Mixed Race Studies

Race and Multiraciality in Brazil and the United States: Converging Paths? By G. Reginald Daniel. [Book Review]

Ethnic and Racial Studies
Volume 30, Number 6 (November 2007)
pages 1167-1181

Antonio Sérgio Alfredo Guimarães
Department of Sociology, University of Sao Paulo

In his recent comparative study G. Reginald Daniel looks at the convergence in race relations patterns between Brazil and the US with a reasonable amount of historical information extracted from an extensive literature, yet adds almost no empirical research. His narrative takes a descriptive, reading-notes-like mode as he passes over both countries’ history from colonial times to the present, following too closely different authors’ arguments. His metanarrative, the one that ties together his diverse sources, is a Gramscian–Marxist theory of hegemony and race formation borrowed mainly from Omi and Winant (1986), and Hanchard (1994)…

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Black and White, or Shades of Gray? Racial Labeling of Barack Obama Predicts Implicit Race Perception

Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy
Volume 10, Issue 1 (December 2010)
pages 207–222
DOI: 10.1111/j.1530-2415.2010.01213.x

Lori Wu Malahy
University of Washington

Mara Sedlins
University of Washington

Jason Plaks, Associate Professor of Psychology
University of Toronto

Yuichi Shoda, Professor of Psychology
University of Washington

The present research capitalized on the prominence and multiracial heritage of U.S. 2008 presidential election candidate Barack Obama to examine whether individual differences in classifying him as Black or as multiracial corresponded to differences in implicit perception of race. This research used a newly developed task (Sedlins, Malahy, & Shoda, 2010) with digitally morphed mixed-race faces to assess implicit race perception. Participants completed this task four times before and one time after the election. We found that people who labeled Obama as Black implicitly perceived race as more categorical than those who labeled Obama as multiracial. This finding adds to the growing literature on multiracial perception by demonstrating a relationship between the explicit use of multiracial and monoracial race classification and implicit race perception. The results suggest potential implications for governmental, educational, and judiciary usage of racial categories.

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Racial Self-Categorization in Adolescence: Multiracial Development and Social Pathways

Child Development
Volume 77, Number 5, September/October 2006
Pages 1298–1308
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2006.00935.x

Steven Hitlin, Assistant Professor of Sociology
University of Iowa

J. Scott Brown, Associate Professor of Gerontology, Scripps Research Fellow
Miami University, Oxford, Ohio

Glen H. Elder, Jr.
Carolina Population Center
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Research on multiracial individuals is often cross-sectional, obscuring the fluid nature of multiracial selfcategorization across time. Pathways of racial self-identification are developed from a nationally representative sample of adolescents aged 14 – 18, measured again 5 years later. A significant proportion of multiracial adolescents change racial self-identification across time. Youth who ever report being multiracial are 4 times as likely to switch self-identification as to report consistent multiracial identities. Across this time, more multiracial adolescents either add a racial category (diversify) or subtract one (consolidate) than maintain consistent multiracial self-categorization. Exploratory multinomial analyses show few differences between these pathways on select psychological and social characteristics. Results lend quantitative support to qualitative studies  indicating the fluidity of racial self-categorization.

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Segregation of the Free People of Color and the Construction of Race in Antebellum New Orleans

Southeastern Geographer
Volume 48, Number 1, May 2008
pages 19-37
E-ISSN: 1549-6929
Print ISSN: 0038-366X
DOI: 10.1353/sgo.0.0010

Amy R. Sumpter, Instructor of Geography
Georgia College and State University

Louisiana and the city of New Orleans have a complicated colonial and racial history. A large free population of color living amidst enslaved people of color attests to fluidity in racial constructions present in the colonial period in Louisiana. Throughout the French (1682–1763) and Spanish (1763–1803) colonial periods and the first five decades of U.S. statehood (1803–1850), racial constructions changed remarkably. Cultural conflict, an increasing number of American whites, and fear of insurrection contributed to growing hostility toward the free people of color and remaining colonial racial practices. Historical evidence, state and municipal legislation, and 1850 U.S. Census data show that free people of color tended to reside in specific “Creole” areas within the city, demonstrating that free people in the city were segregated by race.

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A Brief History of Census “Race”

Knol: A unit of knowledge
2010-06-08
4 illustrations

Frank W. Sweet, Independent Research Historian

The U.S. federal census was founded to apportion congressional representation among the states. In order to achieve additional goals, it switched in 1850 from recording households in summary, to recording individuals in detail. It became self-administered in 1960 to reduce costs. It has always been a political instrument of the administration in power. Today, the census encourages identity politics and so wavers between the goal of capturing “race” as a form of ethnic self-identity, and the equally desired but conflicting goal of capturing “race” as involuntary physical trait.

This brief history covers three major topics: The Changes of 1850 and 1960, Politics and Confidentiality, and The “Race” Question. The third topic, the history of the “race” question, is then presented in six sub-topics: Changes in “Racial” Terminology, Changes in “Racial” Categories, Changes in “Racial” Criteria, Changes in Stated “Racial” Goals, The Religion Question Controversy of 1956, and The Legality of Refusal…

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My Coloured Thoughts: Last of the Mohicans and Perceptions of Mixed Race Peoples

Originally presented at the 1999 Southwest Graduate Literature Symposium on “Expanding ‘Literature(s)’, Challenging Boundaries”
Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona
1999-03-12 through 1999-03-14

Zoë Ludski
Ryerson Polytechnic University

But alas, to make me
A fixed figure for the time of scorn
To point his slow unmoving finger at
Othello act 4, scene. 2

Although Coopers novel, The Last of the Mohicans, is obviously outdated in its reflection of Native American people, the depiction of Cora, a women of mixed race, maintains its validity today. The text provides valuable insight into race issues surrounding multiracial people that is still pertinent and important today. Cooper is extremely perceptive in showing how Cora’s heritage affects her self perception and causes her to judge herself and others in light of visible characteristics such as skin colour.

Today’s discussions and literature on race issues present a wide range of feelings on the topic of mixed race. Currently in the United States there is a large movement supporting the creation of a multiracial category for the US census. This movement has considerable opposition, particularly from within the black American community. This situation is a reminder of the diverse opinions and contrasting views in regards to the issue of mixed race.

It is valuable to re-examine the character Cora in light of contemporary race theory in order to gain an insight into the past and present of mixed race people in America…

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Queer Punk Macha Femme: Leslie Mah’s Musical Performance in Tribe 8

Cultural Studies↔Critical Methodologies
Volume 10, Number 4 (August 2010)
pages 295-306

Deanna Shoemaker, Assistant Professor of Applied Communication (Performance Studies)
Monmouth University, West Long Branch, New Jersey

This essay analyzes the musical performances of Leslie Mah, biracial lead guitarist and backup vocalist for the legendary all-female, queercore punk band Tribe 8, whose members broke up in 2005 after fifteen years together. Inspired by the recent turn in performance studies toward studies of music as performance, this work employs multiple methods and objects to get at the complex totality of popular music’s performativity. Mah’s macha femme persona, playing style, and performance of identity as a lesbian woman of color within queercore punk music allow her to enter a carnivalesque realm of feminist menace, palpable rage, and unruly pleasure. Mah’s performance strategies and articulations of her queer and biracial identities in interviews are contextualized within feminist performance, riot grrrl, and punk music studies. Tribe 8’s lyrics, music, marketing, and band member personas provide cultural context for Mah’s distinctive performance of macha femme.

Read or purchase the article here.

Blackberries and Redbones: Critical Articulations of Black Hair/ Body Politics in Africana Communities

Hampton Press
July 2010
484 pages
Paper ISBN: 978-1-57273-881-2
Cloth ISBN: 978-1-57273-880-5

Edited by

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

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

This book features engaging scholarly essays, poems and creative writings that all examine the meanings of the Black anatomy in our changing global world. The body, including its hair, is said to be read like a text where readers draw center interpretations based on signs, symbols, and culture. Each chapter in the volume interrogates that notion by addressing the question, “As a text, how are Black bodies and Black hair read and understood in life, art, popular culture, mass media, or cross-cultural interactions?” Utilizing a critical perspective, each contributor articulates how relationships between physical appearance, genetic structure, and political ideologies impact the creativity, expression, and everyday lived experiences of Blackness. In this interdisciplinary volume, discussions are made more complex and move beyond the “straight versus kinky hair” and “light skin versus dark skin” paradigm. Instead efforts are made to emphasize the material consequences associated with the ways in which the Black body is read and (mis)understood. The aptness of this work lies in its ability to provide a meaningful and creative space to analyze body politics—highlighting the complexities surrounding these issues within, between, and outside Africana communities. The book provides a unique opportunity to both celebrate and scrutinize the presentation of Blackness in everyday life, while also encouraging readers to forge ahead with a deeper understanding of these ever-important issues.

Table of Contents

• Foreword, Haki R. Madhubuti
• Introduction, Regina E. Spellers and Kimberly R. Moffitt
• SECTION ONE: Hair/Body Politics as Expression of the Life Cycle
  • The Big Girl’s Chair: A Rhetorical Analysis of How Motions for Kids Markets Relaxers to African American Girls, Shauntae Brown White
  • Pretty Color ’n Good Hair: Creole Women of New Orleans and the Politics of Identity, Yaba Amgborale Blay
  • Invisible Dread: From Twisted: The Dreadlocks Chronicles, Bert Ashe
  • Social Constructions of a Black Woman’s Hair: Critical Reflections of a Graying Sistah, Brenda J. Allen
  • What it Feels Like for a (Black Gay HIV+) Boy, Chris Bell
• SECTION TWO: Hair/Body as Power
  • Dominican Dance Floor, Kiini Ibura Salaam
  • Covering Up Fat Upper Arms, Mary L. O’Neal
  • Cimmarronas, Ciguapas, and Senoras: Hair, Beauty, and National Identity in the Dominican Republic, Ana-Maurine Lara
  • Of Wigs and Weaves, Locks and Fades: A Personal Political Hair Story, Neal A. Lester
  • “Scatter the Pigeons”: Baldness and the Performance of Hyper-Black Masculinity, E. Patrick Johnson
• SECTION THREE: Hair/Body in Art and Popular Culture
  • From Air Jordan to Jumpman: The Black Male Body as Commodity, Ingrid Banks
  • Cool Pose on Wheels: An Exploration of the Disabled Black Male in Film, Kimberly R. Moffitt
  • Decoding the Meaning of Tattoos: Cluster Criticism and the Case of Tupac Shakur’s Body Art, Carlos D. Morrison, Josette R. Hutton, and Ulysses Williams, Jr.
  • Blacks in White Marble: Interracial Female Subjects in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Neoclassicism, Charmaine Nelson
  • Changing Hair/Changing Race: Black Authenticity, Colorblindness, and Hairy Post-ethnic Costumes in “Mixing Nia”, Ralina L. Joseph
  • “I’m Real” (Black) When I Wanna Be: Examining J. Lo’s Racial ASSets, Sika Alaine Dagbovie and Zine Magubane
• SECTION FOUR: Celebrations, Innovations, and Applications of Hair/Body Politics
  • Diaspora in My Hair: A Poetic Narrative of My Experience in Europe, Nadège Tanite Clitandre
  • Broken Mirrors and Reflections of One’s Self: Blackness, Indianness, and Hybridity, Hershini Bhana Young
  • Sun Kissed or Sun Cursed?: Exploring Color Consciousness and Black Women’s Tanning Experiences, Regina E. Spellers
  • African Men in the United States: Stories of Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Power, Hameed S. (Herukhuti) Williams
  • Weaving Messages of Self-Esteem: Empowering Mothers and Daughters through Hair Braiding, Tracey Y. Lewis-Elligan
• SECTION FIVE: Contradictions, Complications, and Complexities of Hair/Body Politics
  • Divas to the Dance Floor Please!: A Neo-Black Feminist Readin(g) of Cool Pose, D. Nebi Hilliard
  • Coming Out Natural: Dreaded Desire, Sex Roles, and Cornrows, L. H. Stallings
  • “I am More than a Victim”: The Slave Woman Stereotype in Antebellum Narratives by Black Men, Ellesia A. Blaque
  • Two Warring Ideals, One Dark Body: Hegemony, Duality, and Temporality of the Black Body in African-American Religion, Stephen C. Finley
  • The Snake that Bit Medusa: One (Phenotypically) White Woman’s Dreads, Kabira Z. Cadogan
• Author Index
• Subject Index

Situating the Essential Alien: Sui Sin Far’s Depiction of Chinese-White Marriage and the Exclusionary Logic of Citizenship

MFS Modern Fiction Studies
Volume 54, Number 4, Winter 2008
pages 654-688
E-ISSN: 1080-658X Print ISSN: 0026-7724
DOI: 10.1353/mfs.0.1561

Jane Hwang Degenhardt, Assistant Professor of English
University of Massachusetts, Amherst

This essay looks at how Sui Sin Far’s [born Edith Maude Eaton] short stories contested an emerging model of national citizenship that attempted to expand the rights of blacks and women by excluding Chinese immigrants. It argues that her depiction of Chinese-White marriage strategically redresses anxieties about black-white miscegenation that were fueled by Progressive and post-Reconstruction reform. While Sui Sin Far counters Chinese national exclusion by strategically pointing up the more offensive threat of black racial difference, she also exposes the disingenuous logic that attempted to situate national and racial exclusions on opposite sides of a hinge.

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The Meaning of Race in Healthcare and Research-Part 2: Should Race Be Used in Health Care and Research?

Pediatric Nursing
Volume 31, Number 4 (July-August 2005)
Pages 305-308

Cathy J. Tashiro, PhD, RN, Associate Professor of Nursing
University of Washington, Tacoma

The state of race today is complex and challenging. An article published in the preceding issue of this journal examined the history of race and its impact on health care. This article further examines the issue of race and health care as concerns arise regarding the relevance of genetics to health disparities. Pediatric nurses must examine the literature on race, as well as our own assumptions, and be clear about when and why we use racial categories and what they really mean.

The impreciseness of racial categories, as well as the history of racial discrimination in the United States, has contributed to skepticism about the use of race in the clinical setting. Reasonable concerns have been raised that suggest race has been proven to be a non-scientific concept, and that its use in medicine can both be highly misleading and can reinforce an erroneous belief in the inherent biology of race (Witzig, 1996). Fullilove (1998) has argued that race should be abandoned as a variable in public health research in favor of other levels of analysis, such as place of residence, which can provide more meaningful data about social conditions influencing health. The use of race in the clinical setting in particular can lead to stereotyping and even false assumptions (Anderson, Moscou, Fulchon, & Newspiel, 2001), as demonstrated by the case study at the beginning of the companion article published in the previous issue of this journal (Tashiro, 2005). President Clinton’s Cancer Panel, which convened a meeting of experts on “The Meaning of Race in Science,” concluded that race, as a social and political construct, has no basis in science; that there is no genetic basis for racial classification, nor for a belief that distinct races exist; and, that racism continues to exert a powerful influence in society (Freeman, 1997).

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) stops short of advocating the abandonment of the concept of race altogether, but urges that when race is used adequate justification should be provided. According to the authors of the AAP (2000) position statement on race, “Although race historically has been viewed as a biological construct, it is now known to be more accurately characterized as a social category that has changed over time and varies across societies and cultures” (p. 1349). For this reason, in order not to perpetuate erroneous stereotypes, AAP recommends that race and ethnicity be used as variables in research only when they are accurately defined and when the reasons for using them are adequately explained.

Kaplan and Bennett (2003) suggest guidelines for responsible use of race and ethnicity in health- related publications. These include stating the reason for the use of race as a variable and specifying how individuals in the study are assigned to racial categories, avoiding the use of race as a proxy for genetic variation, and avoiding any stigmatizing and/or misleading terminology (Kaplan & Bennett, 2003, pp. 2711-2713). Regarding terminology, some (e.g., Lee, Mountain, & Koenig, 2001) have advocated for the use of the term “racialized groups” instead of “race” in research using race as variable, emphasizing that race is not inherently meaningful scientifically, but rather a concept that is produced by society.

While it would seem to make intuitive sense to abandon the use of race as a variable altogether, there are some dangers to that position too. Proponents for continuing to collect data by race argue that abandoning this practice would eliminate the evidence of health differences due to persistent inequalities between racialized groups (Krieger, Williams, & Zierler, 1999). Race is a social fact in the U.S., and the routine collection of data by race began in earnest because of the Civil Rights Act, in order to identify and eliminate discrimination in housing, employment, and other areas of civic life. Without the data, evidence of discrimination would be lost. In fact, the concept of “color-blind racism” has been identified as a way of perpetuating the racial hierarchy by ignoring racial inequalities (Bonilla-Silva, 2003). In this regard, if the Institute of Medicine report on unequal treatment, discussed previously in the companion article (Tashiro, 2005), is any indication, “color-blindness” has not yet arrived in the examining room, and to pretend that it has will detract from efforts to ameliorate the social and economic conditions producing health disparities.

One’s stance toward race must by necessity be complex. As Krieger (2001) states in relationship to epidemiologic research, “considering lived experiences of racism as real but the construct of biological ‘race’ as spurious, social epidemiological research investigates health consequences of economic and non-economic expressions of racial discrimination” (p. 696). To paraphrase Krieger: while race is not real, racism is.

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