Mixed Race Studies

ARE YOU MIXED-RACE? Are you Biracial, Multiracial, or have biological parents of two or more races?

Tessa Nalven, M.A., Clinical Psychology Doctoral Candidate
University of Rhode Island

2023-03-29

This is a research study about the experiences of young adults in the United States, whose biological parents are two or more races (Multiracial). It is being conducted by Tessa Nalven and Dr. Nichea Spillane at the University of Rhode Island (URI) and is IRB-approved. The following questions will help us determine if you are eligible to be in the study and should take 3-5 minutes to complete.

For more information, click here.

The Cuffee Collaboration: CELS students, faculty reach out to help charter school

The College of Environmental and Life Sciences, University of Rhode Island
CELS News Site
2009-10-27

Rudi Hempe, CELS News Editor

Spread over two inner city locations, one a former maintenance garage and the other one rented, the Paul Cuffee School in Providence is a far cry from the bucolic URI campus and yet a bond is being fashioned between the charter school and the university that has teachers beaming, students fascinated and professors excited.

The collaboration began about four years ago when Dr. J. Stanley Cobb, a professor emeritus in biological sciences, looked around his late mother’s house and saw scores of books and other documents relating to someone called Paul Cuffee, an 18th Century sea captain.

Cobb’s mother, Rosalind C. Wiggins, was an advocate for social and racial justice who spent much of her life studying and teaching about African-Americans and was editor of Paul Cuffee’s Logs and Letters…

…Born on Cuttyhunk in 1759, Cuffee was one of 10 children. His father, born in Ghana, was a former slave and his mother was a Wampanoag Indian.

Cuffee became a wealthy sea captain and had his own ship with a crew of black sailors. He owned property in Westport, Massachusetts. In 1797, when his children were barred from attending a local school because of their mixed race, Cuffee decided to start a school for children of all ethnicities, one of several actions he took during his life to improve civil rights in this country…

Read the entire article here.

The Invisible Weight of Whiteness: The Racial Grammar of Everyday Life in Contemporary America (Lecture by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva)

Fall 2010 Honors Colloquium: RACE
University of Rhode Island
Edwards Auditorium, URI Kingston Campus
Tuesday, 2010-10-12, 19:00 ET (Local Time); (23:00Z)

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Professor of Sociology
Duke University

A series of public programs at the University of Rhode Island presented by the URI Honors Program

Join us! The public is invited to attend this series of free events.

Perceptions about race shape everyday experiences, public policies, opportunities for individual achievement, and relations across racial and ethnic lines. In this colloquium we will explore key issues of race, showing how race still matters.

Other works by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva:

• “More Than Black? Multiracial Identity and the New Racial Order by G. Reginald Daniel [Book Review]”
• “Opting for White: choice, fluidity and racial identity construction in post civil-rights America”
• “From bi-racial to tri-racial: Towards a new system of racial stratification in the USA”
• “Black, Honorary White, White: The Future of Race in the United States?” in Mixed Messages: Multiracial Identities in the “Color-Blind” Era (with David G. Embrick)

Race, Identity, and Medical Genomics in the Obama Age (Lecture by Duana Fullwiley)

Fall 2010 Honors Colloquium: RACE
University of Rhode Island
Edwards Auditorium, URI Kingston Campus
Tuesday, 2010-10-05, 19:00 ET (Local Time); (23:00Z)

Duana Fullwiley, Assistant Professor of African and African American studies and of Medical Anthropology
Harvard University

A series of public programs at the University of Rhode Island presented by the URI Honors Program

Join us! The public is invited to attend this series of free events.

Perceptions about race shape everyday experiences, public policies, opportunities for individual achievement, and relations across racial and ethnic lines. In this colloquium we will explore key issues of race, showing how race still matters.

Watch the lecture below:

Other articles by or about Duana Fullwiley:

• “Race and Genetics: An Attempt to Define the Relationship”
• “Race in a Genetic World”
• “The Biologistical Construction of Race: ‘Admixture’ Technology and the New Genetic Medicine”
• “Racial Categories in Medical Practice: How Useful Are They?”

From “Race in a Genetic World”:

“I am an African American,” says Duana Fullwiley, “but in parts of Africa, I am white.” To do fieldwork as a medical anthropologist in Senegal, she says, “I take a plane to France, a seven- to eight-hour ride. My race changes as I cross the Atlantic. There, I say, ‘Je suis noire,’ and they say, ‘Oh, okay—métisse—you are mixed.’ Then I fly another six to seven hours to Senegal, and I am white. In the space of a day, I can change from African American, to métisse, to tubaab [Wolof for “white/European”]. This is not a joke, or something to laugh at, or to take lightly. It is the kind of social recognition that even two-year-olds who can barely speak understand. ‘Tubaab,’ they say when they greet me.”

Fall 2010 Honors Colloquium: RACE

University of Rhode Island
Tuesday evenings, 19:00 ET (Local Time); (23:00Z through November; 00:00Z on Wednesday after November 9).
2010-09-14 through 2010-12-07
Edwards Auditorium, URI Kingston Campus

A series of public programs at the University of Rhode Island presented by the URI Honors Program

Join us! The public is invited to attend this series of free events.

Perceptions about race shape everyday experiences, public policies, opportunities for individual achievement, and relations across racial and ethnic lines. In this colloquium we will explore key issues of race, showing how race still matters.

You will be able to watch the Colloquium live by clicking here or watching below. This link will only work in real time, while the presentation is going on.

Note: the live feed is only active during live events.

Includes noted scholars (Times and dates below are in UTC.  Please read carefully!):

2010-10-05, 23:00Z
Race, Identity, and Medical Genomics in the Obama Age
Duana Fullwiley, Assistant Professor of African and African American studies and of Medical Anthropology
Harvard University

2010-10-12, 23:00Z
The Invisible Weight of Whiteness: The Racial Grammar of Everyday Life in Contemporary America
Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Professor of Sociology
Duke University

2010-11-31, 00:00Z
How Black Women’s Stories Complicate Race and Gender Politics
Melissa Harris-Lacewell, Associate Professor of Politics and African American Studies
Princeton University

For more information, click here.