Mixed Race Studies

Latino racial choices: the effects of skin colour and discrimination on Latinos’ and Latinas’ racial self-identifications

Ethnic and Racial Studies
Volume 31, Issue 5, 2008
pages 899-934
DOI: 10.1080/01419870701568858

Tanya Golash-Boza, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of California, Merced

William Darity, Jr., Arts & Sciences Professor of Public Policy, African and African American Studies, and Economics
Duke University

Are predictions that Hispanics will make up 25 per cent of the US population in 2050 reliable? The authors of this paper argue that these and other predictions are problematic insofar as they do not account for the volatile nature of Latino racial and ethnic identifications. In this light, the authors propose a theoretical framework that can be used to predict Latinos’ and Latinas’ racial choices. This framework is tested using two distinct datasets – the 1989 Latino National Political Survey and the 2002 National Survey of Latinos. The results from the analyses of both of these surveys lend credence to the authors’ claims that Latinas’ and Latinos’ skin colour and experiences of discrimination affect whether people from Latin America and their descendants who live in the US will choose to identify racially as black, white or Latina/o.

Read or purchase the article here.

“My dad is samurai”: Positioning of race and ethnicity surrounding a transnational Colombian Japanese high school student

Linguistics and Education
Available Online: 2013-05-22
DOI: 10.1016/j.linged.2013.03.002

Satoko Shao-Kobayashi
Chiba University, Japan

Highlights

• Racial hierarchies in different countries impact transnational students’ positioning in local contexts.
• Participants Other coethnics by using various labels to destigmatize their own minority positions.
• Racial mixedness is variously interpreted and represented in the identity negotiation.
• Social stratification of dominance and subordination is reenacted through Othering of coethnics.

From sociocultural, interactional and critical perspectives, this study investigates the practices and ideologies of racial and ethnic identities and relationships surrounding Jun, a Colombian Japanese high school student, within a transnational Japanese student community at Pearl High School (pseudonym) in California. In particular, the analysis focuses on how Jun’s racial and ethnic positioning is interpreted and represented by others and himself through examining their labeling and categorization practices. I utilized the analysis of two-year ethnography, in-depth discourse analysis of narratives and conversations and mental map analysis. The study shows how Jun and other participants interactionally negotiated their racial and ethnic identities and relationships by strategically positioning each other in an attempt to survive in the environment where they were marginalized. The study illuminates the dynamics and politics of inter-/intraracial and ethnic relations and identities as well as the circulation of a persisting Whiteness ideology in a global context.

Read or purchase the article here.

South Korea’s multiculturalism

Al Jazeera
The Stream
2013-05-21

How is the nation dealing with its growing diversity?

A multi-cultural, multi-ethnic society is an emerging reality that is leading to a lot of racial and social discord in South Korea. Faced with an aging population and an influx of migrant wives, many are clinging to their “one-blood” ethnically homogenous national identity. Today the government is scrambling to focus a sound multicultural vision for the country. How are South Koreans adapting to their rapidly changing population?

In this episode of The Stream, we speak to:

Cindy Lou Howe, Director
“Even the Rivers”

Gregory Diggs-Yang, President,
The Mack Foundation

Also on Google Hangout: Yoo Eun Lee, Sajin Kwok, and Sarah Shaw.

Read the story and watch the video here.

Bullying Pulpit: Racism, Barack Obama and the Selective Call for Personal Responsibility

Tim Wise, Antiracist Essayist, Author and Educator
2013-05-19

Tim Wise

Sometimes, white privilege isn’t about stuff. It’s not always about better opportunities, or more money, or even greater access to those things than people of color.

Sometimes, white privilege is as simple as knowing that, generally speaking, if you’re white, you’ll be perceived as competent and hard-working until proven otherwise, while people of color — even those who have proven themselves competent and hard-working — will still be subjected to presumptions that they just might not be, and that somehow, they (but not you) need to be reminded of the importance of hard-work and personal responsibility, lest they (but never you) revert to some less impressive group mean.

To wit, President Obama’s commencement address today at Morehouse College — one of the nation’s preeminent institutions of higher learning, and perhaps its most famous historically black college or university — during which, among plenty of rather standard commencement speech boilerplate, the president lectured this year’s graduates about the importance of taking personal responsibility for their lives, and not blaming racism for whatever obstacles they may face in the future.

It’s hard to know what’s more disturbing.

Either that President Obama thinks black grads at one of the nation’s best colleges really need to be lectured about such matters; or, alternately, that White America is so desirous of exculpation for the history of racial discrimination that we need him to say such things, and he knows it, thereby feeding us the moral scolding of black men we so desperately desire and love to hear.

Either way, the result is tragic…

Read the entire article here.

‘One Drop of Love’ Creates Ripple Effect at UCSB

The Bottom Line
Weekly Newspaper of Associated Students, UC Santa Barbara: News, Features, Video & Investigative Journalism for UCSB
2013-05-13

Yuen Sin, Staff Writer

The personal is very much the political, as actress-playwright Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni illustrated through her solo show “One Drop of Love: A Daughter’s Search for her Father’s Racial Approval.” The show was performed at the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Multicultural Center on May 7.

First formulated as a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) thesis project, “One Drop of Love” began as Cox DiGiovanni’s personal attempt to revive her estranged relationship with her Jamaica-born father, who failed to show up at her wedding years before.

What ensued was a powerful multimedia, one-woman play laced with wit, warmth, and depth that fused her fragmented experiences with racial and cultural dispossession into a coherent narrative. The multidimensional show traversed back into the years of Cox DiGiovanni’s family history to untangle the weight of the socio-political events that have inevitably contributed to a crucial part of her identity and self-perceptions today…

…Cox DiGiovanni slipped in and out of multiple roles with dexterity, first imperiously bearing down at the audience as an anonymous U.S. Census Bureau officer, and then staggering affectionately across the stage with a lilting accent as her grandmother, revealing through her impressions the fluid and ultimately arbitrary nature of identity labels.

Her personal trajectory of “placelessness”—not seeing herself as “black” enough to join the Black Students Union, and yet having candy vendors in Cape Verde, West Africa, come up to her (while on a pilgrimage of sorts to trace back her African roots and understand her father’s pan-African attitudes) to ask her why she was so “white”—was interspersed with scenes that traced the evolution of the practice of racial categorization by the U.S. Census Bureau. The contrast brought to the forefront her sense of frustration from continually being racially defined by others, and the puzzling practice of placing someone in the category of “black” as long as they possessed even “one drop” of Negro blood—hence the play’s title.

At the post-show dialogue with UCSB’s professor of sociology G. Reginald Daniel, Cox DiGiovanni reiterated the importance of engaging in “scary conversations about race and racism,” reflecting that her work producing and performing “One Drop of Love” completely transformed the nature of her family relations after their involvement in her show…

Read the entire review here.

Mixing Matters: Critical Intersectionalities: An Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Symposium on Critical Mixed Race Studies

Centre for Ethnicity and Racism Studies (CERS)
University of Leeds
2013-05-18, 08:45-17:15 BST (Local Time)

Key note speakers:

Dr. Suki Ali is a Senior Lecturer at the London School of Economics. Her research interests include feminist cultural studies, theories of identity and embodiment and particularly the interplay between gender, ‘race’ and class. Dr. Ali is the author of several books, articles and chapters including ‘Mixed-Race: Post-Race: Gender, New ethnicities and cultural practices’ and ‘Reading Racialised Bodies: Learning to see Difference’.

Dr. Rebecca Chiyoko King-O’Riain is a Senior Lecturer at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. Her research interests are in people of mixed descent; emotions, technology and globalization; race/ethnicity; critical race theory; beauty; and Japanese Americans. She has published in Ethnicities, Sociology Compass, Journal of Asian American Studies, and Amerasia Journal. Her book Pure Beauty: Judging Race in Japanese American Beauty Pageants (University of Minnesota Press) examines the use of blood quantum rules in Japanese American Beauty Pageants. She is currently researching and writing about ‘Global Mixed Race’ and ‘The Globalization of Love’.

Critical Mixed Race Studies (CMRS) is a rapidly growing body of scholarship and through the continued challenging of essentialized conceptions of ‘race’ and ethnicity, CMRS becomes an emerging paradigm for examining the politics of ‘race’, racism and representation. CMRS can be defined as “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” (Critical Mixed Race Studies Association). In this transnational, interdisciplinary symposium, we seek to explore these components through the lens of intersectionalities in individual experience, theorising and activism.

For more information, click here. View the program here.

Dr. Ralina Joseph and Transcending Blackness: From the New Millennium Mulatta to the Exceptional Multiracial

I Mix What I Like
2013-01-11

Jared A. Ball, Host and Associate Professor of Communication Studies
Morgan State University, Baltimore, Maryland

This is part one of our discussion with Dr. Ralina Joseph about her book, Transcending Blackness: From the New Millennium Mulatta to the Exceptional Multiracial.

Watch the video interview here.

What We Mean When We Say ‘Race Is a Social Construct’

The Atlantic
2013-05-15

Ta-Nehisi Coates, Senior Editor

In a world where Kevin Garnett, Harold Ford, and Halle Berry all check “black” on the census, even the argument that racial labels refer to natural differences in physical traits doesn’t hold up.

Andrew Sullivan and Freddie Deboer have two pieces up worth checking out. I disagree with Andrew’s (though I detect some movement in his position.) Freddie’s piece is entitled “Precisely How Not to Argue About Race and IQ.” He writes:

The problem with people who argue for inherent racial inferiority is not that they lie about the results of IQ tests, but that they are credulous about those tests and others like them when they shouldn’t be; that they misunderstand the implications of what those tests would indicate even if they were credible; and that they fail to find the moral, analytic, and political response to questions of race and intelligence.

I think this is a good point, but I want to expand it. Most of the honest writing I’ve seen on “race and intelligence” focuses on critiquing the idea of “intelligence.” So there’s lot of good literature on whether it can be measured, its relevance in modern society, whether intelligence changes across generations, whether it changes with environment, and what we mean when we say IQ. As Freddie mentions here, I had a mathematician stop past to tell me I needed to stop studying French, and immediately start studying statistics — otherwise I can’t possibly understand this debate.

It’s a fair critique. My response is that he should stop studying math and start studying history…

…Our notion of what constitutes “white” and what constitutes “black” is a product of social context. It is utterly impossible to look at the delineation of a “Southern race” and not see the Civil War, the creation of an “Irish race” and not think of Cromwell’s ethnic cleansing, the creation of a “Jewish race” and not see anti-Semitism. There is no fixed sense of “whiteness” or “blackness,” not even today. It is quite common for whites to point out that Barack Obama isn’t really “black” but “half-white.” One wonders if they would say this if Barack Obama were a notorious drug-lord.

When the liberal says “race is a social construct,” he is not being a soft-headed dolt; he is speaking an historical truth. We do not go around testing the “Irish race” for intelligence or the “Southern race” for “hot-headedness.” These reasons are social. It is no more legitimate to ask “Is the black race dumber than then white race?” than it is to ask “Is the Jewish race thriftier than the Arab race?”…

Read the entire article here.

Soledad O’Brien: ‘OK, white person, this is a conversation you clearly are uncomfortable with’

The Washington Examiner
2013-05-13

Paul Bedard

Soledad O’Brien, recently yanked from her morning show “Starting Point” on CNN, plans to continue her focus on racial issues and is charging that whites are afraid of dealing with the nation’s black-white division.

O’Brien, just named a distinguished visiting fellow at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, told the school’s Institute of Politics that she’s often confronted by whites who want to take issue with her documentaries on race in America…

O’Brien is an award-winning correspondent who hosted and developed “Black in America,” one of CNN’s most successful international franchises.

Read the entire article here.

Half/Full

UC Irvine Law Review
University of California, Irvine Law School
Volume 3, Forthcoming
Online: 2013-04-07
pages 101-125

Nancy Leong, Associate Professor of Law
University of Denver, Sturm College of Law

Research suggests that multiracial identity is uniquely malleable, and I will focus here on the significance of that malleability for mixed-Asian individuals. At various times, mixed-Asian individuals may present themselves as “half” Asian; other times, they may present themselves as “full” Asian, “full” White, or, in some instances, fully ambiguous. Mixed-Asian racial identity negotiation, I will argue, often presents considerable challenges for mixed-Asian individuals. And mixed-Asian individuals are often targets of what I have elsewhere called “racial capitalism” by White individuals and predominantly White institutions. Still, I conclude that the malleability of mixed-Asian racial identity provides unique opportunities for destabilizing existing views about racial identity, reinvigorating stale conversations about race, and ultimately facilitating progress toward a racially egalitarian society.

Contents

• Introduction
• I. Mixed-Asian Identity
  • A. Sociology
  • B. Legal Discourse
• II. Using Mixed-Asian Identity
  • A. Commodification
  • B. Exploitation
  • C. Entrepreneurship
• III. Harms
  • A. Intrinsic Harms of Commodification
  • B. Harms to Individual Mixed-Asians
  • C. Harms to Society
• IV. Half Full

INTRODUCTION

About one out of six new marriages in America takes place between two people of different races—an all-time high. And Asian Americans are ahead of the curve: about one in three Asian Americans marries someone of a different race. Such relationships precipitate what commentators have described as an “interracial baby boom.”

Research suggests that multiracial identity is uniquely malleable, and I will focus here on the significance of that malleability for mixed-Asian individuals. At various times, mixed-Asian individuals may present themselves as “half” Asian; other times, they may present themselves as “full” Asian, “full” White, or, in some instances, fully ambiguous. Mixed-Asian racial identity negotiation, I will argue, often presents considerable challenges for mixed-Asian individuals. And mixed-Asian individuals are often targets of what I have elsewhere called “racial capitalism” by White individuals and predominantly White institutions—that is, these individuals and institutions derive value from mixed-Asian racial identity. Still, I conclude that the malleability of mixed-Asian racial identity provides unique opportunities for destabilizing existing views about racial identity, reinvigorating stale conversations about race, and ultimately facilitating progress toward a racially egalitarian society.

In Part I, the Essay examines the social scientific literature regarding mixed-Asian racial identity. As the result of a wide range of factors, including phenotypic characteristics, life experiences, and family dynamics, mixed-Asian individuals often view their racial identity differently from members of any of the traditional socially ascribed racial categories. In particular, mixed-Asian identity is often more fluid and dynamic, shifting from one context to the next. Such fluidity and dynamism is facilitated by a social view of mixed-Asian individuals as occupying a unique racial space. Part I also briefly notes the relative dearth of legal discourse relating to mixed-Asians.

Part II explores the way mixed-Asian racial fluidity is used, manipulated, exploited, and leveraged. Mixed-Asian individuals often engage in what scholars have described as “identity performance” or “identity work,” so as to present themselves in the manner most favorable in a particular social or employment context. For example, mixed-Asian individuals may be able to present themselves in a way that is more palatable to employers by displaying greater assimilation into dominant White norms of behavior and self-presentation. But mixed-Asian racial identity is also exploited by White individuals and predominantly White individuals. For example, an employer might count a mixed-Asian person for purposes of its diversity numbers even if that person does not personally consider herself a minority, or might incorporate photos of a mixed-Asian person on its website or in its promotional literature in order to advertise its nominal commitment to diversity without engaging harder questions of structural disadvantage and remediation.

Part III examines some of the negative implications of such uses of mixed-Asian identity, which harm both mixed-Asian individuals and society at large. For example, mixed-Asian individuals suffer identity demands that harm the integrity of their racial identity and submerge their own complex processes of identity negotiation. More broadly, exploitation of mixed-Asian racial identity by White individuals and predominantly White institutions often essentializes mixed-Asian individuals, impoverishes our discourse around race, fosters racial resentment by inhibiting the reparative work essential to improved racial relations, and detracts from more meaningful antidiscrimination goals.

Despite the many negative implications of manipulating mixed-Asian identity in the ways I have described, the Essay concludes in Part IV by suggesting that the fluidity and malleability of mixed-Asian identity also has the potential to serve as a powerful tool for racial reform. Mixed-Asian racial malleability has the potential to destabilize entrenched beliefs about race, to lay bare hidden demands of racial identity performance, and to engender a dramatic improvement in our conversations and policies regarding race.

Read the entire article here.