Mixed Race Studies

Researcher Seeking to Examine the Experiences of Multiracial Individuals and Their Negotiation of Social Spaces From a Strength

2015-10-16

Erika Noriega

I am currently a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Santa Barbara in the Counseling, Clinical, and School Psychology Program and in the process of recruiting participants for my dissertation study. I am interested in examining the experiences of multiracial individuals and their negotiation of social spaces from a strength-based perspective. Participation will include an interview with a questionnaire.

Participants must:

1. Identify as multiracial (i.e. biracial, mixed, multiethnic, biethnic, or multicultural)
2. Be born to parents who are of different racial backgrounds (i.e. White, Asian, Black, Latino, etc).
3. One biological parent must be White or Caucasian.
4. Be at least 18 years old and born after 1968.
5. Must have experienced feeling like at one point it was necessary to change the way they act around different racial groups.

There is a $20 (USD) Amazon Gift Card provided to participants at the time of interview.

Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me at enoriega@education.ucsb.edu or (857) 399-2254. Thank you for your time. I hope to hear from you soon. Please send good dissertation karma my way.

Multiethnic Adults Grapple With Questions of Identity

KQED News
San Francisco, California
2015-10-14

Adizah Eghan

In his 1964 Nobel Prize lecture, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. described humanity as a “world house,” filled with family of all backgrounds who must somehow learn to live with each other.

Within the borders of our countries, cities and states, our own homes are increasingly becoming multi-ethnic, multiracial microcosms of the greater world house to which King refers.

Today, nearly one in six newlyweds marries across racial or ethnic lines. If we continue in this direction, the U.S. Census Bureau projects that the multiracial population will triple by 2060…

On the most recent episode of So Well Spoken, we dove into the complex world of multiethnic families, interracial marriages and cross-cultural adoptions. How do families handle racial issues and celebrate who they are?

Read the entire article here. Listen to the episode (00:51:26) here.

Health Care, Research Failing to Adapt to U.S.’s Growing Multiracial Population

School of Social Work
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
2015-10-12

Data collection methods in research and health care settings have lagged behind in adapting to the rapidly growing population of multiracials, according to studies led by social work professor Karen M. Tabb Dina

Multiracial people who change their racial identity from a single race to multiracial over time may be healthier than their minority peers who consistently identify as monoracial, new research suggests.

Despite the U.S.’s rapidly growing population of multiracial individuals, researchers and health care systems continue to use outdated approaches to racial categorization that force people to classify themselves as monoracial, which may be masking the incidence of health conditions and obscuring disparities in health care access and utilization among multiracial populations, a University of Illinois scholar said.

Social work professor Karen M. Tabb Dina is the lead author of two recent studies that explored issues of racial identity and its impact on health care access and utilization among nearly 8,000 U.S. young people.

The subjects in both of Tabb Dina’s studies were participants in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, one of the first surveys to allow respondents to identify themselves as multiracial using two or more racial categories, Tabb Dina said.

Participants in the Adolescent Health survey were asked about their racial background during the first wave of data collection in 1994 and again during the third wave, conducted in 2002.

Of the 7 percent of participants identified as multiracial at either wave, only 20 percent of these people selected the same racial categories both times, Tabb Dina found.

Read the entire article here.

Disparities in Health Services Use Among Multiracial American Young Adults

Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health
First online: 2015-09-29
8 pages
DOI: 10.1007/s10903-015-0289-7

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

Christopher R. Larrison, Associate Professor of Social Work
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Shinwoo Choi
School of Social Work
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Hsiang Huang, Instructor of Psychiatry
Cambridge Health Alliance
Harvard Medical School

Addressing disparities in health services utilization remains critical for improving minority health; however, most studies do not report on the health service use of multiracial young adults (age 22–34). This study compares past year health service use of self-identified multiracial (two or more races) young adults with monoracial White young adults. Weighted survey data from Add Health (N = 7296) and multivariate logistic regression analyses were used. Compared to monoracial White young adults, Black-White multiracial [OR 0.40, 95 % CI (0.17–0.90)] and Black-Native American multiracial [OR 0.23, 95 % CI (0.09–0.63)] young adults are less likely to report primary care service use in the past year. Multiracial young adults have different health care service utilization than their White monoracial peers with Black-Native American young adults appearing to be particularly vulnerable to under-utilization of primary care services. It is important to examine multiracial subgroups when studying patterns of health services utilization.

To Be Black And Boricua

La Respuesta
2015-09-17

At this year’s Afro-Latino Festival of New York, La Respuesta teamed up with Project Bronx, the community-focused web series, for an exciting video collaboration. We spoke with festival attendees, artists, and vendors about a theme central to the festival’s focus.

For the past 3 years, the Afro-Latino Festival “celebrates the contributions that people of African descent from Latin America and the Caribbean have made to our city and the global culture as a whole.” The festival this year featured more than a dozen artists and groups, among them the New York-based Bombazo Dance Company, and the Puerto Rico-based Cultura Profética.

As official media partners of the Afro-Latino Festival, we at La Respuesta joined with Project Bronx to document views on Afro Boricua identity. As a Boricua publication, one of our key commitments is to highlight and honor the depth and legacy of our connection to African culture. We asked Puerto Ricans attending the event how our African/Black roots are celebrated. We also asked why many downplay or even deny their own African/Black ancestry. Here’s what they had to say…

Marisa Franco

The Graduate School
University of Maryland
2015-05-21

“My graduate degree is shaping my life and career in a number of ways. The research skills I have gained at the University of Maryland have prepared me for a career in research in academia. An International Graduate Research Fellowship, in addition, gave me the opportunity to do research abroad, in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, and to develop skills in cross cultural research and its communication.”

Marisa Franco earned her PhD in counseling psychology in May 2015. She holds an MS in psychology from UMD, and a BS in applied psychology from New York University, where she graduated magna cum laude.

Franco’s research focuses on “racial identity invalidation,” with particular emphasis on its psychological impact on Black/White mixed-race individuals.

For her innovative work, Franco received a number of Graduate School awards, including the ALL S.T.A.R award, granted to 16 campus graduate students with outstanding records as both researchers and graduate assistants, as well as the International Graduate Research Fellowship. Franco is the only student who has been awarded both a Flagship Fellowship, granted to ten outstanding incoming graduate students, and a McNair Graduate Fellowship, granted to five outstanding incoming graduate students who are alumni of Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Programs.

Franco also has received numerous external awards for her research, including the Michael Sullivan Diversity Award and the Association of Black Psychologists Graduate Research Award.

Franco hopes to become a professor in psychology.

Learn more about her in the interview below:…

Read the entire interview here.

Impact of Identity Invalidation for Black Multiracial People: The Importance of Race of Perpetrator

Journal of Black Psychology
Published online before print: 2015-09-08
DOI: 10.1177/0095798415604796

Marisa G. Franco
University of Maryland

Stephen A. Franco
St. George’s University, St. George, Grenada, West Indies

Multiracial people report repeated experiences of racial identity invalidation, in which their racial identity is rejected by others. The current study examined whether the race of the perpetrator of these invalidating experiences matters in determining the impact of invalidation. A sample of 221 Black multiracial people was recruited to take an online survey investigating their experiences of identity invalidation, levels of cultural homelessness, and challenges with racial identity. Participants reported that Black people invalidated their racial identity the most, and they were most hurt by invalidation perpetrated by Black people. Finally, those whose experiences of identity invalidation were mostly perpetrated by Black people, as opposed to other racial groups, were more likely to exhibit racial homelessness and challenges with racial identity. Results highlight the importance of racial identity affirmation by the Black community for Black multiracial individuals.

Read or purchase the article here.

Racism as a Determinant of Health: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

PLOS ONE
2015-09-23
48 pages
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0138511

Yin Paradies, Professor
Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalization, Faculty of Arts and Education
Deakin University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Jehonathan Ben
Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalization, Faculty of Arts and Education
Deakin University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Amanuel Elias
Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalization, Faculty of Arts and Education
Deakin University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Nida Denson
School of Social Sciences and Psychology
University of Western Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Naomi Priest, Senior Research Fellow in child public health and health inequalities
Australian Centre for Applied Social Research Methods
Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia

Alex Pieterse
Division of Counseling Psychology
University at Albany, State University of New York

Arpana Gupta
Oppenheimer Center for Neurobiology of Stress, David Geffen School of Medicine
University of California, Los Angeles

Margaret Kelaher
Centre for Health Policy Programs and Economics, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health
University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Gilbert Gee
Department of Community Health Sciences
University of California, Los Angeles, Fielding School of Public Health, Los Angeles, California

Despite a growing body of epidemiological evidence in recent years documenting the health impacts of racism, the cumulative evidence base has yet to be synthesized in a comprehensive meta-analysis focused specifically on racism as a determinant of health. This meta-analysis reviewed the literature focusing on the relationship between reported racism and mental and physical health outcomes. Data from 293 studies reported in 333 articles published between 1983 and 2013, and conducted predominately in the U.S., were analysed using random effects models and mean weighted effect sizes. Racism was associated with poorer mental health (negative mental health: r = -.23, 95% CI [-.24,-.21], k = 227; positive mental health: r = -.13, 95% CI [-.16,-.10], k = 113), including depression, anxiety, psychological stress and various other outcomes. Racism was also associated with poorer general health (r = -.13 (95% CI [-.18,-.09], k = 30), and poorer physical health (r = -.09, 95% CI [-.12,-.06], k = 50). Moderation effects were found for some outcomes with regard to study and exposure characteristics. Effect sizes of racism on mental health were stronger in cross-sectional compared with longitudinal data and in non-representative samples compared with representative samples. Age, sex, birthplace and education level did not moderate the effects of racism on health. Ethnicity significantly moderated the effect of racism on negative mental health and physical health: the association between racism and negative mental health was significantly stronger for Asian American and Latino(a) American participants compared with African American participants, and the association between racism and physical health was significantly stronger for Latino(a) American participants compared with African American participants. Protocol PROSPERO registration number: CRD42013005464.

Read the entire article here.

Priming White identity elicits stereotype boost for biracial Black-White individuals

Group Processes Intergroup Relations
Volume 18, Number 6 (November 2015)
pages 778-787
DOI: 10.1177/1368430215570504

Sarah E. Gaither, Provost’s Career Enhancement Postdoctoral Scholar
University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

Jessica D. Remedios, Assistant Professor of Psychology
Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts

Jennifer R. Schultz
Department of Psychology
Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts

Samuel R. Sommers, Associate Professor of Psychology
Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts

Psychological threat experienced by students of negatively stereotyped groups impairs test performance. However, stereotype boost can also occur if a positively stereotyped identity is made salient. Biracial individuals, whose racial identities may be associated with both negative and positive testing abilities, have not been examined in this context. Sixty-four biracial Black-White individuals wrote about either their Black or White identity or a neutral topic and completed a verbal Graduate Record Examination (GRE) examination described as diagnostic of their abilities. White-primed participants performed significantly better than both Black-primed and control participants. Thus, biracial Black-White individuals experience stereotype boost only when their White identity is made salient.

Read or purchase the article here.

Raising a Biracial Child as a Mother of Color

The Atlantic
2015-09-19

Lara N. Dotson-Renta

A mother’s reflection on her own childhood and that of her biracial child—and the inevitable differences of the two.

A few months ago, I was walking home from the bus stop with my eldest daughter during the last week of kindergarten. She was lagging behind as usual, picking up sticks and shiny rocks, when she casually asked, “Mama, are the kids with browner skin more trouble? Why can some of them not read too well? Why do some people think Spanish is not good?”

In that moment, the heart that lives in my stomach jumped, and a mild nausea set in. At six years old, my now first-grade daughter is privileged, more than she understands, in ways that are painful and complicated for me to discern as both a highly educated, upper-middle-class parent, and as a woman of color who did not start out with such advantages.

…My daughter is half white, has a non-Latino last name, and navigates a space in between, of mixed heritage and lineage. She is frequently complemented on how “beautifully tanned” her skin is in the winter. When I say we speak Spanish in the home and our family is together, we are complimented on our efforts to make her bilingual. But, when I am out alone with my two daughters, the youngest yet too little to notice, we are looked askance at for not using English. Sometimes at the park I am mistakenly assumed to be their nanny, suddenly keenly aware of how the sun catches the blond streaks in their hair. It is strange that language can stake so many claims; so often are my children presumed not to be my own…

Read the entire article here.