Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

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  • News from the 2012 Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference Business Meeting

    News from the 2012 Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference Business Meeting

    2012-11-13

    Camilla Fojas, (CMRS 2012 organizer) Associate Professor and Chair
    Latin American and Latino Studies
    DePaul University

    Laura Kina, (Mixed Roots Midwest 2012 co-organizer) Associate Professor Art, Media and Design and Director Asian American Studies
    DePaul University


    Photo of Eric Hamako at CMRS 2012 by Ken Tanabe.

    US Census Report from Eric Hamako

    • Nominated by a coalition of Mixed-Race community organizations, Eric Hamako has been selected to serve a two-year term on the US Census Bureau’s National Advisory Committee (NAC) on Racial, Ethnic, and Other Populations.  (See press release.)
    • Two matters of particular concern for Multiracial people & Two Or More Races (TOMR) populations.
      1. ADMINISTRATIVE RECORDS: For cost efficiency, the Census Bureau is considering using “Administrative Records” in some cases when a person doesn’t submit information to the Census (e.g., if Jane X doesn’t submit a Census 2020 form and doesn’t respond to follow-up requests, the Census might access other public and private databases that contain info about Jane X, to fill in info about her).  However, currently Census studies indicate that Administrative Records are worse at filling in info about non-Whites than Whites — and are particularly bad at filling in info about people who indicate Two Or More Races (TOMR), ranging from 4%-36% accuracy.  This is largely because many public and private databases do not allow respondents to Mark One or More races.  We need to find ways to improve the accuracy of Administrative Record use.
      2. ALTERNATIVE QUESTIONNAIRE EXPERIMENTS (AQEs): Long before each Census, the Bureau tests out various possible changes, using AQEs.  One of the many changes currently being considered is an option that combines the Race question and the Hispanic ethnicity question into a single question.  This would likely a) increase the accuracy of the count of Latinos, b) increase the number of Latinos who are indicating Two Or More Races, c) reduce the White population count by 6-8%.
    • Eric is soliciting community perspectives.  Please review NAC-related documents (see public GoogleDocs folder) and contact Eric at CensusNAC@gmail.com.  Eric is also constructing a blog, “Two or More,” to communicate about the NAC, http://censusnac.blogspot.com/.

  • Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference 2012 Recap

    Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference 2012 Recap

    2012-11-13

    Camilla Fojas, (CMRS 2012 organizer) Associate Professor and Chair
    Latin American and Latino Studies
    DePaul University

    Laura Kina, (Mixed Roots Midwest 2012 co-organizer) Associate Professor Art, Media and Design and Director Asian American Studies
    DePaul University

    Despite being sandwiched between Halloween, Superstorm Sandy, and the presidential elections, over 400 people attended the 2nd biennial Critical Mixed Race Studies conference, “What is Critical Mixed Race Studies?,” and Mixed Roots Midwest at DePaul University in Chicago November 1-4, 2012. Attendees came from across the United State from Hawaii to New York as well as internationally from Canada, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Australia, and Ukraine and included senior and junior scholars and cultural producers, graduate students, undergraduates, community members, and representatives from community organizations.
     
    We would like to thank all of the attendees, participants, organizers, and volunteers for making CMRS 2012 an engaging and memorable conference. A special thanks to the invaluable conference support from DePaul’s Latin American and Latino Studies and our 2012 programming committee: Greg Carter, Michele Elam, Camilla Fojas, Rudy P. Guevarra Jr., and Rainier Spencer. Thank you to our DePaul University co-sponsors: Center for Latino Research (CLR), Center for Intercultural Programs, Global Asian Studies, Latin American and Latino Studies Program (LALSP), Liberal Arts and Social Sciences Dean’s Office, Office of Institutional Diversity and Equity (OIDE), Women and Gender Studies Program, and African American and Black Diaspora Studies.

    Click here to view the 2012 CMRS Conference Schedule.
     
    Enjoy photos from CMRS 2012
     
    Like our new organizational page on Facebook

    Journal of Critical Mixed Race Studies Call For Papers
    “What is Critical Mixed Race Studies?”

    Papers that were presented at the 2012 Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference “What is Critical Mixed Race Studies?” are invited for revision and submission for the second issue of JCMRS. We also welcome papers that speak to specialized research, pedagogical, or community-based interests. JCMRS encourages both established and emerging scholars, including graduate students and faculty, to submit articles throughout the year. Articles will be considered for publication on the basis of their contributions to important and current discussions in mixed race studies, and their scholarly competence and originality.
    Visit JCMRS to download the CFP

    What’s Next?

    The inaugural issue of the Journal of Critical Mixed Race Studies will be published in Jan-Feb 2013. We are in the process of building a dedicated CMRS website, gearing up for the next conference in 2014 (or sooner), and continuing a creative partnership with Mixed Roots Stories (launching in December 2012), and planning to form a CMRS association. Please keep the conversations going through the CMRS Facebook group page and through the CMRS caucus grouops: Latina/os of Mixed Ancestry, the National Association of Mixed Student Organizations, and the newly proposed Queer Caucus. For more information or to get involved contact us at cmrs@depaul.edu.

  • “At This Defining Moment”: Barack Obama’s Presidential Candidacy and the New Politics of Race

    “At This Defining Moment”: Barack Obama’s Presidential Candidacy and the New Politics of Race

    New York University Press
    October 2011
    229 pages
    Hardback ISBN: 9780814752975
    Paperback ISBN: 9780814752982

    Enid Lynette Logan, Associate Professor of Sociology
    University of Minnesota, Minneapolis

    In January 2009, Barack Obama became the 44th president of the United States.  In the weeks and months following the election, as in those that preceded it, countless social observers from across the ideological spectrum commented upon the cultural, social and political significance of “the Obama phenomenon.” In “At this Defining Moment,” Enid Logan provides a nuanced analysis framed by innovative theoretical insights to explore how Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy both reflected and shaped the dynamics of race in the contemporary United States.

    Using the 2008 election as a case study of U.S. race relations,  and based on a wealth of empirical data that includes an analysis of over 1,500 newspaper articles, blog postings, and other forms of public speech collected over a 3 year period, Logan claims that while race played a central role in the 2008 election, it was in several respects different from the past. Logan ultimately concludes that while the selection of an individual African American man as president does not mean that racism is dead in the contemporary United States, we must also think creatively and expansively about what the election does mean for the nation and for the evolving contours of race in the 21st century.  

    Contents

    • Acknowledgments
    • 1. Introduction: The Landscape of Race in the 21st Century
    • 2. Post-race American Triumphalism and the Entrenchment of Colorblind Racial Ideology
    • 3. Rooted in the Black Community but Not Limited to It: The Perils and Promises of the New Politics of Race
    • 4. Contesting Gender and Race in the 2008 Democratic Primary
    • 5. The Trope of Race in Obama’s America
    • 6. Asian and Latino Voters in the 2008 Election: The Politics of Color in the Racial Middle
    • 7. In Defense of the White Nation: The Modern Conservative Movement and the Discourse of Exclusionary Nationalism
    • 8. Racial Politics under the First Black President
    • Notes
    • References
    • Index
    • About the Author

  • 10 Things I learned at CMRS

    10 Things I learned at CMRS

    Honeysmoke
    2012-11-12

    Monique Fields

    When it comes to conferences, sometimes you want to split yourself into four beings and attend every talk, roundtable, and workshop. It can’t be done. The best you can do is attend the workshops that interest you and hope for the best. I got all of that and more at the Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference in Chicago. Sure, I wish I could have attended everything, but I learned enough to keep me busy until the conference is held again in 2014. With that, here is my list of the 10 Things I learned at the CMRS. If you were there, feel free to add your own…

    …7. That a growing number of people transcend race, meaning they deny any racial identity whatsoever…

    Read the entire article here.

  • MSU scholar says medical recommendations should go beyond race

    MSU scholar says medical recommendations should go beyond race

    Michigan State University News
    2012-10-23

    Andy McGlashen, Media Communications

    Sean Valles, assistant professor in Lyman Briggs College and the Department of Philosophy, says race-based medical advice is often misleading and harmful. Photo by G.L. Kohuth.

    EAST LANSING, Mich. — Medical organizations that make race-based recommendations are misleading some patients about health risks while reinforcing harmful notions about race, argues a Michigan State University professor in a new paper published in the journal Preventive Medicine.
     
    While some racial groups are on average more prone to certain diseases than the general population, they contain “islands” of lower risk that medical professionals should acknowledge, said Sean Valles, assistant professor in MSU’s Lyman Briggs College and the Department of Philosophy…

    …By glossing over the varying degrees of health risk within a racial group, medical recommendations imply that all members of each race are biologically the same as one another and different from others – a view that promotes prejudice and discrimination, according to Valles…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Left of Black S3:E9 | Racial Passing and the Rise of Multiracialism

    Left of Black S3:E9 | Racial Passing and the Rise of Multiracialism

    Left of Black
    John Hope Franklin Center
    Duke University
    2012-11-12

    Mark Anthony Neal, Host and Professor of African & African American Studies
    Duke University

    Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Clinical Assistant Professor of Communications
    University of Southern California, Annenberg

    Habiba Ibrahim, Associate Professor of English
    University of Washington

    Left of Black is a weekly Webcast hosted by Mark Anthony Neal and produced in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University.

    For many African Americans, the practice of ‘Passing’—where light-skinned Blacks could pass for White—remains a thing connected to a difficult racial past. In her new book, Clearly Invisible: Racial Passing and the Color of Cultural Identity (Baylor University Press), Marcia Dawkins, a professor in the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Southern California provides a fresh take on the practice arguing that passing in the contemporary moment transcends racial performance.

    Dawkins talks about her new book with Left of Black host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal, via Skype.  Neal is also joined by University of Washington Professor Habiba Ibrahim for part one of a two-part interview about her new book Troubling the Family: The Promise of Personhood and the Rise of Multiracialism (University of Minnesota Press) in which she links the rise of Multiracialism in the 1990s to the maintenance of traditional gender norms.

  • A Milestone Election

    A Milestone Election

    Weekend Reader
    Hannah Arendt Center
    Bard College
    2012-11-09

    Roger Berkowitz, Associate Professor of Political Studies, Human Rights, and Philosophy; Academic Director, Hannah Arendt Center
    Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York

    The re-election of Barack Obama is a milestone. Barack Obama will always be remembered as the first black President of the United States. He will now also be remembered as the first black two-term President, one who was re-elected in spite of nearly 8% unemployment and a feeling of deep unease in society. He is the black President who was re-elected because he seemed, to most Americans, more presidential, more trustworthy, and more likable than his opponent—a white, Mormon, representative of the business elite. Whatever you want to say about this election, it is difficult to deny that the racial politics of the United States have now changed.
     
    President Obama’s re-election victory and his distinguished service have made the country a better place. The dream of America as a land of equality and the dream that our people will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character—these dreams, while not realized, are closer to being realized today because of Barack Obama’s presidency and his re-election.
     
    There are some who don’t see it that way. There is a map going around comparing the 2012 electoral college vote to the civil war map. It is striking, and it shows with pictorial clarity, that the Republic strongholds today are nearly identically matched with the states of the Confederacy 150 years ago. For some, this is an indictment not only of the Republican Party, but also of the United States. The argument made on Facebook and beyond is that the country is still deeply divided racially; that this election brought out the deep-seated racism underlying the country…

    Read the entire article here.

  • “Well, It Is Because He’s Black”: A Critical Analysis of the Black President in Film and Television

    “Well, It Is Because He’s Black”: A Critical Analysis of the Black President in Film and Television

    Bowling Green State University
    August 2011
    183 pages

    Phillip Lamarr Cunningham

    Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

    With the election of the United States’ first black president Barack Obama, scholars have begun to examine the myriad of ways Obama has been represented in popular culture. However, before Obama’s election, a black American president had already appeared in popular culture, especially in comedic and sci-fi/disaster films and television series. Thus far, scholars have tread lightly on fictional black presidents in popular culture; however, those who have tend to suggest that these presidents—and the apparent unimportance of their race in these films—are evidence of the post-racial nature of these texts.
     
    However, this dissertation argues the contrary. This study’s contention is that, though the black president appears in films and televisions series in which his presidency is presented as evidence of a post-racial America, he actually fails to transcend race. Instead, these black cinematic presidents reaffirm race’s primacy in American culture through consistent portrayals and continued involvement in comedies and disasters. In order to support these assertions, this study first constructs a critical history of the fears of a black presidency, tracing those fears from this nation’s formative years to the present. This history is followed by textual analyses of those films and television series featuring a black president, with an emphasis on showing how the narratives and codes within these films reflect those historic fears.

    TABLE OF CONTENTS

    • INTRODUCTION
      • Filling the Void: Situating the Black President in Film Studies
    • CHAPTER I: THE THING SO GREATLY FEARED: HISTORICIZING FEARS OF A BLACK PRESIDENCY
      • Harding, Jefferson, and Lincoln: White Presidents as the First “Black” Presidents
      • Fear of a Black Republic
      • From Impossible to Improbable
      • Jesse Jackson and the Changing Face of Politics
      • Powell for President
      • Return of the Black Cinematic President
    • CHAPTER II: BEING BLACK MATTERS: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE MAN
      • The Man and the Apparently Declining Significance of Whiteness and Racism
      • Black Militancy as Barrier to Racial Harmony
      • Douglas Dilman: “A Well-Dressed Rebuttal to the Militants”
    • CHAPTER III: THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT: BLACK CINEMATIC PRESIDENTS IN CRISIS
      • Fear of a Black President: The Birth of a Nation as Precursor
      • From Deep Impact to 2012: The Black President in Crisis
      • Modern Day Ben Camerons: White Heroes in Black Presidential Films
    • CHAPTER IV: THIS COUNTRY IS UPSIDE DOWN! THE ABSURD BLACK CINEMATIC PRESIDENT
      • Not Exactly Ideal Presidents: Rufus Jones for President and Idiocracy
      • “That Ain’t Right”: Black Cinematic Presidents and the Act of “Laughing Mad”
    • EPILOGUE: POLITICS AS USUAL: BLACK CINEMATIC PRESIDENTS IN THE OBAMA AGE
    • WORKS CITED

    Read the entire dissertation here.

  • From Kongo to Othello to Tango to Museum Shows

    From Kongo to Othello to Tango to Museum Shows

    ARTnews
    2012-10-25

    Robin Cembalest

    Jacopo da Pontormo (Jacopo Carucci), Portrait of Maria Salviati de’ Medici and Giulia de’ Medici, ca. 1539, oil on panel.

    THE WALTERS ART MUSEUM, BALTIMORE, ACQUIRED BY HENRY WALTERS WITH THE MASSARENTI COLLECTION, 1902 (37.596).

    Artists and scholars are taking increasingly nuanced approaches to tracking the image—and influence—of Africans in Western art

    In 1902 the Walters Art Museum acquired a Pontormo painting of an Italian noblewoman, Maria Salviati, dated ca. 1539. Back then it was considered a portrait of a woman whose hands were “in funny places,” as Gary Vikan, the museum’s director, puts it. Then in 1937, restorers removed some over-painting—and discovered a child was there. That child was assumed to be a portrait of Maria’s son, Cosimo de’ Medici.

    And Then He Was a She
     
    Now curators say the boy was a girl–Giulia de’ Medici. The daughter of Duke Alessandro de’ Medici, who was believed to be the son of a black female servant, Giulia is thought to have been the most prominent European woman of African descent at that time.

    Darkness Visible
     
    This discovery helped inspire “Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe,” an inventive show at the Walters that enlists familiar faces of art history to spotlight lesser-known ones in social history. Focusing on the period between 1480 to 1610, an era of increased contact as trade routes expanded, diplomats traveled more widely, and Africans were imported to Europe en masse to serve as slaves, the show includes works by Dürer, Rubens, Pontormo, and Veronese, among many others, depicting Africans living in or visiting Europe. The museum describes the show as an effort to restore an identity to individuals who have been invisible–in various senses of the word.
     
    The show uses representations of slaves in Europe to find out who they were, how they lived, and what their depictions say about Renaissance society. A Caracci portrait of a slave woman is a fragment of a double portrait of her owner, of whom a bit of veil remains. She is holding a clock, meant to announce her mistress’s Christian concern for the quick passage of time…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Other Tongues: Mixed-Race Women Speak Out (review) [McKibbin]

    Other Tongues: Mixed-Race Women Speak Out (review) [McKibbin]

    University of Toronto Quarterly
    Volume 81, Number 3, Summer 2012
    pages 704-705
    DOI: 10.1353/utq.2012.0140

    Molly Littlewood McKibbin

    Other Tongues: Mixed Race Women Speak Out by Adebe De Rango-Adem and Andrea Thompson, eds.(Inanna Publications, 2010)

    DeRango-Adem and Thompson’s new collection of the artistic, autobiographical, and scholarly work of almost seventy women performs the important task of bridging the gap between late twentieth-century mixed-race writing and more contemporary work. Their text demonstrates the changes multiracial discourse has undergone and is undergoing. Other Tongues addresses the important concerns that dominated multiracial discourse in North America in the final decades of the twentieth century, which, as the contributions illustrate, are still quite relevant to the experiences of both older and younger multiracial women. Prominent recurring themes include belonging; racial inclusion and exclusion; identity formation; racism; physical appearance; the continuing prevalence of the ‘what are you/where are you from?’ question; the relationships between race, culture, and ethnicity; and the relationship of ‘colour’ to whiteness. Although some writers do not further these issues beyond what earlier collections have already done, others take them up in ways that renew older ideas with fresh perspectives. Many contributions touch on issues that are central to ongoing multiracial discourses, including gender, sexuality, class, migration, transracial adoption, single parenting, families consisting of multiracial parents, the rhetoric of ‘post-racialism,’ and the impact of Barack Obama as a public figure.

    As Amber Jamilla Musser argues, race is ‘all about context,’ and this collection makes a concerted effort to include work arising out of many different contexts. Through contributors from a large variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds working in a range of genres – including autobiographical essays, narrative sketches, poetry, drama, scholarly essays, and visual art (unfortunately not printed in colour) – Other Tongues offers diverse voices that explore multiracial experience in North America (a necessarily limited geographical region, as the editors acknowledge). The exclusive engagement with women’s voices is, the editors explain, the result of a commitment to the goals of women’s studies. But while Carol Camper’s preface (itself rather troubling in its uncritical adoption of conventional notions of authenticity) signals DeRango-Adem and Thompson’s debt to her 1994 collection of women’s writing, Miscegenation Blues: Voices of Mixed Race Women, and while the desire to offer a forum in which women’s voices can be heard is clear, the absence of men’s experiences is at times a notable lack. Since multiracial discourse is in many ways a product of critical race theory and, consequently, is dependent on the ‘storytelling’ of racialized individuals as a way of approaching matters of race, the absence of male contributors seems limiting. While the editors’ choice is made explicit, the collection is presented in a way that suggests it is quite straightforwardly a text grappling with multiracialism that happens to include only women. Since contemporary North American multiracial theory, scholarship, and cultural production have never been dominated by men, there is no immediately apparent reason to focus on women to the exclusion of men.

    However, the most significant feature of the volume is that it exhibits clearly the complicated set of variables that affect the experiences and identities of racialized figures, and several of the contributions are especially insightful. The blend of contributors of different ages and from different class, educational, regional, and cultural backgrounds aids the project of multiracial discourse, which is perhaps best defined by its heterogeneity. This collection is helpful since the importance of hearing a variety of voices is essential for resisting the homogenizing process of racialization in North American society. As Jackie Wang explains, ‘I write because I believe that it means something, because I have a story, although it is not the story,’ and, indeed, the multitude of ‘stories’ in Other Tongues demonstrates the differences within ‘mixed race’ even as it identifies similarities.

    Although the content of the book does not really break new ground, the editors foster an unusual dialogue between their contributors that emphasizes the important links among ‘real life,’ art, politics, and the academy. A strength of the collection is that because it…