Mixed Race Studies

Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference

DePaul University, Lincoln Park Campus
DePaul University Student Center
2250 N. Sheffield
Chicago, Illinois USA 60614
2010-11-05 through 2010-11-06

Sponsored by DePaul University Asian American Studies and Latin American and Latino Studies and co-sponsored by the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University and the MAVIN Foundation.

“Emerging Paradigms in Critical Mixed Race Studies,” the first annual Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference, will be held at DePaul University in Chicago on November 5-6, 2010.

The CMRS conference brings together scholars from a variety of disciplines nationwide. Recognizing that the diverse disciplines that have nurtured Mixed Race Studies have reached a watershed moment, the 2010 CMRS conference is devoted to the general theme “Emerging Paradigms in Critical Mixed Race Studies.”

Critical Mixed Race Studies (CMRS) is the transracial, transdisciplinary, and transnational critical analysis of the institutionalization of social, cultural, and political orders based on dominant conceptions of race. CMRS emphasizes the mutability of race and the porosity of racial boundaries in order to critique processes of racialization and social stratification based on race. CMRS addresses local and global systemic injustices rooted in systems of racialization.

Fanshen Cox, Tiffany Jones, and myself will participate in a Greg Carter (University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee) moderated round-table discussion titled “Exploring the Mixed Experience in New Media” on 2010-11-05 from 10:15 to 12:15 CDT at the conference.

View the finalized schedule here.

Organizers:

Wei Ming Dariotis, Assistant Professor Asian American Studies
San Francisco State University, IPride Board
dariotis@sfsu.edu

Camilla Fojas, Associate Professor and Chair
Latin American and Latino Studies
DePaul University

Laura Kina, Associate Professor Art, Media and Design and Director Asian American Studies
DePaul University

Dr. Sue-Je Gage to be Featured Guest 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: #178 – Dr. Sue-Je Gage
When: Thursday, 2010-11-04, 21:00Z (17:00 EDT, 16:00 CDT, 14:00 PDT)

Sue-Je Gage, Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Ithaca University

Dr Gage’s specific research focuses on citizenship, identity, blood, gender and transnationalism by examining the identities of Amerasians in South Korea. It explores how Amerasians as local, national and global citizens identify themselves and strategically use their identities to maneuver within Korean society and the globalizing world.

Download or listen to the podcast here.

Selected Bibliography:

• “The Amerasian Problem: Blood, Duty, and Race,” International Relations, Volume 21, Number 1 (2007): 86-1102.

Mulatto Nation: An installation by Lezley Saar

The List Gallery at Swarthmore College
2003-02-28 through 2003-03-30

Lezley Saar

From: Mulattos at War: Battle of ‘Halfway’

Historian Lezley Saar, professor emerita from MU (Mulatto University) and a lifelong outspoken activist for the Mulatto Movement, traces the history of the Mulatto Nation from its bumpy beginnings to its conflicted present. She has codified the five stages of its history, depicted here in visual form, as follows: “Birth of a Nation”, “The Founding Mothers and Fathers of the Mulatto Nation”, “The Mulattoville Athenaeum”, “Alienation” and “Materialism and the Mulatto”. This site is dedicated to all the Mulattos, Quadroons, Octoroons, Lily-skins, Creoles, Cafe-au-Laits, Hybrids, Half-Breeds, and High Yellow House Niggers who have championed this great Nation.

For for information, click here.

Centuries of skin

Ragged Raven Press
2010
80 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9552552-9-8

Joanna Ezekiel

Some of the poems in Joanna Ezekiel’s first full poetry collection Centuries of skin engage imaginatively with her discoveries, in childhood and adolescence, of her dual Indian Jewish and Eastern European Jewish heritage. In the title poem, Centuries of skin, Ezekiel responds to overhearing in synagogue that, “She’s not a proper Jew”, with “Perhaps I’ll shout./Hurl my outlawed voice over wide hats…” and in “Rainbow”, she pictures her family in England and India connected by a rainbow, “our family tree of praying voices/murmuring the seven colours”. Economic imagery, raw honesty, and wry humour characterise Ezekiel’s poems.

Joanna blogs at delayed reactions.

Rainbow

Friday nights, stumbling Sabbath blessings
with my brothers and parents, I’d imagine a rainbow
that stretched from our home to Bombay,
our family tree of praying voices
murmuring the seven colours
radiant as peacock blessings
or precious stones, its arc transcending
timezones, continents, fractured partitions.
climbing through dense English cloud
to set in a haze of Eastern red.
I didn’t know then that over it
my father’s parents loomed, large
as Buddhas and angry as the sun.

A braid of words

I cling to the edge
of the roar of a lion,
it’s white-gold edge
like a coast at sunrise.
My feet hang clear
of the quicksand below
as it bubbles and sucks.
I will scramble up
to face the roar,
it’s mountains and valleys,
my breath a sirocco,
my pulse a landslide.
I will hear my calm voice
through the tremor,
a braid of words
like a pulley-cable
to haul myself across
until I fall off
into full noon sunlight,
blinking, my palms
stripped and raw.

Utilizing the Strengths of Our Cultures: Therapy with Biracial Women and Girls

Women & Therapy
Volume 27 Issue 1 & 2 (January 2004)
pages 33-43
ISSN: 1541-0315 (electronic); 0270-3149 (paper)
DOI: 10.1300/J015v27n01_03

Jennifer Teramoto Pedrotti, Associate Professor
California Polytechnic State University

Lisa M. Edwards, Assistant Professor, Director of Child/Adolescent Community Program
Marquette University

Historically, psychology has operated from a pathology-based perspective. In the last several years, however, efforts have been made to balance this view with an acknowledgement of individual strengths and assets. For biracial women and girls, this approach may be particularly useful. Through the utilization of several techniques, including solution-focused interventions and narrative approaches to treatment, therapists can empower their female biracial clients through development of their strengths.

Read the entire article here.

Grey girls: Biracial identity development and psychological adjustment among women

The Wright Institute
September 2008
141 pages
Publication Number: AAT 3306485 

Andrea Catherine Green

A dissertation submitted to the Wright Institute Graduate School of Psychology, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Psychology

The purpose of this study was to expand the body of research regarding the developmental and psychological experiences of Biracial women-women who have one Black parent and one White parent. This study examined how Biracial women identify racially (i.e., Biracial, Multiracial, Interracial, Black, White, etc.) and how this identification has impacted their psychological well-being. This study had the following purposes: (1) to determine which factors (e.g., family and others’ expectations, physical appearance) may influence racial identity choice for Biracial women, (2) to determine if Biracial women are as psychologically maladjusted as previous studies have indicated, and (3) to explore the relationship between racial identity and psychological functioning among Biracial women.

Forty-two women accessed the study, while thirty-three participants completed the online survey. The survey consisted of three measures: the Adapted Biracial Identity Development Questionnaire (ABID-Q), the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression scale (CES-D), and the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS). The findings indicate the following: All of the participants chose to identify as a person of color (Biracial, Interracial, Multiracial, Black); medium to large correlations were found to exist between the variables (family messages, others’ perceptions, physical appearance) and racial identity development, although not statistically significant relationships; and this sample of women were overall psychologically healthy, reporting low depression scores and high satisfaction with life scores.

Table of Contents

• ABSTRACT
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES
• CHAPTER
  • PRESENTATION OF THE PROBLEM
    • Introduction
    • Statement of Purpose
    • Definitions of Key Terms
    • A Historical Understanding of the Presence of African-Americans in the United States of America: The African Slave Trade
    • After Slavery and the Emergence of Biracial Americans
    • A Short Story: The Researcher’s Own Journey Toward Biracial Identity Development
  • I. REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE
    • General Identity Development
    • Racial Identity Development Models
    • Biracial Identity Development Models
    • The Early Biracial Identity Development Models
    • The New Generation of Biracial Identity Development Models
    • Biracial Identity Development and Psychological Implications
    • Gender and Biraciality
    • Hypotheses
• METHODOLOGY
  • Participants
  • Procedure
  • Instruments
• RESULTS
• DISCUSSION
• REFERENCES
• APPENDICES
  • A. ADAPTED BIRACIAL IDENTITY DEVELOPMENT QUESTIONNAIRE
  • B. SURVEY OF BIRACIAL EXPERIENCES
  • C. BUXENBAUM BIRACIAL IDENTITY QUESTIONNAIRE
  • D. CENTER FOR EPIDEMIOLOGICAL STUDIES DEPRESSION SCALE
  • E. SATISFACTION WITH LIFE SCALE

List of Tables and Figures

• TABLE 1. Descriptive Statistics of Sample
• TABLE 2. Statistical findings of the correlations
• TABLE 3. Means and Standard Deviations of dependent variables
• FIGURE 1. Percentages of Racial Identity

Purchase the dissertation here.

The New Multiracial Student: Where Do We Start?

The Vermont Connection
Volume 31 (2010)
pages 128-135

Jackie Hyman
University of Vermont

Jackie Hyman earned her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2008, and is anticipating her graduation from HESA in 2010. Having gone through periods of doubt and confusion throughout her graduate career in identifying as Biracial, she is now more confident than ever in her racial identity. Because of her experiences at University of Maryland and University of Vermont, she has committed herself to creating a Multiracial student group at UVM, as well as creating potential spaces for Multiracial students at her next institution, wherever that may be. Without a doubt, a passion has been ignited that will guide her research and involvement on college campuses for years to come.

In 2004, one in 40 persons in the United States self-identified as Multiracial. By the year 2050, it is projected that as many as one in five Americans will claim a Multiracial background, and in turn, a Multiracial or Biracial identity (Lee & Bean, 2004). With racial lines becoming more blurred, it is increasingly important for practitioners in higher education to address the issues surrounding identity development in Multiracial college students. By looking at a personal narrative of a Biracial woman, recent studies of Multiracial identity development, and the daily challenges that Multiracial and Biracial students face concerning their identity, student affairs practitioners can begin to create more inclusive spaces for this growing population of students.

Read the entire article here.

Race, Identity, and Medical Genomics in the Obama Age (Lecture by Duana Fullwiley)

Fall 2010 Honors Colloquium: RACE
University of Rhode Island
Edwards Auditorium, URI Kingston Campus
Tuesday, 2010-10-05, 19:00 ET (Local Time); (23:00Z)

Duana Fullwiley, Assistant Professor of African and African American studies and of Medical Anthropology
Harvard University

A series of public programs at the University of Rhode Island presented by the URI Honors Program

Join us! The public is invited to attend this series of free events.

Perceptions about race shape everyday experiences, public policies, opportunities for individual achievement, and relations across racial and ethnic lines. In this colloquium we will explore key issues of race, showing how race still matters.

Watch the lecture below:

Other articles by or about Duana Fullwiley:

• “Race and Genetics: An Attempt to Define the Relationship”
• “Race in a Genetic World”
• “The Biologistical Construction of Race: ‘Admixture’ Technology and the New Genetic Medicine”
• “Racial Categories in Medical Practice: How Useful Are They?”

From “Race in a Genetic World”:

“I am an African American,” says Duana Fullwiley, “but in parts of Africa, I am white.” To do fieldwork as a medical anthropologist in Senegal, she says, “I take a plane to France, a seven- to eight-hour ride. My race changes as I cross the Atlantic. There, I say, ‘Je suis noire,’ and they say, ‘Oh, okay—métisse—you are mixed.’ Then I fly another six to seven hours to Senegal, and I am white. In the space of a day, I can change from African American, to métisse, to tubaab [Wolof for “white/European”]. This is not a joke, or something to laugh at, or to take lightly. It is the kind of social recognition that even two-year-olds who can barely speak understand. ‘Tubaab,’ they say when they greet me.”

Artist Ellen Gallagher humbled by new honor

The Providence Journal
2010-02-21

Bill Van Siclen, Journal Arts Writer

The first time her work appeared in a Whitney Biennial, the every-other-year exhibit that aims to take the pulse of contemporary art, Ellen Gallagher was just one of many up-and-coming artists vying for attention.

That was back in 1995, when Gallagher, a Providence-born painter and printmaker whose interests range from carpentry and scrimshaw to African-American history and culture, was barely out of art school.

Fifteen years later, Gallagher is Biennial-bound once again.

This time, however, she’s returning as a certified art star — someone whose work is avidly collected by major museums, including New York’s Museum of Modern Art and London’s Tate Museum, and whose name is regularly mentioned alongside the likes of Kara Walker, Cindy Sherman and Matthew Barney. Even the Whitney Museum, which organizes the Whitney Biennial (and where the show’s 2010 edition opens Thursday), has several of her works in its permanent collection…

…WHILE MANY ARTISTS draw inspiration from a variety of sources, Gallagher’s reference points — everything from slavery to sea creatures to Sun Ra — seem particularly wide ranging. Then again, so is her background.

Born in 1965, Gallagher grew up in a biracial household headed by her father, an American-born Cape Verdean who traced his roots back to 19th-century whalers and who did odd jobs to support the family, including occasional stints as a professional boxer.

When he left suddenly, the burden of raising Gallagher fell on her mother, a white Irish Catholic who eventually saved enough money to buy a house in Providence’s Washington Park neighborhood…

Read the entire article here.

Scratching the surface: Artist Laylah Ali explores the social dynamics that lie beyond appearances

Boston Globe
2008-08-29

Cate McQuaid, Globe Correspondent

WILLIAMSTOWN – Laylah Ali doesn’t let many people into her studio.

“It’s a private space,” the artist says, welcoming a visitor. “It’s like being in my brain. I’m inviting you into my private brain space – the chaos and the mess.”

As far as chaos goes, this isn’t bad. In the basement of a building on the outskirts of the Williams College campus, where Ali teaches art, an airy studio is filled with white illustrator’s tables. Colored pencils and squat bottles of ink clutter the tables. But what catches the eye are the drawings Ali has tacked to the white walls with pushpins: Portraits, made in her signature cartoon style, of haunted figures with garish headdresses, scarification, and false beards, and smaller drawings that feature ruminative lists with oddly adorned figures drawn over them…

…Growing up in Buffalo as the daughter of an African-American father and a white mother, Ali attuned herself early to social dynamics and covert aggression. The family lived in an all-white neighborhood.

“I was the only black kid in my school,” Ali says. “I’ve been able to negotiate different social places because of that. . . . More people are seeing this now because of Barack Obama, but there have always been biracial people in the US, with the ability to move between these worlds and notice what’s different and what’s not different.

“I developed heightened powers of observation not just from curiosity,” she adds, “but for survival.”

As a child, the artist saw implicit judgment many places, and it wasn’t always black and white.

“It’s not just race. It’s also class,” Ali points out. “My mom’s family had come from some money. It was gone, but they still had the idea of what it’s like to have nice silver, a nice oriental rug. They had an aspiration from what they had lost.

“Dad’s family was from the farming Mississippi South. He grew up working the land. I keep asking him questions and finding out more things. He walked five miles to school and had no electricity at home.”

“My family is very American,” she sums up…

Read the entire article here.