Mixed Race Studies

Jews in America struggled for decades to become white. Now we must give up whiteness to fight racism.

The Washington Post
2015-09-22

Gil Steinlauf, Senior Rabbi
Adas Israel Congregation, Washington, D.C.

Let’s teach our children that we are, in fact, not white, but simply Jewish.

Adapted from a Rosh Hashanah sermon delivered at Adas Israel Congregation.

This summer, I had a conversation with a young woman about her Jewish identity. She told me how she grew up in a family that was very involved in her synagogue. She went to Jewish day school. She had been to Israel multiple times. But she felt very far from her Jewishness. She simply couldn’t find the relevance of Judaism as she was making her way on her own in the world. I asked her what she did feel passionate about. She told me she has been reading and thinking a lot about racial justice. What moved her was the #BlackLivesMatter movement — how, in light of Ferguson, Charleston and seemingly endless incidents of injustice against black people in our society, she felt a need to grapple with the racism that is so pervasive in this country and how it affects her identity.

“As a white woman,” she said, “as the product of so much white privilege, it makes me all the more angry to see how other white people so blindly and carelessly feed into the racial climate of our society.” “So the fact that you are white makes this issue all the more painful, all the more personal for you?” I asked. “Yes,” she said.

I certainly identified with her angst. I find the reality of American racism unbearable: the legacy of slavery; the institutional discrimination that is so pervasive; the scourge of mass incarceration of black Americans, with its collateral damage on families; the ongoing blight of housing segregation; the role of law enforcement in furthering racist systems and hierarchies; all this, and so much more. My answer to her, and my answer for all American Jews during these Days of Awe, is that finding our true Jewish identity can begin by questioning our whiteness…

Read the entire article here.

Identity and Acceptance in Danzy Senna’s Caucasia

Uncovered Classics
2015-09-16

Melanie McFarland

“Race is a complete illusion, make-believe,” observes a central character in Danzy Senna’s debut novel Caucasia. “It’s a costume. We all wear one.”

Or, many. Over the course of our lives, those costumes change as we add and subtract details in reaction to other people’s gaze. To see the idea of race through sugar-coated Coke bottle glasses, racial and cultural differences are to be explored and celebrated. But one can just as accurately say that illusion of race creates unnecessary absurdity in our lives. It challenges our sense of acceptance.

Senna’s Caucasia doesn’t quite blast apart the fallacy of race, but it does use our culture’s obsession with it to highlight the ways in which a person creates and morphs her identity…

Read the entire review here.

Racism as a Determinant of Health: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

PLOS ONE
2015-09-23
48 pages
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0138511

Yin Paradies, Professor
Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalization, Faculty of Arts and Education
Deakin University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Jehonathan Ben
Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalization, Faculty of Arts and Education
Deakin University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Amanuel Elias
Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalization, Faculty of Arts and Education
Deakin University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Nida Denson
School of Social Sciences and Psychology
University of Western Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Naomi Priest, Senior Research Fellow in child public health and health inequalities
Australian Centre for Applied Social Research Methods
Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia

Alex Pieterse
Division of Counseling Psychology
University at Albany, State University of New York

Arpana Gupta
Oppenheimer Center for Neurobiology of Stress, David Geffen School of Medicine
University of California, Los Angeles

Margaret Kelaher
Centre for Health Policy Programs and Economics, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health
University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Gilbert Gee
Department of Community Health Sciences
University of California, Los Angeles, Fielding School of Public Health, Los Angeles, California

Despite a growing body of epidemiological evidence in recent years documenting the health impacts of racism, the cumulative evidence base has yet to be synthesized in a comprehensive meta-analysis focused specifically on racism as a determinant of health. This meta-analysis reviewed the literature focusing on the relationship between reported racism and mental and physical health outcomes. Data from 293 studies reported in 333 articles published between 1983 and 2013, and conducted predominately in the U.S., were analysed using random effects models and mean weighted effect sizes. Racism was associated with poorer mental health (negative mental health: r = -.23, 95% CI [-.24,-.21], k = 227; positive mental health: r = -.13, 95% CI [-.16,-.10], k = 113), including depression, anxiety, psychological stress and various other outcomes. Racism was also associated with poorer general health (r = -.13 (95% CI [-.18,-.09], k = 30), and poorer physical health (r = -.09, 95% CI [-.12,-.06], k = 50). Moderation effects were found for some outcomes with regard to study and exposure characteristics. Effect sizes of racism on mental health were stronger in cross-sectional compared with longitudinal data and in non-representative samples compared with representative samples. Age, sex, birthplace and education level did not moderate the effects of racism on health. Ethnicity significantly moderated the effect of racism on negative mental health and physical health: the association between racism and negative mental health was significantly stronger for Asian American and Latino(a) American participants compared with African American participants, and the association between racism and physical health was significantly stronger for Latino(a) American participants compared with African American participants. Protocol PROSPERO registration number: CRD42013005464.

Read the entire article here.

Too Latina To Be Black, Too Black To Be Latina

The Huffington Post
2015-09-15

Aleichia Williams, Writer, Student, Advocate

I can remember the first time I had a ‘race crisis.’

I was probably twelve or thirteen and I had just moved to the quiet state of North Carolina from my home state and city of New York. North Carolina was a lot different than New York. For one, there wasn’t an enormous variety of culture and people. I didn’t have class with any Russians. My professors weren’t Puerto Rican and there wasn’t a whole lot of mixing between kids of one race with kids of another. In fact, at my middle school you had three groups you could classify as; black, “Mexican”, or white.

Unaware of this fact I walked into my second class on my first day of school and decided to sit next to a group of friendly looking Hispanic girls. As soon as I sat down the table was quiet. Then one girl snickered to another in Spanish “Why is she sitting here? I don’t want her to sit here.” Her friend, who had been in my previous class and had heard my class introduction, blushed and replied to her friend in English “She speaks Spanish.”

That was the first time I could remember being aware of my skin color and the overwhelming implications it held. This was also my first ‘race crisis’…

Read the entire article here.

The Awesome Unordinary: Meet Marawa, The Celebrity Hula-Hooper

Chic Rebellion
2015-09-22

Jazzi Johnson

As children, we’re told to go after our dreams and not to let anyone deter us from whatever it may be… Well, can you imagine being 18 years old and telling your parents that you dream of hula-hooping for a living? That’s precisely what Marawa Ibrahim did.

Ibrahim, better known as Marawa the Amazing, is a record-breaking hula-hooper! She currently holds the Guinness world record for 160 hoops at once, and is known for roller-skating and hooping in high heels as part of her act. A natural born nomad, she was born to a Somalian father and an Australian mother. Inspired by the art of gymnasium, she took to Olga Korbut, Josephine Baker, and Delores Van Cartier to name a few.

Destined to live a world of her own making, Marawa enrolled in NICA- the National Institute of Circus Arts Australia– and earned her Bachelor of Circus Arts. Although she specialized in swinging trapeze, she always knew that hula-hoops was where her future lie…

Read the entire article here.

The Passing Paradox: Writing, identity & publishing while black

Fusion
2015-02-13

Stacia L. Brown

A wife lives in constant fear that her husband will discover she’s not who she claims to be. A black aspiring architect is mistaken for an ethnicity other than his own and is offered a job he never would’ve accessed had he corrected the error. A pregnant mother prays nightly that her baby’s skin won’t betray a bit of brownness. Such are the predicaments of characters in the early 20th century “passing narratives” I’ve loved since my days as an undergraduate English major.

To “pass,” as African American writers in the early 1900s defined it, was to choose to escape from the violence and discrimination attendant to blackness — a privilege possible only for those whose skin was light enough to pull it off. Peaking in popularity by the 1930s, passing narratives were often melodramatic and cautionary, detailing the myriad dangers of abandoning one’s black identity in order to take cover amid the white communities that systemically oppressed black citizens.

The penalty for being caught passing could be as merciless as emotional and physical abandonment or as cruel as a violent death. In Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel Passing, for instance, one of the story’s protagonists, Clare, either falls or is pushed from the top floor of a building during a party. Unbeknownst to her, her racist white husband has discovered her blackness through her light-skinned friend, Irene, who isn’t exactly passing. When he charges toward her stumbles out to her death.

Passing narratives not only interrogate the fluidity of racial identity and assess the stakes of racial allegiance, but also double as slow-burning thrillers: Race itself is the stalker, an implicit threat skulking in the backgrounds of seemingly contented, white identified lives…

Read the entire article here.

Here’s why Equal Protection may not protect everyone equally

The Washington Post
2015-09-23

Lauren Sudeall Lucas, Assistant Professor of Law
Georgia State University

Intersectionality is the acknowledgment that different forms of identity-based discrimination can combine to give rise to unique brands of injustice. For example, although women may generally face certain challenges in the workplace — unequal pay and the “motherhood penalty” are common — women of color may face different obstacles, including a bigger wage gap and the perception that they are too aggressive.

The Equal Protection Clause is the primary constitutional tool for addressing claims of identity-based discrimination. Finding out whether an incident of discrimination is legal typically begins with identifying the identity category — such as race or gender — on which the alleged discrimination is based. Depending on the category invoked, courts will apply varying levels of analysis to the claim, making it easier or harder for those accused of discrimination to defend their policies.

But for those who face discrimination at the intersection of multiple identity categories, it is not immediately clear how a court should respond. If someone claims that she has been denied the equal protection of the law because she is a black woman, should the alleged discrimination be examined with strict scrutiny, the most stringent standard of review in the court system, which is applied to classifications based on race? Or should it be treated with intermediate scrutiny, the lesser standard typically applied to gender classifications?…

Read the entire article here.

Priming White identity elicits stereotype boost for biracial Black-White individuals

Group Processes Intergroup Relations
Volume 18, Number 6 (November 2015)
pages 778-787
DOI: 10.1177/1368430215570504

Sarah E. Gaither, Provost’s Career Enhancement Postdoctoral Scholar
University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

Jessica D. Remedios, Assistant Professor of Psychology
Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts

Jennifer R. Schultz
Department of Psychology
Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts

Samuel R. Sommers, Associate Professor of Psychology
Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts

Psychological threat experienced by students of negatively stereotyped groups impairs test performance. However, stereotype boost can also occur if a positively stereotyped identity is made salient. Biracial individuals, whose racial identities may be associated with both negative and positive testing abilities, have not been examined in this context. Sixty-four biracial Black-White individuals wrote about either their Black or White identity or a neutral topic and completed a verbal Graduate Record Examination (GRE) examination described as diagnostic of their abilities. White-primed participants performed significantly better than both Black-primed and control participants. Thus, biracial Black-White individuals experience stereotype boost only when their White identity is made salient.

Read or purchase the article here.

Multiracial kids will soon have a more colorful toy set for pretend play

The Chicago Tribune
2015-09-23

Sadé Carpenter

The MyFamilyBuilders toy set includes 48 magnetic wooden pieces that snap together. (MyFamilyBuilders)

When Ez Karpf went shopping for a gift for his friends’ children, he thought it would be easy to find a toy set that represented their multiracial family. In the U.S. — Karpf is from Argentina — there are products for everyone, or so he thought.

He quickly realized the store aisles were not overflowing with the toys he hoped to buy. He noticed not only a lack of racial diversity, but also the absence of toys portraying same-sex parents and single-parent households.

“A lot of kids are not reflected in today’s toys; a lot of families are not reflected in today’s toys,” Karpf said. “It’s much easier to learn not to be biased about differences than to unlearn that.”…

…A product developer/designer, Karpf assembled a group that included an education specialist, child psychologist, illustrator and tech entrepreneur to address the lack of diversity in toys. Together, they created MyFamilyBuilders.

“When kids don’t see themselves reflected in toys they play with every day, basically this is like having no mirror of themselves,” Karpf said.

The MyFamilyBuilders toy set includes 48 magnetic wooden block pieces children 3 and up can use to customize their playtime experience. It also includes 25 cards for five different games for children 5 and up. The goal is for parents to join the playing process and create teachable moments for their kids…

Read the entire article here.

Positioning Multiraciality in Cyberspace: Treatment of Multiracial Daters in an Online Dating Website

American Sociological Review
Volume 80, Number 4 (August 2015)
pages 764-788
DOI: 10.1177/0003122415591268

Celeste Vaughan Curington
Department of Sociology
University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Ken-Hou Lin, Assistant Professor of Sociology
The University of Texas, Austin

Jennifer Hickes Lundquist, Professor of Sociology
University of Massachusetts, Amherst

The U.S. multiracial population has grown substantially in the past decades, yet little is known about how these individuals are positioned in the racial hierarchies of the dating market. Using data from one of the largest dating websites in the United States, we examine how monoracial daters respond to initial messages sent by multiracial daters with various White/non-White racial and ethnic makeups. We test four different theories: hypodescent, multiracial in-betweenness, White equivalence, and what we call a multiracial dividend effect. We find no evidence for the operation of hypodescent. Asian-White daters, in particular, are afforded a heightened status, and Black-White multiracials are treated as an in-between group. For a few specific multiracial gender groups, we find evidence for a dividend effect, where multiracial men and women are preferred above all other groups, including Whites.

Read or purchase the article here.