Mixed Race Studies

You Don’t Know Me: Picture Books to Make Biracial and Multiracial Children Comfortable with Dual Identities

Multicultural Review
Volume 18, Issue 4 (Winter 2009)
pages 20-24

Kena Sosa

Next year, in 2010, our country will be due for round two of the census containing an option for biracial or multiracial people. This feature debuted in the 2000 census cycle, when for the first time in U.S. history, people had the chance to choose their racial description as they pleased, and to include their multiple backgrounds. At that time, 6,826,228 Americans were recognized as being of more than one race, 2.4 percent of the counted population. This number may be fairly accurate or slightly deceiving. Although many people were pleased to determine the categorization of their own heritage, others preferred to claim only the blood to which they felt most closely connected. As Americans, we appreciate our right to choose.

Now that we have a multiracial president for the first time in our history, will the results of the 2010 census show a sudden surge in those taking pride in being biracial? Will Barack Obama’s enthusiasm for inclusion and his exploration of his own roots encourage others to take a more introspective look at themselves and proclaim themselves as both halves of the whole of their parents as they were born?…

Read the entire article here.

Stories of Multiracial Experiences in Literature for Children, Ages 9–14

Children’s Literature in Education
December 2013, Volume 44, Issue 4
pages 359-376
DOI: 10.1007/s10583-013-9196-5

Amina Chaudhri, Assistant Professor of Teacher Education
Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago

William H. Teale, Professor of Literacy, Language and Culture
University of Illinois, Chicago

This study analyzed 90 realistic novels written and published in the United States between the years 2000 and 2010 and featuring mixed race characters. The researchers examined specific textual features of these works of contemporary and historical fiction and employed Critical Race Theory to contextualize the books within paradigms about multiracial identity. Findings indicated three broad trends in representations of mixed race identity with an almost equal number of novels falling among three descriptive categories. Books in the Mixed Race In/Visibility category depicted stereotypical experiences and provided little or no opportunity for critique of racism. Mixed Race Blending books featured characters whose mixed race identity was descriptive but not functional in their lives. Mixed Race Awareness books represented a range of possible life experiences for biracial characters who responded to social discomfort about their racial identity in complex and credible ways. This study has implications for research and pedagogy in the fields of education and children’s literature as they expand to become more inclusive of this type of diversity.

Introduction

There has long been, and continues to be, debate about what literature “is” and the roles it plays in people’s lives (Garber, 2011; Kant, 1892): Does it serve social ends? Moral ends? Is it fundamentally an aesthetic experience? But no matter what one’s beliefs about literature’s purposes, theory and research in children’s literature make one thing clear: literature can serve as a tool for growth, a significant factor in children’s identity formation (Gee, 2001; Heath, 2011). Thus, the content of what is available for children to read and what teachers select for use in their classrooms can influence the direction of children’s growth.

Over the past two decades in the United States, as issues of multiculturalism and civil and human rights have become more prominent on the cultural landscape, identity-based movements have received increasing attention. One issue in this realm that is currently taking on increased significance is mixed race/multiracial identity. In the 1990s, pressure from groups such as Project RACE and The Association for MultiEthnic Americans forced Congress to urge a change in the U.S. Census standards. Accordingly, the 2000 Census allowed Americans to “mark one or more” racial categories, and 6.8 million people identified as multiracial. In 2010 that number increased to 9 million. These figures suggest a significant shift in the ways Americans view themselves racially.

Parallel to the ways that feminist, civil rights, and LGBTQ movements have impacted the creation of various bodies of literature, the multiracial movement can be viewed as influencing the work being published as children’s literature. Whether young readers are actively seeking racial affirmation or looking for insights into others not like themselves, representation in bcx)ks can explicitly or subliminally influence understanding of racial identity. Accordingly, we examined all the children’s books we were able to identify using various processes (described below) featuring multiracial characters that were deemed appropriate for 9-14 year-olds and were published between 2000 and 2010 in order to get a sense of what young readers might understand about multiracial identity as imagined by the authors of these works.

Stones of Multiracial Experiences

Novels featuring mixed race characters are generally folded into the larger category of multicultural literature and frequently are classified according to the non-white element in the story. In some respects, in the U.S. context, creators are ahead of researchers in addressing the role of mixed race for readers in the 9-14 age group. Authors such as Jacqueline Woodson, Mildred Taylor, Jamie Adoff, Sharon Flake, and Richard Peck, for example, have been including characters of mixed racial heritage and addressing this heritage as a central feature of their stories.

In general, the hotly of research in multicultural literature makes only sporadic or tangential mention of mixed race issues. Yokota and Frost (2002/2003), Smith (2001a), Sands-O’Connor (2001), and Reynolds (2009) have written specifically about multiracial characters in literature, but this work has not comprehensively examined novels written for the intermediate/middle school student. The relative lack…

When should medicine talk about race?

Scientific American
Unofficial Prognosis: Perceptions and prescriptions of a medical student
2012-08-25

Ilana Yurkiewicz
Harvard Medical School

Race is everywhere in medicine. Most health statistics are broken down by race. We routinely characterize diseases by which populations they affect more and less and medications by which ethnicities respond better or worse.
 
It’s so ubiquitous that it’s easy to take for granted as justified. But the use of race in medicine is a subject that is vigorously debated. Whenever a new study comes out stratifying results by race, there are inevitably supporters and critics.
 
The question under debate: is there a place for race in medicine?

There’s a growing number who say we should toss this way of thinking entirely. Many scholars now contend that race is closer to a social construct than a biological category, and there’s the legitimate fear that pointing out differences between races sends the message that the difference is biological. Even if there are certain genetic differences among populations, we know that self-reported race is at best a crude proxy for indicating them. Moreover, studies often do not adjust for all other variables besides genetics, such as socioeconomic status, culture, and discrimination – meaning if differences are shown, the knee-jerk tendency to think biology might overshadow important environmental disparities that deserve our attention. There are social concerns too, in that historically ethnicity in research has been abused by pseudoscientists with racist agendas of demonstrating the superiority of certain people over others. In light of that history, profound sensitivity toward using race as a variable in medicine is understandable and warranted…

…When comparing groups, we can draw the lines wherever we want. Telling of this point is that many studies that talk about race still only compare blacks to whites, ignoring all other groups along with cases of mixed ancestry…

Read the entire article here.

Bridging 1990 and 2000 census race data: Fractional assignment of multiracial populations

Population Research and Policy Review
Volume 20, Issue 6 (December 2001)
pages 513-533
DOI: 10.1023/A:1015666321798

James P. Allen, Emeritus Professor of Geography
California State University, Northridge

Eugene Turner, Professor of Geography
California State University, Northridge

In contrast to previous censuses, Census 2000 permitted individuals to mark more than one race. Because the new race tables include both single-race and mixed-race categories, measuring change during the 1990s requires some method of bridging between the two data sets.

To accomplish this bridging, we first identified biracial populations as of 1990 through the race and ancestry responses of individuals in the PUMS file. With race responses assumed to represent a person’s primary race identity, we then determined the percentage of each biracial group that preferred each race as the primary identity. The same percentages can be used to assign biracial persons from Census 2000 into single-race categories. We also provide fractional assignment percentages for selected states and for the larger specific nationality groups of mixed-race Asians.

Comparison of our 1990 estimates of the numbers in leading biracial groups with those reported in Census 2000 suggests that our fractional assignment values are reasonable for biracial groups other than those involving American Indians and Alaska Natives. For the latter biracial groups and for all groups representing three or more races, we recommend equal fractional assignment into the appropriate single-race categories.

Study Links Highly Segregated Counties and Lung Cancer Deaths in Blacks

The New York Times
2013-01-16

Sabrina Tavernise

African-Americans who live in highly segregated counties are considerably more likely to die from lung cancer than those in counties that are less segregated, a new study has found.

The study was the first to look at segregation as a factor in lung cancer mortality. Its authors said they could not fully explain why it worsens the odds of survival for African-Americans, but hypothesized that blacks in more segregated areas may be less likely to have health insurance or access to health care and specialty doctors. It is also possible that lower levels of education mean they are less likely to seek care early, when medical treatment could make a big difference. Racial bias in the health care system might also be a factor…

…Dr. David Chang, director of outcomes research at the University of California San Diego Department of Surgery, who wrote an accompanying editorial, said he hoped that the study would focus attention on the environmental factors involved in the stark disparities in health outcomes in the United States because they lend themselves to change through policy. Medical researchers tend to focus on factors like the genetics and the behaviors of individuals that are harder to change.

“We don’t need drugs or genetic explanations to fix a lot of the health care problems we have,” he said.

Read the entire article here.

We Need to Learn More About Our Colorful Past

The New York Times
2004-07-31

Maurice A. Barboza, Founder
Black Patriots Foundation

Gary B. Nash, Professor Emeritus of History
University of California, Los Angeles

Back in 1925, American society tended not to advise young white males about the consequences of intimacy with the black maid. Even if the 22-year-old Strom Thurmond considered himself a father, the standards of the time did not require him to give the daughter born of that intimacy any love, support or acceptance. He did, however, irretrievably give her his bloodline.

Essie Mae Washington-Williams, the offspring of Mr. Thurmond and his family’s black maid, 16-year-old Carrie Butler, recently announced that she intended to join the Daughters of the American Revolution based on her Thurmond bloodline. Reared apart from her father, Ms. Washington-Williams did not have the same privileges as Mr. Thurmond’s white children during his life, yet she is seeking the right to some of the privileges of her lineage.

She is not the first to do so. Ms. Washington-Williams said she was motivated by the battle of Lena Santos Ferguson to join a Washington chapter of the organization and by Ms. Ferguson’s quest to honor black soldiers. Ms. Ferguson’s grandmother, a black Virginia woman, had married a white man from Maine whose ancestor, Jonah Gay, was a patriot. In the 1980’s, Ms. Ferguson fought a four-year legal battle for full membership and to enter her local chapter. It wasn’t until the organization was faced with the potential loss of its tax-exempt status in Washington that she was permitted to join.

Perhaps more significantly, Ms. Ferguson demanded, and received, a settlement agreement that bars discrimination and requires the D.A.R. to identify every African-American soldier who served in the Revolutionary War. It was important to Ms. Ferguson that black women know of their ancestors’ contribution to the founding of this nation and that they embrace it…

…The settlement required the D.A.R. to do historical and genealogical research to find the names of black soldiers who fought in the Revolutionary War. Yet, while doing this research, the D.A.R. has failed to use census records and other historical documents that could help identify the races of soldiers. It has also used a narrow classification system for race, one that increases the potential for underreporting: the D.A.R. includes only men described in historical records as “black,” “Negro” or “mulatto,” on their lists of black soldiers. However, whites of the period used a far greater range of colors to describe African-Americans. They meticulously recorded color distinctions among slaves: labels like “brown,” “yellow,” and “copper” (among others) were used consistently in advertisements for the return of runaways. Excluding those “colored” patriots puts them off-limits to prospective black D.A.R. members who might otherwise make the connection.

Yielding to pressure, in 2001, the D.A.R. published “African-American and American Indian Patriots of the Revolutionary War.” The number of names grew to 2400 names from 1,656, including an additional 744 previously assumed to be “white.” But there are still many more African-American soldiers to be identified, and while it acknowledges a handful of “brown” soldiers as black, as well as many “yellow” ones, the D.A.R. still holds to a narrow definition of an African-American.

This may give a clue to the D.A.R.’s resistance: when confronted with 64 “brown” soldiers who could have sired members, the organization conceded that as many as 57 may be listed in its index of proven Revolutionary war soldiers (patriots whose descendants became D.A.R. members). Yet, for generations, descendants of “brown” patriots married “light” or “white” mates, thus increasing the chances that white society, including organizations like the D.A.R., would be a safe harbor for their offspring. When the lists are complete, many people whose families assimilated into white society and cloaked their African heritage may learn, for the first time, of their complicated ancestry…

Read the entire article here.

Peggy Pascoe’s What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America and the Use of Legal History to Police Social Boundaries

Michigan State Law Review
Volume 2011, Issue 1 (2011)
pages 255-261

Kristin Hass, Associate Professor of American Studies
University of Michigan

“‘Being black is not the only reason why some people have not been accepted . . . .’”

In 1980, Lena Santos Ferguson first sought membership in one of the thirty-nine D.C.-area chapters of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). After three years and a great deal of struggle, Santos Ferguson was begrudgingly granted a limited membership-at-large. This meant that she was not a voting member and did not belong to any local chapter—the center of DAR activity. Despite having the same well-documented genealogical documentation that granted her nephew easy entry to the Sons of the American Revolution, Santos Ferguson met fierce resistance from local and national DAR bodies.

A few years earlier, in 1977, Karen Farmer had, in theory, broken the racial barriers of the DAR when she became the first African American to be accepted for membership in the organization. But, Farmer’s acceptance in a Detroit chapter did not help Santos Ferguson. It probably hurt; together Farmer and Santos Ferguson may have looked like a trend.

In 1984, when the Washington Post ran a front-page story under the headline “Black Unable to Join Local DAR,” the organization’s president general, Sarah King, had a very revealing response to the problem of Lena Santos Ferguson’s membership. King said, “‘Being black is not the only reason why some people have not been accepted into chapters . . . . There are other reasons: divorce, spite, neighbors’ dislike. I would say being black is very [far] down the line.’” This, of course, does not deny that being black is a reason for blocking admission to the DAR; it just claims that it might not be the most pressing reason. For King, the distance between a reasonable request and Santos Ferguson’s attempt to join “the society” is indicated by her insistence that “‘[b]eing black is not the only reason.’” It is as if she was unable to understand that this statement still assumes that being black was reasonable grounds for barring someone from membership.

Certainly King did not deny that African Americans had served in the Revolutionary War. In fact, in the first Post story, she mentioned the Rhode Island Reds and told the reporter, “‘See if you can find me one . . . . We want them [blacks], but I do think the lines should have integrity and legitimate descent. I don’t think you can have it any other way.’” This language, of course, was highly charged. “‘Integrity and legitimate descent’” did not refer to high-quality genealogical research; instead, it referred to the antebellum legal mechanisms by which African Americans were denied the right to marry. Further, it evoked this legal history to continue at the end of the 20th century to deny African Americans access to the kind of full cultural citizenship that the DAR worked to police. In 1979, two years after Karen Farmer successfully joined the DAR, the society revised its application process to include an added requirement—proof of marriage going back each generation. In 1984, the DAR National Congress proposed going one step further by amending the bylaws to include the language that only “‘legitimate’” descendants were eligible for membership. This would have serious consequences for African Americans wanting to join.

The DAR’s interest in rules—and in this intense policing of the boundaries of its membership—was new. From its founding in 1890, at the start of the first great memory boom in the United States, until the 1940s, the greatest obstacle to membership was the invitation of two sponsors. The rules about establishing a paper trail for a direct (not a “‘legitimate’”) lineage were far looser. It is also worth noting that the DAR requirements for membership understand service in the Revolutionary War rather broadly. Its definition includes civil service, political service, and what the DAR calls patriotic service, which includes: “[m]embers of the Boston Tea Party”; “[d]efenders of forts and frontiers”; “[d]octors, nurses, and others rendering aid to the wounded (other than their immediate families)”; “[m]inisters who gave patriotic sermons and encouraged patriotic activity”; and among other things, “[f]urnishing a substitute for military service.” Under the 1984 rules, then, you could join the DAR because your relative sent a slave to fight in his place, but you could not join the DAR if you were a descendant of that slave because he would have been unable to be legally married and therefore unable to produce “‘legitimate’ descendents.”…

…The DAR’s insistence that all women worthy of membership in either society were the products of legally sanctioned marriages harkens back to a past in which sexual racial mixing, or amalgamation or miscegenation, was not only not a topic of polite conversation, but was also a subject of great anxiety, especially for white women invested in defining a national family in particular highly racialized terms—a past in which it was unthinkable for someone like Lena Santos Ferguson to ask for membership, a past in which shame was the only imaginable response to the kind of relationships that would lead a person like Santos Ferguson to think that she deserved to be recognized as part of the national family that the DAR helps to name and shape.

Of course, the DAR’s policies and logic did not go unnoticed in 1984. Both Santos Ferguson and the Council of the District of Columbia initiated legal action and the major newspapers followed the story. A reading of the response to the Santos Ferguson case in the Washington Post reveals both a clear indignation about the prejudice Santos Ferguson faced and an avoidance of the obvious lurking question of miscegenation. Only one op-ed piece in the Washington Post directly addressed this question. Historian Adele Logan Alexander writes, “What is ignored (by the DAR and in Washington Post articles as well) and seems almost impossible for white Americans to accept, discuss, or articulate, is miscegenation.” She continues, “[n]o, formal marriages between slaves were not permitted prior to the Civil War, but more important, marriage and even cohabitation between the races was forbidden by law in most states from colonial times. In many jurisdictions these bans remained in force until 1967.” For Alexander, what needs to be said is that:

No other people on earth display greater variation in skin color, facial structure or hair texture than we do, yet white America hesitates to admit why this is so. Certainly in our country’s early history some few black men sired children by white women, but more commonly we twentieth century black Americans are descended, somewhere along the line, from black women who were sexually coerced by white men.

Alexander is interested in this obvious, unspoken truth in the context of the DAR. She writes,

[t]he tough question then is not so much whether the DAR members accept the handful of black women who will join the organization and who, for the most part (other than skin color) will greatly resemble the present members in education and background . . . but rather how they will deal with these women whose presence must continually remind them of the illicit, coercive and often violent acts of their mutual forefathers to whose valiant patriotic deeds their organization is dedicated.

Peggy Pascoe’s brilliant 2009 What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation and the Making of Race in America offers a dense web of explanatory tools for understanding how laws about marriage have been mobilized to police the boundaries of not only marriage itself but of ideas about what constitutes full cultural citizenship and who should have access to it…

Read the entire article here.

African Americans Reflect on Obama 2nd Inauguration

Voice of America
2013-01-15

Chris Simkins

WASHINGTON — Americans from across the nation will converge on Washington, DC, next  Monday (January 21) for the second inauguration of President Barack Obama. The moment will be especially meaningful for millions of African Americans who will again witness history as the first African American President is sworn in for a second four-year term.

Some Delta Sigma Theta sorority sisters are celebrating the second inauguration of President Barack Obama.  Francine and Cynthia Blake from Ohio see great significance in the president’s second term.
 
“We have come a long way, a long way.  It just touches and warms my heart because for me I may not ever see another African American in office as high as he is,”said Francine.

“The great significance and importance about it is the fact that he needs to promote and protect the middle class, the middle working class,” added Cynthia.

These women are in Washington to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the sorority—which is the largest African-American women’s organization in the world.  The 260,000-member group, along with other black voters, helped propel President Obama to victory last November. 

Political Science teacher Vanessa Kidd-Thomas says the election result illustrates the power blacks have at the ballot box…

Read the entire article here.

“Am I Black? Hell Yeah!”

(1)ne Drop Project
Journal
2013-01-16

Billy Calloway

“You make sure to keep a bonnet on that boy’s head. We don’t need to tip off the sales agent that a Black family is moving in.”

This was the first story I remember being told to me by my dad. My father grew up in Roanoke, Virginia during 1930’s. He was brown skinned. He graduated from high school at the age of 15 and was accepted at the University of Virginia. On the day that he was to register for class he was told the ‘porter’s quarters were down the hall.’ When he produced his acceptance letter he was ushered off the Charlottesville campus. He returned with an up and coming attorney, Thurgood Marshall, who forcible told the school officials that his client would sue if he were not admitted. UVA, instead of fighting my dad, negotiated a deal with him that they would pay for him to go to any other school, just not theirs. My dad went to all Black Fisk University, graduating first in his class at the age of 19 and then went to Meharry Medical College where he graduated second in his class at the age of 23.

My mom was born in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1936. Her mom was a ‘light skin’ girl and her father was White. She’s what you call a ‘high yaller.’ Both of her parents died when she was very young and she was sent to live with ‘Nanna’ in New York. She was discovered by a talent scout who worked for John Johnson of Ebony and Jet magazine fame.  When the Ebony Fashion Fair toured the south it would be my mom who got off the bus to get food for the rest of girls and crew. She ‘passed.’  For my mom being so fair was not an advantage. She was resented by her ‘friends’ who were darker because they thought she went around ‘passing’ as White when in fact she didn’t and by Whites who called her ‘nigger lover’ because she lived in Harlem and associated with Blacks.

Am I Black? Hell yeah! I have light green eyes, when I had hair it was curly and blonde. My complexion is café au lait…

Read the entire article here.

I’m Not Black, I’m Hispanic!

Born Bicultural USA
2009-12-29

Alberto Padron

The first time I heard that statement coming out of a family member’s mouth, I was confused. In my mind, a violation of logic had occurred. After all, the person making this statement was blacker than the black hair on their head. I mean, this person is Black. Anyone with reasonable vision would agree. So what was meant by this apparently irrational statement made by an otherwise rational person?
 
I’ve concluded it’s a confusion of color (race) and culture (ethnicity). More specifically, an attempt to distance oneself from the term ‘black’ because of deeply seeded negative connotations associated with the word. This bothers me. The reasons for these unfair connotations will be discussed in a future blog entry.
 
So let’s address the basics. ‘Black’ refers to race. Culture refers to ethnicity. These terms often get confused. The moment we start hyphenating the term ‘Black,’ a clearer cultural picture begins to emerge…

Read the entire article here.