Mixed Race Studies

Another example of the challenges associated with the use of population descriptors can be found in the frequent use of the terms European, African, and Asian. These continental terms are tremendously broad in scope. At the Tokyo meeting, for example, it was noted that even among the Japanese researchers, there was no unitary understanding of what populations should be considered “Asian.”

More importantly, these terms can, in some contexts, be interpreted as referring to white, black, and Asian, the three classic, and socially constructed “races.” There continues to be a great deal of academic work that highlights the degree to which these broad “racial” categories are, in reality, social constructs. Although we should not overlook the correlation between “race” and socio-economic inequality involving factors such as health care and medical care, such discussion has usually arisen within the context of some North American and European societies. However, outside of these societies, the divergence between samples and population descriptors is also problematic. When the actual samples in the name of “European”, “African”, and “Asian” are taken from certain limited groups, without taking into account significant diversity within each region, it is unlikely that such broad terms have any scientific meaning, at least from the perspective of genetics on the global level. Moreover, the research results may be taken as supporting the classic “racial” categories, with any discovered “differences” misinterpreted as genetically determined “racial differences.”

The importance of the distinction between race and ethnicity cannot be overemphasized as the latter pays close attention to (presumably) shared cultural factors such as language, diet, and religion. When considering the contribution of environmental as well as genetic factors to diversity within each continental region, the scientific validity of the use of such broad terms to describe samples becomes even more questionable.

Yasuko Takezawa, et. al., “Human genetic research, race, ethnicity and the labeling of populations: recommendations based on an interdisciplinary workshop in Japan,” BMC Medical Ethics, (Volume 15, Issue 1, December 2014). p2-3. http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6939-15-33.

With time I learned that there is no one way to be black and a woman, and that being black and German is in no way a contradiction in terms. In fact, I have acquired the power to create a combination of the traits that is unique to me. I can be black, a woman and German and all three characteristics can define me equally.

Ella Achola, ““No, I meant where are you really from?” on being black and German,” Media Diversified, August 15, 2014. http://mediadiversified.org/2014/08/15/no-i-meant-where-are-you-really-from-on-being-black-and-german/.

“Biological race trumps cultural race. Race is something we’re really invested in validating or comprehending. It’s about how we understand race as a marker of difference, something that a story about ancestry can’t resolve.” —Jenifer L. Bratter, Rice University

Felicia R. Lee, “After the ‘White Lie’ Implodes, a Rich Narrative Unfurls,” The New York Times, August 1, 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/02/movies/little-white-lie-lacey-schwartzs-film-about-self-discovery.html.

Why do so many mixed race people excuse white purity ideologies which would not even allow many mixed white/black or white/other people to claim at least half whiteness but readily can tell you the date, time and place when a person of color said something offensive to them about being mixed?

Donna J. Nicol, “Maybe You’re Just An Asshole: The Mixed Race Persecution Complex,” Musings of a Mixed Race Feminist: Random diatribes from a mixed race feminist scholar, July 25, 2014. http://mixedracefeminist.blogspot.com/2014/07/maybe-youre-just-asshole-mixed-race.html.

The journalistic survey, and monographic studies of Obama have been joined by some important anthologies. One of the first notable anthologies written about race and Obama was edited by historian and political scientist Manning Marable and civil rights attorney Kristen Clarke. This volume, entitled Barack Obama and African American Empowerment: The Rise of Black Americas New Leadership (2009), traces the evolution of black leadership and black politics since the civil rights movement, including essays that specifically interrogate the intersection of race and gender. The Speech: Race and Barack Obama’s A More Perfect Union Speech (2009), edited by Denean Sharpley-Whiting, includes key chapters on the Obama speech by Bakari Kitwana and William Julius Wilson. Social scientists Matthew Hughey and Gregory S. Parks compiled an edited volume entitled The Obama’s and a (Post) Racial America? (2011), which examines the unconscious anti-black bias harbored by whites in US society, including commentaries by some noted race scholars. These are but a few of the torrent of scholarly publications on race and the Obama phenomenon. For an extensive list of over 400 publications on Obama see Steven F. Riley’s Mixed Race Studies website: http://www.mixedracestudies.org?cat=63.

Hettie V. Williams and G. Reginald Daniel, “Preface,” in Race and the Obama Phenomenon: The Vision of a More Perfect Multiracial Union, eds. G. Reginald Daniel and Hettie V. Williams (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2014). xvii.

“The participating organizations [of the Third Multiracial Leadership Conference in October 1997] from across the country reached a consensus that a “check one or more box” format rather than a separate multiracial identifier would serve the highest community good. It would: a) allow for the celebration of diverse heritages; b) support the continued monitoring of existing civil rights legislation that impacted multiracial people directly; and c) it would also provide the most information for the accurate collection of racial/ethnic data for medical diagnosis and research… Only Project RACE rescinded its initial endorsement of the Multiracial Summit Statement.”

Ramona Douglass, “The Evolution of the Multiracial Movement,” in the Multiracial Child Resource Book: Living Complex Realities, ed. Maria P. P. Root and Matt Kelley (Seattle: MAVIN Foundation, 2003), 14.

“The contemporary American fascination with “mixed race” and “biracial” identity is a reflection of changing demographics and globalization; it is also a surrender to and performance of a shallow type of faux cosmopolitanism.

Ironically, the race scientists of Nazi Germany and the United States, as well as the photographer Cyjo (whose work was featured in Slate’s essay) who fetishize and find something “stunning” or “interesting” about “mixed race” and/or “biracial” people (what are fictive identities, social constructs, as there is only one race, the human race) share some common assumptions.

One, that those types of “racial” identities are somehow new or novel. In fact, human history is a story of “miscegenation” and “interracial” intimacy. Two, that those types of bodies and individuals merit study and analysis because there is some connection, either implied or explicitly stated, between genes, color, culture, destiny, and personal, as well as national “character.””

Chauncey DeVega, “‘Stunning Portraits of Mixed Race Families’?: Slate’s Human Zoo of Race Mongrelization,” We Are Respectable Negroes: Happy Non-Threatening Coloured Folks, Even in the Age of Obama, June 25, 2014. http://www.chaunceydevega.com/2014/06/stunning-portraits-of-mixed-race.html.

“Employing discredited biological over cultural definitions of who is an Indian and who is not is an assault on our self-determination. We have endured 450 years of forced assimilation which included slavery and post slavery intermarriage, making our walk one of plurality. We are therefore all multiracial. Blood mixing is also believed to be the reason certain phenotypes (physical characteristics) common within Native people also occur in African American populations.”

Julianne Jennings, “The Institutional Racism Against Black Indians,” Indian Country Today Media Network.com (July 4, 2014). http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2014/07/04/institutional-racism-against-black-indians.

“Elsie Roxborough started out to shake the stigma of color; when that proved impossible, she joined step with the oppressor. Her life as a disguised alien in the middle reaches of the white social register did not satisfy her ambition or her pride. Perhaps no happy ending awaited her. The welcome thawings of racial prejudice after the war, and the first signs of a civil rights movement, would only have mocked and embittered her in the years of her deception. A happy child become desperate, she is a case study of the “dark sister” excluded by the American Dream.”

Kathleen A. Hauke, “The ‘Passing’ of Elsie Roxborough,” Michigan Quarterly Review, Volume 23, Issue 2 (Spring 1984). 150. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.act2080.0023.002:01.

“Racial categories vary across the world. Thus, identical twins separated and raised in different countries could end up identifying their race differently. Similarly, were we able to send a person back through time, his or her race might change. Social scientists point to this variation in racial categories across time and space to argue that race is a social construct. Further support for the fluidity of race also comes from recent studies that show that some people report membership in different races at different times in their lives. The race that one selects often depends upon one’s current social position.”

Brooke A. Cunningham, MD, PhD, “Race: A Starting Place,” Virtual Mentor: American Medical Association Journal of Ethics, Volume 16, Number 6 (June 2014), 474. http://virtualmentor.ama-assn.org/2014/06/msoc1-1406.html.