Mixed Race Studies

None of the Above

Filmakers Library (an imprint of Alexander Street Press)
1994
23 minutes

Erika Surat Andersen
University of Southern California

None of the Above is a documentary about people of mixed racial heritage based on the filmmaker’s own search for identity and community. Ms. Andersen, whose mother is (Asian) Indian and father is Danish American, explores her “own personal hangup” by finding others in the same ambiguous category. Through her journey into the multiracial world we are given an inside view of the emotional reality of what it’s like to be racially unclassifiable in a society obsessed with race.

During the course of the film we meet Leslie, a young woman of Native American, African, and European ancestry; Curtiss, whose mother is Japanese and father is African-American; and Henrietta, whose family has been mixed for at least six generations and defies all categorization. The intimacy of the interviews and the filmmaker’s openness about her own experience make this film emotionally compelling and particularly relevant in today’s multicultural society.

Seoul II Soul

Filmakers Library (an imprint of Alexander Street Press)
1999
25 minutes

Hak J. Chung

Produced at USC School of Cinema & Television Directed by Hak J. Chung

Korean American filmmaker Hak J. Chung explores his own identity by taking a close look at a very engaging family. The Yates’ household consists of the father, a black Korean war veteran, his war bride and their three grown children. This love match has endured for thirty-five years because of the couple’s intellectual and spiritual unity. When they first settled in America, they faced discrimination and misunderstanding.

We learn how their children felt growing up as mixed race kids in a home where both cultures were valued. However, it is a surprise to learn that this seemingly well-adjusted family cannot escape the pain of cultural miscommunication. The beloved eldest son is estranged from his parents because his blonde wife and his mother are at odds. His wife does not understand the nuances of her in-laws expectations. His mother is offended that his wife won’t eat kimchi and addresses her by her first name.

This candid film makes a valuable contribution to resources on multiculturalism and diversity.

Vietnamese Amerasians: A Study Of Identity Construction

University of Texas, Arlington
December 2010
78 pages

Ky-Giao C. Nguyen

Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Arlington in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Sociology

“We define who we are by defining who we are not” (Daniel 1996). What happens when we don’t know who we are not, how can we determine who we are? What if the markers of family connections, community alliances and citizenship are missing and there are no peers with whom to make comparisons? “What are you? Where are you from?” Hispanic, Filipino, sometimes even Native American rather than Asian, are ethnicities often ascribed to Vietnamese Amerasians (children of Vietnamese and American parents). Curiously, for such a personal question, the reaction from others to the response “Vietnamese Amerasian” is often rejection or disbelief. For years, Amerasians have struggled with their place in society, within the U.S. based Vietnamese-American community as well as in the larger U.S. and Vietnamese societies. The life of the Amerasian born and raised in Vietnam is an example of the identity construction and socialization of persons whose lives were marginalized times three through denial of citizenship by country, desertion by family, and rejection by community. Triple marginalization is defined for my purposes as lack of national, familial, and societal affirmation of self. This triple marginalization offers no tangible core of positively valued identity, thus forcing the Amerasian to either accept the labels assigned or forge on to create their own identity. Loss of family, lack of community, and statelessness continues to haunt Amerasians today. The quest for a place to belong, a family to come home to, and a country to acknowledge them still influences their decisions and actions, in ways both detrimental and advantageous to the preservation of an identity built without solid foundation.

This project is a historically situated, qualitative research based look into the internal and external construction of identity of the Vietnamese Amerasians born during the Vietnam War, individually and as a group. For primary data collection, I utilized my membership in a local Amerasian organization to participate in regularly scheduled group discussions. I evaluated the transcripts of organized conversations among twenty subjects participating in group discussions sponsored through a local Amerasian organization, over five months, from March 2009 through July 2009. During the course of this research, I discovered that while individual participants’ lives were lived separately, there was a commonality to the experiences that helped each come to some definition of self. The members fell into three distinct groups: those who renounce any and all claim of their heritage, becoming wholly Americanized; those who completely immerse themselves in the Vietnamese communities, living much as they did prior to arriving in the U.S.; and those who learn to fluidly move between their two cultures, picking up nuances of themselves wherever they happen to exist, rarely clinging to just one identity.

Read the entire thesis here.

Variations in Multiracial Identity Integration

California State University, Los Angeles
2012-02-10

Patricia Y. Singim

The purpose of this study was to explore how multiracial people integrate their racial identities and if this integration was related to well-being. Furthermore, differences based on type of mix (half White vs. mixed with groups of color), positive interactions with racial groups, and discrepancy between appearance and culture were also examined. Five hypotheses were tested: (1) Higher levels of integration and multiracial pride will predict better well-being; (2) Multiracial Whites will have lower integration, less positive interactions, and greater discrepancy compared to Multiracials of Color; (3) Participants with positive interactions will have higher identity integration; (4) Greater discrepancy between appearance and culture will predict lower identity integration; (5) Greater discrepancy will predict lower well-being. It was found that lower integration predicted negative affect, pride predicted positive affect, and discrepancy predicted lower integration. Encouraging multiracials to accept inconsistencies between appearance and culture may increase identity integration and well-being.

Log-in to read the thesis here.

AMST 294-03  Mixed Race America: Identity, Culture, and Politics

Macalester College
Saint Paul, Minnesota
Spring 2012

SooJin Pate

This course is an introduction to the animating debates, themes, and issues in Critical Mixed Race Studies. Utilizing critical race theory and postcolonial analysis, we will examine the identities and experiences of multiracial or mixed race people, as well as the ways in which they have played a fundamental role in constructing race and shaping race relations, politics, and culture in the U.S. Topics in this course address the following: conquest and slavery, miscegenation laws, debates about the U.S. Census categories, U.S. militarism, representations of “mixed” people in the media, cultural expressions of “mixed” Americans, transracial adoption, queering mixed race studies, and the Mixed Race/Multiracial Movement.

Essentializing Race: Implications for Bicultural Individuals’ Cognition and Physiological Reactivity

Psychological Science
Volume 18, Number 4 (April 2007)
pages 341-348
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01901.x

Melody Manchi Chao
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Jing Chen
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Glenn I. Roisman
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Ying-yi Hong
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

It is a widely held belief that racial groups have underlying essences. We hypothesized that bicultural individuals who hold this essentialist belief about race are oriented to perceive rigid interracial boundaries and experience difficulty passing between their ethnic culture and the host culture. As predicted, we found that the more strongly Chinese American participants endorsed an essentialist belief about race, the less effective they were in switching rapidly between Chinese and American cultural frames in a reaction time task (Study 1), and the greater emotional reactivity they exhibited (reflected in heightened skin conductance) while they talked about their Chinese and American cultural experiences (Study 2). Taken together, these findings suggest that essentialist beliefs about race set up a mind-set that influences how bicultural individuals navigate between their ethnic and host cultures.

Read or purchase the article here.

hafu (half Japanese)

Lakeland Lectures
Lakeland College
5-7-12 Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, 1st Floor
2012-03-07, 19:00 JST (Local Time)

Marcia Yumi Lise, Researcher and Co-Founder
The Hafu Project

Lakeland College is pleased to present our ongoing lecture series, free of charge, for scholars, students and members of the public to discuss contemporary issues. You are cordially invited to our next lecture.

This lecture asks the very question of what it is to be a Hafu in Japan from a sociological perspective. We will explore the complex nature of the Hafu experiences, which are often a result of the racially designated society surrounding us, as well as the various individual factors ranging from physical appearance, upbringing, or education. Ultimately, it seeks to characterise the negotiation and self-definition of ethnic/racial territory & identity in relation to the cultural and racial discourse in Japan.

Marcia was born in Kanagawa, Japan to a Japanese mother and an Italian-American father. She moved to London in 2001 where she studied Sociology and completed an MA in Social Research at Goldsmiths College, University of London in 2008. She is now based in Tokyo and is the thematic advisor of the Hafu Film.

For more information, click here.

Are You an Indian?

Public Broadcasting Service
Independent Lens
Premiere Date: 2011-11-17
Duration: 00:05:25

Though their ethnicities are mixed, the Wampanoag take pride in their tribal heritage.

In this companion piece to the documentary film We Still Live Here—Âs Nutayuneân, Wampanoag tribal members discuss how their multicultural heritage both complicates and enriches their identities as Native American people.

Watch Are You an Indian? on PBS. See more from Independent Lens.

The One Drop Rule: How Black Are You?

Crème Magazine
2012-02-29

Jessica Thorpe

“Say it loud, I’m Black and I’m proud!”  The James Brown classic shed light on the revolution of how descendants of the African Diaspora would begin to self-identify.  Replacing racial identification terms such as “negro” and “colored,” the use of the word “Black” was another step in the direction of breaking the chains of the oppression and injustice that plagued the African American for centuries.

Today, the term “Black” is commonly used to identify African descendants across America and other countries alike.

But what is it to be Black?  How do the descendents of Africa define “Blackness?”  How do we as African Americans visualize a Black person?…

…In recognition of such issues, Yaba Blay, PhD, visiting Assistant Professor of African Studies at Lafayette College, and renowned photographer, Noelle Théard, have collaborated on a multi-tiered media project (1)ne Drop, to open the discussion on the “other” faces of Blackness.  Using the “one drop rule” as a reference, however not affirming or confirming its historical implications, the project will challenge the narrow yet commonplace perceptions of Blackness through a series of essays, personal insights, one-on-one conversations and video interviews with individuals who are not typically embraced as Black within our society.

“This project opens the conversation about the ways in which skin color politics works for people with lighter complexion.  It’s not just about the complexion, but rather the interplay between complexion and physical appearance with racial identity,” explains Yaba Blay, PhD.

A New Orleans native, Blay’s impetus for starting such a venture spun from personal experience.  Growing up in a society with an undertone of racial consciousness, and a high population of Creoles and Mulattoes, Yaba had a heightened sense of racial politics within the Black community and the underlying sensitivities regarding skin color and racial identity…

…“As a professor, I teach my students about the concept of the Diaspora and that there are Black people of African descent all over the globe.  However, I guess there was some sort of separation for me between the theory and the practice.  As I was sitting on the panel, and Rosa [Clemente] was identifying as an African woman, I was thinking ‘but you’re Latina,’ and I was taken aback and fascinated by the concept that somebody who has the option to be something else, chose to identify as Black.”…

Read the entire article here.

“Freedom By A Judgment”: The Legal History of an Afro-Indian Family

Law and History Review
Volume 30, Issue 1 (February 2012)
pages 173-203
DOI: 10.1017/S0738248011000642

Honor Sachs, Assistant Professor of History
Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, North Carolina

Forum: Ab Initio: Law in Early America

On May 2, 1771, John Hardaway of Dinwiddie County, Virginia posted a notice in the Virginia Gazette about a runaway slave. The notice was ordinary, blending in with the many advertisements for escaped slaves, servants, wives, and horses that filled the classified section of the Gazette in the eighteenth century. Like countless other advertisements posted in newspapers wherever slaves were held, Hardaway’s advertisement read: “Run away from the subscriber, a dark mulatto man slave named Bob Colemand, 25 years old, tall, slim, and well made, wears his own hair pretty long, his foretop combed very high, a blacksmith by trade, claimed his freedom under pretense of being of an Indian extraction.”

Read or purchase the article here.