Mixed Race Studies

Feature: Between two worlds: challenges of being mixed-race in Japan

China Daily
Xinhua News Agency
2013-11-13

TOKYO, November 13 (Xinhua) — The latest statistics from Japan’s health ministry show that one in 49 babies born in Japan today are born into families with one non-Japanese parent, giving way to a growing demographic of mixed-race nationals in Japan, known colloquially as “Hafu.”

“Hafu,” the Japanese popular phonetic expression for the English word “Half,” describes those of mixed-racial, Japanese heritage, and, more precisely, those who are half Japanese and half non-Japanese.

The phrase has been widely coined by popular media here, as those of mixed-race backgrounds born or living in Japan have made their way into the celebrity limelight and as the general socio- demographic ethnicity of Japan undergoes a shift away from its former homogeneity, and towards multiculturalism…

…”What we see on TV and in magazines regarding mixed-raced celebrities is great in terms of a seeming mainstream acceptance to this emerging demographic, by a notably homogenous society, but this doesn’t exactly paint a perfect picture of the challenges faced by mixed-race people in Japan,” Keiko Gono, a sociologist and parent of a mixed-race teenager, told Xinhua…

…For the families well-networked socially and professionally in multicultural circles and can afford the advantages Japan’s international schools can provide, raising a bicultural child is a relatively smooth process.

But for others, it can be a truly testing lifestyle, both for parents and their mixed-race children.

“I’ve lived in Japan all my life. My father is from Nigeria and my mother is Japanese,” Edwin Tanabe, a software designer for a U. S. firm in Tokyo, told Xinhua. He took his mother’s family name in elementary school as nobody could pronounce his name properly.

“It was tough at school because I was the only ‘gaijin’ ( foreigner) in the school, yet I couldn’t speak English and had no knowledge of the world, as I was born and raised in Japan, just like my peers,” he said…

Read the entire article here.

Being Black: It’s not the skin color

Philadelphia Weekly
2013-11-13

Kennedy Allen et al.

Drexel prof Yaba Blay’s striking new photo book “One Drop” explores how a wide range of different skin tones affects Americans’ personal identities. In  this PW excerpt, eight Philadelphia-area residents of mixed heritage concur: However light they may be, they’re still most certainly Black. Our own Kennedy Allen agrees…

Growing up in Mt. Airy, an ethnic and economically diverse neighborhood, instilled within me a level of acceptance and tolerance regarding my fellow man that, confoundingly, many didn’t seem to share. I was one of seven Black kids in a class of 42. Because I spoke English properly and preferred rock to rap, I was deemed “White girl” by my racial peers—a label that haunted me for what felt like eons. I knew I wasn’t White, nor did I ever have the urge to be, outside of wishing my hair would blow in the wind like some of the girls in my class. Flash-forward to my final years of high school, in a black school where I was the “light-bright girl who talks White.” Dark-skinned people still sneer at me, somehow assuming that I believe myself to be “better” than they are because of my buttered-toffee skin tone.

When all is said and done, racial or ethnic identity rests upon the individual and their experiences. I identify myself as a black woman who happens to have Irish and Cherokee lineage. What of all the others who identify as black, but appear otherwise? Scholar and activist Arturo Schomburg, whose extensive collection of books and historical records of African people’s achievements eventually became the famed Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, N.Y., identified as an Afro-Puerto Rican. (In fact, his passion for gathering all those documents was born after a grade-school teacher told him that black people had no history, heroes or accomplishments.) Would Schomburg’s experience be less valid because it fails to meet some homogenous notion of Blackness? Who has the right to determine these standards in the first place? And in an age of global interconnectedness and the instant, worldwide exchange of information and ideals, why does it still even matter?

Dr. Yaba Blay wondered some of the same things. A first-generation Ghanian-American and the co-director of Drexel’s Africana studies program, Blay has spent the past two years gathering vibrant portraits and intimate stories from nearly 60 individuals across the country in an attempt to shine some light upon questions of racial ambiguity and legitimacy. Those portraits now comprise a new book that she’s edited and published, (1)ne Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race—as well as an exhibit of the same name, currently on display at the Painted Bride Art Center…

Read the entire article and eight subject profiles from the book here.

Red: Racism and the American Indian

UCLA Law Review
Volume 56, Issue 3 (February 2009)
pages 591-656

Bethany R. Berger, Thomas F. Gallivan, Jr. Professor of Real Property Law
University of Connecticut

How does racism work in American Indian law and policy? Scholarship on the subject too often has assumed that racism works for Indians in the same way that it does for African Americans, and has therefore either emphasized the presence of hallmarks of black-white racism, such as uses of blood quantum, as evidence of racism, or has emphasized the lack of such hallmarks, such as prohibitions on interracial marriage, to argue that racism is not a significant factor. This Article surveys the different eras of Indian-white interaction to argue that racism has been important in those interactions, but has worked in a distinctive way. North Americans were not primarily concerned with using Indian people as a source of labor, and therefore did not have to theorize Indians as inferior individuals to control that labor. Rather, the primary concern was to obtain tribal resources and use tribes as a flattering foil for American society and culture. As a result, it was necessary to theorize tribal societies as fatally and racially inferior groups, while emphasizing the ability of Indian individuals to leave their societies and join non-Indian ones. This theory addresses the odd paradox that the most unquestionably racist eras in Indian-white interaction emphasized and encouraged assimilation of Indian individuals. It also contributes to the ongoing effort to understand the varying manifestations of racism in a multiracial America. Most important, it provides a new perspective on efforts to curtail tribal sovereignty in the name of racial equality, revealing their connection to historic efforts to maintain the inferiority of Indian tribes by treating them as racial groups rather than political entities with governmental rights.

Read the entire article here.

Beyond Our Hearts: The Ecology of Couple Relationships

California Law Review Circuit
Volume 4, October 2013
pages 155-164

Holning Lau, Professor of Law
University of North Carolina School of Law

In his review of Professor Angela Onwuachi-Willig’s book, According to Our Hearts: Rhinelander v. Rhinelander and the Law of the Multiracial Family, Professor Holning Lau extends Professor Onwuachi-Willig’s analysis of how external support is instrumental to the success of relationships beyond multiracial couples. Arguing that ecological factors should play a larger role in policy discussions about marital relations, Professor Lau examines the debates surrounding same-sex marriage and the Healthy Marriage Initiative and concludes that policymakers should more carefully consider how exogenous circumstances affect the success of intimate relationships.   

Read the entire article here.

Soledad O’Brien Explores Racial and Ethnic Identity in Provocative Black in America

CNN Press Room
Cable News Network (CNN)
2012-12-04

Who is Black in America? Debuts Sunday, Dec. 9 at 8:00 p.m. & 11:00p.m. ET & PT
U.S. Encore: Sunday, January 27, 2013,  20:00 p.m. ET, 23:00 p.m ET, and Monday, 02:00 ET
International Debut on CNN International: Sunday, January 13, 02:00Z and 10:00Z (Saturday, January 12, 21:00 EST and Sunday, January 13, 05:00 EST). View regional schedules here.

“I don’t really feel Black,” says 17-year-old Nayo Jones. Her mother is Black; she was raised apart from her by her White father, and she identifies herself as biracial. “I was raised up with White people, White music, White food so it’s not something I know,” she says in a new documentary that explores the sensitive concepts of race, cultural identity, and skin tone.

For the fifth installment of her groundbreaking Black in America series, CNN anchor and special correspondent Soledad O’Brien reports for Who is Black in America? The documentary debuts Sunday, December 09 at 8:00p.m. and 11:00p.m. ET & PT and replays on Saturday, December 15 at 8:00p.m. and 11:00p.m. ET & PT.

Is Jones Black? Is Blackness based upon skin color or other factors? The 2010 U.S. Census found 15 percent of new marriages are interracial, a figure that is twice what was reported in 1980. One in seven American newborns were of mixed race in 2010, representing an increase of two percent from the 2000 U.S. Census. Within this context, O’Brien examines how much regarding race and identity are personal choices vs. reflections of an external social construct.

Tim Wise, an author and anti-racism activist believes in self identification, but says, in practice, society often will remind biracial people like Jones of their Blackness, “in a million subtle ways,” he says in the documentary.

As the hour unfolds, O’Brien follows Jones, and her best friend and fellow high school student Becca Khalil, as they take part in a spoken word workshop led by the Philadelphia-based poet, Perry “Vision” DiVirgilio.
 
Vision, who is biracial, says he never felt quite White or Black enough to fit in with friends who had parents of one race.  Vision identifies as Black, and says that identity is more than skin – that identity encompasses experiences and struggles.  Through his workshop, he encourages young people to think, talk, and write about identity, as well as the concept of colorism, which he blames for his early struggles with self-esteem and identity.
 
“Colorism is a system in which light skin is more valued than dark skin,” says Drexel University’s assistant teaching professor for Africana studies, Yaba Blay.  Blay tells O’Brien that, as a young African-American woman growing up in New Orleans, she felt discriminated against – often by lighter skinned African Americans – due to her dark skin tone.
 
Blay’s work focuses on how prejudice related to skin tone can confuse and negatively impact identity and self esteem.  She aims to help others also develop positive images of cultural identity – for African Americans of all shades.
 
Often complicating concepts of identity beyond multiracial heritage is skin tone.  Khalil, who has light-colored skin and two parents who are Egyptian in origin, identifies herself as African American.  She feels contemporaries dismiss her African American identity due to her light skin tone.  She says in the documentary that she wishes she had darker skin.
 
Writer, producer, and image activist, Michaela Angela Davis says she accepts that race is a social construct, but she feels it is important for people to name and claim their own racial identity: “You are who you say that you are,” she says in the documentary…

Read the entire press release here.

“Free Negroes” and “Mulattoes” of Gloucester County and the Tidewater Area of Virginia Prior to 1800

Renegade South: histories of unconventional southerners
2013-08-01

The following guest essay by Wayne K. Driver expands upon my own research on the Morris Family of Gloucester County, Virginia.

Vikki Bynum, Moderator

By Wayne K. Driver

Throughout my years of researching my family from Gloucester County and the Tidewater Area of Virginia, I have noted that several families, including my own, were listed as “free Negroes” or “mulattoes” prior to 1800. This discovery ignited my interest; I wanted to know more about these families and how they fit into a society in which most people of African descent were slaves and where those of European descent dominated. I wondered if these free people of color had any rights, if they owned property or had the freedom to move about without being harassed.  Since my focus was on the years prior to 1800, I also wondered how they felt about the Revolutionary War.  Which side did they support? Which side promised a better future for them?

Families with the names ALLMOND/ALLMAN, BLUFORD, DRIVER, FREEMAN, GOWEN/ GOING, HEARN, KING, LEMON, MEGGS, MONOGGIN, and MORRIS are identified in various documents as living free from slavery.  “Free” did not necessarily mean, however, that they were as free as those of full European ancestry.  These “free” people did not have slave masters, but they did have limitations place upon them and hardships that would not be understood by my generation.

The above families of color, as well as others not cited in this essay, contributed to America by serving in wars, participating in religious movements, and working in many trades. At the same time, they strove for greater freedom of access to education, property ownership, and social equality.  Too often, these pioneers are forgotten in the history books; rarely are they recognized for their work in shaping the counties in which they lived.  When I drive through Gloucester, to my knowledge there is no physical memorial that bears witness to their service in the Revolutionary War, or their contributions to their communities.  I can find all types of negative propaganda concerning “free Negroes,” such as recommendations for their forced removal from the county, or punishment for not paying taxes. My hope is that someday the leaders of these communities will recognize free families of color and teach generations to come about their positive contributions…

Read the entire article here.

Caballeros and Indians: Mexican American Whiteness, Hegemonic Mestizaje, and Ambivalent Indigeneity in Proto-Chicana/o Autobiographical Discourse, 1858–2008

MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States
Volume 38, Issue 1 (March 2013)
pages 30-49
DOI: 10.1093/melus/mls010

B. V. Olguín, Associate Professor of English
University of Texas, San Antonio

In the spirit of a new people that is conscious not only of its proud historical heritage but also of the brutal gringo invasion of our territories, we, the Chicano inhabitants and civilizers of the northern land of Aztlán from whence came our forefathers, reclaiming the land of their birth and consecrating the determination of our people of the sun, declare that the call of our blood is our power, our responsibility, and our inevitable destiny.
—Alurista

I got up close with one of the enemy and after having pulled out lots of arrows he shot into me, I was able to fire a shot into his back, straight through from one side to the other. The Indian fell face down. Upon seeing this, Comelso Hernandez, who was close to me, ran towards the Indian saying “Now I’ll take away your fire!,” but since he was close, the Indian arose suddenly, fired an arrow shot hitting him below the Adam’s Apple, and going all the way through, the arrow stuck—the Indian, who perhaps had used his last bit of energy in this attack, fell dead, on his back—Hernandez, so terribly wounded as he was, dragged himself towards the corpse, took out a battle knife he carried and tried to stick it through his ribs, but it broke—Regardless, with the piece that remained he was able to make a big wound, and at the same time he was cutting towards the heart with his piece of knife, he said, as if the cadaver could hear: “I forgive you brother; I forgive you brother.”
—Juan Bernal (16-17)

The evening a diminutive twenty-two-year-old dark brown man with black hair and goatee read “El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán” at the National Chicano Liberation Youth Conference in Denver on March 30, 1969 (excerpted as  the first epigraph), Chicana/o indigeneity was transformed into a central trope in Chicana/o literature, historiography, and related social movements. The reader, Alberto Baltazar Urista Heredia—who took the penname Alurista—would become renowned for his Nahuatl glosses, white cotton frock, and calf-length pants characteristic of indigenous dress in southern Mexico. Such neo-indigenous performances became commonplace in the 1960s and 1970s cultural nationalist spectacles that punctuated the political mobilizations collectively known as the Chicano Movement. One half-century after Alurista’s performance and the subsequent reification of Chicana/o indigeneity in a multiplicity…

Read or purchase the article here.

The Meanings of “Race” in the New Genomics: Implications for Health Disparities Research

Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law, and Ethics
Volume 1, Issue 1 (2001)
pages 33-76

Sandra Soo-Jin Lee, Senior Research Scholar
Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics
Stanford University

Joanna Mountain, Assistant Professor of Anthropological Genetics
Stanford University

Barbara A. Koenig, Professor of Biomedical Ethics and of Medicine at the College of Medicine, Mayo Clinic;
Affiliate Faculty of the Center for Bioethics, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis;
Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics, Stanford University

Eliminating the well-documented health disparities found within the United States population is a laudable public policy goal. Social justice demands that we understand the sources of health inequality in order to eliminate them. A central dilemma is: To what extent are health disparities the result of unequal distribution of resources, and thus a consequence of varied socioeconomic status (or blatant racism), and to what extent are inequities in health status the result of inherent characteristics of individuals defined as ethnically or racially different? How we conceptualize and talk about race when we ask these questions has profound moral consequences. Prior to the Human Genome Project (HGP), scientific efforts to understand the nature of biological differences were unsophisticated. The new technologies for genomic analysis will likely transform our thinking about human disease and difference, offering the promise of in-depth studies of disease incidence and its variations across human populations. In her opening remarks at a meeting of the President’s Cancer Panel, which focused on health disparities in cancer treatment in the United States, Dr. Karen Antman noted that racial differences in cancer rates have been reported for decades, “but for the first time, science now has the opportunity to quantify such differences genetically.” Will the light refracted through the prism of genomic knowledge illuminate straightforward explanations of disease etiology, offering simple solutions to health inequalities? Or are there consequences, currently hidden in the shadows, that require our attention?

The challenge is then to analyze the causes of racism while avoiding the implication that race exists.
-Steven Miles, 1993

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” 1841

Eliminating the well-documented health disparities found within the United States population is a laudable public policy goal. Social justice demands that we understand the sources of health inequality in order to eliminate them. A central dilemma is: To what extent are health disparities the result of unequal distribution of resources, and thus a consequence of varied socioeconomic status (or blatant racism), and to what extent are inequities in health status the result of inherent characteristics of individuals defined as ethnically or racially different? How we conceptualize and talk about race when we ask these questions has profound moral consequences.

Prior to the Human Genome Project (HGP), scientific efforts to understand the nature of biological differences were unsophisticated. The new technologies for genomic analysis will likely transform our thinking about human disease and difference, offering the promise of in-depth studies of disease incidence and its variations across human populations. In her opening remarks at a meeting of the President’s Cancer Panel, which focused on health disparities in cancer treatment in the United States, Dr. Karen Antman noted that racial differences in cancer rates have been reported for decades, “but for the first time, science now has the opportunity to quantify such differences genetically.” Will the light refracted through the prism of genomic knowledge illuminate straightforward explanations of disease etiology, offering simple solutions to health inequalities? Or are there consequences, currently hidden in the shadows, that require our attention?…

…Increasing ability to detect genetic mutations linked to disease susceptibility has not been paralleled by therapeutic discoveries. This disjuncture has contributed to the conflict about population-based testing and disagreement about the calculus of the largely unknown risks and benefits to individuals and populations. Knowing one has a BRCA mutation does not mean that one will ultimately develop cancer. Individuals must interpret complex, uncertain information to make sense of their cancer risk, and are often confused as to how to make sense of genetic information. The additional burden of contemplating the ramifications of targeted testing of their community, including the possibility of categorical discrimination and prejudice, is a daunting challenge. The mutations found most commonly among those of Ashkenazi ancestry were identified by chance. Blood stored for other purposes, notably screening for Tay Sachs, a heritable disease, was available for research. Other mutations in the BRCA-1 and BRCA-2 genes are specific to certain groups, generally isolated populations such as those in Iceland or Finland. How will knowledge that common diseases are associated with socially identifiable populations affect the treatment of those individuals? But more importantly, how will an increasingly sophisticated knowledge of molecular genetics affect our understanding of the nature of “difference” among human groups?…

…In this paper we provide a strong critique of the continued use of race as a legitimate scientific variable. We offer an historical analysis of how the concept of race has changed in the United States and discuss the reification of race in health research. We discuss how genetic technology has been deployed in “proving” racial identity, and describe the consequences of locating human identity in the genes. The implications of the continued use of race in the new genomic medicine—in particular the creation of racialized diseases—is highlighted. We warn about the consequences of a shift toward population-based care, including targeted genetic screening for racially identified “at-risk” groups, including the potential for stigmatization and discrimination. A less commonly identified hazard is the epistemological turn towards genetic reductionism. We suggest that the application of a naive genetic determinism will not only reinforce the idea that discrete human races exist, but will divert attention from the complex environmental, behavioral, and social factors contributing to an excess burden of illness among certain segments of the diverse U.S. population. The intersection of the genomics revolution with the health disparities initiative should serve as a catalyst to a long overdue public policy debate about the appropriate use of the race concept in
biomedical research and clinical practice…

Read the entire article here.

Seeing Opportunity In A Question: ‘Where Are You Really From?’

Morning Edition
National Public Radio
2013-11-11

Renee Montagne, Host

Steve Inskeep, Host

Michele Norris, Host/Special Correspondent

NPR continues a series of conversations about The Race Card Project, where thousands of people have submitted their thoughts on race and cultural identity in six words. Every so often NPR Host/Special Correspondent Michele Norris will dip into those six-word stories to explore issues surrounding race and cultural identity for Morning Edition.

“Where are you from?”

“No, really, where are you from?”

Those questions about identity and appearance come up again and again in submissions to The Race Card Project. In some cases, Norris tells Morning Edition‘s Steve Inskeep, people say it feels accusatory — like, ‘Do you really belong?’

It’s also a question that Alex Sugiura, because of his racially ambiguous appearance, can’t seem to escape.

Sugiura, 27, is the child of a first-generation Japanese immigrant father and a Jewish mother of Eastern European descent. Sugiura’s brother Max looks more identifiably Asian, but when people meet Alex, they’re often not satisfied to hear that he’s from Brooklyn…

Read the article here. Listen to the story here. Download the audio here. Read the transcript here.

Many Black New Yorkers Are Seeing de Blasio’s Victory as Their Own

The New York Times
2013-11-10

Michael M. Grynbaum

Reporting was contributed by Michael Barbaro, Kia Gregory, Winnie Hu, Sarah Maslin Nir, Julie Turkewitz and Vivian Yee.

A black janitor in Brooklyn almost shouted out the name when asked about his vote in the mayoral race. Bill de Blasio, he said, “knows my struggle.”

In the Bronx, some African-American voters defaulted to a shorthand: “the man with the black wife.” Nobody thought it necessary to explain whom they meant.

And in a Brooklyn housing project, a lifelong resident said he was tired of mayors who, in his mind, had pitted blacks against whites. Mr. de Blasio, he declared, “is black and white.”

Of all the records shattered by Mr. de Blasio’s landslide victory, perhaps the most remarkable is that virtually every vote cast by black New Yorkers — 96 percent — went his way. He captured a bigger portion of the black vote than David N. Dinkins in 1989 when he was elected New York City’s first black mayor with 91 percent of the black vote, according to exit polls.

After the divisive tenor of the Giuliani years, and the deep grievances engendered by the stop-and-frisk police tactics of the Bloomberg era, black New Yorkers are now claiming Mr. de Blasio’s victory as their own. In postelection interviews, dozens of black New Yorkers said that Mr. de Blasio’s personal touch, his biracial family and his pledge to help the working-class and poor had affected them deeply. His victory, they said, was a chance to gain a voice in City Hall after two decades of leadership they viewed as inattentive, distant and, at times, even callous…

Read the entire article here.