Mixed Race Studies

Construction and initial validation of the Multiracial Experiences Measure (MEM)

Journal of Counseling Psychology
Volume 63, Issue 2, March 2016
pages 198-209
DOI: 10.1037/cou0000117

Hyung Chol Yoo, Associate Professor of Asian Pacific American Studies
Arizona State University

Kelly F. Jackson, Associate Professor of Social Work
Arizona State University, Phoenix

Rudy P. Guevarra Jr., Asian Pacific American Studies
Arizona State University, Tempe

Matthew J. Miller

Blair Harrington

This article describes the development and validation of the Multiracial Experiences Measure (MEM): a new measure that assesses uniquely racialized risks and resiliencies experienced by individuals of mixed racial heritage. Across 2 studies, there was evidence for the validation of the 25-item MEM with 5 subscales including Shifting Expressions, Perceived Racial Ambiguity, Creating Third Space, Multicultural Engagement, and Multiracial Discrimination. The 5-subscale structure of the MEM was supported by a combination of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Evidence of criterion-related validity was partially supported with MEM subscales correlating with measures of racial diversity in one’s social network, color-blind racial attitude, psychological distress, and identity conflict. Evidence of discriminant validity was supported with MEM subscales not correlating with impression management. Implications for future research and suggestions for utilization of the MEM in clinical practice with multiracial adults are discussed.

Read or purchase the article here.

Study finds mixed-race individuals are fastest-growing demographic group, most discriminated against

The Daily Targum: Serving the Rutgers community since 1869. Independent since 1980.
2016-03-31

Samantha Karas

The fastest growing racial group in the United States is mixed-race individuals, but they are also the ones experiencing increasing amounts of prejudice from white people, according to a study conducted by Jonathan Freeman, an assistant professor at New York University.

White individuals with lower interracial exposure tend to exhibit greater prejudice against mixed-race persons, according to the study run through NYU’s Department of Psychology.

“(These individuals) visually process racially ambiguous faces in a more difficult and unpredictable fashion, and this unstable experience translates into negative biases against mixed-race people,” Freeman said in a press release.

The study is interested in exploring attitudes towards mixed-race individuals as a function of racial exposure, said Diana Sanchez, a co-author on the study and an associate professor in the Department of Psychology…

…Laura Chapas, a School of Arts and Sciences senior, said she would assume people in the Rutgers—New Brunswick area would be less biased due to the diverse population.

“What that study indicated is a shame but I’m not surprised that it’s true,” she said.

People are so quick to judge what they don’t understand, she said, and race cannot be confined to just black or white.

“I think those with lower interracial exposure may have a hard time accepting that,” Chapas said.

Dana Campbell, a School of Arts and Sciences senior, said she was not surprised with the findings of the study.

“I agree (with the conclusion). I think that when people who aren’t exposed to other races only see those races as the media portrays them,” Campbell said. “Without any personal experience people have to rely on movies, books, the new, etc. to try to understand race.”

People can confront their own biases by understanding the sources of bias, she said…

Read the entire article here.

‘A black president, yay’: 106-year-old finally meets the Obamas, dances like a schoolgirl

The Washington Post
2016-02-22

Michael E. Miller, Morning Mix Reporter

Virginia McLaurin’s life isn’t easy. Last winter, she battled bedbugs in her D.C. apartment. This year, snowstorm “Snowzilla” trapped her inside for several days.

She also happens to be almost 107 years old.

None of that mattered last week when the centenarian stepped — nay, scampered — into the White House to meet President Obama and the first lady.

With the leader of the free world in one hand and Michelle Obama in the other, McLaurin danced with sheer and utter joy, shaking her hips like a 16-year-old and flashing a smile as bright as the camera flashes going off all around her.

“She’s 106?” the president asked incredulously.

“No, you are not,” scoffed the first lady, before adding: “I want to be like you when I grow up.”

The uplifting moment was also heavy with history, though. After her super-senior shuffle, McLaurin suddenly got serious.

“I thought I would never live to get in the White House,” said McLaurin, who was born in 1909 in South Carolina, worked as a seamstress for most of her life and has been a widow for more than 70 years.

But her amazement went beyond merely making it inside the hallowed building. She was particularly bowled over to be meeting America’s first African American president…

Read the entire article here.

Where We Live Affects Our Bias Against Mixed-Race Individuals, Psychology Study Finds

NYU News
New York University
2016-03-14

Press Contact: James Devitt | (212) 998-6808

Whites living in areas where they are less exposed to those of other races have a harder time categorizing mixed-race individuals than do Whites with greater interracial exposure, a condition that is associated with greater prejudice against mixed-race individuals, a new experimental study shows.

For decades, research has shown that Whites with lower interracial exposure show greater prejudice against Blacks, but the new study finds they also show a greater prejudice against mixed-race individuals—the fastest growing racial group in the United States.

“Our findings show that White individuals with lower interracial exposure tend to exhibit greater prejudice against mixed-race individuals,” explains Jonathan Freeman, an assistant professor in New York University’s Department of Psychology and the study’s lead author. “The results suggest that this bias arises in individuals with lower interracial exposure because they visually process racially ambiguous faces in a more difficult and unpredictable fashion, and this unstable experience translates into negative biases against mixed-race people.”

A video outlining the research may be viewed here.

The study’s other authors included Kristin Pauker, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and Diana Sanchez, an associate professor of psychology at Rutgers University.

The research, which appears in the journal Psychological Science, considered two national samples totaling approximately 350 subjects. It determined subjects’ interracial exposure by matching Census data with their zip codes. To gauge subjects’ responses, the researchers relied on an innovative mouse-tracking technique that uses an individual’s hand movements to reveal unconscious cognitive processes. Unlike surveys, in which individuals can consciously alter their responses, this technique requires respondents to make split-second decisions about others where an unconscious—and more honest—preference can be uncovered through their hand-motion trajectory…

Read the entire article here.

A conversation on what it means to be mixed race

New Day Northwest
KING TV 5
Seattle, Washington
2016-03-30

Margaret Larson, Host

The last Census report taken in 2010 showed that the population identifying themselves as multi-racial grew by 32% over the census in 2000.

One local author is raising awareness with a new book called ‘Raising Mixed Race: Multiracial Asian Children In a Post-Racial World‘.

Sharon Chang visited New Day NW to talk about what it means to be mixed race in our current culture.

To learn more about Sharon or buy her book, visit her blog.

Watch the interview here.

Who’s the most photographed American man of the 19th Century? HINT: It’s not Lincoln…

The Washington Post
2016-03-15

Jennifer Beeson Gregory

Born into slavery in 1818, Frederick Douglass would become one of the most well-known abolitionists, orators, and writers of his time. He understood and heralded not only the power of the written or spoken word, but also the power of the visual image — especially, his own likeness. He therefore sat for portraits wherever and whenever he could. As a result, Douglass was photographed more than any other American of his era: 160 distinct images (mostly portraits) have survived, more than Abraham Lincoln at 126. Many of these rare, historically significant images are published for the first time in “Picturing Frederick Douglass: An Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth Century’s Most Photographed American,” by John Stauffer, Zoe Trodd and Celeste-Marie Bernier.

This book shows all 160 photos and delves into Douglass’s life and passions, including photography. In his writings, Douglass praises Louis Daguerre, who invented the daguerreotype, which made the developing process easier and cheaper, and in turn made photography available to the masses. By the mid-19th century, there were portrait studios all over the Northern United States. Almost everyone in a free state could afford to have their picture taken — even non-whites. Douglass therefore called photography a “democratic art.”…

Unknown Photographer, Honeymoon with Helen Pitts in Niagara Falls, N.Y., August 1884. Albumen print (Frederick Douglass National Historic Site/National Park Service)

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Preference and prejudice: Does intermarriage erode negative ethno-racial attitudes between groups in Spain?

Ethnicities
Published online before print 2016-03-28
DOI: 10.1177/1468796816638404

Dan Rodríguez-García, Associate Professor
Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology
Autonomous University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

Miguel Solana-Solana
Department of Geography
Autonomous University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

Miranda J. Lubbers, Ramón y Cajal Researcher
Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology
Autonomous University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

This paper challenges the idea – rooted in classic assimilation theory – that intermarriage clearly erodes social and ethno-racial boundaries and negative attitudes between groups. Drawing on narratives from 58 immigrants of seven different origin countries residing in Catalonia, Spain, who are in romantic partnerships with Spanish-born people, we focus on preferences and prejudices related to mixing. We find that the members of exogamous couples both suffer social discrimination regarding the crossing of ethnocultural borders, particularly from their respective family members – a rejection that is based on negative stereotypes and preconceptions linked to the partner’s origin, phenotype or ethnocultural characteristics, such as religion, in intersection with gender. More significantly, we also find that ethno-racial prejudices (particularly when referring to marriage preferences for the respondents and their children) and discriminatory attitudes (towards one’s own and other immigrant minority groups) also exist among intermarried couples themselves. In sum, we question the role of mixed unions as a diluter of differences and an accelerator of integration.

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Haiti, the Archive, and the Historical Imagination

African American Intellectual History Society
2016-03-13

Brandon Bryd, Assistant Professor of History
Mississippi State University

John Mercer Langston Mathew Brady – Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Brady-Handy Photograph Collection. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cwpbh.00690. CALL NUMBER: LC-BH83- 30771

In the fall of 1877, John Mercer Langston laid on his bed on board the British steamer “Andes.” He was sea-sick and could not leave his cabin. Again. The new U.S. minister and consul general to Haiti was three days into his first trip at sea and so far the voyage from New York City to Cap Haïtien had been miserable.

But the tide would turn. After passing Cape Hatteras, the admitted “novice in sea-faring life” recovered. Langston “enjoyed the trip thereafter with a zest and pleasure real and inspiriting.” He became filled with a thrilling realization: soon he would land in Haiti. In a few short days, he would “behold now for the first time . . . negro nationality in harmonious, honored activity.”

Childhood lessons about Toussaint Louverture did not prepare Langston for his arrival in Haiti. They could not. One week after leaving New York, Langston was stunned when the British captain obeyed orders from Haitian men who came on board the “Andes” to direct it into the harbor. Put simply, he “had never seen up to that time men of their complexion holding such positions and performing such duties.”…

Read the entire article here.

However, though my mum’s Irish, my father is Nigerian. I am not white! This fact, one that I had never even considered before I returned to the land of a thousand welcomes, now became the defining feature of my existence. I remember that first week or so back in Dublin, when I was sent out to play with the local kids. One of the first rhymes I heard was: “Eeny meeeny miny moe. Catch a nigger by da toe.” Who, or what in the hell was “nigger”, I wondered? I soon learned.

Emma Dabiri, “I’m Irish but I’m not white. Why is that still a problem as we celebrate the Easter Rising?,” The Guardian, March 29, 2016. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/29/irish-white-easter-rising-ireland-racism.

“But I am saying, in this novel, as in other works, the lessons I have learned from my life as a mother, now a grandmother, as a teacher of African American literature and a writer about race: that so-called mixedness means little in American history. As I said above, many enslaved Americans, including the great Frederick Douglass, were “mixed” due to rape or forced sexual unions, and nevertheless remained enslaved.” —Jane Lazarre

Claire Potter, “Rejoining the Parts: A Conversation with Jane Lazarre About Race, Fiction, American History and Her New Novel, Inheritance,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, November 15, 2011. http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/tenuredradical/2011/11/1432/.