Mixed Race Studies

Toward a critical multiracial theory in education

International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education
Volume 29, Issue 6, 2016
pages 795-813
DOI: 10.1080/09518398.2016.1162870

Jessica C. Harris, Multi-Term Lecturer
Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies
University of Kansas

This manuscript lays the foundation for a critical multiracial theory (MultiCrit) in education. The author uses extant literature and their own research that focused on multiraciality on the college campus to explore how CRT can move toward MultiCrit, which is well-positioned to frame multiracial students’ experiences with race in education.

Read or purchase the article here.

Moral Judgments of Racial Passing

Sponsored Research
Lewis & Clark College
Portland, Oregon
December 2015

The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI) has awarded Assistant Professor of Psychology Diana Leonard a grant from the Grants-in-Aid program. These funds will support Dr. Leonard’s new collaborative research project, “Moral Judgments of Racial Passing: Role of perceiver ideology and consequences for social distancing behavior.” Dr. Leonard will collaborate with Lewis & Clark undergraduates and Dr. Paul Conway at Florida State University to accomplish this research. This project will address a current gap in the scientific literature on racial perceptions, and is timely: conversations about racial passing–presenting oneself as a race other than one’s own–have been highlighted in the national media lately. Dr. Leonard’s project will explore moral judgments of racial passers, and how these judgments are shaped by two ideological factors: “social dominance orientation” and “endorsement of colorblind ideology.” This research will ultimately be extended to investigate how racial passers’ perceived motivations and degree of immersion in another racial identity shape judgments of their behavior. More about Dr. Leonard’s research is available here.

MiXed at Cornell Illustrates Diversity of ‘Multiracial Experience’ at Cornell

The Cornell Daily Sun
Ithaca, New York
2016-04-10

Henry Kanengeiser

MiXed at Cornell — a student organization dedicated to creating community among mixed race individuals — will host its first ever Blend Conference in Klarman Hall this weekend.

The two-day conference will focus on the “awareness of the multiracial experience and the community’s marginalization of identity,” and its main themes are engagement and inclusion, according to the organization’s website.

“We wanted to bring together a conference that … brings to light different issues and unique experiences that mixed people have,” said Erika Axe ’18, incoming co-president of MiXed.

Axe said the Blend Conference was established to celebrate every mixed person’s individual identity.

“As an organization we’ve found that we can’t put one definition on what is mixed race because it’s so unique to every person,” she said…

Read the entire article here.

Study finds mixed-race individuals are fastest-growing demographic group, most discriminated against

The Daily Targum: Serving the Rutgers community since 1869. Independent since 1980.
2016-03-31

Samantha Karas

The fastest growing racial group in the United States is mixed-race individuals, but they are also the ones experiencing increasing amounts of prejudice from white people, according to a study conducted by Jonathan Freeman, an assistant professor at New York University.

White individuals with lower interracial exposure tend to exhibit greater prejudice against mixed-race persons, according to the study run through NYU’s Department of Psychology.

“(These individuals) visually process racially ambiguous faces in a more difficult and unpredictable fashion, and this unstable experience translates into negative biases against mixed-race people,” Freeman said in a press release.

The study is interested in exploring attitudes towards mixed-race individuals as a function of racial exposure, said Diana Sanchez, a co-author on the study and an associate professor in the Department of Psychology…

…Laura Chapas, a School of Arts and Sciences senior, said she would assume people in the Rutgers—New Brunswick area would be less biased due to the diverse population.

“What that study indicated is a shame but I’m not surprised that it’s true,” she said.

People are so quick to judge what they don’t understand, she said, and race cannot be confined to just black or white.

“I think those with lower interracial exposure may have a hard time accepting that,” Chapas said.

Dana Campbell, a School of Arts and Sciences senior, said she was not surprised with the findings of the study.

“I agree (with the conclusion). I think that when people who aren’t exposed to other races only see those races as the media portrays them,” Campbell said. “Without any personal experience people have to rely on movies, books, the new, etc. to try to understand race.”

People can confront their own biases by understanding the sources of bias, she said…

Read the entire article here.

What Is Critical Race Theory?

Harvard Magazine
2016-03-22

Marina Bolotnikova

Khiara Bridges Photograph courtesy of Khiara Bridges

RACIAL-JUSTICE ACTIVISTS at Harvard Law School (HLS) won one of the largest public battles over the school’s legacy this month, when the administration agreed to abandon the existing HLS shield. The shield was modeled after the crest of the slaveholding Royall family, whose fortune endowed Harvard’s first law professorship; the shield’s removal was the first of a list of demands issued in December by student group Reclaim Harvard Law School. But HLS has not, so far, acted on the group’s larger, more controversial demands—among them, creating a program in critical race theory, a legal-studies movement with origins at Harvard in the 1970s.

On Monday night, Reclaim HLS hosted a critical race theory teach-in by Khiara Bridges, an associate law professor at Boston University, modeled on how she teaches first-year criminal law. “We’re not pretending that we’re disconnected from the real world,” Bridges said as she opened her presentation, alluding to one of the motivating goals of critical race theory: to link activism with academics. The event took place in the student lounge of Wasserstein Hall, which members of Reclaim HLS have occupied for the last month to create opportunities for learning and discussion, and to bring visibility to their demands…

Read the entire article here.

Multiethnic student group Mixed receives 2016 Perkins Prize

Cornell Chronicle
Ithaca, New York
2016-03-17

Nancy Doolittle

In 2015 members of the student club Mixed at Cornell created the print and digital Cornell Hapa Book Facebook page, featuring photographs and stories of 60 self-identified multiracial students, staff and faculty who answered the question, “What does being mixed mean to you?” The book received more than 8,000 views.

On March 16 in Willard Straight Hall, Mixed was awarded the recently renamed James A. Perkins Prize for Interracial and Intercultural Peace and Harmony by Michael Kotlikoff, provost and acting president, “for its role in supporting and exploring the experience of multiracial/multiethnic individuals.”…

Read the entire article here.

South Bend high school student behind race-based signs speaks out

WNDU TV 16
South Bend, Indiana
2016-02-12

A local high school student says he’s in trouble after he and two other students posted some controversial signs at Riley High School.

The signs stated “COLORED ONLY” and “WHITES ONLY,” and they were placed above water fountains throughout the school.

Shane Williams, who says he’s black, white, and Hispanic, told NewsCenter 16, “I put the signs up to help students to view legal segregation in a different form, for them to experience it themselves…

Read the entire story here.

Passing up the race: Students share stories of racial “passing”

Polaris Press
The Ann Richards School For Young Women Leaders
Austin, Texas
2016-02-04

It was one of the first weeks of sixth grade when Lanna Ahlberg found herself at school talking on the phone in Traditional Mandarin with her Taiwanese grandmother.

Hanging up the phone, Ahlberg found a number of girls staring at her.

“In sixth grade, a lot of people thought I was Hispanic or white because I have chocolate hair, like it’s not black hair. My eyes aren’t as prominent,” Ahlberg, now in eighth grade, said. “My mom is Taiwanese and my dad is half Swedish.”

If you’re a person of color who has ever been mistaken for white, you’ve experienced the phenomenon known as “white passing.”

Simply defined, White passing is when a person of color is perceived as white at any point in their life…

Read the entire article here.

Meet the New Student Activists

The New York Times
2016-02-01

As told to Abby Ellin

Young African-Americans and their allies are demanding change, leading people of all backgrounds to talk about issues that have lain dormant for decades. What do they want? Inclusion and representation — now. Here, seven students talk about the problems, the protests and themselves.

AMANDA BENNETT University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa

Bio: Senior, English/African-American studies; co-organizer of We Are Done movement; producer and co-author of “How Does It Feel to Be a Problem” video

My Story: I am totally African-American. My grandfather was a sharecropper in rural Alabama who moved to Atlanta and became a mechanic and worker at General Motors, so I grew up in Atlanta around middle-class black people. To come to Alabama and see this kind of segregation was horrifying to me. A lot of people who were impoverished 50 years ago, around the time of Selma, are still impoverished… .Nothing has changed structurally…

…NAILAH HARPER-MALVEAUX, Yale University

“Black women are at the bottom of the totem pole. When you free women of color, you free everyone.” — Nailah Harper-Malveaux Credit Fred R. Conrad for The New York Times

Bio: Senior, American studies/theater studies; director of theatrical productions that tell the stories of African-Americans

My Story: I’ve been surrounded by social justice and law my whole life. My mom is a civil rights lawyer turned law professor at Catholic University, while my dad is U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Council. My dad is Cherokee and Macanese, from Macau, and my mom is Creole, a mixture of Spanish and black descent. I don’t look white but I don’t look black, either. I identify as Indian and black. Because I’m mixed I have been very conscious of race my whole life, which is probably why I’ve participated in so many political events at Yale, including the midnight march to walk the demands to the president’s house. It was very empowering…

Read the entire article here.

In “The Alexander Litany,” intersectionality collides with campus

North by Northwestern
2016-02-03

Lauren Sonnenberg

Roger Mason as Clarence, Eliott Sagay as Joseph, Grant Lewis as Jackson, Jeff Paschal as Max. Photo by Alexandria Woodson

“Look into my eyes and you’ll see that fear ain’t only skin deep, at least not for me,” implored Max Alexander, protagonist of The Alexander Litany, at an open mic reading on an unnamed college campus in Southern California.

Kori Alston, 20-year-old playwright and Communication sophomore, first spoke these words at a 2014 slam poetry competition. To follow, he wrote them into his new play, creating Max Alexander, a young man who contemplates his racial and sexual identity, as a means to express his frustration. The final product was performed as a staged reading in Shanley Pavilion January 15-16, 2016.

“In every good slam poem there is universal truth, there is personal truth, and then there is a kind of truth for the audience,” Alston said…

…Like Alston, Alexander grew up with a white mother and an absentee Black father. Both struggled with their relationship to a Black world. Both are college students far from home, angry with the racism they face every day. But the boys are different in how they confront their dissatisfaction.

“My relationship with Blackness was with my father. He was such a negative part of my life, and it was easy to associate Blackness with the bad parts of my father. I wanted to be white,” Alston said.

As someone with a white mother and Black father, Alston used to refuse to racially identify, partially because he began to dislike the Black parts of himself, he said. As he got older, Alston said he began to confront racism by a “Fuck you; I’m Black” attitude and growing his hair out to emphasize his Black identity.

He vacillates between wanting to disrupt spaces and make noise every time he hears a Black person was killed, to trying to find a safe space to challenge white audience members’ way of thinking…

Read the entire article here.