Mixed Race Studies

Berlin marks Black History Month but the struggle goes on

Deutsche Welle
2012-02-16

Anne Thomas

Berlin has become more diverse and the situation for Afro-Germans has improved, but it’s still hard to get a job or an apartment. Black History Month highlights the challenges faced by over 2 percent of the population.

A black Portuguese friend of mine once dated an African-American guy she had met in her favorite bar. “We were so surprised to see another black person, we instantly gravitated towards each other,” they told me, laughing. They were able to joke, but for many Afro-Germans, it has been a lonely struggle.

Although I live in Neukölln—reportedly Berlin’s most diverse district with inhabitants from 160 countries—I am always struck by how white the city seems compared to other European capitals. I have never seen a black doctor, civil servant, yoga teacher, ticket collector, bus driver, pharmacist, plumber, policewoman, librarian… Most of the black people I know are from the US, UK, Nigeria, Senegal, Brazil or Portugal.
 
As a white foreigner in Germany, I sometimes find it difficult here and am very aware of my differences. However, I cannot really imagine what it must be like to constantly be considered exotic, just because of a different skin color.

Remembering May Ayim

So this year’s Black History Month in Berlin has been especially fascinating. The Initiative of Black People in Germany (ISD) introduced this annual event in 1990, the year of German reunification, which Afro-German poet and activist May Ayim described as a celebration “without immigrants, refugees, Jewish or black people.”

To date, many in Germany maintain the country has a very insignificant colonial history and racism is not an issue. Ayim (1960 – 1996), whose father was Ghanaian and mother German, suffered from this ignorance and co-founded the ISD to change attitudes and work towards a non-racist Germany…

…Introducing Afro-Germans

Micosse-Aikins also praised the fact that Berlin had changed for the better as a result of the work of May Ayim and her fellow panelist, the historian and activist Katharina Oguntoye, who was born in Zwickau to a white German mother and a black Nigerian father.

When Caribbean-American writer, poet and activist Audre Lorde arrived in Berlin in 1984, she looked for other black women and found mainly isolated individuals, including Ayim and Oguntuye. She encouraged them to write a book.

“She said we should introduce ourselves to each other and to the world,” recalled Oguntoye, adding that this was an extremely daunting task for two women in their early 20s, but one they felt equipped to perform.

The result was “Showing Our Colors: Afro-German Women Speak Out,” a groundbreaking combination of historical analysis, interviews, personal testimonies and poetry that explored racism in Germany and was published in German in 1986…

Read the entire article here.

TIME to Think in Full Color About Race & Ethnicity

Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Ph.D.
2012-02-25

Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Visiting Scholar
Brown University

TIME Magazine’s latest cover story (Feb. 2/24) is called “Yo Decido. Why Latinos will pick the next President.” It reports that about 9% of all voters in 2012 will be Latino, up 26% from four years ago. While the Latin@ vote is definitely an important and interesting and game-changing political development, the most interesting thing about this story isn’t the headline or the article’s statistics. It’s the cover (left).

The cover claims to feature 20 portraits of Latin@s with captions. Some are individual or occupational descriptions like dancer, DREAMer, nutrition undergrad, car aficionado and immigration activist. Other descriptions are nation-oriented, like Mexicans, Hondurans and Guatemalans.

Here’s the problem: In reality, the cover features only 19 portraits of Latin@s and one man who passes as Latino but actually identifies himself as multiracial—half Chinese and half White. According to Michelle Woo at the OC Weekly, “That man is Michael Schennum, is the short-haired gentleman in the top row, center, behind the letter ‘M.’ He is half Chinese and half White. Not Latino. Not even a little bit.”…

…Sociologists have identified two patterns emerging in US multiracial communities. Asian / Whites and Latin@ / Whites tend to acknowledge and celebrate all aspects of their backgrounds but live life as Whites, especially if their fathers are White. Black / Whites and Black / Asian, Black / Latin@s tend to celebrate all aspects of their backgrounds but live their lives as Black…

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‘Race’ as a scientific and organizational construct: a critique

GeoJournal
Volume 41, Number 3 (March 1997)
pages 233-243
DOI: 10.1023/A:1006881215239

Georges G. Cravins, Professor of Geography
University of Wisconsin, La Crosse

“Race” for many years has been a major construct of science and society. While its importance as such has not historically been particularly pronounced on a global scale, the emergence of its most forceful architects, the Anglophone countries, to pre-eminence since World War II has significantly extended its geographical range and added to its significance as an idea within commercialized culture as well as within social organization.

In the present paper, “race” is critically examined from the following angles: 1) its role in the behavioral and medical sciences; b) its historical origins and manifestations within the Anglophone countries, particularly the United States; and c) its emergence as a “liberal” concept and operating principle since World War II. Questions of why and how “race” arose and its continued use in science, society and culture drive both the trajectory and depth of this research. “Race” is found to be a modern construct which arose as a consequence of colonialism and slavery, and was substantially constructed in its present form and substance by England and its off-spring societies, particularly the United States. “Race” was not used as a term expressing a social idea until modern times, and had no basis in the primordial civilizations which greatly influenced modern Western societies (e.g., ancient Greece and Rome). Efforts undertaken by liberals – particularly in the United States – to “humanize” the concept of “race”since the 1960″s have been largely unsuccessful. “race” is viewed as inherently hierarchical, a fact which is evident from its historical and present role in science and society.

Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. Many a man believes himself to be the master of others who is, no less than they, slaves.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Du Control Social (1762)

In this paper. I shall discuss the involvement of modern Western societies with the concept of ‘race,’ focusing special attention on its developmental and functional manifestations within Anglophone societies. By Anglophone* is meant the cultures and countries of the English-speaking world, most especially the United States. Canada, Britain, South Africa and Australia. My primary aim is to render a critical perspective on ‘race’ as academic idea and social praxis, so as to argue against its continued use within the human and medical sciences as well as an element of social and political policy.

Montagu (1974. p. 3) has called ‘race’ the ‘witchcraft of our time’. ‘Race’ is not only an academic or ideological construct, but also a notion whose applied manifestations and consequences arc intellectually, socially, politically and economically significant. Indeed, it is possible to discern two distinct yet mutually-supporting channels through which ‘race’ has been historically articulated: 1) as an idea around which major academic debates have been constructed within scientific communities; and 2) as an organizational construct which has played a significant role in shaping personal world views, individual and group identities and primary social relations.

As a serious organizational construct, ‘race’ owes its existence principally to Western societies, particularly the Anglophone countries. Although educated populations in most non-Western societies today are aware of the existence of ‘races’, this awareness is generally owed to diffusion through Western influences rather than to autochthonal development. Moreover, in the extent to which it functions organizationally, ‘race’ is universal neither in its societal and spatial significance, nor in its historical origins and development. Indeed, divorced from the empirical reality of social hierarchies and class divisions, and the day-to-day conflict it engenders within certain Western societies, race is meaningless, as it has long lost its significance on purely scientific grounds.

The consideration of ‘race’ in the pages that…

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To tackle racism, we must tackle ignorance

The Times of London
2012-02-14

John Barnes

It’s not about football, it’s about destroying modern myths of colour, race and superiority
 
In 1987 a black friend of mine went into a shop to buy a coat. He asked the assistant if they had it in black and she said no, they only had it in nigger brown. She was a lovely woman, but what would we say if that happened today?
 
If I were to ask players of my generation if they had made a racist comment in a football match, anyone honest would almost certainly say yes. No one batted an eyelid 20 years ago. Now when Alan Hansen says “coloured” rather than “black” (because black used to be an insult) or Luis Suárez says “negrito”, everyone jumps up and down to distance themselves from such remarks. They believe racism has been consigned to the past…

…The Football Association ticks all the right boxes with its policies and campaigns, the Government passes legislation, the Prime Minister gets involved because someone didn’t shake someone’s hand, people queue up to say ignorance is no excuse. But they are wrong. Ignorance is the excuse. To stop it, we have to start talking seriously about race.
 
The idea that race is about colour is relatively modern. When Aristotle spoke about races he was differentiating between uncivilised barbarians and civilised Greeks. But it was introduced by governments, backed by the Church, to validate slavery and colonialism, to justify treating some people as less equal than others. Just as Linnaeus classified plants, so people were classified by the colour of their skin. Academics tried to prove differences in skull formation to give scientific support to the idea that black people were morally and intellectually inferior.
 
But race is not a scientific reality. You could find a tribe in Africa who are genetically closer to Europeans than to an African tribe a hundred miles away. Some Saudis have whiter skin than Italians.
 
The notion of “whiteness” is an ideology of superiority. Nothing similar has ever existed in black culture. Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda do not see themselves as the same. When the Labour MP Diane Abbott talked on Twitter about “divide and rule” her claims depended on a sense of black identity that wasn’t correct…

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Is racial mismatch a problem for young ‘mixed race’ people in Britain? The findings of qualitative research

Ethnicities
Volume 12, Number 6 (December 2012)
pages 730-753
DOI: 10.1177/1468796811434912

Miri Song, Professor of Sociology
University of Kent, UK

Peter Aspinall, Reader in Population Health at the Centre for Health Services Studies
University of Kent, UK

Recent evidence concerning the racial identifications of ‘mixed race’ people suggests growing latitude in how they may identify. In this article, we examine whether mixed race young people believe that their chosen identifications are validated by others, and how they respond to others’ racial perceptions of them. While existing studies tend to assume that a disjuncture between self-identification and others’ perceptions of them is problematic, this was not necessarily the case among our respondents. While a racial mismatch between expressed and observed identifications was a common experience for these individuals, they varied considerably in terms of how they responded to such occurrences, so that they could feel: (1) misrecognized (and there were differential bases and experiences of misrecognition); (2) positive about the mismatch; or (3) indifferent to how others racially categorized them in their day-to-day interactions. Some differences in responses to such mismatch emerged among disparate types of mixed people. This study also found that we need to consider national identity, and other forms of belonging, in making sense of the diverse and often multilayered identifications and experiences of mixed race young people in Britain.

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Interracial Love Is No Societal Cure-All

truthdig
2012-02-17

Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Visiting Scholar
Brown University

A recently released report by the Pew Center is a belated Valentine’s Day gift to interracial families. The report indicates that intermarriage across racial and ethnic lines continues to be on the rise in the U.S. and the change is a sign that acceptance is growing. Although this is definitely cause for celebration and a reason to continue the fight for marriage equality everywhere, we should remember that a fuller and more accurate historical account of interracial sex and marriage in the U.S. should focus on social and legal constraints along with demographic patterns.

One reason why is the large-scale psychological distress experienced by all racial groups resulting from a social and legal history around interracial sex and marriage that’s been fraught with challenges. Legal history tells us that interracial sexual relations have been a troubled issue since the days of colonialism and enslavement, when many African-American women were forced to give birth to mixed race children to increase the enslaved population. This means that a large number of people who can claim interracial heritage do not because they are what multiracial activist Glenn Robinson calls “mixed by force” rather than “mixed by choice.” We must also consider the many free “mixed by choice” families of various backgrounds whose marriages were not recognized in the census records because miscegenation laws got even stricter after the demise of slavery.

Then, there were female members of interracial marriages, such as New York’s Alice Rhinelander in 1925 or California’s Marie Antoinette Monks in 1939, who were accused of fraud so that their marriages could be annulled and so that they could be disinherited. So, we must remember that before the 1967 case Loving v. Virginia ended bans on interracial marriage in all territories where it was outlawed, interracial coupling was a common practice. That means there may be some validity to the critique that today’s demographic patterns may not represent as much of an increase from historical trends as is being reported. Sadly, this is difficult to prove because there are few historical records to document the trend through its 500-or-more-year history in the U.S…

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 The Rise of Intermarriage: Rates, Characteristics Vary by Race and Gender

Pew Social and Demographic Trends
Pew Research Center
Washington, DC
2012-02-16
56 pages

Wendy Wang, Research Associate

Note from Steven F. Riley: The Pew Social and Demographic Trends data is report from 2010-06-04 for the year 2008, titled “Marrying Out: One-in-Seven New U.S. Marriages is Interracial or Interethnic” is here.

Page 10 of the report states,

Backdrop and Recent Changes: The increasing popularity of intermarriage in the U.S. happens at a time when fewer people are getting married and the share of adults currently married has reached a historic low. [See the report “Barely Half of U.S. Adults Are Married—A Record Low,”]  The number of new marriages in the U.S. has declined from approximately 2.3 million in 2008 to 2.1 million in 2010. Only about half of U.S. adults (51%) are currently married. The share is highest among Asians (61%) and lowest among African Americans (31%), with whites (55%) and Hispanics (48%) in between.

For new marriages in 2008 to 2010 period, black male exogamy increased from 21.7% to 23.6% (from 1 in 5 to 1 in 4) and black female exogamy increased from 8.9% to 9.3% (relatively steady at 1 in 11). Asian male exogamy decreased from 19.5% to 16.6% (from 1 in 5 to 1 in 6) and Asian female exogamy decreased from 39.5% to 36.1% (from 2 in 5 to 2 in 6).

This report contains no data on the “exogamy” of individuals who identify with more than one racial group.

Executive Summary
 
This report analyzes the demographic and economic characteristics of newlyweds who marry spouses of a different race or ethnicity, and compares the traits of those who “marry out” with those who “marry in.” The newlywed pairs are grouped by the race and ethnicity of the husband and wife, and are compared in terms of earnings, education, age of spouse, region of residence and other characteristics. This report is primarily based on the Pew Research Center’s analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) in 2008-2010 and on findings from three of the Center’s own nationwide telephone surveys that explore public attitudes toward intermarriage. For more information about data sources and methodology, see Appendix 1.

Key findings:

• The increasing popularity of intermarriage. About 15% of all new marriages in the United States in 2010 were between spouses of a different race or ethnicity from one another, more than double the share in 1980 (6.7%). Among all newlyweds in 2010, 9% of whites, 17% of blacks, 26% of Hispanics and 28% of Asians married out. Looking at all married couples in 2010, regardless of when they married, the share of intermarriages reached an all-time high of 8.4%. In 1980, that share was just 3.2%.
• Gender patterns in intermarriage vary widely. About 24% of all black male newlyweds in 2010 married outside their race, compared with just 9% of black female newlyweds. Among Asians, the gender pattern runs the other way. About 36% of Asian female newlyweds married outside their race in 2010, compared with just 17% of Asian male newlyweds. Intermarriage rates among white and Hispanic newlyweds do not vary by gender.
• At first glance, recent newlyweds who “married out” and those who “married in” have similar characteristics. In 2008-2010, the median combined annual earnings of both groups are similar—$56,711 for newlyweds who married out versus $55,000 for those who married in. In about one-in-five marriages of each group, both the husband and wife are college graduates. Spouses in the two groups also marry at similar ages (with a two- to three-year age gap between husband and wife), and an equal share are marrying for the first time.
• However, these overall similarities mask sharp differences that emerge when the analysis looks in more detail at pairings by race and ethnicity. Some of these differences appear to reflect the overall characteristics of different groups in society at large, and some may be a result of a selection process. For example, white/Asian newlyweds of 2008 through 2010 have significantly higher median combined annual earnings ($70,952) than do any other pairing, including both white/white ($60,000) and Asian/Asian ($62,000). When it comes to educational characteristics, more than half of white newlyweds who marry Asians have a college degree, compared with roughly a third of white newlyweds who married whites. Among Hispanics and blacks, newlyweds who married whites tend to have higher educational attainment than do those who married within their own racial or ethnic group.
• Intermarriage and earnings. Couples formed between an Asian husband and a white wife topped the median earning list among all newlyweds in 2008-2010 ($71,800). During this period, white male newlyweds who married Asian, Hispanic or black spouses had higher combined earnings than did white male newlyweds who married a white spouse. As for white female newlyweds, those who married a Hispanic or black husband had somewhat lower combined earnings than those who “married in,” while those who married an Asian husband had significantly higher combined earnings.
• Regional differences. Intermarriage in the United States tilts West. About one-in-five (22%) of all newlyweds in Western states married someone of a different race or ethnicity between 2008 and 2010, compared with 14% in the South, 13% in the Northeast and 11% in the Midwest. At the state level, more than four-in-ten (42%) newlyweds in Hawaii between 2008 and 2010 were intermarried; the other states with an intermarriage rate of 20% or more are all west of the Mississippi River. (For rates of intermarriage as well as intra-marriage in all 50 states, see Appendix 2.)
• Is more intermarriage good for society? More than four-in-ten Americans (43%) say that more people of different races marrying each other has been a change for the better in our society, while 11% say it has been a change for the worse and 44% say it has made no difference. Minorities, younger adults, the college-educated, those who describe themselves as liberal and those who live in the Northeast or the West are more disposed than others to see intermarriage in a positive light.
• Public’s acceptance of intermarriage. More than one-third of Americans (35%) say that a member of their immediate family or a close relative is currently married to someone of a different race. Also, nearly two-thirds of Americans (63%) say it “would be fine” with them if a member of their own family were to marry someone outside their own racial or ethnic group. In 1986, the public was divided about this. Nearly three-in-ten Americans (28%) said people of different races marrying each other was not acceptable for anyone, and an additional 37% said this may be acceptable for others, but not for themselves. Only one-third of the public (33%) viewed intermarriage as acceptable for everyone.
• Divorce. Several studies using government data have found that overall divorce rates are higher for couples who married out than for those who married in – but here, too, the patterns vary by the racial and gender characteristics of the couples. These findings are based on scholarly analysis of government data on marriage and divorce collected over the past two decades.

Table of Contents

• Executive Summary
• Chapter 1: Overview
• Chapter 2: Characteristics of Intermarried Newlyweds
• Chapter 3: Intermarried Couples of Different Cohorts
• Chapter 4: Public Attitudes on Intermarriage
• Appendices
  1. Data & Methodology
  2. State and Regional Rates
  3. Detailed tables

Read the entire report here.

Intermarriage rates soar as stereotypes fall

The Washington Post
2012-02-16

Carol Morello

Virginia leads the nation in the percentage of marriages between blacks and whites, a new study by the Pew Research Center shows, barely four decades after state laws criminalizing interracial marriage were struck down by the Supreme Court. And one in five new married couples in the District crossed racial and ethnic lines.

The prevalence of intermarriage in and around the Washington area reflects demographic changes that are pushing interracial marriage rates to an all-time high in the United States while toppling historical taboos among younger people…

…Dan Lichter, a Cornell University sociologist who has studied intermarriage, said the trend shows the continuing blurring of racial boundaries.

“Different racial and ethnic minorities are increasingly sharing the same social space, in their neighborhoods, their job settings and schools,” Lichter said. “It’s a reflection of declining inequality on a lot of fronts, including income and education.”

But a postracial society remains a long way off, he added.

“Most of the minorities who outmarry are not marrying other minorities,” Lichter said. “They’re outmarrying to whites. It’s not a melting pot.”

Nathan Nash, a black man who is divorced from a Korean American woman he was married to for five years, said that is particularly true for African Americans. A technology consultant who used to live in the District and now lives in Orange County, Calif., Nash said he has Asian friends who would not consider dating blacks…

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Interracial marriage in US hits new high: 1 in 12

The Miami Herald
2012-02-16

Hope Yen, Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Interracial marriages in the U.S. have climbed to 4.8 million—a record 1 in 12—as a steady flow of new Asian and Hispanic immigrants expands the pool of prospective spouses. Blacks are now substantially more likely than before to marry whites.

A Pew Research Center study, released Thursday, details a diversifying America where interracial unions and the mixed-race children they produce are challenging typical notions of race.

“The rise in interracial marriage indicates that race relations have improved over the past quarter century,” said Daniel Lichter, a sociology professor at Cornell University. “Mixed-race children have blurred America’s color line. They often interact with others on either side of the racial divide and frequently serve as brokers between friends and family members of different racial backgrounds,” he said. “But America still has a long way to go.”

The figures come from previous censuses as well as the 2008-2010 American Community Survey, which surveys 3 million households annually. The figures for “white” refer to those whites who are not of Hispanic ethnicity. For purposes of defining interracial marriages, Hispanic is counted as a race by many in the demographic field…

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The Real American Love Story: Why America is a lot less white than it looks

Slate
1999-10-05

Brent Staples

The PBS broadcast last month of An American Love Story—a 10-hour film about an interracial family—spawned a great deal of chatter to the effect that mixed-race couplings were the wave of the future. In fact, they are the wave of the past. Interracial marriages accounted for only 2.2 percent of all marriages in the Current Population Survey of 1992, a gain of only two-tenths of a percent over 1980, and the number of mixed couplings actually decreased slightly in 1991. The census pattern suggests that slightly more interracial couples will fall into each other’s arms in the coming years but that there will be nothing resembling a dramatic acceleration of marriage across the color line.

But America already has almost 400 years of race mixing behind it, beginning with that first slave ship that sailed into Jamestown harbor carrying slaves who were already pregnant by members of the crew. Americans have grudgingly accepted the fact that sex between masters and slaves such as Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings was frequent, leading to a many-hued race of people who do not look African at all, even though they call themselves “African-American.” Outside of recent African immigrants to the United States, there are virtually no black Americans of purely African descent, which is to say no black people who lack white ancestry, left in this country.

Four centuries of race mixing have had a similar impact on Americans who define themselves as white. Convincing estimates show that by 1950 about one in five white Americans had some African ancestry. This inheritance most often arrived at the bedroom door in the form of a fair-skinned black person who had slipped over the color line to live as white. Put another way, most Americans with African blood in their veins think of themselves as white and conduct themselves as such—and check “white” when they fill out census forms…

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