The Latinos of Asia: How Filipino Americans Break the Rules of Race [Review]

Posted in Articles, Asian Diaspora, Book/Video Reviews, Latino Studies, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2017-01-06 01:49Z by Steven

The Latinos of Asia: How Filipino Americans Break the Rules of Race [Review]

Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
Volume 3, Issue 1, (January 2017)
pages 145-146
DOI: 10.1177/2332649216676788

Emily Walton, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire

Anthony Christian Ocampo, The Latinos of Asia: How Filipino Americans Break the Rules of Race. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2016. 272 pp. $22.95. ISBN 978-0-8047-9754-2

“For the first time ever, I felt like I was reading about my life,” my Filipina student told me when returning my copy of The Latinos of Asia. Her reaction highlights a major strength of Anthony Ocampo’s new book: It weaves an untold story. Though Filipinos are one of America’s longest-residing ethnic groups, academic and popular discourse provide little understanding of factors shaping their identity. Ocampo highlights the lived experiences of Filipino Americans as they navigate the multiple structures influencing their identities—legacies of colonization by both Spain and the United States, neighborhood environments, and educational institutions—structures that operate differently depending on one’s stage in the life course. On this front, The Latinos of Asia is a considerable achievement. Because of its broad accessibility, Ocampo’s book fills an important gap in our knowledge about an often-overlooked group while also providing a foundation for understanding the “unwritten rules of race.”

Ocampo’s book begins with a historical analysis of four centuries of colonial and dictatorial regimes in the Philippines. Having spent more than 300 years as a colony of Spain, today the Philippines is the only majority Roman Catholic society in Asia, Spanish words are embedded in Filipino languages, and there is a deep cultural focus on family as the center of social life. The subsequent 50 years of U.S. colonial rule resulted in continued subjection to extensive “civilization” projects for “America’s little brown brothers.” Most consequential was the complete overhaul of the educational system, which established English as the primary language of instruction. Independence from colonialism in 1946 was ultimately bittersweet, however, as it ushered in a period of poverty in the Philippines. Centuries of colonial rule had depleted the country’s rich natural resources, facilitated the underdevelopment of the national economy, and created a large pool of educated workers facing limited labor market opportunities. Dictator Ferdinand Marcos stepped in with promises of economic reform and established a labor migration program that funneled skilled Filipino workers throughout the world…

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National Colors: Racial Classification and the State in Latin America [Review]

Posted in Articles, Book/Video Reviews, Caribbean/Latin America, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, Social Science on 2017-01-06 01:16Z by Steven

National Colors: Racial Classification and the State in Latin America [Review]

Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
Volume 3, Issue 1, (January 2017)
pages 141-145
DOI: 10.1177/2332649216676789

Mark Q. Sawyer, Associate Professor of Political Science
University of California, Los Angeles

Mara Loveman, National Colors: Racial Classification and the State in Latin America. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2014. 376 pp. $26.95. ISBN 978-0-19-933736-1

States, and in particular Latin American states, have been classified by race. National Colors: Racial Classification and the State in Latin America by Mara Loveman seeks to answer how and why states do so. The book is remarkable for its depth and scope, analyzing several countries essentially from some of the earliest colonial attempts at measurement driven by central authorities to contemporary census policies that may follow the dictates of social movements and international organizations.

Loveman rightly argues that states do not make race out of nothing but rather pick recognizable signs of human variation and endow them with characteristics and also use these axes as a means of allocating social value, either formally or informally. Loveman notes there can be slippage between state, personal, and socially recognized categorization, given all parties have different ideologies and incentives with regard to categorization. However, out of the cacophony emerge dominant discourses and ideas that define race for groups of people that come to be defined as discrete populations. But the Latin American story is not without complications at various historical points. Different logics have driven state categorization, and the state may not formally categorize at all.

Mara Loveman argues that the census first reflected colonial issues and concerns. It buttressed national projects developed by state elites. Colonial administrators saw populations as “key resources” to be enumerated. Racial categories imposed by colonial authorities identified the civilized and the uncivilized and in many cases outlined castes and detailed racial-ethnic mixtures and hierarchies that in different forms have remained part of the racial lexicon in Latin America. Loveman follows what has become the growing orthodoxy applied to historical and contemporary race in Latin America. She correctly finds that colonial authorities constructed and maintained elaborate racial hierarchies, which related to forced labor, land dispossession, and social and economic discrimination. Categories thus had material and symbolic consequences.

Loveman joins scholars like Michael Hanchard, Edward Telles, Peter Wade, Melissa Nobles, Tianna Paschel, Christina Sue, and Tanya Golash-Boza, who document both the ways in which white elites maintained racial hierarchies using the state, and how blacks, Indians, and mixed-raced individuals resisted categorization and racial discrimination in big and small ways…

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Reevaluation of the Influence of Appearance and Reflected Appraisals for Mixed-Race Identity: The Role of Consistent Inconsistent Racial Perception

Posted in Articles, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, Social Science, United Kingdom, United States on 2016-10-26 14:03Z by Steven

Reevaluation of the Influence of Appearance and Reflected Appraisals for Mixed-Race Identity: The Role of Consistent Inconsistent Racial Perception

Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
October 2016, Volume 2, Number 4
pages 569-583
DOI: 10.1177/2332649216634740

Jennifer Patrice Sims, Adjunct Visiting Professor of Sociology
University of Wisconsin, River Falls

Developed from Cooley’s looking-glass self, the theory of reflected appraisals is frequently used to explain how appearance influences the racial identity development of mixed-race people. However, postulating that racial identity develops via the internalization of the perception of what race one thinks others assume him or her to be rests on the assumption that others consistently perceive the individual in the same manner. Although true for many people, the appearance of mixed-race people is often ambiguous and changeable and is perceived differently depending on context, which results in mixed-race people’s being ascribed to, and interacted with as if a member of, a variety of different races and ethnicities. This fact illuminates a gap in our knowledge of how appearance influences racial identity absent consistent perception by others. Drawing on 30 interviews with mixed-race adults from a variety of racial backgrounds in the United States and United Kingdom, the author examines not only the particular experiences with differential racial perception that mixed-race people have but also the mechanisms by which appearance influences identity when one experiences varying perceptions from others. This work ultimately extends the theory of reflected appraisals by advancing the idea that, under certain conditions, identity can form from experiences being consistently inconsistently perceived when that consistent inconsistency itself functions as a reflected appraisal of a particular identity.

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Part-Latinos and Racial Reporting in the Census: An Issue of Question Format?

Posted in Articles, Census/Demographics, Latino Studies, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2016-06-20 18:20Z by Steven

Part-Latinos and Racial Reporting in the Census: An Issue of Question Format?

Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
July 2016, Volume 2, Number 3
pages 289-306
DOI: 10.1177/2332649215613531

Michael Hajime Miyawaki, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Hendrix College, Conway, Arkansas

In this study, the author examines the racial reporting decisions of the offspring of Latino/non-Latino white, black, and Asian intermarriages, focusing on the meanings associated with their racial responses in the 2010 census and their thoughts on the separate race and Hispanic origin question format. Through interviews with 50 part-Latinos from New York, the findings demonstrated that their racial responses were shaped largely by question design, often due to the lack of Hispanic origins in the race question. Many added that their responses did not reflect their racial identity as “mixed” or as “both” Latino and white, black, or Asian. Most preferred “Latino” racial categories, and when given the option in a combined race and Hispanic origin question format, they overwhelmingly marked Latino in combination with white, black, or Asian. Part-Latinos’ preference for “Latino” racial options may stem from the racialization of Latinos as nonwhite and their desire to express all aspects of their mixed heritage identity. Moreover, the contrast in racial reporting in the 2010 census and the Census Bureau’s recently proposed “race or origin” question for the 2020 census could result in different population counts and interpretations of racial statistics.

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The Racism-Race Reification Process: A Mesolevel Political Economic Framework for Understanding Racial Health Disparities

Posted in Articles, Economics, Health/Medicine/Genetics, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2016-06-14 00:12Z by Steven

The Racism-Race Reification Process: A Mesolevel Political Economic Framework for Understanding Racial Health Disparities

Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
Published online before print 2016-02-08
DOI: 10.1177/2332649215626936

Abigail A. Sewell, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia

The author makes the argument that many racial disparities in health are rooted in political economic processes that undergird racial residential segregation at the mesolevel—specifically, the neighborhood. The dual mortgage market is considered a key political economic context whereby racially marginalized people are isolated into degenerative ecological environments. A multilevel root-cause conceptual framework, the racism-race reification process (R3p), is proposed and preliminarily tested to delineate how institutional conditions shape the health of racially marginalized individuals through the reification of race. After reviewing and critiquing the conceptual and theoretical roots of R3p, the key components of the synergistic framework are detailed and applied to clarify extant understandings of the upstream (i.e., macrolevel) factors informing racial health disparities. Using aggregated data from the 1994 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act and Neighborhood Change Database merged at the mesolevel (i.e., the neighborhood cluster) with microlevel data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, exploratory analysis is presented that links dual mortgage market political economies to ethnoracial residential segregation at the mesolevel and to childhood health inequalities at the microlevel. The author concludes by considering how racial inequality is an artifact of the political economic reality of race and racism manifested from the neighborhood-level down.

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Race & Racisms: A Critical Approach [Gabriel Review]

Posted in Articles, Book/Video Reviews, Media Archive, Social Science, Teaching Resources on 2016-05-04 21:09Z by Steven

Race & Racisms: A Critical Approach [Gabriel Review]

Tanya Maria Golash-Boza, Race and Racisms: A Critical Approach (New York, London: Oxford University Press, 2014)

Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
Published online before print 2016-04-22
DOI: 10.1177/2332649216645801

Ricardo Gabriel
The Graduate Center
City University of New York

Explaining to students that race is a social construction is one of the biggest challenges faced by all who teach courses on race and ethnicity, humble adjuncts and seasoned professors alike. Furthermore, the constructed and fabricated aspects of race must be balanced with how race and racism have shaped, and continue to shape, our society in concrete ways. Is race “real”? Does systemic racism still exist, or didn’t the civil rights movement take care of all of that? How can there still be racism if we elected a Black president? What about personal responsibility? Even if racism does exist, what can we do about it? These are just some of the questions that typically arise when discussing race and racism in the classroom. How do we explain the continued prevalence of racial inequality in the twenty-first century, in a society that some claim is now “post-“racial? And how do we discuss these issues with students in a way that both stretches their sociological imaginations and encourages a racial justice praxis?

Golash-Boza’s brief edition of Race & Racisms: A Critical Approach takes up this important challenge. Written for the undergraduate*level instructor, its main objective is to “engage students in significant questions related to racial dynamics in the United States and around the world.” From beginning to end. Golash-Boza provides a balanced mix of empirical data, rich theory, and personal narratives as well as useful pedagogical features such as the “Thinking about Racial Justice” sections that facilitate critical thinking.

Chapter 1 provides a concise summary of the scholarship on the origin of the idea that humans can be separated into different racial categories. The greatest strength of this opening chapter is the way it sets the tone for the rest of the book by emphasizing that racial taxonomy and racial ideologies were invented as a justification for colonialism, genocide. and slavery…

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On the Boundaries of Race: Identification of Mixed-heritage Children in the United States, 1960 to 2010

Posted in Articles, Asian Diaspora, Census/Demographics, Media Archive, Native Americans/First Nation, Social Science, United States on 2016-03-18 01:56Z by Steven

On the Boundaries of Race: Identification of Mixed-heritage Children in the United States, 1960 to 2010

Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
Published online before print 2016-03-17
DOI: 10.1177/2332649216632546

Carolyn A. Liebler, Professor of Sociology
University of Minnesota

Socially constructed race groups have boundaries that define their membership. I study temporal trends and group-specific patterns in race and ancestry responses provided for children of interracial marriages. Common responses indicate contemporary definitions of race groups (and perhaps emerging groups); uncommon responses reveal socially defined limits of race group membership. I leverage dense, nonpublic, Census Bureau data from 1960 to 2010 to do this and include a more diverse set of families, a longer time span, and more accurate estimates than prior research. I find that the location of race group boundaries varies over time and across 11 distinct family types. Since mixed-heritage responses became possible in 1980, they have been common in most groups. Part Asians have almost always been reported as multiracial or mixed ancestry. A number of (non-Asian) mixed-heritage children are described as monoracial on the census form, particularly children with American Indian heritage. Over time, part whites are decreasingly reported as monoracially white (white race with no nonwhite ancestry). Black heritage is reported for part blacks, but monoracial black responses became nonmodal by 1980. Part Pacific Islanders show similarities to part Asians and part American Indians. Given the predominance of multiracial and mixed-ancestry Asian responses since 1980, Asian multiracial may be an emerging socially recognized race category. Black multiracial shows a similar pattern. Monoracial responses (especially common among white–American Indians and black–American Indians) create important but hard-to-measure complexity in groups’ compositions.

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A Critical and Comprehensive Sociological Theory of Race and Racism

Posted in Articles, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, Social Science on 2016-02-24 23:05Z by Steven

A Critical and Comprehensive Sociological Theory of Race and Racism

Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
Published online before print 2016-02-23
DOI: 10.1177/2332649216632242

Tanya Golash-Boza, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of California, Merced

This article contests the contention that sociology lacks a sound theoretical approach to the study of race and racism, instead arguing that a comprehensive and critical sociological theory of race and racism exists. This article outlines this theory of race and racism, drawing from the work of key scholars in and around the field. This consideration of the state of race theory in sociology leads to four contentions regarding what a critical and comprehensive theory of race and racism should do: (1) bring race and racism together into the same analytical framework; (2) articulate the connections between racist ideologies and racist structures; (3) lead us towards the elimination of racial oppression; and (4) include an intersectional analysis.

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Rethinking Multiracial Formation in the United States: Toward an Intersectional Approach

Posted in Articles, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2015-12-16 09:06Z by Steven

Rethinking Multiracial Formation in the United States: Toward an Intersectional Approach

Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
Volume 2, Number 1 (January 2016)
pages 27-41
DOI: 10.1177/2332649215591864

Celeste Vaughan Curington
Department of Sociology
University of Massachusetts, Amherst

This article forwards an integrative multiracial formation perspective that analyzes race, class, and gender as complex social systems, predicated on racism, patriarchy, and economic exploitation. I apply this new framework to three distinct racial projects—slavery, miscegenation law, and the multiracial movement of the 1990s. An analysis of the linkages between the several racial projects that have produced multiraciality over time shows the larger context in which those in power were able to shape the meaning of multiraciality in a way that was created by and constitutive of privilege and power at the intersections of class, gender, and racial hierarchies in the United States.

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Probing Change in Racial Self-identification: A Focus on Children of Immigrants

Posted in Articles, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2015-11-08 13:39Z by Steven

Probing Change in Racial Self-identification: A Focus on Children of Immigrants

Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
Published online before print 2015-10-26
DOI: 10.1177/2332649215611685

Thomas J. Mowen, Assistant Professor
Department of Criminal Justice
University of Wyoming

Richard Stansfield, Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice
Rutgers the State University of New Jersey, Camden

Recent studies have shown that racial identification varies across context and time. Although sociologists recognize many contextual factors associated with racial group membership, relatively little attention has been given to understanding the specific factors—such as self-perceptions, socioeconomic incentives, and family pressures—that relate to changes in racial self-identification, especially among children of immigrants individuals who may have a relatively high propensity for inconsistency in racial identification. Using two waves of data from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study and guided by social identity theory, the authors seek to (1) explore the prevalence of changes in racial self-identification over time within this sample and (2) understand the mechanisms that may contribute to changes in self-identification. The results indicate that self-esteem, self-worth, and family cohesion are related to an individual’s reporting a change in racial identification between waves. Socioeconomic status and depression are not related to changes in racial identification.

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