Mixed Race Studies

President Obama checks the “Black” box Evidently it’s official: Barack Obama is the nation’s first black president.

Psychology Today
2010-04-04

Samantha Smithstein, Psy.D., Clinical and Forensic Psychologist and Co-Founder
Pathways Institute for Impulse Control, San Francisco

This week, the New York Times reported that “It is official: Barack Obama is the nation’s first black president.” Evidently, President Obama chose to check the “African-American” box when defining his race for the 2010 census

…From the perspective of science and biological anthropology, race does not exist. In other words, there is not one gene, trait, or characteristic that distinguishes all members of one race from all members of another. In fact, eighty-five percent of all human variation can be found in any local population, and a full ninety-four percent can be found on any continent. In other words, there are no sub-species when it comes to humans; we are, in truth, one of the most genetically similar to each other species of all species on earth…

Read the entire article here.

Geographies of diaspora and mixed descent: Anglo-Indians in India and Britain

International Journal of Population Geography
Special Issue: Geographies of Diaspora
Volume 9, Issue 4 (July/August 2003)
pages 281–294
DOI: 10.1002/ijpg.287

Alison Blunt, Professor of Geography
Queen Mary, University of London

This paper explores geographies of diaspora for Anglo-Indians (formerly known as ‘Eurasians’) through a focus on their ‘homing desire’ in two diaspora spaces: firstly, an imperial diaspora in British India, and secondly, a decolonised diaspora in Britain after independence in 1947. Before independence, although Anglo-Indians were ‘country-born’ and domiciled in India, many imagined Britain as home and identified with British life in India even though they were largely excluded from it. Britain was often imagined as the fatherland, embodied by the memory of a British paternal ancestor, as enacted by settlement at an independent homeland for Anglo-Indians established at McCluskieganj in Bihar in 1933. By 1947, there were about 300,000 Anglo-Indians in India, but a third had migrated by the 1970s. I explore the implications not only of independence but also the British Nationality Act of 1948, which required many Anglo-Indians to prove the British origins of a paternal ancestor. The difficulties of tracing British ancestry are explored with reference to the work of the Society of Genealogists in London on behalf of Anglo-Indians in the subcontinent. Drawing on these records, as well as material from the Anglo-Indian press and interviews with women from one school who migrated after independence, I argue that ideas of Britain as home were intimately bound up with ideas of whiteness. Ideas about an Anglo-Indian diaspora existed long before decolonisation, and the migration of Anglo-Indians under the British Nationality Act led in many ways to a recolonisation of identity. Unlike studies that concentrate on ‘feminising the diaspora’, I argue that the diasporic ‘homing desire’ of Anglo-Indians invoked ideas of imperial masculinity in both imaginative and material terms.

Read or purchase the article here.

Obama and Race in America

The Huffington Post
2010-08-06

Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Visiting Scholar
Brown University

In his first major comment on race and race relations in our nation since his “A More Perfect Union Speech” on March 18, 2008, President Barack Obama called for frank discussion about race last week. In both a speech to the National Urban League and on the ABC daytime talk show “The View,” the president talked about race relations in the context of the political controversy over last month’s firing of long-time Agriculture Department employee Shirley Sherrod.

Obama agreed with those who have been calling for some sort of national conversation on race beyond CNN’s “Black in America” and “Latino in America.” He invited us to “look inward” and find the space to have “mature” dialogues about “the divides that still exist.” For Obama, these honest conversations should be based on our personal experiences and occur “around kitchen tables and water coolers and church basements.” However, many are left wondering whether Obama’s remarks represent a racial dialogue initiative or a post-racial accomplishment.

Here’s a question we might consider: Does Obama want us to talk about race while he effectively sidesteps the conversation himself?…

…Some might argue that statements like this one are clever attempts to use multiracial identity to sanitize the country’s history of chattel slavery and racist discrimination. After all, Obama made no mention of how black and white people got “all kinds of mixed up” in the first place. It follows that if we hear Obama from this perspective, then we may be hearing a call to transcend race without getting beyond racial inequalities. On the other hand, there are those who assert that Obama makes use of his multiracial identity to do precisely the opposite: to acknowledge racial division as well as its problems and awkwardness…

Read the entire article here.

Opinion: Are you mixed up?

Malayasian Insider
2010-07-08

Praba Ganesan

JULY 8 — Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad is the poster child for Malaysians with mixed parentage. Not that he epitomises multiculturalism, the misguided doctor is far from that.

He does however mirror the difficulties and challenges anyone of that situation experiences in a Malaysia averse to real diversity.

Don’t mention your mixed heritage, overemphasise your commitment to the heritage you do associate with and disassociate with all your might any connection to the heritage you are trying to lose. And marry further away from the ashamed heritage.

Not everyone behaves like that, but the themes remain.

I’m all Tamil. But my nephew and niece are not. One is a quarter Chinese and the other is half Nordic-Irish-English-and a degree of uncertainty. So my nephew goes on as a constitutional Indian though everyone thinks him Malay in school, and my niece well she goes all over the house wrecking things — in her two-year-old shoes. But her Malaysian birth certificate states her ethnicity as Australian, a nationality becomes her ethnicity according to the good people at the National Registration Department.

So what are they, and how should they grow up in Malaysia?

In Malaysia there are no halves, just wholes. This might be illogical to people outside Malaysia or anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of genealogy, but in our tropical paradise when your parents are of different ethnicities (or even mixes) you can only be of an ethnicity. Worse if one of the parents is Muslim then the other parent’s identity, past and history has to evaporate…

Read the entire article here.

A Biracial Identity or a New Race? The Historical Limitations and Political Implications of a Biracial Identity

Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society
Volume 3, Number 4 (Fall 2001)
pages 83-112

Minkah Makalani, Assistant Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies
University of Texas, Austin

Over the past fifteen years in the United States, there has emerged a concerted push to racially reclassify persons with one Black and one white parent as biracial.  Advocates of racial reclassification are calling for the establishment of a biracial identity that is both socially and officially recognized.  They are joined by a cohort of scholars, many of whom are themselves biracial identity advocates, who argue that such an identity is more appropriate for persons of mixed parentage than a Black one. Social scientist have dominated these discussions, concerned primarily with the experiences and identity of people of mixed parentage. They maintain that a biracial identity would better recognized the complete racial background of persons of mixed parentage and offer a more mentally healthy racial identity than a Black racial identity.  Moreover, the exalt a biracial identity as a positive step in moving society beyond issues of race and towards the realization of a color-blind society.

Focusing on the scholarship advocating a biracial identity for people with one Black and one white parent, I argue that such an identity has no historical basis, and would have a negative political impact on African Americans…

Read the entire article here.

Endogenous Race in Brazil: Affirmative Action and the Construction of Racial Identity among Young Adults

Working Paper
2010-01-10

Andrew M. Francis, Professor of Economics
Emory University

Maria Tannuri-Pianto, Professor of Economics
University of Brasilia

Brazil is not only characterized by racial diversity but also by socioeconomic inequality. This complexity, plus the recent adoption of racial quotas by a handful of universities, makes Brazil an ideal place to study the construction of racial identity. In this paper, we examine applicants and students of the University of Brasilia, which established racial quotas in July 2004 reserving 20% of available admissions slots for students who self-identified as black. Using admissions data as well as a student survey conducted by the authors, we explore the determinants of racial identity, including socioeconomic status, parents’ race, academic performance, and quotas in admissions. We find that, holding skin tone constant, socioeconomic status and academic performance vary inversely with black identity. The evidence suggests that young adults in mixed race families are more likely to identify with their mother’s race than their father’s, and that this pattern relates to gender and father’s absence during childhood. We also find that quotas in university admissions increased the likelihood that applicants and students self-identified as non-white, and that this phenomenon was attributable, in part, to actual change in racial identity.

Read the entire paper here.

Arts and Mixedness [eConference]

Runnymede Trust
2010-07-09

Runnymede is currently hosting an online debate on mixed-race identity and the arts.

There is a comment from columnist and broadcaster Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: Mixed-Race Britain: Where Next?

Playwright and poet Sabrina Mahfouz also writes about her thoughts on mixed-race identity: A Reflection on Mixedness. 

There are also contributions from noted arts practitioners Patricia Cumper – director of the Talawa theatre company, Jane Earl – Director of the Rich Mix Arts Centre, and Jennifer Williams – Founding Director of the British American Arts Association in our live discussion thread.

They discussed issues of cultural representation in art, the role of funding bodies and policy, the need for specific ‘mixed’ representation and the benefits / dangers of defining mixedness, race or art. Read and contribute to the discussion thread live now.

Discussion thread started by Nina Kelly on 2010-07-09 at 09:43Z.

Read the entire thread here.

Mixed Race Britain: Where Next?

Runnymede Trust
2010-07-09

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Independent Journalist

My two books on mixed race Britons, Colour of Love (1992) and Mixed Feelings (2001) were among the first non-academic explorations of racial mixing in Britain. In the nine years between the two publications, awareness had grown of the fast rising number of mixed heritage families in Britain (some going back three generations) but recognition of multiple identities was yet to come. Public policies, community politics and, arguably, mixed race people and couples themselves, still worked within established mono-racial categories. Black activists forcefully argued that mixed raced people could only be black because that is how society saw them. They, in fact, appropriated the old one drop rule applied during the days of slavery. It wasn’t right in the bad old days and certainly made no sense in the late 20th century. Now that mixed race Britons are set to overtake most other ‘ethnic minority’ groups, the hope must be that old classifications and disagreements will give way to the newer, more pertinent, voices of those who are themselves biracial or even tri-racial and we will find fresh language, modernised concepts and better understanding of human desire and multifarious identities. This hasn’t happened yet. We are in a lacuna at present- in the UK and the US too…

Read the entire article here.

Hybridity in the Third Space: Rethinking Bi-cultural Politics in Aotearoa/New Zealand

Paper Presented to Te Oru Rangahau Maori Research and Development Conference
1998-07-07 through 1998-07-09
Massey University
7 pages

Paul Meredith (Ngati Kaputuhi/Pakeha), Research Fellow
Te Matahauariki Institute
University of Waikato, New Zealand

This brief paper joins a growing call for a reconceptualisation of bicultural politics in Aotearoa/New Zealand that draws on an inclusionary and multifaceted identity politics. (Reilly 1996; McClean 1997; Spoonley 1997) The paper argues the need for this conceptualisation to take place in an alternative space that blurs the limitations of boundaries and engenders new possibilities.

In this paper I invoke Homi Bhabha’s notions of hybridity and the third space and offer some introductory comment as to what these concepts might mean for a project that seeks to redesign the laws and institutions for a bicultural Aotearoa/New Zealand.

Read the entire paper here.

The more things change, the more they stay the same

Thinking Twice: RACE
The Stanford Review
2009-01-29

C. Matthew Snipp, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity
Stanford University

Last week, we inaugurated our first African American president, and coincidentally our first mixed race president, and our first Hawaiian president. The first of these three events captured the public imagination while the other two have passed with barely a comment, and for good reason. Few Americans know the sordid history behind the acquisition of Hawaii. Fewer still have parsed what it means to be multiracial in America. But most Americans are well aware of the travails of African Americans, from slavery to Jim Crow to the Civil Rights movement.

Trolling the news outlets since the November elections yields two seemingly dissonant messages. One is that Obama’s election signals a new era in race relations—that we are living in a “post-civil rights” era, an era of “color blindness.” The New York Times recently published a glowing story about an interracial couple who suddenly have found it less awkward to have to conversations with their friends about racial differences. In contrast, others are quick to point out that racism is alive and well in America, and that Obama’s election will mean little for changing the racial partition that has existed in this country since its inception….

Read the entire article here.