Mixed Race Studies

Whoa, We Have a Black President

Zócalo: Public Square
2011-09-08

Randall Kennedy Assesses Obama’s Triumphs—and Shortcomings—In Erasing the Color Line

Randall Kennedy, Harvard professor of law and author of The Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency, had an assignment: to answer whether or not Obama has been erasing the color line. “By color line,” explained Kennedy, “I mean all of the sentiments, instincts, habits of mind, structures that wrongly stymie people because of race. Is Obama erasing that baleful aspect of political culture?”
 
In a word, said Kennedy, yes. But there was a caveat: the “Obama way” is to avoiding talking about race at every turn.
 
According to Kennedy, Obama’s most impressive feat was to treat making it to the White House as a realistic, tenable option. His legacy, Kennedy believes, will be the alteration of public psychology to a place of normalizing a black presidency. After four years, people will have accepted seeing a black man enter and exit Air Force One.
 
“It was so audacious because of the history of the U.S.,” he said.
 
As Kennedy reminded the audience, a crowd of a few hundred gathered in an auditorium in the Hammer Museum, African-Americans were largely excluded from politics until the Voting Rights Act of 1965. “Blacks were excluded by dint of terror throughout the deep South, excluded by dint of various legal shenanigans,” Kennedy said….

…Kennedy’s own criticisms of Obama only came up in the question-and-answer portion of the evening. Kennedy said he believes that Obama didn’t actively do enough to change the ideological landscape of the country and that he was sheepish about outwardly supporting liberal judges. Kennedy was most critical of Obama’s stances surrounding gay rights, finding it ironic that when Obama’s parents married across racial boundaries it was considered a felony in many places. Now Obama is pushing a “separate but equal” equivalent in the gay community…

Read the entire article here.
Watch the video and/or listen to the audio here.

The Concept of Post-Racial: How Its Easy Dismissal Obscures Important Questions

Dædalus
Volume 140, Issue 1 (Winter 2011 – Race in the Age of Obama, volume 1)
pages 174–182
DOI: 10.1162/DAED_a_00069

Colloquium – Mónica Moreno Figueroa on “Naming Ourselves: Recognising Racism and Mestizaje in Mexico”

Auditorium of King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center
New York University
53 Washington Square South
New York, New York
Monday, 2011-09-12, 18:00-20:00 EDT (Local Time)

Mónica Moreno Figueroa, Lecturer in Sociology
Newcastle University

Discussant: Frances Negrón-Muntaner

Hosted by the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) at NYU

Mónica Moreno Figueroa is a Lecturer in Sociology at Newcastle University, UK in the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology. Her research is concerned with the contemporary practices of racism in relation to discourses of mixed-race identities, feminist theory and emotions, with a specific focus on Mexico. In particular, she is interested in the qualities of the lived experience of racism; the significance of racial ideologies and notions of race and nation; and the experience of racism analysed from the particular perspective of the visible, specifically the relationship between visual representations of identities, embodiment and racist practices. She teaches extensively on these topics. Mónica has published in Ethnicities, History of the Human Sciences, Journal of Intercultural Studies and the Journal for Cultural Research as well as in the edited collections Raza, Etnicidad y Sexualidades (Universidad Nacional de Colombia), Porn.Com (Peter Lang Publishing Group) and Mestizaje, Diferencia y Nación (INAH, UNAM, CEMCA and IRD), and has two forthcoming chapters in Contesting Recognition (Palgrave) and Cultures of Colour (Berghahn Books).

Drawing from empirical research on contemporary practices of racism and understandings of the discourse of mestizaje, this paper presents an examination of the ambiguities of Mestiza identity as an unproblematised but racialised identity. Mestiza is a racial category that emerges as a key component of the ideological myth of formation of the Mexican nation, namely mestizaje, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In such a project of state formation Mexican is equivalent to Mestiza. Mestiza refers to those who represent Mexicaness and, therefore, those who are closer to the model of the ideal subjects of the Mexican Mestiza nation. Mestizaje, as this ideological framework, boosts an implied rhetoric of inclusiveness while concealing processes of exclusion and racism. Mestiza is then seen as term both relatively ‘neutral’ (i.e. all Mexicans are Mestizas/os) but also as highly ‘loaded’ (implies possibilities of inclusion and exclusion to the national myth). This analysis considers the limits of racial recognition in what could be considered a raceless (Goldberg 2002) context. Such setting has given way to a process of racial and racist normalization that allows Mexican people to express and be convinced by the commonly spread idea that in Mexico there is no racism because we are all ‘mixed’. Mexicans do not recognise themselves as racial subjects, but as national subjects and citizens. In this scenario, recognition of racism is not preceded by the explicit claim of belonging to the specific Mestiza racial identity but a citizenship status.

The title for the CLACS Fall 2011 Colloquium Series is Contemporary Racisms in the Americas. This colloquium will explore emergent racisms in the Americas as integral to the multicultural and what some have called “post racial” present defined within larger processes of economic and cultural globalization and transnational migration. It will also deepen the understanding of different theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of contemporary forms of racism as major obstacles to the construction of intercultural relations, racial and economic justice, and democracy. In this way, it will complement the themes covered by the seminar on Racisms and anti-racist strategies in the Americas. It will become an opportunity for students to benefit from latest contributions to the analysis of racism in the hemisphere and develop a thematic and methodological comparative perspective. It will also become an opportunity for a larger audience to benefit from the information and analysis of cutting-edge scholarship which is also preoccupied with the construction of anti-racist strategies.

For more information, click here.

Getting Back to Basics: Re-Reading NYT’s “Race Remixed”

Nuñez Daughter
2011-02-15

Kismet Nuñez

A few weeks ago, @TrickAmaka sent me a New York Times piece by Susan Saulny on the high numbers of adults who identify as mixed-race as of the 2010 census.  In what was apparently the first in a series titled “Race Remixed,” the article focuses on a group of students at the University of Maryland as part of “the crop of students moving through college right now” who make up “the largest group of mixed-race people ever to come of age in the United States.”  Apparently, inquiring minds expect to latest census to reflect the changing dynamics of race in America:

One in seven new marriages is between spouses of different races or ethnicities, according to data from 2008 and 2009 that was analyzed by the Pew Research Center. Multiracial and multiethnic Americans (usually grouped together as “mixed race”) are one of the country’s fastest-growing demographic groups. And experts expect the racial results of the 2010 census, which will start to be released next month, to show the trend continuing or accelerating.

I’m glad I waited until after V-Day to even click the link.  Turns out the second article basically redacted the first (it is, *gasp* a “complex” matter, quantifying and analyzing the mixed-race population), and the third (well, what do you, our ever so intelligent and enraged readers, think?) threw the topic to the wolves of the blogosphere for further discussion…

The piece is mostly NYT playing Columbus and re-discovering race (mixture) in this country.  Again.  After all, what do you with bleached out phrases like these:

“Some proportion of the country’s population has been mixed-race since the first white settlers had children with Native Americans.”

 A bit of rape with your legacy of colonialism?  A dollop of indentured servitude and forced labor on the side?  How Disney of you…

…And I affirm Ms. Wood, Ms. López-Mullins, and all of the other students who were brave enough to talk to a reporter about what is going on in their hearts and in their heads.  Figuring out who you are is no easy feat, regardless of your race, class, ethnicity, sexuality, religion, political affiliation, etc., etc., etc.
 
But there is a legacy of violence that underlies all of these identity claims and we need to make that central to the discussion.   Once upon a time a black man boy was lynched for whistling at a white woman.  Once upon a time a black woman was raped for walking down the wrong road.  Once upon a time a white woman was enslaved for not being white enough (or was she?).
 
And because we should never speak of these relations as though they were simply a matter of romance, a rainbow conflagration of resistance that just happened to occur between the legs of women of color, I will also never advocate for “mixed-race” as a corporate identity…

Read the entire article here.

Race Card: The New York Times Realizes Mixed People Exist

Bitch Media
2011-01-31

Nadra Kareem Nittle

Breaking news: the New York Times has discovered mixed people. Did you know that the number of racially mixed families in the US is growing? Or how about that some mixed kids feel pressured to choose one race? And get this—multiracial people find it annoying to be asked, “What are you?”
 
Yeah, that’s about as deep as the Times Jan. 29 piece on multiracial youth got. The paper evidently rolled out the article because the Census Bureau will soon unveil data about racial groups in the U.S., including how many people identified as more than one race—a move the government first allowed on the 2000 census.

…As required by law after Election Day 2008, all articles about multiracial people must make note of President Obama. And this piece follows suit. Why did Obama just check black on his census form? Isn’t he white, too? Should we call him the first black president or the first multiracial president?…

Read the entire article here.

Biracial and Biethnic Identity Development in Vietnamese/Caucasian Adults

Alliant International University, San Francisco Bay
May 2011
75 pages
Publication Number: AAT 3467139
ISBN: 9781124783406

Tien Vu

A Clinical Dissertation Proposal Presented to the Faculty of The California School of Professional Psychology, San Francisco Bay Campus Alliant International University

The current study explored factors that contribute to Vietnamese/White biracial identity. Three interview participants who were raised in the United States experienced less racism and discrimination than the two interviewees raised overseas. All of the participants currently have healthy and strong biracial and biethnic identity development. These findings suggest that Vietnamese/White individuals are more resilient and are more likely to have healthy outcomes than previous research has suggested.

Table of Contents

• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• I. Introduction
• II. Literature Review
  • Ethnic Identity Research
  • Biracial People
  • Asian-American Immigration
  • Biracial Asian-Americans
  • Vietnamese Immigration to the United States
  • Vietnamese Biracial Individuals
• III. Methods
• IV. Results
• V. Discussion
• VI. Implications
• References
• Appendix A: Research Study Flyer
• Appendix B: Script of Subject Screening
• Appendix C: Consent Form
• Appendix D: Background Information Form
• Appendix E: Interview Guide
• Appendix F: Follow-Up Phone Script

Purchase the dissertation here.

More metro Atlantans say they’re multiracial: Fast-growing segment represents a cultural shift that’s nationwide

Atlanta Journal-Constitution
2011-09-03

Bo Emerson

When Evelyn Brown-Wilder was growing up in Tuscaloosa, Ala., in the 1950s, life was a matter of warring opposites. Though some of her ancestors were white and her face was pale, the law said she was black. She wrapped both arms around that identity.

Her daughter, Sonya Colvin-Boyd, lives in a different world and chooses a different identity. When it came time for Colvin-Boyd to indicate her race on her 2000 U.S. census form, she picked both white and black. “We’re all mixed,” said the Powder Springs resident.
 
Claiming both races puts her in one of the fastest-growing segments of America’s population. It’s a trend that reveals seismic shifts in both outward social and cultural relations and inward notions of individual identity.
 
Across metro Atlanta’s counties, the last decade saw a doubling or tripling of the number of people identifying themselves as being of more than one race, according to the Census Bureau. In Gwinnett County, the number of respondents checking two or more races rose from 12,673 in 2000 to 25,292 in 2010, a 99 percent jump. In Fulton County, the number rose from 11,853 to 20,279, a 71 percent increase. In Henry County, the numbers went up 269 percent…

…Yet mixed ancestry is a matter of fact for most Americans whose ancestors include people from Africa; they operate in a world of gradations where skin color sometimes determines status. “A lot of darker-complected blacks saw it as the ‘house Negro’ syndrome versus the ‘field Negro’ syndrome,” said Troy Gordon, 42, who teaches elementary school in Lithonia. Gordon is a copper-skinned mix of African-American and American Indian, and his light skin drew “flak” when he was younger.
 
He knew, growing up, that “black” was a whole range of colors, from his white great-grandmother, to his “paper-sack brown” aunt and his green-eyed, red-haired uncle. “I was black,” said Gordon, “but you’d see family pictures and say, ‘Wow, who’s this white lady?’”
 
Such conversations were limited back then. Today, there are many more talks about their multiracial heritage with his light-skinned 4-year-old son Chase. Chase’s mother is white, and he considers himself white, though he pronounces it “wipe.”…

Read the entire article here.

Generation, Degeneration, Miscegenation

Intstitute for Research on Women
IRW Distinguished Lecture Series 2011-12: (De)Generations: Reimagining Communities
Rutgers University
Thursday, 2012-04-12
(16:00 EDT reception; 16:30 EDT lecture)

César Braga-Pinto, Associate Professor of Brazilian Studies
Northwestern University

Focusing on the cases of Brazil and the U.S., this presentation proposes to articulate the role played by gender representations in debates around miscegenation in the turn of the 19th to the 20th century. Generation, understood in its vertical, genealogical, reproductive aspect is one of the most contested issues in the late 19th century both in Brazil and the U.S., and it is always haunted by miscegenation and the threat of degeneration. This paper aims to understand how horizontal calls for the formation of a new generation (in the sense of brotherhood, nationality, contemporaneity and intellectual-literary communities) in the beginning of the 20th century struggles to resolve the pessimism associated with mixed-race subjects and communities.

For more information, click here.

Race, Racism, and Multiraciality in American Education

Academica Press
2006
504 pages
Trim Size: 6 x 9
Paper ISBN: 1-933146-27-3

Christopher Knaus, Associate Professor of Education
California State University, East Bay

This research monograph analyses and describes how multiracial undergraduates have come to think about race and racism. The work begins with an overview of the problem of race and racism in education, then discusses the way in which race is typically construed along a continuum of mono-racial thinking( a surprisingly inept conceptualization given the increasing birth rates of mixed or multiracial school populations). The text is then split into seven distinct case studies based on individuals with multiracial, multicultural and ambiguous racial identities and their K-12 experience. Since this work is part of a growing field of research that incorporates a critical analysis of race and racial identity theory it also moves the discussion into areas of multiracial experience and concludes with analysis of higher education’s role in developing awareness of the dynamics and suggestions for practioners in helping the student navigate the question “ What are you?” in a society so long divided along traditional color lines.

ASEM 2535: The Multiracial Individual

The Womens College, University of Denver
Fall Quarter, 2011

Arthur C. Jones, Clinical Professor and Chair of Culture and Psychology

From the beginning of its history, the United States has always been a place where bi-ethnic and bi-racial romantic alliances have been common, producing children with multi-ethnic and multi-racial roots. This was inevitable in a country that evolved as an international “melting pot,” including Native American peoples, enslaved Africans, and successive waves of immigrants and refugees from around the world. Yet, it was not until the year 2000 that the U.S. Census included a category that allowed respondents to indicate a bi-racial or multi-racial heritage/identity. This course will explore the historical racial tensions in the U.S. that have made it difficult to acknowledge the reality of multi-racial peoples in its midst, and will trace the trends in culture and national consciousness that made it possible for a change to occur in the 2000 Census. We will survey the varying ways in which multiracial people have been regarded by the larger society in different social contexts, as well as the ways in which the sociological, psychological, and political dynamics of multiracial identity have changed over time, and have impacted the experience of multiracial people themselves. Finally, we will examine the contemporary social and psychological dynamics of race and ethnicity in the U.S., including the continuing controversy surrounding the very idea of a multiracial identity.

For more information, click here.