Mixed Race Studies

A New Look at an Old Notion: Lawrence Hirchfeld Discusses Race in Society

Michigan Today
University of Michigan
June 1996

John Woodford

Talk of race is everywhere and incessant in America, the din of discourse emanating from all ranks and stations, all age groups, all creeds, all parts of the political spectrum and all manner of news and cultural media.

Is race real or is it imagined? If it’s real, is it real in a biological sense, a social sense, or both? If imaginary, how did the idea arise?

Lawrence A. Hirschfeld, U-M associate professor of anthropology and psychology, tackles all of these questions in a book published this spring by the MIT Press: Race in the Making: Cognition, Culture and the Child’s Construction of Human Kinds. The book emerged from Hirschfeld’s studies in the United States and Europe of children’s thinking about race. It will interest not only anthropologists, psychologists, philosophers, historians, political scientists and social workers, but parents and teachers as well. Professor Hirschfeld discussed some of his conclusions with Michigan Today’s John Woodford.

MT: What is race?

LH: It is important to begin by talking about what race is not. Regardless of what our senses seem to tell us, race is not a biologically coherent story about human variation simply because the races we recognize and name are not biologically coherent populations. There is as much genetic variation within racial groups as there is between them. Now this does not mean that race is not real psychologically or sociologically. It is obvious that race is real in both these senses. People believe in races and they use this belief to organize important dimensions of social, economic, and political life. But this does not make race a real thing biologically…

Read the entire article here.

Continuous dynamics in the real-time perception of race

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
Volume 46, Issue 1 (January 2010)
pages 179–185
DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2009.10.002

Jonathan B. Freemam,  Assistant Professor of Psychological & Brain Sciences
Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire

Kristin Pauker, Assistant Professor of Psychology
University of Hawaii

Evan P. Apfelbaum
Kellog School of Management
Northwestern Univeristy

Nalini Ambady, Professor and Neubauer Faculty Fellow
Tufts University

Although the outcomes of race categorization have been studied in detail, the temporal dynamics of realtime processing of race remain elusive. We measured participants’ hand movements en route to one of two race-category alternatives by recording the streaming x, y coordinates of the computer mouse. Study 1 showed that, when categorizing White and Black computer-generated faces that featurally overlapped with the opposite race, mouse trajectories showed a continuous spatial attraction toward the opposite category. Moreover, these race-atypical White and Black targets induced spatial attraction effects that had different temporal signatures. Study 2 showed that, when categorizing real faces that varied along a continuum of racial ambiguity, graded increases in ambiguity led to corresponding increases in trajectories’ attraction to the opposite category and trajectories’ movement complexity. These studies provide evidence for temporally dynamic competition across perceptions of race, where simultaneously and partially-active race categories continuously evolve into single categorical outcomes over time. Moreover, the findings show how different social category cues may exert different dynamic patterns of influence over the real-time processing that culminates in categorizations of others.

…The second important difference between dimensions of sex and race is the inherently fuzzy nature of race relative to the substantially less fuzzy nature of sex. Whereas it is rare to encounter faces that are truly sex-ambiguous—an unlikely situation usually evoking anxiety, a few laughs, or both (e.g., Saturday Night Live’s androgynous ‘‘Pat” skits)—perceivers often encounter faces that do not fit squarely into any race category at all. Interactions with mixed-race individuals, for instance, involve the perception of faces that tend to  contain major physiognomic overlap between multiple traditionally-distinguished race categories. Prior research indicates that, even in instances of extreme racial ambiguity (e.g., mixed-race faces), perceivers readily resolve this ambiguity by slotting faces into traditionally-distinguished race categories (Pauker et al., 2009), particularly during rapid categorization (Peery & Bodenhausen, 2008). In the present work, we wanted to determine how this resolution of racial ambiguity is accomplished in realtime.  Because perceptions of race can be fuzzy and involve different levels of ambiguity, this gave us the opportunity to examine how graded increases in the ambiguity of a social category may have corresponding graded effects on the real-time evolution of social categorical responses…

Read the entire article here.

`For Venus smiles not in a house of tears’: Interethnic relations in European cinema

European Journal of Cultural Studies
2003
Vol. 6, No. 1
pages 55-74
DOI: 10.1177/1367549403006001470

Anneke Smelik
University of Nijmegen

In the 1990s, several European filmmakers addressed the Romeo and Juliet motif of `impossible love’ in the context of multiculturalism. A heterosexual love affair between people of different ethnic backgrounds allows filmmakers to address issues of racism and deconstruct racial stereotypes. In the films discussed in this article, the tragic love affairs point to the unwillingness of European countries to become pluralistic and multiethnic societies. Some films have attempted to represent interethnic love relations more hopefully, celebrating happy endings of mixed race couples. The success of such films may indicate that the genre of comedy has won over the tragedy of the Romeo and Juliet topos in cinematic representations of interethnic love relations. Perhaps European cinema is ready to embrace constructions of European identity as hybrid, diverse and multiple.

‘After all, I am partly Māori, partly Dalmatian, but first of all I am a New Zealander’

Ethnography
Volume 6, Number 4 (December 2005)
pages 517-542
DOI: 10.1177/1466138105062477

Senka Božić-Vrbančić
The University of Auckland, New Zealand

This article explores the complexity of the processes of identity construction for ‘mixed-race’ individuals in New Zealand. It focuses on two life stories told by Māori-Croatian women in order to analyse how individuals of Māori-Croatian background constitute their own identity within the heterogeneous discursive practices (race, ethnicity, gender, class, nation) that have operated in New Zealand from colonial times to the bicultural New Zealand of the present. Experience of the hybridization of identity is placed within a framework of power relationships and the varieties of social struggles which help to constitute it from below.

Read or purchase the article here.

Collecting and tabulating race/ethnicity data with diverse and mixed heritage populations: A case-study with US high school students

Ethnic and Racial Studies
September 2003
Vol. 26 No. 5
pp. 931–961

Alejandra M. Lopez-Torkos, Social Scientist
SRI International

The increasing diversity of the US coupled with the continuing need for information gathered about race/ethnicity require us to reexamine our practices of collecting and tabulating such data, particularly from individuals of mixed heritage. In the context of Census 2000, which allowed people for the first time to identify with multiple race groups, this article focuses on the context of education and looks at high school students’ selfidentification practices on forms. Survey data gathered from 638 freshmen during 1999–2000 at a diverse, public high school in California indicate: there can be high levels of inconsistency in students’ individual identifications depending on question format and response options provided; and, overall demographic counts can greatly vary depending on how multipleresponse data are tabulated. Students’ responses raise questions about whether it is possible to attain a high level of measurement reliability when working with a diverse population that includes individuals of mixed heritage.

Read the entire article here.

Mixed-Race School-Age Children: A Summary of Census 2000 Data

Educational Researcher
Volume 32, Number 6 (2003)
pages 25-37
DOI: 10.3102/0013189X032006025

Alejandra M. Lopez-Torkos, Social Scientist
SRI International

On the 2000 Census, people were allowed to identify themselves and their children by more than one race. This article examines these data to document the mixed-race population of children in the United States. Using data from California as an example, I consider various methods for tabulating or “counting” multiple-response race data, noting the impact of each strategy on demographic conclusions. I also discuss how federal guidelines on race classification will influence the collection and organization of race data in the field of education. Given the increasing prevalence of mixed-race youth, it is critical that we examine our ways of talking about and studying race and ethnicity in schools, allowing for fluidity and multiplicity in racial-ethnic identification.

Read or purchase the article here.

Living Proof: Is Hawaii the Answer?

The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
Volume 530, Number 1 (November 1993)
pages 137-154
DOI: 10.1177/0002716293530001010

Glen Grant

Dennis M. Ogawa, Professor and Department Chair of American Studies
University of Hawaii

Hawaii has often been heralded for its relatively harmonious race relations, which encompass a great diversity of Asian and Pacific cultures. As the national concern with respect to multi-culturalism escalates into a debate over the merits of ethnicity versus amalgamation into the American melting pot, an understanding of Hawaii’s social and racial systems may demand greater scrutiny. The living proof that the islands’ people offer is not racial bliss or perfect equality but an example of how the perpetuation of ethnic identities can actually enhance race relations within the limits of a social setting marked by (1) the historical development of diverse ethnic groups without the presence of a racial or cultural majority; (2) the adherence to the values of tolerance represented in the Polynesian concept of aloha kanaka, an open love for human beings; and (3) the integration of Pacific, Asian, European, and Anglo-American groups into a new local culture.

Read or purchase the article here.

Are Mestizos Hybrids? The Conceptual Politics of Andean Identities

Journal of Latin American Studies
Volume 37, Issue 02
May 2005
pp 259-284
DOI: 10.1017/S0022216X05009004

Marisol de la Cadena, Associate Professor of Anthropology
University of California, Davis

Through a genealogical analysis of the terms mestizo and mestizaje, this article reveals that these voices are doubly hybrid. On the one hand they house an empirical hybridity, built upon eighteenth and nineteenth century racial taxonomies and according to which ‘mestizos’ are non-indigenous individuals, the result of biological or cultural mixtures. Yet, mestizos’ genealogy starts earlier, when ‘mixture’ denoted transgression of the rule of faith, and its statutes of purity. Within this taxonomic regime mestizos could be, at the same time, indigenous. Apparently dominant, racial theories sustained by scientific knowledge mixed with, (rather than cancel) previous faith based racial taxonomies. ‘Mestizo’ thus houses a conceptual hybridity – the mixture of two classificatory regimes – which reveals subordinate alternatives for mestizo subject positions, including forms of indigeneity.

Read the entire article here.

(Re)constructing multiracial blackness: women’s activism, difference and collective identity in Britain

Ethnic and Racial Studies
Volume 24, Issue 1 (January 2001)
pages 29-49
DOI: 10.1080/014198701750052488

Julia Sudbury, Professor and Department Head of Ethnic Studies
Mills College, Oakland, California

This article analyses the (re)construction of black identity as a multiracial signifier shared by African, Asian and Caribbean women in Britain, from the framework of recent social movement theory. The collective identity approach calls attention to naming as a strategic element of collective action, but has overlooked the experiences of black women at the intersection of multiple systems of oppression. A focus on the process of constructing black womanhood allows us to move beyond static and unidimensional notions of identity to question how and why gendered racialized boundaries are created and maintained. I argue that multiracial blackness should be viewed as an oppositional identity, strategically invoked by black women activists in order to mobilize collective action. Drawing on everyday theorizing by black women, the article examines the shift from the policing of authenticity claims, to a more open and fluid collectivity, and suggests that explicit interrogations of identity are a prerequisite for effective and sustainable alliances between diverse movement participants…

…For African Caribbean women, the ‘pure and narrow defnition’ of blackness (see Faith above) was personified through the figure of the ‘conscious’ or ‘I-tal’ black woman. The ‘I-tal’ woman was a direct refutation of hegemonic constructions of beauty and thus established an alternative ideal of womanhood. She was assumed to have dark skin, unprocessed hair and African phenotype features. In seeking to revalorize these denigrated characteristics, black women activists reified a rigid conceptualization of distinct ‘races’.  One unintentional outcome of this approach is the marginalization of mixed race women (Ifekwunigwe 1997). Exclusionary notions of belonging and community were therefore inherent in women’s oppositional constructions of beauty.

Similar processes characterized a whole array of characteristics and behaviours as black or non-black. A prime area of contestation was that of sexual relationships. Few of the interviewees appeared to view ‘mixed’ relationships as a valid family structure. It was assumed that women who were politically aware would engage in black on black relationships. Accordingly, women who had a white partner were held in suspicion. For example where a woman brought a picture of her new fiancé to a centre, she was at first surrounded by excited women. On seeing the photograph of a white man, the crowds quickly dissipated and women subsequently ignored her…

Read the entire article here.

Interracial Intimacy and the Potential for Social Change

Berkeley Women’s Law Journal
University of California, Berkeley Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper Series
2002
pp. 153-164

Stephanie M. Wildman, Professor of Law and Director of Center for Social Justice and Public Service
Santa Clara University School of Law

Moran, Rachel F.  (2001).  Interracial Intimacy: The Regulation of Race and Romance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
271 pp.

In her review essay Interracial Intimacy and the Potential for Social Change, Stephanie Wildman examines Interracial Intimacy: The Regulation of Race and Romance by Rachel F. Moran. Moran’s book investigates the so-called private landscape of race in the context of interracial intimacy. Moran urges the connection between our personal, private views of race and racial issues and the policy decisions society makes in the public realm. Moran explores historic antimiscegenation laws and their role in establishing societal norms and customs, the significance of race in daily life, the legal decisions leading to Loving v. Virginia, and the role of race in custody and adoption decisions. Wildman observes that interracial gay and lesbian relationships represent another area usually viewed as private, yet which implicates the societal landscape. Recognition of the public aspect of personal choice is a necessary element in the fight against bias and the movement toward social change.

Read the entire review/essay here.