Mixed Race Studies

Feeling Ancestral: The Emotions of Mixed Race and Memory in Asian American Cultural Productions

positions: east asia cultures critique
Volume 16, Number 2, Fall 2008
pages 457-482

Jeffrey Santa Ana, Assistant Professor English Department
Stony Brook University

The current era of war, militarism, and neocolonialism in the Pacific is a time in which capitalist expansion simultaneously generates and conceals the negative human consequences of globalization — for example, the tremendous upheaval and migration of Asian people. Diaspora, dislocation, exile, and immigration born of economic necessity are the depressing contradictions to a capitalist paradise that has been optimistically envisaged as the end of history.   Critics of globalization have theorized the ways in which the commercialization of human feeling conceals the anxieties, fears, and other negative affects that express the harsh underside of transnational capitalism.  Nowhere is this commercialization of emotion more obvious than in the marketing of multiculturalism and racial difference in global commerce. The commercial use of racial mixture is especially provocative in the way it signals, conditions, and manages distressing experiences, while assimilating them symmetrically and seamlessly into the transnational stage of capitalism. Clearly, racial mixture is a hot commodity in today’s global market. Particularly in North America, the fascination with and consumption of multiraciality is evident in the notable increase in scholarship about multiraciality in the academy and the profusion of mixed-race productions in the culture industry, both of which reflect the commercialization of racial mixture in a globalized world.

In the last ten years, there has been an explosion of cultural productions about mixed-race people, and particularly of multiracial Asian Americans. Ruth Ozeki’s My Year of Meats and Halving the Bones, Kip Fulbeck’s Paper Bullets and Part Asian, 100 Percent Hapa, Paisley.

Second Glances: Two African-American Women Take a Closer Look at their Jewish Identities

Bridges: A Jewish Feminist Journal
Volume 13, Number 2 (Autumn 2008)
pages 52-63

Amy André

Nzinga Koné-Miller

This conversation is co-written by two African American women, one who converted to Judaism and one who was born Jewish. They dialogue about the differences and similarities of their experiences in regard to religious practice, family, community, and hopes for a future that includes practical and widespread recognition of Jews of all races.

Policing the Borderlands: White- and Black-American Newspaper Perceptions of Multiracial Heritage and the Idea of Race, 1996–2006

Journal of Social Issues
Volume 65, Number 1 (March 2009)
pages 105-127
DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-4560.2008.01590.x

Michael C. Thornton
University of Wisconsin-Madison

By employing a new policy of “check all that apply,” the Census Bureau accommodated a mushrooming multiracial lobby demanding that its members be allowed a right to self-identification. With its implied shifting meaning of race, newspapers portrayed the reaction to this change as a firestorm of debate along racial fault lines, highlighted by Black-American inferences that this was a perilous decision. Using textual analysis, I examine from 1996 to 2006 how five Black-American and three White-American newspapers characterized multiracial people. White-American papers framed the discussion in two ways: (a) multiracial people epitomize a new era in which race has lost its bite, and (b) Black America stands in the way of their gaining their civil rights.  There were also two frames for the Black-American papers: (a) The lobby advocates individual identity and is undergirded by denial or distancing from Blackness, and (b) that focus undermines Black America’s future by playing into the misguided notion that race is socially insignificant.

Read or purchase the entire article here.

When Race Becomes Even More Complex: Toward Understanding the Landscape of Multiracial Identity and Experiences

Journal of Social Issues
Volume 65, Number 1 (March 2009)
pages 1-11
DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-4560.2008.01584.x

Margaret Shih
University of California, Los Angeles

Diana T. Sanchez
Rutgers University, The State University of New Jersey

The explosion in the number of people coming from a multiracial heritage has generated an increased need for understanding the experiences and consequences associated with coming from a multiracial background. In addition, the emergence of a multiracial identity challenges current thinking about race, forcing scholars to generate new ideas about intergroup relations, racial stigmatization, social identity, social perception, discrimination, and the intersectionality of race with other social categories such as social class.  The present issue brings together research and theory in psychology, sociology, education, culture studies, and public policy surrounding multiracial identity and introduces new advances in thinking about race, intergroup relations, and racial identity.  In exploring multiracial identity, the issue will reexamine conceptualization of race and racial identification by examining the social experiences of multiracial individuals.

 Read or purchase the article here.

The Best of Both Worlds? Family Influences on Mixed Race Youth Identity Development

Qualitative Social Work
Volume 7, Number 1 (March 2008)
pages 81-98
DOI: 10.1177/1473325007086417

Susan E. Crawford
Halton Multicultural Council, Canada

Ramona Alaggia
University of Toronto, Canada

This study explored influences on racial identity of mixed race youth who identified themselves to be part of mixed African (Black) and European (White) origin. Research questions emerged following a review of the literature identifying the ways in which views of self, family, peers and society impact youth and their racial identification. Eight in-depth interviews employing the Long Interview Method were conducted, transcribed and coded to determine themes. Family influences emerged as playing a significant role in biracial identity formation. Three major themes were identified: (1) level of parental awareness and understanding of race issues; (2) impact of family structure; and (3) communication and willingness to talk about race issues. Implications for researchers and social work practitioners working with this population are discussed.

Read or purchase the article here.

Portraits of the New Negro Woman: Visual and Literary Culture in the Harlem Renaissance (review)

Legacy
Volume 26, Number 1 (2009)
pages 182-184
E-ISSN: 1534-0643
Print ISSN: 0748-4321
DOI: 10.1353/leg.0.0069

Martha Jane Nadell, Associate Professor
Brooklyn College of the City University of New York

Cherene Sherrard-Johnson opens her provocative and intriguing book, Portraits of the New Negro Woman, with a reading of a painting by Harlem Renaissance artist Archibald Motley. One of Motley’s many portraits of mixed-race women in a 1928 solo exhibition, A Mulatress, drew a great deal of attention, even appearing on the front cover of the exhibition catalogue and in reviews of the show. Critics used a language of racial classification, rather than of painterly inquiry, to discuss Motley’s work; they described it and other works in terms of race and primitivism, rather than as meditations on line, color, or composition. Sherrard-Johnson uses the portrait and reactions to it to set up the central concern for her book: the aesthetically and culturally complex representations of the mulatta in the visual and literary work of the Harlem Renaissance. Images of mixed-race women—in novels, films, paintings, and illustrations—engage with racially inflected discourse, evident in interpretations of Motley’s portraits: Mulattas in Sherrard-Johnson’s visual and textual sources are simultaneously proper and primitive, domestic and desirable, civilized and sexual.  As such, they are most significantly also a central part of the Harlem Renaissance’s wrestling with race.

Mother’s, Father’s, or Both? Parental Gender and Parent-Child Interactions in the Racial Classification of Adolescents

Jenifer L. Bratter, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Associate Director of the Institute for Urban Research
Rice University

Holly E. Heard
Rice University

Sociological Forum
Volume 24, Number 3, September 2009
pages 658-688
DOI: 10.1111/j.1573-7861.2009.01124.x

Research on racial identification in interracial families shows that children are more likely to be labeled as minority if the father is of minority race. Yet, prior studies have not sufficiently considered the role of parent-child relationships in shaping children’s identification with either mother’s or father’s race.  We address this limitation using data on 706 adolescents in interracial families from Wave 1 of Add Health.  We examine whether adolescents identify with their mother’s race or with their father’s race, as opposed to selecting a multiracial identity, within specific combinations of parents’ races. We also explore whether indicators of parental involvement (i.e., quantity and quality of involvement, educational involvement, and social control) explain any gender effects. Contrary to prior studies, we find that the tendency to match father’s race is only true in black/white households, particularly if he is white, while adolescents in Asian/white families tend to match mothers regardless of her race. Moreover, while father’s involvement, particularly educational involvement, was more likely than mother’s to influence racial classification, adjusting for involvement does not explain gender patterns.  This study shows that the well-known gender influences on parenting have little to do with the complex ways parent-child relationships impact racial classification.

Read the entire paper proposal for presentation at the Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America, 2006 here.

Read or purchase the article here.

My Choice, Your Categories: The Denial of Multiracial Identities

Journal of Social Issues
Volume 65, Number 1 (March 2009)
pages 185-204
DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-4560.2008.01594.x

Sarah S. M. Townsend
University of California, Santa Barbara

Hazel R. Markus
Stanford University

Hilary B. Bergsieker
Princeton University

Mixed-race individuals often encounter situations in which their identities are a source of tension, particularly when expressions of multiracial and biracial identity are not supported or allowed.  Two studies examined the consequences of this identity denial. In Study 1, mixed-race participants reported that their biracial or multiracial identity caused tension in a variety of contexts. Study 2 focused on one often-mentioned situation: completing a demographic questionnaire in which only one racial background can be specified.  Relative to mixed-race participants who were permitted to choose multiple races, those compelled to choose only one showed lower subsequent motivation and self-esteem.  These studies demonstrate the negative consequences of constraining mixed-race individuals’ expression of their chosen racial identity. Policy implications for the collection of racial and ethnic demographic data are discussed.

Read the entire article here.

Racing to Theory or Retheorizing Race? Understanding the Struggle to Build a Multiracial Identity Theory

Journal of Social Issues
2009
Volume 65, Number 1
pp. 13–34

Kerry Ann Rockquemore, Associate Professor
University of Illinois at Chicago

David L. Brunsma, Professor of Sociology
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Daniel J. Delgado
University of Missouri-Columbia

Empirical research on the growing multiracial population in the United States has focused largely on the documentation of racial identification, analysis of psychological adjustment, and understanding the broader political consequences of mixed-race identification. Efforts toward theory construction on multiracial identity development, however, have been largely disconnected from empirical data, mired in disciplinary debates, and bound by historically specific assumptions about race and racial group membership. This study provides a critical overview of multiracial identity development theories, examines the links between theory and research, explores the challenges to multiracial identity theory construction, and proposes considerations for future directions in theorizing racial identity development among the mixed-race population.

Read the entire article for free here.

The Tragic Mulatta Plays the Tragic Muse

Victorian Literature and Culture
Volume 37, Issue 2 (June 2009)
pages 501-522
DOI: 10.1017/S1060150309090317

Kimberly Snyder Manganellia, Assistant Professor of 19th-Century British and American Literature
Clemson University

Marie Lavington, the runaway octoroon slave in Charles Kingsley‘s little-read novel Two Years Ago (1857), makes this declaration of independence in a letter to Tom Thurnall, the novel’s hero. Though Tom helped her escape to a Canadian Quaker community, Marie has tired of the “staid and sober” (122; vol. 1, ch. 5) lifestyle of a Quakeress.  She reenters the public marketplace by refashioning herself into the Italian diva, La Cordifiamma.  Marie’s ascent to the stage as La Cordifiamma marks the construction of a new female body in the mid-nineteenth century: the Tragic Mulatta who becomes a Tragic Muse.

Read or purchase the article here.