Mixed Race Studies

Multiracial Identity

Bullfrog Films
2010
77 minutes/56 minutes
DVD ISBN: 1-59458-913-5
Directed by Brian Chinhema
Produced by Abacus Production
Narrated by Dieter Weber
Director of Photography: Jay Cornelius
Editor: Jay Cornelius
Music: Ed Beceril, Elizabeth Nicholson

Explores the social, political and religious impact of the multiracial movement.

Note: There are two versions of this program on the same DVD: 77-minutes and 56-minutes.

Multiracial people are the fastest growing demographic in America, yet there is no official political recognition for mixed-race people. MULTIRACIAL IDENTITY explores the social, political, and religious impact of the multiracial movement and the lived experience of being multiracial.

Different racial and cultural groups see multiracialism differently. For some Whites multiracialism represents the pollution of the White race. For some Blacks it represents an attempt to escape Blackness. And for some Asians, Latinos, and Arabs, multiracialism can be seen as ill equipped to perpetuate cultural traditions and therefore represents the dilution of the culture.

Also features commentary from noted scholars, Rainier Spencer, Naomi Zack, Aliya Saperstein, Aaron Gullickson, Susan J. Hayflick and Pastor Randall Sanford.

Existential hazards of the multicultural individual: Defining and understanding “cultural homelessness.”

Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology
Volume 5, Number 1 (February 1999)
pages 6-26.
DOI: 10.1037/1099-9809.5.1.6

Veronica Navarrete-Vivero
University of North Texas

Sharon Rae Jenkins, Professor of Psychology
University of North Texas

Discusses cultural homelessness (CH), the unique experiences and feelings reported by some multicultural individuals. Ethnically related concepts found in the cross-cultural and multiethnic literature (eg., marginality, intercultural effectiveness, ethnic enclaves, and reference group) are used to explain how CH may arise from cross-cultural tensions within the ethnically mixed family and between the family and its culturally different environment, especially due to geographic moves. CH is conceptualized as a situationally imposed developmental challenge, forcing the child to accommodate to contradictory and changing norms, values, verbal and nonverbal communication styles, and attachment processes. Culturally homeless individuals may enjoy a broader, stronger cognitive and social repertoire because of their multiple cultural frames of reference. However, code-switching complexities may lead to emotional and social confusion, which, if internalized, may result in self-blame and shame. Culturally encoded emotion labeling may be disrupted, leading to alexithymia.

Read or purchase the article here.

Identity and Marginality: Issues in the Treatment of Biracial Adolescents

American Journal of Orthopsychiatry
Volume 57, Issue 2 (April 1987)
pages 265–278
DOI: 10.1111/j.1939-0025.1987.tb03537.x

Jewelle Taylor Gibbs, Emeritus Professor
School of Social Welfare
University of California, Berkeley

Teenagers of mixed black and white parentage face peculiar difficulties in the developmental tasks of adolescence. The major conflicts and coping mechanisms of this group are examined, as are the clinical and sociocultural issues in its assessment and diagnosis. Specific treatment techniques are delineated.

Read or purchase the article here.

Shades of Difference: Why Skin Color Matters

Stanford University Press
2009
312 pages
11 tables, 15 figures, 16 illustrations
Cloth ISBN: 9780804759984
Paper ISBN: 9780804759991
E-book ISBN: 9780804770996

Edited by:

Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Professor of Asian American Studies
University of California, Berkeley

Shades of Difference addresses the widespread but little studied phenomenon of colorism—the preference for lighter skin and the ranking of individual worth according to skin tone. Examining the social and cultural significance of skin color in a broad range of societies and historical periods, this insightful collection looks at how skin color affects people’s opportunities in Latin America, Asia, Africa, and North America.

Is skin color bias distinct from racial bias? How does skin color preference relate to gender, given the association of lightness with desirability and beauty in women? The authors of this volume explore these and other questions as they take a closer look at the role Western-dominated culture and media have played in disseminating the ideal of light skin globally. With its comparative, international focus, this enlightening book will provide innovative insights and expand the dialogue around race and gender in the social sciences, ethnic studies, African American studies, and gender and women’s studies.

Contents

Contributors
• Introduction: Economies of Color—Angela P. Harris
• Part I The Significance of Skin Color: Transnational Divergences and Convergences
  • 1. The Social Consequences of Skin Color in Brazil—Edward Telles
  • 2. A Colorstruck World: Skin Tone, Achievement, and Self-Esteem Among African American Women—Verna M. Keith
  • 3. The Latin Americanization of U.S. Race Relations: A New Pigmentocracy—Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and David R. Dietrich
• Part II Meanings of Skin Color: Race, Gender, Ethnic Class, and National Identity
  • 4. Filipinos and the Color Complex: Ideal Asian Beauty—Joanne L. Rondilla
  • 5. The Color of an Ideal Negro Beauty Queen: Miss Bronze 1961-1968—Maxine Leeds Craig
  • 6. Caucasian, Coolie, Black, or White? Color and Race in the Indo-Caribbean Diaspora—Aisha Khan
  • 7. Ihe Dynamics of Color: Mestizaje, Racism, and Blackness in Veracruz, Mexico—Christina A. Sue
• Part III Consuming Lightness: Modernity, Transnationalism, and Commodification
  • 8. Skin Tone and the Persistence of Biological Race in Egg Donation for Assisted Reproduction—Charis Thompson
  • 9. Fair Enough? Color and the Commodification of Self in Indian Matrimonials—Jyotsna Vaid
  • 10. Consuming Lightness: Segmented Markets and Global Capital in the Skin-Whitening Trade—Evelyn Nakano Glenn
  • 11. Skin Lighteners in South Africa: Transnational Entanglements and Technologies of the Self—Lynn M. Thomas
• Part IV Countering Colorism: Legal Approaches
  • 12. Multilayered Racism: Courts’ Continued Resistance to Colorism Claims—Taunya Lovell Banks
  • 13. The Case for Legal Recognition of Colorism Claims—Trina Jones
  • 14. Latinos at Work: When Color Discrimination Involves More Than Color—Tanya Katerí Hernandez
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Index

Read the Introduction here.

Multicultural Artist and Educator to Speak at UVU

Utah Valley University
Orem, Utah
2011-03-24

Jim Rayburn

Louie Gong, a nationally-recognized artist and mixed-heritage advocate, will speak at Utah Valley University on March 31 at 2 p.m. at the Sorensen Student Center, room 206A.

Gong—of Nooksack, Squamish, Chinese, French and Scottish descent—is known best for his custom-designed Vans and Converse shoes and is a national leader in the discourse about mixed-race identity. He is a self-taught artist whose mash-up of traditional and pop culture influences is resonating with people all over the world. His Coast Salish-style artwork is especially popular with skateboarders…

…His remarks on March 31 will be centered on the realities of modern society while maintaining one’s cultural heritage…

Read the entire press release here.

Racial/Ethnic Identities and Related Attributed Experiences of Multiracial Japanese European Americans

Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development
Volume 32 (October 2004)
pages 206-221

Karen L. Suyemoto, Associate Professor of Psychology and Asian American Studies
University of Massachusetts, Boston

Surveys from 50 multiracial Japanese European Americans supported the endorsement of multiple simultaneous racial/ethnic identities and a differentiated multiracial identity. Experiences associated with being multiracial included feeling different, sensitivity to cultural cues, appreciation of different viewpoints, acceptance of  difference, and disliking exclusion. Implications for research and therapy are discussed.

In the 2000 U.S. census, 6.8 million people (2.4%) actively endorsed two racial categories (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2001). This is likely an underreporting of the multiracial population, given that many racial/ethnic minority group organizations lobbied againstendorsing multiple races because of the lack of clarity regarding how the census data would be used regarding allocating resources or creating policy related to racial and ethnic groups. In 1990, 5% of the respondents to the U.S. census reported mixed ancestry (Waters, 2000). Sociologists already estimate that up to 90% of Black Americans have White ancestors (Wehrley, 1996), the majority of Latinos/as and American Indians are of mixed racial and ethnic heritage (Amaro & Zambrana, 2000; Fernandez, 1992; Mihesuah, 1996), and interracial marriage is becoming the numerical norm for some racial/ethnic minority groups such as American Indians and Japanese American women (Jaimes, 1995; Kitano, Fujino, & Sato 1998).

In spite of these trends, the psychological literature on racial/ethnic identity continues to predominantly reflect the monoracial experience both in the individuals who participate in research and in the theories/models that are constructed. Two of the most problematic aspects of monoracial racial/ethnic identity models for multiracial people are the assumptions that there will be a single reference group in the identity development process and a single “achieved identity” (Kerwin & Ponterotto, 1995; Root, 1990). The pressure to choose only one identity and the social message that having multiple identities is problematic have been continually identified as difficult for multiracial individuals (Gibbs & Hines, 1992; Hall, 1992; Root, 1990, 1997).

Hall (1992) reported that 10 of her 30 Black Japanese interviewees chose the “other” category rather than a single identification as only Japanese or only Black. The comments made by the individuals whom she interviewed indicated that choosing only one monoracial identity was frustrating and limiting. Gibbs and Hines’s (1992) interviews with 12 multiracial adolescents and their 10 families also described conflicts about having to choose only one identity or heritage. C. W. Stephan and Stephan (1989) conducted the only quantitative study that explicitly explored multiple ethnic identities. Their survey of students with multiethnic backgrounds (not all multiracial as usually defined in the United States; e.g., Japanese Chinese students were included) found that 73% of Japanese multiethnic participants listed a multiple identity on at least one of the five situationally specific ethnic identity questions (e.g., “When you are with your closest friends, which ethnic group do you feel you belong to?”). In their second study with Hispanic multiethnic students, 44% of the students listed a multiple identity on at least one measure. In spite of these studies identifying difficulties with a single, monoracial identification, I do not know of any published research that explicitly investigates the extent to which multiracial individuals actually do identify in multiple ways.

Another major difficulty with applying monoracial racial/ethnic identity models to the multiracial experience is that they do not include the possibility of a multiracial identity. However, many authors have suggested that a multiracial identity could itself be either the identity or an identity claimed by multiracial individuals (Collins, 2000; Kich, 1992; Root, 1990). Developing a multiracial identity may contribute to resolving problems of belonging, exclusion, and negotiating multiple reference groups that are discussed in the critiques of monoracial racial/ethnic identity models’ applicability to multiracial individuals (Collins, 2000; Kich, 1992; Root, 1990)…

Read the entire article here.

Understanding what it means to be mixed

Excalibur
York University’s Community Newspaper
2011-03-30

Victoria Alarcon, Sports & Health Editor

People have always seen me as different. It doesn’t matter where I went, when it happened or who it was; I’ve too often come face-to-face with puzzled looks and people examining me, trying to dissect what I was. That curious look prefaced the inevitable question: “Where are you from?”

“This question of ‘where do you come from?’ has become normalized. For people that is a normal way of trying to figure something out about someone,” said Arun Chaudhuri, an anthropology professor at York University.

“It’s a very profound expectation of how you’re supposed to understand someone in terms of talking about where they came from and their origin.”

I’ve been called Chinese, Japanese, Filipino and a few other names that weren’t even close. But what people don’t know is that I’m mixed race.

Growing up I had a father whose ancestors came from China and a mother who was very much from a traditional Spanish family. They got married, and just like that, I was born into a mixed family. From my Asian eyes to my beige skin, I was neither Chinese nor Spanish, but both. The hardest part was constantly being surrounded by scrutinizing eyes and getting past their judgments to accept what I was…

Read the entire article here.

Mestizo in America: Generations of Mexican Ethnicity in the Suburban Southwest

University of Arizona Press
2006
200 pages
6.0 x 9.0
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8165-2504-1; Paper ISBN: 978-0-8165-2505-8

Thomas Macias, Assistant Professor of Sociology
University of Vermont

How much does ethnicity matter to Mexican Americans today, when many marry outside their culture and some can’t even stomach menudo? This book addresses that question through a unique blend of quantitative data and firsthand interviews with third-plus-generation Mexican Americans. Latinos are being woven into the fabric of American life, to be sure, but in a way quite distinct from ethnic groups that have come from other parts of the world. By focusing on individuals’ feelings regarding acculturation, work experience, and ethnic identity—and incorporating Mexican-Anglo intermarriage statistics—Thomas Macias compares the successes and hardships of Mexican immigrants with those of previous European arrivals. He describes how continual immigration, the growth of the Latino population, and the Chicano Movement have been important factors in shaping the experience of Mexican Americans, and he argues that Mexican American identity is often not merely an “ethnic option” but a necessary response to stereotyping and interactions with Anglo society. Talking with fifty third-plus generation Mexican Americans from Phoenix and San Jose—representative of the seven million nationally with at least one immigrant grandparent—he shows how people utilize such cultural resources as religion, spoken Spanish, and cross-national encounters to reinforce Mexican ethnicity in their daily lives. He then demonstrates that, although social integration for Mexican Americans shares many elements with that of European Americans, forces related to ethnic concentration, social inequality, and identity politics combine to make ethnicity for Mexican Americans more fixed across generations. Enhancing research already available on first- and second-generation Mexican Americans, Macias’s study also complements research done on other third-plus-generation ethnic groups and provides the empirical data needed to understand the commonalities and differences between them. His work plumbs the changing meaning of mestizaje in the Americas over five centuries and has much to teach us about the long-term assimilation and prospects of Mexican-origin people in the United States.

Passing as Black

The University of Vermont
University Communications
2011-03-30

Lee Ann Cox

The new dynamics of biracial identity in America

There’s a rule everybody knows. Not the golden one. Since the days of slavery and Jim Crow segregation, when “one drop” of black ancestry determined the whole of who you were, black-by-default is a weakened but lingering cultural assumption and it shapes the way many mixed-race people navigate their lives. But a lot has changed, too. Particularly in the pre-civil rights era, passing as white—if appearances made it plausible—was a way to defy racist restrictions. Now, new research by University of Vermont sociologist Nikki Khanna shows that passing has a new face.

In a study published in the Social Psychology Quarterly, Khanna finds that not only do black-white biracial adults exercise considerable control over how they identify, there is “a striking reverse pattern of passing today,” with a majority of survey respondents reporting that they pass as black.

Passing, as currently defined, is about adopting an identity that contradicts your self-perception of race. Despite having a white mother and a black father, President Obama considers himself black. He is not passing—his identity is solidly rooted within the black community. The people Khanna interviewed, however, view themselves as biracial or multiracial, but choose to pass as black in certain contexts…

Read the entire article here.

GW gives community option to identify as multiracial

The GW Hatchet
George Washington University, Washington D.C.
2011-03-28

Pavan Jagannathan, Hatchet Reporter

The University added a new category for multiracial students, faculty and staff to classify themselves as “two or more races” in University institutional data, moving into compliance with a new federal regulation.

University Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Steven Lerman said the U.S. Department of Education’s new aggregate categories for reporting racial and ethnic data of students and staff went into effect for the 2010-2011 school year.

“GW is complying with a federal mandate to collect race and ethnicity data in a specific way to allow for multiple race codes per person,” Lerman said…