Mixed Race Studies

Sense of Place with Guest Sharon H. Chang

Sense of Place
Roundhouse Radio 98.3 FM
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
November 2015

Minelle Mahtani, Host

Minelle Mahtani and Sharon H. Chang (Source: Facebook)

Author, scholar, sociologist, and activist Sharon H. Chang discusses her new book Raising Mixed Race: Multiracial Asian Children in a Post-Racial World.

Listen to the interview (00:36:17) here.

The day my daughter realized she isn’t white

The Washington Post
2015-11-03

Lisa Papademetriou

“Mama,” my 4-year-old daughter said. “Did you know that darks and lights didn’t used to be able to go to the same places?”

“What?” I asked. It was bedtime, and I was tired. I wondered vaguely how Zara knew so much about laundry.

“There are some people who have dark skin color,” she said. “Lights would go one place, and darks would go another,” Zara went on, indignant. “There were signs saying the darks couldn’t go into where the lights were!”

“Who told you about that?” I asked, and she explained that a special visitor had come to her classroom to talk about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. She very earnestly explained the Civil Rights movement and Dr. King’s message to me. “He said that everyone should be able to go into the same places. He said people should take down the signs that kept the darks out.” Growing more passionate, Zara cried, “Kylie and I agreed that we wouldn’t go anywhere if there was a sign that said, ‘Lights Only!’ We would rip up that sign and say, ‘Everyone can go here!’” Kylie has blue eyes and curly blond hair.

“Zara, honey, I’m so glad you feel that way,” I told her. “But do you realize that you’re not white?”

Stunned silence.

And then: rage. “I am white!” she shouted. “You’re white!”

“Yes,” I told her. “I’m white, so you are part white. But Daddy is from Pakistan. He’s brown. And that means that, in those times, you would have been considered brown, not white.”

“I am white!” Zara wailed. “I’m everything!” And she burst into tears…

Read the entire article here.

Diversity Committee Workshop: Loretta Staples, LCSW: “Both & Neither: Biracial Identities”

The Connecticut Society of Psychoanalytic Psychology
Mt. Carmel Medical & Professional Building
3074 Whitney Avenue, Bldg 1
Hamden, Connecticut 06518
2015-11-14, 10:30-12:30 EST (Local Time)

Loretta Staples, LCSW

The CSPP Diversity Work Group Announces a New Workshop in our series: Through An/Other Lens: Multicultural Perspectives

Loretta Staples, LCSW maintains a private practice in New Haven and is a therapist in addiction services at Rushford in Meriden. She specializes in working with clients on issues of race, class, and gender as they impact identity and well-being.

Despite claims of a “post-racial” society, race persists as a salient cultural dimension through which private and public identities are formed. While public discourse about race in the U.S. continues to focus on black/white racial tension, biracial individuals—representing a varied mix of racial backgrounds—occupy a fast-growing segment of the population, as defined by the U.S. Census.

Individuals of mixed race occupy a realm in which they are “both and neither,” affording unique challenges and opportunities in navigating social realities. These particular adaptive demands impact identity formation, social functioning, and well-being, sometimes adversely, sometimes advantageously.

Therapists, especially those identifying as monoracial, may not recognize biracial clients, or may incorrectly assume certain racial allegiances. Moreover, they may overlook the effects of multivalent racialized experiences on the lives of biracial clients, and on the specific concerns these clients bring to treatment. This workshop provides an informal opportunity to explore biracial identity and considerations for clinical work…

For more information, click here.

I Am Mixed And I Am Whole

Ain’t I A Woman Collective: Centring the Voices of Women with African Ancestry
2015-10-19

Sekai Makoni

When I heard the theme for this month was ‘identity’, the word crisis as an appendage kept coming to mind. As a mixed person it, it seems as though the word “crisis” is constantly attached to identity, as though there is confusion somewhere. This is problematic. Other phrases that have become synonymous with “mixed race” include: ‘unsure of themselves’, ‘in-between’, ‘not one, not the other’, etc. It becomes a little exasperating, especially if, like me, you don not relate to such notions of bi- and multi-racial identity. It sometimes seems alien to some that an identity crisis is not an inevitable part of your coming of age. I’d like to take this opportunity to say that identity crises are not a universal truth for those of mixed heritage…

Read the entire article here.

Multiracial Teens Talk About Their Identity Rip Tides

Women’s eNews
2015-10-27

Stephanie Geier, Teen Voices for Women’s eNews

The pressures and rejections come from within, from peers, from different sides of their families. “No matter how hard I tried I was always too white for the black kids and too black for the white kids,” says one girl. The second in a three-part series on multiracial teens.

WOODSIDE, N.Y. (WOMENSENEWS)–In middle school, Allyson Gonzalez thought befriending white girls would stop the other Brooklyn public school students from teasing her about her thick eyebrows and hairy arms.

However, her new friends acted outright, “horribly” racist to certain students. Gonzalez went along with them, but would be nice to the other students in private. After witnessing this behavior, she then decided “if anything was bad, it was being white.”

Now a college freshman at Hunter College, Gonzalez, who is German, Irish and Puerto Rican, identifies as a “multiracial white-Hispanic woman.” She blames “social pressure” for the delayed acceptance of her mixed background, she said in an email interview.

Young people who are multiracial are four times more likely to switch their racial identity than to consistently report one identity, sociologists Steven Hitlin, J.Scott Brown and Glen H. Elder found in their 2006 research, cited by sociologists Kerry Ann Rockquemore, David Brunsma and Daniel J. Delgado in their 2009 piece published in the Journal of Social Issues.

This is part of the multiracial “journey,” according to freelance writer Hannah Gomez, who also works with the advocacy organization We Need Diverse Books. In her 2013 paper “This, That, Both, Neither: The Badging Of Biracial Identity In Young Adult Realism,” she combined evidence from modern fiction and scientific research to identify a three-step process in multiracial identity development. First, individuals are confronted with a situation causing them to reject one side of their race. They then seek a community that does not pressure them to disconnect with one of their sides. Finally, they achieve a sense of empowerment that successfully leads to identifying with a mixed label.

“Structural, systemic racism says that people must be easily defined and sorted into groups, and race is an easy way to do that,” said Gomez in an email interview.

While she added that no one needs to embrace all of her background, individuals are often told to embrace just one, resulting in “a lot of undue stress.”…

Read the entire article here.

Counseling the Multiracial Population: Couples, Individuals, and Families

Microtraining Associates
2003
01:15:00

Kelley Kenney

Mark Kenney

This film presents the worldview experiences of interracial couples, multiracial individuals, and multiracial families including trans-racial adoptive families. It also makes clear suggestions for action in the interview.

Six live demonstrations showcase typical issues such as concerns and challenges faced by the multiracial population, acceptance and respect by society and family, questions of identity, positive identity development, and navigating cultural worldview differences.

Read the leader guide here.

Just Black?: Multi-Racial Identity

Filmakers Library
1992
00:59:00

Produced by:

Francine Winddance Twine

Jonathan F. Warren

Francisco Ferrandiz

Most of us at one time or other are faced with an official form requiring us to “check” the applicable ethnic designation. What “box” does a person check if his or her parents come from different racial backgrounds?

In this provocative documentary, we meet several articulate young men and women of mixed racial heritage. Each has one black parent, and a white, Asian or Hispanic second parent. They share with us their struggle to establish, acquire and assert a racial identity. Their experiences lead one to question whether there is room in America for a multi-racial identity.

The interviews presented reflect the research of anthropologist Francine Winddance Twine. Her searching questions on dating, family relationships, friendships and childhood experiences reveal a wide range of reactions to having a dual heritage. As these young people speak of their hopes and frustrations, they all reveal the tension of having their multicultural background overlooked and being classified as having one racial identity.

The candor with which these college students reveal themselves makes this compelling viewing for university and general audiences.

Awards

• American Psychological Association, 1993
• Honorable Mention, American Film & Video Festival,1992
• Special Jury Award, National Educational Film & Video Festival, 1992

Race as Biology Is Fiction, Racism as a Social Problem Is Real: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives on the Social Construction of Race

American Psychologist
Volume 60, Number 1, January 2005
pages 16–26
DOI: 10.1037/0003-066X.60.1.16

Audrey Smedley
Virginia Commonwealth University Institute of Medicine

Brian D. Smedley
Virginia Commonwealth University Institute of Medicine

Racialized science seeks to explain human population differences in health, intelligence, education, and wealth as the consequence of immutable, biologically based differences between “racial” groups. Recent advances in the sequencing of the human genome and in an understanding of biological correlates of behavior have fueled racialized science, despite evidence that racial groups are not genetically discrete, reliably measured, or scientifically meaningful. Yet even these counterarguments often fail to take into account the origin and history of the idea of race. This article reviews the origins of the concept of race, placing the contemporary discussion of racial differences in an anthropological and historical context.

Read the entire article here.

Changes in racial categorization over time and health status: an examination of multiracial young adults in the USA

Ethnicity & Health
Published online: 2015-06-08
DOI: 10.1080/13557858.2015.1042431

Karen M. Tabb, Assistant Professor of Social Work
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

• Objective: Multiracial (two or more races) American health related to racial stability over the life course is a pressing issue in a burgeoning multi-ethnic and multicultural global society. Most studies on multiracial health are cross-sectional and thus focus on racial categorization at a single time point, so it is difficult to establish how health indicators change for multiracials over time. Accordingly the central aim of this paper was to explore if consistency in racial categories over time is related to self-rated health for multiracial young adults in the USA.
• Methods: Data were drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) survey (N = 7957). Weighted multivariate logistic regression was used to exam health status in early adulthood between individuals who switched racial categories between Waves 1 and 3 compared to those who remained in the same racial categories.
• Results: There were significant differences in report of self-rated health when comparing consistent monoracial adults with multiracial adults who switch racial categories over time. Diversifying (switching from one category to many categories) multiracial respondents are less likely to report fair/poor self-rated health compared to single-race minority young adults in the fully adjusted model (OR = 0.20; 95% CI [0.06–0.60]).
• Conclusion: These results demonstrate the importance of critically examining changes in racial categories as related to health status over time. Furthermore, these results demonstrate how the switch in racial categories during adolescence can explain some variations in health status during young adulthood.

Read or purchase the article here.

Esther Cepeda: The complexities of race and ethnicity

GazetteXtra
Janesville, Wisconsin
2015-10-17

Esther Cepeda, Columnist
Washington Post Writers Group

CHICAGO

Our society gives a lot of lip service to the importance of diversity in fields such as science, medicine and technology because multicultural people bring unique viewpoints, varied life experiences and new ideas.

Rarely do we come upon an ideal example of how this plays out in real life.

Karen M. Tabb Dina, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, recently published a paper in the journal Ethnicity and Health that found that adults who identified as one race when they were young but now identify as multiracial report being healthier compared with those who continue to identify as monoracial.

The idea for this study came 10 years ago when Tabb Dina was a health policy researcher in low-income communities studying how race and ethnicity impact long-term health. She noticed that the way some of her patients identified racially didn’t always match the way their medical records categorized them.

Identity is a complex and often thorny issue. There are many reasons—including education level, geographic location and gender—why someone with a multiracial background would choose to identify as a single race or multiracial, and why that could change throughout a lifetime…

Read the entire article here.