Mixed Race Studies

The Myth of a White Minority
2015-06-11

Richard Alba, Distinguished Professor of Sociology
City University of New York Graduate Center

IN 2012, the Census Bureau announced that nonwhite births exceeded white births for the first time. In 2013, it noted that more whites were dying than were being born. In March, it projected that non-Hispanic whites would be a minority by 2044.

But the forecast of an imminent white minority, which some take as a given, is wrong. We will seem like a majority-white society for much longer than is believed.

The predictions make sense only if you accept the outdated, illogical methods used by the census, which define as a “minority” anyone who belongs to “any group other than non-Hispanic White alone.” In the words “group” and “alone” lie a host of confusions.

A report the Pew Research Center is releasing today on multiracial Americans demonstrates how problematic these definitions have become. Pew estimates that 8.9 percent of Americans now have family backgrounds that involve some combination of white, black, Latino, Asian and Native American.

“Mixed” unions — intermarriages and long-lasting cohabitations — have become far more common. According to a 2012 Pew report, 15 percent of new marriages cross the major lines of race or Hispanic origin. Some 70 percent of these relationships involve a white partner and a minority spouse. The most common minority partners for whites are Latinos, followed by Asians, though the frequency of white-black marriage also continues to rise.

But even as the on-the-ground understanding of race and ethnicity becomes more fluid, contingent and overlapping, our public conversation lags…

Read the entire article here.

Multiracial in America

Pew Research Center
Washington, D.C.
2015-06-11
155 pages

Principal Researchers

Kim Parker, Director of Social Trends Research
Rich Morin, Senior Editor
Juliana Menasce Horowitz, Associate Director, Research
Mark Hugo Lopez, Director of Hispanic Research

Research Team

Anna Brown, Research Assistant
D’Vera Cohn, Senior Writer
Richard Fry, Senior Researcher
Ana Gonzalez-Barrera, Research Associate
Sara Goo, Senior Digital Editor
Scott Keeter, Director of Survey Research
Jens Manuel Krogstad, Writer/Editor
Gretchen Livingston, Senion Researcher
Kyley McGeeney, Research Methodologist
Andrew Mercer, Research Methodologist
Eileen Patten, Research Analyst
Renee Stepler, Research Assistant
Wendy Wang, Senior Researcher

Proud, Diverse and Growing in Numbers

Multiracial Americans are at the cutting edge of social and demographic change in the U.S.—young, proud, tolerant and growing at a rate three times as fast as the population as a whole.

As America becomes more racially diverse and social taboos against interracial marriage fade, a new Pew Research Center survey finds that majorities of multiracial adults are proud of their mixed-race background (60%) and feel their racial heritage has made them more open to other cultures (59%).

At the same time, a majority (55%) say they have been subjected to racial slurs or jokes, and about one-in-four (24%) have felt annoyed because people have made assumptions about their racial background. Still, few see their multiracial background as a liability. In fact, only 4% say having a mixed racial background has been a disadvantage in their life. About one-in-five (19%) say it has been an advantage, and 76% say it has made no difference…

Read the entire report here.

Allyson Hobbs

Morris Educational Foundation
Morristown, New Jersey
2015-05-04

Each issue, we are pleased to circle back with one of our Morristown High School esteemed alumni and catch up.

This spring we caught up with Allyson Hobbs, MHS Class of ’93…

Allyson Hobbs, MHS Class of 1993, Author & Assistant Professor at Stanford University

After graduating Morristown High School in 1993, Allyson attended Harvard University and graduated magna cum laude in 1997. After that, she worked at an advertising agency in New York City for a few years. However, in search of finding her professional passion, she decided to apply to graduate school and attended University of Chicago where she received a Ph.D. with distinction. It was through her experience there that she determined she wanted to pursue her book and a teaching. She has received fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research, and the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity at Stanford. At Stanford, Allyson teaches courses on American identity, African American history, African American women’s history, and twentieth century American history. She has won numerous teaching awards including the Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Prize and the St. Clair Drake Teaching Award. She gave a TEDx talk at Stanford, she has appeared on C-SPAN and National Public Radio, and her work has been featured on CNN.com and Slate.com.

Allyson’s first book, A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life, published by Harvard University Press in October 2014, examines the phenomenon of racial passing in the United States from the late eighteenth century to the present. A Chosen Exile has been featured on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, the Tavis Smiley Show on Public Radio International, and the Madison Show on SiriusXM.

On a visit back to the East Coast, we visited Allyson and caught up…

…MEF: “Tell us more about your book?”

AH: “Writing the book has been an incredible experience. My book is about racial passing where light-skinned African Americans pass as white during the late 18th century to present. The inspiration for the book was a story about a relative of mine that my aunt had told me about. During the 1920’s and 30’s I had a female cousin who grew up in the Southside of Chicago. She attended a predominately black high school living in a historic African-American neighborhood. After graduating from high school, her mom decided she wanted her to move to California and live life as a white woman.   Since she was light-skinned, her mother believed this was the best thing she could do for her daughter giving her more opportunity and better life experiences. Her cousin did not want to go and pleaded with her mom not wanting to leave the life she known, her community, and her friends. However, her mom insisted so she moved to LA, married a white man, had children (who had no idea about her past).   Ten years later she receives a call from her mom to come back immediately because father is dying. She said she couldn’t come back as she is a white woman now, a life you forced me to have. That story inspired my book and really made me want to explore the history of passing.   We think of passing as a story about individualism and a way to get ahead. We don’t think about people who were so impacted, the story of all the people around them, families, friends, people who have to be accomplices, people who have to keep secret. I also felt that we often look at what is to gain by passing, I thought what would the story would look like with what is lost by passing.”…

Read the entire interview here.

Multicultural Perspectives on Race, Ethnicity, and Identity

NASW Press
2015
224 pages
ISBN: 978-0-87101-460-3

Edited by:

Elizabeth Pathy Salett, MSW

Diane R. Koslow, PhD

In the past 30 years, the United States has undergone an unprecedented and accelerated growth in the diversity of its population. These changes affect all elements of our society, underscoring the need for an informed and knowledgeable public that can understand, respect, and communicate with people of diverse backgrounds. Multicultural Perspectives on Race, Ethnicity, and Identity discusses the relationship between race, ethnicity, sense of self and the development of individual and group identity. It further explores the question of who we are and who we are becoming from the perspective of our multicultural, multilingual, and globally interconnected world. This book offers readers the opportunity to examine the importance of ecological and environmental factors in defining how we experience our lives and the world around us.

The authors introduce and review numerous frameworks and models for understanding racial and ethnic identity development. Each chapter reviews the social, economic, and political processes related to building and preserving racial and ethnic identities and perceptions of self. Multicultural Perspectives on Race, Ethnicity, and Identity is a great resource for all social workers.

Contents

• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Elsie Achugbue
• Chapter 1: Identity, Self, and Individualism in a Multicultural Perspective / Alan Roland
• Chapter 2: African American Identity and Its Social Context / Lee Jenkins
• Chapter 3: Children of Undocumented Immigrants: Imperiled Developmental Trajectories / Luis H. Zayas and Mollie Bradlee
• Chapter 4: Racial and Ethnic Identities of Asian Americans: Understanding Unique and Common Experiences / Greg M. Kim-Ju and Phillip D. Akutsu
• Chapter 5: Indigenous Peoples and Identity in the 21st Century: Remembering, Reclaiming, and Regenerating / Sandy Grande, Timothy San Pedro, and Sweeney Windchief
• Chapter 6: White Racial Identity Development: Looking Back and Considering What Is Ahead / Lisa B. Spanierman
• Chapter 7: Growing Up Multiracial in the United States / Robin Lin Miller and NiCole T. Buchanan
• Chapter 8: What It Means to Be American / Jennie Park-Taylor, Joshua Henderson, and Michael Stoyer
• About the Editors
• About the Contributors
• Index

Why Media Representation Matters To Biracial And Multiracial People

Blue Nation Review
2015-06-04

John Paul Brammer, Identity Editor

“So, you’re sort of nothing then.”

I’ve only heard this once. Someone asked me what my race was because they were curious. I explained to them that I was mixed, that I had both indigenous and European blood, and after mulling it over for a second, that was their response.

They meant no malice by it. If anything, they were trying to be playful. But it still reminded me that when it comes to the dominant narratives on how we perceive race and culture in this country, I don’t quite fit the story.

I am reminded of this again with the debate over Emma Stone’s multiracial character in Cameron Crowe’s certified stinker Aloha. Stone, a white woman, was cast to portray a half-white, quarter-Chinese, quarter-Native Hawaiian character by the name of Allison Ng.

Crowe has come forward and apologized for his decision. But casting Stone in the first place has opened a very necessary dialogue on multiracial characters in the media.

In the context of the media diversity debate, multiracial people exist in a precarious place. On the one hand, they seem to be left out for the sake of a more direct approach to criticism of media representation of minorities…

Read the entire article here.

4th Annual “What Are You?” with Lacey Schwartz’s “Little White Lie”

Brooklyn Historical Society
128 Pierrepont Street
Brooklyn, New York 11201
Monday, 2015-06-08, 18:30-21:00 EDT (Local Time)

A BHS “Crossing Borders, Bridging Generations” program.

Top: Lacey Schwartz, photo by Michael Hill; Bottom: Lise Funderburg, photo by Tigist Tsegie

On the week of Loving Day 2015, filmmaker Lacey Schwartz comes to BHS to presents her provocative documentary about being a biracial woman who grew up believing she was white, Little White Lie, as part of our 4th Annual What Are You? program looking at mixed heritage and identity.

Lise Funderburg, the author of the ground-breaking book on multiracial identity, Black, White, Other leads Schwartz in a post-screening talkback.

For more information and to reserve a free ticket, click here.

Competencies for Counseling the Multiracial Population

Multi-Racial/Ethnic Counseling Concerns (MRECC) Interest Network of the American Counseling Association Taskforce
American Counseling Association
2015-02-02
51 pages

Co-Chairs/Authors:

Kelley R. Kenney

Mark E. Kenney

Taskforce Members/Authors:

Susan B. Alvarado

Amanda L. Baden

Leah Brew

Stuart Chen-Hayes

Cheryl L. Crippen,

Hank L. Harris

Richard C. Henriksen, Jr.

Krista M. Malott

Derrick A. Paladino

Mark L. Pope

Carmen F. Salazar

Anneliese A. Singh

In memory of Dr. Bea Wehrly for her tireless work and advocacy. The publication of her book, Counseling Interracial Individuals and Families, by the American Counseling Association in 1996 was a major part of this journey.

Competencies for Counseling the Multiracial Population: Couples, Families, and Individuals; and Transracial Adoptees and Families (Endorsed and adopted by the ACA Governing Council, March 2015)

The Multiracial/Ethnic Counseling Concerns (MRECC) Interest Network of the American Counseling Association has developed the following competencies in order to promote the development of sound professional counseling practices to competently and effectively attend to the diverse needs of the multiple heritage population.

Section I: Overview

This document is intended to provide counseling competencies for working with and advocating for members of the multiracial population including interracial couples, multiracial families, and multiracial individuals, and transracial adoptees and families. The document is intended for use by counselors and other helping professionals; individuals who educate, train, and/or supervise current and future counseling and other helping professionals; as well as individuals who may conduct research and/or other professional activities with members of the multiracial population. To this end, the goal is for these competencies to serve as a resource and provide a framework for how counseling and other helping professionals can competently and effectively work with and advocate for members of the multiracial population…

Read the entire report here.

The Color Conversation-Healthy Identity Happy Kids: Fostering Positive Racial Identity in Mixed Youth

Multiracial Americans of Southern California (MASC)
World City Center
3911 W. Adams Blvd.
Los Angeles, California 90018
Saturday, 2015-06-20, 13:00-16:00 PDT (Local Time)

Join our 3rd parenting seminar where we focus on issues relating to adolescence – specifically, racial identity.

Hear a presentation on how parents can better understand the racial identity process in youth and what you can do to support your youth! Join a supportive conversation in a safe space with similar parents and families.

Bring your mixed race or transracially adopted TEEN for a special breakout session JUST for them!

FREE childcare will be provided at the preschool playground and garden for younger children.

Children will engage in an identity building and affirming art project presented by Art Zone!

This event will be beneficial for ALL parents, not just those with teens!…

For more information, click here.

‘Loving Day,’ by Mat Johnson

Sunday Book Review
The New York Times
2015-06-01

Baz Dreisinger, Associate Professor of English
John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York

“A house divided against itself cannot stand,” Abraham Lincoln declared in his 1858 speech presaging the Civil War. Such a house sits at the heart of Mat Johnson’s ribald, incisive novel “Loving Day.” Bequeathed to the narrator, Warren Duffy, by his deceased father, it’s a roofless, ramshackle mansion in a black neighborhood in Philadelphia: “I look at the buckling floors. I look at the cracks in all the walls, the evidence of a foundation crumbling beneath us. I smell the char of the fire, the sweet reek of mold, the insult of mouse urine. I see a million things that have to be fixed, restored, corrected, each one impossible and each task mandatory for me to escape again.”

The house is haunted. There are ghosts, mostly of neighborhood crackheads — that is, if we take Warren’s word for it; our narrator’s psyche is as wrecked as his inheritance. An “inept” comic book artist — “My work is too realistic, too sober” — he has moved back to America from Wales after a failed business and broken marriage. He’s wrecked, too, by his liminal ­racial status: His father was an Irishman, his mother was black and he comfortably claims neither — call him a man divided against himself. “I am a racial optical illusion,” he says.

Warren lives and breathes what W. E. B. Du Bois called double consciousness, by which the American black person is “always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others. . . . One ever feels his two-ness, — an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body.” Except Warren’s body is white, making things even thornier; he’s perpetually performing a black identity that isn’t written all over his face — as when he describes “letting my black voice come out, to compensate for my ambiguous appearance. Let the bass take over my tongue. Let the South of Mom’s ancestry inform the rhythm of my words in a way few white men could pull off.”…

Read the entire review here.

Review: Mat Johnson’s ‘Loving Day’ Takes a Satirical Slant on Racial Identities

The New York Times
2015-05-26

Dwight Garner, Senior writer and book critic

Mat Johnson’s new novel, “Loving Day,” takes its title from an unofficial holiday, one his narrator likens to “Mulatto Christmas.” It’s the observance of the Supreme Court ruling in Loving v. Virginia, which in 1967 decriminalized interracial marriage in America.

Mr. Johnson, whose previous novels include the excellent “Pym” (2011), is himself the product of such a marriage — his mother is black, his father not just white but Irish white — and the politics of his own racial mix is a topic he’s written about with discernment and a rumbling wit.

In The New York Times Magazine recently, he described learning from a DNA test that he is 26 percent African. “I wasn’t a mustefino,” he said, as if paging through a field guide. “(Who has even heard of a mustefino?) I surpassed octoroon status, too; I was a quadroon with a percentage point to spare.”

“Loving Day” is about being blackish in America, a subject about which Mr. Johnson has emerged as satirist, historian, spy, social media trickster (follow him on Twitter) and demon-fingered blues guitarist.

The novel is about a man in early middle age named Warren Duffy, who loosely resembles Mr. Johnson. That is, he’s a culturally sophisticated black man who can just about pass for white. He considers himself “black, with an asterisk,” adding, “The asterisk is my whole body.”…

Read the entire review here.