Mixed Race Studies

Not All Blacks Are African American: The Importance of Viewing Advisees as Individuals in a Culturally Mosaic Context

The Mentor: An Academic Advising Journal
Pennsylvania State University
2013-08-15

Mary M. Livingston, Professor of Psychology
Louisiana Tech University

Latoya Pierce, Assistant professor of Psychology
Louisiana Tech University

Lou’uan Gollop-Brown, Assistant Professor of Psychology
Louisiana Tech University

When an advisee walks through the door, it is important for an adviser to consciously refrain from making possibly fallacious assumptions about the advisee’s racial heritage on the basis of skin color. Of course, this is also a mistake that may also be made by the advisee. One author of this paper, who is from the Caribbean, was selected as a preferred adviser by many undergraduate African American advisees, because they felt, as one of them, she would know and understand their experiences. Initial impressions influence the adviser-advisee interaction. This is not to say that the adviser should eschew accurate cultural recognition, which may be an important part of an advisee’s identity and a key to understanding and communication. Instead, we should attempt to verify our assumptions since our suppositions may not be correct…

…An additional issue is the racial identity of individuals who consider themselves to be biracial or multiracial. Biracial is defined as “of, relating to, or involving members of two races” (Biracial, 2013). Multiracial is defined as “composed of, involving, or representing various races” (Multiracial, 2013). When individuals are biracial or multiracial, our human tendency to fit them into one category no longer works. Numerous times, biracial or multiracial advisees have told stories about meeting a person, and during the conversation, racial identity came up. The multiracial student was almost always asked to readily identify himself or herself as a member of an established racial group. The acronym VREG coincides with this experience. VREG stands for visibly recognizable ethic groups, and the concept speaks to our need to classify and recognize people as such (Helms & Cook, 1999)…

Read the entire article here.

Researching the Experiences of Multiracial People Having their Racial Group Membership Denied by Others

University of Maryland, College Park
Department of Psychology
2013-08-22

Marisa Franco, Doctoral Student
Counseling Psychology

Greetings!

My name is Marisa Franco and I am a doctoral student in counseling psychology at the University of Maryland. I am conducting a survey examining Multiracial people’s experiences of having their racial group membership denied by others.

I would appreciate if you could participate and/or forward this study to potential participants. We are looking for participants that identify as Multiracial and are over the age of 18.

All participants will have the option of being entered into a raffle to receive one of three $25 gift cards.

To participate in the study, please click here: https://umd.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_8ChXJARNTErFm0l

Prospective participants can click on the link provided above and will be directed to the informed consent document, which includes additional information on study participation. Participation in the study is expected to take approximately 30 minutes.

Participation is confidential and participants may withdraw from the study at any time. If participants have any questions, they may contact me at mgf269@umd.edu.

Thank you.

What the ‘Mixed Kids Are Always So Beautiful’ Meme Really Means

The Huffington Post
2013-08-22

Marcia Dawkins, Clinical Assistant Professor of Communications
University of Southern California, Annenberg

The New York Times’ Motherlode blog recently posted a thought-provoking article called, “Mixed Kids Are Always So Beautiful.” The author’s experiences as a parent to a racially-ambiguous mixed child are proof that beauty and race are concepts societies create that may not actually exist in nature. As a result, beauty and race are associated with and impacted by our experiences and perceptions related to class, immigration, gender, sexuality and marketing. Case in point: Since the Time magazine “New Eve” cover in the 1990s, multiracial individuals are more and more said to be the face of 21st century America and its evolved standard of beauty. But what’s less known is that even this image was altered to look less “Hispanic/Latino” (read: brown) and more “European” (read: white) after focus group testing.

The “mixed race faces are prettier” meme is related directly to hybrid vigor, the biological phenomenon that predicts that crossbreeding leads to offspring that are genetically fitter than their parents. Hybrid vigor makes mixed race people somehow biologically different and prettier than non-mixed (non-white) people by nature. Equally dangerous is the added effect that focusing on mixed-race offspring continues to make interracial relationships about sex and heterosexuality and to marginalize those who do not identify as heterosexuals and/or come from same-sex interracial families…

…My parents reminded us that real beauty is measured more accurately by intelligence, interests and healthy relationships rather than by a racially ambiguous appearance and others’ reactions to it. They also taught me not to “believe the (racist) hype” that mixed kids are more beautiful than anyone else…

Read the entire article here.

Multiracial Experiences Survey

Self in Social Context Lab
Psychology Department
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada
2013-02-18

Lisa S. Giamo, M.A., Ph.D. Candidate
Experimental Social Psychology

I am conducting research as part of my dissertation at Simon Fraser University. As part of research being conducted on behalf of the Self in the Social Context Lab at Simon Fraser University, we are currently working on a study examining the experiences of multiracial people in today’s society. Psychology is just starting to study multiracial people more in depth, and we think it is important to understand more about the experiences of multiracial people and how they see themselves. We are specifically interested in people with one White and one Asian parent, as this population is the fastest growing of all of the multiracial combinations.  Since multiracial people are found all across the globe, it is difficult to do this type of research without assistance with online recruiting.

The anonymity and confidentiality of all participants are guaranteed.  If you are interested in being a part of this research, please use the following link to our survey: https://cgi.sfu.ca/~sisclab/cgi-bin/v5/rws5.cgi?FORM=MultiracialExperience1

A big fish or a small pond? Framing effects in percentages

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes
Volume 122, Issue 2, November 2013
pages 190–199
DOI: 10.1016/j.obhdp.2013.07.003

Meng Li, Assistant Professor
Department of Health and Behavioral Sciences
University of Colorado Denver

Gretchen B. Chapman, Professor of Psychology
Rutgers University

This paper presents three studies that demonstrate people’s preference for a large percentage of a small subset over a small percentage of a large subset, when the net overall quantity is equated. Because the division of a set into subsets is often arbitrary, this preference represents a framing effect. The framing effect is particularly pronounced for large percentages. We propose that the effect has two causes: A partial neglect of the subset information, and a non-linear shaped function in the way people perceive percentages.

Highlights

• We examined framing effects in percentages.
• We explored the functional form of percentage weighting.
• Big percentage of a small subset looms larger than small percentage of a big subset.
• Such effect occurs are more pronounced for percentages greater than 50%.
• The perception of percentages follows a non-linear function.

Read or purchase the article here.

Obama as Wounded Healer

Psychology Today
Ideals in Question: Exploring values in psychotherapeutic culture
2013-08-02

Stephen Salter, Psy.D.

Validating the context of racial trauma

On July 19th, Barack Obama honored the life of Trayvon Martin by giving voice to the history of racial trauma in the African American community.  “It could have been me,” Obama states in reference to Trayvon.  The remark reminds me of the old proverb, “There but for the grace of God go I.”  Obama’s kinship with Trayvon relates of course to their identities as African Americans.

He delivered a 17 minute off the cuff speech with unprecedented candor, provoking powerful reactions that diverged along racial, political, and personal lines.

For Barack Obama, Trayvon Martin’s death was a trauma.  It set off a chain of recollections that were outside of the flow of day to day experience, revealing additional dimension of his character.  His recollections pointed toward his personal past, his identity as a black man, and his connectedness to the history of African American trauma…

Read the entire article here.

Often Misidentified, Multiracial People Value Accurate Perceptions

American Psychological Association
Press Releases
2013-08-02

Average American has trouble identifying multiracial people, research finds

HONOLULU — Multiracial people may be misidentified more often as being white than black and may value being accurately identified more so than single-race individuals, according to research presented at APA’s 121st Annual Convention.

“Today, the distinctions among white, black, Latino and Asian people are becoming blurred by the increasing frequency and prominence of multiracial people,” said Jacqueline M. Chen, PhD, of the University of California, Davis. “Still, average Americans have difficulty identifying multiracial people who don’t conform to the traditional single-race categories that society has used all their lives.”

Chen discussed six experiments in which participants were consistently less likely to identify people as multiracial than single-race and took longer to identify someone as multiracial compared to how easily they identified black, white and Asian people. When they made incorrect identifications, they were consistently more likely to categorize a multiracial person as white than black, the study found. Time pressure, distractions and thinking of race in either-or terms made observers significantly less likely to identify someone as multiracial. The study was conducted at the University of California, Santa Barbara and involved 435 ethnically diverse undergraduate students.

Participants identified the race of black, white, Asian or multiracial individuals in photos and researchers recorded each participant’s accuracy and time to respond. Researchers used a memorization task and a time limit in two experiments to determine if either would affect a participant’s accuracy. In another experiment, participants were told the study was about reading comprehension and attention. They then read news articles about scientists claiming to find a genetic basis for race and were asked to view several photographs of faces and identify them by race.

Scientists agree that the racial categories we use today are not based on biological differences but are social constructions that can change over time, Chen said, noting that until the mid-20th century, the Anglo-Saxon majority in the United States viewed Irish and Italian immigrants as different races. Previous research has found that people who identify as multiracial have as many as or more positive experiences than those who identify with a single race, regardless of that group’s status in society, she said…

…In another presentation during the same convention session, Jessica D. Remedios, PhD, of Tufts University, looked at how multiracial people value the accuracy of another person’s perception of their race. “Our research found that multiracial people expect positive interactions with people who accurately perceive their racial backgrounds because that affirms their self-perceptions,” Remedios said. ..

Read the entire press release here.

Prove you’re Japanese: when being bicultural can be a burden

The Japan Times
2013-07-29

Louise George Kittaka

Parents’ decision to add a katakana name can create issues when kids enter the big wide world

Japanese are Japanese and foreigners are foreigners, and never the twain shall meet? In many aspects of daily life in this country, there is one way for the Japanese and another for the rest of us. Like it or not, that’s just how it is. At least foreigners know where we stand.

However, bicultural individuals — the children of one Japanese and one foreign parent — may find that life isn’t quite that simple.

Although they were born, raised and educated in Japan, and as Japanese citizens are entitled to all the legal privileges that entails, society sometimes marginalizes them in ways that their foreign parents may not have anticipated. Japanese television shows and commercials might be full of cute “half” young adults, but back in the real world, being a bit “different” isn’t always such a good thing when you are trying to make your way in this country…

Read the entire article here.

Mental health service use by adolescents of Indian and White origin

Archives of Disease in Childhood
Published online: 2013-07-29
DOI: 10.1136/archdischild-2013-303772

Panos Vostanis, Professor of Psychology
University of Leicester

Nadzeya Svirydzenka, Research Assistant
Department of Psychology
University of Leicester

Pat Dugard, Independent Senior Statistician
King’s Lynne, United Kingdom

Swaran Singh, Professor of Social and Community Psychiatry
University of Warwick, Coventry

Nisha Dogra, Professor of Psychology
University of Leicester

Background Despite the available epidemiological evidence on the prevalence of mental health problems in childhood and adolescence, there is limited knowledge on whether there are differences in the level of need and service utilisation by young ethnic minority groups.

Methods Adolescents of 13–15 years from nine schools in two English cities in which children of Indian ethnicity were over-represented (n=2900), completed rating scales on different types of mental health problems, contacts with services and informal supports.

Results Indian adolescents scored significantly lower on general mental health and depression symptoms. They were also less likely than White adolescents to self-report having mental health problems, even for a similar level of need. Among those with mental health scores within the clinical range, Indian adolescents were less likely to have visited specialist services. Instead, they were more likely to first approach family members, teachers or general practitioners.

Conclusions Rather than a blanket approach being applied to policy and service planning to meet the needs of diverse communities of young people, more specific evidence needs to be gained about patterns of referrals of minority groups and their strategy of accessing supportive adults.

Read or purchase the article here.

Multiracial Daughters of Asian Immigrants: Identity and Agency

Women & Therapy
Volume 36,  Issue 3-4, 2013
Special Issue: Women and Immigration
pages 268-285
DOI: 10.1080/02703149.2013.797776

Leilani Salvo Crane
Counseling and Psychological Services
University of Pennsylvania

Multiracial daughters of Asian immigrants must navigate complex pathways to adulthood, self-efficacy, and self-concept. Frequently they are required by family and society to bridge the cultural divide among a variety of Asian and American norms. Conflicting loyalties at times manifest as psychological struggles, which the daughter may be unable to resolve without therapeutic intervention. This article describes a culturally responsive approach to therapeutic intervention that takes into account both developmental and multiracial identity models, along with specific tools for exploring the complexities of cultural background, familial expectations, and issues of power and oppression. Both Hays’ ADDRESSING model (2001, 2009) and construction of the genogram are used to explore individual differences. Case examples are presented to illustrate interventions.

Daughters of Asian immigrants must navigate complex pathways to adulthood, self-efficacy, and self-view. As noted in the Handbook of Girls’ and Women’s Psychological Health (Worell & Goodheart, 2006), immigrant women and their children must be considered within the family system, rather than as Isolated individuals (Goodheart, 2006). Those with disempowered and or traumatized parents travel an especially difficult road due. in part, to the absence of multiracial role models with whom to identify, as well as to frequently conflicting cultural demands. Multiracial daughters of at least one Asian immigrant parent frequently face demands from family of origin to lie closely connected to family…

Read or purchase the article here.