Mixed Race Studies

Color outside the lines

Columbia Missourian
2006-06-11

Sara Fernández Cendon

The boundaries between traditional racial categories shift as more people identify themselves as multiracial. The term adds another dimension to the complex issue of race in America.

Some say Tiger Woods started it all.

After winning the Masters Tournament in 1997, the golf star described himself as “Cablinasian” — as in Caucasian, black, American Indian and Asian.

Colin Powell, a light-skinned black man, quickly dismissed Wood’s invention.

“In America, which I love from the depths of my heart and soul, when you look like me, you’re black,” Powell said.

Woods says “Cablinasian” honors his multiracial heritage. In 1997 he told Oprah Winfrey that being identified solely as an African-American bothered him. But others, who agree with Colin Powell, believe Woods will always be thought of as black and treated as such.

The Woods-Powell disagreement illustrates the deep rift between those who believe that race is a biological category and those who believe it is a political one. As more mixed-race couples join Woods’ camp by identifying their children as “multiracial,” or even “white,” civil rights groups worry about the loss of historical racial categories.

Critics of the multiracial label believe the American racial landscape is still dominated by the “one-drop” rule, which held that a person with just one black ancestor was still black. Their argument is that you don’t need much “color” to be a “person of color.” Discrimination affects people of color, they say, regardless of how light their skin might be or how they identify themselves racially…

…AGAINST THE MULTIRACIAL LABEL

David Brunsma

White people have made disparaging racial comments around him expecting to get a nod in return. But fair-skinned, red-haired, blue-eyed David Brunsma has no tolerance for “whiteness” because “white” to him is synonymous with privilege. He says he gets questions like, “What are the best neighborhoods in town, if you know what I mean …” His response: “No, I really don’t know what you mean.”

Half-Puerto Rican and half-Caucasian, Brunsma does not think of himself as biracial, but he does consider “Hispanic” to be a racial category…

…FOR THE MULTIRACIAL LABEL

Susan Graham and Project RACE

You can’t blame Ryan Graham for not wanting to check “other” on questionnaires requesting racial information. “It makes me feel like a freak or a space alien,” he testified during a U.S. House hearing on multiracial identification back in 1997, when he was 12 years old.

Ryan’s mother, Susan Graham, is the executive director of Project RACE, an advocacy organization for multiracial individuals. She, too, testified before the House on behalf of a separate multiracial category in census forms.

In her testimony, Graham berated the “all that apply” compromise announced by the Office of Management and Budget just days before the hearing.

“My children and millions of children like them merely become ‘check all that apply’ kids or ‘check more than one box’ children or ‘more than one race’ persons. They will be known as ‘multiple check offs’ or ‘half and halfers,’” she said…

Read the entire article here.

Color Struck: Essays on Race and Ethnicity in Global Perspective

University Press of America
April 2010
516 pages
Paper ISBN: 0-7618-5064-3 / 978-0-7618-5064-9
Electronic ISBN: 0-7618-5092-9 / 978-0-7618-5092-2

Edited by

Julius O. Adekunle, Professor of History
Monmouth University, West Long Branch, New Jersey

Hettie V. Williams, Lecturer, African American History
Department of History and Anthropology
Monmouth University, West Long Branch, New Jersey

Color Struck: Essays of Race and Ethnicity in Global Perspective is a compilation of expositions on race and ethnicity, written from multiple disciplinary approaches including history, sociology, women’s studies, and anthropology. This book is organized around a topical, chronological framework and is divided into three sections, beginning with the earliest times to the contemporary world. The term “race” has nearly become synonymous with the word “ethnicity,” given the most recent findings in the study of human genetics that have led to the mapping of human DNA. Color Struck attempts to answer questions and provide scholarly insight into issues related to race and ethnicity.

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction

Part 1: The First Complex Societies to Modern Times

1. Race, Science, and Human Origins in Africa
Julius O. Adekunle

2. Race and the Rise of the Swahili Culture
Julius O. Adekunle

3. ‘Caste’-[ing] Gender: Caste and Patriarchy in Ancient Hindu Jurisprudence
Indira Jalli

4. Comparative Race and Slavery in Islam, Judaism, and Christianity: Texts, Practices, and Current Implications
Magid Shihade

5. The Dark Craven Jew: Race and Religion in Medieval Europe
James M. Thomas

6. Growth of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Racial Slavery in the New World
Kwaku Osei Tutu

7. The Yellow Lady: Mulatto Women in the Suriname Plantocracy
Hilde Neus

Part 2: Race and Mixed Race in the Americas

8. Critical Mixed Race Studies: New Approaches to Resistance and Social Justice
Andrew Jolivétte

9. Militant Multiraciality: Rejecting Race and Rejecting the Conveniences of Complicity
Rainier Spencer

10. Whiteness Reconstructed: Multiracial Identity as a Category of “New White”
Kerry Ann Rockquemore and David L. Brunsma

11. Conversations in Black and White: The Limitations of Binary Thinking About Race in America
Johanna E. Foster

12. The Necessity of a Multiracial Category in a Race-Conscious Society
Francis Wardle

13. Mixed Race Terminologies in the Americas: Globalizing the Creole in the Twenty First Century
DeMond S. Miller, Jason D. Rivera, and Joel C. Telin

14. Examining the Regional and Multigenerational Context of Creole and American Indian Identity
Andrew Jolivétte

15. Race, Class, and Power: The Politics of Multiraciality in Brazil
G. Reginald Daniel and Gary L. Haddow

16. All Mixed Up: A New Racial Commonsense in Global Perspective
G. Reginald Daniel and Gary L. Haddow

Part 3: Race, Ethnicity, and Conflict in Contemporary Societies

17. Black No More: African Americans and the ‘New’ Race Science
Hettie V. Williams

18. Contesting Identities of Color: African Female Immigrants in the Americas
Philomina Okeke-Ihejirika

19. Burdened Intersections: Black Women and Race, Gender, and Class
Marsha J. Tyson Darling

20. Ethnic Conflicts in the Middle East: A Comparative Analysis of Communal Violence within the Matrix of the Colonial Legacy, Globalization, and Global Stability
Magid Shihade

21. Ethnic Identity in China: The Politics of Cultural Difference
Dru C. Gladney

22. Shangri-la has Forsaken Us: China’s Ethnic Minorities, Identity, and Government Repression
Reza Hasmath

23. The Russian/Chechen Conflict and It’s Consequences
Mariana Tepfenhart

Contributors
Index

Mixing Blood: What Does “Biracialism” Do to the Notion of “Race”? [Book Review]

PINS (Psychology in Society)
Volume 31 (2005)
pages 99-105

Gerhard Maré, Professor of Sociology
University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban

Book review: Rockquemore, Kerry Ann & David L. Brunsma (2002) Beyond Black: Biracial identity in America. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. ISBN 0-7619-2322-5 pbk. Pages 256.

The term and notion of “biracial” confirms a perception of “races”, resting as it does on the acceptance of the existence, in some form, of two distinct “somethings” (races) that give rise to a combination. At the same time, paradoxically, it also adds confusion to the apparent certainty of race existence – what meaning can “race” have if it is so easily undermined through the creation of a totally new racial group or of a person who straddles “races”? Can we then have an infinite number of “races” through the infinitely various combinations of union that are possible?

In America, “biracial” challenges the “one drop of blood rule” that for so long turned the offspring of a dilution of the hegemonic notion “white” into “black”, and not into “biracial”, or into “Coloured” as was the case in South Africa. In the strange world of race thinking, and of racism and “race” or racist power, one drop could not, ever, turn “black” into “white”. This rule came to be accepted and then supported by black Americans as well, for a number of reasons.

In academic research and writing, the area of “race mixing” seems to be gaining in popularity. As Parker and Song note, “Of course racial mixture is nothing new – it has been the history of the world. What stands out as novel are the forms of political contestation gathering around the topic of ‘mixed race’” (2001:1). Paul Spickard (2001) refers to the “boom in biracial biography”. Charmaine Wijeyesinghe (2001:129) writes that “Multiracial identity is the newest chapter in the evolving field of racial identity development. The heightened interest in the experience of Multiracial people is fuelled by changing social demographics, an increasing number of Multiracial people who identify with their racial ancestries, and the emergence of groups advocating the rights of Multiracial people”. Interest in this aspect of social life was also illustrated by the appearance of a second edition, in 2002, of Barbara Tizard and Ann Phoenix’s Black, White or Mixed Race? Race and Racism in the Lives of Young People of Mixed Parentage, first published in 1993.In South Africa, too, several contributions in the field of “mixed race” identity include an edited collection by Zimitri Erasmus (2001) and an article by Jane Battersby (2003).

“Bi-racialism”, “hybridity”, “cross-racial”, “mulatto”, “coloured”, and so on, are terms that in different contexts signify an unnatural “mixing of blood” – in other words, moving beyond what is usually socially acceptable. The investigations that are reported on in books on this topic are of cases that need to be examined because of the disturbance it implies to the certainty of “race” categories, ripples on the smooth surface of the pond of race thinking. Of course, earlier, studies of the same social phenomenon set out to prove the horrors that arose from such mixing, the taint and the supposed mental and physical deficiencies that were to be the inevitable destiny of such people, the tragedies that befell them!

As Zimitri Erasmus comments on “mixture”: “There is no such thing as the Black ‘race’. Blackness, whiteness and colouredness exist, but they are cultural, historical and political identities. To talk about ‘race mixture’, ‘miscegenation’, ‘inter-racial’ sex, and ‘mixed descent’ is to use terms and habits of thought inherited from the very ‘race science’ that was used to justify oppression, brutality and the marginalisation of ‘bastard people’“ (Erasmus (ed) 2001: Editor’s note)…

Read the entire article here.

Hybrid Identities: Theoretical and Empirical Examinations

Brill Publishing
2008
412 pages
Hardback ISBN-13: 978 90 04 17039 1; ISBN-10: 90 04 17039 1

Edited by

Keri E. Iyall Smith, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Suffolk University, Boston, Massachusetts

Patricia Leavy, Associate Professor of Sociology
Stonehill College, Easton, Massachusetts

Combining theoretical and empirical pieces, this book explores the emerging theoretical work seeking to describe hybrid identities while also illustrating the application of these theories in empirical research. The sociological perspective of this volume sets it apart. Hybrid identities continue to be predominant in minority or immigrant communities, but these are not the only sites of hybridity in the globalized world. Given a compressed world and a constrained state, identities for all individuals and collective selves are becoming more complex. The hybrid identity allows for the perpetuation of the local, in the context of the global. This book presents studies of types of hybrid identities: transnational, double consciousness, gender, diaspora, the third space, and the internal colony.

Contributors include: Keri E. Iyall Smith, Patrick Gun Cuninghame, Judith R. Blau, Eric S. Brown, Fabienne Darling-Wolf, Salvador Vidal-Ortiz, Melissa F. Weiner, Bedelia Nicola Richards, Keith Nurse, Roderick Bush, Patricia Leavy, Trinidad Gonzales, Sharlene Hesse-Biber, Emily Brooke Barko, Tess Moeke-Maxwell, Helen Kim, Bedelia Nicola Richards, Helene K. Lee, Alex Frame, Paul Meredith, David L. Brunsma and Daniel J. Delgado.

Table of Contents

List of Figures
Acknowledgements

I. THEORETICAL STUDY OF HYBRIDITY
1. Hybrid Identities: Theoretical Examinations, Keri E. Iyall Smith
2. Hybridity, Transnationalism, and Identity in the US-Mexican Borderlands, Patrick Gun Cuninghame
3. DuBois and Diasporic Identity: The Veil and the Unveiling Project, Judith R. Blau and Eric S. Brown
4. Disturbingly Hybrid or Distressingly Patriarchal? Gender Hybridity in a Global Environment, Fabienne Darling-Wolf
5. Gender and the Hybrid Identity: On Passing Through, Salvador Vidal-Ortiz
6. Bridging the Theoretical Gap: The Diasporized Hybrid in Sociological Theory, Melissa F. Weiner and Bedelia Nicola Richards
7. Geoculture and Popular Culture: Carnivals, Diasporas, and Hybridities in the Americas, Keith Nurse
8. The Internal Colony Hybrid: Reformulating Structure, Culture, and Agency, Roderick Bush

PART II. EMPIRICAL STUDIES ON HYBRID IDENTITIES
9. An Introduction to Empirical Examinations of Hybridity, Patricia Leavy
10. Conquest, Colonization, and Borderland Identities: The World of Ethnic Mexicans in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, 1900–1930, Trinidad Gonzales
11. Neither Black nor White Enough – and Beyond Black or White: The Lived Experiences of African-American Women at Predominantly White Colleges, Sharlene Hesse-Biber and Emily Brooke Barko
12. Creating Place from Confl icted Space: Bi/Multi Racial Māori Women’s Inclusion within New Zealand Mental Health Services, Tess Moeke-Maxwell
13. Women Occupying the Hybrid Space: Second-Generation Korean-American Women Negotiating Choices Regarding Work and Family, Helen Kim
14. Hybrid Identities in the Diaspora: Second-Generation West Indians in Brooklyn, Bedelia Nicola Richards
15. Hybridized Korean Identities: The Making of Korean-Americans and Joseonjok, Helene K. Lee
16. One Plus One Equals Three: Legal Hybridity in Aotearoa/New Zealand, Alex Frame and Paul Meredith
17. Occupying Third Space: Hybridity and Identity Matrices in the Multiracial Experience, David L. Brunsma and Daniel J. Delgado

Author Biographies
References
Index

Beyond Black: Biracial Identity in America (Book Review)

Pychiatric Services
May 2003
Volume 54
Page 751
Published by The American Psychiatric Association

Maureen Slade, R.N., M.S., Director of Psychiatry
Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Chicago

Brendan Slade-Smith
Illinois Wesleyan University, Bloomington

Beyond Black: Biracial Identity in America
by Kerry Ann Rockquemore and David L. Brunsma; Thousand Oaks, California, Sage Publications, 2002, 178 pages.

Who is black today, and who will be black tomorrow? Kerry Ann Rockquemore and David L. Brunsma, two sociologists, decided to initiate a research project to study this complicated and highly controversial question, in part to provide sorely needed empirical data to facilitate informed discussions on multiracialism. The authors also hope that their book can be used as a resource to guide decisions about the inclusion of a multiracial category in the 2010 census. Rockquemore and Brunsma chose to focus specifically on individuals who have one black and one white parent.

Beyond Black: Biracial Identity in America is composed of six chapters and is easy reading, while at the same time being intellectually stimulating and challenging. The first chapter lays the groundwork for explaining why it is necessary to study biracial identity formation in a scholarly fashion. This chapter includes a straightforward discussion of the role of slavery, the “one-drop” rule, miscegenation, the Jim Crow laws, and the civil rights era in the rigid categorization of blacks as a racial category in the United States. However, the most fascinating discussion is the identification and in-depth discussion of possible biracial identities…

Read the entire article here.

Interracial Families and the Racial Identification of Mixed-Race Children: Evidence from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study

Social Forces
Volume 84, Number 2 (December 2005)
pages 1131-1157
DOI: 10.1353/sof.2006.0007

David L. Brunsma, Professor of Sociology
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

In this article, a nationally-representative sample of kindergarten-aged children is used from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study to explore the structure of parental racial designation of mixed-race children. The variation in these parental designations of a variety of mixed-race children is described. Parental racial designations in the three most common majority-minority interracial couplings – White/Hispanic, Black/White and Asian/White – are predicted using multinomial logistic regression models. The results may indicate a movement by the parents of these multiracial children away from minority status through racial labeling and towards “multiracial” and “White” – movements that are predicated upon gender, class and context. Critical discussions of the implications of these results as well as directions for future research are offered.

Read or purchase the article here.

Beyond Black: Biracial Identity in America (Second Edition)

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
December 2007
220 pages
Cloth ISBN: 0-7425-6054-6 / 978-0-7425-6054-3
Paper ISBN: 0-7425-6055-4 / 978-0-7425-6055-0

By Kerry Ann Rockquemore and David L. Brunsma
Foreword by Joe Feagin

Beyond Black is a groundbreaking study of the dynamic meaning of racial identity for multiracial people in post-Civil Rights America. Kerry Ann Rockquemore and David Brunsma document the wide range of racial identities that individuals with one Black and one White parent develop, and they provide a incisive sociological explanation of the choices facing those who are multiracial.

Stemming from the controversy of the 2000 Census and whether an additional “multiracial” category should be added to the survey, this second edition of Beyond Black uses both survey data and interviews of multiracial young adults to explore the contemporary dynamics of racial identity formation. The authors raise even larger social and political questions posed by expanding racial categorization on the U.S. Census.

About the Authors
Kerry Ann Rockquemore is associate professor of African American Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and coauthor of Raising Biracial Children.

David L. Brunsma is associate professor of sociology at the University of Missouri-Columbia and coeditor of The Sociology of Katrina: Perspectives on a Modern Catastrophe.

Table of Contents

• List of Tables and Figures
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword: Joe Feagin
• Chapter 1: Who is Black? Flux and Change in American Racial Identity
• Chapter 2: Biracial Identity Research: Past and Present
• Chapter 3: What it Means to be Mixed-Race in Post-Civil Rights America
• Chapter 4 : Sociological Factors Influencing Biracial Identity
• Chapter 5: The Color Complex: Appearances and Multiracial Identity
• Chapter 6: Who is Black Today and Who Will be Black Tomorrow?
• Endnotes
• Appendices
• References
• Index

Mixed Messages: Multiracial Identities in the “Color-Blind” Era

Lynne Rienner Publishers
2006
405 pages
Hardcover: ISBN: 978-1-58826-372-8
Paperback: ISBN: 978-1-58826-398-8

Edited by David L. Brunsma, Professor of Sociology
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

The experiences and voices of multiracial individuals are challenging current categories of race, profoundly altering the meaning of racial identity and in the process changing the cultural fabric of the nation. Exploring this new reality, the authors of Mixed Messages examine what we know about multiracial identities—and the implications of those identities for fundamental issues of justice and equality.

Read the entire introduction here.

Table of Contents

• Mixed Messages: Doing Race in the Color-Blind Era—David L. Brunsma
• SHIFTING COLOR LINES.
  • Defining Race: Comparative Perspectives—F. James Davis.
  • Black, Honorary White, White: The Future of Race in the United States?—Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and David G. Embrick.
  • Racial Justice in a Black/Nonblack Society—George Yancey.
  • Carving Out a Middle Ground: The Case of Hawai’i—Jeffrey Moniz and Paul Spickard.
  • New Racial Identities, Old Arguments: Continuing Biological Reification—Rainier Spencer.
  • Color Blindness: An Obstacle to Racial Justice?—Charles A. Gallagher.
  • Racism, Whitespace, and the Rise of the Neo-Mulattos—Hayward Derrick Horton.
• MANIPULATING MULTIRACIAL IDENTITIES.
  • Race, Multiraciality, and the Neoconservative Agenda—G. Reginald Daniel and Josef Manuel Castañeda-Liles.
  • White Separatists in the Color-Blind Era: Redefining Multiracial and White Identities—Abby L. Ferber.
  • Defining Racism to Achieve Goals: The Multiracial and Black Reparations Movements—Johanna E. Foster.
  • Selling Mixedness: Marketing with Multiracial Identities—Kimberly McClain DaCosta.
• SOCIALIZATION IN MULTIRACIAL FAMILIES.
  • It All Starts at Home: Racial Socialization in Multiracial Families—Kerry Ann Rockquemore,
    Tracey Laszloffy, and Julia Noveske.
  • Racial Logics and (Trans)Racial Identities: A View from Britain—France Winddance Twine.
  • Black and White: Family Opposition to Becoming Multiracial—Erica Chito Childs.
• DILEMMAS OF MULTIRACIAL IDENTITY.
  • Negotiating Racial Identity in Social Interactions—R. L’Heureux Lewis and Kanika Bell.
  • Black/White Friendships in a Color-Blind Society—Kathleen Korgen and Eileen O’Brien.
  • Black and Latino: Dominican Americans Negotiate Racial Worlds—Benjamin Bailey.
  • Finding a Home: Housing the Color Line—Heather Dalmage.
  • Confronting Racism in the Therapist’s Office—Kwame Owusu-Bempah.
  • Culture and Identity in Mixed-Race Women’s Lives—Debbie Storrs.

Race-ing and (E)race-ing the Child: Interracial Families Negotiate Racial Identification for their Multiracial Children

Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association
Marriott Hotel, Loews Philadelphia Hotel
Philadelphia, PA
2005-08-12

18 pages

David L. Brunsma, Professor of Sociology
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

In this paper, a nationally-representative sample of kindergarten-aged children is used from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study to explore the structure of parental racial designation of mixed-race children. The variation in these parental designations of a variety of combinations of mixed-race children is described. Parental racial designations in the three most common majority-minority interracial couplings – White/Hispanic, Black/White, and Asian/White – are predicted using multinomial logistic regression models. The results may indicate a movement by the parents of these multiracial children away from minority status through racial labeling and towards “multiracial” and “white” – movements that are predicated upon social class. A critical discussion of the implications of these results considers the multifaceted reasons why parents are deciding to racially label their children in the ways that they do.

Read the entire paper here.

Parental Communication and Its Influence on Biracial Identity

Paper presented at the annual meeting of the NCA 93rd Annual Convention, TBA
Chicago, IL
2007-11-15

27 pages
 
Carolyn Brooks

The Biracial identity development process has long been overlooked in society and in research. Few models exist and those models in existence are mostly descriptive. This paper focused on one of the major influential factors in a child’s identity development process – parental communication. The Parental Racial Socialization Communication Model (PRSC) is proposed. A parent’s view of the child’s Biracialness and view of the world impact two dimensions that construct a parent’s communication style. Those two dimensions are the approach technique and valence of racial socialization. Four parental racial socialization styles are created from those two dimensions and are examined as predictors of the child’s ethnic identity label (border, protean, transcendent, and traditional) and their racial-esteem (feelings associated with the label). This model is helpful for counseling practitioners working with this population and for the parents of Biracial children who want information on how best to communicate with their children. The Parental Racial Socialization Communication Model is a needed addition to the limited literature on Biracial identity development.

Introduction

A topic that has gained much interest over the past few decades is that of Biracial identity. The 2000 Census, which was the first Census providing individuals with the option of identifying with more than one racial group, made it clear that the number of Biracial individuals in the United States is increasing rapidly (Buckley & Carter, 2004). Before this, the historical One-Drop Rule, which stated that an individual with as little as one drop of Black blood would be considered Black, was prevalent (Rockquemore & Brunsma, 2004). Therefore, some concluded that Black identity models were sufficient for Black/White Biracial individuals. In the 1980’s, researchers began to recognize that Biracial individuals experience racial issues differently than Blacks and have begun to delve into various investigations to see what factors influence Biracial identity development. (Rockquemore & Brunsma, 2004).

The concept “Bi-racial identity,” however, is rarely defined or understood in any consistent manner in the existing literature. In many ways, Biracial identity appears to be a primitive term. However, various researchers examine Biracial identity in quite dissimilar ways, suggesting that the term Biracial identity is far from being understood. I define Biracial identity as an “emergent category of identification” (Rockquemore, 1998, p. 199) – singular, border, protean, or transcendent – for people with parents that are of “two different socially designated racial groups” (Root, 1996, p. ix). This identification, from which one attempts to gain a sense of self, is a choice based on a continuous process of interactions with one’s family, social network, and society, which are largely influenced by one’s appearance. The central question to be explored here is how parents of Biracial children communicatively influence their child’s Biracial identity development.

This question is not one that appears in most of the literature on this topic. The majority of the models proposed in this field are descriptive, based on qualitative data, and lack process. Thus, an understanding of what factors and how the factors influence Biracial identity has not yet been achieved. Although prior work has primarily been descriptive, they provide a substantial foundation upon which more predictive models can be built (Poston, 1990). The literature on racial identity suggests that parental influence is important in the identity development of their children, as parents are the “primary socializing agents” of their children (Hughes, 2003, p. 15). Hence, the scope of this paper is to examine one of those factors – parental influence and develop a model that has a process and predictive power. The following review of the Biracial identity literature will reveal just how integral parental influence seems to be in the racial identity process for Biracial children…

Read the entire paper here.