Mixed Race Studies

‘One-drop rule’ persists: Biracials viewed as members of their lower-status parent group

Harvard Gazette
Harvard Science: Science and Engineering at Harvard University
2010-12-09

Steve Bradt, Harvard Staff Writer

Arnold K. Ho (right), a Ph.D. student in psychology at Harvard, and James Sidanius, a professor of psychology and of African and African-American studies at Harvard, researched the “one-drop rule.” They say their work reflects the cultural entrenchment of America’s traditional racial hierarchy, which assigns the highest status to whites, followed by Asians, with Latinos and blacks at the bottom.

The centuries-old “one-drop rule” assigning minority status to mixed-race individuals appears to live on in our modern-day perception and categorization of people like Barack Obama, Tiger Woods, and Halle Berry.

So say Harvard University psychologists, who’ve found that we still tend to see biracials not as equal members of both parent groups, but as belonging more to their minority parent group. The research appears in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

“Many commentators have argued that the election of Barack Obama, and the increasing number of mixed-race people more broadly, will lead to a fundamental change in American race relations,” says lead author Arnold K. Ho, a Ph.D. student in psychology at Harvard. “Our work challenges the interpretation of our first biracial president, and the growing number of mixed-race people in general, as signaling a color-blind America.”…

…“One of the remarkable things about our research on hypodescent is what it tells us about the hierarchical nature of race relations in the United States,” says co-author James Sidanius, professor of psychology and of African and African-American studies at Harvard. “Hypodescent against blacks remains a relatively powerful force within American society.”…

Read the entire article here.

Half-Caste (An Excerpt)

Afroeuropa: Journal of Afroeuropean Studies
Volume 2, Number 1, (2008)
6 pages

Angela Ajayi

At about the age of nineteen, a year after I arrived for college in the United States, I stopped thinking of myself as “half-caste.” The word, so loaded in its literal meaning and with its colonial roots, was used with frequency and ease to refer to those of us who had European mothers and African fathers in Nigeria.

For a long time—from early childhood to late teens—I accepted the word, not giving it much thought since it wasn’t necessarily used in a negative way. In fact, if you were “half-caste,” you were different in a way that was usually considered interesting and more attractive. The “half-caste” women, for instance, were often sought after and desired by Nigerians for love affairs; the men deemed good-looking. Or so I observed, growing up in Plateau State, Nigeria, where more than a handful of mixed-race families lived.

In the first decades following Nigeria’s independence from the British in 1960, many Nigerian men received scholarships to study in Europe and the former Soviet Union. They left for their studies—and some of them returned, after many years, with foreign wives. My father was one of these men who came home with a European wife. While studying veterinary medicine in Kiev, now the capital of Ukraine, he met my mother and married her in a tumultuous time of discrimination and racial prejudice against black students in the Soviet Union…

Read the entire excerpt here.

School Counselors’ Perceptions of Biracial Children: A Pilot Study

Professional School Counseling
American School Counselor Association
December 2002
page 120-129

Henry L. Harris, Associate Professor and Chair of Department of Counseling
University of North Carolina, Charlotte

Biracial children represent a growing segment of America’s increasingly diverse population. According to Kalish (1995), data from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) showed between 1978 and 1992, the number of biracial children born in the United States increased more than 50%, “rising from about 63,700 to almost 133,200” (p. 1). During the same period, biracial births grew from 2.1% to 3.9% of all births (Kalish). Jamison (1999) suggested the number of biracial individuals at between 2 million and 5 million, and noted this is a significant underestimation. Past societal guidelines and restrictions have contributed to this underestimation because, in many situations, biracial children were simply identified with the parent of color. According to the 2000 Census report, the most recent numbers indicate that people of two or more races made up 2.4 % (6,826,228) of the national population, and 42% (2,856,886) of them were under the age of 18 (U.S. Bureau of Census, 2001). In this article, a biracial individual is defined as someone having biological parents from two different racial or ethnic groups (Winn & Priest, 1993).

The research on the unique issues biracial children encounter has produced mixed results. Some studies found biracial children were more likely to experience higher degrees of problems associated with racial identity development, social marginality, isolation, sexuality conflicts, career dreams, and academic and behavioral concerns (Brandell, 1988; Gibbs, 1987; Gibbs & Moskowitz-Sweet, 1991; Herring, 1992; Teicher, 1968; Winn & Priest, 1993). However, other investigations yielded more positive results discovering biracial individuals overall were assertive, independent, and emotionally secure and creative individuals with a positive self concept (Kerwin, Ponterotto, Jackson, & Harris, 1993; Poussaint, 1984; Tizard & Phoenix, 1995).

Historically, biracial individuals have been analyzed and judged from biological and sociocultural perspectives (Nakashima, 1992). Originally, the biological perspective characterized individuals from interracial unions as mentally, physically, and morally weak beings and because of their perceived genetic inferiority, they faced insurmountable social, emotional, and psychological problems (Krause, 1941; Provine, 1973). The sociocultural perspective supported the belief that biracial people were social and cultural misfits, incapable of fitting in or gaining acceptance in any racial group, destined to lead a life of loneliness and confusion. The ultimate goal behind both perspectives was racial division, which socially and legally discouraged Caucasians from marrying and/or having children with people of color (Nakashima). For example, in 1945, more than half of the states had active laws banning interracial marriages. Twenty-one years later, 19 of those states still had such laws on the books. It was not until 1967 that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in Loving v. Virginia, that states could not legally prohibit interracial marriages (Parker, 1999). Needless to say, the different forms of past social and legal discrimination against interracial marriages have also influenced children of such marriages in a negative manner (Wardle, 1991)…

Read the entire article here.

Protective factors promoting psychosocial resilience in biracial youths

University of Alaska, Fairbanks
2010
127 pages
Publication Number: AAT 3421517
ISBN: 9781124214290

Gail K. Kawakami-Schwarber

Presented to the Faculty of the University of Alaska ,Fairbanks in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Resilience in adolescents is the achievement of positive outcomes and the attainment of developmental tasks in the face of significant risk. This study identified protective factors promoting resilience in the development of positive self-identity in biracial youths. The rapidly rising biracial youth population is a vulnerable group facing potentially higher risks for mental health and behavioral issues compared to their monoracial counterparts. Identity development, a central psychosocial task of adolescence, is a complex task for biracial youths since they must integrate two ethnic identities. For biracial youths, mastery of the psychosocial identity developmental task can be daunting as they face stressors such as racial stigmas and negative stereotypes, which may lead to identity problems manifesting during adolescence. Sixteen biracial individuals ranging from age 18 to 29 years participated in this qualitative research project. Comparisons were made to identify patterns and themes for factors affecting self-esteem and ethnic identity level among the participants. Brought to light were culturally-based protective factors stemming from individual, family, and social domains promoting psychosocial resilience in fostering healthy biracial identity resolution. Risk factors unique for the biracial population were also identified. The findings underscore the importance in understanding how the environment shapes and influences the ways biracial youth negotiate their dual identity. The research results can be integrated into appropriate prevention and intervention techniques for application by professionals and families to further healthy identity resolution in biracial youths.

Table of Contents

• Signature Page
• Title Page
• Abstract
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Appendices
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1 Introduction
  • Statement of Problem
  • Statement of Purpose
  • Definition of Terms
• Chapter 2 Literature Review
  • Vulnerable Population
  • Issues Related to the Biracial Population
  • Adolescent Identity Development
  • Psychosocial Identity Process
  • Ecological Theory
  • Race, Culture, and Stereotypes
  • Racial Identity Studies
  • Ethnic Identity and Self-Esteem
  • Ethnic Identity Models
  • Biracial Identity Models
    • Posten’s biracial identity development model (BID)
    • Wardle’s biracial model
    • The Kerwin-Ponterotto model
    • Root’s biracial identity resolution theory
  • Resilience Concept
  • Models of Resilience
    • Challenge model
    • Cumulative effect model
    • Interaction model
  • Factors Influencing Resilience
    • Risk factors
    • Protective factors
      • Psychosocial protective factors
    • Self-Esteem
  • Developmental Outcomes of Resilience
• Chapter 3 Method
  • Participants
  • Apparatus
  • Procedures
  • Data Analysis
• Chapter 4 Results
  • Self-Esteem Ranking and Data Comparison
    • Heritage and parents’ heritage
    • First generation parents
    • Cultural knowledge
    • Self-identity and parental ethnic identification
    • Self-identity and identification with parents
    • Self-identity and role models
  • Ethnic Identity Levels and Data Comparison
    • Heritage and parents’ heritage
    • First generation parents
    • Culture knowledge
    • Self-identity and parental ethnic identification
    • Self-identity and identification with parents
    • Self-identity and role models
  • Comparison Between Self-Esteem Ranking and Ethnic Identity Levels
    • Self-esteem ranking
    • Ethnic identity levels
  • Identified Protective Factors
    • Personal Factors
    • Ethnic mixture
    • Ethnic heritage
  • Identity Factors
    • Positive and consistent labels from parents
    • Parental ethnic identity assignment
    • Identification with parents
  • Coping Skills
    • Ethnic identity discrepancy management
    • Identity fluctuation
  • Family Factors
    • First generation parent
    • Parents as role models
    • Extended family contact and acceptance
  • Social and Community Factors
    • Cultural knowledge
    • Peer acceptance
  • Potential Risk Factors
• Chapter 5 Discussion
  • Protective Factors for Biracial Identity Development
  • Additional Protective Factors
  • Risk Factors and Resilience
  • Implications
  • Practical Applications
  • Limitations
  • Future Directions
  • Conclusion
• References

List of Figures

• Figure 1: Potential risk factors identified for biracial identity development
• Figure 2: Protective factors identified for biracial identity development

List of Tables

• Table 1: Self-Esteem, Heritage, Parents’ Heritage and Generation to United States
• Table 2: Self-Esteem, Self-Identity, Parental’s Ethnic Identification and Cultural Knowledge
• Table 3: Self-Esteem, Self-Identity, Role Model and Identified with Parent
• Table 4: Ethnic Identity, Heritage, Parents’ Heritage and Generation to United States
• Table 5: Minority-White Ethnic Identity, Heritage and Parents’ Heritage
• Table 6: Minority-Minority Ethnic Identity, Heritage and Parents’ Heritage
• Table 7: Ethnic Identity, Self-Identity, Parental Ethnic Identification and Cultural Knowledge
• Table 8: Minority-White Ethnic Identity, Self-Identity, Parental Ethnic Identification and Cultural Knowledge
• Table 9: Minority-Minority Ethnic Identity, Self-Identity, Parental Ethnic Identification and Cultural Knowledge
• Table 10: Ethnic Identity, Self-Identity, Role Model and Identified with Parent
• Table 11: Self-Esteem Ranking with Ethnic Identity Score
• Table 12: Ethnic Identity Ranking with Self-Esteem Scores

List of Appendicies

• Appendix A: Informed Consent Form
• Appendix B: Demographic Questionnaire
• Appendix C: Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale
• Appendix D: Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure
• Appendix E: Interview Guide

Purchase the dissertation here.

Existing in a Third World: The unique biracial educational experience

California State University, Long Beach
December 2007
90 pages
Publication Number: AAT 1451152
ISBN: 9780549405887

Ashley Benjamin

A Thesis Presented to the Department of Educational Psychology, Administration, and Counseling California State University, Long Beach In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in Education

The purpose of this study is to explore the educational experience of the Black/White biracial student in order for educators to become better informed about the challenges that biracial students face during their educational years. In order to accomplish this task, data were collected through open-ended interviews and questionnaires and analyzed using a combination of “closed” and “open” coding techniques.

The results of this study indicated that biracial students have a unique educational experience and that racism and racial segregation are still a problem in today’s educational settings. The findings, in addition to the literature, also demonstrates the many challenges biracial students face within the educational context, thus making them potentially at risk for various emotional, social, and academic problems.

Order the dissertation here.

4203W-01 – Racial Passing, Masquerade, and Transformation in African American Literature, Law, Film, and Culture

University of Connecticut
Fall 2010

Martha Cutter, Associate Professor of English

What is “race”? What is “whiteness”? What is “blackness”? What does it mean to be “mixed-race” or “multi-racial” in the US? This course will examine what racial passing—people who transform themselves from one race to another—can tell us about the meaning of race itself. Our methodology will be chronological as we test the idea that texts about passing and racial transformation both highlight, but also perhaps undermine, ideas about the meaning of race in a particular cultural and historical moment. Our focus will mainly be on twentieth and twenty-first century manifestations of racial passing and transformation, although we will also look at some earlier texts to get a sense of how ideas of race have changed over time. Our examination will also include scientific and legal texts which help us understand the meaning of blackness, whiteness, and race.

Texts: Charles Chesnutt, The House Behind the Cedars; William and Ellen Craft, Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom; Nella Larsen, Passing; George Schuyler, Black No More; Randall Kennedy, Sellout; Danzy Senna, Life on the Color Line; Spike Lee (Director), Bamboozled; Ariela Gross, What Blood Won’t Tell: A History of Race on Trial in America; Barbara Koenig, ed. Revising Race in a Genomic Age (Excerpts); other readings on racial science.

For more information, click here.

English 39695-001 ST: Racial Crossings

Kent State University
2006

Martha Cutter, Associate Professor of English

This course will examine literary and cultural treatments of individuals, authors, and characters who cross from one race to another, and sometimes also from one gender to another. This crossing may be metaphorical—for example, a white writer may attempt to write from the point of view of an African American character or a Native American character may try to “transcend” his or her race through various means. This crossing may also be actual—someone who is white may “pass” for black, or someone who is black may “pass” for white. We will look at novels, short stories, poems and films as cultural texts that depict racial crossing and passing. We will ask what these texts tell us about the way race is constructed and configured in society, culture, history, and the law. We will also attempt to understand how artists both assist and resist social and cultural constructions of the meaning of “race.” Does racial crossing fundamentally undermine or stabilize the meaning of “race”?

For more information, click here.

American Mixed-Race Literature: Cultural History, Precursors, Identities, and Forms of Expression

Purdue University
2004
116 pages
Publication Number: AAT 3166693
ISBN: 9780542022999

Gino Michael Pellegrini, Adjust Assistant Professor of English
Pierce College, Woodland Hills, California

This dissertation focuses on recent instances of mixed race literature in American culture such as Danzy Senna’s novel Caucasia, Rebecca Walker’s Black, White, and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self, and Kip Fulbeck’s Paper Bullets: A Fictional Autobiography. This dissertation suggests that these mixed race literary texts, as well as the multiracial experiences, sensibilities, themes, and expressions communicated therein, differ from traditional conceptions and descriptions of race and mixed race in American society, history, and literature that are based on the logic of the binary racial system. Mixed race literature attempts to phrase and communicate suppressed, distorted, and/or neglected multiracial experiences, sensibilities, and possibilities. Mixed race literature is also coextensive with the emergence of the multiracial social formation and movement in the post-civil rights era. “Precursors” to mixed race literature fall short in their attempt to phrase and to communicate complexities and experiences of mixed race lived existence. I read Jean Toomer’s Cane as one of the most significant precursors to mixed race literature in American literature. Mixed race literature also differs from “mixed race in American literature” insofar as the later, in the presentation of mixed race characters and themes, both relies on and validates the categorical, hierarchical, and dichotomous logic of the binary racial system. Notable examples in the canon of American and American Ethnic literature are William Faulkner and Toni Morrison who, from a mixed race perspective, extend and promote in their texts the suppression and distortion of multiracial complexities, possibilities, and lived realities in the service of the binary racial system.

Table of Contents

• Abstract
• Chapter One: Multiracial Identity in the Post-Civil Rights Era: A Personal Narrative Essay
  • The Summer of 1999
  • Growing up Racially Mixed in the 1970s and 1980s
  • Negotiating Raciated University in the 1990s
  • Conclusion
• Chapter Two: Cane and Jean Toomer: Percursors, American Mixed Race Literature
• Chapter Three: Danzy Senna’s Caucasia: A Novel About Growing Up Racially Mixed and Becoming Multiracial in the Post-Civil Rights Era
• Chapter Four: American Mixed Race Ficiational Autobiographies: Rebecca Walker’s Black, White and Jewish and Kip Fulbeck’s Paper Bullets
• List of References
• Vita

Purchase the dissertation here.

From Manenberg to Soweto: race and coloured identity in the black consciousness poetry of James Matthews 

African Studies
Volume 62, Issue 2 (December 2003)
pages 171-186
DOI: 10.1080/0002018032000148740

Mohamed Adhikari, Associate Professor of Historical Studies,
University of Cape Town

The Black Consciousness poetry of James Matthews, internationally recognised Coloured writer from the Cape Flats, reflects the growing popularisation amongst politicised Coloured people during the 1970s of the idea that racial distinctions in general, and Coloured identity in particular, had historically been used by the white supremacist establishment to divide and rule the black majority. This insight, by no means novel, provided the main thrust to the popular rejection of Coloured identity in the anti-apartheid movement of the 1980s. Coloured rejectionism had, however, originated within a small section of the Coloured intelligentsia, in particular amongst those active within the Non-European Unity Movement (NEUM) in the early 1960s (Adhikari 2002: 186-87, 213-14, 243-48) and grew into a significant movement by the time it peaked at the end of the 1980s. Though confined to a politicised minority within the Coloured community itself, and observed mainly in public discourse or for pragmatic reasons, the disavowal of Coloured identity had by the early 1980s nevertheless become a politically correct orthodoxy within the anti-apartheid movement, especially in the Western Cape. In response to the overt racism of apartheid, the democratic movement embraced non-racism as a cornerstone of its philosophy and any recognition of Coloured identity was condemned as a concession to apartheid thinking. This tendency was, however, reversed during the four-year transition to democratic rule as radical changes to the political landscape in the first half of the 1990s once again made the espousal of Coloured identity acceptable in left-wing and “progressive” circles (Adhikari 2000: 349; 2002: 23-24, 281-87). 

Read or purchase the article here.

The whole story on being ‘hafu’

CNN International
CNN Go
2010-11-29

Daniel Krieger

The movie ‘Hafu’ explores the limbo world of people who are half-Japanese and half something else, as they try to find their place in society

What does it mean to be half-Japanese in 21st-century Japan?

This is what filmmakers Megumi Nishikura and Lara Takagi set out to explore in their documentary film, “Hafu,” of which they showed a preview screening last month at the Kansai Franco-Japanese Institute in Kyoto.

The film, which is not yet completed, is an offshoot of the Hafu Project, which was set up in London two years ago by sociologist Marcia Yume Lise and photographer Natalie Maya Willer, both half-Japanese.

The project profiles hafus with photos and interviews that shed light on the experience of living between two cultures.

“We wanted to create an opportunity to discuss contemporary Japan through the lens of half Japanese,” says Lise…

Read the entire article here.