Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

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  • 687.8: The Apple Does NOT Fall FAR from the Tree: Offspring of Interracial Marriages in Brazil

    687.8: The Apple Does NOT Fall FAR from the Tree: Offspring of Interracial Marriages in Brazil

    XVIII ISA World Congress of Sociology: Facing an Unequal Word: Challenges for Global Sociology
    International Sociological Association
    Yokohama, Japan
    2014-07-13 through 2014-07-19

    Wednesday, 2014-07-16, 09:54 JST (Local Time)
    Room: Booth 54

    Kaizô Iwakami Beltrão
    Ebape, FGV, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

    Sonoe Sugahara
    Ence, IBGE, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

    Moema De Poli Teixeira
    Ence, IBGE, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

    Starting from colonial times, Brazil has a long history of racial miscegenation. How do families structure themselves with respect to a concept of racial hierarchy? Several censuses and survey from the Brazilian Central Statistical Office (IBGE) incorporates some ethnic enumeration with information on race/skin color of the respondent, though mostly self-reported. Alternatives are: “White”, “Black”, “Asian”, “Mixed race” and “Native Brazilian”. Though it is possible that some subjectivity is inherent to the process, temporal consistency is observable, within a 5% error margin. Analyzing census data, one can perceive a time trend towards “whitening” of the population until 1991, with a slight reversal in 2000, resuming the “whitening” trend up to 2010 (the latest census). But how do offspring of interracial marriages self-report themselves? Among possible alternatives, is the race/skin color of the father or the mother the determinant factor? Is this choice affected by geographical region or social status? Is there a noticeable time trend in choices made?  The study analysis data from five Brazilian censuses, between 1960 and 2010, in order to identify patterns and trends among offspring of interracial marriages.

    Among exogamic couples where one of the partners is “White”, this is the dominant race/skin color alternative for the offspring. When the mother is “White” the difference with respect to other alternatives is even wider, less so, when the father is “Asian”. The reported proportion of “White” children increases with socio-economic status. Among “Black”/”Mixed-race” couples, the preference is for reporting “Mixed-race” offspring, with a higher proportion of “Black” if the father is also “Black”.

    For more information, click here.

  • JS-44.12: A Global Look at Mixed Marriage

    JS-44.12: A Global Look at Mixed Marriage

    XVIII ISA World Congress of Sociology: Facing an Unequal Word: Challenges for Global Sociology
    International Sociological Association
    Yokohama, Japan
    2014-07-13 through 2014-07-19

    Wednesday, 2014-07-16, 18:00 JST (Local Time)
    Room: 315

    Erica Chito Childs, Sociology
    Hunter College, City University of New York

    Mapping attitudes toward intermarriage—who is and who is not an acceptable mate—offers an incisive means through which imaginings of belonging—race, ethnicity, nationhood, citizenship and culture—can be critically evaluated.  In particular, social constructions of race and difference involve discussions of purity, race identity and taboos against interracial sex and marriage. Drawing from qualitative interviews and ethnographic research in six countries on attitudes toward intermarriage, this paper explores these issues of intermarriage in a global context.  Through a comparison of qualitative data I collected in Australia, Brazil, Ecuador, Portugal, South Africa and the United States, I offer a theoretical framework and provide an empirical basis, to understand the concept of intermarriage and what it tells us about racial boundaries in a global context. For example, in the United States, the issue of intermarriage is discussed as interracial with less attention paid to inter-religious or inter-ethnic, to the point that those concepts are rarely used.  Similarly in South Africa, despite the end of apartheid decades ago, marriage across racial categories is still highly problematized and uncommon.  Yet globally there is less consensus of what constitutes intermarriage—sometimes intercultural, interethnic, or any number of words with localized meanings.  In South America and Australia, the debate seems to revolve more around indigenous status, citizenship and national identity such as who is Australian or who is Ecuadoran?  As indigenous populations rally for rights and representation how does this change the discourse on what intermarriage mean?  Looking globally, what differences matter? What boundaries are most salient in determining the attitudes of different groups toward intermarriage?  How are various communities responding to intermarriage, particularly if there are a growing number of “mixed” families? This research on attitudes toward intermarriage adds to our understanding of constructions of race, racism and racialized, gendered and sexualized beliefs and practices globally.

    For more information, click here.

  • “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon”: Troubling the Visual Optics of Race

    “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon”: Troubling the Visual Optics of Race

    Flow
    Volume 17, Issue 9 (2013-03-28)

    Isabel Molina-Guzmán, Associate Professor of Media and Cinema Studies; Associate Professor of Latina/o Studies; Associate Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies
    University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

    On February 26, 2013, the one year anniversary of the shooting of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, FL by George Zimmerman, I stare at the beautiful face of Trayvon Martin on my television screen and online news feed. I study his cinnamon brown skin, big teddy bear brown eyes and long black lashes, trimmed tight curly black hair, well-sculpted nose and full lips. I hear the invisible and terrified cries for help, the shot, and the silence.

    I am racially black and I am of Puerto Rican and Dominican ethnic descent. And I see my father, uncles, cousins. I silently remember President Barack Obama’s somber observation more than a year ago: “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.”

    The Problems with the Visual Optics of “Race”

    I remember being frustrated by the news narratives that categorize Martin as black and George Zimmerman as white simply because of the color of their skin. After all, if Martin could be the son of our first mixed race president or be my son, his identity should be more complicated than the color of his skin. Martin’s gender, class, and ethnoracial complexities remain irrelevant – he was essentially, biologically, and categorically a black man. As a racial or ethnic identity, blackness remains static despite US Census reports that the black population is more racially and ethnically diverse that ever before with more than 25% of the growth among black Americans driven by immigration. Indeed Haitians are among Florida’s largest immigrant population.

    Nevertheless, who is defined as black in the United States continues to be defined by the problematic rules of biological hypodescent – the one drop rule that defines anyone with one drop of “black blood” as black. How that “one drop” is often determined is by the visual resonances of blackness; and, Martin “looks” black.

    Amidst civil rights protest calling for Martin’s murder to be classified as racial profiling and a hate crime, the story becomes more complicated and more troubling…

    Read the entire article here.

  • After Tiananmen Square, New Lives On A New Continent

    After Tiananmen Square, New Lives On A New Continent

    Tell Me More
    National Public Radio
    2014-06-04

    Michel Martin, Host

    After the democracy protests were crushed in 1989, many thought China would turn inward. Instead, a million Chinese citizens moved to Africa. Howard French discusses his book China’s Second Continent.

    MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

    I’m Michel Martin, and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. We’re going to start the program today by taking note of a difficult moment in history. Twenty-five years ago today, the Chinese army attacked demonstrators who had been occupying Tiananmen Square, protesting for more democracy and freedom. The crackdown brought international condemnation. Some observers believed it would lead the communist country to become increasingly inward-looking and isolated. It turned out that did not happen. Today, China stands as a major global power, and one part of the world in which it clearly rivals the U.S. as an influence on politics and the economy is Africa. Thousands of Chinese companies have established themselves in Africa over the last two decades. China-Africa trade has surged from $10 billion in 2000 to $200 billion last year, far surpassing the U.S. and any European country. China’s top leaders make multiple trips to the continent every year. But, as author Howard French tells us in his new book, just as important as those high-level visits are the people who are rarely discussed. And they are the million or so Chinese expatriates who aren’t just passing through, but are staying and moving into all walks of life. That’s who the former New York Times bureau chief spent time with as he prepared his latest book, “China’s Second Continent: How A Million Migrants Are Building A New Empire In Africa.” And Howard French is with us now. Welcome back to the program. Thanks so much for joining us.

    HOWARD FRENCH: It’s great to be with you again…

    …MARTIN: If you’re just joining us, I’m speaking with Howard French. We’re talking about his new book, “China’s Second Continent: How A Million Migrants Are Building A New Empire In Africa.” The former New York Times bureau chief conducted interviews in Mandarin, French and Portuguese, among other languages, to, kind of, get to the ground level of how China is influencing the continent. One of the characters that struck a chord with me was Hao Shengli, whom you met in Mozambique. Tell us a little bit about his story, if you would. I was struck by the fact that he wanted his sons to marry local women, but I didn’t get the sense that this was a love-match he was seeking, here.

    FRENCH: Hao was interesting because, unlike most of the people I profile, he was not a working-class person. He had started up several businesses in China that had done reasonably well. He had some savings. He set off to the Middle East – tried to do business there. He failed. He comes back to China. And he goes to a trade fair and meets some people in Guangzhou who tell him that there’s all kinds of opportunity in Africa. And so he then begins to fixate on Africa. And he ends up in Mozambique on the theory that, as a Portuguese speaking country, they’ll be very few Chinese people there. He spoke no Portuguese, but he figured, at least, he wouldn’t have any cutthroat Chinese competitors. And so he goes to Mozambique. He doesn’t do well in the capital. He discovers, to his disgust, that there are a lot of Chinese people there, in fact. And so he sets off for the countryside. And he ends up finagling his way into buying a very nice piece of irrigated, very rich farmland. And he gets into these relationships with the local people. And their relationship becomes ever more testy, and so he’s worrying. Even though he’s got a long-term lease, he’s wondering if the villagers won’t find a way to contest it, or the local government will take it back from him. And he settles upon a scheme, which absolutely astounded me, of bringing his teenage sons from China to settle there with him – and to have children by local women, in whose names he could place the property and control it indirectly through these people, who, as Mozambican citizens, would legally have the right to own land forever. And so that’s the scene that I stumble upon in this rural place.

    MARTIN: It was interesting to me how much racism you personally encountered over the course of your travels. I mean, just the kind of day-to-day, casual reminders of distance that is certainly not polite in this country anymore. I’m thinking about when you went to this hotel in Liberia. And then you went to this room to drop off your things and wash up, and there was no towel there. And then when you told your host this, he summoned a young Chinese man who worked for him and told him to fetch me one. He says, we don’t usually give them out because most Chinese bring their own. They wouldn’t want to use one that a black person might have used. I mean, put this in some context for me. I mean, do you think that this is, kind of, growing pains, and that at some point will people have moved beyond that? What’s your sense?

    FRENCH: Everywhere I went, the local Chinese person referred to the people, in whose midst they had come to settle, as black people. You know, they would say, the blacks, the blacks, the blacks, the blacks. They wouldn’t say the Ghanaians, or the Tanzanians, or the Zambians, or the this or the that. It was just, the blacks. And this refusal, or reluctance, to allow any kind of finer identity – to render them totally anonymous as just simply black, as if that was the only pertinent detail about them, was very telling for me. That whether or not this is a passing phase, I can’t really say. But for the time being, the Africans are just, essentially, serving as a backdrop for Chinese processes – somebody that will be useful for them – or a place that will be useful for them for the time being along the way, as they proceed up the ladder of hierarchies, if you will, of civilizations of nations…

    Listen to the interview here. Download the interview here.

  • Race, Romance, and Rebellion: Literatures of the Americas in the Nineteenth Century

    Race, Romance, and Rebellion: Literatures of the Americas in the Nineteenth Century

    University of Virginia Press
    October 2013
    224 pages
    6 x 9
    Cloth ISBN: 9780813934884
    Paper ISBN: 9780813934891
    Ebook ISBN: 9780813934907

    Colleen C. O’Brien, Associate Professor of English
    University of South Carolina, Upstate

    As in many literatures of the New World grappling with issues of slavery and freedom, stories of racial insurrection frequently coincided with stories of cross-racial romance in nineteenth-century U.S. print culture. Colleen O’Brien explores how authors such as Harriet Jacobs, Elizabeth Livermore, and Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda imagined the expansion of race and gender-based rights as a hemispheric affair, drawing together the United States with Africa, Cuba, and other parts of the Caribbean. Placing less familiar women writers in conversation with their more famous contemporaries—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and Lydia Maria Child—O’Brien traces the transnational progress of freedom through the antebellum cultural fascination with cross-racial relationships and insurrections. Her book mines a variety of sources—fiction, political rhetoric, popular journalism, race science, and biblical treatises—to reveal a common concern: a future in which romance and rebellion engender radical social and political transformation.

  • As long as you have a Māori (ancestor), you are Māori.

    “I don’t think we have any full-blooded Māori,” Dr. [Tīmoti] Kāretu said. “But it is not a problem. As long as you have a Māori (ancestor), you are Māori. It’s left to the individual to identify with their Māori or European.”

    K. C. Cole, “Chickasaw and Māori Celebrate Similarities, Language and Culture,” Indian Country Today Media Network, May 31, 2014. http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/05/31/chickasaw-and-maori-celebrate-similarities-language-and-culture-155051.

  • Elliot Rodger at the Sometimes Troubling Intersection of Race and Gender

    Elliot Rodger at the Sometimes Troubling Intersection of Race and Gender

    Diverse: Issues In Higher Education
    2014-06-04

    Elwood Watson, Professor of History, African American Studies, and Gender Studies
    East Tennessee State University

    Many have now heard of Elliot Rodger, the self-hating, misogynistic 22-year-old man who shot more than a dozen people and murdered six in Isla Vista, Calif., before turning the gun on himself and ending his own life. After this latest chapter of “angry young White male gone mad,” columnists, bloggers, psychologists and others weighed in with their views. Predictably, there were some websites ― primarily right of center ones like Paul Bois of Truth Revolt ― that tried to promote the argument that, since the majority of Rodger’s victims were male, critics who were denouncing his behavior by pointing out his history of misogyny were misguided in their viewpoints…

    ..The fact is that Elliot Rodger was a very frighteningly disturbed young man who hated himself and most of those around him. He shared a notable commonality with Adam Lanza, Kip Kinkel, Eric Harris and Dylan Kleblod and others. They were young, hostile, often socially isolated White men who were angry at the world for their own social insecurities, failures and misfortunes. To be sure, I am certainly not making the case that mass violence is the sole domain of young White men. That being said, it is clear that a disproportionate number of recent mass shootings have been committed by young White men. In the case of Rodger, a biracial White man.

    This is where it gets more intense and complicated. The fact is that Rodger was the product of an interracial marriage ― White British father and ethnic Chinese Malaysian mother. He did not see himself as a person of color or mixed heritage and, rather, identified as White. This was evident in his demonstrably disturbing commentary on racist blogs such as PU Hate. This notorious website (PU Hate) has since been dismantled but not before a number of people lauded him as a martyr. The ample level of brimming rage that simmered within Elliot Rodger was evident in his rhetoric such as:…

    …These were just a few of the much racially inflammatory commentary posted by Rodger. His mindset demonstrated a person who saw himself as White, male, wealthy, privileged and therefore entitled to all the perks that supposedly come along with such a status ― money, women, power, etc. The fact that he had been deprived of most all these opportunities enraged him. That some Black and other non-White men were successful in achieving what he had failed to accomplish drove him into a level of embittered rage that resulted in psychotic behavior…

    Read the entire article here.

  • On My Upcoming Trip to Indian Country

    On My Upcoming Trip to Indian Country

    Indian Country Today Media Network
    2014-06-05

    Barack Obama, President of the United States

    Six years ago, I made my first trip to Indian country. I visited the Crow Nation in Montana—an experience I’ll never forget. I left with a new Crow name, an adoptive Crow family, and an even stronger commitment to build a future that honors old traditions and welcomes every Native American into the American Dream.

    Next week, I’ll return to Indian country, when Michelle and I visit the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in Cannonball, North Dakota. We’re eager to visit this reservation, which holds a special place in American history as the home of Chief Sitting Bull. And while we’re there, I’ll announce the next steps my Administration will take to support jobs, education, and self-determination in Indian country.

    As president, I’ve worked closely with tribal leaders, and I’ve benefited greatly from their knowledge and guidance. That’s why I created the White House Council on Native American Affairs—to make sure that kind of partnership is happening across the federal government. And every year, I host the White House Tribal Nations Conference, where leaders from every federally recognized tribe are invited to meet with members of my Administration. Today, honoring the nation-to-nation relationship with Indian country isn’t the exception; it’s the rule. And we have a lot to show for it…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Pinpointing Another Reason That More Hispanics Are Identifying as White

    Pinpointing Another Reason That More Hispanics Are Identifying as White

    The New York Times
    2014-06-02

    Nate Cohn

    Recently, I wrote about new research that showed that a net 1.2 million Hispanics changed their racial identification from “some other race” to “white” between the 2000 and 2010 censuses.

    Manuel Pastor, a professor at the University of Southern California, added an important detail to the story. Between 2000 and 2010, the census question on race and ethnicity changed in a subtle way.

    The salient difference is the second line of the “Note” preceding the two questions on race and ethnicity. The 2010 census prefaces the otherwise identical questions with the statement: “For this census, Hispanic origins are not races.” The 2000 census offered no such clarification. Both questionnaires offered the “some other race” option at the bottom. The instruction could have led some Hispanics, who otherwise might have checked “some other race” because they thought their race was “Hispanic,” to switch their answer to “white.”…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Are Latinos Really Turning White?

    Are Latinos Really Turning White?

    Latino Voices
    The Huffington Post
    2014-05-29

    Manuel Pastor, Professor of Sociology and American Studies
    University of Southern California

    Writing for The New York Times, Nate Cohn recently reported that more Hispanics are identifying as white. The piece—which even includes a cute graphic in which a (presumably Latino) man steps from one square to another, miraculously becomes white, and then rises up to the sky—suggests that this may be “new evidence consistent with the theory that Hispanics may assimilate as white Americans, like the Italians or Irish….”

    That’s interesting (and colorful), to be sure. But as I often tell my data staff, when you discover a surprising fact, you could be on to something—but you could also just be wrong.

    Cohn’s analysis is actually a few steps removed, which may explain part of the problem. He bases his discussion on a summary offered by the Pew Research Center, which was in turn reporting on a presentation given at the annual meetings of the Population Association of America.

    The underlying research is novel in several ways, one of which is that it links individual answers on the 2000 Census with the answers those same individuals gave when administered the Census in 2010.

    It turns out that 2.5 million Americans who marked Hispanic and “some other race” in 2000 indicated that they were Hispanic and white a decade later; while another 1.3 million people flipped the other way, it’s still a large net gain—about 3.5 percent of the Latino population in the year 2000.

    So what happened? Perhaps assimilation is indeed alive and well? Maybe the racial threats posed by anti-immigrant rhetoric led some Hispanics to become defensively white? Maybe it’s young people who became adults over the course of the decade and finally got a chance to choose their identity rather than have it chosen by the head of their household?

    Or maybe the question changed…

    Read the entire article here.