Mixed Race Studies

Helping mixed-race Asian kids navigate a world that isn’t post-racial

The Seattle Times
2016-03-16

Jerry Large, Columnist

Sharon H. Chang is author of “Raising Mixed Race: Multiracial Children in a Post-Racial World.” (Courtesy of Sheila Addleman)

Seattle author writes about the challenges of raising multiracial Asian children in America and helping then overcome racial biases.

If you have mixed-race kids, teach mixed-race kids or know any mixed-race kids, you should read Sharon Chang’s book. Chang is a local writer and mom who saw a vacuum and tried to fill it with information she wishes her own parents had.

The book is “Raising Mixed Race: Multiracial Asian Children in a Post-Racial World,” and yes, that last phrase is meant tongue in cheek. This definitely is not a post-racial world, and one of the strengths of Chang’s book is that it helps people see how race continues to shape our lives.

Chang grew up in Southern California, the daughter of a Taiwanese father and white American mother. She’s lived in Seattle for 16 years and is married to a man who grew up on Vashon Island. His father is white and his mother is from Japan, so they’ve had lots of conversations about growing up mixed and not having anyone explain how people might react to them, or why.

How does a kid feel when relatives, or strangers, openly comment on their features — “That’s a good nose” or “Too bad about the eyes”? What does a parent say when a child says, “Mommy, I want blond hair”?…

Read the entire article here.

On the Boundaries of Race: Identification of Mixed-heritage Children in the United States, 1960 to 2010

Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
Published online before print 2016-03-17
DOI: 10.1177/2332649216632546

Carolyn A. Liebler, Professor of Sociology
University of Minnesota

Socially constructed race groups have boundaries that define their membership. I study temporal trends and group-specific patterns in race and ancestry responses provided for children of interracial marriages. Common responses indicate contemporary definitions of race groups (and perhaps emerging groups); uncommon responses reveal socially defined limits of race group membership. I leverage dense, nonpublic, Census Bureau data from 1960 to 2010 to do this and include a more diverse set of families, a longer time span, and more accurate estimates than prior research. I find that the location of race group boundaries varies over time and across 11 distinct family types. Since mixed-heritage responses became possible in 1980, they have been common in most groups. Part Asians have almost always been reported as multiracial or mixed ancestry. A number of (non-Asian) mixed-heritage children are described as monoracial on the census form, particularly children with American Indian heritage. Over time, part whites are decreasingly reported as monoracially white (white race with no nonwhite ancestry). Black heritage is reported for part blacks, but monoracial black responses became nonmodal by 1980. Part Pacific Islanders show similarities to part Asians and part American Indians. Given the predominance of multiracial and mixed-ancestry Asian responses since 1980, Asian multiracial may be an emerging socially recognized race category. Black multiracial shows a similar pattern. Monoracial responses (especially common among white–American Indians and black–American Indians) create important but hard-to-measure complexity in groups’ compositions.

Read or purchase the article here.

WELL! WELL!

Goldsboro Weekly Argus
Goldsboro, North Carolina
Thursday, 1895-02-28 (Volume XVI, Number 67)
page 1, column 3
Source: Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. United States Library of Congress.

Well, well, well!

“Where are we at?”

The sudden death of Frederick Douglas, the foremost negro in America, not by deserts but by the combination of fortuitous circumstances, occurred at his home in Washington, D. C., Wednesday night, and yesterday the Rep-Pop-Fusion House of Representatives of the General Assembly of North Carolina adjourned in his honor.

Fred Douglas as every one knows, was a mulatto, who was born a slave, but ran away at the age of 21 and made good his escape to New York. He had acquired a pretty fair education in his slavery days, which aided him in engineering his escape and helped him in his thus acquired freedom to gain notoriety. He leaped into prominence at one bound—at an anti-slavery meeting in Nantucket in 1841, where he made a speech, and delivered himself with such force and venom against the South that he was at once employed by the “Massachusetts Anti-Slavery League” to take the lecture field m behalf of the emancipation movement, that culminated in the war between the States.

After the war Douglas pressed himself into the field of politics, with his past prestige to give him force, and was made secretary of the San Domingo Commission, in 1871, under President Grant; and in 1872 he was one of the Republican Presidential electors of New York.

Subsequently he was for a number of years, until the Republicans went out of power, Register of Deeds for the District of Columbia, and while incumbent of that office married a white woman.

When President Harrison came into power he made Douglas U.S. Minister to Hayti.

This is the record in brief of the man who, though a negro himself, eschewed his own race and attempted to promulgate amalgamation, by marrying a white wife:—this is the man, “neither fish nor fowl,” as to race, but very foul always in his abuse of the South, in whose “honor” the lower House of the General Assembly of North Carolina, by the majority vote of its Rep-Pop fusion contingent, adjourned yesterday.

Wonder what Senator Marion Butler’s Etheopean will have to say about this action of his Russell-Pearson-Skinner Butler-Kitchen-ridden “Co-operative” Legislature.

Truly are we fallen on strange times in North Carolina.

Miscegenation Endorsed.

Several weeks ago a proposition was made in the General Assembly to adjourn in honor of Robert E. Lee, on the occasion of his birthday. This resolution was voted down, although by enactment of a prior Legislature Gen. Lee’s birthday is a public holiday in the State, and the public buildings are closed on that day.

Yesterday a resolution was introduced to adjourn until 10 o’clock on Saturday in order to pay respect to the memory of George Washington, whose birthday is also a legal holiday. This was voted down.

At the same session that the resolution to adjourn in honor of Washington was voted down, the following resolution, introduced by Crews, colored, of Granville, was adopted:

Whereas, The late Frederick Douglass departed this life on the 20 inst.; and whereas, we greatly deplore the same; now, therefore,

Resolved, That when this House adjourn, it adjourn in respect to the memory of the deceased.

These three dates—the birth of Lee, the birth of Washington, and the death of Douglass are compassed in one month. This General Assembly, deliberately and after debate, voted down the resolutions to honor the memory of the Father of his country, and Robt. E. Lee, who, with Grant, was among the heroes of Chepultapec, and the commander of the armies of the South, but put on record, in the journals of the House, a resolution of adjournment “in respect to the memory of Frederick Douglass.”

This action is equivalent to saying:

“Washington—
Lee—
Douglas—
these three, but the greatest of these is Douglas.”

This action, more correctly than any other official proceeding of this Legislature, shows the spirit of this body.

Fusion is a marriage of two parties having no principles in common.

The endorsement of the miscegenation leader is the legitimate heir of this union. —Raleigh News & Observer

Who is Black? Who is Indian? State/Federal Acknowledgment and the Politics of Racial Purity

Arizona State University
West Hall, Room 135
Tempe, Arizona
2016-03-21, 16:30-18:00 MST (Local Time)

Arica Coleman, adjunct lecturer, Center for African Studies, Johns Hopkins University African and African American History, Widener University, will discuss the politics of racial purity in state and federal acknowledgement policies for American Indian populations with known or perceived black ancestry. Racial purity, as first defined by whites and later adopted by many tribal nations, means the absence of blackness, and remains an implicit aspect of the state and federal acknowledgement processes. It has proven troublesome to many tribes in the East where extensive interracial intimacies among blacks, whites and Indians occurred. Using case studies, Coleman will focus on the questions, how do notions of racial purity affect state and federal acknowledgement processes? How has it influenced historical and contemporary views of the social phenomena of Black–Indian relations, Black–Indian familial ties, and “Black Indian” identity?

This lecture is part of the African and African American Speakers series and is also sponsored by the Center for Indian Education in the School of Social Transformation.

For more information, click here. View the flyer here.

Interview: Raquel Cepeda On Identity, Race & Hip-Hop

Vibe
2016-03-16

Richy Rosario

CREDIT: Heather Weston

Raquel Cepeda is a fighter. The renowned writer, journalist and filmmaker is clad in light blue patterned tights and a gray crop top, with her hair pulled back in a ponytail— she is furiously jabbing a black Everlast bag. On this chilly Friday afternoon, we’re at Mendez Boxing where Cepeda spends a good amount of time training for her bouts.

Inside, the large space on the lower level is laden with black punching bags, swaying from the ceiling. Behind the cloud of sand-filled sacks, sits a red boxing ring. As Cepeda makes her way around the gym, she gets pounds and greetings from many boxing aficionados here. You can very much tell she is a regular and perhaps well-liked. Not to mention, she’s quite comfortable kicking it with the boys. After we take a stroll around the facility, we settle in a wooden bench by a row of yellow lockers.

Born to Dominican parents in Harlem, and raised in Washington Heights during the early ’80s when hip-hop was in a state of becoming, Cepeda is no stranger to battling adversity. From surviving a crime-ridden neighborhood to standing resilient in an abusive household, she details in her 2013 memoir Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina her simultaneous journey of finding her roots through ancestral DNA…

…How do you define the term AfroLatina?

I don’t define the term AfroLatina, because I don’t like defining terms of identity, because they mean something different to everybody.

Would you consider yourself one?

I’m a Dominiyorkian of mixed decent. If you read my book you will find that I’m mixed and that I am just one example of the many of how the new world came to be. I’m the genetic evidence that the new world happened. So can’t just turn my back on one side of my culture and just call myself one thing. I feel like I’d be selling out the parts of who I am for better or for worse. Because there are things that we have in our blood that we don’t want to have; that we don’t want to admit. That we don’t want to reconcile with. For example, growing up I always thought as the European man as the aggressor, but when you have European blood running down your veins too, you have to come to terms with that…

Read the entire interview here.

Fr. Virgilio Elizondo Takes His Own Life

The Rivard Report: Urban. Independent. All About San Antonio.
San Antonio, Texas
2016-03-14

Robert Rivard, Director

Fr. Virgilio Elizondo, one of San Antonio’s most accomplished and beloved Catholic priests whose work brought him recognition in Latin America and Europe and an esteemed faculty position at the University of Notre Dame, died of a self-inflicted gunshot at his home Monday afternoon, according to sources in the Catholic community.

The Bexar County Medical Examiner ruled Elizondo’s death a suicide on Tuesday.

Friends spoke of being devastated and in disbelief as the news made its way through Elizondo’s large circle in the city. Elizondo, 80, a Westside native and the son of Mexican immigrants, became a beacon for Catholics and non-Catholics inspired by his deep appreciation of mestizo history, culture and spirituality. His own roots gave him a grounded understanding as a theologian of what the poor and oppressed throughout Latin America were experiencing under the rule and repression of military dictatorships in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. For Elizondo, liberation theology that swept the continent in those decades was one and the same with his mestizo-rooted theology…

…He served as rector of San Fernando Cathedral in the late 1980s and early 1990s and was credited with resurrecting the parish community there. His understanding of the power of media led him to do extensive work with the archdiocese’s television station, and his Spanish-language Mass at San Fernando was broadcast each Sunday to more than one million people throughout Latin America. He was a co-founder with then-Archbishop Patrick Flores of the Mexican American Cultural Center in San Antonio and a strong advocate for the city and region’s working poor. He was fond of telling stories about his own happy childhood and close-knit family, poor in material goods, rich in spirit and faith.

Elizondo was named secondarily in a May 2015 lawsuit filed by a John Doe in Bexar County that accused Jesus Armando Dominguez, then a student at Assumption Seminary here, of sexually molesting him from 1980-83 while the boy lived at a local orphanage and was mentored by Dominguez. In the lawsuit, the John Doe claims he approached Elizondo to report the molestation, only to be kissed and fondled by him while the two were in a vehicle together. Elizondo vigorously denied the charges in a public statement and in conversations with friends, and said he was prepared to fight the allegation legally…

…Woodward, a Notre dame graduate, was a friend of Elizondo and Fr. Theodore Hesburgh, who served as president of Notre Dame from 1952-1987. He said it was a world that welcomed Elizondo. Despite his own humble beginnings, Elizondo learned to speak multiple languages and lectured widely on three continents. He authored numerous books, including “The Future is Mestizo” in 1992; “Guadalupe: Mother of the New Creation” in 1997; and “Galilean Journey: The Mexican American Promise” in 2000. His books remain in print, often assigned by theology professors at other major universities…

Read the entire article here.

Allyson Hobbs, A Chosen Exile, in conversation with Helena Brantley

Kepler’s Books
1010 El Camino Real
Menlo Park, California 94025
Tuesday, 2016-03-15, 19:30 PDT (Local Time)

Presented by Peninsula Arts & Letters and Kepler’s Books

Join us for a look back at the history of racial passing, and a topical discussion of race and identity problems in America today.

For centuries, countless African Americans passed as white, leaving behind families and friends, roots and community, almost always for the benefits of expanded opportunity and mobility. But along with these brighter possibilities came grief, loneliness, and isolation that often outweighed the rewards. A Chosen Exile is a beautiful, extensively researched book, with historical photographs and over 82 pages of notes.

As racial relations in America have evolved so has the significance of passing. To pass as white in the antebellum South was to escape the shackles of slavery. After emancipation, many African Americans came to regard passing as a form of betrayal, a selling of one’s birthright. When the initially hopeful period of Reconstruction proved short-lived, passing became an opportunity to defy Jim Crow and strike out on one’s own.

Allyson Hobbs is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Stanford. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard and she received a Ph.D. with distinction from the University of Chicago. Hobbs teaches courses on African-American history, African-American women’s history and 20th century American history. Her research interests include American social and cultural history, racial mixture, identity formation, migration and urbanization, and the intersections of race, class and gender.

Helena Brantley is the founder of Red Pencil Publicity + Marketing, working with both publishers and authors. Previously, she managed publicity campaigns for HarperCollins. She is a proud alumna of the Stanford Publishing Course. Helena tweets and posts about books and other interesting things on Twitter and Instagram.

For more information, click here.

The Brain Likes Categories. Where Should It Put Mixed-Race People?

Shots: Health News from NPR
National Public Radio
2016-03-15

Katherine Du

Humans like to place things in categories and can struggle when things can’t easily be categorized. That also applies to people, a study finds, and the brain’s visual biases may play a role in perceptions of mixed-race people.

The study, published in Psychological Science on Monday, asked people to sort images of people as either white or black, but it included multiracial faces in the mix, too. There has been much less research into attitudes about mixed-race people, even though they are the fastest-growing racial group in the United States.

The 235 study participants, who all self-identified as white, signed up through the online survey site Mechanical Turk and provided their ZIP codes. The researchers then used U.S. Census data to determine their level of exposure to other racial groups…

…”Where you live influences how easily you process biracial faces which may, without your awareness, be affecting your attitudes toward them,” according to Diana Sanchez, an associate professor of psychology at Rutgers and an author of the study…

Read the entire article here.

A Perceptual Pathway to Bias: Interracial Exposure Reduces Abrupt Shifts in Real-Time Race Perception That Predict Mixed-Race Bias

Psychological Science
Volume 27, Issue 4, 2016
pages 502–517
DOI: 10.1177/0956797615627418

Jonathan B. Freeman, Assistant Professor of Psychology
New York University

Kristin Pauker, Assistant Professor of Psychology
University of Hawaii, Manoa

Diana T. Sanchez, Associate Professor of Psychology
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick

In two national samples, we examined the influence of interracial exposure in one’s local environment on the dynamic process underlying race perception and its evaluative consequences. Using a mouse-tracking paradigm, we found in Study 1 that White individuals with low interracial exposure exhibited a unique effect of abrupt, unstable White-Black category shifting during real-time perception of mixed-race faces, consistent with predictions from a neural-dynamic model of social categorization and computational simulations. In Study 2, this shifting effect was replicated and shown to predict a trust bias against mixed-race individuals and to mediate the effect of low interracial exposure on that trust bias. Taken together, the findings demonstrate that interracial exposure shapes the dynamics through which racial categories activate and resolve during real-time perceptions, and these initial perceptual dynamics, in turn, may help drive evaluative biases against mixed-race individuals. Thus, lower-level perceptual aspects of encounters with racial ambiguity may serve as a foundation for mixed-race prejudice.

Read or purchase the article here.

Seeking Participants: Experiences of People who have Biological Parents of Different Racial Backgrounds

University at Albany, State University of New York
2016-03-14

Michael Gale

Experiences of racism have been found to be inversely linked to health and mental health among racial minority individuals, including those who identify as biracial or multiracial. Mixed race theorists have suggested that biracial adults with an integrated racial identity (i.e. viewing one’s own racial backgrounds as complementary and non-conflicting) may experience less pronounced ill-effects in association with encounters with racism. Thus, the goal of this study is to promote understanding and awareness of discrimination against biracial and multiracial individuals in the interest of anti-racism advocacy.

The study is expected to take about 20-30 minutes. To participate in this study, you need to:

• Identify as biracial or multiracial or
• Have biological parents who have different racial backgrounds from one another and
• Be at least 18 years of age

To thank you for participating, you may choose to enroll in a drawing where you will have a chance to win a $25 Target gift card. One drawing will be held for every 20 participants up to 400 participants (20 gift cards). Your responses will be anonymous and confidential, and you may withdraw at any time with no penalties.

To participate in the study, click here.

If you have any questions, please contact Michael Gale at mgale@albany.edu, or his dissertation chair, Dr. Alex Pieterse, at apieterse@albany.edu.

This study is approved by University at Albany’s Institutional Review Board. All information that you provide will be anonymous. If you have questions about your rights as a participant, you may contact the Office of Regulatory Research Compliance at the University at Albany at 1-866-857-5459 or hsconcerns@albany.edu.