Mixed Race Studies

An Intimate Look at Race: Growing Up Biracial in a Racially Torn World

Wellesley Centers for Women
Book Reading \ Panel \ Conversation with Author Sil Lai Abrams
Clapp Library, Lecture Room
Wellesley College
106 Central Street
Wellesley, Massachusetts
Tuesday, 2016-10-25, 16:30-17:00 EST (Local Time)

Presenters: Author Sil Lai Abrams with Linda Charmaraman, Ph.D., Layli Maparyan, Ph.D., Linda M. Williams, Ph.D.

For more information, click here.

Being “Dual Heritage” In Modern Britain

HC At Exeter Cornwall
2016-10-11

Stacey Harris, 2nd year Environmental Science Student
Solihull, West Midlands

As many of you may be aware, October is Black History Month, which acts as a platform for education, reflection and a celebration of the trials and triumphs of African and Caribbean communities throughout history. It provides a vital means to raise the voices of minorities whose history is often sorely overlooked.  Every year a different thought-provoking theme is selected for the month, with this year’s being “tackling conscious and unconscious bias”. As a person of dual heritage, this got me thinking about my own intentional and unintentional bias towards my own ethnic background.

After spending 19 years of my life with a very vague understanding of my own family history – merely using the provided census classification of “white black Caribbean” – I suddenly had a bit of an identity crisis, and decided I needed to know more about my heritage in order to solve this. This, in tandem with my impulsive spending habits, led to me undertaking a 23andMe DNA test. The process involved sending away a saliva sample, and then an agonising two month wait until my results were sent back and revealed. I found the whole thing strangely more emotive than I was expecting when I first saw the detailed breakdown of my ancestry, as so much of my history was presented before me in just a few words and numbers…

Read the enitre article here.

Colin Kaepernick, Racial Identity and the Power of Protest

Racism Review
2016-09-06

Alyssa Lyons
Department of Sociology
The Graduate Center, City University of New York

NFL player Colin Kaepernick has made headlines recently by refusing to stand for the national anthem before football games in protest. It’s a protest linked to racial identity and politics, as Kaepernick has said that he wants to draw attention to the issue of police brutality, specifically toward people of color in the US. However, a number of political pundits, celebrities and self-identified patriots on social media have taken issue with Kaepernick’s protest. While some of the push back he has received is about the politics of patriotism, a good deal of it is about whether his racial identity gives him the authority and legitimacy to talk about race…

…As a self-identified multiracial scholar, the Kaepernick controversy has made think a lot about racial identity. I’m intrigued by the geneaology of race and racial identities—how much our categories for racial identification shift, yet how much they seemingly remain the same. The interest isn’t purely an intellectual one-it’s personal too. My mother is White (Irish) and my father is Brown (Latino). Because race is so salient in the United States—it’s how we organize and categorize much of our society—race is an integral part of our identity.

Personally, I’ve just had a difficult journey figuring out where I fit in. I was never Latina enough. I didn’t speak the language or embody the culture. Whites knew I wasn’t one of them-my nose looked different, my hair much too dark. But in a society that places a premium on race, how do you find consciousness if your existence has been racialized but you don’t fit into the preexisting racial categories? How can you be heard? What is your role in the fight for racial justice?…

Read the entire article here.

Same Family, Different Colors: Confronting Colorism in America’s Diverse Families

Beacon Press
2016-10-04
216 pages
Cloth ISBN: 978-080707678-1

Lori L. Tharps, Assistant Professor of Journalism
Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Weaving together personal stories, history, and analysis, Same Family, Different Colors explores the myriad ways skin-color politics affect family dynamics in the United States.

Colorism and color bias—the preference for or presumed superiority of people based on the lighter color of their skin—is a pervasive but rarely openly discussed phenomenon, one that is centuries old and continues today. In Same Family, Different Colors, journalist Lori Tharps, the mother of three mixed-race children with three distinct skin colors, uses her own family as a starting point to explore how skin-color difference is dealt with in African American, Latino, Asian American, and mixed-race families and communities. Along with intimate and revealing stories and anecdotes from dozens of diverse people from across the United States, Tharps adds a historical overview and a contemporary cultural critique. Same Family, Different Colors is a solution-seeking journey to the heart of identity politics, so this more subtle “cousin to racism,” in the author’s words, will be acknowledged, understood, and debated.

“So, What Are You?”

Columbia Daily Spectator
New York, New York
2016-10-04

Alexandra Peebles and Eliza Solomon

Members of the Mixed Heritage Society at a club meeting. (Jared Orellana / Staff Photographer)

“For me, personally, thinking of myself as defined by race has never really worked, because I don’t fit in with the Asians, [and] I don’t fit in with white people,” Zina Sockwell, a Columbia College senior, explains when asked about her identity as a mixed-heritage student.

Sockwell is half Korean on her mother’s side and a quarter Native American on her father’s side, and she identifies as mixed heritage. Her entire “nuclear family” is Asian, white, and Native American. Growing up, Sockwell did not feel different or perplexed by her mixed background. “I didn’t realize for a long time that I was mixed race—I was just a person, in a family. I was a Sockwell; that’s what was normal,” she says matter-of-factly.

But when Sockwell got to college, things were different. When the Mixed Heritage Society (previously known as the Mixed-Race Students Society) debuted on campus in the spring of 2015, it filled what some saw as a glaring cavity by providing an identity-based discussion space for students like Sockwell. These students don’t identify strictly with one race or ethnicity, and as a result must combat the pressure to define themselves as belonging to one specific culture. The club set out to meet a need for the students who wanted to share their often unique experiences with their fellow “mixed” classmates…

Read the entire article here.

How do multiracial Asian people fit into discussions around race?

The Record
KUOW.org 94.9 FM | Seattle News & Information
2016-09-29

Caroline Chamberlain, Acquisitions Producer

Bill Radke, Host

Bill Radke sits down with Sharon H. Chang, author of “Raising Mixed Race: Multiracial Asian Children in a Post-Racial World.”

She explains why it’s important to study the experiences of mixed race people and how it relates to our broader history of race in this country.

Listen to the interview (00:12:32) here.

What are you?

#EmergingUS: Exploring race, immigration and the emerging American identity
2016-09-26

How do you describe yourself if you’re mixed?

“What are you?” is a common question posed to mixed race people, usually preceded by, “Where are you from, from?” In other words: I can’t tell what you are. In this #EmergingUS video, we explore the different modes in which multiracial people, an increasing group across the country, define and classify themselves…

Read the transcript here.

Intermarriage and Mixed Parenting, Promoting Mental Health and Wellbeing: Crossover Love

Palgrave Macmillan
2015
262 pages
eBook ISBN: 978-1-137-39078-3
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-137-39077-6
Softcover ISBN: 978-1-349-48271-9
DOI: 10.1057/9781137390783

Rashmi Singla, Associate Professor
Department of Psychology and Educational Research
Roskilde University, Denmark

Marriages across ethnic borders are increasing in frequency, yet little is known of how discourses of ‘normal’ families, ethnicity, race, migration, globalisation affect couples and children involved in these mixed marriages. This book explores mixed marriage though intimate stories drawn from the real lives of visibly different couples.

Opinion: “White spaces” are everywhere – including ARC

The American River Current
Sacramento, California
2016-09-26

Shiavon Chatman

Imagine being alone in a place where there was no one who looked like you or understood your experiences.

Imagine having a conversation with someone who assumed the actions and behaviors of people who looked like you and made predictions about the way you conducted yourself.

Being a person of color in a predominantly “white space” is similar to this.

Author Toni Morrison addresses this very idea of oppression and loneliness that comes with being racially stereotyped in her first novel entitled “The Bluest Eye.”

In her novel, the main character Pecola is “(the) little black girl who want(s) to rise up out of her pit of her blackness and see the world with blue eyes.”

The idea of “colorblindness” doesn’t exist. No matter how progressive and accepting a person is, they will see color.

Recognizing color, or rather, race and ethnicity, is being consciously aware of the social injustices and stereotypes that people of color experience.

American River College [(ARC)] student Alyssa Senna said “I feel like there’s a stereotype for all people of color and that’s how white people see us.”…

…The stigma of being a person of color in predominantly white spaces has the same level of intensity for mixed people.

“I feel almost like an alien at times,” said ARC student, Sade Butler, “because I’m black, white, and Filipino and I’m of a medium complexion, (so) a lot of people don’t see me as a person of color.”

Mixed people typically experience more privilege, referred to as “passing”, than non-mixed people of color, except in predominantly “white spaces.”…

Read the entire article here.

A Qualitative Analysis of Multiracial Students’ Experiences With Prejudice and Discrimination in College

Journal of College Student Development
Volume 57, Number 6, September 2016
pages 680-697
DOI: 10.1353/csd.2016.0068

Samuel D. Museus, Associate Professor of Higher Education and Student Affairs
Indiana University

Susan A. Lambe Sariñana, Clinical Psychologist
Cambridge, Massachusetts

April L. Yee
University of Pennsylvania

Thomas E. Robinson

Mixed-race persons constitute a substantial and growing population in the United States. We examined multiracial college students’ experiences with prejudice and discrimination in college with conducted focus group interviews with 12 mixed-race participants and individual interviews with 22 mixed-race undergraduates to understand how they experienced prejudice and discrimination during their college careers. Analysis revealed 8 types of multiracial prejudice and discrimination which were confirmed by individual interviews: (a) racial essentialization, (b) invalidation of racial identities, (c) external imposition of racial identities, (d) racial exclusion and marginalization, (e) challenges to racial authenticity, (f) suspicion of chameleons, (g) exoticization, and (h) pathologizing of multi-racial individuals. Implications for research and practice are discussed.