Mixed Race Studies

Being Mixed Race: What are the identity politics of the million-strong ‘Jessica Ennis generation’?

Women of the World Festival
Southbank Centre
2013-03-06 through 2013-03-10

Sunday, 2013-03-10, 12:00-13:00Z
Level 5 Function Room
Royal Festival Hall

Panelists:

Emma Dabiri, Teaching Fellow
Africa Department, School of African and Oriental Studies, London
Visual Sociology Ph.D. Researcher, Goldsmiths University of London

Reya El-Salahi, Radio broadcaster, television presenter, writer and journalist

Kay Montano, Make-up Artist

Chair:

Emine Saner, Feature Writer
The Guardian

In the 2011 census over a million people in the UK classed themselves as ‘mixed race’—but for some, the label is meaningless.

So what are the identity politics of the ‘Jessica Ennis generation’?

Join broadcaster Reya El-Salahi, celebrity make-up artist Kay Montano, and Irish-Nigerian visual sociologist Emma Dabiri as they discuss the joys and challenges of being a dual heritage woman in modern-day Britain.

For more information, click here. Listen to the panel here.

Mixed Race in Britain

Kneeshaw Consulting
2013-03-11

In the 2011 census over a million people in the UK classed themselves as ‘mixed race’ – but for some, the label is unhelpful. The identity politics of the ‘Jessica Ennis generation’ was the subject of a workshop at the Women of the World Festival yesterday at London’s Southbank Centre. The latest data shows that 2.2% of the population are mixed race compared to 1.2% in 2001. Mixed-race is the fastest-growing minority in the UK. With this in mind four young British women of dual heritage talked about their experiences and debated whether having the box of ‘mixed race’ to tick offered them a sense of power or a meaningless classification, no better than ticking the ‘other’ box. Emma Dabiri, an Irish-Nigerian visual sociologist and writer, argued that race does not provide a stable or static concept of identity, but is a social construct. She talked about historical racialisation of identity, and stressed that race mixing does not eliminate racism. She gave examples of the media using images of mixed race people to promote an idea of a hip, cool generation, when in fact the experience of mixed race people, in the wider context of race relations in modern Britain, is complex and brings many challenges…

Read the entire article here.

SOCI 329-Multiracial America

Rice University
2013-2014

Multiracial America examines the phenomenon of race mixing (e.g. interracial interaction, multiracial identity) from a sociological perspective. The course covers the legal, political, and cultural contexts of interracial interaction and how these impact current understanding of what it means to be “mixed race.” Recommended Prerequisite(s): SOCI 101.

American Multicultural Studies (AMCS) 374: The Multiracial Experience

Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, California
2012-2013

Elenita Fe (Leny) M Strobel, Associate Professor and Chair of American Multicultural Studies Department

A general survey of the historical and contemporary experience of people claiming more than one racial or ethnic background. Emphasis will be given to inter-racial relations, the impact of political and social factors, and the cultural expressions of the multiracial experience.

The Myth of Post-Racialism: Hegemonic and Counterhegemonic Stories About Race and Racism in the United States

Critical Race and Whiteness Studies
Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association
Volume 7, Issue 1 (2011) (Special Issue: Post-Racial States)
pages 2-25

Babacar M’Baye, Associate Professor of Pan-African Literature and Culture
Kent State University

In the United States, hegemonic narratives reproduce post-racial ideals by developing popular myths that either minimise the prevalence of racial inequalities or blame their persistence on African Americans, who are represented as dysfunctional and resistant to mainstream American culture. Hegemonic narratives are not only racist and prejudiced but also deceptive because they move race away from the unequal policies that produce structural-level inequities for lower and working class African Americans, putting the latter at a greater disadvantage in relationships to middle and upper class white Americans and African Americans. Hegemonic stories are misleading since they claim that racial equality is possible even when the majority of white Americans have a claim to socioeconomic and political privilege and have a vested interest in maintaining that advantage at the expense of others. Using both past and recent critical race theories, this article critically analyses the major differences between hegemonic stories which accept the myth of post-racialism in the United States and counterhegemonic stories which contest this myth. By analysing these stories, the essay reveals the racially disadvantageous conditions the majority of blacks in the United States continue to face despite the 2008 election of a black president. The essay identifies persistent structural racism that the myth of post-racialism seeks to efface. It also suggests that American social and economic institutions work to entrap African Americans and other non-white minorities into a racist prison industrial complex, limited education and health facilities and rampant poverty which drastically reduce their opportunities in the United States.

Read the entire article here.

Referential Ambiguity in the Calculus of Brazilian Racial Identity

Southwestern Journal of Anthropology
Volume 26, Number 1 (Spring, 1970)
pages 1-14

Marvin Harris (1927-2001)

Categorizations elicited from 100 Brazilian informants through the use of a standardized deck of facial drawings suggests that the cognitive domain of racial identity in Brazil is characterized by a high degree of referential ambiguity. The Brazilian calculus of racial identity departs from the model of other cognitive domains in which a finite shared code, complementary distribution, and intersubjectivity are assumed. Structurally adaptive consequences adhere to the maximization of noise and ambiguity as well as to the maximization of shared cognitive order.

THE COMPARATIVE STUDY OF RACE RELATIONS in Brazil and the United States has brought to light important differences in culturally controlled systems of “racial” identity. Many observers have pointed out the partial subordination of “racial” to class identity in Brazil exemplified in the tendency for individuals of approximately equal socio-economic rank to be categorized by similar “racial” terms regardless of phenotypic contrasts, and by the adage, “money whitens” (Pierson 1942, 1955; Wagley 1952; Harris 1956; Azevedo 1955). Other aspects of the Brazilian calculus of “racial” identity lead to categorizations that are inconceivable in the cognitive frame of the descent rule which underlies the bifurcation of the United States population into “whites” and “negroes” (now, more politely, “blacks”). Experimental evidence indicates that phenotypically heterogeneous full siblings are identified by heterogeneous “racial” terms. Children of racially heterogeneous Brazilian marriages are not subject to the effects of hypodescent; where the phenotypes are sharply contrastive, full siblings may be assigned to contrastive categories (Harris and Kottak 1963). It has also long been observed that the inventory of terms which defines the Brazilian domain of “racial” types exceeds the number of terms in the analogous domain used by whites in the United States (and probably by blacks as well).

The suggestion has been made that the most distinctive attribute of the Brazilian “racial” calculus is its uncertain, indeterminate, and ambiguous output. Subordination of race to class, absence of descent rule, and terminological efflorescence all contribute to this result (Harris 1964a, 1964b). Several different indications of the absence of a common shared calculus should be noted: ego lacks a single socio-centric racial identity; the repertory of racial terms varies widely from one person to another (holding region and community constant); the referential meaning of a given term varies widely (i.e., the occasions in which one term rather than another will be used); and the abstract meaning of a given term (i.e., its elicited contrasts with respect to other terms) also varies over a broad range even within a single community.

Clarification of the nature of the ambiguity in the Brazilian “racial” calculus awaits the development of cross-culturally valid methods of cognitive analysis. In this essay I report on a preliminary attempt to employ a test instrument to elicit the Brazilian lexicon of “racial” categories and to provide a measure of referential ambiguity and consensus with respect to the elicited terms…

Read the entire article here.

Racial Identity in Brazil

Luso-Brazilian Review
Volume 1, Number 2 (Winter, 1964)
pages 21-28

Marvin Harris (1927-2001)

According to the 1950 census, the population of Brazil consisted of 61.66% brancos, 26.54% pardos, and 10.6% pretos. In the I.B.G.E.’s 1961 review of these facts, the following caution is registered:

In order to avoid erroneous interpretation, it must be remembered that there is no barrier of racial prejudices in Brazil which divides whites from non-whites as in the United States and that in Rio the label “white” is bestowed with a liberality that would be inconceivable in Washington. One must presume that a study made in conformity with objective criteria would show the proportion of whites to be inferior to that indicated by the census. However, it would be extremely difficult to clearly separate brancos morenos from pardos de matiz claro and pardos de matiz escuro from pretos. (IBGE 1961:169).

The unreliability of Brazilian racial statistics has nothing to do with the alleged absence of “barriers of racial prejudice.” The myth that Brazilians have no racial prejudices has been exposed by numerous studies carried out in both northeastern and southern portions of the country (Bastide and Fernandes 1959; Costa Pinto 1953; Wagley 1951; Harris 1956; Hutchinson 1958, etc.). It has by now been convincingly demonstrated that Negroes throughout Brazil are abstractly regarded as innately inferior in intelligence, honesty and dependability; that negroid features are universally (even by Negroes themselves) believed to be less desirable, less handsome or beautiful than caucasoid features; that in most of their evaluations of the Negro as an abstract type, the whites are inclined to deride and slander; and that prejudiced stereotyped opinions about people of intermediate physical appearance are also common. One may speak in other words of an ideal or abstract racial ranking gradient in Brazil in which the white physical type occupies the favorable extreme, the Negro type the unfavorable extreme, and the mulatto type the various intermediate positions…

Pigmentocracy in the Americas: How is Educational Attainment Related to Skin Color?

Latin American Pubic Opinion Project
AmericasBarometer Insights
Number 73 (2012)
Vanderbilt University
2012-02-20
Number 73 (2012)
9 pages

Edward Telles, Professor of Sociology
Princeton University

Liza Steele
Department of Sociology
Princeton University

Executive Summary: This Insights report addresses the question of whether educational attainment, a key indicator of socioeconomic status, is related to skin color in Latin America and the Caribbean. Based on data from the 2010 AmericasBarometer, our analysis shows that persons with lighter skin color tend to have higher levels of schooling than those with dark skin color throughout the region, with few exceptions. Moreover , these differences are statistically significant in most cases and, as we show in a test of several multiracial countries, the negative relation between skin color and educational attainment occurs independently of class origin and other variables known to affect socioeconomic status. Thus, we find that skin color, a central measure of race, is an important source of social stratification throughout the Americas today.

Read the entire report here.

Ethnicity and Earnings in a Mixed-Race Labor Market

Economic Development and Cultural Change
Volume 55, Number 4 (July 2007)
pages 709-734

Hugo Ñopo
Inter-Amerian Development Bank

Jaime Saavedra
World Bank

Máximo Torero
International Food Policy Research Institute

This study examines the relationship between earnings and racial differences in a context in which various races have coexisted and mixed during several centuries, as is true in many parts of the postcolonial world and specifically urban Peru. Coarse indicators of racial differences do not suffice in capturing this relationship; therefore, we introduce a score-based procedure of white and indigenous racial intensities that allows us to approximate these mixed racial heritages. We introduce a score-based procedure of white and indigenous racial intensities that allows us to approximate the heterogeneity within the mestizo population. We construct two types of indicators of racial intensities using a score-based procedure: a single-dimensional indicator of degrees of whiteness and a two-dimensional indicator combining degrees of both whiteness and indigenousness. This second indicator allows us to study nonlinearities in earning differences across mixed white and indigenous racial characteristics. Our estimates from a semiparametric model show evidence of a race premium for whiteness on earnings, statistically significant among wage earners but not among the self-employed. These results may be consistent with a story of employer discrimination.

Obama and the Biracial Factor: The Battle for a New American Majority [Andrews Review]

Ethnic and Racial Studies
Volume 36, Issue 5 (May 2013)
pages 918-919
DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2012.758864

Matthew T. M. Andrews
Department of Sociology
University of Michigan

Andrew J. Jolivétte (ed), Obama and the Biracial Factor: The Battle for a New American Majority, Bristol: Policy Press. 2012. v+237 pp. (paper)

In Obama and the Biracial Factor, Andrew Jolivétte edits a collection of essays that critically explore the role of U.S. President Barack Obama’s biracial background not only in his 2008 election and first term in office but also in the context of an increasingly multiracial USA. This volume is part of a multidisciplinary body of scholarship on ‘mixed race’ or multiracialily that has grown exponentially in the USA and the UK over the past two decades. However, it also departs from this scholarship’s tendency to focus exclusively on the topics of identity formation and racial classification on government forms. Instead, utilizing the timely case of President Obama ‘the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas’ the book examines what Jolivétte terms ‘mixed race hegemony’, the assertion that ‘biracial and multiracial individuals and families will lead to the end of a race-conscious and racially-discriminatory society in the United States’ (p. 4). Through various disciplinary lenses, the volume’s authors more or less expound on this concept to imagine a ‘post-racist’ rather than ‘post-racial’ USA.

The book’s first section. ‘The Biracial factor in America’, explores how narratives of ‘mixed race’ have shaped the past and present US race relations. In his chapter. G. Reginald Daniel situates Obama’s 2008 election within Daniel’s body of influential work on multiracial identity and considers the egalitarian possibilities of a ‘critical multiraciality’, which emphasizes cross-racial, coalition building and shared ancestral and cultural connections. Next, in ‘A Patchwork Heritage’, Justin Ponder offers an insightful close reading of Obama’s autobiography Dreams from My Father and argues that its rhetorical appeal lies less in Obama’s “accurate* portrayal of himself as African American than in his indeterminate citation of others, especially his white mother, complicating easy representations of his racial identity. Finally. Darryl Barthé,  Jr. charts the historical origins of ‘whiteness’ and ‘blackness’ in the USA to challenge the ‘racial revisionism’ in debates surrounding President Obama’s black identity.

The volume’s second section. “Beyond Black and While Identity Polities’, considers the gendered, global and cultural implications of President Obama’s biraciality beyond black white racial politics. Wei Ming Dairiotis and Grace Yoo draw on a nation-wide survey of ‘Obama Mamas’ or mothers who supported Obama’s 2008 campaign and show how many perceived him as a potential ‘bridge builder’ that could provide a more peaceful future for their children. In her perceptive chapter. ‘Is “No One as Irish as Barack O’Bama?”‘, Rebecca Chiyoko King-O’Riain contends that Ireland’s embrace of Obama’s Irish heritage illustrates an unprecedented decoupling of ancestry and phenotype in contemporary racial thinking. This section also includes an additional essay by Dariotis. in which she extends her notion of ‘mixed race kin aesthetic’ to explain Obama’s global appeal, and a chapter by Zebulon Vance Miletsky. who uses Obama’s ‘mutt like me’ comment as an entry point into a historically informed analysis of questions around his ‘racial authenticity’.

The book’s final section, ‘The Battle for the New American Majority’, addresses existing challenges for President Obama and Americans more generally in realizing a truly diverse American majority. In his essay, Robert Keith Collins employs person-centred ethnography to critique monolithic conceptions of ‘blackness’ that undergird debates around Obama’s…

Read or purchase the article here.