Mixed Race Studies

A portrait of couples in mixed unions

Component of Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 11-008-X
Canadian Social Trends
2010-04-20
pages 68-80

Anne Milan, Senior Analyst
Demography Division

Hélène Maheux, Analyst
Immigration and Ethnocultural Section

Tina Chui, Chief
Immigration and Ethnocultural Section in the Social and Aboriginal Statistics Division

As Canada‘s population continues to become ethnoculturally diverse, there is greater opportunity for individuals to form conjugal relationships with someone from a different ethnocultural background. In this study, a mixed union, either marital or common-law, is based on one of two criteria: either one member of a couple belongs to a visible minority group and the other does not; or the couple belongs to different visible minority groups. Using data primarily from the 2006 Census of Population, this study examines the socio-demographic characteristics of mixed union couples in Canada. Studying mixed unions is important not only because these relationships reflect another aspect of the diversity of families today, but also for their implications in terms of social inclusion and identification with one or more visible minority groups, particularly for subsequent generations.

What you should know about this study

Visible minority status is self-reported and refers to the visible minority group to which the respondent belongs.  The Employment Equity Act defines visible minorities as “persons, other than Aboriginal peoples, who are non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour.” Under this definition, regulations specify the following groups as visible minorities: Chinese, South Asians, Blacks, Arabs, West Asians, Filipinos, Southeast Asians, Latin Americans, Japanese, Koreans and other visible minority groups, like Pacific Islanders.

Mixed couples refer to common-law or marital relationships comprised of one spouse or partner who is a member of a visible minority group and the other who is not, as well as couples comprised of two different visible minority group members. Mixed couples include both opposite-sex and same-sex couples unless indicated otherwise.

Data used are primarily from the 2006 Census of Population, with comparisons to 2001 data where appropriate. Throughout the paper, both person-level and couple-level data are used.

Person-level data are used for characteristics of individuals in mixed unions, such as age, sex, educational level, immigrant status and mother tongue. Couple-level data are more appropriate when analyzing characteristics of the union, for instance, whether it is a marriage or common-law relationship or if there are children present in the home.

Persons of multiple visible minority group status are individuals who reported belonging to more than one visible minority group by checking two or more mark-in circles on the census questionnaire, e.g., Black and South Asian.

List of Tables

• Table 1: Out-group pairing by visible minority group, 2006
• Table 2: Persons in couples and in mixed unions by visible minority group, 2006
• Table 3: Persons in mixed unions by place of birth and visible minority group, 2006
• Table 4: Persons in couples that were mixed unions by highest level of education, 2006
• Table 5: Census family median income by mixed union status, 2006
• Table 6: Percentage of couples in mixed unions by census metropolitan area, 2006
• Table 7: Children in two-parent families by visible minority status, 2006

List of Charts

• Chart 1: Higher proportion of Arab or West Asian, Black and South Asian men in couples were in mixed unions compared to women from these groups
• Chart 2: Longer history in Canada was associated with higher proportion of persons in mixed unions
• Chart 3: Young adults have highest proportion of mixed unions
• Chart 4: Persons in mixed unions are younger compared to those in non-mixed unions
• Chart 5: Persons in mixed unions have much higher levels of education than those in non-mixed unions
• Chart 6: Allophones in mixed unions reported using an official language at home more than allophones in non-mixed unions

Read the entire report here.

Canada’s mixing pot: Multiracial relationships growing at rapid pace

National Post
2010-04-20

Mary Vallis

The number of Canadians in mixed-race relationships and marriages is rising, still primarily a big city phenomenon, but a trend fuelled in part by romances in small cities, according to a new report released by Statistics Canada on Tuesday.

Between 2001 and 2006, mixed unions grew at a rapid pace (33%), more than five times the growth for all couples (6.0%), the agency says in a new report titled “A Portrait of Couples in Mixed Unions.”

According to the 2006 Census, 3.9% of the 7.4 million couples in Canada were “mixed unions,” meaning either one member of the relationship belonged to a visible minority or that both were members of different visible minorities. Fifteen years earlier, mixed unions accounted for 2.6% of all couples.

Residents of small cities with predominantly white populations like Saguenay, Que., Moncton, N.B., and Thunder Bay, Ont., boasted some of the highest percentages of visible minorities in mixed unions. Nearly 63% of all of the visible minorities in Saguenay had spouses or partners from other backgrounds. Saint John, N.B., Kelowna, B.C., Sudbury and Barrie also ranked high…

To read the entire story, click here.

Beyond the Rainbow: Mixed Race and Mixed Culture in the 21st Century Work Place

Society for Intercultural Education Training and Research
2010 Conference: Living and Working in a Intercultural World
2010-04-14 through 2010-04-17
Spokane, Washington
Session Date: 2010-04-15

Harriet Cannon, M.C.

Rhoda Berlin, MS

Today on the street, at schools and in the workplace, we can no longer be sure of a person’s ethnicity by their surname or appearance. Walk the streets of any larger city, most university campuses, and the majority of businesses in the United States and if you are looking for it, you will be amazed at the number of mixed race people under the age of 40. This quiet revolution is rapidly changing the face of the US, Canada, Europe, and has a presence in Asia.

The goal of this workshop is to discuss how multicultural and mixed race population growth is pushing the boundaries of our thinking about diversity and cross cultural training. We will discuss appearance and identity and address the breadth and depth of mixed race experience. We will share our research on mixed race adult identity. We will describe strengths and challenges educators and trainers increasingly encounter with this mushrooming diverse mixed race population at university and in the workplace. There will be group participation on brainstorming creative changes in delivery of diversity/intercultural training in the 21st century.

View the session handout (a few reading resources on biracial and multiethnic identity)  here.

The controversial connection between race, genetics and medicine

Minnesota Public Radio News
Midmorning Broadcast: 2010-02-03, 09:06 CST

Kerri Miller, Host

Dorothy Roberts, George A. Weiss University Professor of Law and Sociology; Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights
University of Pennsylvania

David Goldstein, Professor of Genetics and Director of the Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy Center for Human Genome Variation
Duke University

[From Steven F. Riley: This is an excellent “must listen to” discussion!]

As scientists explore the human genome and medicines tailored to particular genes, a provocative question emerges about whether there is a genetic marker that could explain why some treatments work better for different racial groups. And some say the narrow focus on race misses the point of social disparities and what we now know about genetics. (00:54:12)

(Interview suspends at 00:26:40 for a short news update, then restarts at 00:30:23.)

Download the interview (00:54:12) here.

Audio: History professor discusses census

The Daily Collegian
Published Independently by the students at Penn State
2010-04-09

Eddie Lau

Interview with

Grace Delgado, Assistant Professor of History
Pennsylvania State University

Associate Professor of History Grace Delgado, who specializes in Chicano history, said the U.S. census is not sensitive enough to mix-raced residents. She said having mixed-race residents to label themselves as “white,” “black, African-American or negro” or some other categories they don’t belong is not the best approach.

However, despite the fact that the wordings and categorizations in the census form are not perfect, Delgado encouraged all Penn State students to fill out the form. She said the best option right now is to check “some other race” in Question 9 and print their race in the given box.

To listen to the short interview, click here.

Half-Yella: Mixed Race Asian American Art [Lecture]

Oberlin College
King 106
2010-04-29, 16:30 to 17:30 EDT (Local Time)

Laura Kina, Professor of Art
DePaul University

Laura Kina is an artist, independent curator, and scholar whose research focuses on Asian American art and critical mixed race studies. She is an Associate Professor of Art, Media and Design, Vincent de Paul Professor, and Director of Asian American Studies at DePaul University. She is a 2009-2010 DePaul University Humanities Fellow. She earned her MFA from the school of the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she studied under noted painters Kerry James Marshall and Phyllis Bramson, and she earned her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Born in Riverside, California and raised in Poulsbo, WA, the artist currently lives and works in Chicago, IL. Her work has shown internationally is represented in Miami, Florida by Diana Lowenstein Fine Arts. Her work is currently on display in a solo exhibition “Laura Kina: A Many-Splendored Thing” at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago, IL as well as in group shows at the DePaul Art Museum in Chicago and the Korean Cultural Center in Los Angeles.

Laura Kina’s work focuses on the fluidity of cultural difference and the slipperiness of identity. Asian American history and mixed race representations are subjects that run through her work. She draws inspiration from popular culture, history, textile design, as well as historic and personal photographs. Critic Murtaza Vali has described her art as “a genre of Pop art with a distinctly postcolonial edge.”

This event is sponsored by Asian American Alliance as a part of Oberlin College’s Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month 2010.

Reinventing the Color Line: Immigration and America’s New Racial/Ethnic Divide

Social Forces
Volume 86, Number 2 (December 2007)
E-ISSN: 1534-7605 Print ISSN: 0037-7732
DOI: 10.1353/sof.2008.0024

Jennifer Lee, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of California, Irvine

Frank D. Bean, Chancellor’s Professor of Sociology
University of California, Irvine

Contemporary nonwhite immigration from Latin America and Asia, increasing racial/ethnic intermarriage, and the growing number of multiracial individuals has made the black-white color line now seem anachronistic in America, consequently raising the question of whether today’s color line is evolving in new directions toward either a white-nonwhite divide, a black-nonblack divide, or a new tri-racial hierarchy. In order to gauge the placement of today’s color line, we examine patterns of multiracial identification, using both quantitative data on multiracial reporting in the 2000 U.S. Census and in-depth interview data from multiracial individuals with Asian, Latino or black backgrounds. These bodies of evidence suggest that the multiracial identifications of Asians and Latinos (behaviorally and self-perceptually) show much less social distance from whites than from blacks, signaling the likely emergence of a black-nonblack divide that continues to separate blacks from other groups, including new nonwhite immigrants. However, given that the construction of whiteness as a category has been fluid in the past and appears to be stretching yet again, it is also possible that the color line will change still further to even more fully incorporate Asians and Latinos as white, which would mean that the historical black-white divide could again re-emerge.

Read or purchase the article here.

Teaching Race as a Social Construction: Two Interactive Class Exercises

Teaching Sociology
Volume 37, Number 4 (October 2009)
Pages 369-378

Nikki Khanna, Assistant Professor of Sociology
University of Vermont

Cherise A. Harris, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Connecticut College

This paper offers two interactive exercises to teach students about race as a social construction. In the first exercise, “What’s My Race?”, we ask students to sort various celebrities and historical figures into racial categories, giving them the opportunity to see the difficulty of the task first-hand. More importantly, through the process of sorting individuals into various categories, they are introduced to flaws within the current racial classification scheme in the U.S. In the second exercise, “Black or White?”, students are asked to classify photographs of legendary celebrities and historical figures as either black or white. This exercise is used to introduce the concept of the one drop rule; the majority of individuals in the exercise appear racially ambiguous or white, yet all were historically classified as “black” based on the one drop rule. Both exercises, when used together, are designed to visually illustrate to students the ambiguity and arbitrariness of American racial classifications.

Read or purchase the article here.

A cross-cultural marriage is an adventure I’d recommend

The Observer
2009-12-27

Anushka Asthana, Education Correspondent

Mixed-race unions in this country are on the increase, a magical journey that benefits all the families involved

One visit to India and a childhood playing cricket was never going to be quite enough to prepare Toby, a white Englishman who grew up in Oxfordshire, for his marriage. After all, you don’t just marry an Indian woman—you marry her large (and often eccentric) family and all that brings with it.

The realisation began to sink in for Toby at the Hindu part of our wedding, three months ago. He got out of arriving on the back of a white horse, but we persuaded him to go along with the rest of it. That included being dressed up from head to toe, with a red turban with white tassels hanging over his face, embroidered scarf, full-length white coat with gold trimmings and his very own pair of what he called “Aladdin” shoes. He took part in the “baraat“, an Indian tradition in which the groom arrives with family and friends dancing around him.

So there they were: swinging their arms to the bhangra beat of a dhol drum with shell-shocked smiles as they were met by the cheering crowd of “aunties” and “uncles” (not real ones—that is how we address any Indian person above the age of 40) and bending down to have garlands draped around their necks and red marks smeared on their foreheads.

The image of a white British groom at the centre of a mass of ecstatic Indian aunties would once have been a rarity. But research released earlier this year found that one in 10 people in Britain with Indian heritage who is in a relationship has a partner of a different race. The study, by the Institute for Social and Economic Research, found the same was true of half of all Caribbean men, one in five black African men and two out of five Chinese women. The result so far: one in 10 children in Britain is living in a mixed-race family…

Read the entire article here.

Biracial Children Learn To Self-Identify

Tell Me More
National Public Radio
2010-04-20

Michel Martin, Host

Interview with:

Kip Fulbeck, Professor of Performative Studies, Video
University of California, Santa Barbara
Author of: Mixed: Portraits of Multiracial Kids

Peggy Orenstein
Author of: Waiting for Daisy: A Tale of Two Continents, Three Religions, Five Fertility Doctors, An Oscar, An Atomic Bomb, A Romantic Night, and One Woman’s Quest to Become a Mother

Heidi W. Durrow
Author of: The Girl Who Fell from the Sky
Co-Host of: Mixed Chicks Chat

An installment of Tell Me More‘s weekly parenting segment focuses on the new book Mixed. It’s a collection of photographs of multiracial children that includes stories celebrating their heritage. Host Michel Martin is joined by the book’s author, Kip Fulbeck, as well as authors Peggy Orenstein and Heidi Durrow, who discuss their own experiences living in multiracial families.

Read the transcript of the interview here.  Listen to the interview here.

Note by Steven F. Riley: The term “Hapa” is incorrectly spelled as “Hoppa” in the transcript.