Mixed Race Studies

3rd Annual Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival

2010-06-12 through 2010-06-13
Japanese American National Museum
69 East 1st Street
Los Angeles, California

The 3rd Annual Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival will take place at the Japanese American National Museum, 369 East 1st Street, June 12-13, 2010, in downtown Los Angeles.

In the Obama age, this free public event celebrates storytelling of the Mixed racial and cultural experience including that of transracial/cultural adoption and interracial/cultural relationships.

The Festival, a fiscally sponsored project of the New York Foundation for the Arts, a non-profit organization, brings together film and book lovers, innovative and emerging artists, and multiracial families and individuals for two days of workshops, readings, film screenings and live performance including music, comedy and spoken word.

Today, 7 percent of all marriages are interracial, according to the Census. More than 6.8 million individuals identify as Mixed.

The Festival highlights include:

• The largest West Coast Loving Day party, a nationwide celebration of the Supreme Court decision which affirmed the right of people of different races to marry
• Family fun
• Mixed Unplugged: Comedy, Music, Performance and Spoken Word, a live performance
• Loving Prize Presentation honoring celebrated storytellers and community leaders

Red Dust Road: An Autobiographical Journey

Picador an Imprint of PanMacmillan
2010-06-04
304 pages
214mm x 135mm, 0.43 kg
ISBN: 9780330451055

Jackie Kay, Professor of Creative Writing
Newcastle University

‘What makes us who we are? My adoption is a story that has happened to me. I couldn’t make it up.’

From the moment when, as a little girl, she realizes that her skin is a different colour from that of her beloved mum and dad, to the tracing and finding of her birth parents, her Highland mother and Nigerian father, the journey that Jackie Kay undertakes in Red Dust Road is full of unexpected twists, turns and deep emotions.

In a book shining with warmth, humour and compassion, she discovers that inheritance is about much more than genes: that we are shaped by songs as much as by cells, and that our internal landscapes are as important as those through which we move.

Taking the reader from Glasgow to Lagos and beyond, Red Dust Road is revelatory, redemptive and courageous, unique in its voice and universal in its reach. It is a heart-stopping story of parents and siblings, friends and strangers, belonging and beliefs, biology and destiny, and love.

In Their Siblings’ Voices: White Non-Adopted Siblings Talk About Their Experiences Being Raised with Black and Biracial Brothers and Sisters

Columbia University Press
May 2009
248 pages
5 tables
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-231-14850-4
Paper ISBN: 978-0-231-14851-1

Rita J. Simon, University Professor Emerita
Department of Justice, Law and Society
American University, Washington, D.C.

In Their Siblings’ Voices shares the stories of twenty white non-adopted siblings who grew up with black or biracial brothers and sisters in the late 1960s and 1970s. Belonging to the same families profiled in Rita J. Simon and Rhonda M. Roorda’s In Their Own Voices: Transracial Adoptees Tell Their Stories and In Their Parents’ Voices: Reflections on Raising Transracial Adoptees, these siblings offer their perspectives on the multiracial adoption experience, which, for them, played out against the backdrop of two tumultuous, politically charged decades. Simon and Roorda question whether professionals and adoption agencies adequately trained these children in the challenges presented by blended families, and they ask if, after more than thirty years, race still matters. Few books cover both the academic and the human dimensions of this issue. In Their Siblings’ Voices helps readers fully grasp the dynamic of living in a multiracial household and its effect on friends, school, and community.

A White Side of Black Britain: The Concept of Racial Literacy

Ethnic and Racial Studies
Volume 27, Issue 6
November 2004
pages 878 – 907
DOI: 10.1080/0141987042000268512

France Winddance Twine, Professor of Sociology
University of California, Santa Barbara

Opposition to transracial adoption on both sides of the Atlantic, has been based, in part, on the assumption that white parents cannot understand race or racism and thus cannot properly prepare children of multiracial heritage to cope with racism. In this article I draw on a seven-year ethnographic study to offer an intensive case study of white transracial birth parents that counters this racial logic. I draw on a subset of data collected from field research and in-depth interviews with 102 members of black-white interracial families in England. I provide an analysis of three practices that I discovered among white transracial birth parents who were attempting to cultivate ‘black’ identities in their children of multiracial heritage. I offer the concept of ‘racial literacy’ to theorize their parental labour as a type of anti-racist project that remains under the radar of conventional sociological analyses of racism and anti-racist social movements.

Read or purchase the article here.

Pathways to Permanence for Black, Asian and Mixed Ethnicity Children: Delemmas, Decision-Making and Outcomes

Research Brief
DCSF-RBX-13-08
October 2008
8 pages

Julie Selwyn
Hadley Centre for Adoption and Foster Care Studies
University of Bristol

P. Harris
Hadley Centre for Adoption and Foster Care Studies
University of Bristol

David Quinton
Hadley Centre for Adoption and Foster Care Studies
University of Bristol

S. Nawaz
Hadley Centre for Adoption and Foster Care Studies
University of Bristol

Dinithi Wijedasa
Hadley Centre for Adoption and Foster Care Studies
University of Bristol

Marsha Wood
Hadley Centre for Adoption and Foster Care Studies
University of Bristol

Recent research reviews stress the lack of information on permanency planning and pathways to permanence for black and minority ethnic (BME) children. Even basic data are missing and there are no available comparisons between children of different ethnicities. Delays differentially affect and disadvantage children of minority ethnic heritage but, beyond speculation, there are no data on the processes that underlie delays for them.

In this study differential planning and decision-making affecting the progress of BME children towards permanence will be compared retrospectively from case files with that of non-BME children over a two-year period in a sample of approximately 106 children looked-after continuously for over one year in three local authorities with high and contrasting BME populations. Progress towards permanence following a recent or current best-interests recommendation will also be tracked prospectively in a separate sample of approximately 200 BME children. For fifty of these, decision-making will be followed in real-time. Case-file data and interviews with social workers and their managers will be used. The outcomes for children of black, Asian and mixed heritages will be compared.

There will be two additional outputs: a conceptual and research review of matching – a likely key element in delay and differential pathways-; and a scoping review of current practice models for the recruitment and support of BME parents for BME children for whom permanence is the aim.

This study will provide essential new information relevant to the policy objectives of increasing the use of adoption as a permanency solution for children unlikely to return to their own families and reducing the delays in this process. With respect to the brief for this initiative, the study will:

• Investigate whether looked-after BME children are less likely to be placed for adoption and why they may wait longer for placement
• Examine the process affecting successful placement for them.
• Compare the placement pathways of Black, Asian and mixed parentage children.
• Compare three authorities will high but different BME populations.
• Examine how the government’s attempts to increase the use of adoption are being translated into practice with respect to BME children.
• Examine how social workers are applying the principles underlying adoption reform.
• Identify good practice models for the recruitment and support of BME adopters.

Read the entire paper here.

Building Kinship and Community: Relational Processes of Bicultural Identity Among Adult Multiracial Adoptees

Family Process
Volume 49, Issue 1 (March 2010)
pages 26-42
DOI: 10.1111/j.1545-5300.2010.01306.x

Gina Miranda Samuels, Associate Professor
School of Social Service Administration
University of Chicago

This study uses the case of transracially adopted multiracial adults to highlight an alternative family context and thus process of African American enculturation. Interpretive analyses of interviews with 25 adult multiracial adoptees produced 4 patterns in their bicultural identity formation: (1) claiming whiteness culturally but not racially, (2) learning to “be Black”—peers as agents of enculturation, (3) biological pathways to authentic Black kinship, and (4) bicultural kinship beyond Black and White. Conceptualizing race as an ascribed extended kinship network and using notions of “groundedness” from bicultural identity literature, the relational aspects of participants’ identity development are highlighted. Culturally relevant concepts of bicultural identity are proposed for practice with multiracial adoptees who have multiple cultures of origin and for whom White mainstream culture is transmitted intrafamilially as a first culture.

Read the entire article here.

Race: Social Fact, Biological Fiction

Focus on Adoption
Volume 17, Number 3
June/July 2009
pages 16-17

Andrew Martindale, Assistant Professor of Anthropology
University of British Columbia

Andrew Martindale, an adoptive parent, and assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, explains that the concept of race is man-made and, though it holds enormous power, has no biological basis.

…Why races exist
If races are not biological divisions, why do they exist? The answer is complex and partly that races exist because people want to believe they exist.  Although race identities can lead to racism, they also have considerable value in social terms. People who have been marginalized historically, based on a flawed concept of race, find solidarity with people who share the same history. Ironically, the concept of race can have a positive role in repudiating racism. For this reason, the concept of race is not likely to disappear any time soon…

Read the entire article here.

The Politics of Biracialism [Issue]

The Black Scholar
Journal of Black Studies and Research
Fall 2009 (2009-09-22)
Volume 39, No. 3/4

Guest Editors:

Laura Chrisman, Professor of English
University of Washington

Habiba Ibrahim, Assistant Professor of English
University of Washington

Ralina Joseph, Assistant Professor of Communications
University of Washington

Why a biracial issue, and why now? As black Americans we have mixed ancestry; one might ask what is gained by giving this obvious fact the attention of a special issue. Rather than focus on this broad history, however, we instead highlight here the situations of first-generation biracial black people. Perhaps this does not simplify matters. Foregrounding their specific experiences, identities, and concerns may stir up the anger of those who feel judged “not black enough” and the anger of those who feel betrayed and devalued by self-identifying biracial individuals. The politics of biracialism, seen this way, are individualistic, diminishing our community’s cohesion. Yet we feel that the time is right for an exploration of the topic. Biracial or multiracial studies is fast-growing and itself extremely varied in its methods, disciplines, and orientation. Acknowledging the important and interesting work that has been produced in the last two decades, we provide a forum for such work. Another factor in our choice of topic is the emergence, in 2008, of Obama as a presidential candidate. Both his blackness and his first generation biracialism have prompted new consideration, within black communities and within the U.S. population as a whole, of the operations and meanings of race, nation, family and community within the U.S.A. This gives us additional incentive to explore biracialism in the present moment. Our moment differs from the fraught late 1990s when the multiracial social movement campaigned for recognition in the 2000 Census, and was opposed by influential black voices. The present adds some confidence and optimism: to profile biracialism now, we suggest, is not to jeopardize black collectivity so much as it is to recognize and join the healthy debates that are flourishing within and beyond black studies…

Table of Contents

• Introduction to “The Politics of Biracialism” / Laura Chrisman
• Interracial Intimacies, Barack Obama, and the Politics of Multiracialism / Kimberly McClain DaCosta
• Review Essay: Performing the Twenty-first Century Tragic Mulatto: Black, White, and Jewish: Autobioraphy of Shifting Self by Rebecca Walker / Ralina Joseph
• Toward Black and Multiracial “Kinship” After 1997, or How a Race Man Became “Cablinasian” / Habiba Ibrahim
• Poetry: “The Art of Loving” / Madeleine Clifford
• Baby janay and Naomi Pabst: Negotiating Race Mixing, Adoption, and Transnationality / Naomi Pabst
• Reframing the National Family: Race Mixing and Re-telling American History / Catherine Squires
• Race, Multiraciality, and Barack Obama: Toward a More Perfect Union? / G. Reginald Daniel
• Books Reviews
  • Amalgamation Schemes: Anti-blackness and the Critique of Multiracialism by Jared Sexton / LeiLani Nishime
  • Dispatches from the Color Line: The Press and Multiracial America  by Catherine R. Squires / Manoucheka Celeste
  • Framing the Black Panthers: The Spectacular Rise of a Black Power Icon by Jane Rhodes / Madhavi Murty
  • Mixed Race Hollywood Edited by Mary C. Beltrán and Camilla Fojas / Sarita Cannon

“Being Raised by White People”: Navigating Racial Difference Among Adopted Multiracial Adults

Journal of Marriage and Family
Volume 71, Issue 1, February 2009
Pages 80-94
DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-3737.2008.00581.x

Gina Miranda Samuels, Associate Professor
School of Social Service Administration
University of Chicago

There are increasing numbers of multiracial families created through marriage, adoption, birth, and a growing population of multiracial persons. Multiracials are a hidden but dominant group of transracially adopted children in both the United Kingdom and the United States. This paper introduces findings from an interpretive study of 25 transracially adopted multiracials regarding a set of experiences participants called “being raised by White people.” Three aspects of this experience are explored: (1) the centrality yet absence of racial resemblance, (2) navigating discordant parent-child racial experiences, and (3) managing societal perceptions of transracial adoption. Whereas research suggests some parents believe race is less salient for multiracial children than for Black children, this study finds participants experienced highly racialized worlds into adulthood.

Read the entire article here.

Listen to the interview on Chicago Public Radio, Eight Forty-Eight from 2009-03-01 here.

The Multiracial Experience: Racial Borders as the New Frontier

SAGE Publications
1995
512 pages
Paperback ISBN: 9780803970595

Edited by Maria P. P. Root

In her bold new edited volume, The Multiracial Experience, Maria P. P. Root challenges current theoretical and political conceptualizations of race by examining the experience of mixed-race individuals. Articulating questions that will form the basis for future discussions of race and identity, the contributors tackle concepts such as redefining ethnicity when race is less central to the definition and how a multiracial model might dismantle our negative construction of race. Researchers and practitioners in ethnic studies, anthropology, education, law, psychology, nursing, social work, and sociology add personal insights in chapter-opening vignettes while providing integral critical viewpoints. Sure to stimulate thinking and discussion, the contributors focus on the most contemporary racial issues, including the racial classification system from the U.S. Census to the schools; the differences between race, ethnicity, and colorism; gender and sexuality in a multicultural context; ethnic identity and identity formation; transracial adoption; and the future of race relations in the United States. The Multiracial Experience opens up the dialogue to rethink and redefine race and social relations in this country. This volume provides discussions key to all professionals, practitioners, researchers, and students in multicultural issues, ethnic relations, sociology, education, psychology, management, and public health.

Table of Contents

The Multiracial Experience: Racial Borders as a Significant Frontier in Race Relations – Maria P. P. Root

PART ONE: HUMAN RIGHTS

• A Bill of Rights for Racially Mixed People –  Maria P. P. Root
• Government Classification of Multiracial/Multiethnic People – Carlos A. Fernandez
• The Real World – Susan R. Graham
• Multiracial Identity in a Color-Conscious World – Deborah A. Ramirez
• Transracial Adoptions: In Whose Best Interest? – Ruth G. McRoy and Christine C. Iijima Hall
• Voices from the Movement: Approaches to Multiraciality – Cynthia L. Nakashima

PART TWO: IDENTITY

• Hidden Agendas, Identity Theories, and Multiracial People –  Michael C. Thornton
• Black and White Identity in the New Millenium: Unsevering the Ties That Bind – G. Reginald Daniel
• On Being and Not-Being Black and Jewish – Naomi Zack
• An `Other’ Way of Life: The Empowerment of Alterity in the Interracial Individual – Jan R. Weisman

PART THREE: BLENDING AND FLEXIBILITY

• LatiNegra Lillian: Mental Health Issues of African –  Lillian Comas-Diaz
• Race as Process: Reassessing the `What Are You?’ Encounters of Biracial Individuals – Teresa Kay Williams
• Piecing Together the Puzzle: Self-Concept and Group Identity in Biracial Black/White Youth – Lynda D. Field
• Changing Face, Changing Race: The Remaking of Race in the Japanese American and African American Communities – Rebecca Chiyoko King and Kimberly McClain DaCosta
• Without a Template: The Biracial Korean/White Experience – Brian Chol Soo Standen

PART FOUR: GENDER AND SEXUAL IDENTITY

• In the Margins of Sex and Race: Difference, Marginality, and Flexibility – George Kitahara Kich
• (Un)Natural Boundaries: Mixed Race, Gender, and Sexuality – Karen Maeda Allman
• Heterosexual Alliances: The Romantic Management of Racial Identity-  Francine Winddance Twine
• Ambiguous Bodies: Locating Black/White Women in Cultural Representations – Caroline A. Streeter

PART FIVE: MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION

• Making the Invisible Visible: The Growth of Community Network Organizations – Nancy G. Brown and Ramona E. Douglass
• Challenging Race and Racism: A Framework for Educators – Ronald David Glass and Kendra R. Wallace
• Being Different Together in the University Classroom: Multiracial Identity as Transgressive Education – Teresa Kay Williams et al
• Multicultural Education – Francis Wardle

PART SIX: THE NEW MILLENIUM

• 2001: A Race Odyssey – Christine C. Iijima Hall