Mixed Race Studies

The Privilege of Denial

all things beautiful
2012-09-19

Alyssa Bacon-Liu

I remember doing what’s called a Privilege Walk during my freshman year of college. There was a group of us and we stood in a line and we were given instructions. You had to take steps forward or steps back depending on how you answered certain questions. Are most people in power the same gender as you? Race as you? Are you the first in your family to go to college? Do most people on TV and the covers of magazines have the same skin tone as you? Stuff like that. And I’m sure you can see where this is going.

I did this exercise several times with several different groups of people. At the end of the exercise, the white males were always in the front. Guess who was always in the back? Me. And the only other non-white person because I went to private Christian college and when you’re a minority at private Christian college you’re REALLY a minority…

…,But you know who always complained about the exercise? The white males. Because even though I was the one who was in the back because people who look like me are not represented in politics, leadership, entertainment or even the college I was attending, somehow it was even more embarrassing for these young, white men to come to terms with their own privilege.

And I get it. Being confronted with the realities of one’s privilege is a really difficult thing. I’ve had to go through the process of identifying and reconciling my own privilege. Because despite what the Privilege Walk would imply, I have privilege too. I am American. By simply being born in this country (which I had absolutely no control over) I am one of the most privileged people on the planet. Does that mean I feel guilty about being an American? No. Aware of my privilege? Yes. Aware of how that privilege affects others around the globe, whether or not I intentionally mean to affect them? Yes. Absolutely.

One of my favorite bloggers, Dianna Anderson, is currently writing a series on her site about understanding privilege.

“Privilege is an advantage I have but am not always aware of. It is something inherent to my self that has the ability to affect how easy or difficult my life is.”

Based on this understanding, although it can be a challenging journey to understand your privilege, simply having privilege is not a bad thing. It’s not something you control. You can’t help it if you were born a certain way! But it’s still an important thing to acknowledge, as Dianna points out:

“Understanding our implicit privileges and the ways they cloud our thinking is vital for a discussion in social justice to actually get anywhere.“

Understanding privilege is vital for a discussion on social justice, huh? Well then imagine my surprise in discovering that a supposed leader in the multiracial advocacy movement has not yet come to terms with her own privilege. The woman [Susan Graham] (who happens to be white) heading the organization Project RACE is mad that people keep tossing around the phrase “white privilege” and yesterday she wrote an entire post about it on the organization’s official blog, which is both peculiar and unprofessional. I’d like the share the highlights of said post, but you can read the entire thing here. The opening line of her post is the following statement:

“I’m sick of hearing people infer that if you are white, you are somehow privileged. Mitt Romney is, but that’s just one guy…”

I’m perplexed by her “argument.” It’s like she’s saying, “Just because Mitt Romney is privileged doesn’t mean every white person is!” White privilege is not synonymous for “extremely wealthy.” She is already missing the point and it’s only the first sentence of her post…

…She cannot claim to be the voice of racial minorities without acknowledging the ways she (as a white person) benefits from the system that makes multiracial advocacy necessary in the first place. As a biracial person, it is completely unacceptable to me that someone who claims to be an advocate for the multiracial community would openly proclaim that she not only doesn’t believe that white privilege even exists but that it is not a necessary part of the conversation in multiracial advocacy…

Read the entire essay here.

How Do Whites Perceive Biracial People?

Daily Observations: Your source for the latest psychological research
Association for Psychological Science
2011-11-10

In case you missed it, the cameras were rolling at the APS 23rd Annual Convention in Washington, DC. Watch Sabrica Barnett from The City University of New York present her poster research on “Not Fully Black, but Not Fully White: Whites’ Perceptions of Black-White Biracials.”

Barnett and her coauthor Daryl A. Wout won an APSSC Award for this research, in which they compared Whites’ ratings of perceived similarity, competence, and warmth for Blacks, Whites, and Black/White biracials. Their findings were consistent with previous research on this topic: Whites tend to perceive Black/White biracials as more similar, competent, and warm than Blacks; however, they perceive Black/White biracials as less similar, competent, and warm than Whites. These findings have important implications for how biracial people are treated and valued in society.

The Autobiography of an Ex-White Woman: Bliss Broyard’s One Drop

Mother Jones
2007-11-09

Debra J. Dickerson

Suddenly, white people are fascinated by race. Good for them. Good for all of us?

If you haven’t read Bliss Broyard’s One Drop: My Father’s Hidden Life—A Story of Race and Family Secrets, you must. No matter how well you thought you understood, this book makes you realize just how relentlessly integral race is to American life and just how crucial it is to move beyond it. A complex book on a complex issue, it’s hard to know where to begin (good reviews here, here and here).

Here’s the easy part: One Drop is about having a semi-famous father who gave you all the insulated, WASPy pampering any white girl could want but who turns out, on his deathbed, to have in fact been black, then backtracking to figure out why and how he did so. And where that leaves you in a nation where boxes must be checked and sides must be taken. Only in America could a strained conversation in your dying father’s sickroom change your race. This just in: you’re black.

Pere Broyard, Anatole, was a New Orleans Creole, as it turned out, who helped create a post-war, bohemian-intellectual Manhattan where he and his friends “didn’t know where books stopped and they began.” But the world did. The only way for the cerebral, wavy-haired Negro to claim a place in that rarified atmosphere, seduce numberless white girls, or even get a decent job, was to stop being black. The price of doing so for two generations left Broyard a twisted soul, self-eliminated from family and culture, adrift in a world which existed mostly in the minds of the trendy Communist sympathizers and slumming trust-funders who fed on each other until it was time to marry and move to Connecticut. “Our tribe of four made us seem alternately special and forsaken,” Bliss writes, “the last survivors of a dying colony or the founding members of an exclusive club.”She and her brother had almost no interaction with either side of the family, so deeply ‘incognegro’ was Anatole. So were they black now? If they’re not, is it because it’s too late or because it’s too easy?…

…Still, these works do what America never will; participate in all the truth and reconciliation we’re ever going to have—piecemeal, caveated, hazy, statute of limitations-expired but more than blacks knew before. More than whites could bear to admit to before. Leave it to white narcissism to do for us what the urgings of conscience never will: put white perpetrators center stage. Now that it’s safe. Given that America won’t hold its breath until a black person goes digging for the ancestor who narc’d on Denmark Vesey, maybe blacks should cut whites some slack on their long overdue introspection. There’s no denying that blacks desperately want to know what the hell happened and how and only whites can tell us that…

Read the entire article here.

A Conversation with Eric Hamako

MixedRaceStudies.org
2013-01-23

Steven F. Riley, Creator

This is the first in a series of interviews with scholars, writers, activists and others involved with the topic of multiracilism.

Scholar Eric Hamakois an Ed.D. candidate in the Social Justice Education concentration at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a long-time student- and community-organizer of mixed-race activities. Last October, Eric wasappointed to a position on the United States Census Bureau’s National Advisory Committee(NAC) on Racial, Ethnic and Other Populations for a two-year term. The committee, as one of several National Advisory Committees, advises theCensus Bureauon a wide range of variables that affect the cost, accuracy and implementation of the Census Bureau’s programs and surveys.

I had a chance to sit down with Eric the morning of November 2, 2012, during the2012 Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference (CMRS) at DePaul University in an attempt to learn more about him, his scholarship and his activism and how they intersect. The day before, both Eric and I had presented papers at the conference. Eric also presentedanotherpaper on Saturday followed by a report on the census for the CMRS business meeting on Sunday! Thus our face-to-face time was quite pleasant, yet far too brief. Recently, I caught up with him to follow up on our CMRS chat.

Steve Riley: What inspired you to get involved with mixed-race community and student organizing?

Eric Hamako: In college, like many Mixed-identified folks, I sought out community in various ways with various groups. In some places, I wasn’t seen as belonging or didn’t feel welcomed. In others, I felt I had more opportunities; people saw potential in me and welcomed my contributions. In particular, toward the end of college, I heard about a student organizing a student chapter of Hapa Issues Forum. I attended the small meeting and, as I listened to others, I thought, “Well, I have some thoughts and suggestions for what this group should do…” And, opening my big mouth, people seemed supportive—so much so that they said, “That’s a good idea… you’re in charge of that.” Little did I realize, at the time, that this was the first meeting and that, by virtue of showing up and demonstrating some initiative, I had somewhat inadvertently joined the leadership core of the group. Mixed-Race organizing has, unlike some of my other work and volunteer experiences, been a place where I’ve felt that I could make a more substantial difference. I’ve worked in other positions where, if I was heard at all, my ideas weren’t given much merit and I wasn’t sure what difference I was making. But, with my Mixed-Race work, I’ve felt that I’ve had more sense of community and more sense that I could impact what’s going on. So, I’ve tried to nurture that in my own work, to provide opportunities for others to connect and make their marks, too.

SR: Can you describe the selection process for membership to the Census NAC?

EH: Over the past few years, a number of Multiracial student and community organizations have been networking and getting closer to one another. Through some of our collective work, we were informed by a Census representative that the Census Bureau was putting out a public call for nominations to a new iteration of the Census Bureau’s advisory committee system. Our loose network of Multiracial organizations’ leaders decided we’d nominate someone, in hopes that we’d have a representative on the committee interested in Multiracial issues. Through an internal nomination and vote, the group elected to nominate me for a position. The Census Bureau grandparented in fifteen members of the former advisory committees, the REACs (Racial and Ethnic Advisory Committees), and of the nominations received, selected an additional seventeen new advisory committee members, for a total of thirty-two members on our National Advisory Committee. The Census Bureau chose me as one of the seventeen new nominees. I don’t know much about the process the Census Bureau used to choose among the nominees, but it’s my sense that they were looking for members who would be knowledgeable in various subject-areas and had community connections to various marginalized and hard-to-count populations.

SR: Certainly there are others in the mixed-race community who might have served on the Census NAC. What do you bring as a representative that others may not?

EH: There definitely are other leaders who also have area-related knowledge, historical perspective, and strong connections to Multiracial organizations and networks. I feel fortunate to have been nominated by peers and selected by the Census Bureau. To help share the information I’m learning and to solicit the concerns and opinions of people interested in racial justice and Multiraciality, I’ve created a blog: Two Or More: Mixed thoughts about the Census NAC (http://censusnac.blogspot.com).

SR: Are the NAC meetings in-person?

EH: There are several different National Advisory Committees (NACs), including the NAC on Racial Ethnic and Other Populations. The NAC on which I serve is scheduled to meet in-person four times in two years, as well as holding at least two virtual meetings. These meetings are open to the public and provide comment periods, which I encourage people to use. Additionally, our NAC will have “working groups,” which are tasked with exploring and researching various subtopics, such as how to count hard-to-count populations; the impacts of using third-party databases to supplement Census Bureau data; and what might happen if the Census Bureau combined the “race question” and the “ethnicity question” into a single question. The working groups are also empowered to recruit experts from outside the NAC to contribute to the group’s work. So, for people interested in working with the NAC, you might think about how you could contribute to a working group’s work.

SR: Do you anticipate any changes affecting the Two or More Race (TOMR) option on the 2020 census?

EH: I think it’s important for everyone to know that neither racism nor race are stable or natural. Racism metastasizes and changes over time, changing the ways that race is thought about and implemented in the US. For the last few decades, the Census has been one way to try to observe and track the symptoms of racial inequalities. For example, we can use the data to determine whether a racial group is disproportionately imprisoned or denied access to equitable bank loans. Without such data, it’s difficult to demonstrate racist trends.

At the same time, the Census’ racial categories change from decade to decade; one reason for those changes has to do with the ways racism and race change over time. For example, the more a group is able to assert that it is a group and has valid claims to seek recognition and protection from racism, the more able it might be to seek recognition on the Census. The 1997 Directive No. 15 issued by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) allowed for the “Mark One Or More” (MOOM) format on the 2000 Census’ race question, resulting in the Two or More Races (TOMR) data we’ve seen from the 2000 and 2010 Census. At this point, I do not have reason to believe that the MOOM format will be significantly altered for the 2020 Census.

But, there are many important issues that are related and less visible. For example, in the lead-up to Directive No. 15, I think many people were talking about “What will the forms allow?” (i.e., “enumeration”) and far fewer people were talking about “How will people’s responses be counted up and reported out?” (i.e., “tabulation” and reporting). I encourage everyone to educate themselves about how the data is tabulated and reported. Different agencies and organizations tabulate and report in different ways—and that impacts how the data can be used and what we can learn about racial inequalities.

SR: What challenges (if any) do you anticipate with your NAC?

EH: I think several of the challenges are logistical, but the logistics of things also impact getting to know each other and working together. All of the committee members are working other jobs and have other responsibilities. We’re spread out across the country and meet in-person only a few times during our term; that makes getting to know each other and remotely coordinating our work more challenging. Thankfully, I think that many of us have had experience collaborating over long distances and the Census Bureau provides some technical support for bridging the distances (e.g., conference calls; a web-based space for communication and collaboration; financial support for travel to our in-person meetings). Another logistical or perhaps communication challenge is sharing information with and gathering concerns and opinions from various populations and communities. While I don’t claim to represent every Multiracial-identified person or every person concerned about Multiracial issues, I do hope to find ways to communicate with other people. For now, I’m counting on my connections to various Multiracial organizations and my attempts to reach out through those channels.

SR: The census in Canada does not collect data on race. Do you think that the U.S. should follow in its footsteps? Why or why not?

EH: Because I think the Census’s data about race is an important way to identify racial inequalities produced by systemic racism, I’m in favor of continuing to collect information about race, rather than discontinuing it. That said, collecting information about race via the Census is merely a way to track the symptoms of racism, rather than the systems through which racism operates. I think we need information about both.

Similarly—and perhaps controversially—I think that we often use a person’s racial self-identification (e.g., on the Census) as a loose way of inferring things about their experiences of racism. Some scholars have pointed out that this is somewhat sloppy and also reinforces the myth that “race” is real, when really race is just a product of racism. So, if what we really want to know is, “What’re your experiences of racism?” then we can and should ask additional questions, beyond just “What’s your racial identity?” or “What race are you?” Part of racism’s myth of race is the idea that members of a so-called racial group are all similar and thus different from everyone of other racial groups—but really, there’s tremendous diversity within so-called racial groups. And racism affects members of a racial group differently, based on racism’s interaction with things like sexism, heterosexism, classism, colorism, ableism, nationalism, and Christian Supremacy.

SR: I was impressed with one of your Facebook posts about the California Mumford Act of 1967, where the National Rifle Association (NRA) and conservative Republicans, led by assemblyman Don Mumford and governor Ronald Regan spearheaded gun-control legislation because of a fear of increased gun ownership by black people. How and why is it important to use an anti-racist social justice framework when engaging in your work?

EH: I can’t claim credit for the content of that post—only for reposting it along to folks; there’s some good stuff out there. As for my own work, I’m trying to find ways to improve the ways that we teach about racism and about monoracism (oppression of Multiraciality). As a student and an educator, I’ve found that much of the anti-racist curricula that’s currently available isn’t well-suited for addressing monoracism or for reaching Mixed-identified participants. So, I’m trying to work with colleagues to identify some of those shortcomings and to improve what and how we’re teaching about racism, about monoracism, and about the other “intersecting” or intertwined forms of oppression. I try to keep a multi-issue analysis in mind when I work and when I teach. For me, I aspire to a social justice analysis that sees how things like racism and sexism are not only “intersecting” but are intertwined and make up each other. And, further, I think Multiracial organizers can learn a lot from other social movements. I’ve been particularly interested in what Multiracial organizers can learn and share with people organizing for bisexual/pansexual liberation and transgender liberation. Certainly, we’re present in each other’s movements, but we’re also each situated as “in-between” and many of the stereotypes and aspects of oppression are similar, too.

SR: How and why is the examination of the “mixed-race metaphor” in science fiction and other genres important in the discussion of mixed-race?

EH: I believe that stories are powerful. Stories shape how we think about ourselves and others; how we think about social problems, their origins, and their solutions; and what we think is possible or desirable. Many negative stories have been told about Multiraciality and, while they continue to be told, now there are also more seductively positive-sounding stories, too. But I want to emphasize: racial stereotypes that sound positive are still racial stereotypes, are still racism, and often play into larger racist agendas.

In the past, we had more stories where Multiraciality was represented as negative, defective, confused or evil. And those stories are still being told (e.g., Voldemort in the Harry Potter franchise). But now we’re seeing more stories where a hybrid hero embodies more positive-sounding stereotypes and defeats the hybrid villain. So, the hybrid hero tells us positive-sounding stories, such as “Multiracial people are smarter, healthier, stronger, etc.” or “Multiracial people will be the end of racism!” But as sweet as those stories sound, as seductive as it might be for people to believe those lies, that’s all they are: racist lies. Multiracial people are neither racially inferior nor racially superior. No one and no group is inherently better or worse than another on a racial basis. And, I hope that we will strengthen our mental self-defense skills so that we’re prepared to fight back against racist stories; not just the obviously hateful racist stories, but also the seductive racist stories that try to say, “Hey, we used to say you were bad, but now we’re going to say you’re better… (better than thosepeople).” I think that seeing the problems in stories is an important step to telling different stories, rather than retelling the same old stories.

SR: I found the Critical Mixed Race Studies (CMRS) conference to be an incredible learning experience and thoroughly invigorating. It was great to have the privilege to present a paper and it was also really wonderful to meet many of the scholars that I have posts for on my site. What did CMRS do for you and how might it influence your NAC activities?

EH: I’m so thankful to all the people who’ve made the first two CMRS conferences possible—to everyone who attended, but also to the people who organized the conference and made it happen. As an attendee and a presenter, CMRS continues to be a place where I can meet new people, reconnect with friends and colleagues, feel inspired and useful, and also, as an academic, to be exposed to new ideas and new ways of thinking. As a representative to the NAC, CMRS provides me with opportunities to share information, gather ideas and opinions, and to connect broadly and deeply with people who’re concerned about Multiraciality, monoracism, and social justice. I’m looking forward to CMRS 2014!

^©2013, Steven F. Riley

This is a Time for Hope and Change

Indiana Law Journal
Volume 87, Issue 1 (2012)
Article 23
pages 431-444

Kevin D. Brown, Richard S. Melvin Professor of Law
Indiana University Maurer School of Law

I have agreed to comment on the paper delivered by Professors Angela Onwuachi-Willig and Mario Barnes at a conference titled Labor and Employment Law Under the Obama Administration: A Time for Hope and Change? In his victory speech on the night of November 4, 2008, Barack Obama, the first black (African American, biracial?) President reaffirmed the themes of “hope and change” that were central to his campaign. He stated that his election was the answer “that led those who have been told for so long by so many to be cynical, and fearful, and doubtful of what we can achieve, to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.” He went on to point out that “[i]ts [sic] been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America.” So with his reelection just a year away, now is an appropriate time to reflect on whether this truly is a time for hope and change.

Professors Onwuachi-Willig and Barnes entitled their piece The Obama Effect: Understanding the Emerging Meanings of “Obama” in Anti-Discrimination Law.
They reject the idea that this is a time for either hope or positive change. They close their introduction with the following summary:

[W]e conclude that having a biracial, black-white president has had very little effect on the enforcement of anti-discrimination law. Indeed, we contend that Obama’s campaign and election have, to an extent, had the opposite effect in the work environment. Rather than revealing that racism is over or that racial discrimination is diminishing in the workplace, Obama’s presence and prominence have developed a specialized meaning that has signaled an increase in or at the very least a continuation of regular discrimination and harassment within the workplace.

To support their conclusion Onwuachi-Willig and Barnes point to “Obama’s own identity performance during his campaign, studies regarding the psychology of whites who supported Obama, and studies concerning implicit bias.” Onwuachi-Willig and Barnes note that during his campaign, Obama engaged in a number of racial-comfort strategies. He avoided discussions of race as much as possible and “black people [like Louis Farrakhan and Al Sharpton] . . . deemed to be ‘too’ racially defined.” Obama worked to produce an identity that countered stereotypes of blacks as too consumed with race and downplayed his status as a black man during the campaign. Onwuachi-Willig and Barnes also point out that Obama’s opponents used his race against him and his wife, often publicizing negative stereotypes about blacks. These attacks continued even after the election, including the highly publicized use of stereotyped images by the Tea Party. Onwuachi-Willig and Barnes mention studies that demonstrate that some whites voted for Obama as a means to make a statement about the irrelevancy of race to them and society. They indicate that psychologists have noted that some white voters who supported Obama did so simply in order to congratulate themselves for backing a black person. This statement, however, might provide persons with a license to support racism, because supporting Obama gave them the moral credentials to express their true feelings about race. Onwuachi-Willig and Barnes go on to contend that these psychological studies suggest that Obama’s election may actually increase racial discrimination, thereby requiring, but not necessarily resulting in, greater enforcement of anti-discrimination law.

It is impossible to ground an evaluative judgment, using definitive measures of universally agreed upon objective and measurable criteria, that Obama’s election may have increased racial discrimination and had a negative effect on the work environment. To reach such a conclusion, scholars have to decide among innumerable possible factors which ones are worthy of consideration, and how much weight should be given to the particular aspects chosen. Alternatively, scholars could arrive at a conclusion like this motivated by particular concerns. Thus, the evaluative conclusion that Obama’s election may increase racial discrimination could represent a response to these concerns…

Read the entire article here.

‘It is a peculiar feeling, this multiple-consciousness:’ Putting the Multiracial Experience Into Multicultural Education

McNair Scholars Research Journal
Eastern Michigan University
Volume 4, Issue 1 (2012-01-26)
Article 2
21 pages

Jennifer Alexander

Alexis is the product of miscegenation. Her mother is White and her father is Black. Her appearance blends both races so that, at a glance, she might be described as light brown with slim, European facial features. Growing up, Alexis faced many stereotypical situations mixed-race individuals face. She was constantly asked, “What are you?” and told she looked exotic. When others tried to guess her racial makeup, she was called Hispanic, Arabic, or Filipino, rarely ever identified with her correct racial ancestry. Even though Alexis may not be a living person, her experience is one to which many mixed-race individuals can relate.

The year 2000 marked a milestone for the mixed-race population in the United States. This was the first year any person of mixed race was allowed to identify as such on the U.S. Census. As a result, the population of non-Hispanic, multiracial persons jumped from 0 in 1990 to 4,602,146 in 2000 (“Population by race,” 2000). Where did all these people of mixed race come from? The simple answer: they were always here.

Despite persons of mixed-race existing well before 2000, research on this portion of the United States’ population is lacking. This literature review begins to connect mixed-race history and theory to educational theory and practice. The purpose of this connection is to examine the mixed-race experience in multicultural education and why it is underreported in current research. Bridging the gap between multiracial experiences and multicultural education might possibly make education more inclusive, not just for mixed-race students but for all students, because it will bring to the forefront similarities and differences that students, parents, and teachers should understand.

Race permeates American culture, acting as a “fundamental organizing principle of human affairs” (Spickard, 1992, p. 12). It is most often associated with individual physique, such as skin tone and facial features, as a form of biology. However, Wardle and Cruz-Janzen (2004) distinguish between genotype, “the genetic code each person carries in his or her chromosomes”, and phenotype, “the physical characteristics an individual displays” (p. 28). They acknowledge the general public belief that individuals with the same genotype carry the same phenotype, and, yet, argue this is not fact. Harrison (2010) shares a statement on race from the American Anthropological Association: “Evidence from the analysis of genetics (e.g., DNA) indicates that most physical variation, about 94%, lies within so-called racial groups. Conventional geographic “racial” groups differ from one another only in about 6%” (p. 23). To use another example, this understanding of genetics among races is analogous to comparing granulated sugar, table salt, and corn syrup. While granulated sugar may look like table salt, chemically it has more in common with corn syrup. This analogy begins to break down the argument of race as biology.

Some scholars view race as a social construct (Spickard, 1992; Harrison, 2010). As a social construct, race becomes a way to maintain boundaries (Spickard, 2010), commonly referred to as the color line. Wardle and Cruz-Janzen (2004) claim that “maintaining the color line truly translates to maintaining the power line” (p. 97). Power, especially in the United States, feeds the stratification system that creates racial group division, placing Whites at the top. As a result, oppressed racial groups “fight for numbers” to “fight against the institutional structure designed to perpetuate their dehumanization and oppression,” in addition to fighting against other oppressed racial groups for “limited resources” (p. 98).

Further support viewing race as a social construct is the “flexibility” of race. Views on race have changed throughout history. Race has “been defined and used in different ways by different cultures in different time periods” (Harrison, 2010, p. 21). However, if race is to be seen as a biological occurrence, the understanding of it should follow suit. The fact that the understanding of race varies between groups and over time leads me to define it as a social construct.

Additionally, the concepts of monoracial and mixed race need to be defined. In our common understanding of race, an individual is identified by a single racial category. These categories include Caucasian, African American, Native American, Asian-Pacific Islander, Arab and Hispanic/Latino. When introducing persons who represent a mix of any of these labels, a distinction must be made between those persons, and individuals who are represented by only one group. Therefore, a monoracial individual has parents who fall into the same socially-constructed racial group, while a mixed-race individual has parents who fall into two or more racial groups.

To begin to understand how race, and specifically mixed-race individuals, fit into educational studies, the changes that mixed-race categorization has gone through must also be examined. Just as Harrison believes, racial categorization is not a stagnant concept, and this rings true for descriptions of mixed-race individuals.

Read the entire article here.

Troubling the Family: The Promise of Personhood and the Rise of Multiracialism

University of Minnesota Press
October 2012
256 pages
5 1/2 x 8 1/2
Paper ISBN: 978-0-8166-7918-8
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8166-7917-1

Habiba Ibrahim, Associate Professor of English
University of Washington

Troubling the Family argues that the emergence of multiracialism during the 1990s was determined by underlying and unacknowledged gender norms. Opening with a germinal moment for multiracialism—the seemingly massive and instantaneous popular appearance of Tiger Woods in 1997—Habiba Ibrahim examines how the shifting status of racial hero for both black and multiracial communities makes sense only by means of an account of masculinity.

Ibrahim looks across historical events and memoirs (beginning with the Loving v. Virginia case in 1967 when miscegenation laws were struck down) to reveal that gender was the starting point of an analytics that made categorical multiracialism, and multiracial politics, possible. Producing a genealogy of multiracialism’s gendered basis allows Ibrahim to focus on a range of stakeholders whose interests often ran against the grain of what the multiracial movement of the 1990s often privileged—the sanctity of the heteronormative family, the labor of child rearing, and more precise forms of racial tabulation—all of which, when taken together, could form the basis for creating so-called neutral personhood.

Ibrahim concludes with a consideration of Barack Obama as a representation of the resurrection of the assurance that multiracialism extended into the 2000s: a version of personhood with no memory of its own gendered legacy, and with no self-account of how it became so masculine that it can at once fill the position of political leader and the promise of the end of politics.

Contents

• Introduction: The Rising Son of Multiracialism
• 1. Multiracial Timelines: A Genealogy of Personhood
• 2. Legitimizing the Deviant Family: Loving vs. Virginia and the Moynihan Report
• 3. The Whiteness of Maternal Memoirs: Politicizing the Multiracial Child
• 4. Ambivalent Outcomes: Blackness and the Return of Racial Passing
• Conclusion: Dreams of the Father and Potentials Lost
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Index

Creating a “Latino” Race

The Society Pages: Social Science That Matters
2013-03-13

Wendy D. Roth, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of British Columbia
(Author of Race Migrations: Latinos and the Cultural Transformation of Race)

Editors’ Note: The author prefers to capitalize Black and White along with other socially constructed racial categories.

For much of American history, race has been a dichotomous, Black-White affair where the “one-drop rule” dictated that people with any amount of racial mixture were defined legally and socially as Black. In recent generations, however, with the rise of intermarriage and the entrance of new immigrants from all over the world, American racial categories and conceptions have become much more complicated and contested. Latinos provide a particularly revealing case of the new complexities of race in America.

Persons of Hispanic ancestry have long had mixed racial identities and classifications. The history of Latin America is characterized by the mixing of European colonizers, native Indigenous groups, and Africans brought over as slaves. As a result, the diverse Latino group includes people who look White, Black, and many mixtures in between. In the mid-20th century, it was assumed that as they Americanized, Latinos who looked European would join the White race, while those with visible African ancestry would join the Black race, and others might be seen as Native American. For fifty years, the Census has supported this vision by informing us that Latinos could be classified as White, Black, or “other,” but not as a race themselves. “Hispanic” remained an ethnic, not a racial, category.

To answer this question, I studied Dominicans and Puerto Ricans, two groups whose members span the traditional Black/White color line. I interviewed sixty Dominican and Puerto Rican migrants in New York City, and another sixty Dominicans and Puerto Ricans who have never migrated out of their countries of origin. We spoke about how they understand and classify their own and other people’s races, their perception of races in the mainland United States and their home country, what race means to them, and the migrants’ integration experiences. Their interviews revealed that most identify with a new, unified racial category that challenges not only the traditional Black-White dichotomy but also the relationship between race and ethnicity in American society. In other words, the experiences of these groups help us to better understand how immigrants’ views of collective identity and the relationship between color and culture are reshaping contemporary American racial classifications…

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Young Afro Latinos straddle both cultures

Our Weekly: Our Truth, Our Voice
Los Angeles, California
2010-09-23

Manny Otiko

Hispanic heritage month celebrated Sept. 15-Oct. 15

When 2nd Lt. Emily Perez was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq, she became the first female African American officer to die in combat. Perez, an outstanding West Point graduate, was mourned by two communities because, while she looked like a Black woman, she came from a Black-Latino family.

Like former POW Spec. Shoshana Johnson, Perez’s death indicates how society’s definition of who is Black is changing. Johnson was championed by the Black media, after her captivity was almost drowned out by the spectacle of Jessica Lynch’s staged rescue. (Johnson is of Afro-Panamanian descent and is also identified with the Hispanic ethnic group.)

Latinos are now officially the largest ethnic group in the United States, by passing African Americans, who for a long time have been the largest and most politically-visible minority.

But there are an increasing number of young people who are from both of these significant ethnic groups. Latinos and African Americans often live and work alongside one another in urban areas, and while there are often reports about the friction between the two groups, sometimes the Black-Brown unions work quite smoothly. Many younger Latinos supported President Barack Obama’s campaign, and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villarigosa also courted the African American community…

…Growing up [Shay] Olivarria said that she did not fit in with either of the ethnic groups.

“My mom is Black and my dad is Mexican. I have one full Black sister, one full Mexican sister, and then there’s me. Growing up neither side accepted me. To the Blacks I was ‘exotic’ and ‘different,’ so the girls thought I was a Barbie and the boys were all after me. To Mexicans, I was ‘too dark’ to take home and ‘not really Mexican’ because I didn’t speak Spanish,” Olivarria said. “When I was little, I looked like a Pacific Islander … I ended up spending a lot of time with Asians.” But race is not an issue in her family. “We all get along really well,” she said…

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Statehood Issue Stirs Passions About Puerto Rican Identity

Puerto Rico: Unsettled Territory
Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication
Arizona State University
2012-10-29

Kailey Latham
Cronkite Borderlands Initiative

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — What does it mean to be Puerto Rican?

For over 500 years, the people of this island have struggled with the answer to that question. This November, the question will follow them into the voting booth.

As the rest of the United States goes to the polls to elect a new president, the big issue for Puerto Ricans, who are U.S. citizens but can’t vote for president unless they live in a U.S. state, is whether to vote for a change in their territorial status. They can decide to remain as they are, become an independent nation, or apply to become the 51st U.S. state. If statehood wins at the polls Congress will eventually have to decide Puerto Rico’s political fate.

But much more than meets the eye rides on the vote. The question on the ballot goes to the heart of what it means to be Puerto Rican. A question that has hung over the island since the U.S. acquired it in 1890.

These days, citizenship links Puerto Ricans to the United States on paper but culture and history separate the two.

“Puerto Rico is not a nation-state, not an independent … country, but still it has its own history, language, territory, culture and autonomy,” said Jorge Duany, a dean and anthropologist at the University of Puerto Rico at Rio Piedras. “And perhaps more importantly, the awareness people do have of being separate from other people of the world, including the United States.”…

…Puerto Rican Racial Identity and the U.S. Paradigm

Under the leadership of Gov. Luis Muñoz Marín, Puerto Rico in 1960 removed the racial identification question from the territory’s version of the U.S. census. The U.S. Census Bureau and the Puerto Rico Planning Board worked together to develop a specific census that met the needs of the territory, and did not include stateside topics such as race and Hispanic origin.

Professor Juan Manuel Carrion, from the University of Puerto Rico, says that this change is representative of a traditional view about race on the island.

“The governments of Puerto Rico and of the Popular Democratic Party defended that on the idea that we are all Puerto Rican here, we don’t make distinctions about race,” Manuel said.

The race question remained off the Puerto Rican version of the census until 2000, when the Puerto Rican government sent a letter to the U.S. Census Bureau requesting to receive the same decennial census that is distributed within the continental United States.

However, the reinstatement of this question has posed some challenges because racial categories in the United States are not reflective of the racial identities used in Puerto Rico.

In 2010, approximately 76 percent of the Puerto Rican population identified as ‘white’ and 12.4 percent identified as ‘black.’

“If you took the more recent census statistics seriously, Puerto Rico would look more like a Scandinavian country than a Caribbean country in terms of the large proportion of people that have African origin and are not reflected in the census,” Duany said.

Milagros Denis-Rosario, a professor at Hunter College at the City University of New York, says that the racial identification question does not provide Puerto Ricans on the island the flexibility to identify using the terms they are familiar with.

“There are race categories in Puerto Rico, but people self-define,” she said. “It’s not like the U.S., like a binary system where you are black or white. But on the island, there is this flexibility.”

Manuel agrees, saying that race is more than black and white in Puerto Rico; it is about the shades in between.

“According to North American criteria, all Puerto Ricans would be black no matter how light their skins are,” Manuel said.

Duany says that because the census has been translated from the U.S. version it has created a big issue for Puerto Ricans who may not understand where they fit in.

“Every 10 years, Puerto Ricans get their census questionnaire and they have to figure out exactly how to fill out the form,” he said.

Vasquez, the student from the University of Sacred Heart, says that racial distinctions in Puerto Rico are not as important as they are in the United States. He feels that the census is an effort to make Puerto Ricans fit within a mold that they never came from.

“All of this really boils down to is that we don’t give such an importance to race, because at the end of the day we are all Puertoriquenos,” Vasquez said. “I don’t care what your color is, or where you come from. What I care about is that we have a common cultural background.”

Vasquez believes that Puerto Rico’s mixed heritage is the reason why racial differences are not a concern for the Puerto Rican people.

“Even from within the family nucleus we are always sharing space with someone that looks different, and when you are sharing space with someone that looks different than you, those differences start melting away and you don’t see them anymore,” he said.

Joglar Burrowes, the student from the University of Puerto Rico, agrees as she has witnessed these sentiments in her own family.

“I am white, but my grandparents are more dark,” Joglar said. “They are almost black. It is almost like we are not very defined. I may look white, but I don’t feel like it.”

Manuel says the same racial pride you find in the United States cannot be found in Puerto Rico.

“If you think that is something that should be cultivated at least for some racial categories, then the situation in Puerto Rico is not very likeable,” he said.

While Barack Obama in 2008 made history as America’s first black president, Luis Lopez Salgado, a senior at the University of Puerto Rico, says the President wouldn’t necessarily be considered black in Puerto Rico.

“Here, he wouldn’t necessarily be deemed black,” Lopez said. “He would be called mixed race, because he is mixed race. If he were competing for governor here, there wouldn’t be that much attention paid to his racial identity.”

Lopez says that the issue of race on the census is one huge problem without a solution.

“I think it’s kind of absurd to ask people to identify themselves,” he said. “It’s very a personal thing how you identify yourself, and it should be left up to the person. Not fill out whatever category you think because what you think you are may not even be in those categories.”

With all of Puerto Rico’s challenges in defining identity, the upcoming election season has added extra pressure on the people of this nation to let the world know exactly who they are…

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