Mixed Race Studies

Identity as Proxy

Columbia Law Review
Volume 115, Number 6 (October 2015)
pages 1605-1674

Lauren Sudeall Lucas, Assistant Professor of Law
Georgia State University

As presently constructed, equal protection doctrine is an identity-based jurisprudence, meaning that the level of scrutiny applied to an alleged act of discrimination turns on the identity category at issue. In that sense, equal protection relies on identity as a proxy, standing in to signify the types of discrimination we find most troubling.

Equal protection’s current use of identity as proxy leads to a number of problems, including difficulties in defining identity categories; the tendency to privilege a dominant-identity narrative; failure to distinguish among the experiences of subgroups within larger identity categories; and psychological and emotional harm that can result from being forced to identify in a particular way to lay claim to legal protection. Moreover, because the Court’s identity-as-proxy jurisprudence relies on superficial notions of identity to fulfill a substantive commitment to equality, it is susceptible to co-option by majority groups.

This Essay aims to engage readers in a thought experiment, to envision what equal protection doctrine might look like if it were structured to reflect the values identity is intended to serve without explicitly invoking identity categories as a way to delineate permissible and impermissible forms of discrimination. In doing so, it aims to incorporate directly into equal protection jurisprudence the notion that identities like race and gender are not merely a collection of individual traits, but the product of structural forces that create and maintain subordination. Under the “value-based” approach proposed herein, the primary concern of equal protection is not to eliminate differential treatment, but instead to deconstruct status hierarchies. Therefore, rather than applying heightened scrutiny to government actions based on race or gender, it applies heightened scrutiny to government actions that have the effect of perpetuating or exacerbating a history of discrimination or that frustrate access to the political process.

The clearest impact of such a model would be in the context of affirmative action, where a majority plaintiff could no longer simply claim discrimination on the basis of race. Yet, the potential of a value-based model extends to other contexts as well—for example, challenges to voter identification laws, in which political exclusion would displace discriminatory intent and disparate impact as the relevant measure for analysis; and the treatment of pregnant women, in which discrimination on the basis of pregnancy would no longer have to align with gender to receive heightened scrutiny.

This shift has several advantages: It allows the law to make important distinctions between groups and within groups; it alleviates the need for comparative treatment and solutions that favor taking from all over giving to some; it is less likely to generate identity-based harms; it is fact-driven rather than identity-driven and thus better suited to the judicial function; and it serves an important rhetorical function by changing the nature of rights discourse.

Read the entire essay here.

Do You Have a Cherokee in Your Family Tree?

History News Network
George Mason University
2015-10-18

Gregory D. Smithers, Associate Professor of History
Virginia Commonwealth University

Gregory D. Smithers is an Associate Professor of History at Virginia Commonwealth University and the author of The Cherokee Diaspora: An Indigenous History of Migration, Resettlement, and Identity (Yale University Press, 2015).

Each fall I teach an undergraduate course titled “Native Americans in the South.” The class is designed for juniors and combines historical narrative with analysis of specific events and/or Native American people in the Southeast. On the first day of class I begin by asking students why they’re taking the course and inquire if any have Native American ancestors. This year proved typical: five of forty students claimed they are descended from a great-great Cherokee grandmother.

I’ve become so use to these declarations that I’ve long ceased questioning students about the specifics of their claims. Their imagined genealogies may simply be a product of family lore, or, as is occasionally the case, a genuine connection to a Cherokee family and community. All of these students – whether their claims are flights of fancy or grounded in written and oral evidence – are part of a growing number of Americans who insist they are descended from one or more Cherokee ancestor(s)…

According to the United States Census Bureau, the number of Americans who self-identify as Cherokee or mixed-race Cherokee has grown substantially over the past two decades. In 2000, the federal Census reported that 729,533 Americans self-identified as Cherokee. By 2010, that number increased, with the Census Bureau reporting that 819,105 Americans claiming at least one Cherokee ancestor. The Census Bureau’s decision to allow Americans to self-identify as belonging to one or more racial/ethnic group(s) has meant that “Cherokee” has become by far the most popular self-ascribed Native American identity. “Navajo” is a distant second…

Read the entire article here.

Korean TV networks move to oust discrimination against gender, race

The Korean Herald
2015-10-18

Claire Lee

A much-criticized scene from MBC’s “Three Wheels,” where two female comedians appeared in blackface in 2012. Photo: MBC Screengrab

In 2012, South Korea’s public broadcaster MBC sparked outrage among international viewers when it aired a segment of two Korean female comedians in blackface on its comedy show “Three Wheels.”

The show received mounting criticism, mostly from overseas viewers, who claimed the particular scene was blatantly racist. The producer of the show eventually offered a public apology, explaining the two women were simply parodying Michol — a black male character featured in Korea’s hugely popular 1987 TV animated series “Dooly the Little Dinosaur.”

Regardless of the intention, many critics argued the scene was undoubtedly insensitive and discriminatory against blacks. While appearing in blackface, the two comedians sang “Shintoburi,” a 1999 Korean pop song that praises Korean heritage and culture, specifically mentioning kimchi and soybean paste.”I did not think it was funny. What were they thinking?” an international viewer said in a YouTube video she posted to criticise the show…

…Korea’s concept of “multicultural families” in particular was often used in the local media to convey negative connotations of foreign workers and migrant wives from Southeast Asia, said UN expert Mutuma Ruteere, who also urged Korea to enact a wide-ranging antidiscrimination law.

In a report submitted to Ruteere last year, local activist Jung Hye-sil pointed out the term “mixed-blood” was still being used frequently by the Korean media when referring to multiracial individuals, in spite of the UN committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination’s 2007 recommendation that Korea end the use of the particular expression. The committee also urged the Korean public to overcome the notion that the country is “ethnically homogeneous” back in 2007.

According to Jung’s report, however, a total of 1,287 Korean news reports — from both print and broadcast outlets — used the term “mixed-blood” when referring to multiracial individuals from 2012-2014. Jung also addressed that a number of these reports were favourable toward those with a Caucasian parent, notably by praising their physical attractiveness.

The report also pointed out that the Korean media unnecessarily differentiates between multiracial children and children of foreign-born immigrants who are not ethnically Korean.

For example, a news segment aired by MBC in 2012 used the term “mixed-blood multicultural children” when delivering information that Korean-born children of migrant wives are more likely to receive education in Korea than children immigrants who were born overseas.

“The discourse of ethnic homogeneity based on the notion of ‘pure blood’ has been causing discrimination in the form of social exclusion by placing restrictions on the lives of the multiracial population in Korea, as they are seen as a threat to Korea’s ‘pure bloodline,'” Jung wrote in her report, noting that the very first children who were sent overseas for foreign adoption in 1954 from Korea were mixed-race children born to African-American soldiers and Korean women…

Read the entire article here.

Tired of Tradition, Honey Maid’s Marketing Chief Chose to Put the Spotlight on Modern Families

Adweek
2015-10-18

T.L. Stanley

Gary Osifchin, Honey Maid portfolio lead, Mondelez Photo: Sasha Maslov

Adweek’s 2015 Brand Genius winner for CPG/food

It always seemed strange to Gary Osifchin that the characters in traditional advertising were so, well, traditional. “There was the Caucasian female lead, with the French manicure,” Osifchin says, “or the black guy in a secondary role only.”

TV spots had been this way for years, but Osifchin recognized a problem with it. “How,” he asks, “can consumers connect with [your brand] if that’s all you’re showing?”

That nagging question led Honey Maid and its agency Droga5 to break with decades of standard practice. In 2014, packaged foods giant Mondelēz sought to overhaul Honey Maid, a household name and a staple in American pantries. Getting consumers to take a fresh look at a 90-year-old brand of graham crackers would require a truly different approach.

So, it went in search of 21st century families—gay, single-parent, mixed-race and immigrant, for example. There were no actors, just regular people shot in a documentary-style for TV spots, digital shorts and other content under the tagline “This is wholesome.”…

Read the entire article here.

Race as Biology Is Fiction, Racism as a Social Problem Is Real: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives on the Social Construction of Race

American Psychologist
Volume 60, Number 1, January 2005
pages 16–26
DOI: 10.1037/0003-066X.60.1.16

Audrey Smedley
Virginia Commonwealth University Institute of Medicine

Brian D. Smedley
Virginia Commonwealth University Institute of Medicine

Racialized science seeks to explain human population differences in health, intelligence, education, and wealth as the consequence of immutable, biologically based differences between “racial” groups. Recent advances in the sequencing of the human genome and in an understanding of biological correlates of behavior have fueled racialized science, despite evidence that racial groups are not genetically discrete, reliably measured, or scientifically meaningful. Yet even these counterarguments often fail to take into account the origin and history of the idea of race. This article reviews the origins of the concept of race, placing the contemporary discussion of racial differences in an anthropological and historical context.

Read the entire article here.

Black History Month Firsts: Lilian Bader

Black History Month 2015
2015-10-13

Omar Alleyne Lawler, Editor

Lilian Bader, Photo Credit courtesy of the Imperial War Museum

The contributions and efforts of Lilian Bader to World War Two for the Caribbean community actually starts before her birth, with her Fathers contribution in World War One.

Marrying in 1913, Marcus Bailey was a Barbadian born migrant who found himself in England, coupled with an English born, Irish raised woman^* on the outbreak of war. The possibility of a happy family was postponed as war broke out in 1914 and Marcus would find himself serving in the Royal Navy as a Merchant Seaman until the war finished.

However, upon the wars end, the Baileys would parent three children, one of which would be Lilian Bader. Born in 1918, she would go onto be quite possibly the first Black woman to join the British Armed Forces…

…The reality of being a Mixed Raced Woman, in Britain in the early 1930’s, would be one her intelligence and popularity would never be able to escape and at the age of twenty, Lilian would still be at the Convent she joined as a nine year old, simply because nobody was willing to hire her for work…

Read the entire article here.

Hanif Kureishi: ‘We’re all mixed-race now

The Independent
2011-10-23

James Kidd

Immigration, Islamism, multi-culturalism – as his new collected stories attests, the hottest topics of the day have long been the bedrock of Hanif Kureishi’s fiction. Just don’t get him started on the joys of ‘Big Brother’…

Hanif Kureishi is, by some accounts, a hard man to interview. In the days before our meeting, any number of people insist that the author of My Beautiful Laundrette, The Buddha of Suburbia and The Black Album is cantankerous, sarcastic and prone to lengthy lacunae in the middle of conversation. This portrait is corroborated by some of those closest to Kureishi: his sister and more than one ex-partner have complained of literary parasitism, that their lives have been exploited in the service of Kureishi’s art. It is a charge that he doesn’t exactly refute: “If [your writing] doesn’t upset your family, you must be doing it wrong.”

Perhaps the problem is that no one got him on to the subject of Celebrity Big Brother. This not only sparks his enthusiasm, it proves that Kureishi speaks like he writes – an entertaining mix of irreverent humour, personal revelation and social critique. So a relatively grave discussion about “the psychotic exhibitionism of our time” (or “the age of Jordan”) triggers a lengthy dissection of the recent reality series.

“My missus says Jordan chooses really nice men then destroys them. It seems a good way to pass the time. The cage-fighter [Alex Reid] is a nice bloke – thick, but nice. Unlike Vinnie [Jones]. He was quite hardcore – a naughty, tough daddy. I think Vinnie had an evil edge. People were afraid of him.”…

…What he does remember is the urgency to become a writer. Growing up in Bromley in the 1960s, surrounded by racist teachers, skinheads and the National Front, it was his means to self-expression and political empowerment. “Being a writer was a counter-force to people saying I was a half-caste, a Paki, a mongrel. It was a real thing in the world, an identity. I needed to call myself a writer back then because they were calling me a fucking Paki.” He pauses. “We are all mixed-race now – me, Obama, Tiger Woods, Lewis Hamilton.”

Kureishi says he was fortunate that the themes which distinguished his seminal works – race, immigration, Islam and multi-culturalism – have so profoundly defined 21st-century global culture. “You are lucky if you hit it for five years. I suddenly saw that the story of my father, a Muslim man coming to Britain, was not only his story, it was the story of the West. It was gold dust. No one else was writing about it, and people didn’t welcome it. ‘This is very good, Hanif, but do they have to be Indian in a cornershop?'”

Twenty years after The Buddha of Suburbia helped change the landscape of British fiction, and society, Kureishi continues to have plenty to say. He is certainly still politically engaged and enraged. “My dad’s family always thought that power rendered white people unsophisticated. Look at the stupidity of invading Iraq. Every Muslim would think that was hilarious stupidity. It has destroyed American power in the world. They aren’t going to invade anywhere else now. The Iranians aren’t afraid of them. The Koreans aren’t afraid. How stupid was that strategically, let alone morally? They have, as it were, shot their bolt.”…

Read the entire article here.

Leading Aircraftwoman in the WAAF and one of the first black women to join the British Armed Forces

The Independent
2015-04-06

Stephen Bourne

Lilian Bader (1918-2015)

Bader trained as an instrument repairer, became a Leading Aircraftwoman and soon gained the rank of Acting Corporal.

I first met Lilian Bader at the Imperial War Museum in 1991 at the launch of Colin Douglas and Ben Bousquet’s book West Indian Women at War. She was the only black Briton interviewed in the book. Feisty, outspoken but not without a sense of humour, Bader was proud of the fact that, by the end of the 20th century, three generations of her family had served in the British Armed Forces.

She was born in 1918 in the Toxteth Park area of Liverpool to Marcus Bailey, a merchant seaman from Barbados who had fought for the British in the First World War, and Lilian, her British-born mother, whose parents were Irish. The Baileys had married in 1913 and Bader was the youngest of their three children. In 1927, Bader and her older brothers, Frank and James, were orphaned – and she was raised in a convent where she remained until she was 20, because no one would employ her. However, she was determined to overcome racial prejudice.

She found employment in domestic service, but, when the war broke out, she joined the Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes (NAAFI) at Catterick Camp, Yorkshire. She was enjoying herself until she was asked to leave when her father’s West Indian heritage was discovered by an official in London. For weeks her supervisor avoided informing her of this decision – but eventually he had to tell her the truth, and release her…

Read the entire article here.

Brazilian television slowly confronts country’s deeply entrenched race issues

The Guardian
2015-10-07

Bruce Douglas
Rio de Janeiro

Mister Brau features a black couple known as Brazil’s Jay Z and Beyoncé in the lead roles – an unprecedented move in a country whose majority black population has long been sidelined in its leading leisure-time industry

In the middle of the night, a young black couple pull up at the entrance to an elegant mansion in an upper-class neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro.

Excitedly, they walk through the empty building into the garden and jump into the swimming pool. Their laughter wakes a white woman living next door.

Immediately, she grabs her binoculars. “Thieves,” she cries, and orders her sleepy husband to call security…

Read the entire article here.

Changes in racial categorization over time and health status: an examination of multiracial young adults in the USA

Ethnicity & Health
Published online: 2015-06-08
DOI: 10.1080/13557858.2015.1042431

Karen M. Tabb, Assistant Professor of Social Work
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

• Objective: Multiracial (two or more races) American health related to racial stability over the life course is a pressing issue in a burgeoning multi-ethnic and multicultural global society. Most studies on multiracial health are cross-sectional and thus focus on racial categorization at a single time point, so it is difficult to establish how health indicators change for multiracials over time. Accordingly the central aim of this paper was to explore if consistency in racial categories over time is related to self-rated health for multiracial young adults in the USA.
• Methods: Data were drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) survey (N = 7957). Weighted multivariate logistic regression was used to exam health status in early adulthood between individuals who switched racial categories between Waves 1 and 3 compared to those who remained in the same racial categories.
• Results: There were significant differences in report of self-rated health when comparing consistent monoracial adults with multiracial adults who switch racial categories over time. Diversifying (switching from one category to many categories) multiracial respondents are less likely to report fair/poor self-rated health compared to single-race minority young adults in the fully adjusted model (OR = 0.20; 95% CI [0.06–0.60]).
• Conclusion: These results demonstrate the importance of critically examining changes in racial categories as related to health status over time. Furthermore, these results demonstrate how the switch in racial categories during adolescence can explain some variations in health status during young adulthood.

Read or purchase the article here.