nearly 2 years after the deadline for implementation, however, higher education institutions had not yet been required by the National Center for Education Statistics to make the change. This article discusses the policy context for collecting and reporting data on student race and ethnicity in higher education and challenges created by the addition of the multiple race option. This article describes the current status of postsecondary racial/ethnic data collection, predicts challenges in aggregating and bridging data, and makes recommendations for policy and practice.

    Read the entire article here.

  • Profiles: Samuel Hickson – The Change Agent

    Profiles: Samuel Hickson – The Change Agent

    State University of New York, Brockport
    2010-10-28

    BS in Sociology, ’10

    “My understanding of what is important in life began with my family, who taught me about cultural diversity and having respect for people who are different from me.”

    Samuel Hickson, a former McNair student, studied the processes of racial identification in multiracial students in modern America and the benefits and consequences of that racial choice. Through his study, “Silent but Real: The Struggle for Racial Identification for Multiracial Students in Modern America,” Samuel sought to understand how student’s racial classification changes as their education increases. In addition, Samuel worked on a senior project , which tells the story of social conditions of the world through photos. “One Voice, One Sound; Ghostly Voices, Stories Untold,” considers social conditions in five countries: Ghana, Uganda, Jamaica, Mexico, and the US. His project revealed that education comes in many forms—academic, physical, art, music, and others—and that by incorporating the physical aspects of education with the arts, the possibility for affecting positive change multiplies many times over. And that’s what Samuel’s life is all about—effecting positive change in the lives of people around him…

    Read the entire profile here.

  • It’s Not Easy Being Green: Stress and Invalidation in Identity Formation of Culturally-Complex or Mixed-Race Individuals

    It’s Not Easy Being Green: Stress and Invalidation in Identity Formation of Culturally-Complex or Mixed-Race Individuals

    Texas A&M University
    May 2008
    159 pages

    Samaria Dalia Roberts Perez

    Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Communications

    This is an exploratory study to examine a population which has not been widely researched, mixed-race or “culturally-complex” individuals and identification. In the interest of this study, “culturally-complex” refers to individuals who report parents being from two or more different races/ethnicities; i.e. Black, White, Latino/Hispanic, Asian, Native-American, etc. Current literature reveals through quantitative methods that mixed-race adolescents often report more stress and are at greater health risks than most mono-racial adolescents. However, past studies have not thoroughly investigated why and how this stress exists and at times is inconsistent, which points to the need for qualitative inquiry. Although most of the previous literature focuses on mixed-race adolescents, this study focused on an adult population. Study participants were recruited through snowball sampling for in-depth, open-ended interviews. The data was analyzed by searching for common themes that illustrate the possible causes for stress in culturally-complex individuals.

    Though this study cannot be representational of all culturally-complex individuals it did provide for noteworthy findings. Race and ethnicity, and particularly being culturally-complex are topics that are often not spoken about in the family or between siblings. In general, culturally-complex individuals are not provided with space for dialogue and so thus, having a place to voice ideas, experiences, and opinions was appreciated by all participants. In all interviews, frustration and confusion was expressed towards box-checking. Though stress and invalidation was inconsistent in past literature surrounding mixed-race and culturally-complex individuals, only some participants in this study reported stress and invalidation, while other participants did not report having ever experienced stress or invalidation. While literature had posed that often culturally-complex individuals would identify with the ethnicity of the father, in this study most of those who identified as one culture over another had identified as the ethnicity of the mother. Participants additionally had―hierarchies of identities―where being culturally-complex was not always their most important role. Future research should examine populations from different socioeconomic groups and other demographics.

    Read the entire thesis here.

  • Hybrids and History. The Role of Race and Ethnic Crossing in Individual and National Achievement

    Hybrids and History. The Role of Race and Ethnic Crossing in Individual and National Achievement

    The Quarterly Review of Biology
    Volume 26, Number 4 (December, 1951)
    pages 331-347

    George D. Snell (1903-1996)
    Roscoe B. Jackson Memorial Laboratory, Bar Harbor, Maine

    It is curious to reflect that almost the requisite three or four hundred years have passed since the intercrossing began in America; and it is possible that the United States of America may be quite near to a brilliant efflorescence of genius in thought and art, and perhaps even nore in the scientific organization of natural resources for the good of its own life and for the life of mankind” (Murphy, 1941), This quotation from a British author is based on phenomenon often noted by anthropologists and historians. Sir Flinders Petrie (1911) and numerous writers after him have remarked that the rise of great civilizations, usually and perhaps invariably, is preceded by a mixing of races, and that an incubation period of several centuries follows the first invasion of alien groups before the civilization comes to full flower.

    Toynbee (1935) has attached less significance to the crossing than most writers, and his discussion of the subject may be taken as conservative. He distinguishes twenty-one civilizations, and finds clear evidence of crossing in eleven of these. Moreover, most of the remaining ten can also be said to involve crossing if some additional permissible divisions are made in the races of man. The ten civilizations in which the evidence of crossing is least clear are the Babylonic, Syriac, Arabic, Hindu, Sinic (yellow), Far Eastern (yellow), Andean, Mayan, Yucatec, and Mexican. Nine of the great white civilizations including the Hellenic, Western and Egyptic are known beyond question to be the product of hybrid peoples with the Alpine race being one of the components of the mixture and the Nordic and/or Mediterranean the other. Toynbee concludes that “the number of civilizations created by the unaided endeavours of a single race in each case would present themselves as exceptions to a prevalent law—a law to the effect that the geneses of civilizations require creative contributions from more races than one.”

    There has been little agreement among those who have discussed the subject as to reason for this relation between race crossing and the progress of civilizations. It is the purpose of this paper to examine the possibility that race crossing, even between subgroups of the white race, produces individuals of exceptional vitality and vigor (hybrid vigor), and that its role in the development of civilizations lies largely or in significant part in the unusual contributions which these individuals, both as leaders and as laborers, are able to make. Few writers seem to have considered this possibility. Hooton (1926) has recognized the probable occurrence of heterosis within the white race, and Hankins (1926) has proposed heterosis as an explanation of the role of race mixture in the genesis of civilizations. Other writers have looked elsewhere in seeking to explain the phenomenon…

    Read or purchase the article here.

  • ‘Such fine families’: photography and race in the work of Caroline Bond Day

    ‘Such fine families’: photography and race in the work of Caroline Bond Day

    Visual Studies
    Volume 21, Issue 2     (October 2006)
    pages 106-132
    DOI: 10.1080/14725860600944971

    Heidi Ardizzone, Assistant Professor of American Studies
    University of Notre Dame

    This article examines a collection of family photographs published in an unusual 1932 anthropological study of ‘Negro-White families’. In the 1920s Caroline Bond Day, a woman of mixed ancestry herself, gathered family histories and photographs of over 300 ‘Negro-White families’ for her graduate work at Harvard University under eugenicist Ernest Hooton. Day’s subjects, recruited from her circles of friends and acquaintances, shared her goals of African American equality and uplift but were often suspicious of her chosen field. Anthropology has often been referred to as the handmaiden of colonialism and racism, and physical anthropology in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was not generally supportive of African American civil rights movements prior to World War II. Nevertheless, about 350 families submitted family histories and photographs and filled out surveys. Some also allowed themselves to be measured with calipers. The published study included over four hundred photographs, which collectively provide a visual mediation between Day’s political goals, her exclusive focus on mixed-race families and her use of physical anthropology and blood-quantum language. Day’s work remains controversial, but continues to be used by scholars, activists and artists in part because of its unique focus and methods.

    Read or purchase the article here.

  • Acknowledgment

    Finally, while his name does not appear in the text or bibliography, I want to acknowledge the deep debt I owe to Steven Riley, who maintains the mixed-race scholarly website, “Mixed Race Studies: Scholarly Perspectives on the Mixed Race Experience” (http://www.MixedRaceStudies.org), which is the most comprehensive and objective clearinghouse for scholarly publications related to critical mixed-race theory of which I am aware.  It is through this very robust resource that I came across a goodly number of scholarly references I cite in this book.

    Rainier Spencer, Reproducing Race: The Paradox of Generation Mix. (Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Reinner Publishers, Inc., 2011), x.

  • Dr. Susan Straight to be Featured Guest on Mixed Chicks Chat

    Dr. Susan Straight to be Featured Guest on Mixed Chicks Chat

    Mixed Chicks Chat (The only live weekly show about being racially and culturally mixed. Also, founders of the Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival) Hosted by Fanshen Cox and Heidi W. Durrow
    Website: TalkShoe™ (Keywords: Mixed Chicks)
    Episode: #180-Susan Straight
    When: Tuesday, 2010-11-09, 22:00Z (17:00 EST, 16:00 CST, 14:00 PST)

    Susan Straight, Professor of Creative Writing
    University of California, Riverside


    Susan Straight is an award-winning author of several novels that explore the Mixed experience. Join us for this discussion about her work, her life & her new novel Take One Candle Light a Room.

    Download or listen to the podcast here.

  • Heredity of Skin Color in Negro-White Crosses

    Heredity of Skin Color in Negro-White Crosses

    Carnegie Institution of Washington
    1913
    106 pages
    Number 188, Paper Number 20 of the Station for experimental evolution at Cold Spring Harbor, New York

    Charles B. Davenport (1866-1944), Director
    Eugenics Record Office, Carnegie Department of Genetics, and Biological Laboratory
    Cold Spring Harbor, New York

    Table of Contents

    • A. Statement of the problem
    • B. Method of investigation
    • C. Evaluation of the data
    • D. Ontogenetic development of the skin color of the negro
    • E. Results:
      • I. The skin color of Caucasians in Bermuda and Jamaica
      • II. Quantitative determination of the skin color of pure-bred negroes
      • III. Skin color of the children of a negro and a Caucasian (the Fi generation)
      • IV. Skin color of the children of two mulattoes (the F2 generation)
      • V. Hypothesis
      • VI. Test of the hypothesis
      • VII. Is there a sex-linkage or sex-dimorphism in skin color?
      • VIII. Do the children “take after” the mother and father equally?
      • IX. Selection of mates—”grading up” to white
      • X. The agreement of the hypothesis with popular observation and nomenclature
      • XI. The yellow element in the skin color
      • XII. The “fixed white,” the “pass for white,” and the “white by law”
      • XIII. Reversion to black skin color
    • F. Discussion of inheritance of traits associated with skin color:
      • I. Eye color
      • II. Hair color
      • III. Hair form
    • G. Correlation of characteristics in hybrids
      • I. Correlation between the color of the skin and of the hair in the F2 generation
      • II. Correlation between color of the skin and form of the hair in the F1 generation
    • H. Fecundity of hybrids
    • I. Summary of conclusions
    • K. Literature cited
    • Appendix A:
      • I. Bermudian families
      • II. Jamaican families
      • III. Louisianian families
    • Appendix B. Social data concerning miscegenation

    Two years ago (1910) Mrs. Davenport and I published some measurements made on the color of the skin of descendants of matings between negroes and Caucasians; and we concluded that, in opposition to current belief, our data afforded evidence that there is segregation in skin color. We concluded that, while skin color is inherited in typical fashion, the pigmentation of the full-blooded negro is not dependent on two {i.e., the duplex) determiners, “but perhaps a myriad of them.” Lang (1911,*p. 122) cites these results with approval and brings them in line with other studies in which the presence of several factors for a single character is indicated, but he would query our statement “that offspring are rarely darker than the darker parent.” This statement merely summarized the empirical result obtained from the four quantitatively studied families and was not in complete harmony with the theoretical explanation offered—a disaccord upon which we laid no emphasis because our quantitative data were so limited. Our concluding sentence was as follows:

    All studies indicate that blonds lack one or more units that brunets possess; that the negro skin possesses still additional units; that individuals with the heavier skin pigmentation may have slight pigmentation covered over—hypostatic, evidence of this condition appearing in the light offspring of such hybrids in the second or third generation; and that first-generation hybrids frequently show, somatically, a color grade less than that which they carry potentially and may segregate in their germ-cells.

    The need for additional data was, however, recognized as great…

    Read the entire book in various formats including PDF, plain text or internet reader.

  • “Death by Misadventure”: Teaching Transgression in/through Larsen’s “Passing”

    “Death by Misadventure”: Teaching Transgression in/through Larsen’s “Passing”

    College Literature
    Volume 37, Number 4    , Fall 2010
    pages 120-144
    E-ISSN: 1542-4286 Print ISSN: 0093-3139
    DOI: 10.1353/lit.2010.0013

    Jessica Labbé, Assistant Professor of English and Director of Writing Across the Curriculum
    Greensboro College, Greensboro, North Carolina

    This article provides college literature teachers with a detailed historical, theoretical, and critical analysis of Larsen’s popular novel. Using bell hooks’ groundbreaking approach to “transgressive” education, as described in Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, the article illustrates the means by which Passing can help teachers achieve hooks’ radical vision of learning. To this end, the author situates Larsen and her novel within an inclusive, kaleidoscopic vision of modernism and folds into this discussion Larsen’s modernist stylistic strategies. Related to these subversive strategies are the critical debates surrounding Larsen’s use/interrogation of “passing,” tragic mulatto, and (potentially) lesbian narratives. In addition to these “transgressive” interpretations of the text, the author reads Clare Kendry as a New Woman anthropologist figure and illustrates how our inability to decipher the cause of her demise is a testament to Larsen’s success as a “transgressive” modernist author.

    Read or purchase the article here.

  • “Slippin’ Into Darkness”: The (Re)Biologization of Race

    “Slippin’ Into Darkness”: The (Re)Biologization of Race

    Journal of Asian American Studies
    Volume 13, Number 3     (October 2010)
    pages 343-358
    E-ISSN: 1096-8598 Print ISSN: 1097-2129

    Michael Omi, Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies
    University of California, Berkeley

    While the dominant mantra in humanities and the social sciences is that “race is a social construction, not a biological one,” in the wake of the Human Genome Project, a vigorous debate has emerged about whether race is indeed a meaningful and useful genetic concept. This essays argues that debates about the very concept of race—the system of classification we employ, the meanings we ascribe to racial categories, and their use in social analysis and policy formation—are rendered more complex, indeterminate, and muddy with the increasing re-biologization of race.

    Read or purchase the article here.