Mixed Race Studies

Racial/Ethnic Identities and Related Attributed Experiences of Multiracial Japanese European Americans

Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development
Volume 32 (October 2004)
pages 206-221

Karen L. Suyemoto, Associate Professor of Psychology and Asian American Studies
University of Massachusetts, Boston

Surveys from 50 multiracial Japanese European Americans supported the endorsement of multiple simultaneous racial/ethnic identities and a differentiated multiracial identity. Experiences associated with being multiracial included feeling different, sensitivity to cultural cues, appreciation of different viewpoints, acceptance of  difference, and disliking exclusion. Implications for research and therapy are discussed.

In the 2000 U.S. census, 6.8 million people (2.4%) actively endorsed two racial categories (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2001). This is likely an underreporting of the multiracial population, given that many racial/ethnic minority group organizations lobbied againstendorsing multiple races because of the lack of clarity regarding how the census data would be used regarding allocating resources or creating policy related to racial and ethnic groups. In 1990, 5% of the respondents to the U.S. census reported mixed ancestry (Waters, 2000). Sociologists already estimate that up to 90% of Black Americans have White ancestors (Wehrley, 1996), the majority of Latinos/as and American Indians are of mixed racial and ethnic heritage (Amaro & Zambrana, 2000; Fernandez, 1992; Mihesuah, 1996), and interracial marriage is becoming the numerical norm for some racial/ethnic minority groups such as American Indians and Japanese American women (Jaimes, 1995; Kitano, Fujino, & Sato 1998).

In spite of these trends, the psychological literature on racial/ethnic identity continues to predominantly reflect the monoracial experience both in the individuals who participate in research and in the theories/models that are constructed. Two of the most problematic aspects of monoracial racial/ethnic identity models for multiracial people are the assumptions that there will be a single reference group in the identity development process and a single “achieved identity” (Kerwin & Ponterotto, 1995; Root, 1990). The pressure to choose only one identity and the social message that having multiple identities is problematic have been continually identified as difficult for multiracial individuals (Gibbs & Hines, 1992; Hall, 1992; Root, 1990, 1997).

Hall (1992) reported that 10 of her 30 Black Japanese interviewees chose the “other” category rather than a single identification as only Japanese or only Black. The comments made by the individuals whom she interviewed indicated that choosing only one monoracial identity was frustrating and limiting. Gibbs and Hines’s (1992) interviews with 12 multiracial adolescents and their 10 families also described conflicts about having to choose only one identity or heritage. C. W. Stephan and Stephan (1989) conducted the only quantitative study that explicitly explored multiple ethnic identities. Their survey of students with multiethnic backgrounds (not all multiracial as usually defined in the United States; e.g., Japanese Chinese students were included) found that 73% of Japanese multiethnic participants listed a multiple identity on at least one of the five situationally specific ethnic identity questions (e.g., “When you are with your closest friends, which ethnic group do you feel you belong to?”). In their second study with Hispanic multiethnic students, 44% of the students listed a multiple identity on at least one measure. In spite of these studies identifying difficulties with a single, monoracial identification, I do not know of any published research that explicitly investigates the extent to which multiracial individuals actually do identify in multiple ways.

Another major difficulty with applying monoracial racial/ethnic identity models to the multiracial experience is that they do not include the possibility of a multiracial identity. However, many authors have suggested that a multiracial identity could itself be either the identity or an identity claimed by multiracial individuals (Collins, 2000; Kich, 1992; Root, 1990). Developing a multiracial identity may contribute to resolving problems of belonging, exclusion, and negotiating multiple reference groups that are discussed in the critiques of monoracial racial/ethnic identity models’ applicability to multiracial individuals (Collins, 2000; Kich, 1992; Root, 1990)…

Read the entire article here.

Undermining Race: Ethnic Identities in Arizona Copper Camps, 1880-1920

University of Arizona Press
2009
240 pages
6.0 x 9.0
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8165-2745-8

Phylis Cancilla Martinelli, Professor of Sociology
Saint Mary’s College of California, Moraga, California

Undermining Race rewrites the history of race, immigration, and labor in the copper industry in Arizona. The book focuses on the case of Italian immigrants in their relationships with Anglo, Mexican, and Spanish miners (and at times with blacks, Asian Americans, and Native Americans), requiring a reinterpretation of the way race was formed and figured across place and time.

Phylis Martinelli argues that the case of Italians in Arizona provides insight into “in between” racial and ethnic categories, demonstrating that the categorizing of Italians varied from camp to camp depending on local conditions—such as management practices in structuring labor markets and workers’ housing, and the choices made by immigrants in forging communities of language and mutual support. Italians—even light-skinned northern Italians—were not considered completely “white” in Arizona at this historical moment, yet neither were they consistently racialized as non-white, and tactics used to control them ranged from micro to macro level violence.

To make her argument, Martinelli looks closely at two “white camps” in Globe and Bisbee and at the Mexican camp of Clifton-Morenci. Comparing and contrasting the placement of Italians in these three camps shows how the usual binary system of race relations became complicated, which in turn affected the existing race-based labor hierarchy, especially during strikes. The book provides additional case studies to argue that the biracial stratification system in the United States was in fact triracial at times. According to Martinelli, this system determined the nature of the associations among laborers as well as the way Americans came to construct “whiteness.”

Mestizo in America: Generations of Mexican Ethnicity in the Suburban Southwest

University of Arizona Press
2006
200 pages
6.0 x 9.0
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8165-2504-1; Paper ISBN: 978-0-8165-2505-8

Thomas Macias, Assistant Professor of Sociology
University of Vermont

How much does ethnicity matter to Mexican Americans today, when many marry outside their culture and some can’t even stomach menudo? This book addresses that question through a unique blend of quantitative data and firsthand interviews with third-plus-generation Mexican Americans. Latinos are being woven into the fabric of American life, to be sure, but in a way quite distinct from ethnic groups that have come from other parts of the world. By focusing on individuals’ feelings regarding acculturation, work experience, and ethnic identity—and incorporating Mexican-Anglo intermarriage statistics—Thomas Macias compares the successes and hardships of Mexican immigrants with those of previous European arrivals. He describes how continual immigration, the growth of the Latino population, and the Chicano Movement have been important factors in shaping the experience of Mexican Americans, and he argues that Mexican American identity is often not merely an “ethnic option” but a necessary response to stereotyping and interactions with Anglo society. Talking with fifty third-plus generation Mexican Americans from Phoenix and San Jose—representative of the seven million nationally with at least one immigrant grandparent—he shows how people utilize such cultural resources as religion, spoken Spanish, and cross-national encounters to reinforce Mexican ethnicity in their daily lives. He then demonstrates that, although social integration for Mexican Americans shares many elements with that of European Americans, forces related to ethnic concentration, social inequality, and identity politics combine to make ethnicity for Mexican Americans more fixed across generations. Enhancing research already available on first- and second-generation Mexican Americans, Macias’s study also complements research done on other third-plus-generation ethnic groups and provides the empirical data needed to understand the commonalities and differences between them. His work plumbs the changing meaning of mestizaje in the Americas over five centuries and has much to teach us about the long-term assimilation and prospects of Mexican-origin people in the United States.

Passing as Black

The University of Vermont
University Communications
2011-03-30

Lee Ann Cox

The new dynamics of biracial identity in America

There’s a rule everybody knows. Not the golden one. Since the days of slavery and Jim Crow segregation, when “one drop” of black ancestry determined the whole of who you were, black-by-default is a weakened but lingering cultural assumption and it shapes the way many mixed-race people navigate their lives. But a lot has changed, too. Particularly in the pre-civil rights era, passing as white—if appearances made it plausible—was a way to defy racist restrictions. Now, new research by University of Vermont sociologist Nikki Khanna shows that passing has a new face.

In a study published in the Social Psychology Quarterly, Khanna finds that not only do black-white biracial adults exercise considerable control over how they identify, there is “a striking reverse pattern of passing today,” with a majority of survey respondents reporting that they pass as black.

Passing, as currently defined, is about adopting an identity that contradicts your self-perception of race. Despite having a white mother and a black father, President Obama considers himself black. He is not passing—his identity is solidly rooted within the black community. The people Khanna interviewed, however, view themselves as biracial or multiracial, but choose to pass as black in certain contexts…

Read the entire article here.

Mixed Race Week begins with Loving Day awareness dinner

Today@Colorado State
Colorado State University
2011-03-30

This Friday, Apr. 1, marks the beginning of the 3rd-annual Mixed Race Week, a series of presentations and activities celebrating the multiracial and interracial community at Colorado State University. The yearly event is put on by Shades of CSU, an organization dedicated to multiracial students…one of a few of its kind in the country…

• Friday, April 1: Loving Day Awareness Dinner
• Monday, April 4th: Multiracial Faculty Meet and Greet
• Tuesday, April 5: Monsters, Messiahs, or Something Else?: Mixed-Race in Science Fiction Movies presented by Eric Hamako
• Wednesday, April 6: Interracial Relationships; Hair and Beauty within the Multiracial population

For more information, click here.

GW gives community option to identify as multiracial

The GW Hatchet
George Washington University, Washington D.C.
2011-03-28

Pavan Jagannathan, Hatchet Reporter

The University added a new category for multiracial students, faculty and staff to classify themselves as “two or more races” in University institutional data, moving into compliance with a new federal regulation.

University Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Steven Lerman said the U.S. Department of Education’s new aggregate categories for reporting racial and ethnic data of students and staff went into effect for the 2010-2011 school year.

“GW is complying with a federal mandate to collect race and ethnicity data in a specific way to allow for multiple race codes per person,” Lerman said…

Making (mixed-)race: census politics and the emergence of multiracial multiculturalism in the United States, Great Britain and Canada

Ethnic and Racial Studies
Volume 35, Issue 8, 2012
pages 1409-1426
DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2011.556194

Debra Thompson, Assistant Professor of Political Science
Ohio University

During the same time period, the United States, Great Britain and Canada all moved towards ‘counting’ mixed-race on their national censuses. In the United States, this move is largely attributed to the existence of a mixed-race social movement that pushed Congress for the change—but similar developments in Canada and Britain occurred without the presence of a politically active civil society devoted to making the change. Why the convergence? This article argues that demographic trends, increasingly unsettled perceptions about discrete racial categories, and a transnational norm surrounding the primacy of racial self-identification in census-taking culminated in a normative shift towards multiracial multiculturalism. Therein, mixed-race identities are acknowledged as part of—rather than problematic within—diverse societies. These elements enabled mixed-race to be promoted, at times strategically, as a corollary of multiculturalism in these three countries.

Read or purchase the article here.

Drs. Regina E. Spellers and Kimberly R. Moffitt to be Featured Guests on Mixed Chicks Chat

Mixed Chicks Chat (The only live weekly show about being racially and culturally mixed. Also, founders of the Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival) Hosted by Fanshen Cox and Heidi W. Durrow
Website: TalkShoe™ (Keywords: Mixed Chicks)
Episode: #199-Drs. Regina E. Spellers and Kimberly R. Moffitt
When: Wednesday, 2011-03-30, 21:00Z (17:00 EDT, 16:00 CDT, 14:00 PDT)

Regina E. Spellers, President and CEO
Eagles Soar Consulting, LLC

Kimberly R. Moffitt, Assistant Professor of American Studies
University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Drs. Spellers and Moffitt are editors of the anthology Blackberries and Redbones: Critical Articulations of Black Hair/ Body Politics in Africana Communities.

Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference 2010—Reflections

MultiRacial Network Newsletter
Winter 2011
pages 4-5

A few months have passed since the inaugural Critical Mixed Race Studies (CMRS) Conference held November 5-6, 2010 at DePaul University in Chicago, IL, but we’re still thinking about it! Here is why:

The People: Over 450 people registered for the two-day conference, and 430 people actually showed up! For those of us who have experience planning conferences or large-scale academic event, that is a pretty good yield from RSVPs! These attendees came from all over the U.S., from Hawaii to Tennessee to New York, and also included participants from Canada, France, Korea, Norway, and the UK! What was great about the people was that it included a great mix of academic scholars, administrators, artists, and community activists… all hoping to connect with and learn from each other…

Read the entire article here.

Half-Breed Citizenship Bill, 1857

Oregon State Archives
Echoes of Oregon History Learning Guide

A Bill
 
To enable certain Half Breeds to acquire the rights of citizenship within this Territory.Section1. Be it enacted by the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Oregon. That any person, being the child of a white father and an Indian mother, and therefore disfranchised by existing laws, may be admitted to the privileges of citizenship, by the District Court, upon satisfactory proof that he is a permanent resident and land owner of the county or district, and can speak read and write the English language, and has in all respects the educatio habits and associations of a white person, and would, if he were a white person, be a citizen of the United States or entitled to admission as such, and is a person of good moral character and in all respects worthy to enjoy the said privileges. The District Court shall make a record of such admission and grant to the applicant a certificate thereof which shall entitle him to enjoy, during the pleasure of the Legislative Assembly, all the rights privileges and immunities of a citizen of the United States within this Territory as fully as it is competent for the Territory to grant the same.

Sec. 2. This act shall take affect from the time of its passage.

Background

American immigrants in Oregon Territory disliked people of mixed Indian-white parentage. In 1855, the territorial government passed a law which prevented mixed race men from becoming citizens. This bill is an attempt to gain these rights for the children of white fathers and Indian mothers, subject to the satisfaction of certain requirements. Many white citizens would have been unable to satisfy these requirements, which included proof of literacy and good moral character. This bill did not pass.