Mixed Race Studies

White but Not Quite: Tones and Overtones of Whiteness in Brazil

Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism
Volume 13, Number 2 (July 2009)
pages 39-56
DOI: 10.1215/02705346-2009-005

Patricia de Santana Pinho
State Univiersity of New York, Albany

This article analyzes anecdotes, jokes, standards of beauty, color categories, and media representations of “mixed-race” individuals to assess the junctions and disjunctions of whiteness and blackness in Brazil.  While the multiple and contradictory meanings of “racial” mixture stimulates a preference for whiteness, thus reducing the access to power by those deemed black, it simultaneously fuels a rejection for “pure” forms of whiteness as witnessed in the country’s celebration of morenidade (brownness).  Not all forms of miscegenation are valued in Brazil’s myth of racial democracy, and some “types of mixture” are clearly preferred in detriment of others. I argue that anti-black racism in Brazil is expressed not only against dark-skinned individuals, but it also operates in the devaluing of physical traits “deemed black” even in those who have lighter skin complexion, thus creating “degrees of whiteness.”  One’s “measure of whiteness,” therefore, is not defined only by skin color, but requires a much wider economy of signs where, together with other bodily features, hair texture is almost as important as epidermal tone. In any given context, the definition of whiteness is also, necessarily, shaped by the contours of gender and class affiliation.

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Speaking Up: Mixed Race Identity in Black Communities

Journal of Black Studies
Volume 39, Number 3 (January 2009)
pages 434-445
DOI: 10.1177/0021934706297875

Tru Leverette
University of North Florida, Jacksonville

Within Black communities, individuals of mixed Black/White parentage have faced diverse reactions, ranging from elevation to scorn. These reactions have often been based on the oppressions of history, the injustices of the present, and the hopes for a radically different future. This article traces the common historical responses, both positive and negative, within Black communities to mixed race identities, thereby elucidating contemporary reactions to race mixture within Black communities. In so doing, it argues that an historical understanding of these reactions as well as a recognition of the positions mixed race individuals occupy can challenge assumptions about race, difference, identity, and community—fostering new ground on which individuals can stand for common causes within heterogeneous communities.

Read or purchase the article here.

Mixing It Up: Early African American Settlements in Northwestern Ohio

Journal of Black Studies
Volume 39, Number 6 (July 2009)
pages 924-936
DOI: 10.1177/0021934707305432

Jill E. Rowe, Assistant professor, African American studies
Virginia Commonwealth University

Prior to the 19th century, African American settlers founded a number of productive communities in northwestern Ohio.  During this time period, there were a number of intermarriages and couplings between indigenous people, European explorers, ethnically diverse shipmates, and free and enslaved Africans in this section of the country.  Descendants of these unions were dubbed Melungeon, mulatto, or colored, depending on the discretion of oft-illiterate census takers. Though much is written about the hostilities free people of color faced in the South, descriptive documentation of their experiences in northwestern Ohio is scarce.  An examination of primary and secondary sources offers evidence of their agency as they struggled with structural barriers that led to disenfranchisement and descent into the racially identifiable category of African American.  White resistance to these diverse settlements and settlers challenges America’s collective memory of a racially tolerant North.

Read or purchase the article here.

From the University of Kent: ‘Invisible’ history of mixed race Britain becomes the subject of a major study

A major new study, jointly undertaken by Peter Aspinall, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Kent, and Chamion Caballero, Senior Research Fellow at London South Bank University, will investigate who was considered to be mixed race in Britain between 1920 and 1950, and how this population was perceived and treated by officialdom, the media and wider society.

Titled The Era of Moral Condemnation: mixed race people in Britain 1920 – 1950, the study will use first-hand accounts, autobiographical recordings and a range of archival material to understand how these perceptions emerged and the impact they may have had on the conceptualisation of mixed race people in Britain today….

The Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival 2009 (2009-06-12 to 2009-06-13)

The Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival is an annual free public event celebrating stories of the Mixed [race] experience through films, readings, workshops and live performance.  The Festival is an inclusive event which brings together film and book lovers, innovative and emerging artists, and multiracial/multicultural individuals, families and friends.

Harvard Professor Kimberly McClain DaCosta Guest on Mixed Chicks Chat

Mixed Chicks Chat (The only live weekly show about being racially and culturally mixed.)
Website: TalkShoe™ (Keywords: Mixed Chicks)
Episode: #101 – Dr. Kimberly McClain DaCosta
When: 2009-05-08, 21:00Z 

Kimberly McClain DaCosta, Associate Professor
Gallatin School of Individualized Study, New York University

Kimberly McClain DaCosta is Associate Professor of African and African American Studies and of Social Studies at Harvard. Professor DaCosta received her doctorate in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley. She was a postdoctoral fellow in the Robert Wood Johnson Scholars in Health Policy Program at Yale, is a recipient of a fellowship from the Advertiser’s Educational Foundation, and was a 2004-2005 fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Professor DaCosta is interested in the intersections of cultural ideas of race and family and their practical effects. Her book Making Multiracials: State, Family and Market in the Redrawing of the Color Line (Stanford University Press) examines how multiracialism emerged as a topic of public discussion in the last quarter century, and how “multiracial” became a recognizable social category and mode of identification.

Click here to listen to the episode.

It matters how and when you ask: self-reported race/ethnicity of incoming law students

Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology
Volume 15, Number 1 (January 2009)
pages 51-66

A. T. Panter
Department of Psychology
University of North Carolina

Charles E. Dayle
Department of Psychology
University of North Carolina

Walter R. Allen
Department of Psychology
University of North Carolina

Linda F. Wightman
Department of Psychology
University of North Carolina

Meera E. Deo
Department of Psychology
University of North Carolina

The high-stakes nature of law school testing and admissions puts a premium on the student data presented to admissions committees, such as essays, academic and work history, and student background characteristics including race/ethnicity. 4,472 law school-bound students self-identified their race/ethnicity using (a) a mutually exclusive “choose one” format during registration for the law school admissions test, and (b) an elaborated “check-all-that-apply” format as part of a national survey administered during the first weeks at their chosen law school. Student multiraciality that was masked by the first assessment was associated with self-reported ethnic identity, discrimination experience, intergroup contact, race-related attitudes, academic performance, and trait ratings, as compared to monoracial majority students. A different profile of findings was observed across these constructs when multiracial students were compared to monoracial majority students, to monoracial minority students, and within group. These correlates also predicted the likelihood of changing identification across the two assessment contexts. These findings support the continued study of specific combinations of multiracial groups, fluidity of multiracial identities, and context effects that influence race/ethnicity self-categorizations.