“IT’S LIKE WE HAVE AN ‘IN’ ALREADY”: The Racial Capital of Black/White Biracial Americans

Posted in Articles, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2017-01-08 00:45Z by Steven

“IT’S LIKE WE HAVE AN ‘IN’ ALREADY”: The Racial Capital of Black/White Biracial Americans

Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race
Published online: 2016-12-19
DOI: 10.1017/S1742058X16000357

Chandra D. L. Waring, Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology, Criminology and Anthropology
University of Wisconsin, Whitewater

The increasing bi/multiracial1 community in the United States has generated much literature about racial identity and social psychological well-being. Drawing on sixty in-depth interviews with Black/White biracial Americans, this paper shifts the theoretical focus from identity and well-being to the conceptual development of how race shapes bi/multiracial Americans’ social interactions with both Whites and Blacks. The majority of participants reported interacting differently when in predominately White settings versus predominately Black settings. I offer the concept of “racial capital” to highlight the repertoire of racial resources (knowledge, experiences, meaning, and language) that biracial Americans use to negotiate racial boundaries in a highly racialized society. These findings reveal the continuing significance of racial boundaries in a population that is often celebrated as evidence of racial harmony in the United States.

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Latina/o Whitening? Which Latina/os Self-Classify as White and Report Being Perceived as White by Other Americans?

Posted in Articles, Census/Demographics, Latino Studies, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2016-02-26 20:57Z by Steven

Latina/o Whitening? Which Latina/os Self-Classify as White and Report Being Perceived as White by Other Americans?

Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race
Volume 12, Issue 01, Spring 2015
pages 119-136
DOI: 10.1017/S1742058X14000241

Nicholas Vargas, Assistant Professor of Sociology; Latino Studies
University of Florida

Some scholars argue that Latina/os in the United States may soon become White, much like the supposed Whitening of Eastern European immigrant groups in the early twentieth century. High rates of White racial identification on surveys among Latina/os is one explanation provided for this assertion. However, personal identification is but one element of racial boundary maintenance. It is when personal identification is externally validated that it is most closely associated with group-based experiences. This article maps components of the White-Latino racial boundary that may be permeable to White expansion by examining conditions under which Latina/os self-identify as White and report that they are externally classified as White by other Americans. Employing novel data from the 2006 Portraits of American Life Study, this article shows that nearly 40% of Latina/os sometimes self-identify as White, yet a much smaller proportion—only 6%—report being externally classified as White by others. Moreover, logistic regression analyses suggest that for those with light phenotypical features and high levels of socioeconomic status, the odds of reported external Whitening are increased. Interestingly, phenotypically light Latina/os with low-socioeconomic-status levels have low probabilities of reporting external classification as White when compared to their phenotypically light and high-socioeconomic-status counterparts, suggesting that the combination of both skin color and class may be central to the White-Latino racial boundary. Results also indicate that many who report external Whitening do not prefer to self-identify as White. In sum, multidimensional measures of racial classification indicate that only a very small minority of Latina/os may be “becoming White” in ways that some previous researchers have predicted.

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A Change Has Come: Race, Politics, and the Path to the Obama Presidency

Posted in Articles, Barack Obama, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, Social Science, United States on 2015-11-27 00:25Z by Steven

A Change Has Come: Race, Politics, and the Path to the Obama Presidency

Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race
Volume 6, Issue 01, Spring 2009
pages 1-14
DOI: 10.1017/S1742058X09090018

Lawrence D. Bobo, W. E. B. Du Bois Professor of the Social Sciences
Harvard University

Michael C. Dawson, John D. MacArthur Professor of Political Science
University of Chicago

Has Barack Obama’s success transformed the racial divide? Did he somehow transcend or help bring to an end centuries of racial division in the United States? Did he deliberately run a strategically race-neutral, race-evading campaign? Did his race and ingrained American racism constrain the reach of his success? Have we arrived at that postracial moment that has long been the stuff of dreams and high oratory? Or was the outcome of the 2008 presidential election driven entirely by nonracial factors, such as a weak Republican ticket, an incumbent party saddled with defending an unpopular war, and a worsening economic crisis? It is at once too simple and yet entirely appropriate to say that the answers to these questions are, in a phrase, complicated matters. These complexities can, however, be brought into sharper focus.

Read the entire article here.

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SCIENTIFIC RACISM REDUX? The Many Lives of a Troublesome Idea

Posted in Articles, Book/Video Reviews, Health/Medicine/Genetics, Media Archive, Social Science on 2015-07-23 01:40Z by Steven

SCIENTIFIC RACISM REDUX? The Many Lives of a Troublesome Idea

Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race
Volume 12, Issue 1, Spring 2015
pages 187-199
DOI: 10.1017/S1742058X1500003X

Ann Morning, Associate Professor of Sociology
New York University

Nicholas Wade, A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History. New York: Penguin Press, 2014, 278 pages, ISBN 978-1-5942-0446-3. $27.95.

What, if anything, does Nicholas Wade’s A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes. Race and Human History have to offer sociologists?

For most of us, the answer is “nothing.” Because simply put, this is not scholarly work. A Troublesome Inheritance is not an empirically-grounded monograph that offers substantiated arguments, but rather a trade book targeting general readers who are probably not interested in the literature reviews and citations that academics expect. All kinds of claims are made without reference to any supporting evidence or analysis. As a result, the book cannot serve as a source of data or credible theory regarding race, culture, social structure, or the relationship of genes to human behaviors.

But for sociologists of knowledge and of science, A Troublesome Inheritance is a gold mine. These scholars will no doubt delight in discovering the echoes of eighteenth-century race science, nineteenth-century polygenetic and Romantic thought, twentieth-century eugenics and development theory, as well as enduring sexism and the occasional tirade against “Marxists.” This book may also well become a classic for students of racial ideology, right up there with Herrnstein and Murray’s The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (1994). Both books are poignant cultural artifacts that testify to the ways in which biological science is invoked in the United States to shore up belief in races and to justify inequality between groups…

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Racial ‘Boundary-policing’: Perceptions of Black-White Interracial Couples in Los Angeles and Rio de Janeiro

Posted in Articles, Brazil, Caribbean/Latin America, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2014-10-16 18:15Z by Steven

Racial ‘Boundary-policing’: Perceptions of Black-White Interracial Couples in Los Angeles and Rio de Janeiro

Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race
Volume 10 / Issue 01 / Spring 2013
pages 179-203
DOI: 10.1017/S1742058X13000118

Chinyere K. Osuji, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Camden

As people who cross racial boundaries in the family formation process, the experiences of interracial couples can actually reveal the nature of racial boundaries within and across societies. I draw on in-depth qualitative interviews with eighty-seven respondents in interracial Black and White couples in Los Angeles and Rio de Janeiro to compare perceptions of public stigmatization by outsiders, a term I call “boundary-policing.” I find that couples in Los Angeles perceive gendered, Black individuals as perpetrators of this boundary-policing. In Rio de Janeiro, couples perceive regionalized and classed, White perpetrators. These findings suggest that in the United States and Brazil, racial boundaries are intertwined with class and gender boundaries to shape negotiation of boundary-policing in the two contexts. This analysis builds on previous studies of ethnoracial boundaries by showing how individuals reinforce and negotiate them through interpersonal relations. It demonstrates the similarities and differences in the negotiation and reinforcement of racial boundaries in the two sites.

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Clearly, genealogy alone does not dictate racial identification.

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2013-07-14 16:46Z by Steven

What remains perplexing is that given the history of racial mixing, the Census Bureau estimates that about 75-90% of Black Americans are ancestrally multiracial, yet even today, only 7% choose to identify as such (Davis, 2001; Lee and Bean, 2010). Clearly, genealogy alone does not dictate racial identification. Given that the “one-drop rule” of hypodescent is no longer legally codified, why does the rate of multiracial reporting among Blacks remain relatively low?…

Jennifer Lee and Frank D. Bean, “A Postracial Society or A Diversity Paradox? Race, Immigration, and Multiraciality in the Twenty-First Century,” Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, Volume 9, Issue 2, (Fall 2012). 423. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1742058X12000161.

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A Postracial Society or A Diversity Paradox? Race, Immigration, and Multiraciality in the Twenty-First Century

Posted in Articles, Census/Demographics, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2013-07-13 23:34Z by Steven

A Postracial Society or A Diversity Paradox? Race, Immigration, and Multiraciality in the Twenty-First Century

Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race
Volume 9, Issue 2, Fall 2012
pages 419-437
DOI: 10.1017/S1742058X12000161

Jennifer Lee, Professor of Sociology
University of California, Irvine

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

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Southern states decreed that one drop of African American blood made a multiracial individual Black, and even today, multiracial Blacks are typically perceived as being Black only, underscoring the enduring legacy and entrenchment of the one-drop rule of hypodescent. But how are Asians and Latinos with mixed ancestry perceived? Based on analyses of census data and in-depth interviews with interracial couples with children and multiracial adults, I find that the children of Asian-White and Latino-White couples are much less constrained by strict racial categories. Racial identification often shifts according to situation, and individuals can choose to identify along ethnic lines, as White, or as American. Like their Irish and Italian immigrant forerunners, the Asian and Latino ethnicities of these multiracial Americans are adopting the symbolic character of European, White ethnicity. We appear to be entering a new era of race relations in which the boundaries of Whiteness are beginning to expand to include new non-White groups such as Asians and Latinos, with multiracial Asians and Latinos at the head of the queue. However, even amidst the new racial and ethnic diversity, these processes continue to shut out African Americans, illustrating a pattern of “Black exceptionalism” and the emergence of a Black–non-Black divide in the twenty-first century.

Read or purchase the article here. (Read for free until 2016-03-04!)

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BLACK, TRIGUEÑO, WHITE…? Shifting Racial Identification among Puerto Ricans

Posted in Articles, Caribbean/Latin America, Census/Demographics, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2012-05-02 02:17Z by Steven

BLACK, TRIGUEÑO, WHITE…? Shifting Racial Identification among Puerto Ricans

Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race
Volume 2, Issue 2 (2005)
pages 267-285
DOI: 10.1017/S1742058X05050186

Carlos Vargas-Ramos, Research Associate
Center for Puerto Rican Studies
Hunter College, City University of New York

The use of U.S.-oriented racial categories in the 2000 decennial census conducted by the Census Bureau in Puerto Rico provided results that may not accurately reflect social dynamics in Puerto Rico, more generally, and inequality based on race, in particular. This work explores how variations in racial typologies used for the collection of data in Puerto Rico and the methodology used to collect such data produce widely ranging results on racial identification that in turn affect the measurement of the impact of “race” on social outcomes. Specifically, the analysis focuses on how the omission of locally based and meaningful racial terminology from census questionnaires leads to results on racial identification that differ markedly from those found in survey data that include such terminology. In addition, differing strategies to record the racial identification of Puerto Ricans on the island (i.e., self-identification versus identification by others), lead to variations that highlight the changing effect of race on socioeconomic status. Who identifies a person’s race affects analyses of how race affects the life chances of individuals in Puerto Rico.

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Walter White and Passing

Posted in Articles, Biography, History, Media Archive, Passing, United States on 2011-10-12 21:04Z by Steven

Walter White and Passing

Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race
Volume 2, Issue 1 (2005)
pages 17-27
DOI: 10.1017/S1742058X05050034

Kenneth R. Janken, Professor, African and Afro-American Studies
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Walter White, the blond, blue-eyed Atlantan, was a voluntary Negro, that is, an African American who appears to be White but chooses to live in the Black world and identify with its experiences. He joined the NAACP national leadership in 1918 as assistant secretary and became secretary in 1931, serving at this post until his death in 1955. His tenure was marked by an effective public antilynching campaign and organizational stability and growth during the Depression years and by controversy over his leadership style. For him, posing as a Caucasian—and then telling all who would listen about his escapades—had three interrelated purposes. First, he developed inside information about mob psychology and mob violence, publicity of which was critical to the NAACP’s campaign against lynching. Second, White hoped to show Whites in particular the fallacy of racial stereotyping and racial categorization. Third, by emphasizing the dangers he courted—and even embellishing on them—he enhanced his racial bona fides at key times when his Black critics called into question his leadership.

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Reconceptualizing the Measurement of Multiracial Status for Health Research in the United States

Posted in Articles, Health/Medicine/Genetics, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, United States on 2011-05-18 04:28Z by Steven

Reconceptualizing the Measurement of Multiracial Status for Health Research in the United States

Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race
Volume 8, Issue 1 (2011) (Special Issue: Racial Inequality and Health)
pages 25-36
DOI: 10.1017/S1742058X11000038

Meghan Woo, Senior Analyst
Abt Associates Inc.

S. Bryn Austina, Director of Fellowship Research Training in the Division of Adolescent/Young Adult Medicine
Children’s Hospital, Boston

David R. Williams, Florence and Laura Norman Professor of Public Health; Professor of African and African American Studies and of Sociology
Harvard University

Gary G. Bennett, Associate Professor of Psychology and Global Health
Duke University

The assessment of multiracial status in U.S. health research is fraught with challenges that limit our ability to enumerate and study this population. This paper reconceptualizes the assessment of multiracial status through the development of a model with three dimensions: mixed ancestry multiracial status, self-identified multiracial status, and socially assigned multiracial status. We present challenges to studying multiracial populations and provide recommendations for improving the assessment of multiracial status in health research.

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