Mixed Race Studies

Undermining Race: Ethnic Identities in Arizona Copper Camps, 1880-1920

University of Arizona Press
2009
240 pages
6.0 x 9.0
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8165-2745-8

Phylis Cancilla Martinelli, Professor of Sociology
Saint Mary’s College of California, Moraga, California

Undermining Race rewrites the history of race, immigration, and labor in the copper industry in Arizona. The book focuses on the case of Italian immigrants in their relationships with Anglo, Mexican, and Spanish miners (and at times with blacks, Asian Americans, and Native Americans), requiring a reinterpretation of the way race was formed and figured across place and time.

Phylis Martinelli argues that the case of Italians in Arizona provides insight into “in between” racial and ethnic categories, demonstrating that the categorizing of Italians varied from camp to camp depending on local conditions—such as management practices in structuring labor markets and workers’ housing, and the choices made by immigrants in forging communities of language and mutual support. Italians—even light-skinned northern Italians—were not considered completely “white” in Arizona at this historical moment, yet neither were they consistently racialized as non-white, and tactics used to control them ranged from micro to macro level violence.

To make her argument, Martinelli looks closely at two “white camps” in Globe and Bisbee and at the Mexican camp of Clifton-Morenci. Comparing and contrasting the placement of Italians in these three camps shows how the usual binary system of race relations became complicated, which in turn affected the existing race-based labor hierarchy, especially during strikes. The book provides additional case studies to argue that the biracial stratification system in the United States was in fact triracial at times. According to Martinelli, this system determined the nature of the associations among laborers as well as the way Americans came to construct “whiteness.”

Mestizo in America: Generations of Mexican Ethnicity in the Suburban Southwest

University of Arizona Press
2006
200 pages
6.0 x 9.0
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8165-2504-1; Paper ISBN: 978-0-8165-2505-8

Thomas Macias, Assistant Professor of Sociology
University of Vermont

How much does ethnicity matter to Mexican Americans today, when many marry outside their culture and some can’t even stomach menudo? This book addresses that question through a unique blend of quantitative data and firsthand interviews with third-plus-generation Mexican Americans. Latinos are being woven into the fabric of American life, to be sure, but in a way quite distinct from ethnic groups that have come from other parts of the world. By focusing on individuals’ feelings regarding acculturation, work experience, and ethnic identity—and incorporating Mexican-Anglo intermarriage statistics—Thomas Macias compares the successes and hardships of Mexican immigrants with those of previous European arrivals. He describes how continual immigration, the growth of the Latino population, and the Chicano Movement have been important factors in shaping the experience of Mexican Americans, and he argues that Mexican American identity is often not merely an “ethnic option” but a necessary response to stereotyping and interactions with Anglo society. Talking with fifty third-plus generation Mexican Americans from Phoenix and San Jose—representative of the seven million nationally with at least one immigrant grandparent—he shows how people utilize such cultural resources as religion, spoken Spanish, and cross-national encounters to reinforce Mexican ethnicity in their daily lives. He then demonstrates that, although social integration for Mexican Americans shares many elements with that of European Americans, forces related to ethnic concentration, social inequality, and identity politics combine to make ethnicity for Mexican Americans more fixed across generations. Enhancing research already available on first- and second-generation Mexican Americans, Macias’s study also complements research done on other third-plus-generation ethnic groups and provides the empirical data needed to understand the commonalities and differences between them. His work plumbs the changing meaning of mestizaje in the Americas over five centuries and has much to teach us about the long-term assimilation and prospects of Mexican-origin people in the United States.

Passing as Black

The University of Vermont
University Communications
2011-03-30

Lee Ann Cox

The new dynamics of biracial identity in America

There’s a rule everybody knows. Not the golden one. Since the days of slavery and Jim Crow segregation, when “one drop” of black ancestry determined the whole of who you were, black-by-default is a weakened but lingering cultural assumption and it shapes the way many mixed-race people navigate their lives. But a lot has changed, too. Particularly in the pre-civil rights era, passing as white—if appearances made it plausible—was a way to defy racist restrictions. Now, new research by University of Vermont sociologist Nikki Khanna shows that passing has a new face.

In a study published in the Social Psychology Quarterly, Khanna finds that not only do black-white biracial adults exercise considerable control over how they identify, there is “a striking reverse pattern of passing today,” with a majority of survey respondents reporting that they pass as black.

Passing, as currently defined, is about adopting an identity that contradicts your self-perception of race. Despite having a white mother and a black father, President Obama considers himself black. He is not passing—his identity is solidly rooted within the black community. The people Khanna interviewed, however, view themselves as biracial or multiracial, but choose to pass as black in certain contexts…

Read the entire article here.

Mixed Race Week begins with Loving Day awareness dinner

Today@Colorado State
Colorado State University
2011-03-30

This Friday, Apr. 1, marks the beginning of the 3rd-annual Mixed Race Week, a series of presentations and activities celebrating the multiracial and interracial community at Colorado State University. The yearly event is put on by Shades of CSU, an organization dedicated to multiracial students…one of a few of its kind in the country…

• Friday, April 1: Loving Day Awareness Dinner
• Monday, April 4th: Multiracial Faculty Meet and Greet
• Tuesday, April 5: Monsters, Messiahs, or Something Else?: Mixed-Race in Science Fiction Movies presented by Eric Hamako
• Wednesday, April 6: Interracial Relationships; Hair and Beauty within the Multiracial population

For more information, click here.

GW gives community option to identify as multiracial

The GW Hatchet
George Washington University, Washington D.C.
2011-03-28

Pavan Jagannathan, Hatchet Reporter

The University added a new category for multiracial students, faculty and staff to classify themselves as “two or more races” in University institutional data, moving into compliance with a new federal regulation.

University Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Steven Lerman said the U.S. Department of Education’s new aggregate categories for reporting racial and ethnic data of students and staff went into effect for the 2010-2011 school year.

“GW is complying with a federal mandate to collect race and ethnicity data in a specific way to allow for multiple race codes per person,” Lerman said…

Making (mixed-)race: census politics and the emergence of multiracial multiculturalism in the United States, Great Britain and Canada

Ethnic and Racial Studies
Volume 35, Issue 8, 2012
pages 1409-1426
DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2011.556194

Debra Thompson, Assistant Professor of Political Science
Ohio University

During the same time period, the United States, Great Britain and Canada all moved towards ‘counting’ mixed-race on their national censuses. In the United States, this move is largely attributed to the existence of a mixed-race social movement that pushed Congress for the change—but similar developments in Canada and Britain occurred without the presence of a politically active civil society devoted to making the change. Why the convergence? This article argues that demographic trends, increasingly unsettled perceptions about discrete racial categories, and a transnational norm surrounding the primacy of racial self-identification in census-taking culminated in a normative shift towards multiracial multiculturalism. Therein, mixed-race identities are acknowledged as part of—rather than problematic within—diverse societies. These elements enabled mixed-race to be promoted, at times strategically, as a corollary of multiculturalism in these three countries.

Read or purchase the article here.

The social and economic circumstances of mixed ethnicity children in the UK: findings from the Millennium Cohort Study

Ethnic and Racial Studies
First Published online: 2011-03-10
DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2011.556745

Lidia Panico, Research Student
Department for Epidemiology and Public Health
University College London

James Y. Nazroo, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Cathie Marsh Centre for Census and Survey Research
University of Manchester

The number of people with a ‘mixed’ ethnicity heritage is growing in contemporary Britain. Research in this area has largely focused on implications for cultural and racialized identities, and little is known about associated economic and social factors. Data from the Millennium Cohort Study, a representative panel survey of children born in 2000-2001, are used to examine the circumstances of mixed ethnicity children in comparison with their non-mixed and white counterparts. Findings suggest a cultural location between ‘white’ and minority identities, and socio-economic advantage in comparison with non-mixed counterparts. For example, households of non-mixed white children had poorer economic profiles than households of both mixed white and mixed Indian children. This effect is associated with the presence of a white parent, and the factors underlying it are examined. Although the statistical approach used bypasses a consideration of the dynamics of identity, it provides important evidence on stratification and inequality, and the factors driving this.

Read or purchase the article here.

Drs. Regina E. Spellers and Kimberly R. Moffitt to be Featured Guests on Mixed Chicks Chat

Mixed Chicks Chat (The only live weekly show about being racially and culturally mixed. Also, founders of the Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival) Hosted by Fanshen Cox and Heidi W. Durrow
Website: TalkShoe™ (Keywords: Mixed Chicks)
Episode: #199-Drs. Regina E. Spellers and Kimberly R. Moffitt
When: Wednesday, 2011-03-30, 21:00Z (17:00 EDT, 16:00 CDT, 14:00 PDT)

Regina E. Spellers, President and CEO
Eagles Soar Consulting, LLC

Kimberly R. Moffitt, Assistant Professor of American Studies
University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Drs. Spellers and Moffitt are editors of the anthology Blackberries and Redbones: Critical Articulations of Black Hair/ Body Politics in Africana Communities.

Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference 2010—Reflections

MultiRacial Network Newsletter
Winter 2011
pages 4-5

A few months have passed since the inaugural Critical Mixed Race Studies (CMRS) Conference held November 5-6, 2010 at DePaul University in Chicago, IL, but we’re still thinking about it! Here is why:

The People: Over 450 people registered for the two-day conference, and 430 people actually showed up! For those of us who have experience planning conferences or large-scale academic event, that is a pretty good yield from RSVPs! These attendees came from all over the U.S., from Hawaii to Tennessee to New York, and also included participants from Canada, France, Korea, Norway, and the UK! What was great about the people was that it included a great mix of academic scholars, administrators, artists, and community activists… all hoping to connect with and learn from each other…

Read the entire article here.

The Anglo-Indians: Aspirations for Whiteness and the Dilemma of Identity

Counterpoints
The Flinders University Online Journal of Interdisciplinary Conference Papers
Volume 3, Number 1 (September 2003)
Flinders University of South Australia

Sheila Pais James
Department of Sociology
Flinders University of S.A.

The Anglo-Indian, as a distinct ethnic identity, was the product of the racialised social hierarchies of British India. Set off from the Indian majority by their claims to British heritage, they were, because of their mixed ancestry, never accorded full status as British. At the end of British rule, their anomalous status was confirmed in certain protections, including employment quotas, enshrined in the Indian constitution. Despite this, the Anglo-Indian community in India declined in the decades after Independence as many chose to leave. Climate, proximity, and its British roots meant that Australia was considered a desirable destination by many. In particular, this paper focuses on the relevance of the study of whiteness in relation to the study of the Anglo-Indians as an ethnic and racial minority. It traces the aspirations for whiteness among these diasporic people in their quest for identity. It explores the dimensions in the constructions of identity and the possibility of identity dilemmas among the Anglo-Indians as transcolonial migrants in a multicultural Australian society.

…The discourse on whiteness as a theoretical notion that attempts to uncover the authority of the invisible is very promising. Studying whiteness delves into the silence or invisibility (Frankenberg, 1993; Dyer, 1997) about whiteness which lets everyone continue to harbour prejudices and misconceptions. This silence, when penetrated, opens channels for the understanding of identity dilemmas among the Anglo-Indians and the identity choices they make vis-à-vis the skin colour of others in similar situations.

By the 19th century, the British separated themselves from the coloured people but accepted fairer (and often wealthier) people of dual heritage as ‘Anglo-Indian’ . Darker (and usually poorer) people were given the name ‘Eurasian’ . Anglo-Indians were of British descent and British subjects; some even claimed to be British to escape prejudice. The British did not however accept such identification. They did not see Anglo-Indians as kinsmen, socially viewing them as ‘half-caste’ members who were morally and intellectually inferior to the sons and daughters of Britain (Varma 1979). The Anglo-Indians tried to counter this by trying to be more like the British. Their campaign to be called ‘Anglo-Indians’ was aimed at establishing a closer link with the British Raj (rule) in contrast to the general term ‘Eurasian’ (Bose, 1979).

Under these circumstances, it was not easy for Anglo-Indians to develop a clear conception of their own identity. Europeans tended to think of them as Indians with some European blood; Indians thought of them as Europeans with some Indian blood. On both the cultural and social level they were alien to many other Indians, though kin to them on the biological level. Many of the prejudices of the British were adopted by the Anglo-Indians towards the Indian people of dark complexion, thus creating rejection of the Anglo-Indians both by the British and other Indian communities. The prejudices against them, real or imagined, or the prejudices that they themselves had against other Indians were an obstacle to both group and individual identity (Gist, 1972, Gist and Wright, 1973)…

Read the entire paper here.