Mixed Race Studies

“What Are You?”: Racial Ambiguity, Stigma, and the Racial Formation Project

Deviant Behavior
Volume 35, Issue 12, 2014
pages 1006-1022
DOI: 10.1080/01639625.2014.901081

Tiffanie Grier, Career Placement Director & Garden to Groceries Project Director
Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Memphis, Memphis Tennessee

Carol Rambo, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of Memphis, Memphis Tennessee

Marshall A. Taylor
University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana

Using interview data from individuals who were frequently asked some version of the question “What are you?” in regards to their race, we apply a deviance perspective to frame these encounters as micro level racial formation projects. Racial formation projects are problematized when one’s race is not readily classifiable. These data suggest that when race is perceptibly ambiguous, stigma is assigned and normativity is enforced through discursive constraint and other means. Racially ambiguous individuals use many forms of resistance to navigate these encounters and make identity claims that either affirm or endanger the normative racial formation order.

Read or purchase the article here.

And you thought we had moved beyond all that: biological race returns to the social sciences

Ethnic and Racial Studies
Volume 37, Issue 10, 2014
Special Issue: Ethnic and Racial Studies Review
pages 1676-1685
DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2014.931992

Ann Morning, Associate Professor of Sociology
New York University

Recently, sociologists have argued in high-profile journals that racial categories are linked to genetically distinct clusters within the human population. They propose theorizing race as a socially constructed categorization system that is related to biological groupings within our species. This work overlooks, however, the extent to which statistically inferred genetic clusters are themselves socially constructed, making it impossible to juxtapose ‘subjective’ social categories with ‘objective’ biological ones. This editorial urges social scientists to take a critical look at claims about the genetic underpinnings of race, and to contribute their insights to ongoing debates about the nature of race.

Read the entire article here.

“Everyone Knows It’s a Social Construct”: Contemporary Science and the Nature of Race

Sociological Focus
Volume 40, Issue 4, 2007
pages 436-454
DOI: 10.1080/00380237.2007.10571319

Ann Morning, Associate Professor of Sociology
New York University

Sociological literature frequently claims that scientists across the disciplinary spectrum have arrived at the common conclusion that race is socially constructed, not biologically anchored. I investigate contemporary scientific thinking about race by interviewing more than 40 biologists and anthropologists at four northeastern universities. Contrary to sociologists’ expectations, racial constructionism is revealed to be a minority viewpoint. Moreover, this research shows that the usual “constructionist” versus “essentialist” dichotomy a blunt tool for characterizing the debate about race; a third platform—“antiessentialism”—must be taken into account. Recognizing antiessentialist discourse calls for a reevaluation of prior research that emphasizes socioeconomic status and professional affiliation as influences on interviewees’ concepts of race; this project demonstrates that such tectors do little to distinguish essentialist from antiessentialist veiwpoints.

Read or purchase the article here.

Collaboration is Key to Psychology Professor Sam Sommers’ Research on Race and Ethnicity

Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts
School of Arts And Sciences
August 2013

Anna Burgess

Doctoral Student Sarah Gaither and a Team of Undergraduates Focus on Biracial Perceptions and Identity Flexibility

“As a society, the way we think about questions of race and ethnicity tends to be over-simplified,” Professor Sam Sommers explains. “We like to be able to put people into categories. But what about the people who don’t fit into these categories?”

For Sommers, a Tufts professor and social psychologist, and director of  Tufts’ Diversity & Intergroup Relations Lab, this is not a rhetorical question–it’s a research question. He and 5th-year Ph.D. candidate Sarah Gaither, along with an undergraduate student research team, are trying to find some answers within this topic. Sommers has been studying diversity and its effect on group interactions for ten years, and he started working with Gaither a few years ago. “She’s interested in these same kinds of issues,” he says, “but from the perspective of multiracial people.”

Gaither explains that the projects she and Sommers are working on right now all focus on biracial perceptions and identity flexibility. “Growing up in a biracial family has made me extremely interested in interracial and intergroup relations more generally,” she says, “but in particular it has made me want to learn more about how biracial individuals are perceived and treated by others.” Gaither, who is the recipient of a prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, is working with Sommers on several different studies, some focusing on biracial children and others on biracial college students. In terms of how student researchers factor in, Gaither says, “All of these studies involve training undergraduate research assistants on how to run the studies, since without them, I would not be able to be nearly as productive as I am.”…

Read the entire article here.

How Ferguson could be America’s future

Cable News Network (CNN)
2014-08-23

John Blake

(CNN) — The protests in Ferguson, Missouri, have been described as a mirror into contemporary America, but they are also something else: A crystal ball.

Look past the headlines — the debates over race and police militarization that have surfaced after the killing of an unarmed black youth by a white police officer — and one can glimpse America’s future, some historians and political scientists say.

No one is talking about an impending race war or a police state, but something more subtle. Unless Americans re-examine some assumptions they’ve made about themselves, they argue, Ferguson could be the future.

Assumption No. 1: Tiger Woods is going to save us

It’s called the “browning of America.” Google the phrase and you’ll get 18 million hits. By 2050, most of the nation’s citizens are expected to be people of color, according to the Pew Research Center.

Dig beneath the Google links and one can detect an emerging assumption: Racial flashpoints like Ferguson will fade in the future because no single race will be dominant. You could call it the Tiger Woods effect. The New American will claim multiple racial origins like Woods, the pro golfer. Demographic change will accomplish what a thousand national conversations on race could never do: lessen the sting of racial conflict.

A dramatic increase in interracial marriages will change the racial landscape as more people cross racial and ethnic lines to marry. But that change won’t be a cure-all, says Rory Kramer, a sociology and criminology professor at Villanova University in Pennsylvania.

He says racial progress is not inevitable with the browning of America.

“I don’t want to deny the optimism,” Kramer says. “I deny the assumption that it will happen without effort.”…

Read the entire article here.

Documentary reveals Jewish mother’s ‘Little White Lie’

The Times of Israel
2014-08-17

Rebecca Spence

Lacey Schwartz’s film about reconciling her hidden black paternity to the Ashkenazi Jewish home she was raised in strikes universal themes

SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) — When Lacey Schwartz celebrated her bat mitzvah more than two decades ago in her hometown of Woodstock, New York, a synagogue-goer turned to her and said, “It’s so nice to have an Ethiopian Jew in our midst.”

Never mind that Schwartz, a striking 37-year-old with long black curls and a megawatt smile, is about as American as they come. Raised by two Ashkenazi Jewish parents in a largely white, upstate New York town, Schwartz’s complexion — darker than that of her relatives — had long been attributed to a Sicilian grandfather.

Despite lingering questions, she believed the story. But when Schwartz enrolled at Georgetown University and the Black Student Alliance sent her a welcome letter based on a picture she submitted, Schwartz could no longer deny something was amiss.

She confronted her mother, Peggy Schwartz, only to discover that her biological father was a black man named Rodney with whom she had had an affair.

The discovery of her family secret and Schwartz’s coming to terms with her newly complex racial identity serves as the basis for “Little White Lie,” a moving documentary that had its official world premiere at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival last Sunday following screenings in Cape Cod, Mass., and Philadelphia…

…While Schwartz the filmmaker has embraced her black identity, it has not been at the expense of the strong Jewish cultural identity she developed during her formative years. Some of the earliest stirrings of the film came through her work with Reboot, a hand-picked collective of Jewish creative professionals who come together to explore meaning, community and identity…

Read the entire article here.

American Pop Culture Hides, Reveals Multiracial Asian-Americans

Voice of America
2014-08-03

Jim Stevenson

The discussion of race in the United States has always been complex and often difficult. Yet in an overwhelmingly large percentage of families, it is not difficult to find some evidence of a multiracial influence.

LeiLani Nishime is assistant professor of communications at the University of Washington and author of Undercover Asian. She examines how multiracial Asian Americans are often overlooked even when presented in highly visible popular media such as movies, television shows, magazine articles and artwork. Nishime contrasts the phenomenon with examples when audiences can view multiracial Asians as multiracial. She told VOA’s Jim Stevenson her fascinating study began with simple discussions in the classroom.

NISHIME: I had students in class who wanted to hear about mixed race and so I taught one class on it; they liked it so much I turned it into a two-week unit, and they liked that so much I turned it into a class, and after that I thought, “well, maybe there is enough there to write a book about.” I mostly draw from pop culture and from visual culture specifically, so advertising, television, film, that sort of thing. That’s partly just because of my own background and training, I was trained in literary studies and I did most of my dissertation work on film. I’m also interested in popular cultural icons because I feel like they have something to say about our culture more generally.

STEVENSON: Tiger Woods is definitely one of the most recognized athletes around the world, and of course, with some of the things that happened in Tiger’s career in the past few years made him even more well-known, I guess. Tiger is an interesting case: his father is African American, his mother is Thai.

NISHIME: There are times where he identifies as African-American, some as Asian-American – he had made up this term, “Cablinasian,” for a while, that he calls himself. I think though, for most of his career, he actually tries not to identify racially at all. His publicity can paint him as something new, something outside of our usual racial categories.

Read the interview here. Download the interview here.

Who Are You? Multiracial Students and Microaggressions on College Campuses

NASPA: Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education
2014-08-01

Brittany Hunt

Have you ever been in a situation where you were having a conversation with someone and then all of the sudden you feel them looking at you with a puzzled look on their face? Then here comes the question: “So…what exactly are you mixed with? What are you?” This is the subtle, intentional (or unintentional) form of racism known as a microaggressions (Sue, Capodilupo, Torino, Bucceri, Holder, Nadal, & Esquilin, 2007). This is an all too familiar experience for those who are multiracial. This article is influenced by my research study on how multiracial students manage microaggressions. In this research I looked at how microaggressions affected the student experience, and how that impacted their experience on campus. This led me to realize that each student has a different experience and we should recognize and embrace each of those experiences. This article will mainly focus on the effect of microaggressions on the experience of multiracial students using my research and other relevant literature. I will also take some time to talk about how we can create inclusive environments for multiracial students…

Read the entire article here.

Perceptions of Parents’ Ethnic Identities and the Personal Ethnic-Identity and Racial Attitudes of Biracial Adults

Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology
Volume 21, Number 1 (January 2015)
pages 65-75
DOI: 10.1037/a0037542

Cesalie T. Stepney
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey

Diana T. Sanchez, Associate Professor of Psychology
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey

Phillip E. Handy
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey

The present study examined the relationship of perceived parental closeness and parental ethnic identity on personal ethnic identity and colorblindness beliefs in 275 part-White biracial Americans (M age = 23.88). Respondents completed online measures of their personal ethnic identity (minority, White, and multiracial), perceived parental ethnic identity, parental closeness, and attitudes about the state of race relations and the need for social action in the United States. Using path modeling, results show that part-White biracial individuals perceive their ethnic identity to be strongly linked to their parental racial identities, especially when they had closer parental relationships. Moreover, stronger minority identity was linked to less colorblind attitudes, and greater White identity was linked to greater colorblind attitudes suggesting that patterns of identity may influence how biracial individuals view race-relations and the need for social action. Implications for biracial well-being and their understanding of prejudice and discrimination are discussed.

Talking About Race – An Essay

Ms. Food Queen: Cooking Across Difference
July 2014

Christine Gregory

In the Korean language, “heug–in sa ram” means “black person.” The word “heug” also means dirt. I realized this when I was in high school and confronted my mother about it. She bristled, and said that I was too sensitive. I looked to my father for back up, but he would provide none. Though he was African American and born in rural South Carolina, he never spoke of his experiences with prejudice or bias. I recall once on a visit home from college, hoping to inspire a conversation about the cultural and racial differences in his and my mother’s relationship, I asked him how he felt about being in an interracial marriage with a Korean woman. He replied, “What are you talking about? Your mama ain’t white.”

Growing up, we never talked about race– and it drove me crazy. From my perspective, our lives revolved around our identity, yet we never discussed what it meant to be black, Korean, or mixed. Among my mother’s Korean friends, co-workers and acquaintances, my brother and I were black. They were shocked at our taste for Korean food beyond mainstream kimchi and bulgogi; and equally astounded by my ability to speak Korean so well! Out of sheer ignorance, they excluded us from church activities meant only for “full-blooded” Korean parishioners, not realizing that they were replicating, in Jim Crow-like fashion, the racism of prior decades.

To black folks, we were mixed. Not quite African American, but brown enough to be included in social networks and friend groups that gave us a sense of community and belonging. Almost all of my friends were black or biracial. With several military bases nearby, mixed race children were not uncommon in our neighborhood. Yet our Korean heritage was still a subject of fascination. Why didn’t we own a grocery mart or dry cleaners? No. We don’t know Karate (and it’s Tae Kwon Do, thank-you-very-much). No. We don’t eat dogs and kimchee is not spoiled cabbage…

Read the entire article here.