Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

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  • The Risks of Multiracial Identification

    The Risks of Multiracial Identification

    The Chronicle of Higher Education
    2006-11-10

    Naomi Schaefer Riley

    The comment period has closed on proposed new guidelines from the U.S. Department of Education on how colleges should ask students about race. No longer, the guidelines say, should applicants simply be given the choice of black, white, Asian, American Indian (or Alaska Native), or native Hawaiian (or other Pacific Islander). Now they should be allowed to check off more than one box, as well as note whether they identify as Hispanic. Eugene L. Anderson, an associate director of the American Council on Education, told Diverse, a higher-education magazine, that he expected colleges would be pleased with the new guidelines: “They make sense; they respect peoples’ individual notion of racial identity, which is important.”

    No doubt colleges also appreciate the department’s instructions for practical reasons. The proliferation of multiracial options on a variety of forms, including college applications, reflects the new demographic reality in America. On the 2000 census, nearly seven million Americans checked off two or more racial boxes. And a study last year by researchers at Cornell University found that the number of interracial marriages involving white people, black people, or Hispanics each year in the United States has jumped tenfold since the 1960s.

    In a sense, these developments represent the realization of the dream of a melting pot. In 1963 Norman Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary, penned a controversial essay called “My Negro Problem—And Ours,” expressing despair about the chances for real racial integration in this country. That could not occur, he wrote, “unless color does in fact disappear: and that means not integration, it means assimilation, it means—let the brutal word come out—miscegenation.”…

    …But even those mixed-race groups cannot satisfy some students. One told the Crimson that her acquaintances at Harvard’s Hapa group focused too much on East Asian identities, instead of South Asian ones. They went out, she complained, for dim sum, “which I enjoy, but don’t identify with culturally.” But she didn’t feel welcome in the regular South Asian group, either, because in a theatrical performance the group’s leaders cast her in the role of a white person.

    The level of specificity that seems to be required for many young men and women to feel comfortable today is bordering on the absurd. Ultimately it’s sad. Advocates of diversity on college campuses insist that they are not just assembling faces of different colors for aesthetic purposes; they are trying to offer students a model of how to live in a multiracial, multiethnic society. But students do not seem to be learning to be more tolerant of people unlike them. They are demanding that they be surrounded and sheltered by people who are exactly like them.

    Colleges have long experienced what sociologists refer to as the “lunch-table problem.” That tendency toward racial self-segregation may find its origins in students’ upbringings, but it is surely furthered by campus multiculturalists. Over the years, I have had many students I’ve interviewed tell me that they were never encouraged to identify themselves by their race so much as when they set foot on a college campus. Both administrators and student-run organizations often pressured them to engage in activities that put them in a particular racial box. So it’s not surprising that students now want activities that conform to every contour of their ancestry…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Interracial families in South Africa: an exploratory study

    Interracial families in South Africa: an exploratory study

    Rand Afrikaans University
    June 1994
    310 pages
    (In English and Afrikaans)

    Lesley Morrall

    A dissertation presented in partial fulfillment of the requirement of the degree Doctor of Literature and Philosophy in Psychology in the Faculty of Arts at Rand Afrikaans University.

    Interracial marriage can be viewed as a barometer of social change. South Africa has historically been a country of racial tension with legislation seeking to keep the races apart. However, during April 1994 the country’s first democratic elections took place, thus ending the reign of white minority rule. It is against this backdrop that the present study took place. The aim of the study is to seek a deeper understanding of the experiences of mixed: race families living in South Africa. Certain questions are raised, inter alia; the causes for interracial relationships and marriage, the reactions of the families of origin, the patterns of adjustment, the raising of the children with specific reference to identity development and, the reactions of the community. Theories on prejudice, discrimination and interpersonal attraction were studied as a basis for a possible understanding of the phenomenon of mixed marriage. A brief exposition of the history of South Africa detailing relevant legislation places the study in context. Statistics on the incidence of interracial marriage and divorce were tabulated. Research pertaining to mixed marriage and interracial children was reviewed emphasizing the issues as outlined in the questions posed. However, very few studies could be found which related to South Africa. As such, media coverage of interracial relationships as reported in South Africa between 1993 to 1994 was also covered.

    Table of Contents

    • ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
    • SUMMARY (ENGLISH)
    • SUMMARY (AFRIKAANS)
    1. OVERVIEW
      1. Introduction
      2. Marriage
      3. Family
      4. The Concept of Race
      5. The Concept of Mixed-Race
      6. The Present Study
        • Aims of the study
    2. THEORIES : PREJUDICE, DISCRIMINATION AND INTERPERSONAL ATTRACTION
      1. Introduction
      2. Prejudice and Discrimination Defined
      3. The Origin of Prejudice
      4. Theories of Prejudice
      5. Combatting Prejudice
      6. Interpersonal Attraction Defined
      7. Proximity
      8. Emotional State
      9. Need for Affiliation
      10. Physical Attractiveness
      11. Similarity
      12. Conclusion
    3. HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF SOUTH AFRICA AND THE LAW
      1. Introduction
      2. Historical Overview
      3. Legislation
        • The Population Registration Act, Act 30 of 1950
        • The Group Areas Act, Act 41 of 1950
        • History of the Immorality Act and the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act
          • Media coverage
          • Repeal of the Acts
      4. Conclusion
    4. LITERATURE REVIEW: MIXED-RACE MARRIAGE
      1. Introduction
      2. Trends and Pattems of Mixed-Race Marriage
      3. Spouse Selection
      4. Adjustment
      5. Divorce
      6. Public Attitudes towards Mixed Marriage
      7. Attitude of Family towards Mixed-Race Couples
      8. Research Critique
      9. Conclusions from the literature Review
    5. LITERATURE REVIEW: MIXED-RACE CHILDREN
      1. Introduction
      2. Theories: Biracial Children and their Identity
      3. Studies of Biracial Children
        • Intellectual development: Birth to four years
        • Racial awareness: Early childhood
        • Self-concept: Scholars
        • Racial identity: Adolescents
        • Mixed-race heritage: Adults
      4. Raising Biracial Children
      5. Conclusions from the Literature Review
    6. INCIDENCE OF MIXED-RACE MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE
      1. Introduction
      2. Incidence in the United States of America
      3. Incidence of Mixed-Race Marriage in South Africa
      4. Incidence of Mixed-Race Divorce in South Africa
    7. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
      1. Introduction
      2. Questions
      3. Qualitative Research
      4. The Study
      5. Sample
      6. Data Analysis
    8. CASE NUMBER 1 – MOHAMMED AND RONELLE: AN ASIAN/WHITE FAMILY
    9. CASE NUMBER 2 – JACK AND TINA: A WHITE/BLACK RELATIONSHIP
    10. CASE NUMBER 3 – CLIVE AND MINNIE: THREE GENERATIONS OF MIXED MARRIAGES
    11. CASE NUMBER 4 – LEON AND ESTHER: A WHITE/BLACK INTERRACIAL MARRIAGE
    12. CASE NUMBER 5 – ED AND ELLEN: FOUR GENERATIONS OF MIXED MARRIAGES
    13. CASE NUMBER 6 – JOHAN AND BELINDA: WHITE/COLOURED MIXED MARRIAGE
    14. CASE NUMBER 7 – THOMAS AND BELLA: A WHITE/BLACK INTERRACIAL MARRIAGE
    15. RESULTS OF THE RESEARCH
      1. Introduction
      2. General Results
      3. Specific Results
      4. Conclusion
    16. DISCUSSION OF RESULTS AND CONCLUSION
      1. Introduction
      2. Theories: Prejudice and Discrimination
      3. Theories: Interpersonal Attraction
      4. Previous Research: Mixed-Race Marriage
        • Who marries out?
        • Spouse selection
        • Adjustment
        • Societal attitude towards mixed marriage
        • Attitude of extended family
      5. Identity Development: Mixed-Race Children
      6. Divorce
      7. Conclusions
        • Causes of interracial relationships
        • Adjustment patterns
        • Child raising practices
        • Racial identity
        • The extended family
        • Legislation and the political environment
      8. Limitations of the Study
      9. Directions for Future Research
    • REFERENCES
    • APPENDIX A: MEDIA COVERAGE OF INTERRACIAL RELATIONSHIPS: 1993-1994
      1. Introduction
      2. Articles
      3. Conclusion
    • APPENDIX B: NEWSPAPER CARTOONS
    • APPENDIX C: QUESTIONNAIRE
    • APPENDIX D: LETTER TO THANDI MAGAZINE
    • APPENDIX E: ADVERTISEMENT IN THANDI MAGAZINE

    Read the entire dissertation here.

  • Familial Ethnic Socialization Among Adolescents of Latino and European Descent: Do Latina Mothers Exert the Most Influence?

    Familial Ethnic Socialization Among Adolescents of Latino and European Descent: Do Latina Mothers Exert the Most Influence?

    Journal of Family Issues
    Volume 27, Number 2 (February 2006)
    Pages 184-207
    DOI: 10.1177/0192513X05279987

    Andrea G. González
    University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

    Adriana J. Umaña-Taylor, Associate Professor, School of Social and Family Dynamics, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
    Arizona State University

    Mayra Y. Bámaca-Colbert, Assistant Professor of Human Development and Family Studies
    Pennsylvania State University

    This article examines gender and family composition differences in 98 biethnic adolescents’ reports of familial ethnic socialization and ethnic identity. Using analysis of variance, four groups (i.e., adolescent males with Latina mothers and European American fathers, adolescent females with Latina mothers and European American fathers, adolescent males with European American mothers and Latino fathers, and adolescent females with European American mothers and Latino fathers) are compared on the above measures. Results indicate that sons of Latina mothers reported the highest levels of familial ethnic socialization. No significant differences emerge between groups on a measure of ethnic identity.

    Read or purchase the article here.

  • Empire’s progeny: The representation of mixed race characters in twentieth century South African and Caribbean literature

    Empire’s progeny: The representation of mixed race characters in twentieth century South African and Caribbean literature

    2006-01-01
    355 pages
    Publication Number: AAT 3249543

    Kathleen A. Koljian
    University of Connecticut

    A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut, 2006.

    This dissertation is an examination of the portrayal of mixed race characters in South African and Caribbean literature. Through a close reading of the works of representative Caribbean [Derek Walcott, Michelle Cliff, and Jamaica Kincaid] and South African authors, [Bessie Head, Zoe Wicomb, and Zakes Mda] my dissertation will construct a more valid paradigm for the understanding of mixed-race characters and the ways in which authors from the Caribbean and South Africa typically deploy racially mixed characters to challenge the social order imposed during colonial domination. These authors emphasize the nuanced and hierarchical conceptualizations of racialized identity in South Africa and the Caribbean. Their narratives stand in marked contrast to contemporary models of ‘hybridity’ promulgated by prominent post-colonial critics such as Homi Bhabha and his adherents. In this dissertation, I hope to provide a more historically and culturally situated paradigm for understanding narrative portrayals of mixed race characters as an alternative to contemporary theories of ‘hybridity’. Current paradigms within post-colonial theory are compromised by their lack of historical and cultural specificity. In failing to take into account specific and long-standing attitudes toward racial identity prevalent in particular colonized cultures, these critics founder in attempts to define the significance of the racially mixed character in postcolonial literature. Bhabha, for example, fails to recognize that the formation of racialized identity within the Caribbean and South Africa is not imagined in simple binary terms but within a distinctly articulated racial hierarchy. Furthermore, Bhabha does not acknowledge the evolution of attitudes and ideas that have shaped the construction and understanding of mixed-race identity. After a brief survey of the scientific discourse of race in the colonial era, and a representative sampling of key thematic elements and tropes in early colonial literature to demonstrate the intersection of race theory and literature, close readings of individual narratives will demonstrate the limitations of current models of ‘hybridity’ and illuminate the ways in which individual authors and texts are constructed within (and sometimes constrained by) long-standing and pervasive discourses of racialized identity.

    Table of Contents

    • Introduction: Empire’s Progeny
    • “A Small Corner of the Earth”: Bessie Head
    • “Colouring the Truth”: Zoe Wicomb
    • Birthing the Rainbow Nation: Zakes Mda’s Madonna of Excelsior
    • The “Mulatto of Style”: Derek Walcott’s Carribean Aesthetics
    • “Only Sadness Comes from Mixture”: Clare Savage’s Matrilineal Quest
    • Xeula and Oya: Jamaica Kincaid’s Autobiography of My Mother
    • Conclusion
    • Works Cited

    Read a preview here.
    Purchase the full dissertation here.

  • Opinion: Are you mixed up?

    Opinion: Are you mixed up?

    Malayasian Insider
    2010-07-08

    Praba Ganesan

    JULY 8 — Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad is the poster child for Malaysians with mixed parentage. Not that he epitomises multiculturalism, the misguided doctor is far from that.

    He does however mirror the difficulties and challenges anyone of that situation experiences in a Malaysia averse to real diversity.

    Don’t mention your mixed heritage, overemphasise your commitment to the heritage you do associate with and disassociate with all your might any connection to the heritage you are trying to lose. And marry further away from the ashamed heritage.

    Not everyone behaves like that, but the themes remain.

    I’m all Tamil. But my nephew and niece are not. One is a quarter Chinese and the other is half Nordic-Irish-English-and a degree of uncertainty. So my nephew goes on as a constitutional Indian though everyone thinks him Malay in school, and my niece well she goes all over the house wrecking things — in her two-year-old shoes. But her Malaysian birth certificate states her ethnicity as Australian, a nationality becomes her ethnicity according to the good people at the National Registration Department.

    So what are they, and how should they grow up in Malaysia?

    In Malaysia there are no halves, just wholes. This might be illogical to people outside Malaysia or anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of genealogy, but in our tropical paradise when your parents are of different ethnicities (or even mixes) you can only be of an ethnicity. Worse if one of the parents is Muslim then the other parent’s identity, past and history has to evaporate…

    Read the entire article here.

  • A Visual and Sociological Study of the Hafus

    A Visual and Sociological Study of the Hafus

    2010-08-07 Through 2010-08-29
    Tue-Thu & Sun 12:00-19:00
    Fri&Sat 12:00-20:00
    (Closed on Mondays and 14, 15, and 16 August )
    3331 Arts Chiyoda 6-11-14 Sotokanda, Chiyoda-Ku,Tokyo, 101-0021

    Natalie Maya Willer, Photographer

    Marcia Yumie Lise, Researcher

    A Visual and Sociological Study of the Hafus

    The Hafu Project is a visual and sociological study & representation of the so-called “Hafu”s. This is the first public exhibition in Japan. The work provides an unfolding journey of discovery into the intricacies of what it is to be a hafu in modern day Japan as well as on a global scale in a time where culture, nationhood and identity are increasingly fluid.

    View the flyer here.

  • Racial Quotas and the Culture War in Brazilian Academia

    Racial Quotas and the Culture War in Brazilian Academia

    Sociology Compass
    Volume 4 Issue 8 (August 2010)
    Pages 592 – 604
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1751-9020.2010.00295.x

    Stanley R. Bailey, Associate Professor of Sociology
    University of California, Irvine

    Michelle Peria
    University of California, Irvine

    Dozens of Brazilian universities recently adopted racial quotas for negros, read Afro-Brazilians, in higher education. Anyone familiar with the Brazilian context will recognize this step as a paradigm shift in the state’s approach to ‘race’. State discourse in past decades touted a mixed-race population not beset by overt discriminatory practices. In response to this new approach, two well-defined clusters of professors in Brazil’s universities authored several dueling manifestos supporting and opposing race-based affirmative action. This article suggests a ‘culture war’ framing of the debate and delineates the contrasting historic ideologies of racialism and antiracialism that inform the divergent racial worldviews of each academic camp. It then explores four points of contention from the manifestos that characterize their conflicting perspectives. They differ in terms of (1) their images of the Brazilian nation, (2) their diagnoses of the mechanisms behind non-white underrepresentation in Brazilian universities, (3) their prognoses for a remedy via racial quotas, and (4) their motivations for entering the debate. At the same time, the article locates some possible common ground.

    Read or purchase the article here.

  • Part Asian, Not Hapa

    Part Asian, Not Hapa

    Open Salon
    Thoughts from a Third Culture: on being mixed in America
    2010-07-27

    Mia Nakaji Monnier

    My mother is Japanese from Osaka; my father, American from a small town in Western Oregon. There’s a word for people like me, used especially on the West Coast and popularized in recent years, maybe most notably by artist Kip Fulbeck:

    Hapa.

    From the Hawaiian phrase “hapa haole” (“half white”), the word “hapa” has come to be a label that many multiracial people with some Asian heritage incorporate into their identities, whether they wear it with pride or with ambivalence.

    I don’t wear it at all.

    It’s not that I think “hapa” is an offensive word, though my parents took issue with it as my brothers and I were growing up, their reason being that it means, literally, “half.” “Haafu,” the Japanese equivalent has the same literal meaning and I’ve even heard people skip over both these words entirely, going straight to “half.” As in, “You look a little Japanese. Are you half?” or “Why do you work at the Japanese American National Museum? OH, are you half?!”…

    Read the entire essay here.

  • Alien Land

    Alien Land

    Northeastern University Press
    2006 (Originally published in 1949 by E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc.)
    336 pages
    1 illus. 5 1/2 x 8″
    ISBN-13: 978-1-55553-657-2
    ISBN-10: 1-55553-657-3

    Willard Savoy (1916-1976)

    Introduction by:
    Robert Burns Stepto, Professor of African American Studies, English and American Studies
    Yale University

    Alien Land is the passionate and haunting story of a light-skinned black man who can pass as white in mid-twentieth-century America. As a spiritually tormented child and young adult caught between two worlds in a segregated society, Kern Roberts puzzles over racism and agonizes over “why he’s a nigger.” As a teenager studying at the exclusive Evans Academy in Vermont, Kern “passes” until a classmate maliciously exposes him. Anguished and resentful, he throws himself into working for the Freedom League in Washington, D.C., the civil rights organization of which his father, a prominent black attorney, is national president. In 1934 Kern starts college in an “alien land,” the Jim Crow South. Exposed to horrifying racially motivated crimes, prejudice, and contempt, Kern necessarily plays the submissive “nigger” until, terrorized, he renounces his race and his father, returning to Vermont to live as a white man with his white grandmother. Ultimately he comes to terms with his biracial identity, finds peace in his marriage to a white woman, and reconciles with his father.

    Robert Burns Stepto’s keen introduction firmly situates Alien Land in the line of African American novels that treat the issue of identity through the motif of passing. Originally published in cloth in 1949 to national acclaim, the full text of this remarkable novel is finally available in paperback.

  • The C.O.W.S. w/ Minkah Makalani – Jul 15, 2010

    The C.O.W.S. [Context of White Supremacy] w/ Minkah Makalani – Jul 15, 2010

    The C.O.W.S Radio Show
    BlogTalkRadio
    2010-07-15

    Gus T. Renegade, Host

    Minkah Makalani, Assistant Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies
    University of Texas, Austin

    Rutgers’ Minkah Makalani will share his views on the System of White Supremacy. Minkah Makalani is an assistant professor of history; his primary focus is black radicalism, nationalism, the African diaspora, and social movements. We’ll explore his research on “biracial identity” [non-white people with a White parent]. Professor Makalani has written two standout articles on this subject: Rejecting Blackness, Claiming Whiteness: Anti-Black Whiteness and the Creation of a Biracial Race and A Biracial Identity or a New Race? The Historical Limitations and Political Implications of a Biracial Identity. Much of Professor Makalani’s analysis reveals how non-white people with a White parent frequently make a conscious and/or unconscious effort to distance themselves from black people... in a word, they highlight their Whiteness. We’ll explore the ramifications of this in a System dominated by White Supremacy. PS—Professor Makalani has a White parent.

    Interview begins at 00:01:23 and ends at 02:04:47.