Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

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  • Passing the Line

    Passing the Line

    Karl Jacoby
    2012-12-20

    Karl Jacoby, Professor of History
    Columbia University, New York, New York

    Who was Guillermo Eliseo?

    Such was the question that any number of people asked themselves during the Gilded Age as this enigmatic figure flitted in and out of an astonishing array of the era’s most noteworthy events—scandalous trials, unexpected disappearances, diplomatic controversies. To many, the answer was obvious. The tall, exquisitely dressed figure with the carefully coifed mustache, was an upper-class Mexican—in fact “the wealthiest resident of the City of Mexico” and “a prominent Mexican politician.”

    For confirmation, one needed to look no farther than his elegant appearance and his frequent journeys south of the border. Indeed, based on his connections with Latin America, he was widely believed to be, if not a Mexican, than a “Spaniard” or “a Cuban gentleman of high degree.” At least a few observers, however, ventured a quite different answer: despite the widespread acceptance of Eliseo’s “Latin-American extraction,” he was not of Hispanic descent at all. Rather, he was just “an ordinary American mulatto” named William (or W.H.) Ellis, who had managed to play an elaborate game of racial passing…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Not Excluded From Analyses: Ethnic and Racial Meanings and Identification Among Multiethnic/Racial Early Adolescents

    Not Excluded From Analyses: Ethnic and Racial Meanings and Identification Among Multiethnic/Racial Early Adolescents

    Journal of Adolescent Research
    Volume 30, Number 2 (March 2015)
    pages 143-179
    DOI: 10.1177/0743558414560626

    Cari Gillen-O’Neel, Assistant Professor of Psychology
    Macalester College, Saint Paul, Minnesota

    Rashmita S. Mistry, Associate Professor of Education
    University of California, Los Angeles

    Christia Spears Brown, Assistant Professor of Psychology
    University of Kentucky, Lexington

    Victoria C. Rodriguez
    University of California, Los Angeles

    Elizabeth S. White, Assistant Professor of Education
    Illinois State University, Normal

    Kirby A. Chow
    University of California, Los Angeles; Society for Research in Child Development, Washington, DC

    Because research on ethnic-racial identity development largely excludes multiethno-racial youth, we used a mixed-methods approach to examine ethno-racial meanings and identification among 102 early adolescents (M = 11.45, SD = 0.70 years) with multiethno-racial (n = 45), mono-majority (i.e., European American; n = 29), or mono-minority (e.g., Latino, African American; n = 28) heritage. Results indicated more similarity than difference between multiethno-racial and mono-minority youth—most understood their heritage through tangible connections (e.g., language). Social (e.g., stereotypes) and individual (e.g., pride) meanings of ethno-racial heritage were also discussed. Last, we observed that most multiethno-racial youth identified with either one (53.3%) or all components of their heritage (35.6%), and these identification choices were linked to tangible experiences (e.g., travel or language proficiency). Developmental and contextual reasons for these findings are discussed.

    Read or purchase the article here.

  • Checking Boxes: A close look at mixed-race identity and the law

    Checking Boxes: A close look at mixed-race identity and the law

    Macomb County Leagal News
    Mt. Clemens, Michgan
    2015-02-05

    Jenny Whalen, ‎Web Communications Specialist
    School of Law
    University of Michigan

    Professor Martha S. Jones has long struggled with the idea of checking more than one box. Her reluctance to do so has been influenced by a lifetime of changing perceptions about her own identity. Born to an interracial couple a decade before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on the legality of such a relationship in Loving v. Virginia, Jones, who co-directs the Program in Race, Law & History at U-M, crossed the color line at birth.

    As the featured speaker for Michigan Law’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day lecture last month, Jones reflected on her mixed-race experience to open up an understanding of how legal culture has wrestled with the idea that Americans might check more than one box of racial identity.

    “Today I’m going to be asking myself, ‘How does it feel to be a problem?’” Jones said, looking to address the same question contemporaries of W.E.B. Du Bois asked him at the dawn of the 20th century.

    For Jones, the answer to this question starts with Loving v. Virginia…

    Read the entire article here. View Professor Jones’ presentation here.

  • Pioneering African-American chemist refused to ‘pass’ for white; he sought cure for cancer

    Pioneering African-American chemist refused to ‘pass’ for white; he sought cure for cancer

    St. Louis Post-Dispatch
    St. Louis, Missouri
    2015-01-31

    Michael D. Sorkin, Reporter


    Lincoln I. Diuguid, then 84, in a 2001 photo. Photo by Laurie Skrivan

    Growing up, Lincoln Diuguid dreamed of becoming a scientist. He shoveled coal and snow to earn room and board at college. He couldn’t afford enough to eat and lost weight. His father hocked a life insurance policy to pay for a semester at graduate school.

    Although his academic adviser told him he was wasting his time, he wouldn’t give up. He finally earned a doctorate in chemistry. He had everything except a job.

    Then he got an offer. A really good one. An executive at a chewing gum company in New York City offered him a coveted position as assistant research director.

    There was just one catch: It was the 1940s. He had to agree to “pass” as a white man and to never hire a black man.

    Diuguid (pronounced “dewgid”) was a light-complexioned African-American.

    He refused — and didn’t get the job.

    That made him even more determined…

    ..He died Tuesday (Jan. 27, 2015) at Beauvais Manor rehab center in St. Louis. He was 97 and had been diagnosed with pneumonia and the flu, his family said…

    Read the entire obituary here.

  • INTERVIEW: Jason Fung, Author of ‘Beyond Eurasian and Hapa’

    INTERVIEW: Jason Fung, Author of ‘Beyond Eurasian and Hapa’

    Hapa Mama: Asian Fusion Family and Food
    2015-02-02

    Grace Hwang Lynch

    I recently had a chance to interview Jason Fung, author of the upcoming book Beyond Eurasian and Hapa. Fung is a 34-year-old mixed-race (Chinese and Caucasian) person who went to high school and college in the U.S. is currently living in Hong Kong. His book draws upon his own family experiences, as well as history, to examine the different terms we use to describe multiracial Asians.

    HM: What are your thoughts about the terms “Eurasian” and “Hapa”? How are they good descriptors and how do they fall short?

    JF: These terms are really broad, and mean different things to different people.

    For example, Macau has Eurasians; India has Eurasians (aka Anglo-Indians); Hong Kong and Sri Lanka and Burma have Eurasians. There are other definitions for the term, but as far as I define it “Eurasian” means one thing: a bloodline traceable to original European colonials. Macau Eurasians, for example, see themselves as utterly distinctive. Even if you are Portuguese-Chinese mixed they still won’t accept you as “Eurasian” by their standards if you were not from the accepted colonial bloodlines.There are plenty of fascinating “Eurasian” stories, surrounded by a rich material culture but “Eurasian” is too singular and closed…

    “Hapa” is a term I really want to like. I really do…

    Read the entire interview here.

  • Signs of transcendence? A changing landscape of multiraciality in the 21st century

    Signs of transcendence? A changing landscape of multiraciality in the 21st century

    International Journal of Intercultural Relations
    Volume 45, March 2015
    Pages 85–95
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ijintrel.2015.01.004

    Evelina Lou
    Department of Psychology
    York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    Richard N. Lalonde, Professor of Psychology
    York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    The relation between multiracial identity selection and psychological outcomes related to the self and well-being was explored among minority/White biracials spanning four different mixed-race groups (n = 201): Black/Whites, East Asian/Whites, Latino/Whites, and South Asian/Whites. The mixed-race groups showed considerable variability in their selection of multiracial identity categories and different patterns of identity selection, as well as a higher overall representation of transcendent identity (i.e., identity that challenges traditional notions of race) than reported in previously published studies. Our findings demonstrated that biracial identity selection, especially when differentiating between identities that are socially validated or not socially validated by others, was related to a person’s level of multiracial identity integration, identification with Whites, perceived discrimination from Whites and non-Whites, and psychological well-being. Identity selection groups did not significantly differ from each other in levels of self-concept clarity or identification with their non-White racial group. Theoretical implications for extending a multidimensional model to other mixed-race groups and redefining race as a social and cultural construction are discussed.

    Read or purchase the article here.

  • Q&A with Carlos E. Cortés, author of “Rose Hill”

    Q&A with Carlos E. Cortés, author of “Rose Hill”

    Heyday
    2012-03-21

    A poignant memoirist, Carlos E. Cortés brings his past to life in Rose Hill: An Intermarriage before its Time, portraying multiracial relationships and the impact they had on the development of his identity. Sometimes hilarious and at times tragic, this powerful narrative takes the reader on a journey of self-realization that speaks to us on both personal and universal levels.

    Let’s start at the beginning. Why did you write your memoir?

    Actually, it started as a gift to my family. I simply wanted to chronicle family stories and personal recollections in a roughly chronological format, with the hope that others in the family would later add their own stories. I wasn’t thinking about publishing it…

    …Let me change the subject. Multiracial and culturally mixed families are much more common now than while you were growing up. Do you think it’s still just as difficult for a child to negotiate a mixed cultural background?

    I hope not. I think not. My mixed-identity experience of growing up was set in a particular time and place: racially-segregated, religiously-divided, class conscious early post-World War II Kansas City, Missouri.

    I’ve interacted with lots of young people, including high school students, who have seen “A Conversation with Alana.” Those interactions have made it clear to me that having a mixed background can still involve special challenges. However, America today is much more open to “mixed” people…

    Read the entire interview here.

  • Census Bureau may count Arab-Americans for the first time in 2020

    Census Bureau may count Arab-Americans for the first time in 2020

    PBS NewsHour
    Public Broadcasting System
    2015-01-30

    Jeff Karoub, Reporter
    The Associated Press

    DETROIT — The federal government is considering allowing those of Middle Eastern and North African descent to identify as such on the next 10-year Census, which could give Arab-Americans and other affected groups greater political clout and access to public funding, among other things.

    The U.S. Census Bureau will test the new Middle East-North Africa (MENA) classification for possible inclusion on the 2020 Census if it gets enough positive feedback about the proposed change by Sunday, when the public comment period ends.

    Arab-Americans, who make up the majority of those who would be covered by the MENA classification, have previously been classified by default as white on the Census, which helps determine congressional district boundaries and how billions of dollars in federal funding are allocated, among other things.

    Those pushing for the MENA classification say it would more fully and accurately count them, thus increasing their visibility and influence among policymakers.

    The Census Bureau plans to test it later this year by holding focus group discussions with people who would be affected by the proposed change. Congress would still have to sign off on the proposal before the change could be added to the 2020 Census…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Discovering Early California Afro-Latino Presence

    Discovering Early California Afro-Latino Presence

    Heyday
    November 2010
    24 pages
    Paperback, 6 x 9
    ISBN: 978-1-59714-145-1

    Damany M. Fisher, Professor of History and Political Science
    Mt. San Antonio College, Walnut, California

    California’s Afro-Latino heritage

    Although it is not generally apparent from paintings and other depictions of early California, many members of the pioneering Anza expeditions and Spanish California’s most prominent families were of mixed race—Hispanic, Indian, and African. At a time when slavery was still legal in the United States, these Afro-Latinos made major contributions to early California. They were landowners, soldiers, judges, governors, and patriarchs of some of the state’s most influential families. They opened up trails, led rebellions, and established ranchos and pueblos that would become the basis for many of today’s cities.

    This pamphlet, produced in conjunction with the Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail, provides an overview of these remarkable families, describes their backgrounds, and investigates the ways in which they reshaped early California. It also provides us with an image of a society in which the relationships between races, and racism itself, were far different, and perhaps less rigidly understood, than they are today.

  • EIHS Lecture: “Partus Sequitur Ventrem: Slave Law and the History of Women in Slavery”

    EIHS Lecture: “Partus Sequitur Ventrem: Slave Law and the History of Women in Slavery”

    Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies
    University of Michigan
    1014 Tisch Hall
    435 South State Street
    Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1003
    2015-02-05, 16:00-18:00 CST (Local Time)

    Jennifer L. Morgan, Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis, History
    New York University

    In 1662, legislators in the Virginia Colony passed a law that determined that, in the matter of sex between free English men and “negro women,” the legal condition of the child should follow that of the mother. Long understood as the law that codified hereditary racial slavery, this code reassured slaveowning settlers that, in the matter of enslaved people, enslaveability devolved through the mother: Partus Sequitur Ventrem or, literally, “offspring follows belly.” In this paper I ask how this legislative intervention might have been perceived by enslaved women and men in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English Atlantic.

    Jennifer L. Morgan is the author of Laboring Women: Gender and Reproduction in the Making of New World Slavery (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). Her research examines the intersections of gender and race in colonial America. She is currently a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton where she is at work on a project that considers colonial numeracy, racism, and the rise of the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the seventeenth-century English Atlantic, tentatively titled Accounting for the Women in Slavery. She is Professor of History in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis and the Department of History at New York University and lives in New York City.

    Free and open to the public…

    For more information, click here.