Mixed Race Studies

CAMD Scholars Take On Variety of Complex Racial Issues in MLK Jr. Day Presentations

Phillips Academy
Andover, Massachusetts
2008-01-28

Sally Holm

January 28, 2008 — Simone Hill ’08 had good reason to be excited last Monday. Chosen as a featured speaker for one of Phillips Academy’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day special events, the CAMD scholar presented her research on diversity, whose trail led her back more than 150 years into the dust of family history. And in the audience were not just her peers and teachers: her parents, Everett Hill ’77 and Dr. Yasmin Tyler-Hill from Atlanta, and her grandparents, from tiny Ridgeland, S.C., where the trail ended, were right there as well.

…The CAMD Scholars program was created last spring by the Office of Community and Multicultural Development (CAMD) to allow students to apply for research grants to pursue topics in multiculturalism during their summer vacations from school. Funded by the Abbot Academy Foundation, the scholarship provides a small stipend and a faculty advisor to each student selected. Three scholars presented during the fall term and three others spoke on MLK Jr. Day….

CAMD Scholar Britney Achin ’08 began her session with an exercise meant to educate her audience on the difficulties biracial teenagers face with identity in today’s social milieu. She asked everyone to answer the question “What am I?” in a brief phrase, then share it with a small group in the audience. Most seemed to find it difficult to capture complex selves—especially the offspring of interracial parents, as Achin is herself. Her research project was titled “I Am: A Study of Self Identification among Biracial Teenagers.” Mundra served as her advisor.

Achin surveyed hundreds of biracial adolescents through MySpace and Facebook, personal connections, and random interviews, asking probing personal questions of how they viewed themselves. She found that their responses clustered into five categories of identity: “Monoracials,” who defined themselves predominantly by a primary peer group; “Bidentifiers,” who identify confidently with more than one racial identity; “Sliders,” who were able to identify with whatever group in which they found themselves; “Raceless,” who refused to identify with any race, but prefer race-neutral descriptors such as “American”; and “Partial People,” who identify themselves as half a person, mostly as half-white, rarely as half-black.

Achin compared relative levels of turmoil and self-doubt, as well as confidence and self-knowledge, reflected by each group. She said she found that, without fail, PA students offered the most insightful responses. “I believe that speaks very highly of the work done by the school to make us aware of ourselves and others—our differences and similarities, racial and otherwise,” Achin said…

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School counselors’ perceptions of biracial students’ functioning

Columbia University
September 2010
178 pages
Publication Number: AAT 3400544
ISBN: 9781109673753

Mai Margaret Kindaichi

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy under the Executive Committee of The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Columbia University

The number of biracial school-aged youth has continued to increase dramatically (Jones & Smith, 2001), and has drawn timely attention to the extent to which practicing school counselors address biracial youths’ concerns in a culturally competent manner. This study examined the perceptions of a nationally-based random sample of 203 White school counselors who provided their assessment of a students functioning (i.e., GAF) and case conceptualizations (i.e., multicultural case conceptualization ability [MCCA]; Ladany et al., 1997) in response to a summary of a fictitious student. In the summary, the student was identified as White, Black, Asian, Biracial Black-White, Biracial Black- Asian, or Biracial Asian-White; the student summaries were identical less the racial background of the identified student. Potential differences in assessments of students’ functioning and inclusion of racial-cultural information in case conceptualizations were examined across the six student conditions, which yielded non-significant results. Nearly 89% and 93% of participants failed to address race or culture in their conceptualizations of students’ presenting concerns and treatment conceptualizations, respectively. Additionally, school counselors’ denial of racism (i.e., color-blind racial attitudes) was shown to moderate their inclusion of racial-cultural information in their treatment conceptualizations across students’ racial backgrounds. Implications of the findings, future research directions, and multicultural education in school counseling curricula are discussed.

Table of Contents

• CHAPTER I
  • INTRODUCTION
    • Multicultural Counseling Competence in School Counselors
    • Color-Blind Racial Attitudes
    • Attitudes toward Multiracial Youth
    • Overview of the Dissertation Project
• CHAPTER II
  • LITERATURE REVIEW
    • Multicultural Counseling Competence in School Settings
    • Explanation of Terms
    • Research concerning Biracial Individuals
      • Unique Challenges in Research Concerning Biracial and Multiracial Individuals
      • Perceptions of Biracial and Multiracial Individuals and Interracial Marriage
      • Empirical Literature on Biracial Adolescents’ Psychological Well-Being and Adjustment
      • Summary Models of Biracial Identity Development and Identity Resolution
      • School Professionals’ Attitudes toward Biracial and Multiracial Children and Adolescents
    • Color-Blind Racial Attitudes
    • Summary and Research Questions
• CHAPTER III
  • METHOD
    • Research Goals
    • Participants and Sampling Method
    • Sample
    • Instruments
• CHAPTER IV
  • RESULTS:
    • Preliminary Analyses
    • Main Analyses
      • Question 1
      • Question 2
      • Question 3
      • Question 4
      • Question 5
    • Summary
• CHAPTER V
  • DISCUSSION
    • Limitations
    • Implications for Education and Training
    • Future Research Directions
• REFERENCES
• APPENDICES
• APPENDIX A. SAMPLE SURVEY PACKET
• APPENDIXB. COLOR-BLIND RACIAL ATTITUDES SUBSCALES
• APPENDIX C. ATTITUDES TOWARD MULTIRACIAL CHILDREN CODING
• APPENDIX D. CODING SCHEME FOR MULTICULTURAL CASE CONCEPTUALIZATION ABILITY

List of Tables

• Table 1. Summary of Stage Progressions in Linear Biracial Identity Development Models
• Table 2. Demographic Characteristics of Participants
• Table 3. Participants’ Demographic Information across Student Conditions
• Table 4. Participants’ Descriptions of School Counseling Settings
• Table 5. Mean GAF, MCCA Etiology, and MCCA Treatment Scores across Student Conditions and Participants’ Race/Ethnicity
• Table 6. Mean CoBRAS Subscale and AMCS Scores by Student Condition and Participants’ Race/Ethnicity
• Table 7. Correlations among White School Counselors’ Experience, Race-Related Attitudes, Case Conceptualization Ability, and GAF Scores
• Table 8. Analysis of Variance in GAF by Student Conditions (N=201)
• Table 9. Hierarchical Regression of School Counselors’ AMCS and CoBRAS Scores on GAF Scores for Biracial Students (N = 83)
• Table 10. Analyses of Variance in MCCA Etiology and MCCA Treatment by Students’ Backgrounds (N=201)
• Table 11. Multivariate Analysis of Variance in MCCA Etiology, MCCA Treatment, and GAF Scores
• Table 12. Summary of Hierarchical Multiple Regression Analyses for Moderator Effects

List of Figures

• Figure 1: Frequency Distribution of MCCA Etiology Scores Offered by White School Counselors across Student Conditions
• Figure 2: Frequency Distribution of MCCA Treatment scores offered by White School Counselors across Student Conditions
• Figure 3: Interaction Effect of Color-Blind Racial Attitudes across Student Conditions on Mean MCCA Treatment Scores

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West Meets East: Nineteenth-Century Southern Dialogues on Mixture, Race, Gender, and Nation

The Mississippi Quarterly
Volume 56, Number 4 (Fall 2003)

Suzanne Bost, Associate Professor of English
Loyola University

When I was growing up in the Eastern half of the United States, American history was presented to me in neatly binary terms: Cowboys and Indians, North and South, Black and White. There were binaries when my family moved out West, too, but the demarcations were in different places: North or South of the border, English or Spanish, hamburgers with or without green chile. Here, sometimes cowboys were Indians, and Mexicans were Americans. The fact that my Eastern home was North and my Western home was South complicated matters further, and I learned to accept that Southerners, though never victorious, were not always as misguided as my first teachers had suggested they were. The deconstruction of American myths and binaries began for me long before I learned to see the world through the lenses of postmodernism or the new American Studies. Moreover, this racial and national decentering occurred not by way of contemporary globalization or NAFTA but throughout American history.

Mestizaje and hybridity are popular concepts today because they lift identity from singular categories and frameworks. They are celebrated, along with Tiger Woods, fusion cuisine, and the Internet, as transracial, transnational frameworks for new, millennial Americans. For Mexicans and Mexican Americans, however, hybridity and racial and national decentering are not a postmodern horizon but rather long-standing historical facts. Racial mixture was part of the Spanish colonial strategy for, literally, “hispanicizing” the natives and acquiring their lands. As such, mixture has been central to the formation of racism, nationalism, resistance, and identity politics in most Southern Americas for centuries. In nineteenth-century Mexico, mestizaje was nationalistic, not transgressive or defiant of norms, while in the Southeastern United States, miscegenation represented a breakdown in the definition of American identity…

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The Physical Form of Mississippi Negroes

American Journal of Physical Anthropology
Volume 16, Issue 2 (October/December 1931)
pages 193–201
DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.1330160213

Melville J. Herskovits (1895-1963), Professor of Anthropology and African Studies
Northwestern University

Vivian K. Cameron

Harriet Smith

During the years 1923 to 1927, research was carried on in an attempt to investigate the physical form of the American Negro, with particular reference to the question of a possible physical type being formed in the United States, and to the amount and consequences of the racial mixture that had gone into the formation of the Negro population of this country.  The results of this research may be briefly summarized as follows: first, that the American Negro, as indicated by the genealogies collected in the course of the study, represented much more racial crossing than had been generally recognized, and secondly, that in spite of this crossing, a physical type which combined the characteristics of the African and European ancestral populations hand which was relatively homogeneous in character had been formed.

Awaiting publication of the complete results of this study, a volume outlining the results was brought out. The point most generally made when this work was criticized was that since the majority of the sample utilized in the study had been measured in the north, the group studied could not be…

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Mixed: A Mixed Heritage

Daily Bruin
University of California, Los Angeles
2010-11-09

Nicholas Greitzer

America has always been considered a melting pot – a melting pot of ideas, of ethnicities, of religions, of experiences and of people.

In the 2000 census, for example, this miscegenation resulted in more than 6.8 million Americans self-identifying as multiracial. While there may not be any similar statistics for UCLA, a look at the enrollment figures for 2009 lists 4.4 percent of students as having an ethnicity of unstated, unknown or other, close to the national percentage in 2000 of 2.4 of those who identify themselves as multiracial.

Second-year international development studies and Chicana/Chicano studies student Camila Lacques falls into that group that cannot be adequately fit into the racial options provided by the U.S. Census Bureau or the University of California undergraduate application.

“People want to put you in a box, but mixed people don’t fit into a box,” said Lacques, who identifies herself as half Mexican, a quarter Irish and a quarter eastern European Jewish.

Lacques’ cultural makeup is not limited to those backgrounds found within her blood, as she was raised in a predominantly black neighborhood and attended an elementary and middle school that was comprised primarily of Korean students…

…In a similar vein, for second-year sociology student Ay’Anna Moody, being multiracial revolves around teaching others that they need to be intellectually curious.

“I needed to know who I was in order for me to move forward, culturally and socially,” said Moody, whose dad is black Creole and whose mom is Scott-Irish, German and black.

While Moody said that Irish traditions such as St. Patrick’s Day held a prominent place in her family, it was the black cultural influence that dominated her household, which she shared with her mother and stepfather…

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Rachel Knight: Slave, White Man’s Mistress and Mother to a Movement

Johnathon Odell: Discovering Our Stories
2010-09-20

John Odell

Rachel’s Children

I can’t help but think of the Old Testament Abraham when I hear stories about Newt Knight. Both men sired children by a wife and a slave. In Newt’s case it was Serena and Rachel. With Abraham, Sara and Hagar. According to religious texts, one of these women went on to become the matriarch of God’s chosen people. Exactly which one, depends on what you happen to be reading, your Bible or your Koran. Jews and Christians claim the wife Sarah and Muslims claim the handmaiden Hagar. Several Crusades were launched trying to settle that matter.

In Jones County, there’s always been a fierce crusade of competing stories about Rachel, the white account versus the black account. Like most stories, the white interpretation gets written down and called history, while the black story gets handed down by word-of-mouth and called folklore.

Growing up as a white boy, I swore by Ethel Knight’s written-down version. According to her, Rachel was a light-skinned temptress with blue-green eyes and flowing chestnut hair. But evil as the day is long. Ethel alternately calls her a vixen, a witch, a conjure woman, a murderer and a strumpet.

Serena, Newt’s white wife, is but an innocent captive, forced a gunpoint to live in this den of iniquity, and like Newt, powerless as Rachel’s sorcery wrecked and degraded their family.

As a child of Jim Crow, this narrative satisfied my budding sensibilities about race. In my white-bubble world, there could never be any possibility of true love or affection between a white man and a black woman. Nor would any white man sire children by a black woman and then choose to live amongst his mixed-race offspring. Unless of course, the black woman had either seduced him unmercifully or mysteriously conjured him, or both. It just wasn’t possible that he actually loved her, or her children.

Imagine my surprise when I heard, as they say, “the rest of the story.” It was as shocking as sitting down in church and listening to the preacher get up and declare from the pulpit that Abraham’s birthright went to Hagar’s kid Ishmael, instead of Sarah’s son, Isaac, and it was we Christians who were the infidels!  Boy would that turn some peoples world upside down!…

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Race remains hot topic despite Obama presidency

USA Today
2010-10-17

Shannon Mullen, Asbury Press

The election of the first black president in U.S. history was supposed to usher in a post-racial era in America.

But a series of controversies since then, from the White House “Beer Summit” to the conflicts between the tea party and NAACP, shows that race is still a hot-button issue.

“As a society, clearly we’re not over race,” said Hettie V. Williams, lecturer in the African American History Department at Monmouth University…

…But Williams, of Monmouth University, and others still see reason for optimism. Mixed marriages are on the rise, she noted, and more Americans of mixed parentage feel comfortable identifying themselves as multiracial.

In New Jersey, one of the most racially and ethnically diverse states in the country, nearly 2 of 3 residents say it is important for people of different races and ethnic groups to live, go to school and work closely together, according to the latest Monmouth University/Gannett New Jersey Press Media poll. Forty percent say blacks and whites are now treated equally..

…But Deepa Kumar, associate professor of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University, sees disturbing parallels between the rise of right-wing, “anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim” groups across Europe and the rhetoric of the tea party and Pamela Geller’s Stop Islamization of America group, which has led the fight against the ground zero mosque…

…Tukufu Zuberi, a sociologist and professor of race relations at the University of Pennsylvania, says the media presents a superficial view of the role of race in America.

“There is a tremendous disconnect between what we see and hear and read in the media and the racial realities that people are experiencing in society,” Zuberi said…

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Cast From Their Ancestral Home, Creoles Worry About Culture’s Future

New York Times
2005-10-11

Susan Saulny, National Correspondent

NATCHITOCHES PARISH, La., Oct. 9 – It is peaceful here on the Cane River, beyond the fluffy tops of high cotton and towering magnolia trees, but it is not home. For the New Orleans Creoles living in exodus here and elsewhere around Louisiana, their city was far more than home – it was homeland, the capital of an ethnic nation unique in this country.

“New Orleans was our womb and for most of us, it was going to be our grave,” said Timothy Bordenave, who is living in a cottage here, a five-hour drive away from the city, describing the deep sense of lifelong connection felt to New Orleans by many of the city’s Creoles, the population of mixed-race families who trace their roots to the city’s French and Spanish colonial era…

…Many Creoles trace their roots to immigrants and slaves from the former French and Spanish colonies in the Caribbean, particularly Cuba and what is now Haiti. Historians say it was New Orleans’s position as a crossroads and port town that allowed for the easy mingling of races and nationalities that in turn gave birth, in the 18th century, to a part-European, part-Afro-Caribbean society that grew to an estimated 20,000 people in Louisiana by the mid-1800’s.

The Creole culture that developed over generations—known for a distinctive cuisine, language and music—contributed to New Orleans’s singular identity and helped define Louisiana to the world. Before Hurricane Katrina, experts estimated that 10 to 20 percent of black people in New Orleans—30,000 to 60,000 people—considered themselves Creole by way of ancestry, but even more lived lives influenced by the culture because of their proximity to it…

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Adopted Territory: Transnational Korean Adoptees and the Politics of Belonging

Duke University Press
November 2010
320 pages
15 photographs, 4 tables
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8223-4683-8
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8223-4695-1

Eleana J. Kim, Assistant Professor of Anthropology
University of Rochester

Since the end of the Korean War, an estimated 200,000 children from South Korea have been adopted into white families in North America, Europe, and Australia. While these transnational adoptions were initiated as an emergency measure to find homes for mixed-race children born in the aftermath of the war, the practice grew exponentially from the 1960s through the 1980s. At the height of South Korea’s “economic miracle,” adoption became an institutionalized way of dealing with poor and illegitimate children. Most of the adoptees were raised with little exposure to Koreans or other Korean adoptees, but as adults, through global flows of communication, media, and travel, they came into increasing contact with each other, Korean culture, and the South Korean state. Since the 1990s, as infants continue to leave Korea for adoption to the West, a growing number of adult adoptees have been returning to seek their cultural and biological origins. In this fascinating ethnography, Eleana J. Kim examines the history of Korean adoption, the emergence of a distinctive adoptee collective identity, and adoptee returns to Korea in relation to South Korean modernity and globalization. Kim draws on interviews with adult adoptees, social workers, NGO volunteers, adoptee activists, scholars, and journalists in the U.S., Europe, and South Korea, as well as on observations at international adoptee conferences, regional organization meetings, and government-sponsored motherland tours.

Source: Ebony Magazine, 1955

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgments
• Notes on Transliteration, Terminology, and Pseudonyms
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: Understanding Transnational Korean Adoption
• Part I
  • 1. “Waifs” and “Orphans”: The Origins of Korean Adoption
  • 2. Adoptee Kinship
  • 3. Adoptee Cultural Citizenship
  • 4. Public Intimacies and Private Politics
• Part II
  • 5. Our Adoptee, Our Alien: Adoptees as Specters of Family and Foreignness in Global Korea
  • 6. Made in Korea: Adopted Koreans and Native Koreans in the Motherland
  • 7. Beyond Good and Evil: The Moral Economies of Children and their Best Interests in a Global Age
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index

“Hearing Radmilla” Film Screening

Northern Arizona University
Flagstaff, Arizona
Gardner Auditorium, W. A. Franke College of Business (bldg. 81, room 101)
2010-11-22, 19:00 to 21:30 (Local Time)

Native American Heritage Month

The film will be introduced by filmmaker/producer Angela Webb, Radmilla Cody–Miss Navajo Nation 1997-1998, followed by Questions & Answer session. The film follows Radmilla through her controversial reign as the first biracial Miss Navajo (Navajo and African-American). An inspiring story of an activist-artist’s triumph over adversity and an identity colored by the politics of race and ethnicity. Co-sponsored by the Department of English, NAISA, and the Student Activity Council. Contact: Jeff Berglund, 523-9237.

For more information, click here.