Mixed Race Studies

“One Drop of Love”: The Keynote Performance for the Mixed Heritage Conference at UCLA

University of California, Los Angeles
James West Alumni Center
325 Westwood Plaza
Los Angeles, California 90095
Saturday, 2016-04-30 14:30-16:00 PDT (Local Time)

Join us for some or all of this enlightening and affirming conference. One Drop will start at 2:30 pm in the James West Alumni Center.

TICKETS: FREE and open to the public!

We remain so very grateful for your continued support and look forward to sharing One Drop with you.

For more information, click here. To RSVP, click here.

Beyond Black and White: Biracial Attitudes in Contemporary U.S. Politics

American Political Science Review
Volume 110 / Issue 01 / February 2016
pages 52-67
DOI: 10.1017/S0003055415000556

Lauren D. Davenport, Assistant Professor of Political Science
Stanford University

The 2000 U.S. census was the first in which respondents were permitted to self-identify with more than one race. A decade later, multiple-race identifiers have become one of the fastest-growing groups in the nation. Such broadening multiracial identification poses important political ramifications and raises questions about the future of minority group political solidarity. Yet we know little about the opinions of multiple-race identifiers and from where those opinions emerge. Bridging literatures in racial politics and political socialization, and drawing upon a multimethod approach, this article provides insight into the consequences of the U.S.’s increasingly blurred racial boundaries by examining the attitudes of Americans of White-Black parentage, a population whose identification was traditionally constrained by the one-drop rule. Findings show that on racial issues such as discrimination and affirmative action, biracials who identify as both White and Black generally hold views akin to Blacks. But on nonracial political issues including abortion and gender/marriage equality, biracials who identify as White-Black or as Black express more liberal views than their peers of monoracial parentage. Being biracial and labeling oneself a racial minority is thus associated with a more progressive outlook on matters that affect socially marginalized groups. Two explanations are examined for these findings: the transmission of political outlook from parents to children, and biracials’ experiences straddling a long-standing racial divide.

Read or purchase the article here.

‘Our schools are failing mixed raced children’

The Voice
London, England, United Kingdom
2016-04-02

Dinah Moreley

Stereotypical expectations that this group have ‘confused identities’ often mean they experience racism from teachers and fellow pupils

A REPORT by People in Harmony, (PIH) the national charity for mixed race people and families has highlighted the experience of mixed race children in the education system. Stereotypical expectations that this group have ‘confused identities’ often mean they experience racism from teachers and fellow pupils. Here, PIH’s Dinah Morley tells how the report and the seminars it was based on were put together.

IT IS over a decade since People in Harmony (PIH) published Mixed Race and Education: creating an ethos of respect and understanding, a conference report on mixed race children and young people in the education system.

PIH has now revisited the subject of mixed race young people in education in a new report called Mixed Race and Education: 2015 in order to consider ways in which a better dialogue with schools could be achieved to help improve outcomes and to add some substance to a patchy body of research…

…AWARENESS

The debate in April 2015 facilitated by Martin and Asher Hoyles, educators and authors of books on race and culture, was constructed to address four specific topics that had arisen from the earlier seminar.

Racism and discrimination in school was also discussed by the young people and parents. They identified:

• The curriculum content does not acknowledge the mixed race presence.
• A failure to stimulate an awareness of mixed race students and families.
• Schools lack resources needed about mixed race achievers and role models
• Appearance often incorrectly determines how mixed race students are related to.
• Teacher stereotyping leads to incorrect assumptions about students’ backgrounds and needs.
• The default position applied to mixed race people is usually black.
• Others are deciding the terminology used in schools for mixed race people.

It is important for teachers and others to understand the experiences of mixed race people and the fact that lazy racist stereotypes are not helpful in helping children from these backgrounds to settle and to achieve…

Read the entire article here.

Race identity for mixed race kids in America

The Collegian
Stockton, California
2016-04-24

Shellcia Longsworth

Being a mixed kid wasn’t easy growing up.

My mother is white and Samoan. My father is Belizean.

I was born and raised in Tracy. I was one of two black children in my elementary school.

I recall having moments of prejudice against me when I was young. I got called the “N” word so many times in my life I am numb to it.

I shouldn’t be…

Read the entire article here.

My Mixed Identity: Growing Up As A Mixed American

Odyssey
2016-03-29

Ryan McDaniel

It is 2016 and interracial marriage is on the rise. Consequently, the number of mixed Americans is on the rise. Naturally, there is a lot of controversy regarding the matter that comes in different forms. People oppose it for the false reasoning of it violating their religion. From my experience, most people with foolishness claim to be Christians.

Apparently they did not know that Romans 10:12 states: “For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon Him.” Other reasons include protecting the children; the children will be degraded and ostracized for being Mixed. Unfortunately, this is a possibility. However, it is also a possibility that the child will be accepted for who they are.

…In high school, my claim to blackness was challenged. This came not from the White community, but rather the community that I felt I had belonged to my entire life. For the first time, my blackness was being denied to me. I would be told, “You’re not really black, though.” or a straight up, “You’re not black.” As someone who grew up identifying as black, it was a slap in the face. How dare someone tell me how I can and cannot identify myself?…

Read the entire article here.

That awful moment parents of interracial children will probably face

The Washington Post
2016-04-26

Nevin Martell

“Is that your son?” the man suddenly asked, without any preamble, and with an aggressive edge to his tone.

I was sitting in the dining area of a local Whole Foods after finishing the weekly shopping with my 3-year-old son, Zephyr. We were both eating and laughing about something silly, simply enjoying a Saturday morning together.

The unexpected question was from a 30-something African American man who had been giving me odd, furtive glances since we sat down. I figured that he thought he recognized me and was trying to jog his memory. I was certain we hadn’t met, so I was bracing myself for one of those semi-awkward, “No, sorry, I’m not who you think I am” conversations.

“Yes, this is my son,” I answered, a little warily.

“Hmph,” he snorted. “I didn’t think so.”

Now my defenses were fully up. “Why not?” I shot back.

He scrunched up his face, like he had just taken a bite of something distasteful. “There’s just something off about you two,” he said.

Frankly, I wanted to knock him senseless, but I restrained myself. Who says that to a complete stranger? How could he not see — for any number of reasons — that Zephyr and I were related? In my mind, there was only one reason why he would draw that conclusion.

“Is it because we don’t have the same skin color?” I challenged.

You see, I’m white and my Ghanaian wife is black, so our mixed-race son is golden brown…

Read the entire article here.

Navigating Racial Liminality

The Tufts Observer
Medford, Massachusetts
Issue 4 Spring 2016
2016-03-28

Conrad Young

Kindergarten was the first time my racial identity was called into question. My mom came into my class to do a show-and-tell about my family’s time in the Republic of Macedonia, where I lived from ages one to four while my mom worked for a non-governmental organization (NGO) that aided refugees fleeing from neighboring, war-torn Kosovo. During the presentation, a classmate raised his hand and asked my mom, “Is that why you’re so dark?” Another classmate asked, “Is Conrad half-Chinese?” While I was unaware of any greater pattern at the time, this story was the beginning of many social interactions throughout my childhood that would ultimately lead me to have a warped perspective of my outward appearance and racial identity.

Accordingly, I began to hate my nose when I was twelve. Looking at pictures of myself from a long-forgotten party, I realized that my nose was large and ugly in comparison to my White friends’ noses. I stopped smiling fully in order to make my nose appear smaller, and later in my teens I would daydream about getting plastic surgery. My physical appearance—my dark olive skin, my thick black hair, and my big ugly nose—became something that I was more and more aware of throughout my childhood, and through comparing myself with others, I began to think less highly of how I looked. My family rarely talked about their racial identities, as neither of my parents identify as mixed race or as people of color (POC). Unlike many POC, I was afforded the privilege of going through most of my childhood unaware of structures of racism I maintained and was affected by…

Read the entire article here.

Legal Codes and Talking Trees: Indigenous Women’s Sovereignty in the Sonoran and Puget Sound Borderlands, 1854-1946

Yale University Press
2016-04-26
352 pages
23 b/w illus.
6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Cloth ISBN: 9780300211689

Katrina Jagodinsky, Assistant Professor of History
University of Nebraska

Katrina Jagodinsky’s enlightening history is the first to focus on indigenous women of the Southwest and Pacific Northwest and the ways they dealt with the challenges posed by the existing legal regimes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In most western states, it was difficult if not impossible for Native women to inherit property, raise mixed-race children, or take legal action in the event of rape or abuse. Through the experiences of six indigenous women who fought for personal autonomy and the rights of their tribes, Jagodinsky explores a long yet generally unacknowledged tradition of active critique of the U.S. legal system by female Native Americans.

22nd Annual David Noble Lecture featuring Robin D.G. Kelley

Best Buy Theater
Northrop Auditorium
84 Church Street, SE
Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455
Tuesday, 2016-04-26, 19:00 CDT (Local Time)

Robin D.G. Kelley, Distinguished Professor of History & Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in United States History
University of California, Los Angeles

The 22nd Annual David Noble Lecture will feature Robin D.G. Kelley. His talk is titled “‘A Female Candide’: U.S. Empire, Racial Cartographies, and the Education of Grace Halsell, 1952 – 1986.” Kelley’s talk focuses on Texas-born journalist Grace Halsell, who spent part of the Cold War as a foreign correspondent, including a stint in Vietnam, working as a staff writer under President Lyndon B. Johnson, and engaged in investigations into U.S. “internal colonies.” She chemically darkened her skin and lived as a black woman in Harlem and Mississippi, resulting in her book, Soul Sister; she published Bessie Yellowhair about living as a Navajo and working as a housekeeper; and The Illegals, a book about passing as an undocumented worker from Mexico. In the course of her travels and experiments in racial passing, the worlds she encountered undermined the conceits she grew up with. Halsell’s world view, schooled in Cold War liberalism, Southern paternalism & white supremacy, and domesticity, begins to unravel especially after her stint in Vietnam, and even more so when she turns her attention to the U.S., its ghettos, reservations, borders and finally to Palestine. So in some ways, this is a classic loss of innocence story.

For more information, click here.

Multiracial families socially excluded

The Korean Times
2016-04-26

Kim Bo-eun

Multiracial family members in Korea have become more stabilized but continue to feel isolated due to obstacles in building relationships with locals, a survey shows.

According to a Statistics Korea’s survey of 17,849 multiracial households here, more immigrant brides and naturalized Koreans have trouble befriending Koreans than in 2012, when the last survey was conducted.

More than 30 percent of the respondents said they lacked social ties — they did not have anyone with whom they could discuss problems they need help with, or enjoy pastimes and spend their leisure time with.

More respondents said they felt lonely. And perhaps due to the lack of acquaintances and friends around them with whom they could share information, they also were found to have greater problems in raising their children here.

Trouble with relationships was not only limited to mothers with foreign backgrounds — the children were also found to have trouble finding close friends…

Read the entire article here.