Mixed Race Studies

Navigating my way through mixed race identity

news.com.au
Surry Hills, New South Wales, Australia
2017-06-27

Carolyn Cage

Carolyn Cage pictured as a newborn with her dad Ray and her mum Doreen. Picture: Carolyn Cage

IF THERE were an algorithm that could formulate a person’s most asked question, mine would be “what are you?” Society has a habit of labelling people like soup cans in a kitchen and for as long as I can remember, one of the first questions people ask during initial conversation is usually in relation to my racial ambiguity.

Replying with “I am Australian” only ever leads to “but what are you really?” Learning how to tolerate ignorance and pass it off as curiosity, I take a deep breath and pull out the pie chart. I was born in Australia, but my mother originates from Malaysia and is of Chinese heritage. My father is of Anglo background, mixed with German and Belgium descent but was born in Sydney.

The responses tend to be generic ranging from how exotic that is, how adorable mixed babies are or how I am the spitting image of their other mixed raced friend. Accepting that it is intended as a compliment, at the same time it is dehumanising and reduces my identity to some sort of novelty. Most of the time it leaves me unscathed, but the more I am asked “what am I”, the more of a hindrance it becomes…

Read the entire article here.

Biracial Group Membership Scale

Journal of Black Psychology
Volume 43, Issue 5 (2017-07-01)
pages 435-450
DOI: 10.1177/0095798416657260

Marisa G. Franco
Department of Psychology
University of Maryland, College Park

Olivia L. Holmes
Department of Psychology
University of Illinois, Chicago

With individuals of mixed African heritage increasingly identifying as Biracial, it is important to determine whether Black people continue to perceive Biracial people as members of their community. The status of Biracial individuals within the Black community has implications for the political power of the Black community and also for Biracial individuals’ racial identity development and well-being. Thus, the purpose of this study was to create a psychometrically sound measure to assess the degree to which Black people accept Biracial people as members of the Black community: the Biracial Group Membership Scale. Factor analyses were conducted with 328 Black adults. Exploratory factor analysis revealed two factors: Rejection of Biracial People and Forced Black Identity. A confirmatory factor analysis provided support for the initial factor structure. The scale related to the Attitudes Toward Multiracial Children Scale, essentialism, and items assessing interactions with Biracial individuals. Limitations, suggestions for future research, and implications are discussed.

Read or purchase the article here.

Red and Yellow, Black and Brown: Decentering Whiteness in Mixed Race Studies

Rutgers University Press
278 pages
2017-06-26
12 photographs, 4 tables
152.4 x 228.6cm
Paper ISBN: 978-0-8135-8730-1
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8135-8731-8

Edited by:

Joanne L. Rondilla, Program lecturer in Asian Pacific American Studies
School of Social Transformation
Arizona State University, Tempe

Rudy P. Guevarra, Jr., Associate Professor of Asian American Studies
Arizona State University

Paul Spickard, Professor of History; Professor of Asian American Studies
University of California, Santa Barbara

Red and Yellow, Black and Brown gathers together life stories and analysis by twelve contributors who express and seek to understand the often very different dynamics that exist for mixed race people who are not part white. The chapters focus on the social, psychological, and political situations of mixed race people who have links to two or more peoples of color— Chinese and Mexican, Asian and Black, Native American and African American, South Asian and Filipino, Black and Latino/a and so on. Red and Yellow, Black and Brown addresses questions surrounding the meanings and communication of racial identities in dual or multiple minority situations and the editors highlight the theoretical implications of this fresh approach to racial studies.

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1. Introduction: About Mixed Race, Not About Whiteness / Paul Spickard, Rudy P. Guevarra Jr., Joanne L. Rondilla
• Part I. Identity Journeys
  • Chapter 2. Rising Sun, Rising Soul: On Mixed Race Asian Identity That Includes Blackness / Velina Hasu Houston
  • Chapter 3. Blackapina / Janet C. Mendoza Stickmon
• Part II. Multiple Minority Marriage and Parenting
  • Chapter 4. Intermarriage and the Making of a Multicultural Society in the Baja California Borderlands / Verónica Castillo-Muñoz
  • Chapter 5. Cross-Racial Minority Intermarriage: Mutual Marginalization and Critique / Jessica Vasquez-Tokos
  • Chapter 6. Parental Racial Socialization: A Glimpse into the Racial Socialization Process as It Occurs in a Dual-Minority Multiracial Family / Cristina M. Ortiz
• Part III. Mixed Identity and Monoracial Belonging
  • Chapter 7. Being Mixed Race in the Makah Nation: Redeeming the Existence of African-Native Americans / Ingrid Dineen-Wimberly
  • Chapter 8. “You’re Not Black or Mexican Enough!” Policing Racial/Ethnic Authenticity among Blaxicans in the US / Rebecca Romo
• Part IV. Asian Connections
  • Chapter 9 Bumbay in the Bay: The Struggle for Indipino Identity in San Francisco / Maharaj Raju Desai
  • Chapter 10. Hyper-visibility and Invisibility of Female Haafu Models in Japanese Beauty Culture / Kaori Mori Want
  • Chapter 11. Checking “Other” Twice: Transnational Dual Minorities / Lily Anne Y. Welty Tamai
• Part V. Reflections
  • Chapter 12. Neanderthal-Human Hybridity and the Frontier of Critical Mixed Race Studies / Terence Keel
  • Chapter 13. Epilogue: Expanding the Terrain of Mixed Race Studies: What We Learn from the Study of NonWhite Multiracials / Nitasha Tamar Sharma
• Bibliography
• Notes on Contributors
• Index

Psychophysiological Responses to Racial Passing Behavior

2017 Rogers Science Research Brown Bag Presentations
Olin 301
Lewis & Clark College
0615 S.W. Palatine Hill Road
Portland, Oregon 97219 USA
Telephone: 503-768-7000
Tuesday, 2017-06-27, 12:00-13:15 PDT (Local Time)

Student presenters: Madison Kleiner and Mikayla Parsons
Faculty collaborator: Diana Leonard, Assistant Professor of Psychology

Brown Bags
Students discuss their research projects during a series of brown-bag talks on Tuesdays in June and July. Each presentation is 15 minutes; there are generally 3-4 talks per session. For more information about projects see project descriptions.

• Tuesdays 12:00-13:15, in Olin 301 unless otherwise noted
• Presentations are free and open to the public
• Dessert provided

Racial passing–presenting oneself as a race other than one’s own–is often viewed negatively (Dawkins, 2012), but the reason is unclear. Thus far, our lab has shown that passing as a member of a lower status racial group (i.e., as Black) is more morally condemned than the reverse (i.e., passing as White). We have also demonstrated that people who endorse Colorblind ideology judge racial passing more harshly, perhaps because it threatens their core beliefs. In our next step, we will measure stress and cognitive depletion to examine why people find racial passing to be morally condemnable under these circumstances.

For more information, click here.

Biracial and Bisexual – Our Identities are Important.

Wear Your Voice: Intersectional Feminist Media
2017-06-07

Lara Witt, Senior Editor

When bisexuality isn’t being mischaracterized as being indecisive or greedy, it is being erased by cisgender, heterosexual folks which is partially why bisexual women face some of the highest rates of intimate partner violence and sexual assault.

As someone who has written thousands of words about sexual assault and been vocal about being the victim of rape, I am not going to describe my pain or how I was raped – I am not here for a voyeuristic lens focused on violence inflicted upon my body – I am here because I want to discuss being bisexual and multiracial and how those two parts of my identity are pushed against in similar ways.

They take what they see as being a fracture within ourselves and exploit it to diminish our words. Sometimes, or oftentimes, this can bring up years of trauma. Multiracial or biracial identity and bisexuality are nuanced and complex, and can be difficult to navigate depending on how we are raised or what resources we have available to us…

Read the entire article here.

Does Growing Population of Multiracial Kids Portend a Future with Less Racism?

WVTF Public Radio
Roanoke, Virginia
2017-06-13

Sandy Hausman, WVTF/RADIO IQ Charlottesville Bureau Chief

A growing number of families in this country include people of different races. Credit NPR

Fifty years ago today, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down laws that prevented people of different races from marrying in Virginia.  Now, one of every six newlyweds choose partners of a different race or ethnicity.  So does this mean America is on the road to ending racism?  And how do mixed race kids think of themselves.  Those questions puzzled a UVA alum whose new book offers intriguing answers.  Sandy Hausman has that story.

Hephzibah Strmic-Pawl grew up in rural Virginia where race consciousness was strong.  Back then, the U.S. census bureau recorded only a handful of possible races for residents of the state.  Now, however, that has changed.

“Now we have 63 possible racial categories,”  Strmic-Pawl says.

And looking at the younger members of our population, the assistant professor of sociology was startled by the number of kids who don’t fit neatly into a single racial category…

[Hephzibah Strmic-Pawl is the author of Multiracialism and Its Discontents: A Comparative Analysis of Asian-White and Black-White Multiracials.]

Read the entire story here. Listen to the story (00:02:14) here.

Onstage — and in life — an actress explores her racial identity

The Boston Globe
2017-06-12

Sally Jacobs

Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff

Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni, who grew up in Cambridge and is biracial, has spent much of her life grappling with her racial identity through story and performance.

As a child, Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni had a cherished birthday ritual. It wasn’t cake or a favorite pancake breakfast. It was her mother’s retelling of her birth story, intended to reassure her about the details of her origins and her parents’ marriage, about which she had nagging questions.

In a way, she still does.

“I had this belief growing up that I’m not theirs,” explained DiGiovanni, 47, who grew up in Cambridge and now lives in Los Angeles. “I always tried to make Mom prove that she actually gave birth to me. So, I always started with, ‘When did you and Dad first kiss?’ I really couldn’t imagine them being together at all. Still can’t.”…

…“One Drop,” in which she plays 16 roles, examines the ever-changing racial classifications in the US Census through the lens of her own family experience. DiGiovanni is one of two children born to Winston and Trudy Cox, who were married in 1966 in California, a year before the Loving ruling but in a state where interracial marriage was legal.

As a couple, they collided head-on with racial discrimination. Winston Cox, a Jamaican, was barred from bathrooms, kicked out of restaurants, and humiliated. After he and his wife settled in Washington, D.C., their interests swiftly diverged. Winston joined the Black Panthers while his wife turned to the women’s movement. Now 80, Winston believes that race was the main reason the marriage ended.

“I couldn’t foresee the problems that would take place,” he said.

Trudy Cox, 74, who lives in an assisted-living facility in Boston, agrees race was a part of what divided them. “He just hated it that I was white,” she said. Not only did many of the Panthers’ meetings exclude white people, but Winston himself was growing increasingly uncomfortable around them…

Read the entire article here.

Research investigates marks of racism in “interracial families”

Black Women of Brazil
Source: FAPESP
2017-05-31

José Tadeu Arantes

The final pillar of the debunked ‘racial democracy’? Post-doctorate research project exposes racism and racial hierarchies within interracial families

One hundred and twenty-nine years after the abolition of slavery, and despite the myth of racial democracy, racial prejudice continues to be widespread in Brazilian society – so widespread that it even manifests itself within “interracial families”. This was the conclusion of a study conducted by social psychologist Lia Vainer Schucman.

The study was the postdoctoral theme carried out at the University of São Paulo (USP) with support from FAPESP, a collaboration of Felipe Fachim and under the supervision of Belinda Mandelbaum, coordinator of the Laboratory of Family Studies at the Institute of Psychology at USP.

“Our objective was to verify if and how the racial hierarchies of society reproduce within families whose members self-classify differently in relation to ‘race’: as ‘brancos’ (whites), ‘negros’ (blacks) or ‘mestiços’ (persons of mixed race). And how these hierarchies coexist and interact with affections,” Schucman told FAPESP…

Read the entire article here.

ROR CHASING COLOR: EP 07 | “Multiracial/Mulatto 2.0”

Revolution of Race
Chasing Color
2017-04-11

Dr. Blair Proctor, Expert Host and Ph.D. Doctorate in Sociology

Pamela Lawrence, Moderator, Founder & Creative Director

The 5th Episode for Chasing Color features a ‘taboo’ discussion about the term ‘mulatto’ versus multi-racial & bi-racial.

Dr. Blair Proctor discusses the term ‘mulatto’ the definition and how this term became a racial slur. In addition, Dr. Blair Proctor breaks-down the social issues that lies with the term multi-racial and how this term doesn’t eliminate systemic racism.

Many topics are discussed to flesh out this particular episode such as Taye Diggs, Meghan Markle currently dating Prince Harry including the One-Drop Rule, trans-racial Rachel Dolezal etc.

Nothing is off limits with this hefty controversial discussion that sought to define this term bi-racial and how it stack up against racism and the system of racism in America.

Listen to the episode (01:13:52) here.

SISS 2017: Race as Kink: Reading Transracial Fetishism – Public Lecture by Dr. Trish Salah

Centre for Feminist Research at York University
Keele Campus
DB0014 (Victor Phillip Dahdaleh Building, formerly Technology Enhanced Learning [TEL] Building)
4700 Keele Street
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3J 1P3
Telephone: 416-736-2100
Tuesday, 2017-06-06, 10:00-11:30 EDT (Local Time)

Dr. Trish Salah, Assistant Professor
Department of Gender Studies
Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada

Introduced by Dr. John Greyson

In what sense might we speak or think about race as libidinally charged? How do we understand racial identity as erotically invested and in what ways do we see object choice as racially inflected? To what extent are such libidinal economies of identity formation and object choice both ubiquitously alluded to and routinely disavowed? And what are the circumstances under which they present themselves as an occasion for scandal, crisis and conflict?

Drawing upon Freud’s discussion of the place of disavowal in the constitution of desire, this talk is an attempt to think about the persistence, and affective charge, with which analogies between transgender identities and forms of racial passing or cross-identification, increasingly named as “transracialism,” are made.

Dr. Trish Salah is Assistant Professor in the Department of Gender Studies at Queen’s University and the author of two poetry collections, the Lambda award-winning Wanting in Arabic and Lyric Sexology, Vol. 1…

For more information, click here.