Mixed Race Studies

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

Caballeros and Indians: Mexican American Whiteness, Hegemonic Mestizaje, and Ambivalent Indigeneity in Proto-Chicana/o Autobiographical Discourse, 1858–2008

MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States
Volume 38, Issue 1 (March 2013)
pages 30-49
DOI: 10.1093/melus/mls010

B. V. Olguín, Associate Professor of English
University of Texas, San Antonio

In the spirit of a new people that is conscious not only of its proud historical heritage but also of the brutal gringo invasion of our territories, we, the Chicano inhabitants and civilizers of the northern land of Aztlán from whence came our forefathers, reclaiming the land of their birth and consecrating the determination of our people of the sun, declare that the call of our blood is our power, our responsibility, and our inevitable destiny.
—Alurista

I got up close with one of the enemy and after having pulled out lots of arrows he shot into me, I was able to fire a shot into his back, straight through from one side to the other. The Indian fell face down. Upon seeing this, Comelso Hernandez, who was close to me, ran towards the Indian saying “Now I’ll take away your fire!,” but since he was close, the Indian arose suddenly, fired an arrow shot hitting him below the Adam’s Apple, and going all the way through, the arrow stuck—the Indian, who perhaps had used his last bit of energy in this attack, fell dead, on his back—Hernandez, so terribly wounded as he was, dragged himself towards the corpse, took out a battle knife he carried and tried to stick it through his ribs, but it broke—Regardless, with the piece that remained he was able to make a big wound, and at the same time he was cutting towards the heart with his piece of knife, he said, as if the cadaver could hear: “I forgive you brother; I forgive you brother.”
—Juan Bernal (16-17)

The evening a diminutive twenty-two-year-old dark brown man with black hair and goatee read “El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán” at the National Chicano Liberation Youth Conference in Denver on March 30, 1969 (excerpted as  the first epigraph), Chicana/o indigeneity was transformed into a central trope in Chicana/o literature, historiography, and related social movements. The reader, Alberto Baltazar Urista Heredia—who took the penname Alurista—would become renowned for his Nahuatl glosses, white cotton frock, and calf-length pants characteristic of indigenous dress in southern Mexico. Such neo-indigenous performances became commonplace in the 1960s and 1970s cultural nationalist spectacles that punctuated the political mobilizations collectively known as the Chicano Movement. One half-century after Alurista’s performance and the subsequent reification of Chicana/o indigeneity in a multiplicity…

Read or purchase the article here.

African-Americans and Latinos: Conflict or Collaboration?

Ebony Magazine
2012-09-25

Eugene Holley, Jr.

As Latinos now outnumber African-Americans as this country’s largest minority, could there be a political, social and economic union with our brown brothers and sisters?

In celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month – which runs through October 15th – EBONY interviewed African-Americans and Hispanics about the challenges, complexities and collaborations between these two groups. 

“The Census suggested a competition,” says Miriam Jiménez Román, Executive Director of the AfroLatin@forum: a research and resource center focusing on Black Latinos and Latinas in the United States. “And it ignored a history of, not only just collaboration, but inclusion within the rubric of Blackness. We are not in competition with the African-American community. They have been at the vanguard, in terms of assuring civil rights in this country. And for that reason, all of the privileges that we have as Latinos in this country owe so much to the African-American struggle.”

The New York-born Puerto Rican, who also co-edited the book, The Afro-Latin@ Reader, also points out that there are many Hispanics of visible African descent. “Many African-Americans don’t realize that the majority of Black people in the Americas are in Latin America and the Caribbean,” she states. “Ninety five percent of all the enslaved Africans landed in those places. There are 150 million people of African descent in Latin America.”…

Read the entire article here.

Jesus for Revolutionaries: An Introduction to Race, Social Justice, and Christianity

Robert Chao Romero
2013-10-07
262 pages
5.83 wide x 8.26 tall
Paperback ISBN: 9781304513984
eBook ISBN: 9781304531063

Robert Chao Romero, Associate Professor of Chicana/o Studies and Asian American Studies
University of California, Los Angeles

Are you a “revolutionary”? Are you curious about exploring issues of race and social justice from a Christian perspective? This book by UCLA Professor and Pastor, Robert Chao Romero, is for you!

Topics covered include: a biblical framework for understanding poverty, race, and gender; undocumented immigration; politics; affirmative action; mixed race issues; Christian social justice pioneers; and, an introduction to the Christian world of social justice and community development.

Contents

• Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction: Student Stories from the Revolution
• 1. God’s “Equal Protection Clause”: The Biblical Basis for Social justice
• 2. Jesus Was An Immigrant
• 3. “A Day Without A Mexican”: The Essential Economic Contributions of Undocumented Immigrants
• 4. “Secure Communities” Destroys Immigrant Families
• 5. God Loves “Dreamers”: Undocumented Youth and Comprehensive Immigration Reform
• 6. Jesus Invented Affirmative Action
• 7. The Case for Affirmative Action Today
• 8. Jesus and the Tea Party: Politics and Christianity
• 9. “Chino-Chicano“: A Biblical Framework for Diversity
• 10. Colorblindness, Structural Inequality, and Trayvon Martin
• 11. Gender
• 12. Class
• 13. Summing Up the Image of God: Neither Jew nor Gentile, Male nor Female, Slave nor Free
• 14. Manifest Destiny? The Historical Misrepresentation of Christianity
• 15. God Never Leaves Himself Without A Witness: MLK, Cesar Chavez, and other Social Justice Pioneers
• 16. Modern-Day Revolutionaries
• 17. Join the Revolution!
• Appendix I: A Faith and Justice Manifesto
• Appendix II: More Resources for the Budding Revolutionary—Books, Films, and Immigration
• Appendix III: PraXis Groups and The 4-Part Study

The Chinese in Mexico: No Longer a Forgotten History

Mixed Race Radio
Blog Talk Radio
2013-10-09, 21:00Z (17:00 EDT)

Tiffany Rae Reid, Host

Robert Chao Romero, Associate Professor of Chicana/o Studies and Asian American Studies
University of California, Los Angeles

On Today’s episode of Mixed Race Radio we will meet Professor Robert Chao Romero. With a Mexican father from Chihuahua and a Chinese immigrant mother from Hubei in central China, Romero’s dual cultural heritage serves as the basis for his academic studies. He considers himself fortunate to be able to study himself for a living and his research examines Asian immigration to Latin America, as well as the large population of “Asian-Latinos” in the United States. He is also interested in the role played by religion in social activism.

His first book, The Chinese in Mexico, 1882-1940 (2010), tells the forgotten history of the Chinese community in Mexico.  The Chinese in Mexico received a Latino Studies Section Book Award from the Latin American Studies Association. Romero received his J. D. from UC Berkeley and his Ph.D. in Latin American history from UCLA.  

When he is not a professor, he is a pastor and director of Christian Students of Conscience, an organization which trains and mobilizes students in issues of race and social justice from a faith-based perspective.  He is also the author of Jesus for Revolutionaries: An Introduction to Race, Social Justice, and Christianity (October 2013).

Diverse Millennial Students in College: Implications for Faculty and Student Affairs

Stylus Publishing, LLC.
October 2011
320 pages
6″ x 9″
Cloth ISBN: 978 1 57922 446 2
Paper ISBN: 978 1 57922 447 9
Ebook ISBN: 978 1 57922 712 8
Library Ebook ISBN: 978 1 57922 711 1

Edited by:

Fred A. Bonner II

Aretha F. Marbley

Mary F. Howard-Hamilton

While many institutions have developed policies to address the myriad needs of Millennial college students and their parents, inherent in many of these initiatives is the underlying assumption that this student population is a homogeneous group. This book is significant because it addresses and explores the characteristics and experiences of Millennials from an array of perspectives, taking into account not only racial and ethnic identity but also cultural background, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status differences—all factors contributing to how these students interface with academe.

In providing a “voice” to “voiceless” populations of African American, Asian American, Bi/Multi-Racial, Latino, Native American, and LGBT millennial college students, this book engages with such questions as: Does the term “Millennial” apply to these under-represented students? What role does technology, pop culture, sexual orientation, and race politics play in the identity development for these populations? Do our current minority development theories apply to these groups? And, ultimately, are higher education institutions prepared to meet both the cultural and developmental needs of diverse minority groups of Millennial college students?”

This book is addressed primarily to college and university administrators and faculty members who seek greater depth and understanding of the issues associated with diverse Millennial college student populations. This book informs readers about the ways in which this cohort differs from their majority counterparts to open a dialogue about how faculty members and administrators can meet their needs effectively both inside and outside the classroom. It will also be of value to student affairs personnel, students enrolled in graduate level courses in higher education and other social science courses that explore issues of college student development and diversity, particularly students planning to work with diverse Millennial college students in both clinical or practical work settings.

Contributors: Rosie Maria Banda; Fred Bonner, II; Lonnie Booker, Jr.; Brian Brayboy; Mitchell Chang; Andrea Domingue; Tonya Driver; Alonzo M. Flowers; Gwen Dungy; Jami Grosser; Kandace Hinton; Mary Howard-Hamilton; Tom Jackson, Jr.; Aretha F. Marbley; Samuel Museus; Anna Ortiz; Tammie Preston-Cunningham; Nana Osei-Kofi; Kristen Renn; Petra Robinson; Genyne Royal; Victor Saenz; Rose Anna Santos; Mattyna Stephens; Terrell Strayhorn; Theresa Survillion; Nancy Jean Tubbs; Malia Villegas; Stephanie J. Waterman; Nick Zuniga.

Table of Contents

• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• INTRODUCTION / Fred A. Bonner, II
• PART ONE: DIVERSE MILLENNIALS IN COLLEGE: A National Perspective
  • 1. A NATIONAL PERSPECTIVE: Testing Our Assumptions About Generational Cohorts / Gwendolyn Jordan Dungy
• PART TWO: AFRICAN AMERICAN MILLENNIALS IN COLLEGE
  • 2. AFRICAN AMERICAN MILLENNIALS IN COLLEGE / Terrell L. Strayhorn
  • 3. THE PERSON, ENVIRONMENT, AND GENERATIONAL INTERACTION: An African American Rural Millennial Story / Corey Guyton and Mary F. Howard-Hamilton
• PART THREE: ASIAN AMERICAN MILLENNIALS IN COLLEGE
  • 4. ASIAN AMERICAN AND PACIFIC ISLANDER MILLENNIAL STUDENTS AT A TIPPING POINT / Mitchell James Chang
  • 5. ASIAN AMERICAN MILLENNIAL COLLEGE STUDENTS IN CONTEXT : Living at the Intersection of Diversification, Digitization, and Globalization / Samuel D. Museus
• PART FOUR: LATINA/O MILLENNIALS IN COLLEGE
  • 6. LA NUEVA GENERACIÓN: Latina/o Millennial College Students at Four-Year Institutions / Victor B. Saenz, Manuel Gonzalez, and Sylvia Hurtado
  • 7. MILLENNIAL CHARACTERISTICS AND LATINO/A STUDENTS / Anna M. Ortiz and Dorali Pichardo-Diaz
• PART FIVE: NATIVE AMERICAN MILLENNIALS IN COLLEGE
  • 8. INDIGENOUS MILLENNIAL STUDENTS IN HIGHER EDUCATION / Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy and Angelina E. Castagno
  • 9. NATIVE AMERICAN MILLENNIAL COLLEGE STUDENTS / Stephanie J. Waterman
• PART SIX: LGBTQ MILLENNIALS IN COLLEGE
  • 10. LGBTQ MILLENNIALS IN COLLEGE / Lori D. Patton, Carrie Kortegast, and Gabriel Javier
  • 11. IDENTITY MAKEOVER MILLENNIAL EDITION / Using Contemporary Theoretical Frameworks to Explore Identity Intersections Among LGBTQ Millennial Populations / Lori D. Patton and Stephanie Chang
• PART SEVEN: BI- AND MULTIRACIAL MILLENNIALS IN COLLEGE
  • 12. MULTIRACIALIZATION, ‘‘MIXING,’’ AND MEDIA PEDAGOGY / Nana Osei-Kofi
  • 13. MIXED RACE MILLENNIALS IN COLLEGE: Multiracial Students in the Age of Obama / Kristen A. Renn
• PART EIGHT: VOICES OF MILLENNIALS IN COLLEGE: A Diversity of Perspectives
  • 14. MOVING UP AND OUT: Students of Color Transitioning From College to the Workforce / Lonnie Booker, Jr., Tonya Turner-Driver, Tammie Preston- Cunningham, Theresa Survillion, and Mattyna L. Stephens
  • 15. CURRICULUM DESIGN FOR MILLENNIAL STUDENTS OF COLOR / Rosa Maria Banda, Alonzo M. Flowers, III, Petra Robinson, Genyne Royal, Rose Anna Santos, and Nicholas Zuniga
• CONCLUSION: FROM ONE GENERATION TO ANOTHER GENERATION: New Realities, New Possibilities, and a Reason for Hope / Aretha F. Marbley
• ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
• INDEX

An Inconvenient Truth: “Hispanic” is an ethnic origin, not a “race”

National Institute for Latino Policy, Inc.
2013-08-24

Nancy López, Guest Commentator and Associate Professor of Sociology
University of New Mexico

Kenneth Prewitt’s provocative August 21st New York Times commentary calls us to “fix the census archaic racial categories.” He contends that the current national statistical system is untenable because it has not kept pace with post-1965 demographic shifts. However, it is puzzling that while Dr. Prewitt chides the Census for conflating race and nationality, he proceeds to do just that.

His solution is to ask two new questions: “One based on a streamlined version of today’s ethnic and racial categories/’ and a second, separate comprehensive nationality question. This recommendation would effectively conflate race with ethnic origin as if these were one and the same thing. But the inconvenient truth is that knowing a person’s ethnicity, (for example, their cultural background, nationality or ancestry), tells you nothing about their race or their social position in society that is usually related to the meanings assigned to a conglomeration of one’s physical traits, including skin color and facial features.

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of Dr. Prewitt’s recommendation for a streamlined version of today’s ethnic and racial categories is his proposal to make Hispanics a “race.” He points to the fact that 37% of Hispanics marked “some other race” in the 2010 Census race question as proof that the question is flawed. But could it be that it is that many Hispanics or Latinos occupy an in-between racial status that precludes them from being readily identified as white, black, Asian or Native American in the U.S. context?…

Read the entire article here.

Some Critical Thoughts on the Census Bureau’s Proposals to Change the Race and Hispanic Questions

National Institute for Latino Policy, Inc.
2013-01-10

Nancy López, Guest Commentator and Associate Professor of Sociology
University of New Mexico

As a sociologist of racial, ethnic and gender stratification, I applaud the Census Bureau’s ongoing efforts to examine how we can collect race and ethnicity data that address our increasingly complex and changing demographics for generations to come. Among the key recommendations of their 2010 Alternative Questionnaire Experiment (AQE) Report is a call for further testing of the combined race and Hispanic origin question format.

Accordingly, the Census will continue testing questionnaire formats that include Hispanic as a racial category (the first and only time that a specific Hispanic origin group was included in the U.S. Census was in 1930 when “Mexican” was included as a racial group). Including Hispanic as a racial category is a significant departure from current Office of Management and Budget (OMB) guidelines that require that Hispanic Origin (ethnicity) is asked as a separate question from Race (racial status). It is important to note that since 2000, individuals may mark one or more race (but only one Hispanic ethnicity).

While the Census engages in further testing and refinement of questionnaire formats for race and ethnicity data collection, it is important that we consider why we collect and analyze race and ethnicity data in the first place: the focus is to assess our progress in Civil Rights enforcement. Data collection on race and ethnicity is used by federal, state and local agencies to monitor discrimination and segregation in housing (Fair Housing Act), labor market participation (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission), political participation (Voting Rights Act, Redistricting), educational attainment (Department of Education), health (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), and criminal Justice (Department of Justice), among other policy areas…

Read the entire commentary here.

Latina/o Healing Practices: Mestizo and Indigenous Perspectives

Routledge
2008-05-19
360 pages
Hardback ISBN: 978-0-415-95420-4

Edited by:

Brian McNeill, Professor and director of training for the Counseling Psychology Program
Washington State University

Joseph M. Cervantes, Professor in the Department of Counseling
California State University, Fullerton

This edited volume focuses on the role of traditional or indigenous healers, as well as the application of traditional healing practices in contemporary counseling and therapeutic modalities with Latina/o people. The book offers a broad coverage of important topics, such as traditional healer’s views of mental/psychological health and well-being, the use of traditional healing techniques in contemporary psychotherapy, and herbal remedies in psychiatric practice. It also discusses common factors across traditional healing methods and contemporary psychotherapies, the importance of spirituality in counseling and everyday life, the application of indigenous healing practices with Latina/o undergraduates, indigenous techniques in working with perpetrators of domestic violence, and religious healing systems and biomedical models. The book is an important reference for anyone working within the general field of mental health practice and those seeking to understand culturally relevant practice with Latina/o populations.

Contents

• An Appreciation of Dr. Michael W. Smith (1960-2006) Lorraine Garcia-Teague
• Contributors
• Introduction: Counselors and Curanderas/os—Parallels in the Healing Process Brian W. McNeill and Joseph M. Cervantes
• Part One: Mestiza/o and Indigenous Perspectives
  • Chapter 1: What Is Indigenous About Being Indigenous? The Mestiza/o Experience Joseph M. Cervantes
  • Chapter 2: Latina/o Folk Saints and Marian Devotions: Popular Religiosity and Healing Fernando A. Ortiz and Kenneth G. Davis
  • Chapter 3: Santeria and the Healing Process in Cuba and the United States Brian W. McNeill, Eileen Esquivel, Arlene Carkasco, and Rosalilia Mendoza
• Part Two: Indigenous and Mestiza/o Healing Practices
  • Chapter 4: The Use of Psychotropic Herbal and Natural Medicines in Latina/o and Mestiza/o Populations German Ascani and Michael W. Smith
  • Chapter 5: Brazil’s Ultimate Healing Resource: The Power of Spirit Sandra Nuñez
  • Chapter 6: La Limpia de San Lazaro as Individual and Collective Cleansing Rite Karen V. Holliday
  • Chapter 7: Resé un Ave María y Encendí una Velita: The Use of Spirituality and Religion as a Means of Coping with Educational Experiences for Latina/o College Students Jeanett Castellanos and Alberta M. Gloria
• Part Three: Contemporary Aspects of Mestiza/o and Indigenous Healing Practices: Reclamation and Integration
  • Chapter 8: Los Espiritus Siguen Hablando: Chicana Spiritualities Lara Medina
  • Chapter 9: Religious Healing and Biomedicine in Comparative Context Karen V. Holliday
  • Chapter 10: Curanderismo: Religious and Spiritual Worldviews and Indigenous Healing Traditions Fernando A. Ortiz, Kenneth G. Davis, and Brian W. McNeill
• Part Four: Epilogue
  • Epilogue: Summary and Future Research and Practice Agendas Joseph M. Cervantes and Brian W. McNeill
• Index

Esther J. Cepeda: Debate grows over Hispanics and the 2020 Census

San Jose Mercury News
San Jose, California
2013-09-07

Esther J. Cepeda, Columnist
The Washington Post

CHICAGO—A debate is raging about whether the U.S. Census Bureau should offer Hispanics the option of identifying themselves as a separate race in the 2020 count. But let’s instead ponder how accurately they’ll be defined.

According to a new study by Duke University professor Jen’nan Ghazal Read, policymakers should be working hard to ensure that demographic subgroups are portrayed as accurately as the data allow.

“While it’s great that people are concerned about how they want to self-identify, what I’m concerned about is the information we overlook,” Read told me as she described research she conducted on Public Use Microdata Samples, or PUMS, from the 2000 census.

In her study published in the journal Population Research and Policy Review, Read used two distinct subgroups, Mexicans and Arabs, to tease out very different stories about the nature of their circumstances compared to how the census usually describes them.

She found that if the census broadened its standard definition to include people who don’t identify themselves as Hispanic or Latino—but who were nonetheless born in Mexico or report Mexican ancestry—in the “Mexican” Hispanic origin question, the number of Mexican-Americans known to be legally in the U.S. would increase nearly 10 percent…

Read the entire opinion piece here.