Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

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  • White Americans, The New Minority? Non-Blacks and the Ever-Expanding Boundaries of Whiteness

    White Americans, The New Minority? Non-Blacks and the Ever-Expanding Boundaries of Whiteness

    Jonathan W. Warren, Associate Professor of International and Latin American Studies
    University of Washington

    France Winddance Twine, Professor of Sociology
    University of California, Santa Barbara

    Journal of Black Studies
    Volume 28, Number 2 (November 1997)
    pages 200-218

    Argues that in the United States the “white” racial category has expanded across time to include groups previously considered “non-white.” The role of blacks in this expansion is explored as well as whether white Americans are really becoming a numerical minority. An alternative racial future to the one frequently forecasted is suggested.

    …But are Whites really becoming a minority? Does the escalation of non-European immigrants mean that minorities are becoming a majority? The logic of the argument appears sound enough: Immigration from Asia and Latin America is increasing, and because  these people are non-Whites, then eventually non-Whites will be in the numerical majority. Yet, this argument hinges on an unexamined premise—the essentialist premise that Whiteness is a fixed racial category. In other words, one can only draw the conclusion that Whites are becomin a minority if one assumes that racial categories are static across time and place. However, as the  following experience of Amy Pagnozzi suggests, such an assumption is dubious at best…

    …In this article, we will argue that in the United States the “White” racial category has expanded across time to include groups previously considered “non-White.” The Irish will be used as an example of how groups, at one time considered to be neither White nor Black, have been racially repositioned as White. We will then explore the importance of the role of Blacks in the expansion of the White category. Finally, we will return to the question of whether White Americans are actually in danger of becoming a numerical minority, given the sharp increase in Latin American and Asian immigration, and suggest an alternative racial future to the one so often forecasted….

    Read or purchase the article here.

  • “Skinfolks” and “Kinfolks”: Racial Passing in American Films 1930-1960

    “Skinfolks” and “Kinfolks”: Racial Passing in American Films 1930-1960

    Department of American Studies
    University of Virginia
    Summer 2002

    Introduction

    Characters with a desire to become something that they are not in order to escape their realities have been present from the earliest American films to the present. The popular encyclopedia of American cinema, Videohound, categorizes films with these characters under “Not-So-Mistaken-Identity”. Of these “not-so-mistaken identity” films, more than half of the characters in question are black passing as white. This reflects the American obsession with race, authenticity, and reinvention.

    As characters whose racial identity could rest somewhere between black and white, passing characters have the potential to subvert racial categories by proving the falsity of the black and white racial binary. Elaine Ginsberg argued that the power of passing narratives is “its interrogation of the essentialism that is the foundation of identity politics, passing has the potential to create a space for creative multiple identities, to experiment with multiple subject positions, and to cross social and economic boundaries that exclude or oppress.” However in most popular American films, these characters are never allowed the freedom to define themselves and live with their choices.

    Despite the possibilities their existence in a society anxious about interracial sex suggests, they are actually used most often to prove that it is not possible to transcend racial categories. And just in case the repeated humiliation, violence, and personal sacrifices they endure in the films did not persuade the audience to value stability in racial identity, more traditional, stereotypical black characters are always present, and usually placed at the moral center of the films, to reinforce racist definitions of blackness and whiteness…

    Visit the website here.

  • ‘A modelling competition with a difference’ is being pioneered by social enterprise mix-d:™ at MMU’s business incubator, Innospace

    ‘A modelling competition with a difference’ is being pioneered by social enterprise mix-d:™ at MMU’s business incubator, Innospace

    News and Events
    Manchester Metropolitan University Business School
    Manchester, England
    2010-08-02

    A MODELLING competition – the first of its kind in the UK to find the mixed race face of 2010 is being organised by social enterprise, mix-d:™, based at Manchester Metropolitan University’s business incubator, Innospace, in collaboration with the prestigious agency Boss Model Management, Harvey Nichols and Vidal Sassoon.

    The fundraiser event, due to be held later on the 30th October at the Monastery in Manchester, will include a catwalk competition where the two lucky winners will each win a photo shoot with a leading Manchester fashion photographer and could be signed up by Boss Model Management. They will also get involved in promoting awareness of mixed race issues….

    Read the entire article here.

  • The social care system and mixed race young people: placing the individual child at the heart of decision making

    The social care system and mixed race young people: placing the individual child at the heart of decision making

    People in Harmony
    Central London, England
    2010-11-11

    A one-day conference from People in Harmony which will consider why mixed race young people are over-represented in the care system, how they fare in the system and beyond, and how existing procedures could be improved upon.

    About the Conference

    The emergence of a sizeable mixed race population provides us with the opportunity to look again at racial stereotyping, and at how public services engage with individuals who do not slot into a single racial group. The need for this is perhaps most acute in the area of looked after children and wider social care – the focus of this conference.

    Mixed race young people are over-represented in the care system, which has important implications for their long term prospects. A number of reasons may contribute to explaining this over-representation – social class, cultural differences in attitudes to marriage and long term relationships, widely dispersed family and a consequent lack of informal support structures. However, the tendency of service providers to see ‘black’ children as separate from their white mothers and to question the ability of white mothers to raise ‘black’ children may also play a part.

    There have been major disagreements about local authority policies which insist on the right ‘racial match’ between child and adoptive family (based on Children Act 1989 Section 22 (5) (c)). Much evidence suggests that the key to successful placements is not a good racial match, but the young person’s wishes and the warmth of the adoptive family.

    This conference will seek to explore these difficult issues with openness and honesty, drawing on research and academic work, and on personal experience. It will provide delegates with an opportunity to consider:

    • Whether too much time is spent finding the right label (is it dual heritage rather than mixed race, and does it really matter?).
    • Why ‘racial matching’ between young people and adoptive families may have been over-emphasised at the expense of adopted children – has cultural competence simply become a new dogma?
    • The direct experience of mixed race young people who have been in the care system.
    • Why social class and social heritage means that outcomes are very different among mixed race young people.
    • Whether there is sufficient support for parents, especially single parents, of mixed race children – and how this is informed by perception of white mothers with ‘black’ children.
    • How the care system – including wider services like education and CAMHS – can work towards better outcomes?

    Organisations which book places at this event are invited to take up free exhibition space to encourage an exchange of information and resources.

    Certificates of attendance will be available.

    For more information, click here.

  • Scholars Test Web Alternative to Peer Review

    Scholars Test Web Alternative to Peer Review

    The New York Times
    2010-08-23

    Patricia Cohen

    For professors, publishing in elite journals is an unavoidable part of university life. The grueling process of subjecting work to the up-or-down judgment of credentialed scholarly peers has been a cornerstone of academic culture since at least the mid-20th century.

    Now some humanities scholars have begun to challenge the monopoly that peer review has on admission to career-making journals and, as a consequence, to the charmed circle of tenured academe. They argue that in an era of digital media there is a better way to assess the quality of work. Instead of relying on a few experts selected by leading publications, they advocate using the Internet to expose scholarly thinking to the swift collective judgment of a much broader interested audience…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Vietnamese Afro-Amerasian Testimony: In Search of the “Place” in Displacement

    Vietnamese Afro-Amerasian Testimony: In Search of the “Place” in Displacement

    The Global Viet Diaspora
    2009

    This documentary was produced/directed by Rojelio Vo, Long S. Le, and Aaron Hedge. The documentary is based on the lived-experience of a Vietnamese Afro-Amerasian, Khanh Le.

    “If the individual black self could not exist before the law, it could, and would, be forged in language as a testimony at once to the supposed integrity of the black self and against the social and political evils that delimited individual and group equality.” – Professor Henry Louis Gates

    Khanh Le is a Vietnamese Afro-Amerasian, fathered by an African American serviceman during the Vietnam War. Khanh has no information about his father, and his mother abandoned him when he was an infant. He was raised by a surrogate family. As a “half-breed” black child (con den lai) and a child of the enemy (con cua ke thu), Khanh did not exist before the law in Vietnam. His displacement experiences entail physical, cultural, psychological, and intellectual of which he suffered humiliation and discrimination. His search for a “place” came in 1986 when he arrived to the U.S. through the Orderly Departure Program (ODP). The ODP allowed Amerasians to bring their mothers but restricted surrogate or extended family members. Thus, at the age of ten, Khanh came to the U.S. as an unaccompanied minor, living with foster families and later in sheltered homes for Amerasian young adults…

    Read the article here.
    View part one (of five) of the documentary here.

  • Experiences and Processes Affecting Racial Identity Development: Preliminary Results From the Biracial Sibling Project

    Experiences and Processes Affecting Racial Identity Development: Preliminary Results From the Biracial Sibling Project

    Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psychology (formerly Cultural Diversity and Mental Health)
    Volume 4, Number 3 (August 1998)
    pages 237-247
    DOI: 10.1037/1099-9809.4.3.237

    Maria P. P. Root

    Examined what drives the process of racial identity development in general for persons of mixed racial heritage and what experiences account for some differential choices within the same family. 20 sibling pairs of mixed racial heritage (aged 18–40 yrs) completed packets including an extensive background questionnaire, a body image inventory, a racial resemblance inventory, a sibling racial resemblance inventory, a brief mental health inventory, a racial experiences inventory, and an identity questionnaire. Ss also participated in two 2-hr interviews. Four types of experiences surfaced that appear to influence the identity process: hazing, family dysfunction, other salient identities, and the impact of integration. These experiences were explored within the framework of the ecological model of racial identity development.

    Read the entire article here.

  • Mixed Race/Mixed Space in Media Culture & Militarized Zones

    Mixed Race/Mixed Space in Media Culture & Militarized Zones

    Thursday Afternoon Forum Series
    University of California, Berkeley
    691 Barrows Hall
    2010-10-07, 16:00 to 17:30 PDT (Local Time)

    A Critical Race Theory Approach to Understanding Cinematic Representations of the Mixed Race Experience
    Kevin Escudero    , Ethnic Studies

    This presentation focuses on the developmental trajectory of the portrayal of mixed race people in mainstream media.  Primarily looking at film, but also analyzing other media texts such as photography, stand-up comedy and particular sub-genres of film (Disney, television series, etc.) this presentation seeks to understand the ways in which different forms of media have portrayed mixed race people pre and post-Loving.  While much work has been done on the depiction of mixed race people in media post-Loving, there is a need for such work to be contextualized within the pre-Loving depictions of mixed race.  Furthermore, very little attention has been given to the ways in which pre-1967 depictions of mixed race characters (e.g. the tragic mulatto) oftentimes reflect as well as perpetuated racist stereotypes of mixed race people.  These depictions of mixed race people during the anti-miscegenation era are what I argue, has given rise to the utilization by mixed race people of multiple forms of self-expression available through various media in the post-Loving era. 

    Using a framework of “neutralizing the Other” in combination with a Critical Race Theory analysis I will also examine the ways in which post-1967 depictions of mixed race people in media have resulted in a neutralizing of the pre-1967 “threat” of miscegenation and the resulting mixed race offspring of these marriages.  Using pre-1967 depictions as a backdrop for post-Loving discourse, this paper also comments as to the self-perception and self-representation of mixed race youth today in film.  In this analysis, other forms of marginalization and subordination are prevalent, specifically gender.  Not to be overlooked in mixed race and miscegenation discourse, women of color are more often than not depicted as hypersexualized, super-fertile beings while mixed race men depending on their racial mixture are depicted as either hyper-masculine beings (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Vin Deisel) or associated with a more effeminate masculinity (e.g. Keanu Reeves who is half Asian and half Caucassian).  Tiger Woods, on the other hand, and the media portrayal of his marriage scandal at the end of 2009, has been cast as the ultimate playboy among men.

    Historical Development and Expression of Black-Okinawa: Mixed-Socio-Cultural Race/Space in Militarized Zone
    Ariko Ikehara, Ethnic Studies

    This paper examines the historicity of the Cold War and the Post-Cold War era and the narrativity of its aftermath in which the legacy and memories of the U.S.-Asia border (militarized Asia space) are apprehended, narrated and remembered from a transpacific gaze: mixed-space/race zone in the U.S. militarized Asia.   Thus, this project seeks to map out a genealogy of mixed-space/race in the U.S. militarized Asia zone in the historical context of the Cold War and Post-Cold War era.  Re-examining the “natural” phases of social-geographical expansion/spatial development brought on by the militarization of Asia during the Cold war and Post-Cold war era in Asia, my main focus is couched in the base cultural space (mixed-space) in Okinawa.  Some of the research questions are: what is the structure that maintains and fuels the military complex in Asia, what forms did the militarized place become mixed-space, and what are the different circumstances in which the mixed-race people (Amerasians) with or without mixed families traverse and move in and out and around (circulation) of the militarized Asia zone.  Centering the black-Amerasian history and narrativity as the loci of inquiry, I am particularly interested in exploring how the notion of “blackness” is apprehended, circulated, and performed in the mixed-space/race, and is reiterated over and again within the larger spatiality of transnational sites in between US and Asia.

    For more information, click here.

  • VIS409 Mixed Race Women’s Memoirs

    VIS409 Mixed Race Women’s Memoirs

    Antioch University Midwest
    Winter 2010

    This course is designed as a multidisciplinary exploration of race, gender, and identity utilizing oral and written narratives of Black-white mixed race women from the mid-nineteenth century to the present as source material. Drawing from elements of cultural studies, African American studies, American studies, and women’s studies, students will construct critical and historical contexts for self-identity and perceptions of that identity in women of interracial descent.

  • White like who? The value of whiteness in British interracial families

    White like who? The value of whiteness in British interracial families

    Ethnicities
    Volume 10, Number 3 (September 2010)
    pages 292-312
    DOI: 10.1177/1468796810372306

    France Winddance Twine, Professor of Sociology
    University of California, Santa Barbara

    The value of whiteness is not fixed, rather it has contradictory and competing meanings among members of Black British interracial families. Drawing upon racial consciousness interviews and participant observation conducted as part of a longitudinal study of Black-White interracial families in England, this article presents the analysis of five black members of interracial families to show the fluid value of whiteness. An analysis of interviews with sixteen black family members uncovered four discourses or analytical frames employed by blacks as they evaluated the impact of their white family member upon the family.  These four frames reveal that white family members are perceived as both a source of status and stigma. Black family members perceived their white spouses, partners and sisters-in-laws as: 1) an asset – a source of economic, social and symbolic capital, 2) a source of injury, 3) a cultural liability and 4) a source of sexual adventure that threatened the respectability of the family.

    Read or purchase the article here.