Mixed Race Studies

Tie-Dyed Realities in a Monochromatic World: Deconstructing the Effects of Racial Microaggressions on Black-White Multiracial University Students

Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, California
2013
431 pages
ISBN: 9781303700170

Claire Anne Touchstone

A dissertation presented to the Faculty of the School of Education, Loyola Marymount University, in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Education

Traditional policies dictate that Black-White multiracial people conform to monoracial minority status arising from Hypodescent (the “One-Drop Rule“) and White privilege. Despite some social recognition of Black-White persons as multiracial, racial microaggressions persist in daily life. Subtle racist acts (Sue, Capodilupo, Torino, Bucceri, Holder, Nadal, & Esquilin, 2007b) negatively impact multiracial identity development. Since 2007, studies have increasingly focused on the impact of racial microaggressions on particular monoracial ethnic groups. Johnston and Nadal (2010) delineated general racial microaggressions for multiracial people. This project examines the effects of racial microaggressions on the multiracial identity development of 11 part-Black multiracial university students, including the concerns and challenges they face in familial, academic, and social racial identity formation. Data were analyzed through a typological analysis and Racial and Multiracial Microaggressions typologies (Johnston & Nadal, 2010; Sue et al., 2007b). Three themes arose: (a) the external societal pressure for the multiracial person to identify monoracially; (b) the internalized struggle within the mixed-race person to create a cohesive self-identity; and (c) the assertion of a multiracial identity. Participants experienced Racial Microaggressions (Sue, 2010a; Sue et al., 2007b), Multiracial Microaggressions (Johnston & Nadal, 2010), and Monoracial Stereotypes (Nadal, Wong, Griffin, Sriken, Vargas, Wideman, & Kolawole, 2011). Implications included encouraging a multiracial identity, educating the school community, and eliminating racial microaggressions and stereotypes.

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A Mixture of Culturas: The New Mestiza

CHST 404 – Chicana Feminisms (Spring 2012)
2012-04-07

Erika Meza
Loyola Marymount University

Mestizaje is commonly known as the mixture of the European race with the Indians living in the Americas, something that began very long ago when the Americas were first being conquered. According to anthropologists on Mestizaje and Indigenous Identities, a majority of the Mexican population is the genetic product of mixing of “Amerindians with Europeans” and mestizaje is a biological fact. However, taking this into consideration then raises another question, which of the two ends is granted the most importance. A mixture in race also involves a mixture in cultures and according to these anthropologists; the European culture was always seen as the better one. “Europeanness” was associated with ideas of progress and modernization. The living indigenous people were seen as a backward and traditional “in need of modernization and progress” but this progressiveness was defined by having whiter skin, thus looking more indigenous became socially degrading (Mestizaje). In other words, mestizos became a combination of the oppressor and the oppressed. As Margaret Cantú Sánchez puts it in A Mestizaje of Epistemologies in American Indian Stories and Ceremony, “today Americans must accept the fact that we are all a mixture of cultures and must learn to accept the struggle with being both a part of the culture of the oppressed and the oppressors.”…

Read the entire article here.