Mixed Race Studies

Mixed Race Conference reflects on identity

The Daily Trojan
Los Angeles, California
2017-02-26

Erum Jaffrey

Julia Erickson | Daily Trojan Roundtable · Panelists spoke with Maria Root (second from left) to discuss her 25 years of experience in multiracial studies at the fourth annual Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference. The event was hosted by the USC Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture.

When Rudy Guevarra Jr. filled out identification forms in elementary school, he remembers never checking the provided boxes for race. Instead, he drew his own box, and wrote “Mexican-Filipino,” unable to choose one parent’s culture over the other.

Guevarra delivered the keynote address for the Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference on Sunday, a speech titled “Borderlands of Multiplicity: Reflections on Intimacies and Fluidity in Critical Mixed Race Studies”. The three-day conference held at USC featured a series of workshops, lectures, panels, movie-screenings and concerts on the topic of “Trans,” coinciding with the Hapa Japan Festival. It was hosted by USC Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture.

An associate professor of Asian Pacific American studies at Arizona State University, Guevarra spoke about his mixed race heritage as a “Mexipino,” or Mexican-Filipino, growing up in the borderland city of San Diego and how that influenced his doctoral research in borderlands, labor history and multiethnic identities…

…The conference fell on the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Loving v. Virginia decision that declared anti-interracial marriage laws unconstitutional.

“It’s not just celebrating who we are, but also reflecting on how our multiplicity can enhance the greater good of the communities we work in,” said Chandra Crudup, co-coordinator of the Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference…

Read the entire article here.

Student reflects on mixed-race background

The Times-Delphic
Des Moines, Iowa
2017-02-22

Jessica Spangler, Opinions Editor

As someone who comes from a blend of different cultures, it can sometimes seem like there isn’t really anywhere I belong. There are no neat boxes that I fit into.

I love that I am able to have a unique perspective and have the opportunity to grow up knowing different cultures. I’m proud of who I am and where my family is from. I am Cuban, Mexican and white and I will always consider myself lucky that I am able to have the experiences I do.

But there is also a lot of frustration that comes along with being mixed race.

People have dismissed my Latina side completely (“Please, you’re just white.”) and people have called me racial slurs or have said racist jokes to me (“Want to mow my lawn?”)…

Read the entire article here.

Safe space for multiracial students

The Sagamore: Brookline High School’s student newspaper
Brookline, Massachusetts
2017-02-04

Sofia Reynoso, Staff Writer

According to the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s 2016-2016 data, 7.5 percent of the high school’s student body consists of multiracial students. A new club known as the Multiracial Identifying Community (MIC) is forming from this growing population.
MIC provides students with a safe space to discuss unique issues pertaining to the multiracial experience.

Meetings are every other Monday around 3 p.m. in room 340. Junior Lena Harris, an active member of the club, said that they are trying to work around varying schedules.

“We’re going to be trying in the future to get more meeting times because we do feel like this is an important issue, and we really want to get out there at the high school,” Harris says…

Read the entire article here.

Unmaking Race and Ethnicity: A Reader

Oxford University Press
2016-07-20
512 Pages
7-1/2 x 9-1/4 inches
Paperback ISBN: 9780190202712

Edited by:

Michael O. Emerson, Provost and Professor of Sociology
North Park University
also Senior Fellow at Rice University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research

Jenifer L. Bratter, Associate Professor of Sociology; Director of the Program for the Study of Ethnicity, Race, and Culture at the Kinder Institute for Urban Research
Rice University, Houston, Texas

Sergio Chávez, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Rice University, Houston, Texas

Race and ethnicity is a contentious topic that presents complex problems with no easy solutions. (Un)Making Race and Ethnicity: A Reader, edited by Michael O. Emerson, Jenifer L. Bratter, and Sergio Chávez, helps instructors and students connect with primary texts in ways that are informative and interesting, leading to engaging discussions and interactions. With more than thirty collective years of teaching experience and research in race and ethnicity, the editors have chosen selections that will encourage students to think about possible solutions to solving the problem of racial inequality in our society. Featuring global readings throughout, (Un)Making Race and Ethnicity covers both race and ethnicity, demonstrating how they are different and how they are related. It includes a section dedicated to unmaking racial and ethnic orders and explains challenging concepts, terms, and references to enhance student learning.

Table of Contents

• Preface
• UNIT I. Core Concepts and Foundations
  • What Is Race? What Is Ethnicity? What Is the Difference?
    • Introduction, Irina Chukhray and Jenifer Bratter
    • 1. Constructing Ethnicity: Creating and Recreating Ethnic Identity and Culture, Joane Nagel
    • 2. The Racialization of Kurdish Identity in Turkey, Murat Ergin
    • 3. Who Counts as “Them?”: Racism and Virtue in the United States and France, Michèle Lamont
    • 4. Mexican Immigrant Replenishment and the Continuing Significance of Ethnicity and Race, Tomás R. Jiménez
  • Why Race Matters
    • Introduction, Laura Essenburg and Jenifer Bratter
    • 5. Excerpt from Racial Formation in the United States From the 1960s to the 1990s, Michael Omi and Howard Winant
    • 6. Structural and Cultural Forces that Contribute to Racial Inequality, William Julius Wilson
    • 7. From Traditional to Liberal Racism: Living Racism in the Everyday, Margaret M. Zamudio and Francisco Rios
    • 8. Policing and Racialization of Rural Migrant Workers in Chinese Cities, Dong Han
    • 9. Why Group Membership Matters: A Critical Typology, Suzy Killmister
  • What Is Racism? Does Talking about Race and Ethnicity Make Things Worse?
    • Introduction, Laura Essenburg and Jenifer Bratter
    • 10. What Is Racial Domination?, Matthew Desmond and Mustafa Emirbayer
    • 11. Discursive Colorlines at Work: How Epithets and Stereotypes are Racially Unequal, David G. Embrick and Kasey Henricks
    • 12. When Ideology Clashes with Reality: Racial Discrimination and Black Identity in Contemporary Cuba, Danielle P. Clealand
    • 13. Raceblindness in Mexico: Implications for Teacher Education in the United States, Christina A. Sue
• UNIT II. Roots: Making Race and Ethnicity
  • Origins of Race and Ethnicity
    • Introduction, Adriana Garcia and Michael Emerson
    • 14. Antecedents of the Racial Worldview, Audrey Smedley and Brian Smedley
    • 15. Building the Racist Foundation: Colonialism, Genocide, and Slavery, Joe R. Feagin
    • 16. The Racialization of the Globe: An Interactive Interpretation, Frank Dikötter
  • Migrations
    • Introduction, Sandra Alvear
    • 17. Excerpt from Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945, George J. Sánchez
    • 18. Migration to Europe since 1945: Its History and Its Lessons, Randall Hansen
    • 19. When Identities Become Modern: Japanese Emigration to Brazil and the Global Contextualization of Identity, Takeyuki (Gaku) Tsuda
  • Ideologies
    • Introduction, Junia Howell
    • 20. Excerpt from Racism: A Short History, George M. Fredrickson
    • 21. Understanding Latin American Beliefs about Racial Inequality, Edward Telles and Stanley Bailey
    • 22. Buried Alive: The Concept of Race in Science, Troy Duster
• Unit III. Today: Remaking Race and Ethnicity
  • Aren’t We All Just Human? How Race and Ethnicity Help Us Answer the Question
    • Introduction, Adriana Garcia
    • 23. Young Children Learning Racial and Ethnic Matters, Debra Van Ausdale and Joe R. Feagin
    • 24. When White Is Just Alright: How Immigrants Redefine Achievement and Reconfigure the Ethnoracial Hierarchy, Tomás R. Jiménez and Adam L. Horowitz
    • 25. From Bi-Racial to Tri-Racial: Towards a New System of Racial Stratification in the USA, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva
    • 26. Indigenism, Mestizaje, and National Identity in Mexico during the 1940s and the 1950s, Anne Doremus
  • The Company You Keep: How Ethnicity and Race Frame Social Relationships
    • Introduction, William Rothwell
    • 27. Who We’ll Live With: Neighborhood Racial Composition Preferences of Whites, Blacks and Latinos, Valerie A. Lewis, Michael O. Emerson, and Stephen L. Klineberg
    • 28. The Costs of Diversity in Religious Organizations: An In-Depth Case Study, Brad Christerson and Michael O. Emerson
  • The Uneven Playing Field: How Race and Ethnicity Impact Life Chances
    • Introduction, Ellen Whitehead and Jenifer Bratter
    • 29. Wealth in the Extended Family: An American Dilemma, Ngina S. Chiteji
    • 30. The Complexities and Processes of Racial Housing Discrimination, Vincent J. Roscigno, Diana L. Karafin, and Griff Tester
    • 31. Racial Segregation and the Black/White Achievement Gap, 1992 to 2009, Dennis J. Condron, Daniel Tope, Christina R. Steidl, and Kendralin J. Freeman
    • 32. Differential Vulnerabilities: Environmental and Economic Inequality and Government Response to Unnatural Disasters, Robert D. Bullard
    • 33. Racialized Mass Incarceration: Poverty, Prejudice, and Punishment, Lawrence D. Bobo and Victor Thompson
• Unit IV. Unmaking Race and Ethnicity
  • Thinking Strategically
    • Introduction, Junia Howell and Michael Emerson
    • 34. The Return of Assimilation? Changing Perspectives on Immigration and Its Sequels in France, Germany, and the United States, Rogers Brubaker
    • 35. Toward a Truly Multiracial Democracy: Thinking and Acting Outside the White Frame, Joe R. Feagin
    • 36. Destabilizing the American Racial Order, Jennifer Hochschild, Vesla Weaver, and Traci Burch
  • Altering Individuals and Relationships
    • Introduction, Horace Duffy and Jenifer Bratter
    • 37. A More Perfect Union, Barack Obama
    • 38. What Can Be Done?, Debra Van Ausdale and Joe R. Feagin
    • 39. The Multiple Dimensions of Racial Mixture in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: From Whitening to Brazilian Negritude, Graziella Moraes da Silva and Elisa P. Reis
  • Altering Structures
    • Introduction, Kevin T. Smiley and Jenifer Bratter
    • 40. The Case for Reparations, Ta-Nehisi Coates
    • 41. “Undocumented and Citizen Students Unite”: Building a Cross-Status Coalition Through Shared Ideology, Laura E. Enriquez
    • 42. Racial Solutions for a New Society, Michael Emerson and George Yancey
    • 43. DREAM Act College: UCLA Professors Create National Diversity University, Online School for Undocumented Immigrants, Alyssa Creamer
• Glossary
• Credits

Mixing It Up: Students, professors reflect on the definition of mixed race in modern society

HiLite: Your Source For CHS News
Carmel High School, Carmel, Indiana
2016-12-12

Allison Li, Calendar/Beats Editor, Feature Reporter

Junior Kiki Koniaris is Korean, Pennsylvanian Dutch and Grecian. Despite being of mixed race, Koniaris said she believes race should not define a person.

“I feel like (how you define yourself) should be based off of personal attributes in general,” Koniaris said. “Because if you start defining everyone by race, then at a certain point, it becomes this idea that we separate ourselves based on race, and I think history has shown us that that’s not the best idea. But with that being said, sometimes you want to say, ‘I’m different from everyone else because this is how my culture worked out.’”

But while Koniaris said race shouldn’t define people, the very recognition of people of mixed races is still relatively new in this country. In the 1967 Loving v. Virginia case, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down previous laws prohibiting interracial marriage. In 2000, the U.S. Census Bureau first allowed people to identify themselves. With those statistics in mind, in the just last 50 years, the population of people of mixed races has increased exponentially. According to a 2015 Pew Research study, between 2000 and 2010, the number of white and black biracial Americans has more than doubled, while people of white and Asian backgrounds have increased by 87 percent.

This inclusion of mixed races has led to societal changes, as well as some discomfort form those who discuss those changes. According to Matthew Hayes, assistant professor of political science at IU, when identifying people of mixed race, there has been a general accompaniment of ‘politically correct’ terminologies. That language comes both from those who are not of mixed backgrounds, as well as from those who are…

Read the article here.

Leona Amosah, the Founder of SWIRL, Talks Diversity and Identity

Study Breaks
2016-12-28

Molly Flynn
University of North Carolina, Charlotte

Celebrating Students with Interracial Legacies (SWIRL)

Amosah, a high-achieving senior at UNC Chapel Hill, created the organization to provide a community for students with multiracial and mixed-race identities.

While many college students occupy their time with binge-watching Netflix, binge-drinking at parties and binge-eating at their campus diners, Leona Amosah has chosen to indulge in things much more productive.

Amosah, a senior at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, seems to be involved in a little bit of everything. As a double major in Russian and Global Studies, Amosah spends her time not only in the books, but also involved in a wide range of campus groups. She actively participates in organizations such as Tarheel Outreach Program, Harmonyx A Capella group, Easing Students Abroad Entry (EASE), APPLES Service-Learning Program and Buckley Public Service Scholars, just to name a few.

But, her brainchild, as she calls it, is an organization that she started in August 2015. This past week, I had the opportunity to speak directly with Amosah and learn a little but more about SWIRL, which stands for Students with Inter-Racial Legacies.

Molly Flynn: What inspired you to start SWIRL?

Leona Amosah: I came up with the idea for starting SWIRL after watching a documentary called “Little White Lie.” It told the story of a Jewish woman [Lacey Schwartz] who grew up with a white identity, until she discovered that her biological father was black.

Throughout the film, she grapples with her mixed-race identity, discussing how she felt when she identified as white versus how she felt when she identified as black. I very much connected with the film as a person of mixed-race, and was sobbing by the end of it…

Read the entire interview here.

On the Record: Georgetown and the racial identity of President Patrick Healy

The Georgetown Voice
2010-04-14

Patrick Healy

Matt Sheptuck (COL ’10) is an American Studies major writing his senior thesis, which explores how Georgetown University has perceived Jesuit Father Patrick Healy’s racial identity over the years. In his research Sheptuck found that Healy, whom many of us know as the first African-American President of Georgetown and one of the first black presidents of any major American university, was understood as white for much of the University’s history, until beginning in the 1960s, when Georgetown began to “market” Healy as black.

Sheptuck says he isn’t “overtly condemnatory” of the University’s history, knowing that how they framed Healy was a product of the times. But he proposes that going forward, Georgetown doesn’t need to relegate Healy’s racial identity to the “one-dimensional” white or black designation, and should present him as the complex man he was. He also thinks Georgetown needs to look closely at its relationship with race in America in the past. Intrigued by his research, Vox caught up with Sheptuck on Tuesday to learn more.

Vox Populi: So tell me a little about your thesis.

Matt Sheptuck: I’m looking at how the University’s changing racial conceptualization of Patrick Healy’s identity fit in relation to how the University thought about race in general. And what I’ve found in my research about Healy, who was president from 1874 – 1882, is two main periods from the 1880s, when Healy resigned as president, up to the present, in which the University talked about his racial identity differently…

Read the interview here.

Good riddance to RU’s Powell Hall

The Roanoke Times
Roanoke, Virginia
2010-09-21

Christina Nuckols, Editorial Page Editor

One can, if optimistically predisposed to believe in the inherent honesty and good-natured character of people, accept the story of why Radford University’s arts and music building still bore the name of John Powell until last week.

One might, just barely, trust that university leaders in 1967 chose the name ignorant of Powell’s past, even though the U.S. Supreme Court that same year struck down the Virginia anti-miscegenation law that he had championed.

It’s easier to believe Interim Provost Joe Scartelli when he says he intended to change the name of the building in 2005 after he learned about Powell’s racism, but forgot amid renovation and construction plans…

Read the entire article here.

Mixing kids in school leads to more mixed-race adult relationships

IZA Newsroom
Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit (Institute for the Study of Labor)
Bonn, Germany
2016-11-24

Does the racial mix of students’ classmates affect their behavior later on in life? A new IZA Discussion Paper by Luca Paolo Merlino, Max Friedrich Steinhardt and Liam Wren-Lewis compares American students, contrasting those who happen to be in an age group with fewer blacks in their class compared to other classes in the school.

The study finds that white students with more black classmates are more likely to cohabit and have children with a black partner later on in life. The effect is driven by a change in racial attitudes: These students report less prejudice, and as adults they are less likely to think that race is an important factor within a relationship…

Read the entire article here.

More than Just Friends? School Peers and Adult Interracial Relationships

Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit (Institute for the Study of Labor)
Bonn, Germany
Discussion Paper No. 10319 (October 2016)
40 pages

Luca Paolo Merlino, Associate Professor
Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne

Max F. Steinhardt, Research Fellow
Helmut Schmidt University, IZA, LdA and CELSI

Liam Wren-Lewis, Associate Member
Paris School of Economics and INRA

This paper investigates the impact of individuals’ school peers on their adult romantic relationships. In particular, we consider the effect of quasi-random variation in the share of black students within an individual’s cohort on the percentage of adults’ cohabiting partners that are black. We find that more black peers leads to more relationships with blacks later in life. The results are similar whether relationships begun near or far from school, suggesting that the racial mix of schools has an important and persistent impact on racial attitudes.

Read the entire discussion paper here.