Mixed Race Studies

Hapa Girl: A Memoir

Temple University Press
March 2007
232 pages
5.5×8.25, 12 halftones
Paper EAN: 978-1-59213-616-2 (ISBN: 1592136168)
Cloth EAN: 978-1-59213-615-5 (ISBN: 159213615X

May-lee Chai

• Named one of the Notable Books in the Kiriyama Prize, 2008
• Honorable Mention at the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Awards, 2007

A vivid depiction of the racism suffered by a mixed-race family in rural South Dakota

In the mid-1960s, Winberg Chai, a young academic and the son of Chinese immigrants, married an Irish-American artist. In Hapa Girl (“hapa” is Hawaiian for “mixed”) their daughter tells the story of this loving family as they moved from Southern California to New York to a South Dakota farm by the 1980s. In their new Midwestern home, the family finds itself the object of unwelcome attention, which swiftly escalates to violence. The Chais are suddenly socially isolated and barely able to cope with the tension that arises from daily incidents of racial animosity, including random acts of cruelty.

May-lee Chai’s memoir ends in China, where she arrives just in time to witness a riot and demonstrations. Here she realizes that the rural Americans’ “fears of change, of economic uncertainty, of racial anxiety, of the unknowable future compared to the known past were the same as China’s. And I realized finally that it had not been my fault.”

Table of Contents

Prologue
Chapter 1: The Wearing of the Green
Chapter 2: The Sexy Artist Meets the Boy From New York City
Chapter 3: How to Charm a Mother-in-Law
Chapter 4: California Dreamin’
Chapter 5: The Banana
Chapter 6: The Banana’s Revenge
Chapter 7: Autumn in the Country
Chapter 8: Hunting Season
Chapter 9: The Little Things
Chapter 10: The Closet
Chapter 11: My Last Confession
Chapter 12: Bugs
Chapter 13: The Fall of the Prince
Chapter 14: The Jade Tree
Chapter 15: The Nights of Many Prayers
Chapter 16: What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You
Chapter 17: Stephen King High
Chapter 18: Barbarians
Chapter 19: Glamour Puss
Chapter 20: The Cannibals
Chapter 21: The Fine Art of Denial

Mixed Ancestry Racial/Ethnic Identity Development (MAREID) Model

Wellesley Centers for Women
2003

Peony Fhagen-Smith, Assistant Professor of Psychology
Wheaton College, Norton Massachusetts

To date no theoretical work on racial/ethnic identity development adequately provides a framework for explaining current empirical findings concerning racial/ethnic identification among mixed ancestry youth. This paper reviews current research on the mixed ancestry experience and proposes a mixed ancestry racial/ethnic identity development model that incorporates Rockquemore and Brunsma’s (2002) work on mixed ancestry identity types, Cross and Fhagen-Smith’s (1996, 2001) life-span model of Black identity development, Cross’s (1991) Nigrescence theory, Phinney’s (1989) Ethnic Identity Development Model and Erikson’s (1968) and Marcia’s (1980) work on ego identity development. The proposed model considers contextual influences, fluidity in racial/ethnic identification, and developmental changes over time for three developmental age periods, preadolescence, adolescence, and young adulthood.

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Examining Mixed-Ancestry Identity in Adolescents

Wellesley Centers for Women
Research & Action Report
Fall/Winter 2008

Two years ago, scholars at the Wellesley Centers for Women (WCW) launched a study of racial and ethnic identification among adolescents of mixed ancestry. The reasons for pursuing the research were several. Most literature about ethnic/racial self-identification patterns derived from adult respondents. For example, the series of studies that led to the change in wording of racial self-identification in the 2000 Census was carried out with adults. Little is known about asking racial and ethnic identification questions of adolescents who have more than one racial ethnic ancestry. The WCW research team, led by Sumru Erkut, Ph.D., WCW associate director and senior research scientist, also noted that a growing body of evidence suggested that some mixed-ancestry adolescents have poorer social adjustment outcomes such as depression, substance use, and health problems than their single-race-reporting peers. Whether these youth also have particular strengths had not been systematically studied. Additionally, the beginnings of theoretical models for measuring mixed-racial/ethnic identity development existed but none had been empirically validated with large samples drawn from diverse regions of the U.S. Nor had these models been able to account for the fluidity or variability in self-identification which can vary over time; adolescents of mixed ancestry may report as different single-race or mixed-race at different times and in different situations.

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Complexities in Researching Mixed Ancestry Adolescents: A Preliminary Study

Wellesley Centers for Women
2004

Michelle Porche

Peony Fhagen-Smith, Assistant Professor of Psychology
Wheaton College, Norton Massachusetts

Jo H. Kim

Heidie A. Vázquez García

Allison J. Tracy

Sumru Erkut

Contemporary events, such as the change in the 2000 U.S. Census, highlight the need for a better understanding of political, social, and psychological ramifications of mixed-ancestry identity. To be able to monitor and serve the needs of mixed-ancestry youth, we need to be able to identify who is and is not a mixed-ancestry individual. Subsequently, we need to examine particular risk and protective factors relevant to mixed-ancestry youth. In this paper we review some of the recent literature on mixed-ancestry adolescents’ social adjustment and the assessment of mixed ancestry and present theories of mixed-ancestry identity formation. We then present the results of a preliminary qualitative study of mixed-ancestry college students that illustrate some of the empirical findings and theoretical suppositions.

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New Perspectives on Racial Identity Development: A Theoretical and Practical Anthology

New York University Press
Paperback
2001
296 pages
Paperback ISBN: 9780814793435

Edited by

Charmaine Wijeyesinghe

Bailey W. Jackson, Associate Professor of Education
University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Decades have passed since our original theories of racial identity development were formed, bringing with them changes in our society and in our understandings of race and racism.

New Perspectives on Racial Identity Development seeks to update these foundational models. The volume brings together leaders in the field to deepen, broaden, and reassess our understandings of racial identity development among Blacks, Latino/as, Asian Americans, American Indians, Whites, and multiracial people.

Contributors include the authors of some of the earliest theories in the field. Bailey W. Jackson, Jean Kim, and Rita Hardiman here take stock of their original theories and offer updated versions of their models. Other theorists, such as Perry G. Horse, Charmaine L. Wijeyesinghe, Bernardo M. Ferdman, and Placida Gallegos present new paradigms and consider future issues which may come to challenge existing theories. Later chapters present examples of the ways in which these models may be applied within such contexts as conflict resolution and clinical counseling and supervisory relationships, and address their utility in understanding the experiences of other racial and ethnic groups. In addition, William E. Cross and Peony Fhagen-Smith present a revised and expanded version of nigrescence theory.

Rise and Fall of the Cosmic Race: The Cult of Mestizaje in Latin America

University of Texas Press
2004
6 x 9 in.
216 pp., 3 b&w illus.
ISBN: 978-0-292-70596-8

Marilyn Grace Miller, Assistant Professor of Spanish and Portuguese
Tulane University, New Orleans

Latin America is characterized by a uniquely rich history of cultural and racial mixtures known collectively as mestizaje. These mixtures reflect the influences of indigenous peoples from Latin America, Europeans, and Africans, and spawn a fascinating and often volatile blend of cultural practices and products. Yet no scholarly study to date has provided an articulate context for fully appreciating and exploring the profound effects of distinct local invocations of syncretism and hybridity. Rise and Fall of the Cosmic Race fills this void by charting the history of Latin America’s experience of mestizaje through the prisms of literature, the visual and performing arts, social commentary, and music.

In accessible, jargon-free prose, Marilyn Grace Miller brings to life the varied perspectives of a vast region in a tour that stretches from Mexico and the Caribbean to Brazil, Ecuador and Argentina. She explores the repercussions of mestizo identity in the United States and reveals the key moments in the story of Latin America’s cult of synthesis. Rise and Fall of the Cosmic Race examines the inextricable links between aesthetics and politics, and unravels the threads of colonialism woven throughout national narratives in which mestizos serve as primary protagonists.

Illuminating the ways in which regional engagements with mestizaje represent contentious sites of nation building and racial politics, Miller uncovers a rich and multivalent self-portrait of Latin America’s diverse populations.

Genealogy as Social Memory: Making the Public Personal

The 7th Annual Committee on Historical Studies, Sociology Department and International Labor Working Class History Journal Joint Conference
History Matters: Spaces of Violences, Spaces of Memory
New School for Social Research
2004-04-23 through 2004-04-24

Karla Hackstaff, Associate Professor of Sociology
Northern Arizona University

“Race, like nature and sex, is replete with all the rituals of guilt and innocence in the stories of nation, family, and species. Race, like nature, is about roots, pollution, and origins. An inherently dubious notion, race, like sex, is about the purity of lineage; the legitimacy of passage; and the drama of inheritance of bodies, property, and stories”
(Haraway 1995, p. 213).

In May 2002, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation which runs Monticello and is comprised of the descendants of Thomas and Martha Jefferson voted to deny membership and associated burial rights to the descendants of Sally Hemings—a slave who appears to have had children by Thomas Jefferson (San Francisco Chronicle, May 12, 2002, p. D4).  This decision was somewhat surprising because in 1998 genetic tests appeared to confirm what Hemings’ relatives had claimed through oral history for years—that at least one, if not all, of Sally Hemings’ children had descended from Thomas Jefferson. Still, the white descendants concluded that the historical and scientific evidence was “insufficient.”…

…First, within sociology there is a large and growing literature on the formation of racial/ethnic identities, relations, and the accompanying constructions of inequalities (e.g. Azoulay 1997; Brah and Coombes 2000; Collins 2000; DaCosta 2000; Haraway 1995; Nagel 1994; Omi and Winant 1994; Pedraza and Rumbaut 1996; Song 2001; Waters 1990; Worchel 1999). Given that race, ethnicity, and nationality organize many genealogical associations, clearly, race and ethnicity are constructed in the process of doing genealogy. Although ‘race’ as a biological construction has been widely rejected, it is no less real for being a social construction. As many scholars have shown, racialethnic constructions must be sustained, and are neither invariant nor universal.  Ethnoracial identities are sustained through various practices, policies, and institutions—including families.  Because interracial relations have been taboo, we still assume and to a large degree produce families that appear monoracial (DaCosta 2000). Intermarriage has grown substantially in recent decades—there were ten times as many couples categorized as interracial in 1990 as had been the case in 1960; still, in 1990 interracial marriages were just three percent of all marriages in the United Stated (DaCosta 2000, p. 9-10). By 2000, six percent of marriage households were interracial (Simmons and O’Connell 2003).  The practices of adoption agencies and sperm banks often, if not always, produce monoracial families as well. In short, ethnoracial identities continue to be crucial to family constructions…

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Light in August in Light of Foucault: Reexamining the Biracial Experience

Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory
Volume 64, Number 4, Winter 2008
pages 49-68
E-ISSN: 1558-9595
Print ISSN: 0004-1610
DOI: 10.1353/arq.0.0020

Bethany L. Lam

Comparatively little current criticism of Foucauldian racial theory exists, primarily because [Michel] Foucault never formulated a full-blown racial theory. Some critics, such as Robert J.C. Young and Ann Laura Stoler, have successfully used Foucauldian principles to inform their views of race studies. Foucault himself said little directly pertaining to race studies, admits Young: “Foucault had a lot to say about power, but he was curiously circumspect about the ways in which it has operated in the arenas of race and colonialism. His virtual silence on these issues is striking” (57).  This silence does not deter Young and a few other critics from extrapolating Foucauldian thought into various areas of race studies. Young focuses his discussion on racism; he evaluates Foucauldian influence on colonial studies, particularly on Edward Said’s Orientalism, before applying Foucauldian commentary on ethnology, power, and sexuality to a theory of racism. Like Young, Ann Laura Stoler relies heavily on Foucault’s History of Sexuality in her applications of Foucault to colonial studies. Stoler has authored two of the more extensive explorations of Foucauldian thought as it pertains to race studies, Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault’s History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things and Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule.  Both of these works deal with race primarily in the context of sexuality in colonialism, neglecting the larger picture of Foucault and racial identity.

One element that has been noticeably lacking in the theory thus far is a thorough application of Foucault to the study of multiracialism. But Foucault has much insight to offer in explaining the attitudes of society towards the multiracial, the attitudes of the multiracial towards himself, and the resulting interaction between society and individual. The viability and value of these explanations become evident when applied to literary characters and their social (albeit fictional) contexts. Foucault deepens our understanding of the multiracial in society, showing not just how the individual and society affect each other, but—more importantly—why they view and treat each other as they do; merging his theory with literary criticism sheds new light on the tensions between multiracial characters, such as Faulkner’s Joe Christmas, and their societies, moving our explanations beyond mere “identity confusion” to the underlying causes of the confusion.

Before applying Foucault directly to Faulkner, let us spend several moments tracing the outlines of a Foucauldian theory of multiracialism. To understand society’s perception of multiracialism, we must begin with the racial hierarchy, one of the many ways by which society orders subjects. In order to do this effectively, we should first look at Foucauldian thought regarding power, knowledge, and discourse. Foucault describes discourse as “an instrument and an effect of power, but also a hindrance, a stumbling-block, a point of resistance and a starting point for an opposing strategy. Discourse transmits and produces power; it reinforces it, but also undermines and exposes it, renders it fragile and makes it possible to thwart it” (History 101). “It is in discourse,” he states, “that power and knowledge are joined together” (100). Discourse is both product and producer of power, the place where power and knowledge intersect.

In a Foucauldian paradigm, one might view race as a visual discourse. Its power emanates first of all from the prevalence and potency of race-based societal stereotypes. These racial stereotypes act as self-ful-filling prophecies, continually producing and reproducing themselves. The stereotypes lead to a second source of power in the discourse of race: the race-based ordering of society. These stereotypes and ordering feed off the knowledge aspect of racial discourse, knowledge based both on visual perception of skin color and the expectations created by the stereotypes themselves. Society uses its knowledge to assign a place in the racial hierarchy to each person. Race, then, becomes an indicator of societal expectation for a person, to which that person more or less conforms.

Multiracialism problematizes this visual discourse through its nonconformity, both to the visual code and to traditional racial categories. A mixed-race individual is the result of an ancestral transgression of the racial order, a transgression either of the parents or of a more…

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Undoing Empire: Race and Nation in the Mulatto Caribbean

University of Minnesota Press
2003
336 pages, 27 halftones
5 7/8 x 9
Paper ISBN: 0-8166-3574-9
Paper ISBN-13: 978-0-8166-3574-0
Cloth ISBN: 0-8166-3573-0
Cloth ISBN-13: 978-0-8166-3573-3

José F. Buscaglia-Salgado, Professor and Chair of Cultures, Societies and Global Studies
Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts

A revelatory account that places mulatto experience at the center of Caribbean history.

This ambitious book brings to light the story of what José F. Buscaglia-Salgado terms mulataje-the ways Caribbean aesthetics offer the possibility of the ultimate erasure of racial difference. Undoing Empire gives a broad panorama stretching from the complex politics of medieval Iberian societies to the beginning of direct U.S. hegemony in the Caribbean at the end of the nineteenth century.

Buscaglia-Salgado begins with an examination of Washington Irving‘s “American Columbiad” as an act of historical and territorial plundering. He then traces the roots of mulatto society to the pre-1492 Iberian world, not only finding a connection between the Moors of “Old Spain” and the morenos-the blacks and mulattos of the New World-but also offering a profound critique of creole and imperial discourses. Buscaglia-Salgado reads the pursuit and contestation of what he terms the European Ideal in colonial texts, architecture, and paintings; then identifies the mulatto movement of “undoing” the Ideal in the wars that shook the nineteenth-century Caribbean from Haiti to Cuba, arguing that certain projects of national liberation have moved contrary to the historical claims to freedom in the mulatto world.

Ellen Craft: A New American Opera

8th Annual New York City International Fringe Festival
2004-08-13 through 2004-08-29

Lyrics by Sherry Boone
Music: Sean Jeremy Palmer
Book: Sherry Boone and Sean Jeremy Palmer

Ellen Craft: A New American Opera is based on true events of a half -white, half-black womans harrowing escape from slavery disguised as a white man. Ellen‘s fiery story of revenge, love, forgiveness and redemption was recognized as Best Ensemble Performance at the 2004 New York International Fringe Festival. Ellen Craft will be performed on both the Music Theatre and Operatic Stages of the world.