Mixed Race Studies

A Nation of Mutts

The New York Times
2013-06-28

David Brooks

Over the past few decades, American society has been transformed in a fit of absence of mind. First, we’ve gone from a low immigrant nation to a high immigrant nation. If you grew up between 1950 and 1985, you grew up at a time when only about 5 percent or 6 percent of American residents were foreign born. Today, roughly 13 percent of American residents are foreign born, and we’re possibly heading to 15 percent.

Moreover, up until now, America was primarily an outpost of European civilization. Between 1830 and 1880, 80 percent of the immigrants came from Northern and Western Europe. Over the following decades, the bulk came from Southern and Central Europe. In 1960, 75 percent of the foreign-born population came from Europe, with European ideas and European heritage.

Soon, we will no longer be an outpost of Europe, but a nation of mutts, a nation with hundreds of fluid ethnicities from around the world, intermarrying and intermingling. Americans of European descent are already a minority among 5-year-olds. European-Americans will be a minority over all in 30 years at the latest, and probably sooner…

…Soon there will be no dominant block, just complex networks of fluid streams — Vietnamese, Bengalis, Kazakhs. It’s a bit like the end of the cold war when bipolar thinking had to give way to a radically multipolar mind-set.

Because high immigration is taking place at a time of unprecedentedly low ethnic hostility, we’re seeing high rates of intermarriage. This creates large numbers of hybrid individuals, biracial or triracial people with names like Enrique Cohen-Chan. These people transcend existing categories and soften the social boundaries between groups.

This won’t lead to a bland mélange America but probably a move to ethnic re-orthodoxy. As Alvaro Vargas Llosa points out in his book, “Global Crossings,” the typical pattern is that the more third-generation people assimilate, the more they also value their ethnic roots. We could soon see people with completely unaccented English joining Chinese-American Federations and Honduran-American Support Networks…

Read the entire opinion piece here.

‘One Drop of Love’ (Theatre Review)

The Chic of Domesticity: A Woman-to-Women Conversation on All Facets of Life – Fashion – Politics – Religion – Style – Travel
2013-06-29

Jennifer Vaughn-Estrada

Plans free for tomorrow evening? I recommend catching the final performance of One Drop of Love: A Daughter’s Search for Her Father’s Racial Approval at the Hollywood Fringe Festival. Race is an uncomfortable, and often confusing, subject for us “mixies,” and Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni, co-founder of the Mixed Roots Film and Literary Festival, addresses it head on in this one-woman play about identities, stereotypes, and family frustrations…

Read the entire review here.

‘Soy Yo!’: Play explores being multi-racial in a world where race matters

St. Louis Beacon
2013-06-26

Nancy Fowler

Parents, can you even imagine being accused of kidnapping your own children? It happened to Shari LeKane-Yentumi of University City.

The reason was race. She’s white, her husband’s black. Their three children are both; and in our society, “both” often reads: black.

It was the mid-1990s. LeKane-Yentumi opened her door to the accusing faces of state officials. Someone had seen a white woman shepherding a black toddler and baby across a grocery-store parking lot on Lindell in St. Louis City, and called the authorities.

“It was reported that I had children who were not mine,” LeKane-Yentumi said. “And I was investigated.”

A review of birth certificates and other documentation settled that situation. But the demoralizing incident put LeKane-Yentumi on alert whenever she left the inclusiveness of her own community.

Being multi-racial—with African, Caribbean, European and Native American heritage—also forces the Yentumi children, now young adults, to deny much of their identity when they have to check a single box.

LIke the loose translation of “Soy Yo!,” an upcoming local play about being multi-racial, the Yentumi children believe, “I Am Me.” They and their friends, who are mostly multi-racial, reject narrow definitions of “black,” “white” and other such categories.

“They aren’t as strict about how they want to define race,” LeKane-Yentumi said. “And they don’t want to be defined by it.”…

Read the entire article here.

Solo Show at 2013 Hollywood Fringe Festival Examines Notions of Racial Identity

Contact: Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni
Email: onedropoflove@gmail.com
Website: http://www.onedropoflove.com/
May 2013

(Los Angeles, Calif.) — When actress and playwright Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni married the love of her life in 2006, her father did not walk her down the aisle. In fact, he declined to attend the wedding altogether.

Seeking to understand why he chose not to participate, DiGiovanni began a trek through family history — and time and space — that ultimately led to her M.F.A. thesis project: the multimedia one-woman play, “One Drop of Love: A Daughter’s Search for Her Father’s Racial Approval.”

DiGiovanni will perform the hour-long show on Friday, June 21st at 2:30 p.m., Friday, June 28th at 4:15 p.m. and Sunday, June 30th at 6:00 p.m. at the Lounge Theatres (www.hollywoodfringe.org/venues/11). The cost of the two Friday perrformances is $12 per ticket. The Sunday show is a fundraiser for MASC – Multiracial Americans of Southern California (www.mascsite.org) – all proceeds ($15 per ticket) will go to MASC. This show is also a Los Angeles celebration of Loving Day (www.lovingday.org).

Incorporating filmed images, photographs, and animation DiGiovanni tells the story of how the notion of race came into existence in the United States, and its effects on her relationship with her father. To tell her story, DiGiovanni travels back in time to the first US census in 1790, to cities across the United States, and to West and East Africa, where both father and daughter spent time in search of their racial roots. A leading activist on issues related to mixed cultures and ethnicities, DiGiovanni is an actor, comedian, producer, and educator. She developed “One Drop of Love” as the thesis project for her Master of Fine Arts degree in film, television, and theater from California State University Los Angeles. She will use footage from her performances—the most recent was at the University of California, Santa Barbara—to produce a documentary film. DiGiovanni, who appeared in the Academy Award-winning film “Argo,” is also the co-creator, co-producer, and co-host of the award-winning weekly podcast Mixed Chicks Chat, and co-founder and co-producer of the Mixed Roots Fm & Literary Festival^®.

Read the entire press release here.

Podcast interview with Paisley Rekdal, poet and 2013 UNT Rilke Prize winner

University of North Texas, Denton, Texas
2013-04-29

Julie K. West, Publications Specialist
Office of Research and Economic Development

Poet Paisley Rekdal is the 2013 recipient of the University of North Texas Rilke Prize. The $10,000 award, named for the great German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, recognizes a book written by a mid-career poet and published in the preceding year that demonstrates exceptional artistry and vision. Paisley visited the UNT Department of English in April 2013 to accept the award for her prize-winning collection of poetry, “Animal Eye,” published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. She joins Julie West, publications specialist with the UNT Office of Research, in an audio podcast interview to discuss her poetry and the creative writing process.

…JW: But yet that does seem to be somewhat of a theme running not only through this work but you, yourself, as a Chinese-American with Norwegian ancestry … surely you are used to switching lens …

PR: doubled

JW: … and having that doubled perspective, and I’m just now thinking of that, even, as I hear you read this last poem.

PR: I think that’s very true. I think that’s a really good point. What’s funny though, is the doubled-ness of my vision is not cultural because I grew up in America. So, to a certain extent, the doubled-ness of my vision is something that’s been placed on me. The ways in which — depending on who’s looking at me — I’m either potentially Chinese, or White, or a mixture of both … when people are interested in my ancestry and they’ll ask me questions about that. For me I feel like there’s a real — even though any self contains multiplicities and complexities — I feel like there’s a real unity to my vision. But the experience of being biracial in America means that I do recognize how I can appear two ways and what I mean can mean multiple things. So the willingness and the interest in playing with multiple perspectives — moving in and out of different bodies — I think reflects that, for sure, what you’re just pointing out — that experience of being biracial. But it doesn’t actually reflect my own identity, if that makes any sense. How biracialism exists outside of me, even though I, myself, am biracial…

Listen to the podcast here. Read the transcript here.

New Faces, Old Faces: Counting the Multiracial Population Past and Present

Ann Morning, Associate Professor of Sociology
New York University

Chapter in:

New Faces in a Changing America: Multiracial Identity in the 21st Century
SAGE Publications, Inc.
Paperback ISBN: 9780761923008
2002
432 pages

Edited by:

Loretta I. Winters
California State University, Northridge

Herman L. DeBose
California State University, Northridge

Multiracial Americans have often been heralded as “new people” and in fact have been rediscovered as such more than once in the last century. Charles Chesnutt’s 1899 novel The House Behind the Cedars features a mulatto character who uses the phrase to describe himself and others like him; in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, “the new Negro” described a people that was “neither African nor European, but both” (Williamson, 1980, p. 3). More recently, Forbes (1993) has used the term “Neo-Americans” to denote populations combining African, European, and American Indian roots, and a century after Chesnutt’s work appeared, numerous articles and books—including this volume—convey the sense of multiraciality’s newness in titles such as “Brave New Faces” (Alaya, 2001) or “The New Face of Race” (Meacham, 2000).

Yet having populated North America for nearly four centuries, mixed-race people are far from being a recent phenomenon in the United States. Their early presence has been recorded to greater and lesser degrees in legal records, literature, and historical documentation. As far back as the 1630s and 1640s, colonial records attest to the punishment of interracial sexual unions and the regulation of mulattoes’ slave status (Williamson, 1980). Dictionaries chart 16th-century English usage of the word mulatow (Sollors, 2000), although the meaning of this term has varied over time (Forbes, 1993). Finally, mixed-race people have long populated American literature, particularly since the early 19th century (Sollors, 2000). In sum, the multiracial community is not a new, 20th century phenomenon but rather a long-standing element of American society.

By obscuring the historic dimensions of American multiraciality—emphasizing its newness but not its oldness—we may run the risk of ignoring lessons that past racial stratification offers for understanding today’s outcomes. For one thing, older social norms still make themselves felt in contemporary discussion of mixed-race identity (Davis, 1991; Waters, 1991; Wilson, 1992). In addition, history reminds us that these attitudes toward multiraciality were embedded in complex webs of social, political, economic, and cultural premises and objectives, thereby suggesting that the same holds true today. Finally, turning to the past highlights how malleable racial concepts have proved to be over time despite the permanence and universality we often ascribe to them. Given the United States’ history, the extent to which public attitudes toward mixed-race unions and ancestry have changed is remarkable. Perhaps the real new people today are not just those of multiracial heritage but also Americans in general who now conceptualize, tolerate, or embrace multiple-race identities in ways that were unacceptable in the past.

The history of census enumeration and scientific estimation of the multiracial population in the United States offers an illuminating window onto older conceptions of mixed-race status and a thought-provoking opportunity to compare past treatment of this community with its contemporary reflection. Although the introduction of multiple-race self-description on the 2000 census is often depicted as an entirely new innovation—much as multiracial people themselves are considered to be a new group (Nobles, 2000)—it was not in fact the first time that mixed-race origins have been recorded on the U.S. census. In the 19th century, multiracial response categories were a common, if sporadic, feature of decennial censuses whose appearance and disappearance can be traced to the social, political, and economic outlooks of the nation’s white citizenry at the time. Accordingly, this chapter seeks both to describe historical practices for counting the mixed-race population and to link them with the racial ideologies that motivated and shaped them. Although the focus is on national census enumeration, I also study the efforts of scientists who sought for over a century to estimate the size of the multiracial population and who tended to share the same preoccupations and preconceptions about race as the census officials of their day. Finally, I consider possible implications of the historical record for our understanding of the introduction of multiplerace classification on the 2000 census, suggesting that factors similar to those that weighed in the past are still discernible today…

Read the entire chapter here.

Census Bureau Names Ann Morning to National Advisory Committee on Racial, Ethnic and Other Populations

Newsroom, News Release: CB13-R.30
United States Census Bureau
2013-06-26

Public Information Office, Phone: 301-763-3030

Note from Steven F. Riley: Ann Morning is the author of book The Nature of Race: How Scientists Think and Teach about Human Difference (University of California Press, 2011) and the chapter “New Faces, Old Faces: Counting the Multiracial Population Past and Present,” in the book New Faces in a Changing America: Multiracial Identity in the 21st Century (SAGE, 2002).  To read more of Dr. Morning’s discourses, click here.

The U.S. Census Bureau today announced 10 new members of its National Advisory Committee on Racial, Ethnic and Other Populations, and has named Ann Morning from New York University as a member of the committee.

The National Advisory Committee advises the Census Bureau on a wide range of variables that affect the cost, accuracy and implementation of the Census Bureau’s programs and surveys, including the once-a-decade census. The committee, which is comprised of 32 members from multiple disciplines, advises the Census Bureau on topics such as housing, children, youth, poverty, privacy, race, ethnicity and sexual-orientation issues.

“The committee has helped us meet emerging challenges the Census Bureau faces in producing high-quality statistics about our diverse nation,” said Thomas Mesenbourg, the Census Bureau’s acting director. “By helping us better understand a variety of issues that affect statistical measurement, this committee ensures that the Census Bureau continues to provide relevant and timely statistics used by federal, state and local governments as well as business and industry in an increasingly technologically oriented society.”

The National Advisory Committee members, who serve at the discretion of the Census Bureau director, are chosen to serve based on their expertise and knowledge of the cultural patterns, issues and/or statistical needs of “hard-to-count” populations. The new members will be seated on Aug. 1.

Morning is an associate professor at New York University’s Department of Sociology. She completed her Ph.D. in sociology at Princeton University. Prior to becoming an academic, she worked as an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and as a U.S. Foreign Service officer based in the American Embassy in Honduras. Her research interests are race and ethnicity, especially racial classification; multiracial population; demography; sociology of knowledge and science; immigration; and economic sociology. Morning received the prestigious Dissertation Award from the American Sociological Association in 2005 and received a Fulbright scholarship to spend the 2008-09 academic year at the University of Milan-Bicocca.

Cherokee Phoenix: Remarks on the Report of the Committee on Indian Affairs in the House of Representatives

Cherokee Phoenix and Indians’ Advocate
New Echota, Georgia
Wednesday, 1830-03-30
Volume II, Number 50
Page 1, column 1b; Page 2, column 2b
Source: Hunter Library, Western Carolina University and Georgia Historic Newspapers

We have read that part of the report of the Committee on Indian Affairs in the House of Representatives, which describes the condition of the Cherokees, with feelings of indignation, and sincere regret that otherwise intelligent men should be prompted by self-interest, to the reiteration of studied and criminal misrepresentations.  We were aware, considering the political opinions of a majority of the committee, of the general principles which would be promulgated by them, still we did not in the least suppose that, to justify the policy of removing the Cherokees, such unfounded and untenable premises would be resorted to.  But it is even so.  As truth cannot be brought to second their design, misstatements and falsehoods, derived from interested and mercenary persons must be put in requisition.  It matters not what is sacrificed, so that the great arm of removing and destroying (as we do now verily believe) the Indians may be accomplished.  We can now no longer exercise charity for the advocates of Indian emigration, when it is apparent that their design is intended to be brought about by deception-this is the battery to demolish truth and justice, & with what skill and dexterity it is handled, may be learnt from the following extracts of the report.

The committee are constrained to believe, from the effects of the new institutions, [Cherokee Government]  and the sentiments and principles of most of those who have the direction of them that the Cherokee Indians of pure blood, as they did not understand the design, so they are not likely to profit by the new order of things.

The committee here hazard assertions gratuitously. How do they know in the first place, “the sentiments and principles of most of those who have the direction of these new institutions?”  By what process have they been led to the knowledge and  what are the sentiments and principles here spoken of?  Should they not in justice to themselves, have stated what they are?  The sentiments and principles of the Cherokees are contained in the written constitution long ago made public, which secures to every free man equal rights and privileges.- In the second place, how do the committee know that the full blooded Cherokees did not understand the design of these new institutions, and of course are not likely to be profited.  We take it for granted that they did understand them, for these new institutions were sanctioned by them, having been reduced into a written form by persons (some of pure blood too) elected for the purpose by their votes.
 
When the mixed race began to assert its superiority, may be dated the commencement of the deterioration of the mass of the tribe.

When the mixed Cherokees were admitted into the councils of the nations “may be dated,” the overthrow of Indian prejudices against civilization, and consequently the commencement of that improvement which has so justly distinguished the Cherokees, the assertions of the committee to the contrary notwithstanding.

That part of their ancient usages which secured an equal division of the presents and spoils which fortune threw in their way, has been slowly undermined.  Wealth has long since become the principal badge of distinction among them, and those who possess it constitute a distinct class.  However patriotic or public spirited some few individuals of those who were active in forming the new government may have originally been they have at last been compelled to yield to the general spirit of those around them; and the only tendency yet perceivable in the new institutions has been to enable those who control them to appropriate the whole resources of the tribe to themselves.  For this purpose, they have in effect, taken the regulation of their trade into their own hands.  They appear, also to have established something in the nature of a loan office or bank, in which are deposited the funds arising from the annuities payable by the Government; and these are lent out among themselves or their favorites.  The committee have not been able to learn, that the common Indians have shared any part of the annuities of the tribe, for many years.  The number of those who control the Government are understood not to exceed twenty-five or thirty persons.  These, together with their families and immediate dependents and connexions (sic), may be said to constitute the whole commonwealth, so far as any real advantages can be said to attend the new system of government.  Besides this class, which embraces all the large fortune holders, there are about two hundred families, constituting a middle class in the tribe.  This class is composed of the Indians of mixed blood, and white men with Indian families.  All of them have some property, and may be said to live in some degree of comfort.  The committee are not aware that a single Indian of unmixed blood, belongs to either of the two higher classes of Cherokees, but they suppose there may be a few such among them.  The third class of the free population is composed of Indians, properly so denominated, who, like their brethren of the red race everywhere else, exhibit the same characteristic traits of unconquerable indolence, improvidence, and inordinate love of ardent spirits.  They are the tenants of the wretched huts and villages in the recesses of the mountains and elsewhere, remote from the highways and the neighborhood of the wealthy and prosperous.

In regard to the annuities, we have stated in a previous number of the Phoenix, that they are not divided among the people as in ancient time, but paid into the treasury of the nation and kept as a public fund for the support of the government and other public objects.  Do the committee suppose that these annuities are so large that they are the cause of much wealth and corruption to the “mixed class?”  ???_try do we can tell them better.  The whole amount of these annuities is very little over six thousand dollars and the sum paid yearly to each member of the council “mixed” and “pure blood” for services, is from seventy to one-hundred  dollars.- This small pittance is all they receive.- There is now no “loan office or bank” among the Cherokees.  When there was one, every person; “mixed’ or “pure blood” if he was able to pay, had the liberty of borrowing.  It is therefore false, positively false, when they say that “those who control the new institutions appropriate the whole resources of the tribe to themselves.”  It is a little surprising that the Indian committee in congress should indirectly advocate cold ignorant customs of the Cherokees; such as the custom of dividing among the individuals of the nation, the annuities, a dollar’s worth or so of goods to each, which could not possibly benefit them.  It is civilization which has changed the custom, and however the Hon. Committee may be disposed to impugn the motives of those who have been instrumental in bringing about the change, it is a triumphant instance of the civil improvement of the Cherokees.

But the most remarkable reasoning of the Committee is where they say that the number of those who control the Cherokee government does not exceed twenty-five or thirty.  What of that?  How many control the government of the United States of 12,000,000 inhabitants?  One Chief for 40,000 souls, while the avaricious, the despotic and wealthy “mixed” Cherokee is a representative of only a few hundred.  What did the committee mean?  Did they intend this as an objection to the new institution?

If the committee are not aware whether a single unmixed Cherokee belongs to either of the higher classes, it is because they did not seek testimony from a proper source, or they did not wish to believe existing facts. The speaker of the council of last year was of “pure blood.”-the Clerk of the Council was of “pure blood.”…

Read the entire article here or here.

Professor Dorothy Roberts — Challenging Concepts of Race

Mixed Race Radio
Blog Talk Radio
2013-06-26, 16:00Z (12:00 EDT)

Tiffany Rae Reid, Host

Dorothy E. Roberts, George A. Weiss University Professor of Law and Sociology; Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights
University of Pennsylvania

Dorothy Roberts is the fourteenth Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor, George A. Weiss University Professor, and the inaugural Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights at University of Pennsylvania, where she holds appointments in the Law School and Departments of Africana Studies and Sociology. An internationally recognized scholar, public intellectual, and social justice advocate, she has written and lectured extensively on the interplay of gender, race, and class in legal issues and has been a leader in transforming public thinking and policy on reproductive health, child welfare, and bioethics.

Professor Roberts is the author of the award-winning books Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty (Random House/Pantheon, 1997) and Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare (Basic Books/Civitas, 2002), as well as co-editor of six books on constitutional law and gender. She has also published more than eighty articles and essays in books and scholarly journals, including Harvard Law Review, Yale Law Journal, and Stanford Law Review.  Her latest book, Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century, was published by the New Press in July 2011.

For more information, click here.

You don’t have to be mixed-race to have a mixed identity

The Seattle Globalist: Where Seattle Meets the World
2013-06-24

Maggie Thorpe, Graduate student in Japan Studies
University of Washington

Editor’s note: Laura Kina, who is quoted throughout this post, disagrees with the representation of her perspective here. You can read her response in the comments.

A new exhibit at the Wing Luke museum is part of a growing movement that says our racial identity is a personal choice, not a fact of birth.

“Aren’t you insulted by that?”

Michael Tenjoma, 23, set down the rolled-out slab of Japanese noodle dough and looks at the blackboard specials beside him in the Seattle restaurant.

“What?” asked the fifth-generation Japanese-American from Hawaii.

“That!” The irate customer pointed at the words “Jap. Satsuma Potato.”

Tenjoma let out a chuckle.

“It has a period after the word ‘Jap’. There’s nothing insulting about it.”

The customer stormed away, irate.

“I’m not Japanese,” Tenjoma said after telling this story. “Whenever I was in Japan, everyone kept asking me what I really was. But I’d just answer that I’m American. It seemed to bother everyone that I couldn’t give them a straight reply. But when I’m in Hawaii, I’m Japanese. It all really depends on where I am.”

In 2000 the U.S. Census allowed Americans to identify themselves as being two or more races for the first time. According to National Journal, people who identify themselves as multiracial have risen from 9.2 percent in 2000 to 32 percent in 2010.

“Under My Skin” — a recently opened exhibit at the Wing Luke Museum — discusses the issues of race and identity through art. Each piece weaves an intricate story evoking introspection, whether through modern art installations or traditional oil paintings. It is a quiet place with all 26 artists’ emotions and perspectives prodding into each attendee as they view each display.

Laura Kina, a contributing artist to the exhibit, is mixed. Her father’s side of the family is from Okinawa, Japan and her mother is of mixed-European ancestry with origins in small town Washington…

Read the entire article here.