Mixed Race Studies

Afro-Latinos: a vision of Houston’s mixed-race future

The Houtson Chronicle
Houston, Texas
2016-11-19

Olivia P. Tallet, Reporter

Afro-Latinos embody Texas’ mixed-race future

It happens all the time. At the taco truck, Raul Orlando Edwards placed his fajita order: “Señorita, por favor, póngale la cebolla bien cocida” (“I’d like the onions well-done.”)

“Man,” said the African-American behind him in line, “how did you learn to do that?” Meaning: Why, for a black man, is your Spanish so good?

“I’m Latino,” Edwards answered. The director of the Strictly Street Salsa Studio and founder of the Afro-Latino Festival of Houston, he’s a Panamanian-Jamaican immigrant.

The guy stated the obvious: “I thought you were black!”

“I’m blacker than you are!” Edwards replied. And, he says, they laughed.

These days, in both Texas and the U.S. at large, skin color is an ever less reliable indicator of identity. According to a 2015 Pew survey, about a quarter of U.S. Hispanics identify themselves as Afro-Latino. Like Edwards, the vast majority (70 percent) are foreign-born.

Afro-Latinos generally are descendants of African slaves brought to Spanish and Portuguese colonies in Latin America and the Caribbean. Most are biracial or multiracial. Being Afro-Latino, says Alain Lawo-Sukam, professor of Hispanic and Africana Studies at Texas A&M University, is less about skin color than about identity and a sense of belonging.

By their very existence, Afro-Latinos challenge the traditional “one-drop” view of race in the United States: the idea that one drop of African blood makes a person black. Afro-Latinos like Edwards aren’t simply black, white or Hispanic. They’re a combination – and as such, a vision of the United States’ racially and ethnically complex future. They’re a minority inside a minority; a melting pot within the melting pot…

Read the entire article here.

We are not “belligerent,” “dark” or “bitter”

Media Diversified
2016-11-29

Tele Ogunyemi, Co-founder
Diaspora Philes

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown’s recent article ‘Blend it like Britain’ is a masterpiece in how to simultaneously erase and fetishize people of colour. Published on 6th November 2016 in the Sunday Times Magazine to promote Amma Asante’s new film ‘A United Kingdom’, the article is littered with racist or otherwise problematic assertions about people of colour, and their role in creating a modern multicultural Britain. Alibhai-Brown’s article seeks to explore the role of white women in building a ‘multicultural’ Britain, but is laced with rhetoric that casually dehumanizes people of colour. [Chief amongst these lazy tropes are toxic portrayals of an exotic and dangerous black masculinity in contrast to a pristine, “middle class” white womanhood.

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown writes that ‘miscegenation goes way back and deep down in Great Britain. Much of this integration is thanks to an unsung history of white British women who defied social norms to follow their hearts.’

We do not doubt that white women in relationships with men of colour played a part in this demographic change in society. However, by placing white British women at the centre of a narrative about multicultural nationhood, Alibhai-Brown erases the contributions of millions of immigrants who have come to the UK and done the difficult work of integrating into a new society whilst enriching Britain with the best elements of their cultures…

Read the entire article here.

Blend it like Britain

The Sunday Times
The Times of London
2016-11-06

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

United colours: one in 10 people in this country are in a mixed relationship MORDECHAI MEIRI

An acclaimed new movie, A United Kingdom, is set to shine a spotlight on mixed-race relationships — and how British women changed society’s attitude towards them. The time to celebrate these unsung pioneers is long overdue

Brits have long been typecast as a nation of snobs and Little Englanders. Dull, cold, twitchy folk, as culturally unadventurous as they are sexually repressed. These “small islander” traits are a key part of the national story, but only a part. Dig beneath the surface of British history and society, and you find a culture that is curious and expansive. One in 10 people in this country are in a mixed relationship. Millions of us are bolder than the supposedly romantic and hot-blooded Italians or French, most of whom are conformist and tend not to break out of their cultural and ethnic boundaries.

Europeans are (very slowly) becoming more ethnically mixed, but they will never catch up with the UK’s demographic melange. Between 2001 and 2011, there has been a rise of more than 50% in British black/white partnerships. Today, around half of black and 20% of British-Asian men have wedded or cohabit with white women. This is no new trend. Miscegenation goes way back and deep down in Great Britain. Much of this integration is thanks to an unsung history of white British women who defied social norms to follow their hearts.

In the 16th century, the first black people arrived on these shores. The majority were men: slaves, freed slaves and servants. Poor, working-class women in London and the port cities paired up with them, had children too. They were the first to set the trend that grew during the days of empire and the two world wars. A report written in Liverpool in the early 1930s depicted these women as feckless and promiscuous. In the late 1940s, ships arrived carrying Caribbeans, again mostly men. They, too, found Englishwomen who were enraptured by darker-skinned partners. The women were often reviled, but many of them refused to bow to prejudice. These women began the social revolution that changed Britain for ever…

Read the entire article here.

For Interracial Couples, Growing Acceptance, With Some Exceptions

The New York Times
2016-11-26

Brooke Lea Foster

When I was a new mother living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in 2010, I often forgot that my infant son, Harper, didn’t look like me. As I pushed him around the neighborhood, I thought of him as the perfect brown baby, soft-skinned and tulip-lipped, with a full head of black hair, even if it was the opposite of my blond waves and fair skin.

“He’s adorable. What nationality is his mother?” a middle-aged white woman asked me outside Barnes & Noble on Broadway one day, mistaking me for a nanny.

“I am his mother,” I told her. “His daddy is Filipino.”

“Well, good for you,” she said.

It’s a sentiment that mixed-race couples hear all too frequently, as interracial marriages have become increasingly common in the United States since 1967, when the Supreme Court’s decision in Loving v. Virginia struck down laws banning such unions. The story of the couple whose relationship led to the court ruling is chronicled in the movie, “Loving,” now in theaters.

In 2013, 12 percent of all new marriages were interracial, the Pew Research Center reported. According to a 2015 Pew report on intermarriage, 37 percent of Americans agreed that having more people marrying different races was a good thing for society, up from 24 percent only four years earlier; 9 percent thought it was a bad thing…

Read the entire article here.

The Latinos Of Asia

Think
KERA
Dallas, Texas
2016-11-14

Krys Boyd, Host and Managing Editor

Filipino Americans are classified by the U.S. Census as Asian. But because of Spanish colonialism in the Philippines, many Filipinos also feel part Latino. This hour, we’ll talk about how skin color, history and other factors contribute to cultural identity with sociologist Anthony Christian Ocampo, author of “The Latinos of Asia: How Filipino Americans Break the Rules of Race” (Stanford University Press).

Download the episode (00:48:18) here.

Reclaiming heritage in modern America

Somona State Star
Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, California
2016-11-08

Jahred Nunes, Staff Writer

Virginia natives Mildred Loving, a black woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, were sentenced to a year in state prison after being married in the spring of 1958.

The couple was arrested in their bedroom, after police received an anonymous tip that the Lovings may be an interracial couple. Their marriage violated the state’s anti-miscegenation statute, the Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which prohibited marriage between people classified as “white” and people classified as “colored.”

After taking their case to the Supreme Court in 1967, Loving v. Virginia became a landmark civil rights decision invalidating all laws prohibiting interracial marriage.

Nearly 50 years later, the Pew Research Center found that multiracial Americans are one of the fastest growing communities in America, growing at three times the rate as the American population as a whole.

However, with the lines between race and culture being blurred in the modern era, where does multiculturalism fit in?…

Read the entire here.

How do you become “white” in America?

The Correspondent
September 2016

Sarah Kendzior, Flyover Country Correspondent

An immigrant family looks out over the New York skyline as they arrive in the U.S. from Germany aboard the S.S. Nieuw Amsterdam. Photo by Getty

Trump has retweeted white supremacist groups and has the backing of the Ku Klux Klan. He uses whiteness as a weapon, and his candidacy on a major party ticket threatens to put the country back some 200 years. What does Trump’s vision of whiteness mean for a diverse country like the U.S.?

Since 1790, the U.S. has taken a census that divides citizens into racial categories. These categories have transformed dramatically over the past 220 years along with U.S. demography. In 1790, there were three categories: “free whites”, “other free people”, and “slaves.” Over the next few centuries, new groups were added ranging from broad racial categories (“Asian”) to subsets (“Korean”, for example, was added as its own race in 1920, removed in 1950, re-added in 1970, and subsumed into “Asian” in 2000.)

The most recent census, taken in 2010, divided Americans as follows: White, Black or African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, or Some Other Race. In 1980, as a result of a huge increase in the Hispanic population, ‘Hispanic’ (or Latino, often the preferred term) was added as its own category, with a note that it is an ethnicity, not a race…

…Being white in the U.S. has long meant better jobs and opportunities, and an escape from persecution based on appearance and culture. Although these structural advantages remain, the meaning of whiteness is still hotly debated – particularly during this election season…

Read the entire article here.

Congress Should Tell the OMB to Stop Dividing the Country

The Heritage Foundation
Issue Brief #4614 on Office Of Management And Budget
2016-10-11

Mike Gonzalez, Senior Fellow
The Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy

On the first day of Congress’s recess, the Obama Administration recommended the most sweeping changes to the nation’s official racial and ethnic categories in decades. The two most significant proposals were creating a new ethno/racial group for people who originate from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and taking from those who identify as Hispanic the option to identify their race. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Notice asked for comments to be submitted within a month—the shortest window possible—for what it described as a “limited revision” of data collection practices. Far from limited, the proposals would have long-term consequences for how one-fifth of all Americans are defined demographically and would create more societal conflict over racial preferences and political gerrymandering. The American people deserve more than a month to debate such significant changes, and Congress must weigh in.

Racial Reclassifications

The Obama Administration’s proposal would mean that, as early as the 2020 Census, those of Middle East and North African origin, who have been classified as white for over a century, would now be reclassified as a single and unified minority group. At the same time, people of Latin American or Iberian origins would no longer be able to declare whether they are also white, black, or another race, effectively making “Hispanic” their only racial identifier. This would be the biggest change to the nation’s official demography since OMB created Hispanics in 1977 and the Census divided the country into an ethno-racial pentagon that also included White, Black, Asian and American Indian in 1980. The Clinton Administration tried to create MENA and make Hispanics “a racial designation rather than an ethnicity” but failed, settling instead for the addition of “Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander” as a sixth group in 1997, the last major change…

Read the entire article here.

A U.S. Census proposal to add category for people of Middle Eastern descent makes some uneasy

The Washington Post
2016-10-21

Tara Bahrampour

For the first time in four decades, the federal government is poised to add a new ethnic category to the U.S. census form, adding a box for people of Middle Eastern and North African descent.

Details are still being negotiated, but as the form is currently envisioned, people would be able to check the new box in addition to race identifiers, such as “white” or “black.” Within the new category, they would also be able to specify national origins, such as Saudi or Israeli, and ethnic affiliations, such as Berber or Kurdish. The new form would go to Congress for final approval in 2018 in time for the 2020 Census.

The move comes after more than 30 years of lobbying, but also at a time of rising Islamophobia and calls by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump to ban people from Muslim lands. Some are questioning whether the new designation could lead to profiling or otherwise put them in danger.

The proposed addition would create a race and ethnicity category called MENA for people with roots in the Middle East and North Africa. It has been championed by organizations representing Arab Americans and others with roots in the geographical swath from Iran to Morocco, who complain of being ignored in the decennial count…

Read the entire article here.

Standards for Maintaining, Collecting, and Presenting Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity

Federal Register: The Daily Journal of the United States Government
A Notice by the Management and Budget Office on 09/30/2016
2016-09-30
4 pages

Howard A. Shelanski, Administrator
Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs

AGENCY:
Executive Office of the President, Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

ACTION:
Review and Possible Limited Revision of OMB’s Statistical Policy Directive on Standards for Maintaining, Collecting, and Presenting Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity.

SUMMARY:
The Standards for Maintaining, Collecting, and Presenting Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity were last revised in 1997 (62 FR 58782, Oct. 30, 1997; see https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/fedreg_1997standards). Since these revisions were implemented, much has been learned about how these standards have improved the quality of Federal information collected and presented on race and ethnicity. At the same time, some areas may benefit from further refinement. Accordingly, OMB currently is undertaking a review of particular components of the 1997 standard: The use of separate questions measuring race and ethnicity and question phrasing; the classification of a Middle Eastern and North African group and reporting category; the description of the intended use of minimum reporting categories; and terminology used for race and ethnicity classifications. OMB’s current review of the standard is limited to these areas. Specific questions appear under the section, “Issues for Comment.”

DATES:
Comments on the review and possible limited revisions to OMB’s Standards for Maintaining, Collecting, and Presenting Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity detailed in this notice must be in writing. To ensure consideration of comments, they must be received no later than [30 days from the publication of this notice]. Please be aware of delays in mail processing at Federal facilities due to increased security. Respondents are encouraged to send comments electronically via email, or http://www.regulations.gov (discussed in ADDRESSES below)…

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