Mixed Race Studies

Miscegenation, Racialization and Gender (Mestiçagem, Racialização e Gênero)

Sociologias
Number 21 (Porto Alegre Jan./June 2009)
pages 94-120
DOI: 10.1590/S1517-45222009000100006
ISSN 1517-4522

Rosely Gomes Costa, Pós-doutorado em Ciências Sociais pela
Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP) e pela Universidade Autônoma de Barcelona (Espanha)

This paper reflects on the paradox of a mestizo Brazil and the close relationship between racialization and gender through the analysis of classic and current authors. The article discusses the different processes involved in these authors’ study of racialization, based both on theory and their empirical researches; and considers the intertwining of these two concepts with that of gender. Throughout the paper, the author draws comparisons and makes comments on her own field research on the subject.

O artigo contém uma reflexão sobre o paradoxo do Brasil mestiço e sobre as estreitas relações entre racialização e gênero a partir da análise de alguns autores clássicos e outros atuais. O artigo analisa os processos distintos de elaboração da racialização por que passam esses autores, às vezes de forma teórica e outras vezes baseada em suas pesquisas empíricas e, ainda, uma reflexão do entrelaçamento desses dois conceitos com o de gênero. Em alguns momentos, faço comparações e comentários relativos à minha própria pesquisa de campo sobre o tema.

Read the entire article (in Portuguese) here.

Ciphering Nations: Performing Identity in Brazil and the Caribbean
 
University of Minnesota
June 2011
197 pages

Naomi Pueo Wood, Assistant Professor of Spanish
The Colorado College, Colorado Springs, Colorado

A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

This dissertation explores the interaction of theories of hybridity, mestizaje, mestiçagem and popular culture representations of national identity in Cuba, Brazil, and Puerto Rico throughout the 20th century. I examine a series of cultural products, including performance, film, and literature, and argue that using the four elements of Hip Hop culture—deejay, emcee, break, graffiti—as a lens for reading draws out the intra- American dialogues and foregrounds the Africanist aesthetic as it informs the formation of national identity in the Americas.

Hip Hop, rather than focus solely on its characteristic hybridity, calls attention to race and to a legacy of fighting racism. Instead of hiding behind miscegenation and aspirations of romanticized hybridity and mixing, it blatantly points out oppressions and introduces them into popular culture through its four components—thus reaching audiences through multiple modalities. Tropes of mestizaje or branqueamento—racial mixing/whitening—depoliticize blackness through official refusal to cite cultural contributions and emphasize instead a whitened blending. Hip Hop points blatantly to persistent social inequalities. Diverse and divergent in their political histories, the geographic and nationally bound sites that form the foci of this study are bound by their contentious relationships to the United States, an emphasis on the Africanist aesthetic, and a rich history of intertextual exchanges. Rather than look at individual nation formation and marginalized bodies’ performances of subversion, this study highlights the common tropes that link these nations and bodies and that privilege an alternative way of constructing history and understanding present day transnational bodies.

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgements
• Abstract
• Introduction: De-Ciphering
• Chapter 1: Ciphered Nations
• Chapter 2: Defining Nation from the Outside-In: Las Krudas and Célia Cruz
• Chapter 3: Brasileiras no Palco: Brazilian Women on Stage
• Chapter 4: Breaking Time: Sirena Selena and Fe en disfraz
• Conclusions: Re-Freaking
• Works Cited:

Read the entire dissertation here.

Intimate encounters, Racial Frontiers: Stateless GI babies in South Korea and the United States, 1953-1965

University of Minnesota
June 2010
239 pages

Bongsoo Park

A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

This dissertation explores the policy implications of statelessness by examining G.I. babies, born of non-marital sexual relations between U.S. soldiers in South Korea and Korean women between 1953 and 1965. Using English and Korean language documents about adoption and immigration of stateless GI babies, my work shows that statelessness reveals a racially exclusionary vision of national belonging that shaped citizenship policies of both nations. The GI babies’ presence challenged the myth of racial purity and confounded racial categories in both nations. The dissertation seeks to elucidate some limits of Cold War racial liberalism informed by humanitarian concerns for abandoned Korean war orphans but helped maintain racially exclusionary strategies on citizenship conferral that made the children stateless.

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Ties That Bind: Making of the Origin of Korean Race
• 2. Technologies of Imperial Rule: The Nationality Act of 1940 in the Age of American Expansionism
• 3. Pitied But Not Entitled: Redemptive Adoption and Limits of Cold War Liberalism
• 4. Making of a National Hero: Alchemy of Race, Blood, and Memory
• Epilogue
• Bibliography

Read the entire dissertation here.

Sigmund Feist and the End of the Idea of the Jews as a Mixed Race

Shpilman Institute for Photography
Blog
2011-12-04

Amos Morris Reich, Senior Lecturer of Jewish History
University of Haifa

Sigmnud Feist (1865-1943) is mostly remembered because of the orphanage for Jewish children that he directed in Berlin, as well as for his work in German linguistics. A collection of recently published letters written to him by 77 of his pupils during their service in the German military during the Great War has brought him back to public attention. But in 1925 he published a widely circulating book entitled Stammeskunde der Juden: Die jüdischen Stämme der Erde in alter und neuer Zeit. Historisch-anthropologisch Skizzen (A History of the Jewish Stock: ancient and modern Jewish tribes of the world. Historical-anthropological Sketches).

While “race” and “type” are central to Feist’s 1925 book on the Jews, in no place does he define them. Indeed, biological and, most notably, Mendelian principles are absent from his discussion. The chapters move from discussion of the Jews as a race in ancient times and the Jews in the Diaspora to a discussion of geographically ordered Jewries, including chapters on the Jews of Palestine, Near East, China, India, Ethiopia, North Africa, Spain, and Ashkenazy Jews, before turning to pseudo- and cryptic- Jews, and ending with a discussion of modern Jews as a race. The book’s structure, therefore, corroborates the argument concerning the heterogeneity of the Jews as geographically spread and as anthropologically diverse and the photographic appendix indicates similarity between Jews and their environments and Jewish anthropological variation…

….After providing historical evidence for mixture between non-Jews and Jews throughout history, his basic thesis throughout the book, Feist asked whether this process had already in ancient times aligned Jews with the peoples among whom they lived. This question, Feist wrote, is not easy to answer because of the scarcity of visual material (Bildmaterial). Feist’s assumption, therefore, was that the question was a visual one.

If we follow Feist’s argumentation here, we see the degree of internalization of widespread assumptions concerning the realistic status of photography with regard to race. Franz Boas, to whom he turns explicitly in his conclusion, ruled out on methodological grounds the ability to know what previous types looked like. Feist here argues differently. Because of the state of empirical evidence, according to Feist, the question pertains to the appearance of Jews in the medieval period. Instead of viewing medieval depictions as proof of the degree of Jewish mixture, Feist asserts that, as opposed to ancient Hittite, Assyrian, and Egyptian monuments, medieval Christian and Muslim chronicles and illustrated Bibles do not provide “truthful depictions of Jewish types” (naturgetreue jüdische Typen). He here mentions several medieval sources, in which, he claims, depicted Jews cannot be identified through their physiognomic features but only through social markers attached to them. While this, precisely, could corroborate his argument concerning Jewish mixture, Feist in fact chooses to rule out the realism of these images. While he does not say so explicitly, it is likely that the reason for this is that the depictions do not resemble the photographs of the old monuments of and the modern photographs of Jews. Based on the assumption that medieval images did not depict Jews realistically, Feist declares that only with early modern painting, specifically with Rembrandt, Rubens, and van Dijk, did representations of Jews regain an ancient realism; only here did the realistic character of Jewish faces and Jewish forms (jüdische Gestalten) reappear in art. The Jewish type, then, is constant – change was only the attribute of artistic representation…

Read the entire article here.

Examining Population Stratification via Individual Ancestry Estimates versus Self-Reported Race

Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention
Volume 14, Issue 6 (June 2005)
pages 1545-1551
DOI: 10.1158/1055-9965.EPI-04-0832

Jill S. Barnholtz-Sloan
Cancer Prevention and Control Program
H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute

Ranajit Chakraborty
Center for Genome Research, Department of Environmental Health
University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio

Thomas A. Sellers
Cancer Prevention and Control Program
H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute

Ann G. Schwartz
Population Studies and Prevention Program, Karmanos Cancer Institute and Department of Internal Medicine
Wayne State University School of Medicine, Detroit, Michigan

Population stratification has the potential to affect the results of genetic marker studies. Estimating individual ancestry provides a continuous measure to assess population structure in case-control studies of complex disease, instead of using self-reported racial groups. We estimate individual ancestry using the Federal Bureau of Investigation CODIS Core short tandem repeat set of 13 loci using two different analysis methods in a case-control study of early-onset lung cancer. Individual ancestry proportions were estimated for “European” and “West African” groups using published allele frequencies. The majority of Caucasian, non-Hispanics had >50% European ancestry, whereas the majority of African Americans had <20% European ancestry, regardless of ancestry estimation method, although significant overlap by self-reported race and ancestry also existed. When we further investigated the effect of ancestry and self-reported race on the frequency of a lung cancer risk genotype, we found that the frequency of the GSTM1 null genotype varies by individual European ancestry and case-control status within self-reported race (particularly for African Americans). Genetic risk models showed that adjusting for individual European ancestry provided a better fit to the data compared with the model with no group adjustment or adjustment for self-reported race. This study suggests that significant population substructure differences exist that self-reported race alone does not capture and that individual ancestry may be confounded with disease status and/or a candidate gene risk genotype.

Read the entire article here.

Understanding Racial-ethnic Disparities in Health: Sociological Contributions

Journal of Health and Social Behavior
Volume 51, Number 1 Supplement (November, 2010)
pages S15-S27
DOI: 10.1177/0022146510383838

David R. Williams
Harvard University

Michelle Sternthal
Harvard University

This article provides an overview of the contribution of sociologists to the study of racial and ethnic inequalities in health in the United States. It argues that sociologists have made four principal contributions. First, they have challenged and problematized the biological understanding of race. Second, they have emphasized the primacy of social structure and context as determinants of racial differences in disease. Third, they have contributed to our understanding of the multiple ways in which racism affects health. Finally, sociologists have enhanced our understanding of the ways in which migration history and status can affect health. Sociological insights on racial disparities in health have important implications for the development of effective approaches to improve health and reduce health inequities.

Read the entire article here.

Self-Reported Race and Genetic Admixture

The New England Journal of Medicine
Number 354, Number 4 (2006-01-26)
pages 431-422
DOI: 10.1056/NEJMc052515

Moumita Sinha, M.Stat.
Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio

Emma K. Larkin, M.H.S.
Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio

Robert C. Elston, Ph.D.
Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio

Susan Redline, M.D., M.P.H.
Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio

To the Editor:

The use of data on self-reported race in health research has been highly debated. For example, Burchard et al. recently argued that important information on disease susceptibility may be derived from the use of data on self-reported race, whereas Cooper et al. cited Wilson et al., who argued that ethnic labels “are inaccurate representations of the inferred genetic clusters.” Cooper et al., however, ignored later work that identified limitations in the analyses of Wilson et al. — specifically, inappropriate classification of groups, the use of a suboptimal model for cluster identification, and reliance on only 39 microsatellite markers for cluster analyses. With larger numbers of markers, it was shown that genetically distinct groups can be almost completely inferred from self-reported race…

…With support from a U.S. Public Health Service grant, we applied an admixture analysis to a sample population in Cleveland. Participants were clearly separated into unique groups with the use of this genetic approach. Whereas 93 percent of self-reported whites were classified as having predominantly European ancestry, less than 2 percent of blacks were so classified. Only 4 percent who reported their race as black had predominantly African ancestry; yet, the admixture proportions of this group made it possible to separate the population into two groups, in which 94 percent of self-reported blacks and 7 percent of self-reported whites were classified as being of mixed race (Figure 1: Frequency Histogram Showing the Percentage of African Ancestry in a Population Living in Cleveland). The sharp peak at the left in Figure 1 indicates that there are many persons who have no African ancestry (i.e., the values correspond to those of self-reported whites), and the broad peak at the right indicates that most blacks are of mixed race and do not originate from any single population. Thus, self-reported race and genetic ethnic ancestry appear to be highly correlated as a dichotomy, with those who self-report as being black comprising, as expected from historical and cultural practices in the United States, a broad range of African ancestry…

Read the entire letter here.

Comparing Genetic Ancestry and Self-Described Race in African Americans Born in the United States and in Africa

Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention
Volume 17, Issue 6 (June 2008)
pages 1329-1338
DOI: 10.1158/1055-9965.EPI-07-2505

Rona Yaeger
Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center

Alexa Avila-Bront
Department of Medicine
College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University

Kazeem Abdul
Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center

Patricia C. Nolan
Department of Medicine
College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University

Victor R. Grann
Department of Medicine
College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University

Mark G. Birchette
Department of Biology
Long Island University, Brooklyn, New York

Shweta Choudhry
Department of Biopharmaceutical Sciences and Medicine
University of California-San Francisco, San Francisco, California

Esteban G. Burchard
Department of Biopharmaceutical Sciences and Medicine
University of California-San Francisco, San Francisco, California
 
Kenneth B. Beckman
Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute, Oakland, California

Prakash Gorroochurn
Department of Biostatistics
Columbia University Medical Center, New York, New York

Elad Ziv
Division of General Internal Medicine
University of California-San Francisco, San Francisco, California

Nathan S. Consedine
Department of Psychology
Long Island University, Brooklyn, New York

Andrew K. Joe
Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center

Genetic association studies can be used to identify factors that may contribute to disparities in disease evident across different racial and ethnic populations. However, such studies may not account for potential confounding if study populations are genetically heterogeneous. Racial and ethnic classifications have been used as proxies for genetic relatedness. We investigated genetic admixture and developed a questionnaire to explore variables used in constructing racial identity in two cohorts: 50 African Americans and 40 Nigerians. Genetic ancestry was determined by genotyping 107 ancestry informative markers. Ancestry estimates calculated with maximum likelihood estimation were compared with population stratification detected with principal components analysis. Ancestry was approximately 95% west African, 4% European, and 1% Native American in the Nigerian cohort and 83% west African, 15% European, and 2% Native American in the African American cohort. Therefore, self-identification as African American agreed well with inferred west African ancestry. However, the cohorts differed significantly in mean percentage west African and European ancestries (P < 0.0001) and in the variance for individual ancestry (P ≤ 0.01). Among African Americans, no set of questionnaire items effectively estimated degree of west African ancestry, and self-report of a high degree of African ancestry in a three-generation family tree did not accurately predict degree of African ancestry. Our findings suggest that self-reported race and ancestry can predict ancestral clusters but do not reveal the extent of admixture. Genetic classifications of ancestry may provide a more objective and accurate method of defining homogenous populations for the investigation of specific population-disease associations.

Introduction

Genome-wide case-control association studies provide a powerful tool for investigating possible genetic factors that may contribute to the health disparities observed among different racial and ethnic populations. Populations with different ancestral backgrounds may carry different genetic variants, and these may contribute to the variations in disease incidence and outcomes seen in specific racial and ethnic groups (1). Association studies can most easily identify disease-associated alleles when study groups are genetically similar, sharing a similar ancestral background (2). However, individual ancestry is not an easily assayed, simple category; consequently, race continues to be used as a proxy for genetic relatedness in clinical and other biological studies (3-6). There is currently no consensus on how best to examine or characterize different racial or ethnic groups when designing and conducting such studies.

Two main approaches have been used to approximate individual ancestry in biological studies: (a) using self identified race and ethnicity, which may capture common environmental influences as well as ancestral background, and (b) genotyping a panel of markers that show large frequency differentials between major geographic ancestral groupings (7, 8). Both approaches have limitations. Self-identified racial categories may not always consistently predict ancestral population clusters, and evidence suggests that it may take large sample sizes and numerous markers to describe genetic clusters that correspond to self-identified race and ethnicity groupings (9-11). Racial categories are also imprecise and inconsistent, because they may potentially vary within the same individual over time (12, 13). Furthermore, their use risks reinforcing racial divisions in society. On the other hand, more objective analyses that genotype markers that are highly informative for ancestry may not be economically practical and are limited by the requirement of serum or fresh tissue for DNA extraction. Genetically determined ancestry may not capture unmeasured social factors that may affect differences in health outcomes. There are also unique ethical challenges when linking biological phenotypes with genetic markers for specific racial groups, and caution must always be used when attributing biological differences (e.g., disease risk and treatment response) to different populations.

Understanding the ancestral background of study subjects is most important in genetic studies of admixed populations, such as African Americans, who represent an admixture of Africans, Europeans, and Native Americans (14). Genetic studies have shown that African Americans form a diverse group with percent European admixture estimated to range between 7% and 23% (14-16). Genotyping of self-identified African Americans participating in the Cardiovascular Health Study revealed that among self-reported Africans there are differences in genetic ancestry that are correlated with some clinically important endpoints (15).

…Discussion…

The African American cohort in our study had a mean of 15% European admixture, which is consistent with previous reports of a range of 7% to 23% European admixture among U.S. African Americans (14-16). Of note, the estimates of 4% European and 1% Native American ancestry in the Nigerian population is likely due to bias in MLE due to the limited number of markers. We found that among participants there was a significantly higher proportion of admixture and higher variability in admixture proportions in the U.S.-born African American cohort compared with a population that emigrated from Africa (that is, Nigerians; Table 3). The significant variation in individual ancestry estimates among the African American cohort suggests that this group, like the Cardiovascular Health Study African American cohort (15), represents a diverse population consisting of several subpopulations. For participation in the African American cohort, subjects identified both parents as African Americans who were born in the United States. Although data regarding grandparental race were not used to screen study participation, these data were collected through a three-generation family tree during administration of the questionnaire. In this study population, all African American subjects described that the race of at least three of their four grandparents was consistent with African ancestry. Individuals and society have historically classified children of mixed-race ancestry as African American, even when one parent is Caucasian, Asian, or Native American. For African Americans, this is a remnant of the ‘‘Jim Crow’’ laws and the ‘‘One Drop’’ rule or ‘‘Rule of Hypodescent.’’ Thus, identification as African American would still occur in cases where the parents and grandparents were of mixed-race ancestry. This could also contribute to the greater European admixture and greater admixture variability seen in the African American cohort…

Read the entire article here.

Lansing has highest percentage of people who identify as multiple-race black

Lansing State Journal
2011-11-18

Matthew Miller

Gianni Risper has a black mother, a white biological father (as opposed to the father who raised him, his mother’s husband) and a way of describing himself that isn’t found on any Census form: Italian-Caribbean-American.

“Race is becoming more muddled,” he said, and, at 19, he is part of a generation that is muddling it, more likely to be mixed race than their elders, more likely to reject the rigidity of prevailing racial categories in favor of more fluid identities.

“I try not to put myself into a category of being either black or white or just one thing,” Risper said, “because I’m not.”

And, living in Lansing, he has plenty of company.

Lansing has the highest percentage of people who identify as black and some other race of any place in the country, at least any place with a population of 100,000 or more.

According to the 2010 Census, it’s 4.1 percent, more than one out of every 25 people in the city…

…Kristen Renn, a professor of education at Michigan State University who has studied mixed-race identity in college students, said space began to open up for more complicated racial identities in the latter part of the 1990s.

“Part of this is liberal baby boomers marrying outside their race or having kids with people of other races and liberal baby boomers being very vested in raising happy children,” she said.

But the shift also coincided with the growth of the Internet, which made it easier to create communities around mixed-race identities or even specific racial combinations.

It coincided with celebrities – Renn mentioned Tiger Woods – beginning to speak publicly about their blended ancestries.

As a result, among the younger generation in particular, “it has become more OK,” she said. “There is a youth movement around mixed race.”

And if that’s more true in Lansing than other places, she sees it as a good sign.

“When people are less comfortable, they have to draw the boundaries much more clearly, ‘You’re one of them. You’re one of us. You’ve got to be one or the other,’ ” she said.

“People in more cosmopolitan areas are just used to a more diverse, global kind of population.”…

…Self-definition

Nikki O’Brien was raised by her white mother. She didn’t know her black father until she was an adult. She identifies herself as black.

“You’d think I would be more malleable in my racial identity,” she said, “but really the experience of being other or different was enough that I constantly knew that I was black and the strength and community that I pulled from that identity just pushed me.”

But O’Brien, a program adviser at MSU who spent years working with minority students, sees the conversation about mixed-race identity more as one about self-definition, including the right to identify as one race or another…

Read the entire article here.

Mixed-race Koreans urge identity rethink

The Korea Herald
2011-12-07

Kirsty Taylor

Things have come a long way since the 1970s when mixed-race Koreans here were spat upon and beaten up for being different.

The kids of that time, whose fathers were often foreign soldiers who first came here during the Korean War, used to find it hard to walk down the street for fear of discrimination.

These days, the Korean government and charities are investing heavily in programs to support multicultural families and overt discrimination against Amerasians is rare.

But African-American Korean Yang Chan-wook, who goes by his Korean name here rather than his western name of Gregory Diggs, said that small daily occurrences remind him that this society does not yet fully accept him.

“In the 1970s these kids could not go to school, but even now, mixed-race Koreans going into public schools have a pretty high dropout rate,” he said.

“Sometimes when I am on the bus people will look at me and if they think that I am not Korean they will not sit next to me or they will move when I sit down. This kind of thing is still existent. Also, it can be difficult to get people to stop speaking English with me. Even if I have been speaking in Korean with them for 20 minutes they will still try to speak in English as if they thought I could not understand…

…After living with this prejudice, Yang started the M.A.C.K. Foundation (Movement for the Advancement of the Cultural diversity of Koreans) upon returning in 2003, basing it on a similar mission started in Chicago in 1995…

Read the entire article here.