Mixed Race Studies

Defining Mixed Race Feminism

Musings of a Mixed Race Feminist: Random diatribes from a mixed race feminist scholar.
2014-05-16

Donna J. Nicol, Associate Professor Women & Gender Studies
California State University, Fullerton

…Question of the Day: What is mixed race feminism? Good question given mixed race and gender issues aren’t often brought in conversation together even with the academic use of intersectionality theory.

Let’s start with some basic terminology. I define feminism as a critique on male power with efforts to change it. In essence, for me, feminism is both a theory and a form of activism. This means that feminism is for everyday folks; not just folks with degrees or lots of titles…

…I view one’s claim of being mixed race as a personal choice at self-definition; not simply a matter of DNA. I object to “one-droppist” logic in which a person with any non-white ancestry can not claim to be of Caucasian/European descent. I find it totally illogical that people of color (anyone who is non-white) often play the role of “one-drop” police when the policy and practice of “one-dropping” originated while African Americans were still enslaved and continued through the period of Jim Crow segregation. Why would oppressed people use the oppressors terminology to limit our self-definition is beyond me. I also object to the relative silence from the mixed race community (most prominently found via online forums) in calling out white racism which often forbids mixed race persons from claiming their white ancestry. It is like whiteness is reserved for only “pure bloods” or “mono-racial” white people. Many mixed race people I have encountered say nothing about their experiences with racism from their “white side” but can give you time, date, place and even weather reports when they experience discrimination from non-whites…

Read the entire article here.

Beyond Biracial: When Blackness Is a Small, Nearly Invisible Fraction

The Root
2014-05-12

Jenée Desmond-Harris, Senior Staff Writer and White House Correspondent

In the past, these Americans would have been labeled “quadroons” or “octoroons.” Today their options are so much broader. What can they teach us about race in 2014 and in the future?

Stephanie Troutman, a 36-year-old professor at Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C., has a white mother and a black father. She has her own family’s racial elevator speech down to a single sentence: “I’m a mixed woman who has a child with a black man and a child with a white man.” Her 7-year-old son, Rex, is unambiguous when it comes to his racial identity and “very pro black,” even protesting when he’s described as merely “brown,” she says.

With her 11-year-old daughter, Melora—whose pale, golden-hued skin; light eyes; and long, copper-colored hair prompt strangers to ask if she’s “Mediterranean” or “Arab”—things aren’t as simple.

“For now I’ve told her that she’s a person of color. That’s the best way I can explain it. I want to take it away from black and white because those are weird options for her,” Troutman says. “But I always kind of knew that I’d have a kid who looked white, and I was right. When Melora was born, my friends were like, ‘How did her dad’s white hippie granola genes completely beat out your biracial genes?’ ”

Despite those biracial genes, Troutman realized as a teen that most people see her as “just light skinned” (in other words, black). That hit home one day in the mid-1990s when, in a classically tragic black-identity-forming moment, a Florida stranger yelled “nigger” at her from a passing car.

“At first I was like, ‘Damn, that’s kind of messed up. Who are they yelling at?’ And then I realized I was the only person on the street.”

Read the entire article here.

Reflections of an Undercover Black Girl from San Francisco

50 Shades of Black: Sexuality and Skin Tone in the Formation of Identity
2014-05-07

Stacy Jethroe

My skin is tan. My hair is wavy. In Nina Simone’s “Four Women” I might be considered a Saffonia, though my father was neither rich nor white.

As a child living in a 1970’s San Francisco, I looked exactly like what I was: a nappy-headed mixed child. Born to a fair-skinned, Caucasian mother and a medium-toned Black/Italian/Cherokee father, I have been told I look Brazilian or Cape Verdean or just Plain Ol’ Regular White Girl. As I aged, my skin naturally lightened and my hair relaxed of its own accord.

At the age of nine, I moved to the Midwest. I wasn’t exactly Black or White or what was easily recognized, and my racial backstory became a constant topic. As a nappy-headed mixed child in San Francisco, I never lied about my ethnicity; there was no need for it. But, living in the Midwest, even my maternal grandmother held issue with my color; she lied to protect herself against the judgment she believed would be passed by others and, I believe, her own loathing of her non-White grandchild. Following suit, I began to tell the same lie. I hated the curliness of my hair and spent hours each day straightening it, trying to look White. White is right…right? I don’t believe that now, but I believed it then…

Read the entire article here.

Talking Mixed-Race Identity with Young Children

Hyphen—Asian Americans Unabridged
2014-05-06

Sharon H. Chang

“Mom, am I White?”

A few weeks ago, when I got this question from my four-year-old, I wasn’t sure what to say. Technically my son is “biracial” — but that label does him a severe representative injustice, because his bloodline is actually Japanese, Taiwanese, Slovakian, German, French Canadian, British, and Welsh. He also does not possess a parent of just one race and a parent of another race, as if often assumed when people hear the term “biracial”—because both my husband and I are mixed-race Asian/White too. For these reasons, I much prefer to describe us, and our son, as multiracial.

I write about and research race, families, and children, with an especial focus on multiraciality. I don’t believe in avoiding race talk with my child, though I do try to discuss it in age-appropriate ways. I’ve tried to stand by my conviction that it’s better he learn how to think and talk about these issues within the family first, rather than have normative ideals force-fed down his throat by everyone else when he walks out the door. That said, I wasn’t fully prepared when he turned to me and asked, “Mom, am I White?”…

Read the entire article here.

The Future of Multiracial Identity with Sylvia Targ (Palo Alto High School ’16)

TEDxYouth
2014-04-19

Sylvia Targ (Palo Alto High School ’16) discusses biracial identity and revolutionary ideas regarding how we view ourselves and others. Sylvia is an avid intern at Stanford Behavioral Sciences & Psychology.

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)

Witnesses to History: Children’s Views of Race and the 2008 United States Presidential Election

Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy
Volume 13, Issue 1 (December 2013)
pages 186–210
DOI: 10.1111/j.1530-2415.2012.01303.x

Meagan M. Patterson, Associate Professor of Psychology
University of Kansas

Erin Pahlke, Assistant Professor of Psychology
Whitman College, Walla Walla, Washington

Rebecca S. Bigler, Professor of Psychology and Women’s and Gender Studies
University of Texas, Austin

The 2008 presidential election presented a unique opportunity to examine children’s attention to racial issues in politics. We conducted interviews with 6- to 11-year-old children (70 boys, 60 girls; 29 African Americans, 58 European Americans, 43 Latinos) within 3 weeks prior to and after the election. Interview questions concerned knowledge, preferences, and perceptions of others’ attitudes concerning the election, views of the implications of the election for race relations, and personal aspirations to become president. Results indicated that children were highly knowledgeable about Obama’s status as the first African American president. Most children felt positively about the presence of an African American candidate for president, although a few children showed clear racial prejudice. Overall, children expected others to show racial ingroup preferences but simultaneously endorsed the optimistic view that Obama’s race was a slight asset in his bid for the presidency. Older children were somewhat more likely to view Obama’s race as negatively impacting his chances of being elected than younger children. African American and Latino children were more interested in becoming president than European American children; aspiration rates did not change from pre- to post-election.

Read or purchase the article here.

Becoming a black woman: an identity in process

Black Women of Brazil: The site dedicated to Brazilian women of African descent
2013-07-31

Fernanda Souza

“(…) We are born preta (black), mulata, parda, brown, roxinha (a little purple) among others, but becoming negra (black) (1) is an achievement.” (Lélia Gonzalez)

“How (does one) to form an identity around color and non self-acceptance of blackness by the majority whose future was projected in the dream of branqueamento (whitening)?” (Munanga, p. 137, 2004)

My entire life I saw myself as a parda (brown), morena, mulata, mestiça (mixed race), but never, under any circumstances, negra (black). Although having blacks uncles and cousins, besides my late grandmother being black, I didn’t not recognize as such because of not thinking my parents were black, because I believed in the idea that blacks were only those people who had darker skin and my father and my mother could be seen, even by themselves, as mestiços and not as negros. That’s where we have one of the great subtleties while one of the biggest problems for racial consciousness in the country: the mestiço. The mestiço, as an intermediate category between white and black, is a result of the long process of mestiçagem (racial mixture) that marks Brazil. Mestiço here should be understood primarily as someone who is the child of a interracial couple (in this case, I refer to the union between a black man/ white woman and white man/black woman) and can also, to facilitate understanding of the text, be understood as someone who, even though not being the son/daughter of an interracial couple but of black parents, having lighter skin and had/has difficulty in defining themselves as black. Again I reiterate: this extension of the concept of “mestiço” is only to help in the understanding of the text and not to have to use the term “non-white” because it encompasses other ethnic groups, such as indigenous and neither “pardos (browns)”, because I find it politically innocuous for a text that will discuss mainly mestiçagem and the difficulty of asserting a racial-ethnic identity.

Miscegenation constitutes the cornerstone of the myth of racial democracy, whose central idea is that we are mestiços, the result of interbreeding between the three races – white, Indian and Black – which occurred through a contact and a harmonious coexistence between the three – forgetting that this process started from the rape of black women enslaved by plantation masters and there is nothing harmonious about it – and, in this sense, here there doesn’t exist so much discrimination and racial prejudice and people recognize themselves first as Brazilian than from a racial-ethnic identity of the oppressed, because as the myth of racial democracy dissolves, it mitigates and obscures the tensions, conflicts and racial prejudices present in Brazil, as Kabengele Munanga (2004) pointed out…

Read the entire article here.

Bi-racial Africans: “diluted” Africans?

This is Africa
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
2014-03-22

Melinda Ozongwu, Writer Urban Culture

One’s nationality can be determined by where you were born, where your parents are from, where you hold citizenship – politics, geography, circumstance and even choice. There is nothing complicated about where I am from, until I’m challenged to prove it.

As a bi-racial African, defining and proving how Ugandan I am is something I am faced with quite often.

I’ve just become more tolerant of other people’s opinions of my identity
In the past when confronted with such a challenge, my sensitivity and emotions would affect my participation in the conversation. I would either defend myself by launching into a soliloquy in my mother tongue to prove that I belonged or, more often, I would simply remove myself from the conversation for fear of landing myself with a charge of aggravated assault. I have since matured, or maybe I’ve just become more tolerant of other people’s opinions of my identity. At any rate, I no longer feel the need to prove myself to anyone, so the most recent dispute of my Ugandan-ness couldn’t have come at a better time…

…This isn’t a woe-is-me story, I don’t feel hindered by the diversity in my heritage, but I do feel that not acknowledging challenges and obstacles faced by bi-racial Africans implies that there are none, or that all Africans are equally accepted, no matter how they look or sound. On many levels, the definition of “African” has ample space to be broadened, and somewhere within that definition one should find bi-racial Africans too, because there is a tendency to cast us aside when we’re not being put on a pedestal…

Read the entire article here.

On mixedness and blackness

What Nadia Likes
2014-03-14

Nadia Riepenhausen

What are you? A question that is fairly straightforward for many, but not so much for me. Before you roll your eyes, expecting to hear another lengthy diatribe about another ‘tragic mullato’ identity crisis, hear me out.

A couple of Sundays ago, I found myself in a ‘battle of the races’ on twitter, a ‘twar’ for the lack of a better term. It started out as a pleasant debate regarding racial categories in South Africa, and the difference between a cultural and racial identity. It ended with me being called a racist who hates black people by choosing to identify as ‘mixed race’. I have been called many things, but a racist is definitely a first for me. I’m not going to justify my non-racist claim, by stating something lame like “some of my best friends are black”, because as I am mixed race, I am also black, but some people just don’t seem to get or accept that it’s possible to be both of these things at the same time

In the aforementioned twitter debate, I was explaining to my fellow tweeters that I prefer to identify as mixed race, rather than ‘coloured’. For those not in the know, ‘coloured’ is how mixed race people are referred to in South Africa, and in Zimbabwe where I grew up. For me ‘coloured’ is more of a cultural identity, rather than a race. Although both of my parents were born coloured, I have never been comfortable with the label. This is mainly due to the way that I have been socialised and the environment that I grew up in. I grew up with my German stepfather and spent parts of my childhood in Germany. I went to predominantly white schools, and was one of a handful of so-called ‘coloureds’ in my school. I found myself with either white or black friends, and when it came to debating issues of race or politics, I adopted a black identity. During the time I was in school, I didn’t have the means to question my identity too much, but always found it difficult to answer questions pertaining to what I was. I didn’t live in the areas that coloured people lived in, I didn’t speak the way they spoke, nor did I go to the same places they did. I may give the impression that I was afflicted with a superiority complex, and that I thought I was better in some way, but this was definitely not the case. I would have loved to have blended in, but I simply did not. The few times that I attempted to, I was told that I ‘didn’t belong’ and was even beaten up by a girl once for being where I don’t belong. Many years on, I have no desire to blend in with any group and have embraced my ‘otherness’…

Read the entire article here.

‘Mixed race’, ‘mixed origins’ or what? Generic terminology for the multiple racial/ethnic group population

Anthropology Today
Volume 25, Issue 2 (April 2009)
pages 3-8
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8322.2009.00653.x

Peter J. Aspinall, Emeritus Reader in Population Health
University of Kent, UK

A broad range of terms have been proposed and debated for the ‘mixed race’ population. Dissatisfaction with ‘mixed race’, the term most widely used but contested on the grounds that it references the now discredited concept of ‘race’, has led to the search for an alternative. In 1994 the Royal Anthropological Institute advocated ‘mixed origins’; despite subsequent further efforts, this alternative has gained little momentum. ‘Mixed race’ now competes with terms such as ‘mixed heritage’, ‘dual heritage’, and ‘mixed parentage’ amongst data users.  However, research indicates that the term of choice of most respondents in general population and student samples of this population group is ‘mixed race’, other terms – including ‘mixed origins’ – attracting little support.  Given its dominance, it is premature to argue that the term ‘mixed race’ should be replaced by candidates that are not self-descriptors.

Read the entire article here.