Mixed Race Studies

Who is Black in America? A Soledad O’Brien Report

Cable News Network
2012-12-09, 20:00 EST

Soledad O’Brien, Host

Black in America is a documentary series reported by CNN’s Soledad O’Brien.

In its fifth year, CNN’s Black in America takes a look at “Who is Black in America?” Soledad O’Brien follows two 17-year-olds, Becca Khalil and Nayo Jones, on their journeys to find their racial identities.

Left of Black S3:E10 | Who is Black in Multiracial America?

Left of Black
John Hope Franklin Center
Duke University
2012-11-19

Mark Anthony Neal, Host and Professor of African & African American Studies
Duke University

Habiba Ibrahim, Associate Professor of English
University of Washington

Yaba Blay, Assistant Professor of Africana Studies
Drexel University

Left of Black is a weekly Webcast hosted by Mark Anthony Neal and produced in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University.

American racial history was long framed by the notion of the “one drop” rule, which within a political economy of race and difference, was a blatant attempt to embolden Whiteness and the privilege that derived from it.  Scholar Yaba Blay offers a different view of the “one drop” rule with her multi-media project (1)ne Drop which “seeks to challenge narrow, yet popular perceptions of what Blackness is and what Blackness looks like.”

Blay, a Visiting Professor of Africana Studies at Drexel University and contributing producer to CNN’s Black in America 5, which was inspired by the (1)ne Drop project, joins Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal on the November 19th episode of Left of Black to talk about the complexities of Black identity.  Neal is also joined by University of Washington Professor Habiba Ibrahim for part two of an interview about her new book Troubling the Family: The Promise of Personhood and the Rise of Multiracialism (University of Minnesota Press).

Mixed-race teens talk about identity

The Mash: For teens, by teens
2012-11-15

Kaylah Sosa
Homewood-Flossmoor High School, Flossmoor, Illinois

Chris Pieper
Whitney Young Magnet High School, Chicago, Illinois

Megan Fu
Buffalo Grove, Buffalo Grove, Illinois

Rosemary Anguiano
Whitney Young Magnet High School, Chicago, Illinois

The Mash is a weekly newspaper and Web site that is here to serve you, the Chicago-area teenager.

The paper is distributed for free each Thursday at Chicago-area high schools and is written largely by high school students. Our student contributors influence most of the paper’s coverage, so it’s a publication and Web site created for you, about you and, most important, by you.

Mixed-race teens share their personal perspectives on how they view themselves—and how others view their mixed-race heritage. These essays were part of the cover story, “Outside the box,” about how mixed-race teens identify themselves on college applications in the Nov. 15, 2012 issue of The Mash.

I get two common questions in my life. One: “Are you related to Sammy Sosa?” And two: “You’re mixed, right?” The former is annoying, and I would like to make a public plea for people to stop asking.  The latter is a bit more complicated. Yes, I’m –mixed. I know I don’t look it. You don’t need to point it out.

My dad’s Mexican and my mom is black. The color of my skin could fool you, but the defined curls of my shiny, long hair might give it away. My dad calls me a chameleon. I went to a mostly Hispanic elementary school, and when I was around his side of the family, I looked Mexican. But when I was over with my mom’s family, or in a mostly black school like I am now, I look black. It’s kind of fun being able to play both fields.

When someone asks the oddly worded question, “What are you?” I reply with “Black and Mexican.” That ruffles a few people’s feathers. “You look black,” people sometimes tell me. “If you look black, you are. None of that mixed garbage.”

But by embracing my Latina heritage, I’m not shirking my African American heritage. I grew up with a Mexican father in a Mexican neighborhood. As far as I know, that qualifies me to be on the Latina team. Apart from the ignorance of everyday encounters, I’ve found my ethnicities coming heavily into play while filling out college apps. Race? Black/African American. Hispanic or not? Hispanic. I could put “mixed” and go through the whole song and dance, but I’d rather not. If they ask about Hispanic heritage, I just say I have it…

Read the entire article here.

A few questions from CMRS 2012

Two or More: Mixed thoughts about the Census NAC
2012-11-18

Eric Hamako

Eric Hamako is one of 32 members of the United States Census Bureau’s National Advisory Committee (NAC) on Race, Ethnic, and Other Populations, 2012-2014. This blog is intended to 1) share updates and Eric’s perspectives on the NAC, 2) gather community perspectives, and 3) promote discussion about the Census Bureau as it relates to Multiracial people, the Two Or More Races (TOMR) population, and social justice.

At the 2012 Critical Mixed Race Studies conference at DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois, I gave two informal presentations about NAC matters. As with this blog, I intended to share information and to hear people’s questions and concerns. Here are a few of the questions people raised—I offer them as food for thought and discussion.

1. Will the Census Bureau attempt to use Census 2010 data as the Third Party Record of first resort? (Census 2010 complies with OMB Directive 15. However, the racial categories between 2010 and 2020 will likely differ and have areas that don’t match. Further, young people may self-identify in 2020 differently than their parents identified them in 2010.)…

Read the entire article here.

College applications force mixed-race teens to color outside the lines

The Mash: For teens, by teens
2012-11-15

Steffie Drucker
Niles North High School, Skokie, Illinois

Josh Kalamotousakis
John F. Kennedy High School, Chicago, Illinois

The Mash is a weekly newspaper and Web site that is here to serve you, the Chicago-area teenager.

The paper is distributed for free each Thursday at Chicago-area high schools and is written largely by high school students. Our student contributors influence most of the paper’s coverage, so it’s a publication and Web site created for you, about you and, most important, by you.

The college process is filled with questions. First, students must ask themselves what type of school they want to attend and narrow down schools to only a short list of places to apply. The process can be confusing enough since schools ask for different essays, transcripts or letters of recommendation.
Unfortunately, there’s one question students are asked that should be simple to answer but isn’t always: to identify their race and ethnicity.

For some students, identifying themselves is hard because they don’t fit into a single box. And they’re not alone—according to 2010 census data, more than 9 million people in the U.S. identify themselves as being two or more races, up from about 6.8 million in 2000.

Matthew Ibrahim, a senior at Niles North who considers himself Assyrian because his family’s roots are in the Middle East, falls into this category.

“I don’t feel like I fit into a box,” he says. Ibrahim usually checks white since that’s his skin color or Asian since the Middle East is technically in Asia. But, he says, “It makes me feel dishonest.”…

…Sally Rubenstone, a former college admissions officer, author of “Panicked Parents Guide to College Admissions” and a senior advisor at the college process advice site collegeconfidential.com, sympathizes with multiracial students who say they’re torn between checking different boxes. “Kids are becoming more and more mixed,” she says. “Not everyone identifies with one race or another.”

Kennedy senior John Gonzalez, who identifies himself as Mexican and white, feels that being multiracial is to his advantage since each race has its perks. “I know that if I put down Mexican, I’ll have a better chance getting into some schools than if I would say I’m (only) white.”

Rubenstone does believe that being multiracial has its advantages—though not for the same reason as Gonzalez. “Colleges like (the diversity brought by mixed race and ethnicity students) because they can get a Puerto Rican kid and a Greek kid in one student,” she says. “It makes the student (body) a bit more interesting.”…

Read the entire article here.

The New Colored People: The Mixed Race Movement in America (Book Review)

Mixed American Life
2012-11-15

Charles T. Franklin

The New Colored People: The Mixed Race Movement in America by Jon Michael Spencer (1997) makes the argument that the US multi-cultural movement, like other movements in the past, is something that we need to pay attention for two reasons. Spencer cites the first reason to pay attention is due to the increasing numbers of people who are born with or have become more comfortable expressing their “mixed-race”heritage. The second reason Spencer gives is his assertion that our society as whole is not particularly ready to deal with the potential social, legal, and cultural consequences that could happen as a result. In other words, the multi-racial movement is more than just the right to check multiple ethnicities or the “Other” section for race on an application. Spencer’s interest in the growing multicultural movement of the US is not for its own sake (though he believes it worth studying) , but to compare this movement with similar movements in South Africa and use that comparison to predict the impact of the multicultural movement in the future. Spencer conducts a comprehensive analysis on the subject; however his primary audience and the target of his study is the impact of the mixed-race movement on the African-American community…

Read the entire review here.

Coping with the crickets: a fusion autoethnography of silence, schooling, and the continuum of biracial identity formation

International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education
Published online: 2012-11-07
DOI: 10.1080/09518398.2012.731537

Lynnette Mawhinney, Assistant Professor of Elementary/Early Childhood Education
The College of New Jersey, Ewing, New Jersey

Emery Marc Petchauer, Assistant Professor of Teacher Development & Educational Studies
Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan

This study explores biracial identity development in the adolescent years through fusion autoethnography. Using an ecological model of biracial identity development, this study illustrates how family, peers, and school curricula validate and reject racial self-presentations. We pay specific attention to the different forms of silence (i.e. “crickets”) that teachers and peers deploy as tactics of rejection and how racially coded artifacts such as hip-hop culture and Black Liberation texts function as validations of racial self-presentations. Overall, this study helps researchers and practitioners to understand the fluidity of biracial and multiracial identity development as it relates to everyday school spaces and processes.

Ask any biracial or multiracial person what question makes mem crazy, and 9 times out of 10 the answer will be Ihe question. “What are you?” As a biracial person, even to this day, my response to this question is often physical and visceral: I cringe, clench my jaw, and tense my body. Lewis (2006) writes in his book Fade: My Journeys in Multiracial America that his first thought after this question is, “Here we go again” (3). Ultimately, the question is infuriating because it is provoked by our physical appearance that seems ambiguous or “exotic” according to the insufficient, binary heuristics of race in the USA (Funderburg 1994; Rockquemore and Brunsma 2002; Rockquemore. Brunsma. and Delgado 2009). Though not intending to offend, a person asks the question based upon these narrow heuristics and expects the multiracial person to clearly identify in one category. Some people with multiracial backgrounds do indeed identify as one race, yet instances such as this are problematic, as Lewis (2006, 40) argues, because:

For multiracial people, there is an additional layer in the identity development process. It involves creating a sense of self by assembling pieces of their heritage that others view as incompatible or mutually exclusive.

This additional layer of identity development is inseparable from the process of schooling. Young people spend an enormous amount of their time in schools, thus…

Read or purchase the article here.

The Skin We’re In: A Literary Analysis of Representations Of Mixed Race Identity in Children’s Literature

University of Illinois, Chicago
2012
232 pages
Publication Number: AAT 3530952
ISBN: 9781267715739

Amina Chaudhri, Assistant Professor of Teacher Education
Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago

A Thesis Submitted as partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Curriculum and Instruction in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Chicago

This study systematically analyzed novels of contemporary and historical fiction with mixed race content intended for readers age 9-14. In the context of an increasingly multiracial and multicultural society, this study was primarily concerned with the question of identity representation: What is contemporary children’s literature saying about the experience of being racially mixed? This question was investigated along three strands: 1) How can literature about multiracial identity be usefully described and define? 2) What historical perspectives inform books about multiracial people? and 3) To what degree are contemporary authors maintaining or challenging racial paradigms?

A content analysis of ninety novels with mixed race content was undertaken to determine specific features such as gender, age, racial mix, family situation, socio-economic situation, racial makeup of environment, and setting. Three categories were created based historical paradigms about mixed race identity, and themes that emerged from the novels: 1) Mixed Race In/Visibility, 2) Mixed Race Blending, and 3) Mixed Race Awareness. All ninety novels were evaluated with respect to the criteria of the categories. Thirty-three novels were selected for deep literary analysis, demonstrating the ways historical perspectives about mixed race identity inform contemporary children’s literature.

Findings indicated three broad trends in representations of mixed race identity in children’s literature with novels falling almost equally between the three categories. Books in the Mixed Race In/Visibility category depicted stereotypically traumatic experiences for mixed race characters and provide little or no opportunity for critique of racism. Books in the Mixed Race Blending category featured characters whose mixed race identity was descriptive but not functional in their lives. Mixed Race Awareness books represented a range of possible life experiences for biracial characters who respond to social discomfort to their racial identity in complex and credible ways.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• I. INTRODUCTION
  • Background
  • Rationale
  • Overview of the Study
  • Research Questions
• II. REVIEW OF LITERATURE
  • Literary Criticism
    • Literary Criticism in Children’s Literature
  • Critical Race Theory
    • Critical Race Theory in Children’s Literature
  • Mixed Race Perspectives
    • Theorizing Mixed Race Identity
    • Mixed Race Research in Children’s Literature
    • Setting the Stage
• III. METHODOLOGY
  • Text Identification
  • Search Parameters
    • Publication Date
    • Genre
    • Age of Intended Readership
  • Text Selection for Literary Analysis
  • Text Analysis – Content Analysis
  • Text Analysis – Literary Analysis
  • Terminology
• IV. FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS OF REPRESENTATIVE TEXTS
  • The Big Picture
  • Mixed Race Identity in the Categories
    • Mixed Race In/Visibility (MRIV)
    • Mixed Race Blending (MRB)
    • Mixed Race Awareness (MRA)
  • Trends in Contemporary Realistic Fiction
  • Trends in Historical Fiction
  • Literary Analysis of Representative Books in Each Category
    • MRI/V in Contemporary Realistic Fiction
    • MRI/V in Historical Fiction
    • MRB in Contemporary Realistic Fiction
    • MRB in Historical Fiction
    • MRA in Contemporary Realistic Fiction
    • MRA in Historical Fiction
• V. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
  • Themes in the Categories
    • Mixed Race In/Visibility
      • Wounded by Words
      • Inferior Vitality
      • Incomplete Amalgamation
      • Conclusion: Mixed Race In/Visibility
    • Mixed Race Blending
      • One Drop Still Rules
      • Revelations
      • All-American Biracials
      • Conclusion: Mixed Race Blending
    • Mixed Race Awareness
      • Conclusion: Mixed Race Awareness
  • Talking About Mixed Race Identity
  • Contributions
  • Limitations
  • Future Research
  • Conclusion
• VI. APPENDICES
  • APPENDIX A: Books Identified for this Study
  • APPENDIX B: Books Listed by Genre
  • APPENDIX C: Books Listed by Category
  • APPENDIX D: Books Listed by Racial Mix
  • APPENDIX E: Instrument for Collecting Individual Text Data
• VII. REFERENCES
  • CHILDREN’S LITERATURE CITED
• VIII. CURRICULUM VITAE

LIST OF TABLES

• TABLE III–1. Categories for Content Analysis
• TABLE IV–1. Author Race
• TABLE IV–2. Features of Books With Mixed Race Characters
• TABLE IV–3. Mixed Race Representation Across Genre and Category

Read the entire dissertation here.

HCOL 86 E: D1: Mixed: Multiracialism in U.S. Culture

University of Vermont
The Honors College
Spring 2013

John Gennari, Associate Professor of English

This seminar will examine the theme of multiracial identity and culture in the United States. We’ll consider how U.S. concepts and ideologies of race have developed historically, and why within that history multiracial people and culture have been considered both a problem (e.g. the “tragic mulatto” figure in pre-1960s fiction and film) and a solution (e.g. the vaunted racial pluralism of jazz, the reformist rhetoric and ideology of post-civil rights era multiculturalism). We’ll consider how mixed-race identity and experience challenge and complicate racial classification schemes that govern U.S. institutional life, public policy, popular perception, and private imagination. We’ll reckon with the myriad ways multiracial people and culture point up the massive confusion of American thinking about race—a confusion perhaps best typified by the heralding of a so-called “post-racial” order upon the election of a mixed-raced President, only immediately to see Barack Obama’s racial and national identity become a source of lurid obsession. Course materials include historical and theoretical literature, personal essays and narratives, film, music, and other forms of popular culture. In addition to participating actively in class discussions, students will engage in regular informal and formal writing (in-class free writing, short essays, a longer final paper) and will stage a group presentation.

Covering Multiracial America Requires Historical Perspective

Maynard Media Center on Structural Inequity
Maynard Institute
2012-11-14

Nadra Kareem Nittle

Although people of mixed races have lived in the United States for centuries, authorities on multiracial identity say mainstream media continue to report on these people as if they are a new phenomenon.

In 1619, the first slaves were brought to Britain’s North American colonies. The following year, says Audrey Smedley, professor emerita of anthropology and African American studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, the first “mulatto” child was born. Thus, mixed-race people have a long history in this country, disproving the notion often mentioned today that miscegenation will somehow magically cure racism.

Most major stereotypes about multiracial people in America historically involved individuals whose heritage was black and white or Native American and white. Such people were largely thought to yearn for the same advantages as whites but found them off-limits because of the “one-drop rule,” which originated in the South and mandated that just a drop of black blood meant they were of color.

In the 21st century, newer stereotypes about multiracial people have gained popularity. Rainier Spencer, founder and director of the Afro-American Studies Program and senior adviser to the president at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, says contemporary media coverage of mixed-race people isn’t filled with tragic mulattoes but with docile symbols of a colorblind America yet to reach fruition.

“Multiracial people are infantilized,” Spencer says. “They [the media] don’t treat them as fully capable agents. Mixed-race people are quiet and happy, and they don’t complain. They’re our postracial future.”

Spencer, author of “Reproducing Race: The Paradox of Generation Mix,” cautions that these notions are dangerous. The stereotype that multiracial people represent a bridge between races that will soon eradicate bigotry ignores the fact that such people were in North America more than a century before U.S. independence and that racism remains a reality.

This idea also lets the establishment off the hook, he says. “If mixed-race people are going to take us to a postracial destiny, then the power structure doesn’t have to worry about it. It’s very convenient.”…

…In 2000, the U.S. Census Bureau permitted declaring more than one race on census forms. In the subsequent decade, several published articles reported that the mixed-race population was increasing, especially among young people.

But Heidi W. Durrow, who grew up as the only daughter of an African-American father and a Danish mother, would like to see news stories about multiracial people that don’t revolve around census figures…

…Laura Kina, a founding member of the Critical Mixed Race Studies biennial conference and associate professor of Art, Media and Design at DePaul University, has similar concerns. She considers the idea that mixed-race people are new to be a stereotype. “They go back a very long ways,” she says.

Kina is the daughter of an Okinawan father from Hawaii and a Spanish-Basque/Anglo mother, according to her website…

…Dominique DiPrima, host of Los Angeles radio show “The Front Page,” takes issue with the concept of multiracialism because she disputes the concept of race. “I think the media should differentiate between culture, ethnicity and race,” says DiPrima, daughter of Italian-American poet Diane di Prima and African-American writer Amiri Baraka…

Read the entire article here.