Mixed Race Studies

New research explains why we see Barack Obama as “black” rather than “white”

News of Otago
University of Otago, New Zealand

2010-11-25

Why do people tend to see biracial individuals such as Barack Obama as belonging to the minority group in their parentage rather than the majority one? According to new studies led by a University of Otago psychology researcher, this phenomenon—known as “hypodescent”—can be explained by underlying mechanisms in how human brains learn and categorise groups.

Otago Department of Psychology Associate Professor Jamin Halberstadt says that previously, the hypodescent phenomenon was presumed to be a product of one of several motivations: for example, to deny rights to minority group members, or to grant rights to restore historical inequities.

“Through our face perception research we show that hypodescent need not be motivated by prejudice or anything else, and that the same minority-biased perception of mixed-race individuals can emerge as a simple result of how our brains learn new groups,” Associate Professor Halberstadt says…

“So when people encounter biracial individuals, who exhibit features of both majority and minority groups, their minority features are more influential. In other words, Barack Obama is “black” because, due to most people’s learning history, his dark skin is especially strongly associated with that category,” he says…

Read the entire article here.

Mai i ngā Ao e Rua–From Two Worlds: An investigation into the attitudes towards half castes in New Zealand

University of Otago, Dunedin
October 2006
91 pages

Suzanne Boyes

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the degree of Bachelor of Arts (Honours), in Māori Studies at the University of Otago, Dunedin

This dissertation investigates the attitudes of others’ experienced by ‘half-caste’ or biethnic people of New Zealand, that is, people who have both Māori and Pākehā heritage. The dissertation combines the personal narratives of four half-caste people, my own story, and historical/theoretical literature to illuminate this subject. The dissertation introduces the topic by firstly, discussing the current identity politics in New Zealand, which has tended to dominate the political landscape as of late, and left half-caste people between the crossfire. Secondly, I introduce part of my own story as a half-caste person in New Zealand. In Chapter one, the pre-colonial origins of attitudes towards race, intermarriage and miscegenation are examined through an analysis of religious and scientific discourses. Chapter Two provides a basic understanding of Māori and Pākehā identity as separate entities, with the aim of demonstrating the binary opposites that have informed attitudes towards half-castes in New Zealand. The third chapter outlines a number of themes regarding attitudes towards the half caste people I interviewed as part of this research. The final chapter brings together literature and interview material through the lens of a Bill of Rights for Racially Mixed People to provide an approach for looking towards the future of half-caste identity politics.

Read the entire dissertation here.

Gender, Work and Fears of a ‘Hybrid Race’ in 1920s New Zealand

Gender & History
Volume 19, Issue 3 (November 2007)
pages 501–518
DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0424.2007.00495.x

Barbara Brookes, Professor of History
Otago University, New Zealand

The 1929 New Zealand Committee of Inquiry into the Employment of Māori on Market Gardens affords insight into the ways in which masculine fears of racial degradation through miscegenation—of a ‘hybrid’ Chinese/Māori race—operated within a hierarchy of race, gender and Iwi (tribal) interests. The participation of Māori men in national politics contributed to a new articulation of ‘National Manhood’, in which Māori men and white men combined to express fears about women’s work and sexuality and young women’s potential to undermine a fragile and contested hierarchy of racial purity. Māori women, silenced in the cacophony of voices lamenting their plight, were at the centre of debates between Māori men, Pakeha (white New Zealander) employers, Chinese market gardeners, Anglican and Methodist interests and Pakeha women’s groups. I argue that the Inquiry was about commerce, both in a business and a sexual sense. As a historical episode, it also serves to complicate the picture of New Zealand as a historically bicultural society, made up only of Māori and Pakeha, by signalling the importance of the Chinese in debates about national belonging.

Read or purchase the article here.

Mixed Messages, Mixed Memories, Mixed Ethnicity: Mnemonic Heritage and Constructing Identity Through Mixed Parentage

New Zealand Sociology
Volume 25, Number 1 (2010)
pages 75-99

Zarine L. Rocha, Research Scholar in the Department of Sociology
National University of Singapore

This article explores the concept of mixed ethnic identity from a social memory-based perspective. Drawing on the personal testimonies of individuals of mixed ethnic heritage in New Zealand, the UK, Australia and Canada, the complex influence of collective memory on the construction of a mixed ethnic identity is drawn out, highlighting the contradictions and reconciliations negotiated by those who feel a strong sense of belonging to two groups, with potentially contrasting stories and memories. Participants express their feelings of belonging in multiple ways, showing how appreciation of heritage and internalization of family memories do not have to be equal nor experienced in the same way for both sides of the family. Rather, the unpredictable way in which collective memory shapes mixed ethnic identity indicates that each collectivity can have its own way of being understood for the individual, without reducing or denying its importance.

…The lingering idea of marginalization and internal conflict is particularly interesting from the memory perspective. Do individuals of mixed heritage experience internal conflict due to the different experiences and mnemonic heritages of their parents? Is it possible to reconcile “mixed memories”? Vivero and Jenkins (1999, p. 12) describe the “cultural homelessness” of mixed heritage, indicating that the lack of a coherent memory framework can lead to psychological distress: “Culturally homeless individuals may have the intense feeling and longing to ‘go home’; however, they cannot, because they have never had a cultural home… they cannot rely on memories of having had a cultural home”. In contrast, a number of recent studies have found that individuals of mixed descent have multiple and positive senses of identity, identifying to different extents with both sides of their heritage (Binning, et al., 2009; Root, 1992; Stephan & Stephan, 1989; Ward, 2006).

The reconciliation of mixed memories is illuminated by [Homi] Bhabha’s concept of a “third space” of hybridity, which illustrates new forms of identity and belonging where different cultures collide and collude (Ang, 1999, p. 558; Bhabha, 1994). In contrast to historical discourses of “hybrids” as the mingling of biologically separate “races”, this antiessentialist understanding of identity can instead highlight different forms of cultural recombination, whether based in ancestry or interaction (Bolatagici, 2004, p. 75; Gomes, 2007; Parker & Song, 2001, p. 4). Hybridity thus emphasises the fluidity and multiplicity of mixed ethnic identity, as constructed through memory and experience – suggesting that “cultural homelessness” may not be a lack of a home, but rather “…belonging at one and the same time to several ‘homes’ (and to no one particular ‘home’)” (Hall, 1992, p. 310)…

Read the entire article here.

Hybridity in the Third Space: Rethinking Bi-cultural Politics in Aotearoa/New Zealand

Paper Presented to Te Oru Rangahau Maori Research and Development Conference
1998-07-07 through 1998-07-09
Massey University
7 pages

Paul Meredith (Ngati Kaputuhi/Pakeha), Research Fellow
Te Matahauariki Institute
University of Waikato, New Zealand

This brief paper joins a growing call for a reconceptualisation of bicultural politics in Aotearoa/New Zealand that draws on an inclusionary and multifaceted identity politics. (Reilly 1996; McClean 1997; Spoonley 1997) The paper argues the need for this conceptualisation to take place in an alternative space that blurs the limitations of boundaries and engenders new possibilities.

In this paper I invoke Homi Bhabha’s notions of hybridity and the third space and offer some introductory comment as to what these concepts might mean for a project that seeks to redesign the laws and institutions for a bicultural Aotearoa/New Zealand.

Read the entire paper here.

Q&A With Researchers: Associate Professor Manying Ip

asia:nz online
Asia New Zealand Foundation

Associate Professor Manying Ip
Asia:NZ Trustee; Associate Professor of Chinese, School of Asian Studies, University of Auckland

Manying Ip came to New Zealand in 1974 from Hong Kong where her family lived for five generations. With her strong classical Chinese education at home and colonial English education at shool, she grew up sharply aware of the challenges of being cross-cultural.

Her interest in Maori-Chinese interactions started from the mid 1980s when she conducted extensive qualitative interviews among the pioneering Chinese families, which grew ever stronger with the immigration and ethnic identity debates

Manying is Associate Professor in Asian Studies at The University of Auckland and the author of several critically acclaimed books on Chinese in New Zealand. These include: Aliens At My Table: Asians as New Zealanders See Them (Penguin, 2005), Unfolding Identity, Evolving Identity: The Chinese in New Zealand (Auckland University Press, 2003) as well as numerous journal articles and book chapters on issues pertaining to recent Asian immigrants. Dr Ip’s most recent book Being Maori-Chinese: Mixed Identities (Auckland University Press, 2008) uses extensive interviews with seven different families of mixed Chinese-Maori descent to explore both historical and contemporary relations between Maori and Chinese, a subject which has not been given serious extended study before. Her edited volume The Dragon and The Taniwha: Maori and Chinese in New Zealand will be published in April 2009, investigating the complex social fabric of New Zealand and offering a nuanced study of ancient and contemporary shared identities amongst two significant ethnic minority groups.

Dr Ip is a respected advocate for Chinese communities living in New Zealand. She was awarded a Suffrage Centennial Medal in 1993 and was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 1996.  In 2004 she co-directed New Faces Old Fears, a television documentary exploring racism, multiculturalism and social cohesion in New Zealand. In late 2008, she was elected a Fellow of the New Zealand Academy of Humanities (FNZAH) in recognition of her distinction in research and the advancement of the humanities.

1. Your most recent publication Being Maori–Chinese: Mixed Identities explores the historical and contemporary significance of the relationship between Maori and Chinese New Zealanders.  How did you become interested in this topic and what were some of the most interesting findings?

Ever since I started conducting oral interviews on the early days of Chinese New Zealanders, I heard my interviewees mentioning their relationship with Maori people: as co-workers in the market gardens, as neighbours  and workmates. Quite often they mentioned the existence of mixed Maori-Chinese families because early Chinese men came to New Zealand as bachelors and many of them formed relationships with Maori women…

Read the entire interview here.

Being Māori-Chinese: Mixed Identities (Book Review)

Sites: a journal of social anthropology and cultural studies
University of Otago, New Zealand
Volume 5, Number 2 (2008)
pages 180-182

Kate Bagnall

Being Māori-Chinese: Mixed Identities, Manying Ip, Auckland University Press, Auckland, 2008, 255pp. ISBN 978-1-86940-399-7

Manying Ip makes it clear from the outset that Being Māori-Chinese: Mixed Identities is a very personal book. It begins with an explanation of her own inspiration for the project – the emergence of tantalising snippets about Māori-Chinese families that kept popping up in her wider research on New Zealand Chinese – and her own process of locating subjects and conducting interviews. Ip tells of being warned by a ‘well-meaning elder’ from Te Wānangao-Raukawa about the difficulties she would encounter in her project, due to the sensitivity of the subject matter and the reticence that Māori-Chinese as a group would have towards sharing in-depth information with her. ‘Are you sure you wish to pursue this study on Māori-Chinese relations? I don’t think people will tell you much’, he said.

The publication of Being Māori-Chinese is, then, an acknowledgement of Ip’s reputation as a researcher and community advocate. It is only through mutual trust that she has been given access to the personal stories of the seven Māori-Chinese families whose experiences make up the heart of the book.  Each chapter focuses on a particular family and presents an intimate journey into the family culture and individual identities of family members. The book is further testament to the courage and generosity of her subjects, who shared memories and thoughts on many aspects of their lives. Their generosity is particularly moving because, as Ip states, ‘those memories involve a struggle against social discrimination and, in many cases, family disapproval’…

…Family stories, such as those told in Being Māori-Chinese, are at the core of the growing body of Australasian scholarship that explores mixed race lives, families and communities. Such stories counter the assumptions of previous generations that interracial encounters were either unthinkable due to race prejudice or occurred under unsavoury conditions that were detrimental to one or both parties. Ip is to be commended for encouraging the Māori-Chinese families included in the book to share their experiences, and also for carefully structuring each chapter so that her voice takes a secondary place to those of family members themselves. As she notes in her Introduction, the book explores lives that ‘have been largely overlooked in the formal historical and sociological discourse of New Zealand’. This book is an important step in inserting Māori-Chinese into the story of New Zealand’s past, present and future…

Read the entire review here.

‘After all, I am partly Māori, partly Dalmatian, but first of all I am a New Zealander’

Ethnography
Volume 6, Number 4 (December 2005)
pages 517-542
DOI: 10.1177/1466138105062477

Senka Božić-Vrbančić
The University of Auckland, New Zealand

This article explores the complexity of the processes of identity construction for ‘mixed-race’ individuals in New Zealand. It focuses on two life stories told by Māori-Croatian women in order to analyse how individuals of Māori-Croatian background constitute their own identity within the heterogeneous discursive practices (race, ethnicity, gender, class, nation) that have operated in New Zealand from colonial times to the bicultural New Zealand of the present. Experience of the hybridization of identity is placed within a framework of power relationships and the varieties of social struggles which help to constitute it from below.

Read or purchase the article here.

I Define My Own Identity: Pacific Articulations of ‘Race’ and ‘Culture’on the Internet

Ethnicities
Vol. 3, No. 4
pp. 465-490
(2003)
DOI: 10.1177/1468796803003004002

Marianne I. Franklin
University of Amsterdam

Most of the participants in the internet discussion forums, the Kava Bowl and the Kamehameha Roundtable, herald from the South Pacific islands of Tonga and Samoa. These forums are part of a cluster of popular online meeting places for the ‘Polynesian Diaspora’ and other people from the Pacific Islands who live in the USA, Australia and New Zealand for the most part. They have been going strong since the mid-1990s, nearly as long as the worldwide web. One of the most recurring topics in the discussions is the nature of Tongan and/or Samoan ‘identity’ and how this relates to ‘living overseas’. In these discussions, participants – many of whom are of ‘mixed race’ – exchange personal experiences, political opinions, emotional and intellectual expectations about the outer and inner limits of race/ethnicity, and/or culture in their everyday lives. This article reconstructs several of the more substantial debates on the meaning and implications of ‘identity’ that show how these generations of the postcolonial South Pacific Islands are (re)defining what it means to be Tongan, Samoan – Polynesian – in a diasporic context. Discussions revolve around several axes; the personal and political issues of race (ethnicity) as everyday embodiments; Tongan/Samoan and Pacific Island cultures as negotiable rather than fixed practices; ways of turning colonialist categories for Pacific Island societies, such as ‘Polynesian’, into futurist tropes for communities who are often socioeconomically disadvantaged and discriminated against both ‘at home’ and ‘overseas’. As they argue, write, read, send emails and interact with one another on and offline, the creators of thousands of interwoven online texts over the years have been articulating ‘race’ and ‘culture’ on their own terms. They have been doing so in the public cyberspaces of the worldwide web, tracing, as they come and go, a nascent postcolonial politics of representation.