Mixed Race Studies

The social position of multiracial groups in the United States: evidence from residential segregation

Ethnic and Racial Studies
Volume 34, Issue 4 (April 2011)
pages 707-729
DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2010.527355

Pamela R. Bennett, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Johns Hopkins University

I use multiple perspectives on the racial order in the United States to generate hypotheses about the social position of mixed-race groups. Perspectives that view the racial order as binary, ternary with an undifferentiated middle, or ternary with a stratified middle present different expectations for the social position of multiracial groups. I use a group’s level of residential segregation as an index of social position. In 2000, multiracial persons lived in neighbourhoods that were more white than the neighbourhoods of single-race minorities, though more diverse than the neighbourhoods of whites. Thus, multiracial groups appear to occupy an intermediate social position relative to blacks and whites, a finding that supports contemporary arguments about shifting colour-lines in the United States and the emergence of a triracial system of stratification. Yet, findings also suggest that the social space between blacks and whites is, itself, racially stratified.

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Finding, and correcting, my mistakes

Sociology
Volume 39, Number 3 (July 2005)
pages 483–499
DOI: 10.1177/0038038505052488

Michael Banton, Emeritus Professor of Sociology
Univeristy of Bristol

Mistakes are inherent in the process of research but can illuminate it. Some of the author’s mistakes have been false assumptions shared with others of his generation. His early work lacked a sufficiently sharp focus for him to be able to make any interesting mistakes. In 1967 he claimed that race was used as a role sign when he should have claimed that phenotypical differences were so used. He tended to take race as a synonym for colour, and failed to appreciate that a social construct could not be a basis for a general theory. His subsequent attempts to correct these mistakes are outlined.

Sir Karl Popper, one of my teachers, taught that we should learn from our mistakes, indeed ‘that all our knowledge grows only through the correcting of our mistakes’ (1969: ix; see also Agassi, 1968). In line with this doctrine, I have looked for the mistakes that I have made in the study of ethnic and racial relations, and what I have done to correct them. The exercise has strengthened my belief that Popper’s claim was either a pardonable exaggeration or depended on a restrictive conception of what constitutes knowledge. For in social science much can be learned from a data-gathering inquiry, like a social survey or a population census, or from attending a lecture. In the accumulation of new knowledge there are two phases. The first is inductive in character, gathering and sorting observations. The second phase, in which hypotheses about causal relations are put to the test, relies on deductive reasoning. Popper’s doctrine applies best in the second phase.

Much research in contemporary social science is entangled in the transition from the first to the second phase. Not all inquiry makes this move. Information collected for the purposes of public policy, like a population census, may remain descriptive. When, however, the research worker perceives in the information an intellectual problem, something requiring explanation, there is an impulse to deductive reasoning.

Another of my teachers, Sir Raymond Firth, told me that Malinowski, his teacher, used to insist that ‘without problems there are no facts’. Only when a scholar has decided on the problem can he or she decide which facts are or could be relevant. ‘Science begins with problems, practical problems or theoretical problems’, wrote Popper (1994a: 95–101). Yet the perception of a problem is no simple matter. The German expression Problemstellung is useful as denoting the recognition that something constitutes an intellectual problem; this recognition should include a formulation of the problem in such a way that it can be addressed, for, as others have said, a problem well stated is a problem half solved. Some of my mistakes have been false assumptions that I have shared with others of my generation, errors that can be identified only in retrospect. In trying to correct them I have learned things that, for me, constituted personal discoveries. Many of these were steps on the way towards the identification of causal relationships and the prospect that, one day, it may be possible to subject them to empirical testing…

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“Abominable Mixture”: Toward the Repudiation of Anglo-Indian Intermarriage in Seventeenth-Century Virginia

The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography
Volume 95, Number 2 (April, 1987)
pages 157-192

David D. Smits, Professor of History
The College of New Jersey

Students of Amerindian-white relations have long ascribed to the English colonists an aversion to race mixing, especially through intermarriage, with the North American natives. To be sure, it is recognized that there was some Indian-white interbreeding, and even marriage, on all Anglo-American frontiers, but proportionately less than in Franco- and Hispanic-America. Virginia’s well-known marriage of John Rolfe to Pocahontas did not establish a widely imitated precedent for Anglo-Indian matrimony in the colony. A 1691 Virginia law prohibiting Anglo-Indian marriage and informal sexual unions surely indicates that they occurred; with a few notable exceptions, however, the Englishman who took a native wife, concubine, or mistress violated the colony’s mores…

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The Melungeons: A Mixed-Blood Strain of the Southern Appalachians

Geographical Review
Volume 41, Number 2 (April, 1951)
pages 256-271

Edward T. Price, Professor Emeritus of Geography
University of Oregon

In the native vocabulary of East Tennessee and adjacent parts of neighboring states the word “Melungeon” is widely used. To some people it is only a general derogatory term to be bestowed on anyone who momentarily arouses their antagonism. Middle Tenneseeans are said to have applied it to their former East Tennessee enemies in the bitter period after the Civil War. And at times the Melungeons have had to fill the place of the bogeyman in holding children in the straight and narrow path “The Melungeons will get you!”‘

The persistent folk tale, however, insists that the Melungeons are unusual racially; it identifies them as a dark-skinned mixed-blood group of uncertain origin whose center is on Newman’s Ridge in Hancock County (Fig. 1). An Oriental appearance is occasionally attributed to them, but they are most commonly thought to be at least partly of Portuguese descent. The peculiarity of the mixture, however, is its supposed inability to blend color in crosses with whites: the Melungeon appearance may be lost for a generation or two, only to show up again in full strength. Relatively few people know the Melungeons as a group; more have seen individuals. But the elements of the legend are widely known, even to those who may not seriously entertain the possibility of its reality.

Newman’s Ridge and the adjacent Blackwater Valley are said to have been settled by the Melungeons before the wave of white settlers from the eastern states reached the area;3 it is suggested that they stemmed from sailors shipwrecked on the Carolina coast.

The Melungeons are said to have been disfranchised by the restrictions placed on free persons of color in the Tennessee Constitution of 1834…

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The Vertical and Horizontal Dimensions of the Word Race

Ethnicities
Volume 10, Number 1 (March 2010)
pages 127-140
DOI: 10.1177/1468796809354529

Michael Banton, Emeritus Professor of Sociology
Univeristy of Bristol

The word race has been used both to classify humans and to account for differences between those assigned to the resulting classes or taxa. The two dimensions (horizontal and vertical) are inherent in the conception of race. Initially, the word was used in ways that gave more expression to the sense of descent embodied in the vertical dimension. Since the early 19th century, the word has been used in ways that express the sense of classification reflected in the horizontal dimension. Some histories of thought about human origins and divisions have assumed, wrongly, that a ‘scientific concept of race’ was at some time established within anthropology.

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Navigating the Racial Terrain: Blackness and Mixedness in the United States and the Dominican Republic

Transforming Anthropology
Volume 16, Issue 2 (October 2008)
pages 95–111
DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-7466.2008.00019.x

Kimberly Eison Simmons, Associate Professor Anthropology & African American Studies
University of South Carolina

In this article, I draw on the experiences of students who participated in the Council on International Educational Exchange (CIEE) Program in Spanish Language and Caribbean Studies, in Santiago, Dominican Republic, from 2000 to 2004, to situate the seemingly conflicting racial projects of the Dominican Republic and the United States. I discuss how, for African Americans and Dominicans, the question of race is actually very similar when it becomes a question of color as Blackness and mixedness are situated processes that encompass ideas of ancestry as well as phenotypic expression in both countries. I argue that racial discourses, and the politics surrounding race and color, for Dominicans in the United States, and African Americans in the Dominican Republic, is very similar because of historical colorization—which I define as intragroup racial and color-naming practices. I suggest that growing interactions between African Americans and Afro-Dominicans, and a growing understanding of race and the racial systems in both the United States and the Dominican Republic, contribute to how identities are being reconstructed. Particularly, African Americans in the Dominican Republic and Dominicans in the United States encounter a racial dilemma—how one is racially defined within a new national context as categories are often based on the state’s own definitions, series of laws, and informal ways of classifying people based on skin color.

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Census Bureau Reports Final 2010 Census Data for the United States

United States Census Bureau
Census 2010
2011-03-24

The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that 2010 Census population totals and demographic characteristics have been released for communities in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. These data have provided the first look at population counts for small areas and race, Hispanic origin, voting age and housing unit data released from the 2010 Census. With the release of data for all the states, national-level counts of these characteristics are now available.

For each state, the Census Bureau will provide summaries of population totals, as well as data on race, Hispanic origin and voting age for multiple geographies within the state, such as census blocks, tracts, voting districts, cities, counties and school districts.

According to Public Law 94-171, the Census Bureau must provide redistricting data to the 50 states no later than April 1 of the year following the census. As a result, the Census Bureau is delivering the data state-by-state on a flow basis. All states will receive their data by April 1, 2011.

Highlights by Steven F. Riley

• The United States population (for apportionment purposes)  is 308,745,538. This represents a 9.71% increase over 2000.
• The U.S. population including Puerto Rico is 312,471,327.  This represents a 9.55% increase over 2000.
• The number of repondents (excluding Puerto Rico) checking two or more races (TOMR) is 9,009,073 or 2.92% of the population. This represents a 31.98% increase over 2000.
• The number of repondents (including Puerto Rico) checking TOMR is 9,026,389 or 2.89% of the population.  This represents a 29.23% increase over 2000.
• Hawaii has the highest TOMR response rate at 23.57%, followed by Alaska (7.30%), Oklahoma (5.90%) and California (4.87%).
• California has the highest TOMR population at 1,815,384, followed by Texas (679,001), New York (585,849), and Florida (472,577).
• Mississppi has the lowest TOMR response rate at 1.15%, followed by West Virginia (1.46%),  Alabama (1.49%) and Maine (1.58%).
• Vermont has the lowest TOMR population at 10,753, followed by North Dakota (11,853), Wyoming (12,361) and South Dakota (17,283).
• South Carolina has the highest increase in the TOMR response rate at 100.09%, followed by North Carolina (99.69%), Delaware (83.03%) and Georgia (81.71%).
• New Jersey has the lowest increase in the TOMR response rate at 12.42%, followed by California (12.92%), New Mexico (16.11%), and Massachusetts (17.81%).
• Puerto Rico has a 22.83% decrease in the TOMR response rate and New York has a 0.73% decrease in the TOMR response race.  No other states or territories reported decreases.

Tables compiled by Steven F. Riley. Source: United States Census Bureau

Tables compiled by Steven F. Riley.  Source: United States Census Bureau

President Underscores Similarities With Brazilians, but Ignores One

The New York Times
2011-03-20

Alexei Barrionuevo

Jackie Calmes

RIO de JANEIRO — From a visit to this city’s most infamous slum to a national address amid the gilded elegance of a celebrated theater, President Obama on Sunday sought to underscore the shared histories and futures of the United States and Brazil, reaching out to the people of one of the most racially diverse countries in the Americas.

But Mr. Obama, on the second day of a five-day tour of Latin America, once again seemed to sidestep mentioning his own racial background in appearances here, even as Brazilians who gathered at a plaza trying to catch a glimpse of him said that he had inspired millions in this country because of his African heritage.

“Because he knows the reality of discrimination against blacks, it would be very important for him to pass on the message that it is possible to get somewhere, to be someone, in spite of all the difficulties,” said Célio Frias, a 46-year-old businessman. “He is an inspiration.”…

…But Brazilians see the issue differently. Brazil was the last country in the Western world to abolish slavery, having done it in 1888. Yet unlike the United States, Brazil never passed Jim Crow segregation laws, and despite the persistence of racism here, many Brazilians take pride in having intermarried more than whites and blacks in the United States.

In the months leading up to his election, Mr. Obama’s popularity soared in Brazil with a wide cross-section of Brazilians. Many proclaimed that Mr. Obama’s gregarious personality made him seem like a Brazilian masquerading as an American, even as many Americans see him as too cool and detached.

“I was moved by his election, I followed everything, saved magazines, newspapers, everything that came out about him,” said Maria Helena Reis, 62, a nurse. “He gives a lot of pride to blacks.”

Opinion polls in the region show that Mr. Obama’s election has also improved Latin American countries’ opinion of the United States as a whole. Among Brazilians, those with a favorable view increased by 16 percentage points from 57 percent in 2008 to 73 percent in 2009, according to Latinobarometro, a polling company in Santiago, Chile. The increase was higher among blacks and those of mixed race surveyed than among whites.

Mr. Obama’s activities on Sunday in Rio—first, his visit to the sprawling City of God favela, or slum, made famous the world over in the 2002 movie that bears its name, followed by a televised speech to a large audience at a historic theater—illustrated the White House’s efforts to take advantage of the president’s unique appeal to the broad and heavily mixed-race Brazilian public…

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Census serves up racial buffet in Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley Mercury News
2011-03-20

Joe Rodriguez

Who are you? What are you?

Sara Phillips, a 20-year-old computer science student from Hawaii at Santa Clara University, just may have the new look of the 21st century. When her 2010 Census form arrived last year, she gazed at the variety of ethnic and racial boxes available to her and selected four: Spanish and Filipino, same as her mother; and Japanese and white from her father’s lineage.

“I always mark as many as I can,” she said.

Choosing from this racial buffet made her one of about 87,300 people living in Santa Clara County who claimed more than one race, according to the latest results released by the U.S. Census Bureau. That’s an increase of about 9,000 from the past decade…

…Advocates, including the Berkeley-based Association of Multi Ethnic Americans, started lobbying for the distinction in the late 1960s, arguing in part that the blending of races eventually would transcend racial divisions. Curiously, some odd bedfellows opposed them.

On one side, cultural conservatives said another racial category would Balkanize America and stifle the dream of a colorblind society. On the other, traditional black, Asian and Native American groups feared the new category would dilute their numbers and political clout.

For better or worse, the mixed-race genie is out of the bottle, said professor Matthew Snipp, a sociologist who heads the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University.

“It’s going to continue to grow, and how fast is anybody’s guess,” he said. At the same time, “It’s still a relatively small part of the population.”

Although he has some Irish blood, Snipp is Native American and marked only that box on his own census form. He said the key issues in the mixed-race question still are alive and meaty.

For example, he said, federal anti-discrimination laws name and protect traditional minority groups, but not multiracial people. The Census Bureau is the only agency that collects such information. When a federal health agency wants to know which racial populations need attention and where, Census Bureau computers assign mixed-race people to one of the traditional racial groups and hands the recoded counts to the agencies.

“The bigger issue is that we still have laws in place to combat discrimination that still exists,” he said…

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Fear and Desire: Regional Aesthetics and Colonial Desire in Kate Chopin’s Portrayals of the Tragic Mulatta Stereotype

The Southern Literary Journal
Volume 43, Number 1 (Fall 2010)
pages 1-22
E-ISSN: 1534-1461 Print ISSN: 0038-4291

Dagmar Pegues

The interrogation of the category of race in Kate Chopin’s fiction represents an essential dimension of regional aesthetics, and it offers an alternative view to previous interpretations that focus primarily on feminist themes. This article examines the role of Louisiana as a specific region in the construction of the tragic mulatta stereotype in the fiction of Kate Chopin, primarily in her stories “Désirée’s Baby” and “La Belle Zoraïde,” and by analogy in her most successful novel The Awakening. I propose to extricate Chopin’s work from the virgin/whore dichotomy so often applied to white and non-white characters respectively. From a new perspective, an illumination of the portrayals of the tragic mulatta figure in Chopin’s texts invites a reconsideration of the stereotype of the tragic mulatta that typically oscillates between evocations of the exotic and the sentimental. Attempting to reclaim the category of race in regionalist fiction by examining the tragic mulatta stereotype in the selected texts, I see parallels between this pervasive image of southern local color fiction and the post-colonial paradigm, i.e. the dichotomy of the colonizer versus the colonized as it is suggested by Frantz Fanon in Black Skin, White Masks as well as the notion of stereotype as a form of normalizing, yet contradictory, judgment in Homi K. Bhabha’s The Location of Culture. From this perspective, the trope of the tragic mulatta appropriated by Chopin in her fiction represents an essential point of concurrence of the issues of gender, race, and region, and it points to the underlying racial anxiety manifested by the existence of ambivalent feelings of fear and desire toward the racial Other. Consequently, the internalization of colonial commodification of the racially Other can be interpreted as the true tragic element in the…

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