Mixed Race Studies

Engendering Racial Perceptions: An Intersectional Analysis of How Social Status Shapes Race

Gender & Society
Published online before print: 2013-04-12
DOI: 10.1177/0891243213480262

Andrew M. Penner, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of California, Irvine

Aliya Saperstein, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Stanford University

Intersectionality emphasizes that race, class, and gender distinctions are inextricably intertwined, but fully interrogating the co-constitution of these axes of stratification has proven difficult to implement in large-scale quantitative analyses. We address this gap by exploring gender differences in how social status shapes race in the United States. Building on previous research showing that changes in the racial classifications of others are influenced by social status, we use longitudinal data to examine how differences in social class position might affect racial classification differently for women and men. In doing so, we provide further support for the claim that race, class, and gender are not independent axes of stratification; rather they intersect, creating dynamic feedback loops that maintain the complex structure of social inequality in the United States.

Read or purchase the article here.

Dimensions Variable: Multiracial Identity

RUSH Arts Gallery
526 West 26th St, #311
New York, New York
Phone: 212-691-9552
2013-04-04 through 2013-05-10

Opening Reception: Thursday, 2013-04-04, 18:00-20:00 EDT (Local Time)
Artist Talk: Saturday, 2013-05-04, 16:00-18:00 EDT (Local Time)

Firelei Báez, Yael Ben-Zion, Cecile Chong, Dennis Redmoon Darkeem, Nicky Enright, Lorra Jackson, Sara Jimenez, and Saya Woolfalk

Curated by Gabriel de Guzman

The 2010 census shows a 32 percent increase since 2000 of Americans who identify themselves as belonging to a multiracial background. They represent the growing multiracial diversity that has become more evident in our country and in our communities during the Obama era. Dimensions Variable: Multiracial Identity features artists whose work expresses various aspects of their diverse, yet highly individual backgrounds. The exhibition attempts to move beyond the polarized discussions of race and identity politics of the 1980s and 90s and past the limitations imposed by political correctness. It also contests the idea of a “post-racial” society presented by political commentators after the election of Barack Obama. In the four years since the biracial president’s first inauguration, race has remained a critical and contentious topic in national politics. Challenging a monolithic view of race, this exhibition examines contemporary issues of identity, hybridism, and racial ambiguity. At times the artists in the show directly tackle issues that relate to race and cultural awareness. At other times, the artists deal with these issues subtly by acknowledging the spread of multiculturalism in our global society and the ways in which race and ethnicity are fluid and dependent upon perception and context…

Read the entire announcement here.

Family and Community History of the Winton Triangle

Research at the National Archives & Beyond
BlogTalk Radio
2013-04-22, 21:00-22:00 EDT (2013-04-23, 01:00-02:00Z)

Bernice Bennett, Host

Marvin T. Jones, Executive Director
Chowan Discovery Group

From Family History to Community History—the Chowan Discovery Group Story with Marvin T. Jones, Executive Director of the Chowan Discovery Group (CDG).

The mission of the Chowan Discovery Group  is to research, document, preserve and present the 400+ year-old history of the landowning tri-racial people of color of the Winton Triangle, an area centered in Hertford County, North Carolina.

Founded in 2007, the Chowan Discovery Group (http://www.chowandiscovery.org/)  co-produced in 2009 its first major presentation, a stage production, scripted by Jones, called The Winton Triangle.  The book, Carolina Genesis: Beyond the Color Line, features Jones’ summary of the Triangle’s history.

In addition to writing articles, Jones has made numerous presentations about the Winton Triangle’s history on national and regional radio, at colleges and universities, museums and to civic groups. The North Carolina Office of Archives and History accepted four of his nominations for highway historical markers.

A native of Cofield, a village in the Winton Triangle, Marvin Jones began this project a decade ago by scanning the photograph collection of relatives and neighbors.  The Winton Triangle digital collection now has over 7,000 files of photographs, documents, maps, audio and video recordings.

Jones is the owner of Marvin T. Jones & Associates, a professional photography company in Washington, DC.  He has  published in well-known magazines and has worked in South America, the Caribbean and Africa.  Howard University and Roanoke-Chowan Community College hosted Jones’ exhibit on Somalia.

For more information, click here.

This, That, Both, Neither: The Badging Of Biracial Identity In Young Adult Realism

The Journal of Research on Libraries and Young Adults
The official research journal of the Young Adult Library Services Association
2013-04-22

Sarah Hannah Gómez, Graduate Student
School of Library and Information Science
Simmons College, Boston, Massachusetts

Editor’s Note: “This, That, Both, Neither” was accepted for the peer reviewed paper session at YALSA’s third annual Young Adult Literature Symposium held November 2-4, 2012 in St. Louis. The theme of the conference was “Hit me with the next big thing.”

Only in the lifetime of the Millennial generation has it become legally acceptable to mark more than one race on a federal form. In the 2010 Census, 2.9 percent of respondents indicated that they were two or more races, with even more assigning themselves other designations that speak to the many types of multiracial identities common today. As this population grows in real life, it also flourishes in young adult literature, where ever more protagonists identify with more than one racial or ethnic group and must decide how to assert themselves and what to call themselves. This paper explores some of these novels and tracks each character’s progress towards creating a “badge” of identity.

Introduction

Every year when I was a student, my school district held awards ceremonies to honor distinguished students of color from all grade levels. There was an African American ceremony, a Hispanic ceremony, and presumably an Asian American and Native American one as well. High-achieving students were invited to their respective ceremonies as well as any students of color, although I’m not entirely sure. I didn’t even know the awards existed until seventh grade, when two girls in my homeroom asked me why I hadn’t been at the African American ceremony the evening before.

I hadn’t been invited.

“Oh.” It hit me. “The district has me down as white.”

If you’d been looking at me when I said that, you would be confused. I don’t exactly look like a character in a Nella Larsen novel. But it wasn’t a lie. I am white. I’m also black. And I’m adopted, so I also share a second mixed identity with my sister, one in which we are ethnically Jewish and Latina.

My mother knew that her children were mixed, and she wanted us to have the advantage of going to a diverse magnet elementary school, so when we started kindergarten, she checked the box marked “white.” This was the late 1980s and early 1990s, when you were only allowed to be one race. And so, without having to lie, my mother helped me and my sister pass as white—at least on paper…

…I share this story not because I’m writing my autobiography, but because this is an experience shared by other mixed-race individuals, an increasingly larger part of the young American population. These teens, I believe, are the future of young adult (YA) literature. For fifteen years now, Americans have been able to officially identify as mixed. As people who identify as mixed-race begin to publish novels that tell their stories, it seems natural that their fictional worlds will represent the worlds they see around them. As Michele Elam notes, “the census box represents the new nonviolent resistance, a finger in the eye of the racial status quo,”  and we all know YA literature to be about testing boundaries and making bold statements…

Read the entire article here.

Becoming Mexipino: A Book Event with Rudy Guevarra Jr.

California State University, Fullerton
Langsdorf Hall 402 (Map)
Thursday, 2013-04-25, 16:00-17:30 PDT (Local Time)

Rudy Guevarra, Jr., Assistant Professor, Asian Pacific American Studies, School of Social Transformation, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Arizona State University, Tempe

Becoming Mexipino is a social-historical interpretation of two ethnic groups, one Mexican, the other Filipino, whose paths led both groups to San Diego, California from 1900-1965. Rudy Guevarra Jr. traces their earliest interactions under Spanish colonialism, when they did not strongly identify as Mexican or Filipino, to illustrate how these historical ties and cultural bonds laid the foundation for what would become close interethnic relationships and communities in twentieth-century San Diego as well as in other locales throughout California and the Pacific West Coast.

This event is sponsored by the Department of African American Studies and Humanities & Social Sciences. For more information, please contact Dr. Edward Robinson.

Issue Brief – Race and Ethnicity Matters: Concepts and Challenges of Racial and Ethnic Classifications in Public Health

The Connecticut Health Disparities Project
Connecticut Department of Public Health
Hartford, Connecticut
Fall 2007

Alison Stratton, PhD

Ava Nepaul, MA

Margaret Hynes, PhD, MPH

Race, Ethnicity and Health Disparities: An Introduction

Extraordinary improvements in the health of all Americans have been made since the early 20th century. However, not everyone benefits equally from these advances in the public’s health. Nor is every group equally burdened by the leading causes of death, which in the United States today are no longer infectious diseases, but rather chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer, stroke, and diabetes.

“Health disparities”—those avoidable differences in health among specific population groups that result from cumulative social disadvantages (Stratton, Hynes, and Nepaul 2007)—exist for many minority populations in the United States. As used here, “minorities” are those populations in a society that are in a position of cultural and political non-dominance and disadvantage. As a result, they may experience reduced healthcare quality and access, and increased rates of disease, disability, and death compared to the overall U.S. population. For example, U.S. minority populations might include racial and ethnic minorities, limited English proficiency populations, people living in poverty, and homeless persons.

The Connecticut Health Disparities Project at the Department of Public Health (DPH), in conjunction with other agencies and programs, is taking a new look at health disparities and the collection of “race” and “ethnicity” data. Differential treatment of people based on the ideas of race and ethnicity is a social reality for all Americans (Nepaul, Hynes and Stratton 2007) and has a large impact on Americans’ health and general well-being. In order to track the health impact of these ideas of race and ethnicity, health departments at all levels need to collect consistent and comprehensive health information using racial and ethnic classification tools.

However, race and ethnicity data alone are not sufficient to accurately depict health disparities (Nepaul, Hynes and Stratton 2007). In fact, social structural factors (such as poverty, [low income environments, socioeconomic status and social supports) are equally if not more important as fundamental causes of health disparities (Link and Phelan 1995).

In this Issue Brief, then, we seek to address these questions: How have people defined and used the concepts of “race,” and “ethnicity?” How useful or consistent is our current collection of racial and ethnic data in the effort to reduce and eliminate health disparities? What other factors have an impact on people’s health? Below we: 1) introduce the history, theoretical foundations, and uses of the ideas of “race” and ethnicity” in public health data collection; 2) discuss why they are difficult, yet necessary, concepts to use in studying health in the United States; and 3) stress the need for inclusion of socio-economic and other demographic factors in the collection and analysis of health data to more fully illuminate health disparities…

…Race and ethnicity are neither scientifically reliable nor valid categories, and assignments to racial or ethnic categories are often based on observer biases, changing situational identities, and historical-political vagaries (Lee 1993; Kaplan and Bennett 2003; Williams 2007). In real life, people do not have only one fixed racial or ethnic identity which remains the same over time and space and that can be accurately measured. A further complication inherent in categorization is that people embrace biracial, multiracial, and multi-ethnic identities, which makes the categories even more difficult to sustain, compare, and enumerate. Current racial and ethnic categories for federal data collection are not sensitive to the complex intra-group heterogeneity that exists in the nation (Kaplan and Bennett 2003; Office of Management and Budget 1997).

Despite such inconsistencies in use and logic, the ideology of race is deeply ingrained in American culture. People acting on these beliefs and practices create a social reality for themselves and others based in part on these perceived racial or ethnic differences between people. This reality includes the structures, beliefs and practices of health care, medicine and economics that contribute to health disparities for minority populations (Williams, Lavizzo-Mourey and Warren 1994)…

Read the entire report here.

Mixed bloods of the Upper Monongahela Valley, West Virginia

Washington Academy of Sciences
Volume 36, Number 1 (1946-01-15)
pages 1-13
Source: Biodiversity Heritage Library

William Harlen Gilbert, Jr.
Library of Congress

We are accustomed to think of West Virginia as a racially homogeneous State populated by Old Americans of English, Scotch, and Scotch-Irish descent with an additional contingent in recent years of Poles and Italians in the mining areas. It may come as somewhat of a surprise to many to learn that there exists in the northern counties of the State a racial island of mixed bloods, known locally as “Guineas,” numbering several thousand persons. The origin of this mixed race is unrecorded, and the relative proportion of white, Negro, and Indian blood entering into its makeup is difficult to ascertain. The main seat of this people is in northern Barbour County and southern Taylor County, but small groups are to be found in over half a dozen adjoining counties and in Garrett County, Md. From their homes in the hill country many have gone in recent years to the factory cities of West Virginia, Ohio, and Michigan in search of economic opportunity and social betterment.

It is difficult to find a completely acceptable term to designate these mixed people. Stigmatized by white public opinion as a sort of outcast group, they dislike and resent any designation used by outsiders for themselves. They especially resent the terms “Guinea” or “Guinea Nigger,” which are most generally applied to them by their white neighbors. There are several possibilities in explaining the origin of this sobriquet.

An educated member of this group is said to have worked out a genealogy for them several years ago in which he claimed that an English nobleman went to the Guinea coast of Africa in the early days (possibly as a remittance man), married a native Negro woman, and produced a large family of crossbreeds. Later some of these descendants came to America and became the ancestors of the “Guineas.” Hu Maxwell, in his History of Barbour County (pp. 310-311), asserts that the mixed bloods of that county are called “Guineas” under the mistaken notion that they are Guinea Negroes. They are said, however, to have claimed for many years a descent from one of the Guineas (British, French, or Portuguese) in Africa or from one of the Guianas (British, French, or Dutch) in South America, and that their blood was native Negro or Indian…

Read the entire article here.

the changing face of “caucasian”

The State
2013-04-21

Adam Rothstein, Insurgent Archivist and Researcher

It’s been widely mentioned among a certain set on social media networks that the suspect in the Boston bombings is Chechen, and therefore, “Caucasian.” The good-natured purpose of this being to foil the usual insipid bigotry let loose in similar situations, which assumes that all terrorists are non-White, that Muslims are of a separate, lesser race, and/or that any particular terrorist act is part of some larger, epochal war of “us versus them.”

All of these racist conclusions are ridiculous, and would be easily refuted with the most basic and widely-accepted social and scientific data of contemporary times. However, stating that because the suspect is from the region of the Caucasus Mountains he “is White” is a troubling statement. Most readily, this reifies a notion of Whiteness. But additionally, this overlooks the history of the term “Caucasian,” and how the racial history of anthropology brought this term into common parlance. To a person from the United States, where “Caucasian” is a synonym for racial Whiteness, there is an etymological connection that would allow you to say this, and think you are correct. But “Whiteness” has always only ever been exactly what “White people” want it to be. What part of the world a person is from has little to no affect on whether anyone thinks s/he is actually “White”, because “White” is a social class, not a place.

“Caucasian” was first identified as a race by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach in 1779, as one of five: the others being Mongolian, Malayan, Ethiopian, and American. These categories were based upon the measurement of the human skull. While he was a proponent of “Degreneration Theory,” that theorized that all humans were originally Caucasian before having their appearance change due to poor living conditions, he was able to note what is now widely known—that phenotypical differences within races are as large as those between races. In other words, in any measureable characteristic, there is as great a difference between individual Africans, and as great a difference between individual Europeans, as there is between Africans and Europeans compared…

Read the entire article here.

Age of First Cigarette, Alcohol, and Marijuana Use Among U.S. Biracial/Ethnic Youth: A Population-Based Study

Addictive Behaviors
Volume 38, Issue 9, September 2013
pages 2450–2454
DOI: 10.1016/j.addbeh.2013.04.005

Trenette T. Clark, Associate Professor of Social Work
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Otima Doyle, Assistant Professor of Social Work
University of Illinois, Chicago

Amanda Clincy
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Highlights

• We found an intermediate biracial phenomenon.
• White-American Indian youth start smoking cigarettes earlier than all groups.
• White-Asian youth begin smoking marijuana and drinking at earlier ages than Whites.
• White-Asian youth engaged in all substances at earlier ages than Asian youth.

This study examines age of first cigarette, alcohol, and marijuana use among self-identified biracial youth, using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). We found an intermediate biracial phenomenon in which some biracial youth initiate substance use at ages that fall between the initiation ages of their 2 corresponding monoracial groups. When controlling for the covariates, our findings show White-Asian biracial youth begin smoking marijuana and drinking alcohol at earlier ages than Whites and engaging in all forms of substance use at earlier ages than Asian youth. Results indicate White-American Indian youth start smoking cigarettes at earlier ages than all biracial and monoracial groups. Our findings underscore the need for future research to examine substance-use initiation and progression among biracial/ethnic youth.

Read or purchase the article here.

The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics (Revised and Expanded Edition)

Temple University Press
March 2006
312 pages
Paper ISBN: 978-1-59213-494-6
Cloth ISBN: 978-1-59213-493-9
Electronic Book ISBN:  978-1-59213-495-3

George Lipsitz, Professor of Black Studies and Sociology
University of California, Santa Barbara

Outstanding Books Award, Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights in North America, 1999

In this unflinching look at white supremacy, George Lipsitz argues that racism is a matter of interests as well as attitudes, a problem of property as well as pigment. Above and beyond personal prejudice, whiteness is a structured advantage that produces unfair gains and unearned rewards for whites while imposing impediments to asset accumulation, employment, housing, and health care for minorities. Reaching beyond the black/white binary, Lipsitz shows how whiteness works in respect to Asian Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans.

Lipsitz delineates the weaknesses embedded in civil rights laws, the racial dimensions of economic restructuring and deindustrialization, and the effects of environmental racism, job discrimination and school segregation. He also analyzes the centrality of whiteness to U.S. culture, and perhaps most importantly, he identifies the sustained and perceptive critique of white privilege embedded in the radical black tradition. This revised and expanded edition also includes an essay about the impact of Hurricane Katrina on working class Blacks in New Orleans, whose perpetual struggle for dignity and self determination has been obscured by the city’s image as a tourist party town.

Contents

• Introduction: Bill Moore’s Body
• 1. The Possessive Investment in Whiteness
• 2. Law and Order: Civil Rights Laws and White Privilege
• 3. Immigrant Labor and Identity Politics
• 4. Whiteness and War
• 5. How Whiteness Works: Inheritance, Wealth, and Health
• 6. White Desire: Remembering Robert Johnson
• 7. Lean on Me: Beyond Identity Politics
• 8. “Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac”: Antiblack Racism and White Identity
• 9. “Frantic to Join . . . the Japanese Army”: Beyond the Black-White Binary
• 10. California: The Mississippi of the 1990s
• 11. Change the Focus and Reverse the Hypnosis: Learning from New Orleans
• Notes
• Acknowledgments
• Index