Mixed Race Studies

UT students, staff reflect on experiences with racial passing

The Daily Texan: Serving the University of Texas at Austin Community Since 1900
2021-12-05

Sofia Treviño, Life & Arts Senior Reporter

Julius Shieh/The Daily Texan

Disliking her paler skin compared to other darker-complected Hispanics growing up, Rachel González-Martin spent hours lying under the sun willing herself to tan. Only burning and turning red, she grew frustrated. González-Martin wanted others to easily recognize her as Hispanic.

“There’s who we know we are and how we tell our own story, but we can never escape from what people see in us or read from our appearance,” the associate professor of Mexican American and Latina/o studies said.

Racial passing — a term used to describe those perceived as a member of another racial group than their own — can affect how closely people connect to and feel a part of their communities. For UT students and staff, the process of navigating different cultural stereotypes and learning to embrace their identities regardless of their appearance remains a lifelong project.

Growing up in Oakland, California, with very few fellow Hispanics, González-Martin felt she needed to physically show her identity. However, as she’s grown older, she said she’s learned to accept her own meaning of belonging to a community aside from outside biases…

Read the entire article here.

Color, culture or cousin: FSU researcher explores interracial dating

Florida State University News
Tallahassee, Florida
2019-11-15

Kara Irby, News and Media Relations Specialist

Shantel G. Buggs, assistant professor of sociology and African American studies. (FSU Photo/Bruce Palmer)

The U.S. Census predicts America will become a majority-minority country between 2040 and 2050, with great growth projected for multiracial populations.

A new study from Florida State University researcher Shantel G. Buggs examined how this growing population of multiracial women view interracial relationships and what that illustrates about American’s broader views about race.

Buggs wanted to determine how multiracial women classify interracial relationships and what factors influence their decision to engage with a potential suitor.

“As a multiracial person myself, I was always interested in what happens when multiracial people become adults who then have to navigate relationships with other people,” Buggs said. “It was a goal of this study to debunk this racial fetishizing that is common in society today — the idea that multiracial people are more attractive, are the best of both worlds and will end racism.”

Her findings are published in the Journal of Marriage and Family…

Read the entire article here.

Color, Culture, or Cousin? Multiracial Americans and Framing Boundaries in Interracial Relationships

Journal of Marriage and Family
Volume 81, Issue 5 (October 2019)
pages 1221-1236
DOI: 10.1111/jomf.12583

Shantel Gabrieal Buggs, Assistant Professor of Sociology and African American Studies
Florida State University

Abstract

• Objective: This article analyzes how some multiracial people—the “products” of interracial relationships—conceptualize what counts as an interracial relationship and how they discuss the circumstances that influence these definitions.
• Background: Scholars have argued that the added complexity expanding multiracial populations contribute to dating and marriage‐market conditions requires additional study; this article expands on the limited research regarding how multiracial people perceive interraciality.
• Method: The article uses in‐depth interviews with self‐identified multiracial women (N = 30) who used online dating platforms to facilitate their dating lives in the following three cities in Texas: Austin, Houston, and San Antonio.
• Results: In framing their relationships through lenses centered around skin color, cultural difference, and “familiarity” in terms of seeing potential partners as similar to non‐White male family members, multiracial women illustrate varied and overlapping means of describing their intimate relationships, providing additional nuance to sociological understandings of shifts in preferences and norms around partner choice across racial/ethnic lines and opening up opportunities to continue the exploration of the impact of racial inequality on partner choice.
• Conclusion: Multiracial people internalize racial, gendered, and fetishistic framings about potential partners similarly to monoracial people, demonstrating how racial boundaries and degrees of intimacy are (re)constructed for this growing demographic in the United States.

Read or purchase the article here.

Playwright Adrienne Dawes imagines an dystopian future — with humor

Austin American-Statesman
Austin, Texas
2016-01-16

Jeanne Claire van Ryzin, Arts Critic

Adrienne Dawes (Laura Skelding)

Adrienne Dawes donned denim recently when she stopped by Salvage Vanguard Theater for a rehearsal of her latest play to debut at the indie East Austin venue.

“Denim Doves” opens this weekend.

The play has been several years in development, but that the dystopian future world Dawes and her collaborators imagined is populated with people wearing all denim — well, that detail was decided on from the beginning…

…Dawes, a native Austinite, spent three years training and performing with Chicago’s famed Second City comedy troupe after college in New York. Under her “Heckle Her” production company, Dawes devises sketch comedy shows like the upcoming “Love Me Tindr,” a musical spoof of the online dating app, which opens Valentine’s Day weekend in Salvage Vanguard’s studio theater.

Dawes’ trenchant and intense drama “Am I White”, which played at Salvage Vanguard in October 2014, netted the David Mark Cohen New Play Award from the Austin Critics Table Awards.

A sharp and gutsy look at racial identity, “Am I White” is based on the real-life story of convicted felon Leo Felton, a white supremacist who hid his own biracial identity while plotting to bomb public sites.

Lauded by local critics, “Am I White” is currently being considered for production by theater companies around the country.

Dawes, who is herself of mixed race, spent years working on “Am I White,” and an early workshop version attracted the attention of the incarcerated Felton, who emailed Dawes from prison. Though Dawes exchanged a few emails with Felton during the development of “Am I White,” she declined to continue communication with him after the play’s premiere.

“The play is my creation, not his story,” she says with finality…

Read the entire article here.

B. Iden Payne Awards 2015 Winners and Nominees

B. Iden Payne Awards
Austin, Texas
2015-10-26

Below are the nominees for the 2014-2015 theatrical season.

THEATER FOR YOUTH: 2014 – 2015  Season

Outstanding Production

Winner: Am I White / Salvage Vanguard Theater

Outstanding Direction

Winner: Jenny Larson / Am I White, Salvage Vanguard Theater

Outstanding Lead Actor

Winner: J. Ben Wolfe (Wesley Connor) / Am I White, Salvage Vanguard Theater

Outstanding Featured Actor

Winner: Michael Joplin (Ryan) / Am I White, Salvage Vanguard Theater

Outstanding Original Script

Winner: Adrienne Dawes / Am I White, Salvage Vanguard Theater

Read the entire Winners and Nominees list here.