Mixed Race Studies

Patterns of self-harm and attempted suicide among white and black/mixed race female prisoners

Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health
Volume 13, Issue 4 (November 2003)
pages 229–240
DOI: 10.1002/cbm.549

Jo Borrill
Division of Neuroscience and Psychological Medicine, Imperial College of Science Technology and Medicine
University of London

Rachel Burnett
Division of Neuroscience and Psychological Medicine, Imperial College of Science Technology and Medicine
University of London

Richard Atkins
Psychology Subject Group
Thames Valley University

Sarah Miller
Division of Neuroscience and Psychological Medicine, Imperial College of Science Technology and Medicine
University of London

Daniel Briggs
Division of Neuroscience and Psychological Medicine, Imperial College of Science Technology and Medicine, University of London

Tim Weaver
Department of Social Science and Medicine, Imperial College of Science Technology and Medicine
University of London

Professor Anthony Maden
Division of Neuroscience and Psychological Medicine, Imperial College of Science Technology and Medicine
University of London

Aim

The aim was to investigate ethnic differences in lifetime self-harm and attempted suicide in women prisoners, and to examine relationships between self-harm, suicide and substance use and dependence.

Background

Previous studies have suggested that there may be ethnic differences in the proportion of prisoners reporting substance misuse, self-harm and attempted suicide, although relatively few minority ethnic women have been studied in the UK. This study examines drug and alcohol dependence in white and black British women in prison, and explores possible associations with self-harm, suicide attempts, and family violence.

Methods

301 women (190 white, 111 black or mixed race) were interviewed in ten prisons from different parts of England. Measures included the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification test (AUDIT), the severity of Dependence Scale (SDS), section C (suicidality) of the MINI International Neuropsychiatric Interview.

Results

Half of the women in the sample reported at least one act of self-harm in their life and 46% reported making a suicide attempt at some time. Lifetime self-harm was associated with a history of harmful drinking and with being a victim of violence, including physical assault, sexual assault and violence from family and friends. Lifetime suicide attempts were associated with reported violence from family or friends. Current high suicide risk was most common among women on remand.

Drug dependence and reported violence from family or friends were both more common amongst white women than black/mixed race women. Self-harm and attempted suicide were generally more common among white women, but black/mixed race women dependent on drugs had the highest proportion of women reporting self-harm. There was tentative support for three-way association between ethnicity, dependence and self-harm; this raises the possibility that drug dependence may be a predictor of self-harm in the black female prison population, which is worthy of further investigation.

Read or purchase the article here.

American Identity in the Age of Obama

Routledge
2013-11-28
250 pages
Hardback ISBN: 978-0-415-72201-8

Edited by:

Amílcar Antonio Barreto, Associate Professor of Political Science
Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts

Richard L. O’Bryant, Assistant Professor of Political Science; Director of the John D. O’Bryant African American Institute
Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts

The election of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States has opened a new chapter in the country’s long and often tortured history of inter-racial and inter-ethnic relations. Many relished in the inauguration of the country’s first African American president — an event foreseen by another White House aspirant, Senator Robert Kennedy, four decades earlier. What could have only been categorized as a dream in the wake of Brown vs. Board of Education was now a reality. Some dared to contemplate a post-racial America. Still, soon after Obama’s election a small but persistent faction questioned his eligibility to hold office; they insisted that Obama was foreign-born. Following the Civil Rights battles of the 20th century hate speech, at least in public, is no longer as free flowing as it had been. Perhaps xenophobia, in a land of immigrants, is the new rhetorical device to assail what which is non-white and hence un-American. Furthermore, recent debates about immigration and racial profiling in Arizona along with the battle over rewriting of history and civics textbooks in Texas suggest that a post-racial America is a long way off.

What roles do race, ethnicity, ancestry, immigration status, locus of birth play in the public and private conversations that defy and reinforce existing conceptions of what it means to be American?

This book exposes the changing and persistent notions of American identity in the age of Obama. Amílcar Antonio Barreto, Richard L. O’Bryant, and an outstanding line up of contributors examine Obama’s election and reelection as watershed phenomena that will be exploited by the president’s supporters and detractors to engage in different forms of narrating the American national saga. Despite the potential for major changes in rhetorical mythmaking, they question whether American society has changed substantively.

Contents

• Introduction: The Age of Obama and American Identity; Amílcar Antonio Barreto and Richard L. O’Bryant
• 1. Obama and Enduring Notions of American National Identity; Amílcar Antonio Barreto
• 2. Racial Identification in a Post Obama Era: Multiracialism, Identity Choice and Candidate Evaluation; Natalie Masuoka
• 3. The Son of a Black Man from Kenya and a White Woman from Kansas: Immigration and Racial Neoliberalism in the Age of Obama; Josue David Cisneros
• 4. Immigrant Resentment and American Identity in the Twenty-First Century; Deborah J. Schildkraut
• 5. Browning our way to Post-Race: Identity, Identification, and Securitization of Brown; Kumarini Silva
• 6. White Masculinities in the Age of Obama: Rebuilding or Reloading?; Steven D. Farough
• 7. “Exceptionally Distinctive: President Obama’s Complicated Articulation of American Exceptionalism; Joseph M. Valenzano and Jason A. Edwards
• 8. Barack Obama’s Foreign Policy Leadership: Renewing America’s Image; Mark A. Menaldo
• 9. The First Black President?: Cross-Racial Perceptions of Barack Obama’s Race; David Wilson and Matthew Hunt

Seeking Participants in a Research Study Examining Multiracial Individuals’ Attitudes Toward Seeking Counseling in the U.S.

Wright Institute, Berkeley, California
2013-10-25

Emmanuel Zamora
Department of Clinical Psychology

My name is Emmanuel Zamora, M.A. and I am a Psy.D. student in the Clinical Psychology program at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, CA. I am currently working towards completing my dissertation, and I am seeking participants for my research study examining multiracial individuals’ attitudes toward seeking counseling in the U.S.

Please consider participating in my survey if you meet the following criteria:

1. You are an adult (18+) living in the United States.
2. You have parents that are racially different from each other or you identify as multiracial (mixed race, mixed/multiple heritage, biracial, hapa, etc…)

As a participant you must be willing to complete an anonymous one-time online survey. Completing the survey takes approximately 25 minutes.

Participation is anonymous, strictly voluntary, and you can choose to withdraw at any time without penalty. If you successfully complete the questions in the survey, you will have the option to enter your e-mail address into a raffle with a chance to win one of six $30 Amazon gift-cards. E-mail addresses will be kept confidential.

The risks associated with this project are minimal, however it is possible that participation may elicit mild psychological distress related to the disclosure of information. There are no direct benefits to participating in this study; however you may find the questions interesting and reflecting on self can be enjoyable. Your responses may be used to educate mental health professionals in providing more helpful services for multiracial individuals.

If you have any questions about the study, please feel free to contact Emmanuel Zamora, M.A. at ezamora@wi.edu. You may also contact my dissertation chair, Alicia del Prado, Ph.D. at 510-841-9230 ext. 141. This survey received IRB approval on 10/25/2013. If you have any questions regarding your rights as a research subject, please contact The Wright Institute’s Institutional Review Board at (510) 841-9230.

For more information, click here.

Why Do You Call Yourself Black And African?

New African
2009-04-30

Carina Ray, Associate Professor of African and Afro- American Studies
Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts

A little over a year ago I received an email with the subject line “Ok I wonder why you call yourself ‘black’ and ‘African’” from a self-described longtime New African reader.  Even if subsequent emails have been less direct in their articulation of the same underlying sentiment, they all point in a similar direction: some people are confused about my racial background and about the way I racially identify myself.  Their need to seek clarification suggests that being able to label me is important to the way in which they understand the content of my columns.

I was perplexed at first by this seemingly sudden preoccupation with my race.  After all I’d been writing for New African for several years and never had anyone raise the subject before. It then occurred to me that these racial enquiries started happening almost immediately after my picture began running with my column.  Obviously there was a disconnect in the minds of some readers between my appearance and my writing, especially when I refer to myself as both Black and African, and use the collective “we” to talk about the past, present, and future of Black people worldwide.

Indeed, the fact that I claim my place in the global African world annoyed one reader so much that he asked, “Why do you keep on writing ‘we’?” Just in case he hadn’t already made his point clear he added, “You are not black in my eyes. You look much more Italian or Spanish. I can assure you, if you go to Africa you will be called ‘white’.” I always find it amusing that people seem to forget the proximity of southern Spain and Italy to Africa.  There is a reason after all that Spaniards and Italians from the south look a lot like North Africans—centuries of exchange between the two regions certainly wasn’t limited to material goods.

Ironically, however, the reader was partially right.  I am ¼ Italian, but I don’t look anything like my blond hair and blue eyed Italian paternal grandmother who came from Turin in the far north of the country.  Nor do I look anything like my paternal Irish grandfather.  The reader wasn’t off the mark either when he guessed I might be Spanish.  My mom is part Spanish. She is also Taíno Indian and African, most likely of Yoruba ancestry, as were many of the enslaved Africans who worked the sugar plantations on the island of Puerto Rico where my mom was born.  So there you have it: Taíno, Spanish, Northern Italian, Irish, and yes, African too.  Why, you might ask, if I am so thoroughly mixed race do I identify as Black and African?

Let me begin by providing the context necessary to understand the particularly unique way in which Black is defined in the United States, where I was born and raised. Black, as a legal-cum-racial category, was historically constructed in the broadest possible way in order to expand the number of people who could be enslaved and to limit the legal right of racially mixed people to claim their freedom.  Known as the “one-drop rule“, the idea that a person with even the slightest trace of African ancestry is Black has long outlived slavery in America.  What was once a legal construction became a socially constructed category that has and continues to encompass a broad range of very phenotypically diverse Black people.  While the racial landscape of the U.S. is home to Black people of all hues, hair textures, body shapes and sizes, and facial features, we do not all experience our blackness in the same way—far from it. Phenotype, class, gender, and geography all play major roles in shaping our individual experiences as Black people in America. Hierarchies based on skin tone, alone, have been at the root of painful divisions within the black community, and are often the basis for preferential treatment within the dominant white society. It has not been lost on African-Americans that if Barack Obama was the complexion of his father he would likely not be our president today…

Read the entire article here.

Seeking Female Participants for a Qualitative Study on Hybrid Identity

University of San Diego
2013-11-15

Roxanne J. Kymaani, M.S.
Life and Leadership Coach

I am a doctoral candidate in Leadership Studies at University of San Diego. I am trying to recruit female participants for a qualitative study that will explore whether a dialogic approach can help create the conditions for the construction of a new language for the hybrid identity that is currently labeled black and white, mixed race, and/or biracial.This study will explore in depth the lived experiences of women who have one black and one white parent, and compose a collective narrative about they describe themselves and their processes for constructing identity, as well as how their individual histories intersect within this new discourse.

Participants will be asked to complete a reflection questionnaire, participate in two group dialogues (each two hours long), and participate in one personal interview with the researcher. The dialogues will be held in San Diego, so participants should live within San Diego County or neighboring counties.

To participate in my study, you must meet the following criteria:

• Be female and 30 years of age or over.
• Have one black and one white parent that the participant identifies as such.
• Self-identify as black and white, biracial, mixed, mulatto, or other.
• Be born and raised in the United States.
• Be willing and cooperative to share and discuss your lived experiences with others during two live onsite scheduled group dialogues in December and January.

If you (or someone you know) qualify for this study, please email me to set up a time to interview. My email address is roxannekymaani@gmail.com.

Thank you in advance for any assistance you provide.

Black, White, Other: Biracial Americans Talk About Race and Identity [20th Anniversary Edition]

Smashwords Edition
October 2013
146,200 words (approximate)
eBook ISBN: 9781301877591

Lise Funderburg

In this 20th anniversary edition of the landmark “Black, White, Other,” journalist Lise Funderburg explores the lives of adult children of black/white unions. Her subjects’ unflinching honesty, whipsmart humor, and deep feeling result in a stunning — and enduring — portrait of race in America. New foreword by novelist Mat Johnson and links to updated commentary from the original participants.

Being Black: It’s not the skin color

Philadelphia Weekly
2013-11-13

Kennedy Allen et al.

Drexel prof Yaba Blay’s striking new photo book “One Drop” explores how a wide range of different skin tones affects Americans’ personal identities. In  this PW excerpt, eight Philadelphia-area residents of mixed heritage concur: However light they may be, they’re still most certainly Black. Our own Kennedy Allen agrees…

Growing up in Mt. Airy, an ethnic and economically diverse neighborhood, instilled within me a level of acceptance and tolerance regarding my fellow man that, confoundingly, many didn’t seem to share. I was one of seven Black kids in a class of 42. Because I spoke English properly and preferred rock to rap, I was deemed “White girl” by my racial peers—a label that haunted me for what felt like eons. I knew I wasn’t White, nor did I ever have the urge to be, outside of wishing my hair would blow in the wind like some of the girls in my class. Flash-forward to my final years of high school, in a black school where I was the “light-bright girl who talks White.” Dark-skinned people still sneer at me, somehow assuming that I believe myself to be “better” than they are because of my buttered-toffee skin tone.

When all is said and done, racial or ethnic identity rests upon the individual and their experiences. I identify myself as a black woman who happens to have Irish and Cherokee lineage. What of all the others who identify as black, but appear otherwise? Scholar and activist Arturo Schomburg, whose extensive collection of books and historical records of African people’s achievements eventually became the famed Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, N.Y., identified as an Afro-Puerto Rican. (In fact, his passion for gathering all those documents was born after a grade-school teacher told him that black people had no history, heroes or accomplishments.) Would Schomburg’s experience be less valid because it fails to meet some homogenous notion of Blackness? Who has the right to determine these standards in the first place? And in an age of global interconnectedness and the instant, worldwide exchange of information and ideals, why does it still even matter?

Dr. Yaba Blay wondered some of the same things. A first-generation Ghanian-American and the co-director of Drexel’s Africana studies program, Blay has spent the past two years gathering vibrant portraits and intimate stories from nearly 60 individuals across the country in an attempt to shine some light upon questions of racial ambiguity and legitimacy. Those portraits now comprise a new book that she’s edited and published, (1)ne Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race—as well as an exhibit of the same name, currently on display at the Painted Bride Art Center…

Read the entire article and eight subject profiles from the book here.

Soledad O’Brien Explores Racial and Ethnic Identity in Provocative Black in America

CNN Press Room
Cable News Network (CNN)
2012-12-04

Who is Black in America? Debuts Sunday, Dec. 9 at 8:00 p.m. & 11:00p.m. ET & PT
U.S. Encore: Sunday, January 27, 2013,  20:00 p.m. ET, 23:00 p.m ET, and Monday, 02:00 ET
International Debut on CNN International: Sunday, January 13, 02:00Z and 10:00Z (Saturday, January 12, 21:00 EST and Sunday, January 13, 05:00 EST). View regional schedules here.

“I don’t really feel Black,” says 17-year-old Nayo Jones. Her mother is Black; she was raised apart from her by her White father, and she identifies herself as biracial. “I was raised up with White people, White music, White food so it’s not something I know,” she says in a new documentary that explores the sensitive concepts of race, cultural identity, and skin tone.

For the fifth installment of her groundbreaking Black in America series, CNN anchor and special correspondent Soledad O’Brien reports for Who is Black in America? The documentary debuts Sunday, December 09 at 8:00p.m. and 11:00p.m. ET & PT and replays on Saturday, December 15 at 8:00p.m. and 11:00p.m. ET & PT.

Is Jones Black? Is Blackness based upon skin color or other factors? The 2010 U.S. Census found 15 percent of new marriages are interracial, a figure that is twice what was reported in 1980. One in seven American newborns were of mixed race in 2010, representing an increase of two percent from the 2000 U.S. Census. Within this context, O’Brien examines how much regarding race and identity are personal choices vs. reflections of an external social construct.

Tim Wise, an author and anti-racism activist believes in self identification, but says, in practice, society often will remind biracial people like Jones of their Blackness, “in a million subtle ways,” he says in the documentary.

As the hour unfolds, O’Brien follows Jones, and her best friend and fellow high school student Becca Khalil, as they take part in a spoken word workshop led by the Philadelphia-based poet, Perry “Vision” DiVirgilio.
 
Vision, who is biracial, says he never felt quite White or Black enough to fit in with friends who had parents of one race.  Vision identifies as Black, and says that identity is more than skin – that identity encompasses experiences and struggles.  Through his workshop, he encourages young people to think, talk, and write about identity, as well as the concept of colorism, which he blames for his early struggles with self-esteem and identity.
 
“Colorism is a system in which light skin is more valued than dark skin,” says Drexel University’s assistant teaching professor for Africana studies, Yaba Blay.  Blay tells O’Brien that, as a young African-American woman growing up in New Orleans, she felt discriminated against – often by lighter skinned African Americans – due to her dark skin tone.
 
Blay’s work focuses on how prejudice related to skin tone can confuse and negatively impact identity and self esteem.  She aims to help others also develop positive images of cultural identity – for African Americans of all shades.
 
Often complicating concepts of identity beyond multiracial heritage is skin tone.  Khalil, who has light-colored skin and two parents who are Egyptian in origin, identifies herself as African American.  She feels contemporaries dismiss her African American identity due to her light skin tone.  She says in the documentary that she wishes she had darker skin.
 
Writer, producer, and image activist, Michaela Angela Davis says she accepts that race is a social construct, but she feels it is important for people to name and claim their own racial identity: “You are who you say that you are,” she says in the documentary…

Read the entire press release here.

Infant Perceptions of Mixed-Race Faces: An Exploration of the Hypodescent Rule in 8.5 Month-Old Infants

Pitzer College, Claremont, California
Senior Theses
Spring 2013
42 pages

Sophie Beiers

Studies have shown that adults often categorize mixed-race individuals of White and non-White descent as members of the non-White racial group, an effect said to be reminiscent of the “hypodescent” or “one-drop rule.” This effect has not yet been thoroughly studied in infants, although 9-month-old infants have been shown to be able to categorize mono-racial faces into different racial groups. In the present study, the perception of mixed-race White and Asian/Asian American faces was studied in sixteen 8.5-month-old infants. The infants were randomly assigned to two stimulus groups. The stimuli were the photographed faces of female college students who had self-identified as White, Asian/Asian American, or a 50-50 mix of those two races. Half the infants were habituated to White faces and half were habituated to Asian/Asian American faces, after which all infants were shown a mixed-race face. The results revealed that only infants in the White stimulus group recovered looking to the mixed-race face. This effect suggests that 8.5- month-old infants might see the mixed-race face as part of a different racial group than the White faces, and may see the mixed-race face as part of the same racial group as the Asian faces. Implications of this study on a larger scale are discussed. Further research including a larger sample size and participants of Asian/Asian American descent is recommended.

Read the entire thesis here.

Seeing Opportunity In A Question: ‘Where Are You Really From?’

Morning Edition
National Public Radio
2013-11-11

Renee Montagne, Host

Steve Inskeep, Host

Michele Norris, Host/Special Correspondent

NPR continues a series of conversations about The Race Card Project, where thousands of people have submitted their thoughts on race and cultural identity in six words. Every so often NPR Host/Special Correspondent Michele Norris will dip into those six-word stories to explore issues surrounding race and cultural identity for Morning Edition.

“Where are you from?”

“No, really, where are you from?”

Those questions about identity and appearance come up again and again in submissions to The Race Card Project. In some cases, Norris tells Morning Edition‘s Steve Inskeep, people say it feels accusatory — like, ‘Do you really belong?’

It’s also a question that Alex Sugiura, because of his racially ambiguous appearance, can’t seem to escape.

Sugiura, 27, is the child of a first-generation Japanese immigrant father and a Jewish mother of Eastern European descent. Sugiura’s brother Max looks more identifiably Asian, but when people meet Alex, they’re often not satisfied to hear that he’s from Brooklyn…

Read the article here. Listen to the story here. Download the audio here. Read the transcript here.