Mixed Race Studies

The Hypervisible Man: Obama as the First Black, Mixed-Race, Asian American and now Gay President

Mixed Dreams: towards a radical multiracial/ethnic movement
2012-05-24

Nicole Asong Nfonoyim

“I have always sensed that he [Obama] intuitively understands gays and our predicament—because it so mirrors his own. And he knows how the love and sacrifice of marriage can heal, integrate, and rebuild a soul. The point of the gay-rights movement, after all, is not about helping people be gay. It is about creating the space for people to be themselves. This has been Obama’s life’s work. And he just enlarged the space in this world for so many others, trapped in different cages of identity, yearning to be released and returned to the families they love and the dignity they deserve.” −Andrew Sullivan, “The First Gay President,” Newsweek

I admit, I’ve missed quite a bit being oceans and continents away from the US of A. But one watershed moment managed to reach my little apartment in Udaipur last week as I was sipping my morning chai. Front page of the Times of India was Obama’s declaration of support for marriage equality. Between you and I, I was always of the camp that believed Obama’s previous stance was no more than a mere (albeit calculated and predictable) front to protect his political hide as the over-hyped newbie presidential candidate. Seems my sentiments were shared by Andrew Sullivan in his cover article in this week’s edition of Newsweek, which featured the above image and the headline “The First Gay President.”

Reading Sullivan’s article, I remembered a talk I attended at Oberlin College for Asian Pacific American Month in 2010 where the speaker’s last slide was entitled “The First Asian-American President” beneath two photographs of Obama, one as a child in Indonesia and one hugging his sister Maya Soetoro-Ng at his high school graduation in Hawaii. The speaker insisted that Obama’s early childhood spent in Indonesia with  his mother and stepfather, his youth spent in Hawaii, his identity as a hyphen American, and immigrant son made his experience akin to that of many Asian-Americans and thus earned him the title “First Asian-American President.” And in those terms it totally made sense. Obama could be Asian-American. Obama’s identity lends itself quite easily to repeated acts of reading and (re)interpretation. Though he’s self-identified as African-American, many still call him “The First Multiracial President.” Because it matters much less what Obama thinks of himself than what we the people think of him—what images we project onto his being.

In my course, I used Obama’s story, his identity as a tool to understand how multiraciality contains multitudes and how a multiracial critique could be instrumental in breaking down monolithic notions of identity. So I encouraged students to talk about multiraciality as part of black identities, as part of Asian-American identities, Latin@, Native, White, adoptee and queer identities. If anything multiraciality benefits a great deal from a queer critique—queering race. And there’s increasingly more out there in Academe that works at the rich intersection. That being said, I still found myself a bit surprised to see such a bold act of race queering on the cover of a mainstream American publication such as Newsweek…

Read the entire essay here.

Obama’s election changed racial identity of black students

Chronicle Online
Cornell University
2012-02-16

Karene Booker, Extension Support Specialist
Department of Human Development

Barack Obama’s historic election in 2008 stimulated individual and national reflection on race and changed African-American college students’ perceptions of being black, reports a new Cornell study published in Developmental Psychology (47:6).

But how these changes will shape public discourse as the 2012 presidential campaign unfolds or whether the 2012 election outcome will generate similar changes in racial identity is still unknown, say the researchers.

“Obama’s election triggered deep explorations or ‘encounter experiences’ in which these African-Americans [in our study] were challenged to think through the importance and positive value that can be associated with being black,” said Anthony Burrow, assistant professor of human development in Cornell’s College of Human Ecology, co-author of the study with Anthony Ong, associate professor of human development at Cornell, and lead author Thomas Fuller-Rowell, Ph.D. ’10, now a Robert Wood Johnson postdoctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison…

Read the entire article here.

Changes in racial identity among African American college students following the election of Barack Obama

Developmental Psychology
Volume 47, Number 6 (November 2011)
pages 1608-1618
DOI: 10.1037/a0025284

Thomas E. Fuller-Rowell, Robert Wood Johnson Postdoctoral Fellow
University of Wisconsin, Madison

Anthony L. Burrow, Assistant Professor of Human Development
Cornell University

Anthony D. Ong, Associate Professor of Human Development
Cornell University

The current study considered the influence of the 2008 presidential election on the racial identity of African American college students (Mage = 19.3 years; 26.3% male). The design of the study consisted of 2 components: longitudinal and daily. The longitudinal component assessed 3 dimensions of racial identity (centrality, private regard, and public regard) 2 weeks before and 5 months after the election, and the daily diary component assessed racial identity and identity exploration on the days immediately before and after the election. Daily items measuring identity exploration focused on how much individuals thought about issues relating to their race. Analyses considered the immediate effects of the election on identity exploration and the extent to which changes in exploration were shaped by racial identity measured prior to the election. We also considered immediate and longer term changes in racial identity following the election and the extent to which longer term changes were conditioned by identity exploration. Findings suggest that the election served as an “encounter” experience (Cross, 1991, 1995, pp. 60–61), which led to increases in identity exploration. Moreover, analyses confirmed that changes in identity exploration were most pronounced among those with higher levels of racial centrality. Results also suggest that the election had both an immediate and a longer term influence on racial identity, which in some instances was conditioned by identity exploration.

Read or purchase the article here.

Left By the Ship

Independent Lens
Public Broadcasting Service
2010

Filmmakers:

Emma Rossi-Landi
Alberto Vendemmiati

 In the 1970s and 1980s, the world was touched by the stories of Amerasian children, the offspring of U.S. military personnel stationed in Asia and the Pacific in the aftermath of World War II, and during the Korean and Vietnam wars. Many of these children were born to impoverished prostitutes who worked on the outskirts of the American military bases, and left behind by their American fathers as soon as their deployment ended.

In 1982, the United States Congress passed the Amerasian Act to allow Amerasian children and their parents from Vietnam, Korea, Thailand, and other Asian countries, to relocate to the United States. One of the exceptions was the Philippines, where the United States military maintained active military bases into the 1990s (Japan was also left out of the legislation). Children of U.S. soldiers and Filipino citizens are not covered by the Amerasian Act — they have to be claimed by their American fathers to be permitted to claim a right to relocate or take advantage of the Child Citizenship Act, which gives citizenship rights to children of American citizens.

…An estimated 50,000 Amerasians live in the Philippines today. As in other Asian countries, these mixed-race young people (especially kids of African American servicemen) often face discrimination and are ostracized. Some were abandoned as infants, and many are teased for being “illegitimate” children of presumed prostitutes and fathers who abandoned them. They are routinely labelled “Iniwan ng Barko” (left by the ship)…

For more information, click here.

Breaking the Race Barrier

360 Magazine
Ithica College
2012-05-02

Danielle Torres

“I’m Puerto Rican.”

That’s usually what I say when people ask a second time where I am from. The first time someone asks me that question I usually say, “I’m from New York.” Then the person rephrases the question, “What are you? What is your background?”

I come from a Puerto Rican family that is short and loud. Actually, I’m a little West Indian, too, on my mother’s side. I also say I’m Hispanic but I have been told that label falls under ethnicity. I’m a little displaced when it comes to the question of race. Growing up, my family used to chuckle about the race section on the Census. We always lingered on that section a bit longer than the others trying to decide what box or boxes we should check off.

In 2009, when I was a freshman at Ithaca College, none of my peers cared about the Census. It was just another survey and spring finals were coming up. Yet, although it was a single sheet of paper, I felt that it was another symbol of young adulthood. It was my turn to decide for myself how I was going to answer the race question. What is Person 1’s race? Mark X one or more boxes. I paused, pen hovering, weighing my options…

Read the entire article here.

Rodney King juror: ‘My father was black’

Ventura County Star
Camarillo, California
2012-04-28

Gretchen Wenner, Staff Reporter

SQUAW VALLEY — Juror No. 8 from the Rodney King beating trial has always heard the 12-member panel described as either all white or as having no blacks.
 
Now, he wants the public to know that’s not the whole story: His father was a black man.
 
“Nobody’s ever guessed that I was black,” Henry King Jr. told The Star.
 
From the get-go, the media made a big thing about the jury having no blacks, said King, a 69-year-old retiree living in Fresno County.

“It made you feel like they didn’t think we could come out with a fair verdict because we were supposed to be an all-white jury,” he said…

…”There are a few things about me that people don’t know,” he initially said, then choked back tears before saying his father was black.
 
It’s something he didn’t share with other jurors during the trial and doesn’t recall sharing when they occasionally socialized afterward. Nor had he talked about it with a reporter.
 
“Forty years ago, you really didn’t say that you were part black,” said King. “Now, I’m proud of it.”
 
When he applied last year to be on the Fresno County Grand Jury, one of the first things he told them was that his father was black.
 
“They thought I was joking,” he said.
 
During interviews on the phone and at his home on 5 acres in the southern Sierra Nevada foothills, King shared family photos and thoughts on his background and the trial. Both of his parents have since died.
 
“I look pretty white,” said King, whose friends call him Hank. “If you looked at me, you wouldn’t know I had black blood in me.”
 
His eyes are blue; his skin is light.
 
King variously described himself as part black, as having black blood and occasionally as black or mixed-race.
 
“I don’t know if you would say mulatto or what,” he said at one point.
 
In his younger years, he didn’t often think about his racial background…

Read the entire article here.

Contemporary US multiple heritage couples, individuals, and families: Issues, concerns, and counseling implications

Counselling Psychology Quarterly
Volume 25, Issue 2, (June 2012)
Special Issue: Race, Culture, and Mental Health: Metissage, Mestizaje, Mixed “Race”, and Beyond
pages 99-112
DOI: 10.1080/09515070.2012.674682

Mark Kenney, Adjunct Professor
Kutztown University, Kutztown, Pennsylvania
Multicultural Education and Consulting, Sinking Spring, Pennsylvania

Kelley Kenney, Professor of Counseling & Human Services
Kutztown University, Kutztown, Pennsylvania
Multicultural Education and Consulting, Sinking Spring, Pennsylvania

This article introduces the special edition by providing an overview of how policies and attitudes have influenced the experience of multiple heritage couples, individuals, and families in the American context. This history is linked to the developmental tasks of multiracial individuals and families in contemporary context. This paper also discusses the counseling implications emphasizing the importance of delivering culturally competent and sensitive services.

Introduction

Multiple heritage couples and individuals historically have been the subject of controversy and scrutiny. Myths and stereotypes that pervade our society suggest that individuals who couple interracially are dysfunctional (Yancey, 2002); are attempting to make a statement (Root, 2001); or have ulterior motives for doing so (Wardle, 1992, 1999). Motives speculated upon include quests for the exotic, sexual curiosity and promiscuity, economic and social status or achievement, domination, potential citizenship, rebellion against society or family, low sell-esteem, or racial self-hatred (DaCosta, 2007; Karis, 2003: Root, 1992; Spickard, 1989; Yancey, 2002); that persons of color are more willing to accept children of interracial unions than are white people (Wardle, 1992, 1999); and that the difficulties faced by interracial individuals and families are based on race (Root, 2001: Wehrly, 1996). Myths and stereotypes about multiple heritage individuals suggest that they are doomed to a life of rejection, and confusion about who they are (Wardle, 1999; Yancey, 2002).

This paper examines contemporary multiple heritage couples, individuals, and families in the US; the salient issues and concerns that have historically confronted this population; and the counseling implications of which those working with this growing population need to be aware. In this article, we address multiple heritage individuals, couples, and families drawing on a literature that uses multiple terms to identify them “Interracial couples” are defined as partners, married or not, of a different racial background (Root, 1992; Spickard, 1989). “Multiracial individuals” are defined as individuals whose biological parents or whose lineage are of two or more different racial backgrounds (Funderburg, 1994; Gibbs, 1989; Root, 1992)…

Read or purchase the article here.

Multiracial Americans Ready To Claim Their Own Identity

The New York Times
1996-07-20

Michel Marriott

For Alison Perry, being multiracial has meant moving through life as if she had a giant question mark drawn on her forehead. Strangers frequently approach and begin a vexing guessing game: “Are you Israeli?” “Are you a Latina?” “Where are you from?”

Yet for this slender, almond-colored woman with delicate features drawn from both her black-American father and her Italian-American mother, race is not what defines her.

“I definitely say that I’m interracial,” Ms. Perry said. “I do not identify myself as a black woman. I definitely don’t identify myself as a white woman, either.”

The very existence of multiracial people like Ms. Perry challenges this nation’s traditionally rigid notions of race…

…”People of mixed race in this country haven’t belonged anywhere,” said Charles Byrd, editor and publisher of Interracial Voice, an Internet news journal based in Queens that has backed the march. “The march will, in effect, allow people to come out and be themselves—not just be black, not just be white, but just be a human being.”…

…Forced Choices And No Choices

Increasingly, multiracial people are arguing—and many scientists agree—that race is a social construct, not a biological absolute. Many historians and social scientists, said Steven Gregory, a professor of anthropology and Africana studies at New York University, believe that the notion of race was largely invented as a way to assign social status and privilege.

Unlike sex, which is determined by the X or Y chromosome, there is no genetic marker for race. Indeed, a 1972 study by a Harvard University geneticist, Richard Lewontin, found that most genetic differences were within racial groups, not between them. He could trace only 6 percent of such differences to race.

Yet in the closing years of the 20th century, race remains a stubbornly resistant feature of this nation’s culture. Other societies, like those of some islands of the Caribbean and some South American countries, have a more fluid sense of racial identity. In Jamaica, for example, when people speak of color, they are referring to skin tone, not inalterable racial categories, said Cecile Ann Lawrence, a lawyer who was a government administrator in Jamaica.

But in the United States, race even divides multiracial people themselves. While some proudly claim their multiracial identity, others believe it is a sham, an effort to identify with the dominant, and privileged, white culture at the expense of a stigmatized minority.

“There is a tremendous amount of denial,” said Scott Minerbrook, whose father is black and whose mother white, but who considers himself black. Mr. Minerbrook, who is on the staff of Time magazine and lives in Islip, N.Y., says that many people “fall into the trap that they don’t want to be identified with failure; they think blackness equals failure.” But there is no escape, he argues; that is how the rest of the world labels multiracial children.

Some multiracial Americans believe, as Anthony Robert Hale, a graduate student in American literature at the University of California at Berkeley, said, that “in most cases, ‘mixed race’ means no race.”…

…Some Are Forging A Different Path

Regardless of society’s labels, many multiracial people are determined to set their own courses. Ms. Perry, who was an anthropology major at Wesleyan University, has learned to regard the American obsession with race with a degree of detachment, even tolerance. But she herself still defies categorization.

At Wesleyan, she was drawn to other interracial students, a well-organized and relatively large group on campus. She said she never felt part of the black community there.

Nonetheless, she joined a West African dance troupe at Wesleyan and traveled with it to Ghana. In Africa, she recalled with a chuckle, she was considered white. She also began dating one of the dance troupe’s drummers, who is white and Jewish….

Read the entire article here.

In Mixed Company: Multiracial academics, advocates and artists gather for Hapa Japan Conference

Nichi Bei: A mixed plate of Japanese American News & Culture
2011-05-26

Alec Yoshio MacDonald, Nichi Bei Weekly Contributor

As a graduate student in UCLA’s psychology department during the late 1970s, Christine Iijima Hall absorbed scathing criticism about her dissertation. Fellow academics dismissed her project as “a ridiculous piece of research,” she said, and newspapers declined to publicize her need for study participants based on the belief that she was covering a “stupid topic.” Few people, apparently, saw any worth in exploring the identity formation of individuals from mixed black and Japanese backgrounds.
 
Coming from such a background herself, Hall remained undeterred in pursuing the subject. In part, she was motivated to counteract existing literature that painted a disturbing portrait of those like her—in essence, that “we were insane, that there was something wrong with us, we never knew what we wanted, and we killed ourselves.” The studies that yielded these alarming conclusions were flawed, she explained, because they tended to focus on institutionalized patients instead of average folks. By delving into the everyday mixed race experience, she knew she could reveal a more compelling story deserving of attention.
 
In her effort to reframe an issue so widely ignored and narrowly interpreted, Hall ended up producing one of the pioneering works of an emerging discipline. At that time “‘multiracial’ was not a word yet,” she recalled, but thanks in no small measure to her perseverance, the field of multiracial studies exists today.

Scholars in the field recently had the chance to reflect on the past, present and future of their discipline when they came together April 8 and 9 for the Hapa Japan Conference. Held primarily on the campus of UC Berkeley and hosted by the university’s Center for Japanese Studies, it showcased a range of both foundational and current projects concerning multiraciality. As Hall pointed out while revisiting her dissertation for a session called “A Changing Japanese-American Community,” the conference also served as “a reunion for many of us who have done mixed race research.”…

Read the entire article here.

Neither Enemies nor Friends: Latinos, Blacks, Afro-Latinos

Palgrave Macmillan
April 2005
352 pages
6 1/8 x 9 1/4 inches
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4039-6567-7, ISBN10: 1-4039-6567-6
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4039-6568-4, ISBN10: 1-4039-6568-4

Anani Dzidzienyo, Associate Professor of Africana Studies and Portuguese & Brazilian Studies
Brown University

Suzanne Oboler, Professor of Latin American and Latina/o Studies
John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York

In this collection, leading scholars focus on the contemporary meanings and diverse experiences of blackness in specific countries of the hemisphere, including the United States. The anthology introduces new perspectives on comparative forms of racialization in the Americas and presents its implications both for Latin American societies, and for Latinos’ relations with African Americans in the U.S. Contributors address issues such as: Who are the Afro-Latin Americans? What historical contributions do they bring to their respective national polities? What happens to their national and socio-racial identities as a result of migration to the United States? What is the impact of the growing presence of Afro-Latin Americans within U.S. Latino populations, particularly with respect to the continuing dynamics of racialization in the United States today? And, more generally, what are the prospects and obstacles for rethinking alliances and coalition-building between and among racial(ized) minorities and other groups in contemporary U.S. society?

Table of Contents

• Part I: Comparative Racialization in the Americas
  • Flows and Counterflows: Latinas/os, Blackness, and Racialization in Hemispheric Perspective—Suzanne Oboler and Anani Dzidzienyo
• Part II: The Politics of Racialization in Latin America
  • A Region in Denial: Racial Discrimination and Racism in Latin America—Ariel E. Dulitzky
  • Afro-Ecuadorian Responses to Racism: Between Citizenship and Corporatism—Carlos de la Torre
  • The Foreignness of Racism: Pride and Prejudice Among Peru’s Limeños in the 1990s—Suzanne Oboler
  • Bad Boys and Peaceful Garifuna: Transnational Encounters Between Racial Stereotypes of Honduras and the United States (and Their Implications for the Study of Race in the Americas)—Mark Anderson
  • Afro-Mexico: Blacks, Indígenas, Politics, and the Greater Diaspora—Bobby Vaughn
  • The Changing World of Brazilian Race Relations?—Anani Dzidzienyo
• Part III: The Politics of Racialization in the United States
  • Framing the Discussion of African American–Latino Relations: A Review and Analysis—John J. Betancur
  • Neither White nor Black: The Representation of Racial Identity Among Puerto Ricans on the Island and in the U.S. Mainland—Jorge Duany
  • Scripting Race, Finding Place: African Americans, Afro-Cubans, and the Diasporic Imaginary in the United States—Nancy Raquel Mirabal
  • Identity, Power, and Socioracial Hierarchies Among Haitian Immigrants in Florida—Louis Herns Marcelin
  • Interminority Relations in Legislative Settings: The Case of African Americans and Latinos—José E. Cruz
  • African American and Latina/o Cooperation in Challenging Racial Profiling—Kevin R. Johnson
  • Racial Politics in Multiethnic America: Black and Latina/o Identities and Coalitions—Mark Sawyer
  • Racism in the Americas and the Latino Scholar—Silvio Torres-Saillant
  • Witnessing History: An Octogenarian Reflects on Fifty Years of African American–Latino Relations—Nelson Peery