Mixed Race Studies

Making sense of ‘mixture’: states and the classification of ‘mixed’ people

Ethnic and Racial Studies
Avaiable online: 2012-02-01
9 pages
DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2012.648650

Miri Song, Professor of Sociology
University of Kent, United Kingdom

Diversity and the growth of ‘mixed’ people

In many Western multi-ethnic societies, and increasingly in non-Western societies, ‘super-diversity’ has emerged as a major demographic trend in various metropolitan centres (Vertovec 2007). Contemporary Britain is marked by both super-diversity in urban areas and ‘old’ racial and ethnic cleavages which reflect continuing social divides in many parts of the country. As a result, there is considerable flux in the meanings and significance of race and racial difference across a variety of contexts. Such growing diversity is due to continue, based upon continuing flows of migration, increased interracial and interethnic partnering, and the growth of ‘mixed’ individuals. While I focus on the case of Britain, much of this editorial, I would argue, will be of relevance to what many other multi-ethnic societies will encounter in the coming years.

Notably. while only 2 per cent of marriages are ‘inlerethnic’ in Britain (Office for National Statistics 2005), such marriages are expected to grow rapidly. Black-white partnering is the most common in Britain the direct opposite of the US. where black/white partnering is least common. In a recent analysis of the Labour Force Survey, nearly half of black Caribbean men in a partnership were partnered (married or cohabiting) with someone of a different ethnic group (and about one third of black Caribbean women), while 39 per cent of Chinese women in partnerships had a partner from a different ethnic group (Platt 2009). There are now more children in Britain (under age 5) with one black and one white parent than children with two black parents (Owen 2007)…

Read or purchase the article here.

Catholic records of slave baptisms in colonial New Orleans go online

New Orleans Times-Picayune
2011-02-01

Bruce Nolan, Beat Reporter

On Sunday, the 6th of May, 1798, an enslaved New Orleans woman named only Manon, owned by Mr. LeBlanc, presented her 2-year-old child, Antoine Joseph, at St. Louis Cathedral on the Plaza de Armas to be baptized at the hands of Father Luis Quintanilla, a Capuchin friar there.

Manon was probably accompanied by her owner, as was the custom of the day, according to Emilie Leumas, an expert on the era and the keeper of the Archdiocese of New Orleans’ sacramental records.

In racially complex, laissez-faire New Orleans, where categories of race were faithfully noted then sometimes dismissed, Quintanilla noted the pertinent details. Manon was a mulatto, or mixed-race woman, and the baby’s father was officially unrecognized but apparently white, as the baby is described with the Spanish term “quarteroon,” which means three-fourths white.

The record of that event has always been preserved in the rich archives of the Archdiocese of New Orleans. But it has never been easily accessible.

But Tuesday, the 1798 baptism of Antoine Joseph, with thousands of similar baptismal records from colonial New Orleans, were posted on the Internet as a new tool for genealogists everywhere.

“Now people can sit in their slippers at 11 o’clock at night and read away,” said Leumas, the archdiocese’s archivist…

..In Antoine Joseph’s case, the godparents were there: Marie Joseph and Antonio, neither with a family name. Still attentive to the complex categories of race and color, Quintanilla noted that the baby’s godfather was “metis”—another mixed-race classification, perhaps suggesting American Indian blood, according to Leumas.

By the end of 2012, the archdiocese hopes to go both forward and backward in time, posting all of its sacramental records—baptisms, marriages, funerals and other life cycle events—from the founding of the city in 1718 to the date of Louisiana’s admittance to the union in 1812, Leumas said…

Read the entire article here.

Educational Inequality by Race in Brazil, 1982–2007: Structural Changes and Shifts in Racial Classification

Demography
Volume 49, Number 1 (February 2012)
pages 337-358
DOI: 10.1007/s13524-011-0084-6

Leticia J. Marteleto, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Population Research Center
University of Texas, Austin

Despite overwhelming improvements in educational levels and opportunity during the past three decades, educational disadvantages associated with race still persist in Brazil. Using the nationally representative Pesquisa Nacional de Amostra por Domicílio (PNAD) data from 1982 and 1987 to 2007, this study investigates educational inequalities between white, pardo (mixed-race), and black Brazilians over the 25-year period. Although the educational advantage of whites persisted during this period, I find that the significance of race as it relates to education changed. By 2007, those identified as blacks and pardos became more similar in their schooling levels, whereas in the past, blacks had greater disadvantages. I test two possible explanations for this shift: structural changes and shifts in racial classification. I find evidence for both. I discuss the findings in light of the recent race-based affirmative action policies being implemented in Brazilian universities.

Read or purchase the article here.

Survey reveals half of children of migrants families feel ‘white British’

Daily Mail
2012-03-08

Steve Doughty

More than half the children of immigrant families now count themselves as both white and British, a survey revealed yesterday.

The findings show that more than one in six of those people who call themselves white British were in fact born abroad, or their parents or grandparents came from somewhere else in the world.

Even among children of mixed-race parents, more than a third say they are ‘white British’ when asked how they identify themselves…

…It found: ‘Those of minority ethnicity typically express a stronger British identity than the white British majority.

‘This is true of UK and non-UK born minorities, though the non-UK born across all groups express a lower sense of British identity.’

Researchers Alita Nandi and Lucinda Platt said: ‘This might be regarded as a positive melting pot story…

…Even among people themselves born abroad, who make up 11 per cent of the population, just over one in six describe themselves as white British.

Fewer than a third, 30 per cent, of people with mixed-race parents described their identity as ‘mixed’.

However a greater number, 35 per cent, say they are white British…

Read the entire article here.

AMST 294-03  Mixed Race America: Identity, Culture, and Politics

Macalester College
Saint Paul, Minnesota
Spring 2012

SooJin Pate

This course is an introduction to the animating debates, themes, and issues in Critical Mixed Race Studies. Utilizing critical race theory and postcolonial analysis, we will examine the identities and experiences of multiracial or mixed race people, as well as the ways in which they have played a fundamental role in constructing race and shaping race relations, politics, and culture in the U.S. Topics in this course address the following: conquest and slavery, miscegenation laws, debates about the U.S. Census categories, U.S. militarism, representations of “mixed” people in the media, cultural expressions of “mixed” Americans, transracial adoption, queering mixed race studies, and the Mixed Race/Multiracial Movement.

Interracial marriages deserve equal respect

The Daily Gamecock
University of South Carolina
2012-02-29

Lauren Stefan

Intolerance within certain racial groups inhibits progress, increases divorce rates

Figures released in February reveal that the number of interracial marriages in America has increased in recent years. The new percentage is just over 8 percent, a large jump from the previous 3 percent it was in 1980. In fact, 15 percent of new marriages in the year 2010 were interracial. Those involved with the report paint the picture that no major issues remain for interracial couples. While this news of an increase may sound like a cause for celebration, it is ignorant to conclude that these figures prove that race relations have significantly improved…

…Others claim that interracial marriages should be avoided because it is unfair to their future children. This argument is weak and hypocritical because this nation historically expanded as a result of a mixed population, due to white colonizers intermingling with Native Americans and African American slaves…

Read the entire opinion piece here.

True Londoners Are Extinct

The New York Times
2012-03-01

Craig Taylor

Photo by Mark Neville. Children come to the Somerford Grove Adventure Playground in Tottenham, shown here, after school or on weekends to learn life skills like cooking. “There’s a real sense of adulthood to what the children are doing there,” Neville said.

Later this year, thousands of Olympians will march into London under flapping flags, and the global TV audience will be treated to a romanticized version of the city, with helicopter shots of Big Ben competing for time against footage of Buckingham Palace guards staring stone-faced into the distance and double-decker buses bouncing unsteadily through too-narrow streets. By the end of the ceremonies, you’ll have seen the city’s bridges so many times that you’ll wish they had all fallen down years ago.

The overall impression these images are meant to give off is that London, for all its recent convulsions, is a city that remains preserved in its past, obsessed with its royals (the queen will celebrate her diamond jubilee in June) and populated by the type of cheeky folks mythologized in those postwar BBC social documentaries and kept alive by the likes of Guy Ritchie’s tired gangster clichés. Not Londoners. Lahndannahs.

But London in 2012, like most other global cities, is in significant flux, much less beholden to sepia-tinged notions of what it used to be and much more a product of its new arrivals. Over the last decade, the foreign-born population reached 2.6 million, just about a third of the city. In addition to longstanding Irish, Indian, Jamaican and Bangladeshi communities, there are now many new immigrants from Nigeria, Slovenia, Ghana, Vietnam and Somalia. I’ve seen Russians fly in on their private jets, and Eastern Europeans breach the city limits in cars filled to the roof with suitcases and potted plants…

Read the entire article here. View the slideshows here.

TIME to Think in Full Color About Race & Ethnicity

Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Ph.D.
2012-02-25

Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Visiting Scholar
Brown University

TIME Magazine’s latest cover story (Feb. 2/24) is called “Yo Decido. Why Latinos will pick the next President.” It reports that about 9% of all voters in 2012 will be Latino, up 26% from four years ago. While the Latin@ vote is definitely an important and interesting and game-changing political development, the most interesting thing about this story isn’t the headline or the article’s statistics. It’s the cover (left).

The cover claims to feature 20 portraits of Latin@s with captions. Some are individual or occupational descriptions like dancer, DREAMer, nutrition undergrad, car aficionado and immigration activist. Other descriptions are nation-oriented, like Mexicans, Hondurans and Guatemalans.

Here’s the problem: In reality, the cover features only 19 portraits of Latin@s and one man who passes as Latino but actually identifies himself as multiracial—half Chinese and half White. According to Michelle Woo at the OC Weekly, “That man is Michael Schennum, is the short-haired gentleman in the top row, center, behind the letter ‘M.’ He is half Chinese and half White. Not Latino. Not even a little bit.”…

…Sociologists have identified two patterns emerging in US multiracial communities. Asian / Whites and Latin@ / Whites tend to acknowledge and celebrate all aspects of their backgrounds but live life as Whites, especially if their fathers are White. Black / Whites and Black / Asian, Black / Latin@s tend to celebrate all aspects of their backgrounds but live their lives as Black…

Read the entire article here.

Batson Revisited in America’s “New Era” of Multiracial Persons

Seton Hall Law Review
Volume 33, Issue 1 (2003)
Article 3
pages 67-108

John Terrence A. Rosenthal

Since two bloods course within your veins, Both Jam’s and Japhet’s intermingling; One race forever doomed to serve, The other bearing freedom’s likeness.
—Poem from Jacob Steendam to his multiracial son

It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction—to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.
—Letter from President George Washington to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island (Sept. 9, 1790)

I consider [trial by jury] as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.
—Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Paine (1789)

INTRODUCTION

From the time of this country’s founding, America has always been a multiracial society. In the coming decades, America’s racial and ethnic diversity will continue to increase. The 2000 Census evidences the present and coming racial complexity. Mandated by the Constitution, this decennial census, for the first time allowed individuals to chose more than one race in identifying their racial heritage. The preliminary results of the 2000 Census show that the number of individuals claiming multiracial status is not insignificant. As many as 2.4 percent of our nation’s citizens consider themselves multiracial; and in California, the nation’s most populace state, the percentage is 4.7.

Given our society’s historical penchant for discrimination against minority racial groups, persons of multiracial backgrounds do and will continue to face many of the same problems related to racial discrimination that other minority racial groups in our country have historically faced. These problems include, employment discrimination, housing discrimination, and discrimination in the administration of our criminal justice system. Due to the difficulty often associated with distinguishing which racial groups multiracial individuals belong to or derive from, the problems of discrimination will present these people with unique, and often unrecognized and unaddressed problems. This Article will address one of these potential problems, which is associated with the administration of the criminal justice system: discrimination based on race in the use of peremptory challenges during the selection of jurors.

This country has an extensive history of racial discrimination in the context of the jury selection process. Although both the courts and legislatures have attempted to deal with the problem of racial discrimination in the jury selection process, the solutions provided do not solve the problem for those persons of multiracial descent who may not be readily identified or perceived as racial minorities. In particular, it is a challenge for society to prevent the racially discriminatory use of peremptory challenges in the jury selection process, if only one side in the litigation recognizes a multiracial potential juror as being multiracial and discriminates based on that person’s racial makeup. What if a juror is dismissed from the jury pool by one side due to his or her racial heritage, but neither the other side nor the judge recognizes the discrimination because the racial makeup of the juror is not readily apparent to either?

The present jury selection process, mandated by Batson v. Kentucky to address racial discrimination in the use of peremptory challenges, depends upon the ability of the judge and the attorneys for both sides to perceive the racial makeup of the potential juror. Only then will one party be on notice of the possibility of racial discrimination and raise the proper challenge. If this party does not recognize the dismissed person as being of multiracial descent, then the constitutional violation goes undiscovered and unremedied. Therefore, Batson, as it is presently structured and enforced, may not, and most likely will not solve the problem of racial discrimination in the use of peremptory challenges to exclude multiracial persons from juries.

In Part I, the Article will review the legal and societal history of racial discrimination against multiracial individuals in our country. Part II will then examine the historical problem of racial discrimination in the context of the jury selection process and describe the present judicial remedy used to address this problem. In Part III, the Article will discuss the results of the 2000 Census, the implications of this data with regard to the racial make-up of juries, and how these data and anecdotal evidence suggest the existence of a unique problem of racial discrimination against multiracial individuals in the jury selection process. Finally, Part IV will suggest some potential remedies for this “vexing” problem…

Read the entire article here.

Interracial Love Is No Societal Cure-All

truthdig
2012-02-17

Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Visiting Scholar
Brown University

A recently released report by the Pew Center is a belated Valentine’s Day gift to interracial families. The report indicates that intermarriage across racial and ethnic lines continues to be on the rise in the U.S. and the change is a sign that acceptance is growing. Although this is definitely cause for celebration and a reason to continue the fight for marriage equality everywhere, we should remember that a fuller and more accurate historical account of interracial sex and marriage in the U.S. should focus on social and legal constraints along with demographic patterns.

One reason why is the large-scale psychological distress experienced by all racial groups resulting from a social and legal history around interracial sex and marriage that’s been fraught with challenges. Legal history tells us that interracial sexual relations have been a troubled issue since the days of colonialism and enslavement, when many African-American women were forced to give birth to mixed race children to increase the enslaved population. This means that a large number of people who can claim interracial heritage do not because they are what multiracial activist Glenn Robinson calls “mixed by force” rather than “mixed by choice.” We must also consider the many free “mixed by choice” families of various backgrounds whose marriages were not recognized in the census records because miscegenation laws got even stricter after the demise of slavery.

Then, there were female members of interracial marriages, such as New York’s Alice Rhinelander in 1925 or California’s Marie Antoinette Monks in 1939, who were accused of fraud so that their marriages could be annulled and so that they could be disinherited. So, we must remember that before the 1967 case Loving v. Virginia ended bans on interracial marriage in all territories where it was outlawed, interracial coupling was a common practice. That means there may be some validity to the critique that today’s demographic patterns may not represent as much of an increase from historical trends as is being reported. Sadly, this is difficult to prove because there are few historical records to document the trend through its 500-or-more-year history in the U.S…

Read the entire article here.