Mixed Race Studies

“I’m not half, I’m whole!”

Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu
2013-04-27

Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu
Stanford University

“I hate the word ‘half,’ which is used to designate people like me. I always wanted to be someone who is ‘whole.’” The young man raised his eyes to the evening sky and gazed upon the rising moon. It suddenly struck me that Byron and I were like the moon. As we are called “half,” the moon we were looking at is called a “half moon.” But like the moon, “half” is an illusion; there is much more to the moon than what meets the eye and there is much more to us than what people see. Like the moon, we are not half, we are whole…

…When Half is Whole is a book of stories of the developmental journeys of people with mixed ethnic backgrounds. I gathered these stories from individuals in the United States and Asia whose lives blend Asian and American in their families, whether biological or adoptive. The themes of their lives involve balancing, connecting, and finding meaning in their roots. The stories show how they have engaged in the process of becoming not “half” this or “half” that but whole human beings. In searching for their roots, they discover connections that bring them into contact with communities and their journeys engage them in healing themselves and healing others…

Read the entire article here.

Multiracial students discover identities in college

USA Today
2013-04-04

Taylor Lewis, USA TODAY Collegiate Correspondent

College offers multiracial students the chance to have open conversations about race, allowing them to embark on a quest that is crucial in developing their identities.

When Sam Ho receives a form where he must select his race, he has a decision to make: Will he choose “white,” or will he check “Asian”? The trick, he has found, is to alternate.

Raised by a Caucasian mother and a first-generation Chinese immigrant father, Ho, a junior at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, grew up in a multiracial household. Although he lived in predominately white Topeka, Kan., he was frequently exposed to his Chinese heritage. But because of his physical appearance, Ho finds himself identifying more strongly as a white man.

“My outward features aren’t particularly Asian, and living in a majority white society, that’s culturally just what has been around me for the most part,” Ho says. “I think most people assume I’m 100% Caucasian, so I think the treatment I get from others is with that assumption.”…

…”Your identity is not only impacted by how your racial group might perceive you, but how the dominant culture perceives you as a member of a different racial group,” says Belinda Biscoe, associate vice president for University Outreach at the University of Oklahoma in Norman and an coordinator of The National Conference on Race & Ethnicity in American Higher Education (NCORE). “Regardless of how we may see ourselves, part of our identity is also inextricably woven with how others see us.”…

…Take the “one drop” rule, for example, which suggests that if you have “one drop” of African-American blood, you must identify as black. So for multiracial students who grew up in two or more cultural worlds, they had to learn to define themselves in a society that was frequently asking “What are you?”.

“A lot of the biracial students would hear, ‘I’m not black enough to be black, and I’m also not white enough to be white, so where does that leave me?'” says Willie L. Banks Jr., associate dean of students at Cleveland State University in Cleveland and author of the study “Biracial Student Voices: Experiences at Predominantly White Institutions.” “So that’s always the conundrum. That’s the question that’s always addressed to these students: Where do you fit in?”…

Read the entire article here.

Racial and Ethnic Identity Development in White Mothers of Biracial, Black-White Children

Affilia
Volume 19, Number 1 (February 2004)
pages 68-84
DOI: 10.1177/0886109903260795

Margaret O’Donoghue, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Social Work
New York University

This article reports on a qualitative research study of the racial and ethnic identity of 11 White mothers who were married to Black (specifically African American) men and were raising biracial children. The uniqueness of these women’s lives, as Whites with an intimate knowledge of the Black experience, makes it difficult to place them within the levels described by current models of racial identity. Through their parenting of biracial children, the mothers had come to a greater sense of their own racial identity and to recognize White privilege and their own White identity. Their specific ethnic identity, as ethnic Whites, has not been passed on to their children.

…Most of the women revealed that in raising their children, they focused on a Black identity, with a somewhat unconscious understanding that the traditions that they, the mothers, could provide were either “just American” or not something their children needed to incorporate into their identities.   Essential to this process of White mothers fostering Black culture in their  biracial children was the presence of Black husbands. All the women were in  long-term marriages with Black men. Their husbands had educated them about Black culture and fostered their knowledge of this ethnicity. Without their husbands’ presence, the women may have found it difficult to impart this sense of ethnic identity to their children….

…In general, the women did not think that their identity had essentially changed since they married, nor did they feel they had somehow “crossed over” and become Black. Many noted, however, that they had become more aware of their own identity as a racial being, as a White person. As was noted in the previous section, before their relationships with their husbands, they had never been placed in a situation of having to consider themselves as having a race. White privilege had previously enabled them to move through social situations without having to consider the impact of their racial identification….

Read the entire here.

Status Boundary Enforcement and the Categorization of Black-White Biracials

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
Available online 2013-04-23

Arnold K. Ho, Assistant Professor of Psychology
Colgate University, Hamilton, New York

Jim Sidanius, Professor of Psychology and Professor of African and African American Studies
Harvard University

Amy J. C. Cuddy, Associate Professor of Business Administration, Hellman Faculty Fellow
Harvard University

Mahzarin R. Banaj, Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics
Harvard University

Highlights

• This paper demonstrates that individual differences and social context interact to influence how we categorize biracials.
• We show that the rule of hypodescent is used to enforce group boundaries.
• Anti-egalitarians are shown to strategically engage in hierarchy maintenance.

Individuals who qualify equally for membership in more than one racial group are not judged as belonging equally to both of their parent groups, but instead are seen as belonging more to their lower status parent group. Why? The present paper begins to establish the role of individual differences and social context in hypodescent, the process of assigning multiracials the status of their relatively disadvantaged parent group. Specifically, in two experiments, we found that individual differences in social dominance orientation—a preference for group-based hierarchy and inequality—interacts with perceptions of socioeconomic threat to influence the use of hypodescent in categorizing half-Black, half-White biracial targets. Importantly, this paper begins to establish hypodescent as a “hierarchy-enhancing” social categorization.

Read or purchase the article here.

Researching ethnicity, identity and ‘mixed-race’

Social Science Research: Discussing Methods and Resources
The British Library
2012-11-19

This post discusses our latest Myths and Realities event on ethnicity, identity and ‘mixed-race’ and points readers in the direction of some relevant British Library collections.

On the evening of 13 November we hosted our latest Myths and Realities event (in partnership with the Academy of Social Science) on ‘Our ethnicity and identity – what does it all mean?’ Speakers Professor Miri Song and Professor Ann Phoenix spoke about how we think about our ethnic identity, and how the meanings we attach to this identity can change across time, space and social context. The event was chaired by Rania Hafez of Muslim Women in Education.

Ann Phoenix’s talk entitled ‘Why are ‘race’ and ethnicity crucial to identities and social lives, but not central?’ explored how debates about multiculturalism have produced contradictory ways of thinking about ‘race’, ethnicity and identities. Miri Song’s title was ‘Does the growth of ‘mixed race’ people signal the declining significance of ‘race’?’. Here she examined what is signalled by the growth in interracial partnerships and of ‘mixed’ people…

Read the entire article here.

Brown Babies Germany’s Forgotten Children – Henriette Cain

Research at the National Archives & Beyond
BlogTalk Radio
2013-01-17

Bernice Bennett, Host

Are you searching for your family?  Are you German, Brown and want to learn more about your American or German heritage?

Join Henriette Cain Genealogist, Search Consultant and Secretary of the Black German Cultural Society (BGCS), Inc.  Mrs. Cain – a brown baby adoptee successfully found all members of her birth family. She is now helping others with their searches through her company S.U.N. Public Records Research. She offers family history research and strives to reunite families and friends. She is prominently featured in the documentary – “Brown Babies: Deutschlands verlorene Kinder“.

Mrs. Cain is also a Founding Member, co-founder and former Vice President of the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical  Society of the Northen Illinois Southern Wisconsin Chapter; a member of the Noxubee County (MS) Historical Society, and a former volunteer Librarian for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints Family History Library.

Play in your default player here.

JANM Show Looks at Mixed Ancestry

Los Angeles Downtown News
2013-04-15

Richard Guzmán

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES – The very title of the new Japanese American National Museum exhibit indicates the complex factors at play in a single community.

The show, Visible & Invisible: A Hapa Japanese American History, examines the diverse history of the Japanese American community as well as the still evolving notion of family and race. It opened April 7 and continues through Aug. 25 at the Little Tokyo museum.

Through photos, videos, artifacts and paintings, the shows traces the history of mixed-race Japanese American families — hapa is a term for a person of mixed race who is part Asian or Pacific Islander — going back to the late 1800s. It also looks at the challenges these families faced due to segregation and laws that criminalized mixed race marriages.

It’s a history, said Duncan Williams, the exhibit co-curator, that is often plainly visible in the faces of biracial individuals. However, he said the topic is also invisible, since it is rarely discussed in open forums.

“One of the major points we’re trying to make is that increasingly the Japanese American community is changing,” said Williams, who is also director of the USC Center for Japanese Religion and Culture.

He said that by the next U.S. Census in 2020, it is expected that more than half of the members of the Japanese American community will identify themselves as multiracial…

Read the entire article here.

The Racial Middle On-line Survey

On behalf of Dr. Reanne Frank and Dr. Jennifer Jones of The Ohio State University, we invite you to take part in our research study, which concerns the development of racial identity among multiracials. There are no foreseeable significant direct benefits to you by participating in this research. However, we do hope that this research will provide you with the opportunity to engage in meaningful reflection about your identity. Furthermore, it is our hope that this research will benefit society in general by advancing our awareness and understanding of the experience of race in contemporary society.
 
If you agree to participate in our research, we ask that you complete an informational survey and family history to the best of your ability. Completing the survey and family history will take approximately 20 minutes. You must be at least 18 years of age to participate in this study.

If you would like to complete this research study, please click the link below to participate.

https://casosu.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_es5b7nJjyMlPOn3
  
As a reward to participating in the survey, we offer you the opportunity to participate in a raffle to win an Amazon gift certificate for $50.
 
If you are asked and agree to participate in a follow-up interview, we will provide you with an additional small honorarium of $20.00 in exchange for your participation.
 
For more information about this research study, please contact Dr. Jennifer Jones at jones.4155@osu.edu. For questions about your rights as a participant in this study or to discuss other study-related concerns or complaints with someone who is not part of the research team, you may contact Ms. Sandra Meadows in the Office of Responsible Research Practices at 1-800-678-6251.

A Foot in Both Worlds: Asian Americans’ Perceptions of Asian, White, and Racially Ambiguous Faces

Group Processes & Intergroup Relations
Volume 11, Number 2 (April 2008)
pages 182–200
DOI: 10.1177/1368430207088037

Eve C. Willadsen-Jensen
University of Colorado, Boulder

Tiffany A. Ito, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience
University of Colorado, Boulder

Past research on racial perception has often focused on responses from White participants, making it difficult to determine the role of perceiver race in the perception of others. Similarly, studies examining perceptions of individuals whose racial category membership is unclear have not systematically examined responses from non-Whites. This was addressed by showing Asian participants pictures of Whites, Asians, and racially ambiguous White-Asian faces. Event-related potentials were recorded to measure early attention responses. Participants initially oriented more to outgroup White than ingroup Asian or racially ambiguous faces. Shortly after that, they showed sensitivity to the racial context in which the faces were presented, more deeply processing ingroup Asian and racially ambiguous faces when they were seeing lots of other Asians, but more deeply processing outgroup White and racially ambiguous faces when they were seeing lots of other Whites. Still later, responses were more sensitive to the objective physical properties of the faces, with racially ambiguous faces differentiated from both Whites and Asians. These results demonstrate the fluidity of racial processing, and when compared to responses obtained from White participants, show how perceiver race and racial context influences attention to racial cues.

Read the entire article here.

Suicidal Ideation in Hispanic and Mixed-Ancestry Adolescents

Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior
Volume 31, Number 4 (December 2001)
pages 416-427

Rene L. Olvera, Associate Professor of Psychiatry
University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio

This survey examined differences in suicidal ideation, depressive symptomatology, acculturation, and coping strategies based on ethnicity. The author gathered data from a self-report questionnaire administered to students in an ethnically diverse middle school (grades 6-8, N = 158). Hispanic (predominantly Mexican American) and mixed-ancestry adolescents displayed significantly higher risk of suicidal ideation compared to Anglo peers, even when socioeconomic status, age, and gender were controlled for. Suicidal ideation was associated with depressive symptoms, family problems, lower levels of acculturation, and various coping strategies. Using multivariate analysis, Hispanic ancestry, depressive symptoms, family problems, and the use of social coping remained in the model.

Read or purchase the article here.