Mixed Race Studies

Audio: History professor discusses census

The Daily Collegian
Published Independently by the students at Penn State
2010-04-09

Eddie Lau

Interview with

Grace Delgado, Assistant Professor of History
Pennsylvania State University

Associate Professor of History Grace Delgado, who specializes in Chicano history, said the U.S. census is not sensitive enough to mix-raced residents. She said having mixed-race residents to label themselves as “white,” “black, African-American or negro” or some other categories they don’t belong is not the best approach.

However, despite the fact that the wordings and categorizations in the census form are not perfect, Delgado encouraged all Penn State students to fill out the form. She said the best option right now is to check “some other race” in Question 9 and print their race in the given box.

To listen to the short interview, click here.

Half-Yella: Mixed Race Asian American Art [Lecture]

Oberlin College
King 106
2010-04-29, 16:30 to 17:30 EDT (Local Time)

Laura Kina, Professor of Art
DePaul University

Laura Kina is an artist, independent curator, and scholar whose research focuses on Asian American art and critical mixed race studies. She is an Associate Professor of Art, Media and Design, Vincent de Paul Professor, and Director of Asian American Studies at DePaul University. She is a 2009-2010 DePaul University Humanities Fellow. She earned her MFA from the school of the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she studied under noted painters Kerry James Marshall and Phyllis Bramson, and she earned her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Born in Riverside, California and raised in Poulsbo, WA, the artist currently lives and works in Chicago, IL. Her work has shown internationally is represented in Miami, Florida by Diana Lowenstein Fine Arts. Her work is currently on display in a solo exhibition “Laura Kina: A Many-Splendored Thing” at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago, IL as well as in group shows at the DePaul Art Museum in Chicago and the Korean Cultural Center in Los Angeles.

Laura Kina’s work focuses on the fluidity of cultural difference and the slipperiness of identity. Asian American history and mixed race representations are subjects that run through her work. She draws inspiration from popular culture, history, textile design, as well as historic and personal photographs. Critic Murtaza Vali has described her art as “a genre of Pop art with a distinctly postcolonial edge.”

This event is sponsored by Asian American Alliance as a part of Oberlin College’s Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month 2010.

Reinventing the Color Line: Immigration and America’s New Racial/Ethnic Divide

Social Forces
Volume 86, Number 2 (December 2007)
E-ISSN: 1534-7605 Print ISSN: 0037-7732
DOI: 10.1353/sof.2008.0024

Jennifer Lee, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of California, Irvine

Frank D. Bean, Chancellor’s Professor of Sociology
University of California, Irvine

Contemporary nonwhite immigration from Latin America and Asia, increasing racial/ethnic intermarriage, and the growing number of multiracial individuals has made the black-white color line now seem anachronistic in America, consequently raising the question of whether today’s color line is evolving in new directions toward either a white-nonwhite divide, a black-nonblack divide, or a new tri-racial hierarchy. In order to gauge the placement of today’s color line, we examine patterns of multiracial identification, using both quantitative data on multiracial reporting in the 2000 U.S. Census and in-depth interview data from multiracial individuals with Asian, Latino or black backgrounds. These bodies of evidence suggest that the multiracial identifications of Asians and Latinos (behaviorally and self-perceptually) show much less social distance from whites than from blacks, signaling the likely emergence of a black-nonblack divide that continues to separate blacks from other groups, including new nonwhite immigrants. However, given that the construction of whiteness as a category has been fluid in the past and appears to be stretching yet again, it is also possible that the color line will change still further to even more fully incorporate Asians and Latinos as white, which would mean that the historical black-white divide could again re-emerge.

Read or purchase the article here.

Teaching Race as a Social Construction: Two Interactive Class Exercises

Teaching Sociology
Volume 37, Number 4 (October 2009)
Pages 369-378

Nikki Khanna, Assistant Professor of Sociology
University of Vermont

Cherise A. Harris, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Connecticut College

This paper offers two interactive exercises to teach students about race as a social construction. In the first exercise, “What’s My Race?”, we ask students to sort various celebrities and historical figures into racial categories, giving them the opportunity to see the difficulty of the task first-hand. More importantly, through the process of sorting individuals into various categories, they are introduced to flaws within the current racial classification scheme in the U.S. In the second exercise, “Black or White?”, students are asked to classify photographs of legendary celebrities and historical figures as either black or white. This exercise is used to introduce the concept of the one drop rule; the majority of individuals in the exercise appear racially ambiguous or white, yet all were historically classified as “black” based on the one drop rule. Both exercises, when used together, are designed to visually illustrate to students the ambiguity and arbitrariness of American racial classifications.

Read or purchase the article here.

Biracial Children Learn To Self-Identify

Tell Me More
National Public Radio
2010-04-20

Michel Martin, Host

Interview with:

Kip Fulbeck, Professor of Performative Studies, Video
University of California, Santa Barbara
Author of: Mixed: Portraits of Multiracial Kids

Peggy Orenstein
Author of: Waiting for Daisy: A Tale of Two Continents, Three Religions, Five Fertility Doctors, An Oscar, An Atomic Bomb, A Romantic Night, and One Woman’s Quest to Become a Mother

Heidi W. Durrow
Author of: The Girl Who Fell from the Sky
Co-Host of: Mixed Chicks Chat

An installment of Tell Me More‘s weekly parenting segment focuses on the new book Mixed. It’s a collection of photographs of multiracial children that includes stories celebrating their heritage. Host Michel Martin is joined by the book’s author, Kip Fulbeck, as well as authors Peggy Orenstein and Heidi Durrow, who discuss their own experiences living in multiracial families.

Read the transcript of the interview here.  Listen to the interview here.

Note by Steven F. Riley: The term “Hapa” is incorrectly spelled as “Hoppa” in the transcript.

Black by Choice

The Nation
2010-04-15

Melissa Harris-Lacewell, Associate Professor of Politics and African American Studies
Princeton University

The first black president has created a definitional crisis for whiteness.

President Obama created a bit of a stir in early April when he completed his Census form. In response to the question about racial identity the president indicated he was “Black, African American or Negro.” Despite having been born of a white mother and raised in part by white grandparents, Obama chose to identify himself solely as black even though the Census allows people to check multiple answers for racial identity.

This choice disappointed some who have fought to ensure that multiracial people have the right to indicate their complex racial heritage. It confused some who were surprised by his choice not to officially recognize his white heritage. It led to an odd flurry of obvious political stories confirming that Obama was, indeed, the first African-American president…

Read the entire article here.

Census reveals history of U.S. racial identity

San Francisco Chronicle
2010-04-18

Sally Lehrman, Fellow
Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University
also Knight Ridder San Jose Mercury News Endowed Chair in Journalism and the Public Interest

Whether or not they can lay claim to a special category, the “Confederate Southern Americans” who want to write themselves into the U.S. census section denoting “race” have a point.

Race, as the social scientists like to say, is “socially constructed.” Since the founding of this country, we have been making it up as we go. Race is a modern idea, historians and anthropologists tell us, a means to categorize and organize ourselves that we constantly adjust.

The U.S. census serves as an archive of this change, a record of classifications that have been “contradictory and confused from the very outset,” says Margo Anderson, a University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, urban studies historian and expert on U.S. census history. Begun in 1790 as a solution to the problem of how to allocate seats in Congress, the survey didn’t mention “race” originally, but the idea as we understand it today was central. How should slaves be counted? Were they entirely property or were they people? What to do with “civilized” Indians?..

…All along, the “race” category of the census has been a powerful social and political tool wielded both to discriminate and to guard against discrimination. At first, survey categories reflected ideas about the divide between black and white, which immigrants were eligible for citizenship, and how to sort categories of “Indians.” Later, after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, its groupings also made it possible to measure compliance with equal treatment under the law…

Read the entire article here.

Intercultural Marriage and Family: Beyond the Racial Divide

The Family Journal
Volume 9, Number 1 (2001)
pages 39-42
DOI: 10.1177/1066480701091008

John McFadden, The Benjamin Elijah Mays Distinguished Professor Emeritus
University of South Carolina

Intercultural marriages have emerged as a central theme in discussion, not only among helping professionals but also the general public. Issues surrounding these conversations involve areas such as race, ethnicity, culture, and religion. The racial divide certainly permeates the thinking of many individuals as it affects couples and families. This article focuses on trends in intercultural marriages and how these relationships influence dynamics among families and the development of children and adolescents. Stages of acceptance toward intermarriages beyond the racial divide and empowerment traits for interracial marriages and family are introduced.

Read or purchase the article here.

Anomaly: A documentary fim about multiracial identity

Langston Hughes African American Film Festival
Sunday, 2010-04-18 13:30 PDT (Local Time)
Central Cinema, 1411 21st Avenue (at Union), Seattle, WA 98122
(206) 686-6684

Jessica Chen Drammeh, Director/Producer

Sharon Smith, Co-Producer

Anomaly is a groundbreaking documentary film that takes an insider’s look at the experiences of multiracial Americans. Through personal narratives, Anomaly stimulates viewers to think about identity, family and community in a changing world.

The film features interviews and performances by:

• Gabriella Callender of Mahina Movement
• Michelle Myers of Yellow Rage
• Pete Shungu
• Thaddeus Rutkowski

The film also includes interviews with community expert Eric Hamako, Jen Chau of Swirl, Inc., Michele Elam (professor at Stanford University), Ann Morning (professor at New York University), and Jennifer Chan (professor at San Francisco State University).

For more information, click here.

The New Ingredient in the Identity of Black Biracial Children

The Chicago Tribune
Op-Ed
December 1996

Larry E. Davis, Dean and Donald M. Henderson Professor of Social Work and Director of the Center on Race and Social Problems
University of Pittsburgh

[Republished in the Race and Social Problems: Interview with Dean Larry E. Davis post of the Social Work Podcast]
 
Some parents of black biracial children are being unrealistic. It is a mistake to promote a biracial identity for children born to black and non-black parents. African Americans are a multiracial people. It is estimated that well over 70 percent of African Americans have white ancestry, while others have ancestors who are Native American, Hispanic and Asian. Virtually all African Americans can identify some relative who is “mixed with something.”

So what is new in the identity of today’s children born to black and non-black parents? Only the identities of non-black parents. For the first time in this country, large numbers of non-black parents wish to be identified as the parents of a child by a black person. Historically, the parents of children born to black and non-black unions have been severely castigated, which largely explains their traditional invisibility. It is understandable that parents want to share in their children’s racial identities…

Read the entire op-ed here.