Black or Biracial? Who Gets to Decide?

Posted in Articles, Barack Obama, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2010-09-05 19:39Z by Steven

Black or Biracial? Who Gets to Decide?

The Huffington Post
2009-03-04

Abby L. Ferber, Associate Professor, Director of the Matrix Center and Co-Director of Women’s and Ethnic Studies
University of Colorado, Colorado Springs

Is Obama Black? Biracial? And why do we care so much? A new book by George Yancey and Richard Lewis, Jr., Interracial Families: Current Concepts and Controversies, is a nice primer on the subject, and argues that an historical context is necessary for understanding why questions of racial identity are so heated in the U.S.

I had the good fortune recently of sitting down and discussing the issue with two young, bi-racial women, both sociologists, who have had ample opportunity to reflect upon this issue both personally and intellectually. We can all learn from their experience and insight. Why is the issue so contentious? According to Chandra Waring “It is difficult for black and white people to understand that when they label black/white biracial people as black or as white, they are asking—no, telling—that person to deny, ignore or even disown one parent.”…

…Chandra, like Obama, has one black parent and one white parent. While she self-identifies as both black and white, she explains “people still see me as black and that is because society teaches us that black and white equals black (unless the biracial person can pass, then maybe, they can be white). President Obama is a prime example of this ridiculous racial mathematics. He is just as white as he is black, yet he is celebrated and overwhelmingly understood to be black. Obama illustrates how being biracial works—or does not work—because he was raised by his white mother and white grandparents, yet still is viewed as black. If a biracial American who was raised entirely by his white family is not acknowledged as half white, who will be?”…

Read the entire article here.

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Interracial Families: Current Concepts and Controversies

Posted in Books, Family/Parenting, Media Archive, Monographs, Social Science on 2010-08-22 06:40Z by Steven

Interracial Families: Current Concepts and Controversies

Routledge
2008-11-26
176 pages
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-415-99034-9

George Alan Yancey, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of North Texas

Richard Lewis, Jr., Special Assistant to the President and Associate Professor of Sociology
University of Texas, San Antonio

A unique book offering both a research overview and practical advice for its readers, this text allows students to gain a solid understanding of the research that has been generated on several important issues surrounding multiracial families, including intimate relations, family dynamics, transracial adoptions, and other topics of personal and scholarly interest.

Table of Contents

  • List of Figures and Tables
  • Chapter 1: Introduction
  • Chapter 2: Overview of Intergroup Relations and Their Impact on Interethnic and Interracial Marriages
  • Chapter 3: Interracial Dating
  • Chapter 4: Interracial Marriage
  • Chapter 5: Multiracial Identity
  • Chapter 6: The Multiracial Movement and the U.S. Census Controversy
  • Chapter 7: Transracial Adoption
  • Chapter 8: Multiracial Families: Conclusions and Looking Ahead
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
  • Index
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