Mixed Race Studies

How Ferguson could be America’s future

Cable News Network (CNN)
2014-08-23

John Blake

(CNN) — The protests in Ferguson, Missouri, have been described as a mirror into contemporary America, but they are also something else: A crystal ball.

Look past the headlines — the debates over race and police militarization that have surfaced after the killing of an unarmed black youth by a white police officer — and one can glimpse America’s future, some historians and political scientists say.

No one is talking about an impending race war or a police state, but something more subtle. Unless Americans re-examine some assumptions they’ve made about themselves, they argue, Ferguson could be the future.

Assumption No. 1: Tiger Woods is going to save us

It’s called the “browning of America.” Google the phrase and you’ll get 18 million hits. By 2050, most of the nation’s citizens are expected to be people of color, according to the Pew Research Center.

Dig beneath the Google links and one can detect an emerging assumption: Racial flashpoints like Ferguson will fade in the future because no single race will be dominant. You could call it the Tiger Woods effect. The New American will claim multiple racial origins like Woods, the pro golfer. Demographic change will accomplish what a thousand national conversations on race could never do: lessen the sting of racial conflict.

A dramatic increase in interracial marriages will change the racial landscape as more people cross racial and ethnic lines to marry. But that change won’t be a cure-all, says Rory Kramer, a sociology and criminology professor at Villanova University in Pennsylvania.

He says racial progress is not inevitable with the browning of America.

“I don’t want to deny the optimism,” Kramer says. “I deny the assumption that it will happen without effort.”…

Read the entire article here.

Race and Racisms: A Critical Approach

Oxford University Press
2014-08-01
528 pages
7-1/2 x 9-1/4 inches
Paperback ISBN: 9780199920013

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

Race and Racisms: A Critical Approach engages students in critical questions related to racial dynamics in the U.S. and around the world. Written in accessible, straightforward language, the book discusses and critically analyzes cutting-edge scholarship in the field. Organized into topics and concepts rather than discrete racial groups, the text addresses:

• How and when the idea of race was created and developed
• How structural racism has worked historically to reproduce inequality
• How we have a society rampant with racial inequality, even though most people do not consider themselves to be racist
• How race, class, and gender work together to create inequality and identities
• How immigration policy in the United States has been racialized
• How racial justice could be imagined and realized

Centrally focused on racial dynamics, Race and Racisms also incorporates an intersectional perspective, discussing the intersections of racism, patriarchy, and capitalism.

Table of Contents

• List of Excerpts
• Letter from the Author
• About the Author
• Preface
• Part I: The History of the Idea of Race
  • 1. The Origin of the Idea of Race
    • Defining Race and Racism
    • Race: The Evolution of an Ideology
    • Historical Precedents to the Idea of Race
    • Slavery Before the Idea of Race
    • European Encounters with Indigenous Peoples of the Americas
    • Voices: The Spanish Treatment of Indigenous Peoples
    • The Enslavement of Africans
    • The Need for Labor in the Thirteen Colonies
    • The Legal Codification of Racial Differences
    • Voices: From Bullwhip Days
    • The Rise of Science and the Question of Human Difference
    • European Taxonomies
    • Scientific Racism in the Nineteenth Century
    • The Indian Removal Act: The Continuation of Manifest Destiny
    • Freedom and Slavery in the United States
    • Global View: The Idea of Race in Latin America
  • 2. Race and Citizenship from the 1840s to the 1920s
    • The Continuation of Scientific Racism
    • Measuring Race: From Taxonomy to Measurement
    • Intelligence Testing
    • Eugenics
    • Voices: Carrie Buck
    • Exclusionary Immigration Policies
    • The Chinese Exclusion Act
    • The Johnson-Reed Act of 1924
    • Birthright Citizenship for Whites Only
    • Naturalization for “Free White People”
    • How the Irish, Italians, and Jews Became White
    • The Irish: From Celts to Whites
    • The Italians: From Mediterraneans to Caucasians
    • The Jews: From Hebrews to White
    • African Americans and Native Americans: The Long, Troubled Road to Citizenship
    • African Americans and the Long Road to Freedom
    • Native Americans: Appropriating Lands, Assimilating Tribes
• Part II: Racial Ideologies
  • 3. Racial Ideologies from the 1920s to the Present
    • Voices: Trayvon Martin
    • The 1920s to 1965: Egregious Acts in the Era of Overt Racism
    • Mass Deportation of Mexicans and Mexican Americans
    • Internment of Japanese and Japanese Americans
    • Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment
    • Voices: Fred Toyosaburo Korematsu
    • The Civil Rights Movement and the Commitment to Change
    • Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott
    • Sit-Ins
    • Freedom Rides
    • Old Versus New Racism: The Evolution of an Ideology
    • Biological Racism
    • Cultural Racism
    • Color-Blind Universalism
    • Global View: Cultural Racism in Peru
    • The Maintenance of Racial Hierarchy: Color-Blind Racism
    • Four Frames of Color-Blind Racism
    • Rhetorical Strategies of Color-Blind Racism
    • The New Politics of Race: Racism in the Age of Obama
  • 4. The Spread of Ideology: “Controlling Images” and Racism in the Media
    • Portrayals of People of Color on Television and in Other Media
    • Portrayals of Blacks
    • Portrayals of Latino/as
    • Research Focus: The Hot Latina Stereotype in Desperate Housewives
    • Portrayals of Arabs and Arab Americans
    • Portrayals of Asians and Asian Americans
    • Portrayals of Native Americans
    • Racial Stereotypes in Films
    • Global View: Racial Stereotypes in Peruvian Television
    • New Media Representations
    • Video Games
    • Social Media
    • Voices: I Am Not Trayvon Martin
    • Media Images and Racial Inequality
    • Raced, Classed, and Gendered Media Images
  • 5. Colorism and Skin-Color Stratification
    • The History of Colorism
    • Research Focus: Latino Immigrants and the U.S. Racial Order
    • The Origins of Colorism in the Americas
    • Does Colorism Predate Colonialism? The Origins of Colorism in Asia and Africa
    • The Global Color Hierarchy
    • Asia and Asian Americans
    • Latin America and Latinos/as
    • Voices: The Fair-Skin Battle
    • Africa and the African Diaspora
    • Voices: Colorism and Creole Identity
    • Skin Color, Gender, and Beauty
  • 6. White Privilege and the Changing U.S. Racial Hierarchy
    • White Privilege
    • Research Focus: White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack
    • Whiteness, Class, Gender, and Sexuality
    • Whiteness and Racial Categories in Twenty-First-Century America
    • Latino/as and the Multiracial Hierarchy
    • The Other Whites: Arab Americans, North Africans, Middle Easterners, and Their Place in the U.S. Racial Hierarchy
    • Multiracial Identification and the U.S. Racial Hierarchy
    • Voices: Brandon Stanford: “My Complexion Is Not Black but I Am Black”
    • Will the United States Continue to Be a White-Majority Society?
    • Global View: Social, Cultural, and Intergenerational Whitening in Latin America
    • Changes in Racial and Ethnic Classifications
    • Revisiting the Definitions of Race and Ethnicity
• Part III: Policy & Institutions
  • 7. Understanding Racial Inequality Today: Socio logical Theories of Racism
    • Racial Discrimination, Prejudice, and Institutional Racism
    • Individual Racism
    • Voices: Microaggressions
    • Institutional Racism
    • Global View: Microaggressions in Peru
    • Systemic and Structural Racism
    • Systemic Racism
    • Structural Racism
    • Research Focus: Systemic Racism and Hurricane Katrina
    • Racial Formation: Its Contributions and Its Critics
    • White Supremacy and Settler Colonialism
    • Research Focus: Applying Settler Colonialism Theory
    • Intersectional Theories of Race and Racism
  • 8. Educational Inequality
    • The History of Educational Inequality
    • Indian Schools
    • Segregation and Landmark Court Cases
    • The Persistence of Racial Segregation in the Educational System
    • Affirmative Action in Higher Education
    • Educational Inequality Today
    • Research Focus: American Indian/Alaska Native College Student Retention
    • The Achievement Gap: Sociological Explanations for Persistent Inequality
    • Global View: Affirmative Action in Brazil
    • Parental Socioeconomic Status
    • Cultural Explanations: “Acting White” and Other Theories
    • Tracking
    • Social and Cultural Capital and Schooling
    • Hidden Curricula
    • Voices: Moesha
    • Research Focus: Rosa Parks Elementary and the Hidden Curriculum
  • 9. Income and Labor Market Inequality
    • Income Inequality by Race, Ethnicity, and Gender
    • Dimensions of Racial Disparities in the Labor Market
    • Disparities Among Women
    • Disparities Among Latinos and Asian Americans
    • Underemployment, Unemployment, and Joblessness
    • Voices: Jarred
    • Sociological Explanations for Income and Labor Market Inequality
    • Voices: Francisco Pinto’s Experiences in 3-D Jobs
    • Individual-Level Explanations
    • Structural Explanations
    • Research Focus: Discrimination in a Low-Wage Labor Market
    • Affirmative Action
    • Entrepreneurship and Self-Employment 260
    • Global View: Racial Discrimination in Australia
  • 10. Inequality in Housing and Wealth
    • Land Ownership After Slavery
    • Residential Segregation
    • The Creation of Residential Segregation
    • Discriminatory and Predatory Lending Practices
    • Research Focus: The Role of Real Estate in Creating Segregated Cities
    • Neighborhood Segregation Today
    • Voices: A Tale of Two Families
    • Wealth Inequality
    • Inequality in Homeownership and Home Values
    • Wealth Inequality Beyond Homeownership
    • Explaining the Wealth Gap in the Twenty-First Century
  • 11. Racism and the Criminal Justice System
    • Mass Incarceration in the United States
    • The Rise of Mass Incarceration
    • Mass Incarceration in a Global Context
    • Race and Mass Incarceration
    • Global View: Prisons in Germany and the Netherlands
    • The Inefficacy of Mass Incarceration
    • Voices: Kemba Smith
    • Mass Incarceration and the War on Drugs
    • Race, Class, Gender, and Mass Incarceration
    • Institutional Racism in the Criminal Justice System
    • Racial Profiling
    • Sentencing Disparities
    • The Ultimate Sentence: Racial Disparities in the Death Penalty
    • Voices: Troy Davis
    • The Economics of Mass Incarceration
    • Private Prisons
    • The Prison-Industrial Complex
    • Beyond Incarceration: Collateral Consequences
    • The Impact of Mass Incarceration on Families and Children
    • The Lifelong Stigma of a Felony: “The New Jim Crow”
    • Research Focus: Can Felons Get Jobs?
  • 12. Health Inequalities, Environmental Racism, and Environmental Justice
    • The History of Health Disparities in the United States
    • Involuntary Experimentation on African Americans
    • Free Blacks as Mentally and Physically Unfit
    • Explaining Health Disparities by Race and Ethnicity Today
    • Socioeconomic Status and Health Disparities by Race/Ethnicity
    • Segregation and Health
    • Research Focus: Health and Social Inequity in Alameda County, California
    • The Effects of Individual Racism on the Health of African Americans
    • Life-Course Perspectives on African American Health
    • Culture and Health
    • Global View: Health and Structural Violence in Guatemala
    • Genetics, Race, and Health
    • Voices: Race, Poverty, and Postpartum Depression
    • Environmental Racism
    • Movements for Environmental Justice
    • Voices: The Holt Family of Dickson, Tennessee
  • 13. Racism, Nativism, and Immigration Policy
    • Voices: Robert Bautista-Denied Due Process
    • The Racialized History of U.S. Immigration Policy
    • Race and the Making of U.S. Immigration Policies: 1790 to 1924
    • Global View: Whitening and Immigration Policy in Brazil
    • Nativism Between 1924 and 1964: Mass Deportation of Mexicans and the McCarran Internal Security Act
    • The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act and the Changing Face of Immigration
    • Illegal Immigration and Policy Response
    • The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA ) and Nativism
    • Proposition 187 and the Lead-Up to the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (II RIRA)
    • The 1996 Laws and the Detention and Deportation of Black and Latino Immigrants
    • Voices: Hector, a Guatemalan Deportee
    • Nativism in the Twenty-First Century
• Part IV: Contesting & Comparing Racial Injustices
  • 14. Racial Justice in the United States Today
    • Perspectives on Racial Justice
    • Recognition, Responsibility, Reconstruction, and Reparations
    • Civil Rights
    • Human Rights
    • Moving Beyond Race
    • Intersectional Analyses: Race, Class, Gender
    • Racism and Capitalism
    • Struggles for Racial Justice
    • Racial Justice and the Foreclosure Crisis
    • DREAMers and the Fight for Justice
    • Voices: Fighting Against Foreclosures: A Racial Justice Story
    • Racial Justice and Empathy
  • 15. Thinking Globally: Race and Racisms in France, South Africa, and Brazil
    • How Do Other Countries Differ from the United States in Racial Dynamics?
    • Race and Racism in France
    • French Colonies in Africa
    • The French Antilles
    • African Immigration to France
    • Discrimination and Racial and Ethnic Inequality in France Today
    • Voices: The Fall 2005 Uprisings in the French Banlieues
    • Race and Racism in South Africa
    • Colonialism in South Africa: The British and the Dutch
    • The Apartheid Era (1948-1994)
    • The Persistence of Inequality in the Post-Apartheid Era
    • Research Focus: The Politics of White Youth Identity in South Africa
    • Race and Racism in Brazil
    • Portuguese Colonization and the Slave Trade in Brazil
    • Whitening Through Immigration and Intermarriage
    • The Racial Democracy Myth in Brazil and Affirmative Action
    • Racial Categories in Brazil Today
    • Research Focus: Racial Ideology and Black-White Interracial Marriages in Rio de Janeiro
• Glossary
• References
• Credits
• Index

Who cares about mixed race? Care experiences of young people in an inner city borough

Goldsmiths, University of London
April 2010
280 pages

Fiona Virginia Peters

A thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PhD Sociology Goldsmiths, University of London

This thesis is an engagement with the care experiences of mixed young people, to produce knowledge of how care processes, mediated though the private foster family, impact on their lives. It begins with an examination of the relationship between the mixed classification and care, and continues through a discussion of race, race mixing and the family. The study then examines methodologically how the mixed classification operates in social work through a discussion of racialisation and its impact on the care trajectory of young people. Further, it engages with long-standing debates over why young people with a mixed classification are more likely to be significantly represented in care. The empirical chapters are comprised of the narrative accounts and visual representations of the young people and their experiences in care.

A highly participatory research methodology paid critical attention to the narratives of mixed young people in care between the ages of 12-20 years, as research participants, in order to engage and elicit rich detail about their care experiences. An innovative mixedmethod approach emerged in part from their specific circumstances and led to new ways to research with and understand young people who live in circumstances of instability often characterised by crisis.

This thesis engages with the care experiences of the participants to reveal how the discursive repertoires of mixedness and their application through care processes impacts on lives. Each empirical chapter is presented as an individual case study that examines the experiences of a single participant in order to interrogate care practices in relation to mixedness. The themes to emerge centre around family, relationality, professional intervention, classification and identification, race and mixedness, sex, gender, class, culture and ethnicity, all within the crisis of the care system. This thesis argues that placing the care experiences of mixed young people in the centre of debates about how to conceptualise mixedness could influence care planning.

Read the entire thesis here.

Global Mixed Race

New York University Press
March 2014
357 pages
Cloth ISBN: 9780814770733
Paper ISBN: 9780814789155

Edited by:

Rebecca Chiyoko King-O’Riain, Senior Lecturer
National University of Ireland, Maynooth

Stephen Small, Associate Professor of African American Studies
University of California, Berkeley

Minelle Mahtani, Associate Professor in the Department of Human Geography and the Program in Journalism
University of Toronto, Scarborough

Miri Song, Professor of Sociology
University of Kent

Paul Spickard, Professor of History and Affiliate Professor of Black Studies, Asian American Studies, East Asian Studies, Religious Studies, and the Center for Middle Eastern Studies
University of California, Santa Barbara

Patterns of migration and the forces of globalization have brought the issues of mixed race to the public in far more visible, far more dramatic ways than ever before. Global Mixed Race examines the contemporary experiences of people of mixed descent in nations around the world, moving beyond US borders to explore the dynamics of racial mixing and multiple descent in Zambia, Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico, Brazil, Kazakhstan, Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, Okinawa, Australia, and New Zealand.  In particular, the volume’s editors ask: how have new global flows of ideas, goods, and people affected the lives and social placements of people of mixed descent?  Thirteen original chapters address the ways mixed-race individuals defy, bolster, speak, and live racial categorization, paying attention to the ways that these experiences help us think through how we see and engage with social differences. The contributors also highlight how mixed-race people can sometimes be used as emblems of multiculturalism, and how these identities are commodified within global capitalism while still considered by some as not pure or inauthentic. A strikingly original study, Global Mixed Race carefully and comprehensively considers the many different meanings of racial mixedness.

Contents

• Global Mixed Race: An Introduction / Stephen Small and Rebecca C. King-O’Riain
• Part I: Societies with Established Populations of Mixed Descent
  • 1. Multiraciality and Census Classification in Global Perspective / Ann Morning
  • 2. “Rider of Two Horses”: Eurafricans in Zambia / Juliette Bridgette Milner-Thornton
  • 3. “Split Me in Two”: Gender, Identity, and “Race Mixing” in the Trinidad and Tobago Nation / Rhoda Reddock
  • 4. In the Laboratory of Peoples’ Friendship: Mixed People in Kazakhstan from the Soviet Era to the Present / Saule K. Ualiyeva and Adrienne L. Edgar
  • 5. Competing Narratives: Race and Multiraciality in the Brazilian Racial Order / G. Reginald Daniel and Andrew Michael Lee
  • 6. Antipodean Mixed Race: Australia and New Zealand / Farida Fozdar and Maureen Perkins
  • 7. Negotiating Identity Narratives among Mexico’s Cosmic Race / Christina A. Sue
• Part II: Places with Newer Populations of Mixed Descent
  • 8. Multiraciality and Migration: Mixed-Race American Okinawans, 1945–1972 / Lily Anne Yumi Welty
  • 9. The Curious Career of the One-Drop Rule: Multiraciality and Membership in Germany Today / Miriam Nandi and Paul Spickard
  • 10. Capturing “Mixed Race” in the Decennial UK Censuses: Are Current Approaches Sustainable in the Age of Globalization and Superdiversity? / Peter J. Aspinall and Miri Song
  • 11. Exporting the Mixed-Race Nation: Mixed-Race Identities in the Canadian Context / Minelle Mahtani, Dani Kwan-Lafond, and Leanne Taylor
• Global Mixed Race: A Conclusion / Rebecca C. King-O’Riain
• Bibliography
• About the Contributors
• Index

Mixed Mondays Film Series at the Brooklyn Historical Society

Crossing Borders, Bridging Generatons
Brooklyn Historical Society
128 Pierrepont Street
Brooklyn, New York 11201
Mondays, 2014-08-04 through  2014-08-18, 18:30 EDT (Local Time)

Hosted by and post-screening discussion with:

Erica Chito Childs, Professor of Sociology (author of Navigating Interracial Borders and Fade to Black and White: Interracial Images in Popular Culture)
City University of New York

This series is co-sponsored by MixedRaceStudies.org.

August 18: Toasted Marshmallows (2014): 

Come watch the first public screening of the documentary Toasted Marshmallows in the U.S.! Follow filmmakers Marcelitte Failla and Anoushka Ratnarajah on a journey across Canada and the U.S. as they document the experiences of other mixed-race identified women, delve into their own cultural and ethnic histories, and tell stories about color, passing, privilege, ancestry, and belonging. An extended preview of the film will be followed by a dialogue with the filmmakers and Erica Chito-Childs.

August 11: My Beautiful Laundrette (1985):

British-born, half-Pakistani playwright and novelist Hanif Kureishi won an Oscar nomination for his 1985 screenplay for My Beautiful Laundrette, a richly layered film about Pakistani immigrant life in Thatcherite London.

Come watch the protagonist, Omar, navigate mixed-income and mixed-race arrangements in his family and develop an unlikely, yet beautiful, queer relationship with Johnny (Daniel Day Lewis). Set against the backdrop of anti-immigrant racism and fascism, the story of Omar’s laundrette presents an electrifying set of possibilities around class, race, sexuality, belonging, and love.

August 4: Imitation of Life (1959):

The Mixed Monday film series launches with a 1959 Lana Turner classic—Imitation of Life—which explores the story of an African-American woman and her light-skinned, mixed-race daughter who passes for white. Come munch on popcorn, watch the film and discuss the history and cultural context around mixed families, race relations and popular culture.

Americans Fill Out President Obama’s Census Form: What is His Race?

Social Science Quarterly
Published Online: 2014-07-22
DOI: 10.1111/ssqu.12105

Jack Citrin, Heller Professor of Political Science
University of California, Berkeley

Morris Levy, Assistant Professor of Political Science
University of Southern California

Robert P. Van Houweling, Associate Professor of Political Science
University of California, Berkeley

Objective

We use nationally representative survey experiments to assess public opinion about how President Obama should have identified himself racially on the 2010 Census.

Methods

Respondents were randomly assigned to three conditions—a control, a treatment that described the president’s biracial ancestry, and a treatment that combined the biracial ancestry information with a statement that Obama had in fact classified himself as black only. All respondents were then asked how they felt Obama should have filled out his Census form.

Results

A clear majority of Americans in all experimental conditions said that Obama should have identified himself as both black and white.

Conclusion

There appears to be suggesting robust acceptance of official multiracial identification despite the cultural and legal legacy of the “one drop of blood” rule in official U.S. race categorization. A subsequent survey experiment found that a convenience sample of Americans support multiracial identification for mixed-race individuals generally and not only for the president.

Read or purchase the article here.

Monoracial and Biracial Children: Effects of Racial Identity Saliency on Social Learning and Social Preferences

Child Development
Published Online: 2014-07-14
DOI: 10.1111/cdev.12266

Sarah E. Gaither
Department of Psychology
Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts

Eva E. Chen, Assistant Professor of Social Science
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Kathleen H. Corriveau, Assistant Professor of Human Development
Boston University

Paul L. Harris, Victor S. Thomas Professor of Education
Harvard University

Nalini Ambady (1959-2013), Professor of Psychology
Stanford University

Samuel R. Sommers, Professor of Psychology
Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts

Children prefer learning from, and affiliating with, their racial in-group but those preferences may vary for biracial children. Monoracial (White, Black, Asian) and biracial (Black/White, Asian/White) children (N = 246, 3–8 years) had their racial identity primed. In a learning preferences task, participants determined the function of a novel object after watching adults (White, Black, and Asian) demonstrate its uses. In the social preferences task, participants saw pairs of children (White, Black, and Asian) and chose with whom they most wanted to socially affiliate. Biracial children showed flexibility in racial identification during learning and social tasks. However, minority-primed biracial children were not more likely than monoracial minorities to socially affiliate with primed racial in-group members, indicating their in-group preferences are contextually based.

Read or purchase the article here.

Please pass me the skin coloured crayon! Semantics, socialisation, and folk models of race in contemporary Europe

Language Sciences
Available online: 2014-08-06
DOI: 10.1016/j.langsci.2014.07.011

Martina Zimmermann
Institute of Multilingualism
University of Fribourg, University of Teacher Education, Fribourg, Switzerland

Carsten Levisen
Department of Aesthetics and Communication
Aarhus University, Denmark

þórhalla Guðmundsdóttir Beck
University of Iceland, Háskóli Íslands, Iceland

Cornelia van Scherpenberg
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, München, Germany

Highlights

• Explores the cultural semantics of colour words in four urban European communities.
• An idealised cognitive model of ‘the colour of skin’ shared across these languages.
• A link between the colour terms and the ‘skin’ prototype is intact.
• The sociovisual ideology embedded in the ‘hautfarben’ concept is powerful.
• Traces the origin of the skin-based colour concept to language socialisation.

This study explores the cultural semantics of colour words in the four urban, European communities of Munich, Berne, Aarhus, and Reykjavik, focussing on hautfarben (German), hutfarb (Bernese Swiss German), hudfarvet (Danish), and húðlitur (Icelandic), all of which can be translated as ‘skin coloured’. Unlike in English, where skin coloured has fallen out of use due to its racist semantic profile, these words are still widely present within the four communities. Using evidence from a referential colour naming task and semi-structured interviews, our study seeks to reveal the linguistic worldviews and idealised cognitive models embedded in skin-based colour concepts in contemporary German and Scandinavian languages. Arguing that colour concepts are linguistic constructs through which speakers have learned to pay attention to their visual worlds, we trace the origin of the skin-based colour concept to language socialisation. Our study suggests that children’s use of crayons in pre-schools, homes, and kindergartens have a formative impact on the acquisition of colour concepts in general, and in particular, in acquiring a skin-based colour concept. Apart from ‘crayon socialisation’ and children’s drawing practices, our study points to one other salient aspect of meaning associated with the skin-based colour concept, namely socio-political discourses of multiculturalism, political correctness and racism. Some speakers find it ‘natural’ to use a skin-based colour concept while others find it ‘racist’. Yet regardless of an individual speaker’s views on the matter, they all appear to recognise the specific folk model of race, encoded in hautfarben, hutfarb, hudfarvet and húðlitur. In addition, based on the disagreement among speakers, we do find some evidence that discursive changes in German and Scandinavian languages could lead to similar changes as the ones which have taken place in English (i.e. the replacement of skin coloured with peach or a similar construct). Skin-based colours in Germanic languages also offer new perspectives on visual semantics, the social origins of colour, and on the interface of language, sociality and colour.

Read or purchase article here.

Skewing the Data: Mixed-Race Identity & the Problem of Counting for Race

Lucia Lorenzi: the body politic: musings and meanderings
2014-04-13

Lucia Lorenzi
University of British Columbia

A few weeks ago, I attended a panel hosted by the Institute for Gender, Race, and Sexuality at the University of British Columbia, entitled “CWILA and the Problem of Counting for Race.” CWILA (Canadian Women in the Literary Arts) is a non-profit organization, founded in 2012, as a “discursive space to address gender disparities in Canadian literary culture, as well as the wider politics of representation, the critical reception of women’s writing in the literary press, and the ways in which we can foster stronger critical communities.” Through their first two annual counts, CWILA demonstrated that there is a significant imbalance when it comes to gender representation in Canadian literary culture. Considering the myriad ways in which these imbalances continue to circulate, (as evidenced by statements from the likes of David Gilmour, whom I have written about here) the collection of data seems to serve a useful purpose in providing some numerical and concrete grounding to what often feels like an abstract and unquantifiable problem. Data can help to back an argument, to lend “credibility,” when people would otherwise dismiss lived experiences or personal narratives as “mere anecdotes.”…

…I am deeply aware that I am, in so many ways, a question mark. A fully Italian name, with seemingly-matching olive skin. My mother tongue is German. My mother is white and my father is black. When my parents separated, my sister and I were raised by our mother in a primarily-white suburb of Vancouver. And, in many moments in my life, I have had the privilege of passing. While my sister and I share the same parentage, the rolling of the genetic dice meant that while I was born with lighter skin and straight hair, my sister was born with darker skin and curly hair. Even now, when my sister and I are out together, it is she who is more readily-racialized than I am. It is because of this complexity that the question of race, and accounting for my own racialization, has always been fraught. I am genetically, biologically, half-Black, and yet I have had virtually no connection to “Black” culture for most of my life. What is “Black” culture, anyway? I did not inherit the stories of my father’s family, the stories of growing up in Barbados, growing up Black on an island with a history of British colonization and the Atlantic slave trade. And yet, that history is still mine, somehow. It’s in my skin. Do I count in percentages? Half-half? 70%-30%?…

Read the entire article here.

A phenomenological study of racial identity development of black-white mixed-race children in the United States

Texas Woman’s University, Denton, Texas
2013
142 pages
ISBN: 9781303661433
ProQuest Document ID: 1496772753

Cherly Gary-Furdge, Ph.D

This study examines how black-white mixed-race children develop their racial identity and how black-white parents of mixed-race children help their children with developing their racial identity. For this study, racial identity development is the process by which one selects or identifies his/her racial category. Three research questions are explored: (1) How do black-white interracial couples assist their children with developing their racial identities? (2) How do children born to black-white parents develop their racial identities? (3) What are some of the challenges faced by black-white mixed-race children?

This study included 36 participants: 12 biracial children who were raised by their biological parents and 12 black-white interracial couples who conceived a child together. In-depth interviews were conducted to collect data about how the parents assisted the children with developing their racial identity, how the children developed their racial identity, and what challenges are encountered by these children.

The data collected for this study provide answers to all of the three research questions. The parent participants used four strategies to assist their children with their racial identity development: educating them about their culture, the “one drop rule”, using their race to benefit them, and “see no race and hear no race.” The adult children in this study chose either black or biracial as their racial identities because of their experiences, but none of them chose white as their racial identity. The adult children participants also reported challenges they experienced, including being rejected by family members, the object of prejudiced in school, and being made to feel invisible.

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