Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

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  • Racial Categories in Medical Practice: How Useful Are They?

    Racial Categories in Medical Practice: How Useful Are They?

    PLoS Medicine
    Volume 4, Number 9 (September 2007)
    pages 1423-1428
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.0040271

    Lundy Braun
    Departments of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and Africana Studies
    Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island

    Duana Fullwiley, Assistant Professor of African and African American Studies and of Medical Anthropology
    Harvard University

    Anne Fausto-Sterling
    Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology and Biochemistry, Program in Women’s Studies, and Chair of the Faculty Committee on Science and Technology Studies
    Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island

    Evelynn M. Hammonds, Senior Vice Provost for Faculty Development and Diversity
    History of Science and of African and African American Studies programs
    Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts

    Alondra Nelson
    Departments of Sociology and African American Studies
    Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut

    William Quivers
    Department of Physics
    Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts

    Susan M. Reverby
    Women’s Studies Department,
    Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts

    Alexandra Shields
    Harvard/MGH Cente on Genomics, Vulnerable Populations and Health Disparities,
    Massachusetts General Hospital
    Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts

    The Trouble with Race

    Is it good medical practice for physicians to “eyeball” a patient’s race when assessing their medical status or even to ask them to identify their race? This question was captured in a 2005 episode of “House M.D.,”  Fox television’s medical drama. In the episode, a black patient with heart disease refuses a hospital physician’s prescription for what is clearly supposed to be BiDil, the drug approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration only for “self-identified” African-Americans. Dr. House, on seeing the patient for followup, insists on the same prescription.  The patient again refuses, telling House, “I’m not buying into no racist drug, OK?” House, a white physician asks, “It’s racist because it helps black people more than white people? Well, on behalf of my peeps, let me say, thanks for dying on principle for us.” The patient replies, “Look. My heart’s red, your heart’s red.  And it don’t make no sense to give us different drugs.”  Who is right here, House or his patient? And what does this episode tell us about the way race plays itself out in the physician-patient clinical encounter? What of clinical importance can be learned by making a quick racial assessment?  That an ACE (angiotensin-converting enzyme) inhibitor may not be effective? That screening for sickle cell anemia is a waste of time? Sorting patients by race may seem useful during a time constrained interview, but we argue that acting on rapid racial assessment can lead to missed diagnoses and inappropriate treatments…

    Racial Categories Are Historical, Not Natural

    …Racial definitions are historically and nationally specific. In her comparison of the history of racial categories in the US and Brazilian census from the late 18th century to the present, political scientist Melissa Nobles demonstrated that categories emerge and are  deployed in different ways over time. For example, during the mid-19th to the early 20th centuries, at the height of US anxiety about “miscegenation,” categories such as “mulatto” were vehicles for expressing and containing cultural anxiety about racial purity.  Bolstered by scientific ideas about race, data collected on the numbers of “mulattoes” were shaped by the desire to prove that “hybrids” would die out…

    …A dark-skinned, curly-headed person who identifies as African American may, indeed, have much in his or her history and upbringing to justify that identification. But he or she may also have a white grandparent and several Cherokee ancestors. Thus, returning to the example of glaucoma, it is more important to know a patient’s family history than to assess his or her race.  And collecting family history ought to mean not only compiling a list of which diseases family members have, but making some attempt to assess common (familial) habits such as diet and life experiences (e.g., first- versus second-generation immigrants, living conditions, or same versus widely varied work experience and geographical locations). Similarly, when the history of passing for white is ignored, those who identify themselves as “white” are assumed to have no ancestral “black blood.”  Finally, immigration patterns constantly change. A “black” person walking into a Boston, Massachusetts clinic could easily be the child of a recent immigrant from Ethiopia or Brazil who has a genetic makeup as well as cultural and environmental exposures that differ significantly from the descendents of 19th century US slaves from the western coast of Africa…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Multiracial Recognition in the 2000 Census: A Personal Perpective

    Multiracial Recognition in the 2000 Census: A Personal Perpective

    Perspectives
    Winter 2003
    pages 48-58

    Ikeita Cantú Hinojosa, JD, MSW
    National Women’s Law Center, Washington, D.C

    The census classification scheme chosen for race and ethnicity has become a prominent social fact in its own right and involves serious political and cultural consequences beyond its explicit policy purposes. Thus, it is not surprising that fierce controversy surrounded the federal government’s decision to rescind its “check only one race” rule for the 2000 Census and implement a “mark one or more races” option in its place. The multirace option signals an official acknowledgment of a growing multiracial, multiethnic, multicultural population in the United States. As a black Chicana often required to select either the “black, non-Hispanic” or “Hispanic” option in answering demographic inquiries that mandate a single selection, I appreciate the opportunity to provide a more accurate description of myself by choosing both applicable categories; however, I question whether the scheme chosen to count race and ethnicity in the 2000 Census was the most appropriate approach to transition from the archaic “one drop of blood” conceptualization of race to a more fluid and complex understanding of the intersectionality of multiple identities. This paper provides a personal perspective on the recent 2000 Census racial and ethnic identity debate. I argue that the multirace option chosen, though not without fault, is preferable to both the retention of the old single-race classification and the creation of a new “Multiracial” category. The single-race option of the past reinforces a view of racial identity as exclusive and rigid, the proposed “Multiracial” category could cause a harsh blow to the progress made by the oppressed to date, and the multirace option implemented for the 2000 Census has the potential to blur psychological and sociological racial and ethnic lines without detracting from civil rights initiatives, signaling a new era in the social attitudes of Americans…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Nooksack Tribe member explores multiracial culture

    Nooksack Tribe member explores multiracial culture

    The Bellingham Herald
    2009-09-28

    Dean Kahn

    Louie Gong grew up eating American Indian bread for breakfast and Chinese dinners cooked on a camp stove.

    In the evening, his Chinese and native relatives got together for mah-jongg.

    Gong’s mother was of French and Scottish descent. His father was half Chinese, part Nooksack and part Squamish.

    Early on, Gong was raised by his grandparents, father, stepmother and scads of relatives in a rustic community north of Abbotsford, B.C. Later, his family moved into Nooksack Indian Tribe housing near Deming.

    Growing up in Whatcom County — he graduated from Nooksack Valley High in 1992 — Gong learned to navigate in a world where mixed-race people often struggle to define themselves, and where other people prefer to slot them into simple categories.

    “I couldn’t quite figure out what I was,” he said, “but I knew I wasn’t part of the mainstream.”…

    Read the entire article here.

  • ‘Multiracial Identity’ documentary film and discussion

    ‘Multiracial Identity’ documentary film and discussion

    Portland State University
    228 Smith Union
    Wednesday, 2010-03-03, from 18:30-21:00 PST (Local Time)

    This new documentary explores the social and political impact of adding a Multiracial Category (the fastest growing demographic in America) as a stand-alone racial group on the US Census. Different racial and cultural groups see multiracialism differently. For some Whites, multiracialism represents the pollution of the White race. For some Blacks it represents an attempt to escape Blackness. And for some Asians, Latinos and Arabs, multiracialism represents the dilution of the culture. Preview this 88-minute film, followed by refreshments and join the discussion with filmmaker Brian Chinhema, Sarah Ross, Director, HONEY (Honoring our New Ethnic Youth) Inc., Thomas Wright, Director, Oregon Council on Multiracial Affairs, and Dana Stone, Adjunct Faculty, University of Oregon Couples & Family Therapy.

    Sponsored by Multicultural Center, the Presidents Commission on the Status of Women, and the Center for Academic Excellence. For more information, contact Patrice Hudson, Co-Chair, Presidents Commission on the Status of Women at (503)725-8327 or pjhudson@pdx.edu.

  • Multiracial Politics or the Politics of Being Multiracial?: Racial Theory, Civic Engagement, and Political Participation in a Contemporary Society

    Multiracial Politics or the Politics of Being Multiracial?: Racial Theory, Civic Engagement, and Political Participation in a Contemporary Society

    Jungmiwha Bullock
    University of Southern California

    This dissertation is an interdisciplinary, multi-method, and multi-site project that investigates where race as a social construction and outdated biological explanations of race contradict in the twenty-first century, using grassroots mobilization around multiracial identity as the point of departure. Although many scholars claim that ideas about biology as a determinant of race have long been set aside to adopt the view that race is indeed a social construction, this dissertation argues that this is true to the extent it has occurred in theory, but not in actual practice. Based on the extensive field research and data collected between 2004 and 2009, it is evident that when the identity or population under question involves two or more races (herein referred to as the “multiracial population”), the race-as-biology slippage is much more sharpened and pronounced, staunchly applied, and hardly if ever questioned. While it may be true that most groups are affected by this latent slippage in the discourse, I have observed that a unique phenomenon occurs specifically where “blood” and subsequently, “blood quantum”, continues to stand in as a metonym for multiracial identity in both private and public discourses. As long as “blood” as a signifier of race continues to be used both in public and private dialogue, and in social science research more broadly, I argue that race-as-biology dogma will continue to limit equal access to culturally competent healthcare, coverage in basic concerns in public policy, and educational accountability where race is still a measure by which resources are allocated. In order for society to engage in a more holistic discussion about race and politics, this dissertation proposes we begin to differentiate between “multiracial politics” from that which I consider “the politics of being multiracial.” It is precisely through the convergence of these two concepts that I locate my project. I hope to contribute a nuanced language we can incorporate for future research, public policy, and theory construction on the basis of race and ethnicity, and other structures of identity on a broader scale. The principal methods implemented in this ethnographic study includes case studies, interviews, participant and field observations, content analysis, and archival research collected primarily in the cities of Los Angeles, Washington DC, Chicago, and Sacramento.

    Table of Contents

    • CHAPTER 1/INTRODUCTION: “Multiracial Politics or the Politics of Being Multiracial?: The Theoretical and Pragmatic Challenges of Racialized Biology, Social Construction, and Hegemonoracial Ideology in a Contemporary Society”
    • CHAPTER 2: “The Multi-Whos?: Unpacking the Historical Discourse on Defining the Multiracial Population in the United States Census and Social Science Research, 1850 to 2000”
    • CHAPTER 3: “Simultaneous Identities: Comparative Interviews Among a Diverse Combination of Multiracial Experiences”
    • CHAPTER 4: “From Manasseh to AMEA: A Case Study of Multiracial Community Building and Grassroots Activism through the Association of MultiEthnic Americans”
    • CHAPTER 5: “Civically Engaging Identities: Keys to Effective Mobilization Toward Building a Collective Multiracial Community”
    • CHAPTER 6/CONCLUSION: “Multiracial Politics: Critiques, Challenges, and Strategies”

  • The Cosmic Race / La Raza Cósmica

    The Cosmic Race / La Raza Cósmica

    Johns Hopkins University Press
    1997 (originally published in 1925)
    160 pages
    Paperback: 9780801856556

    José Vasconcelos
    translated, with an introduction, by Didier T. Jaén
    afterword by Joseba Gabilondo

    “The days of the pure whites, the victors of today, are as numbered as were the days of their predecessors. Having fulfilled their destiny of mechanizing the world, they themselves have set, without knowing it, the basis for the new period: The period of the fusion and the mixing of all peoples.” — from The Cosmic Race

    In this influential 1925 essay, presented here in Spanish and English, José Vasconcelos predicted the coming of a new age, the Aesthetic Era, in which joy, love, fantasy, and creativity would prevail over the rationalism he saw as dominating the present age. In this new age, marriages would no longer be dictated by necessity or convenience, but by love and beauty; ethnic obstacles, already in the process of being broken down, especially in Latin America, would disappear altogether, giving birth to a fully mixed race, a “cosmic race,” in which all the better qualities of each race would persist by the natural selection of love.

  • The Cosmic Race by José Vasconcelos: “La Raza Cósmica” and Issues of Racial Diversity and Purity

    The Cosmic Race by José Vasconcelos: “La Raza Cósmica” and Issues of Racial Diversity and Purity

    suite101.com
    2010-01-26

    Melanie Zoltan, Adjunct Professor of History
    Bay Path College

    In “The Cosmic Race” (“La Raza Cósmica” in Spanish), José Vasconcelos argues that racial diversity and interbreeding will produce one superior race. Is it code for purity?

    While The Cosmic Race (La Raza Cósmica) sounds like the name of a new video game from Nintendo starring Mario and Luigi, this essay (in book form) written by Latin American philosopher José Vasconcelos in 1925 presents arguments on racial diversity and interbreeding that set the intellectual world ablaze when it was published and that continue to be debated by scholars…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Engineering American society: the lesson of eugenics

    Engineering American society: the lesson of eugenics

    Nature Reviews Genetics
    Volume 1, November 2000
    pages 153-158

    David Micklos
    DNA Learning Centre
    Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York

    Elof Carlson, Professor Emeritus
    State University of New York, Stony Brook

    We stand at the threshold of a new century, with the whole human genome stretched out before us. Messages from science, the popular media, and the stock market suggest a world of seemingly limitless opportunities to improve human health and productivity. But at the turn of the last century, science and society faced a similar rush to exploit human genetics.  The story of eugenics—humankind’s first venture into a ‘gene age’ — holds a cautionary lesson for our current preoccupation with genes.

    Eugenics was the effort to apply the principles of genetics and agricultural breeding towards improving the human race. The term “eugenics”— meaning well born —was coined in 1883 by Francis Galton, a British scientist who used data from biographical dictionaries and alumni records at Oxford and Cambridge Universities to conclude that superior intelligence and abilities were traits that could be inherited.

    Most people equate eugenics with atrocities that were committed in Nazi Germany for the sake of racial purity. In this context, eugenics is easy to dismiss as purely aberrant behaviour. However, the story of eugenics in the United States is, perhaps, more important than that of Nazi Germany as a cautionary tale to take with us into our new century.  Here we describe the tale of the subtle ways in which the science of genetics was, by degrees, transformed from an agricultural experiment into a popular movement to engineer American society. The fact that eugenics flourished in the land of liberty, involved numerous prominent scientists and civic leaders, and made its intellectual home at the forerunner of the now prestigious Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory shows just how far America fell from grace during this period…

    …Race mixing. Laws against interracial marriage had existed in some states since colonial times, but their number increased after the Civil War. The idea that race mixing, or miscegenation, causes genetic deterioration was proposed by Joseph Arthur Gobineau and other anthropologists in the late nineteenth century. It is worth noting that eugenicists’ conception of race included the classic divisions by skin colour, as well as differences in national origin.  Most lay-eugenicists subscribed to the Biblical idea of ‘like with like’ and that the ‘half-breed’ offspring of parents from two different races were genetically inferior to the parental stock. Davenport’s compilation in 1913 showed that 29 states had laws forbidding mixed-race marriages.  Although these laws were not always enforced, heavy fines and long prison terms showed how seriously American society considered miscegenation to be at that time.

    As in the case of immigration restriction, eugenicists were more than willing to provide a supposed scientific rationale for existing
    racial prejudice. In his influential book, The Passing of the Great Race, Madison Grant warned that racial mixing was a social crime that would lead to the demise of white civilization. Eugenicists actively supported strengthening pre-existing laws and enacting of new ones, including the Virginia Racial Integrity Act of 1924. The Virginia Act and all other similar state laws were struck down by the United States Supreme Court in 1967 in Loving versus Commonwealth of Virginia…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Watson [Program] Will Allow Reid to Study Issues Multi-Racial People Face

    Watson [Program] Will Allow Reid to Study Issues Multi-Racial People Face

    Davidson University
    Davidson, North Carolina
    2007-04-02

    Rachel Andoga

    “When I went abroad to Strasbourg, France, I remember meeting everybody in my program on the plane, and this one girl said to me, ‘So, can we just get this out of the way—what are you?’”
     
    Amy Reid, a senior biology major and dance team captain, has heard such questions about her ethnicity for years. Her light skin and curly black hair defy pigeon-holing her as white, black, Latino or somewhere in between. Realizing that she’s not alone in ethnic no-man’s land, she wrote a successful Watson Foundation proposal that will allow her to spend the coming year exploring the concept of ethnic identity in Brazil and Namibia.

    Reid’s project seeks to compare and contrast multi-racial identity development within specific communities. She chose to visit Brazil and Namibia for their unique cultural heritages. “For a long time, people believed that there was no racism in Brazil since there is such extensive interracial mixing between the native groups, descendants of African slaves, and the Portuguese,” she said. “That’s no longer the popular belief.”…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Asian Indian Men and Hispanic Women in California

    …Between 1913 and 1948–the latter date the abrogation of California’s law prohibiting racial intermarriage–80 percent of the Asian Indian men in California married Hispanic women.  To this day, several thousand of the children and grandchildren of these Punjabi-Hispanic marriages, which involved vows between Muslims and Catholics or Hindus and Catholics, can be found in Imperial Valley and San Joaquin Valley towns.  Many of the families can still be found under the name of Singh–the most common Sikh surname–but most have Hispanic first names, representing the mixed cultural heritage that emerged.  Hindu temples and Muslim mosques can be found all over the San Joaquin and Imperial valleys…

    Nash, Gary B. “The Hidden History of Mestizo America”, In Sex, Love, Race: Crossing Boundaries in North American History, edited by Martha Hodes, 113, 115-116.  New York, New York: New York University Press, 1999.