Mixed Race Studies

Summer Blend Book Club Wraps Up

Tell Me More
National Public Radio
2011-08-25

Michel Martin, Host

This series began in June with the help of Heidi Durrow, author and co-founder of the “Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival.” All summer long, Tell Me More has been covering books about the multicultural experience in America. Durrow checks back in with host Michel Martin to discuss the novels in the program’s Summer Blend Book Club.

MICHEL MARTIN, host: As we said earlier, our Summer Blend book series has taken us deep into the experience of the emerging story of mixed-race Americans.

We decided to end where we began, with a conversation with author Heidi Durrow. She is the author of the bestseller “The Girl Who Fell From the Sky.” She cofounded the Mixed Roots Film and Literary Festival, and she helped us kick off our series back in June. And she joins us once again from NPR West.

Heidi, welcome back. Thanks so much for joining us, and thank you for helping us with the series.

HEIDI DURROW: Thanks for having me back….

Read the transcript here.  Listen to the interview (00:06:30) here, download it here.

Race in Brazil: Out of Eden

The Economist
2003-07-03

Brazil used to think it could be colour-blind. Alas, no longer

JOANA, an actress and student, is white, or at least that is what her birth certificate says. She has a white father, a mixed-race mother and skin the colour of cappuccino. But she considers herself to be “more or less black”. Joana’s ambiguity about her race is quintessentially Brazilian. Brazil had slavery, but never apartheid or the formal segregation of the American south. Centuries of interracial coupling have produced a population that is 40% pardo (mixed). But Joana’s description of herself as “black”, or negra, belongs to a new era in Brazil’s racial politics. It implies that racial mixing has done nothing to correct racism, that pardos and pretos (the census term for blacks) are in the same boat and that the solution is not to ignore race but to plant it at the centre of policies to overcome vast social and economic inequalities. Though most people are only dimly aware of it, their idea of what it means to be Brazilian is about to be challenged.

The challenge is coming through racial quotas, which black leaders see as an indispensable corrective to discrimination. They are not widely used yet, but they are spreading. Three federal ministries recently introduced quotas of 20% for blacks in senior jobs. A handful of cities in São Paulo, the industrial heartland, have introduced racial quotas in the past two years. Most contentiously, so have a few public universities, the institutions that decide who will be admitted to Brazil’s elite. Congress is considering a “statute of racial equality” that would give quotas a big extra push. These and other affirmative actions add up to a “revolution” that is “much bigger than people imagine,” says Ivair dos Santos, advisor to the federal secretary for human rights…

Read the entire article here.

20 years after riots, Crown Heights is now a mixed racial haven

New York Daily News
2011-08-14

Simone Weichselbaum, Staff Writer

Crown Heights has become a mixed race mecca.

The Brooklyn neighborhood infamous for the 1991 riot between blacks and Jews has the second-most residents who identify as being both black and white, the latest Census figures show.

Crown Heights had 635 people in 2010 who said they were born to one black parent and one white. Harlem led the city with 776.

The neighborhood’s new population includes mixed race hipsters and young biracial families moving from pricier neighborhoods. Others identify as Jewish with a black parent who want a multi-cultural area to call home…

Read the entire article here.

Somewhere between Jim Crow & Post-Racialism: Reflections on the Racial Divide in America Today

Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences
Volume 140, Number 2, Spring 2011, Race, Inequality & Culture, Volume 2
pages 11-36

Lawrence D. Bobo, W. E. B. Du Bois Professor of the Social Sciences
Harvard University

In assessing the results of the Negro revolution so far, it can be concluded that Negroes have established a foothsold, no more. We have written a Declaration of Independence, itself an accomplishment, but the effort to transform the words into a life experience still lies ahead.
–Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go From Here? (1968)

By the middle of the twentieth century, the color line was as well defined and as firmly entrenched as any institution in the land. After all, it was older than most institutions, including the federal government itself. More important, it informed the content and shaped the lives of those institutions and the people who lived under them.
–John Hope Franklin, The Color Line (1993)

This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naive as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy–particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.
–Barack H. Obama, “A More Perfect Union” (May 18, 2008)

The year 1965 marked an important inflection point in the struggle for racial justice in the United States, underscoring two fundamental points about race in America. First, that racial inequality and division were not only Southern problems attached to Jim Crow segregation. Second, that the nature of those inequalities and divisions was a matter not merely of formal civil status and law, but also of deeply etched economic arrangements, social and political conditions, and cultural outlooks and practices. Viewed in full, the racial divide was a challenge of truly national reach, multilayered in its complexity and depth. Therefore, the achievement of basic citizenship rights in the South was a pivotal but far from exhaustive stage of the struggle…

…A second and no less controversial view of post-racialism takes the position that the level and pace of change in the demographic makeup and the identity choices and politics of Americans are rendering the traditional black-white divide irrelevant. Accordingly, Americans increasingly revere mixture and hybridity and are rushing to embrace a decidedly “beige” view of themselves and what is good for the body politic. Old-fashioned racial dichotomies pale against the surge toward flexible, deracialized, and mixed ethnoracial identities and outlooks.

A third, and perhaps the most controversial, view of post-racialism has the most in common with the well-rehearsed rhetoric of color blindness. To wit, American society, or at least a large and steadily growing fraction of it, has genuinely moved beyond race–so much so that we as a nation are now ready to transcend the disabling racial divisions of the past. From this perspective, nothing symbolizes better the moment of transcendence than Obama’s election as president. This transcendence is said to be especially true of a younger generation, what New Yorker editor David Remnick has referred to as “the Joshua Generation.” More than any other, this generation is ready to cross the great river of racial identity, division, and acrimony that has for so long defined American culture and politics…

…Consider first the matter of group boundaries. The 2000 Census broke new ground by allowing individuals to mark more than one box in designating racial background. Indeed, great political pressure and tumult led to the decision to move the Census in a direction that more formally and institutionally acknowledged the presence of increasing mixture and heterogeneity in the American population with regard to racial background. Nearly seven million people exercised that option in 2000. The successful rise of Obama to the office of president, the first African American to do so, as a child of a white American mother and a black Kenyan father, has only accelerated the sense of the newfound latitude and recognition granted to those who claim more than one racial heritage.

Despite Obama’s electoral success and the press attention given to the phenomenon, some will no doubt find it surprising that the overwhelming majority of Americans identify with only one race. As Figure 1 shows, less than 2 percent of the population marked more than one box on the 2000 Census in designating their racial background. Fully 98 percent marked just one. I claim no deep-rootedness or profound personal salience for these identities. Rather, my point is that we should be mindful that the level of “discussion” and contention around mixture is far out of proportion to the extent to which most Americans actually designate and see themselves in these terms. Moreover, even if we restrict attention to just those who marked more than one box, two-thirds of these respondents designated two groups other than blacks (namely, Hispanic-white, Asian-white, or Hispanic and Asian mixtures), as Figure 2 shows. Some degree of mixture with black constituted just under a third of mixed race identifiers in 2000. Given the historic size of the black population and the extended length of contact with white Americans, this remarkable result says something powerful about the potency and durability of the historic black-white divide.

It is worth recalling that sexual relations and childbearing across the racial divide are not recent phenomena. The 1890 U.S. Census contained categories for not only “Negro” but also “Mulatto,” “Quadroon,” and even “Octoroon”; these were clear signs of the extent of “mixing” that had taken place in the United States. Indeed, well over one million individuals fell into one of the mixed race categories at that time. In order to protect the institution of slavery and to prevent the offspring of white slave masters and exploited black slave women from having a claim on freedom as well as on the property of the master, slave status, as defined by law, followed the mother’s status, not the father’s. For most of its history, the United States legally barred or discouraged racial mixing and intermarriage. At the time of the Loving v. Virginia case in 1967, seventeen states still banned racial intermarriage…

…Does that pressure for change foretell the ultimate undoing of the black-white divide? At least three lines of research raise doubts about such a forecast. First, studies of the perceptions of and identities among those of mixed racial backgrounds point to strong evidence of the cultural persistence of the one-drop rule. Systematic experiments by sociologists and social psychologists are intriguing in this regard. For example, sociologist Melissa Herman’s recent research concluded that “others’ perceptions shape a person’s identity and social understandings of race. My study found that partblack multiracial youth are more likely to be seen as black by observers and to define themselves as black when forced to choose one race.”…

…Third, some key synthetic works argue for an evolving racial scheme in the United States, but a scheme that nonetheless preserves a heavily stigmatized black category. A decade ago, sociologist Herbert Gans offered the provocative but wellgrounded speculation that the United States would witness a transition from a society defined by a great white–nonwhite divide to one increasingly defined by a black–non-black fissure, with an in-between or residual category for those granted provisional or “honorary white” status. As Gans explained: “If current trends persist, today’s multiracial hierarchy could be replaced by what I think of as a dual or bimodal one consisting of ‘nonblack’ and ‘black’ population categories, with a third ‘residual’ category for the groups that do not, or do not yet, fit into the basic dualism.” Most troubling, this new dualism would, in Gans’s expectations, continue to bring a profound sense of undeservingness and stigma for those assigned its bottom rung.

Gans’s remarks have recently received substantial support from demographer Frank Bean and his colleagues. Based on their extensive analyses of population trends across a variety of indicators, Bean and colleagues write: “A black-nonblack divide appears to be taking shape in the United States, in which Asians and Latinos are closer to whites. Hence, America’s color lines are moving toward a new demarcation that places many blacks in a position of disadvantage similar to that resulting from the traditional black-white divide.”…

Read the entire article here.

Race in America: Restructuring Inequality: Intergroup Race Relation

Center on Race & Social Problems
School of Social Work
The University of Pittsburgh
2010
29 pages

Editors:

Larry E. Davis, Dean and Donald M. Henderson Professor of Social Work and Director of the Center on Race and Social Problems
University of Pittsburgh

Ralph Bangs, Associate Director
Center on Race and Social Problems
University of Pittsburgh

The Third of Seven Reports on the Race in America Conference (June 3-6, 2010)

Despite significant progress in America’s stride toward racial equality, there remains much to be done. Some problems are worse today than they were during the turbulent times of the 1960s. Indeed, racial disparities across a number of areas are blatant—family formation, employment levels, community violence, incarceration rates, educational attainment, and health and mental health outcomes.

As part of an attempt to redress these race-related problems, the University of Pittsburgh School of Social Work and Center on Race and Social Problems organized the conference Race in America: Restructuring Inequality, which was held at the University of Pittsburgh June 3–6, 2010. The goal of the conference was to promote greater racial equality for all Americans. As our entire society has struggled to recover from a major economic crisis, we believed it was an ideal time to restructure existing systems rather than merely rebuilding them as they once were. Our present crisis afforded us the opportunity to start anew to produce a society that promotes greater equality of life outcomes for all of its citizens.

The conference had two parts: 20 daytime sessions for registered attendees and three free public evening events. The daytime conference sessions had seven foci: economics, education, criminal justice, race relations, health, mental health, and families/youth/elderly. Each session consisted of a 45-minute presentation by two national experts followed by one hour of questions and comments by the audience. The evening events consisted of an opening lecture by Julian Bond, a lecture on economics by Julianne Malveaux, and a panel discussion on postracial America hosted by Alex Castellanos of CNN.

This report provides access to the extensive and detailed information disseminated during the intergroup race relations sessions at the conference. This information will be particularly helpful to community and policy leaders interested in gaining a better understanding of race relations and finding effective strategies for improving these conditions.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• In the Mix: Multiracial Demographics and Social Definitions of Race
  • Race: Changing Composition, Changing Definition Howard Hogan
  • Leveraging America’s Increasing Diversity Patricia Gurin
• Coming Together: Promoting Harmony among Racial Groups
  • Obama and the Durable Racialization of American Politics Lawrence D. Bobo
  • Somewhere Over the Rainbow?: Postracial and Panracial Politics in the Age of Obama Taeku Lee
• The White Way?: Discussing Racial Privilege and White Advantage
  • Where and Why Whites Still Do Blatant Racism: White Racist Actions and Framing in the Backstage and Frontstage Joe Feagin
  • The Future of White Privilege in Post-Race, Post-Civil Rights, Colorblind America Charles Gallagher

Race: Changing Composition, Changing Definition

Presenter: Howard Hogan, Associate Director for Demographic Programs, U.S. Census Bureau

Moderator: Pat Chew, Professor of Law, University of Pittsburgh

America’s categorization of race is more of a definition of how America chooses to see individuals and less the result of how people categorize themselves. Our concept of race in the United States has evolved over the country’s history. In America’s first census in 1790, the country viewed itself racially as comprising only three groups: Whites, slaves, and others. American Indians were not identified as a distinct group for this census. As immigration increased, our racial composition changed rapidly, and it was for this reason that in 1850 and 1860, the United States felt that it was necessary to gather information on the birthplaces of individuals. The term “Black” was first used as a census race category in the census of 1850, and the term “Negro” did not appear as a census race category until 1930…

…The concept of race and identification of racial origin continue to serve a role in the United States with regard to monitoring and enforcing civil rights legislation for employment, educational opportunities, and housing. It was for this reason the U.S. Supreme Court, in the 1980s, declared Judaism to be a race for purposes of antidiscrimination. Data on race also are used to study changes in the social, economic, and demographic characteristics and changes in our population. But there is no reason to assume that it will get easier for OMB and the U.S. Census Bureau to make the kind of distinctions they need to be able to collect this information…

…Obama and the Durable Racialization of American Politics

Presenter: Lawrence D. Bobo, W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Social Sciences, Harvard University

Moderator: Lu-in Wang, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of Law, University of Pittsburgh

There are some in American society who are unable to assess issues of racial discord because they accept the concept that the United States has become a postracial nation. There are others who consider postracialism to be a politically neutralizing falsehood that veils how the racial divide is constructed and maintained in American society. The prevalence of racial dissonance has waned over time in comparison to the racial conflicts America faced in the past. However, in order for this recuperation to continue, American society has to be forthright about current race relations conditions and open to developing new ways to improve relations in the future. The United States has adopted a new contemporary form of racism, because the blatant Jim Crow discrimination of years past is not as socially acceptable. The characteristics of this contemporary form, called laissez-faire racism, are the widespread and consequential harboring of negative stereotypes and the collective racial resentment of African Americans. Laissez-faire racism is very prevalent in today’s society despite the belief by many that the United States has transitioned into postracialism, spearheaded by Barack Obama’s presidential election. However, the majority of White voters chose not to vote for Barack Obama for president. An overwhelming majority of minority voters chose to vote for him.

There are several reasons why America has not reached the point where the color line between Blacks and Whites has become blurred beyond recognition. First, only 14.6 percent of U.S. marriages in 2008 were between spouses of a different race or ethnicity, and only 11 percent of these mixed marriages were White-Black. Second, only 7 million (2 percent) of the U.S. population in 2000 marked more than one race on the census. One-quarter of these were Black. Third, Black-White wealth gaps have grown, even among educated Blacks.

In order to relieve some of the racial discord in society, progressive dialogue on the current realities of race relations in the United States is needed, as well as structural and cultural change…

…The anti-Black cultural project of “erasing Blackness” has not destabilized the core racial binary. Although many believe that miscegenation—the mixing of races through marriage, cohabitation, sexual relations, and procreation—an overwhelming majority of Whites, Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians still marry within their racial group.

Miscegenation

Many Americans buy into the notion that miscegenation is causing the end of the Black and White races and that eventually the color line between Whites and Blacks will become blurred beyond recognition. The data show:

• African Americans are the least likely of all races to marry Whites.
• Although the pace of interracial marriage increased more rapidly in the 1990s than it did in other periods, the social boundaries between Blacks and Whites remained highly rigid and resistant to change.
• Although interracial marriages have increased greatly in recent years, they still only account for 15 percent of marriages in the U.S.
• Only 7 million Americans (2 percent) identified more than one race when given the option to do so on the 2000 Census. Of those 7 million, one-quarter identified having any mixture with African Americans.
• Biracial African American-White individuals have historically identified themselves as Black and typically married other African
  Americans…

Read the entire report here.

The Stakes of Race, Color, & Belonging

Thursday Afternoon Forum Series
University of California, Berkeley
Center for Race and Gender
691 Barrows
Thursday, 2011-09-29, 16:00-17:30 PDT (Local Time)

Skin Tone Stratification Among Black Americans, 2001-2003
Ellis Monk Jr., Sociology

“I’m Mixed and Mixed”: Narrating Identities of Individuals with Mexican and Other Ancestries
Jessie Turner, Ethnic Studies

For more information, click here.

My academic research is on racial categories in national censuses.  When I first started reading about the push to get a “mixed-race” category on the U.S. census in the 1990s, I was absolutely on the side of the multiracial movement. I thought the census should recognize our identities, no matter how complicated they may be.  Then I kept reading and realized that the multiracial activists were only concerned with recognition and didn’t care that it potentially came at the expense of civil rights agendas.  Being counted is crucial in the U.S.—and elsewhere. It is linked to money, political power, grassroots mobilization and even community cohesion.  Having a separate mixed-race category threatened all that—and the hard-fought victories of the civil rights movement.  The multiracial organizations that testified before Congress in the 1990s were mostly white mothers of multiracial children who did not want their children to have to choose one race over another.  But they failed to recognize what else was at stake—though the census was once an instrument used to manage and control racial populations, it now has a political power that racial minorities can access and use to advance their claims. The entire U.S. civil rights regime rests on the idea of discrete racial categories. One group’s recognition could lead to another’s oppression.  But the mixed-race activists didn’t care—they went on to argue (unsuccessfully) for their cause and even struck alliances with Republicans, including Newt Gingrich, whose ten steps for better race relations in the U.S. included adding a multiracial category to the census and doing away with affirmative action.

Debra Thompson, “The language and the Ethics of Mixed Race,” In Other Tongues: Mixed-Race Women Speak Out, edited by Adebe De Rango-Adem and Andrea Thompson (Toronto: Inanna Publications, 2010), 267.

Intermarriage and racial amalgamation in the United States

Biodemography and Social Biology
Volume 14, Issue 2 (1967)
pages 112-120
DOI: 10.1080/19485565.1967.9987710

David M. Heer, Professor Emeritus of Sociology
University of Southern California

Within the last few years tremendous popular interest has been aroused in the subject of Negro-white intermarriage. Fifteen years ago Negro protest leaders claimed they were interested only in jobs and votes and consequently downplayed talk of intermarriage. Moreover, conservative whites were comforted by Gunnar Myrdal’s report that although the ban on intermarriage was for them the most important aspect of the caste system, Negroes considered it the least important of the various discriminations they were forced to suffer. Very recently, however, the attitude on the part of many Negro leaders toward intermarriage has changed. Increasingly, such leaders, particularly the younger ones, are saying, “Why not?”

Earlier, most Negro thinking tended to isolate political and economic discriminations from the social discriminations symbolized, par excellence, by white attitudes toward racial intermarriage. However, in the writer’s opinion, such thinking represented faulty sociological analysis. A more thorough view of the situation reveals that restrictions on racial intermarriage may well be closely linked to the economic discrimination that Negroes in our society must endure. Davis (1949) has listed the main social functions of the family as the reproduction, maintenance, placement, and socialization of the young. Let us focus our attention on the placement function of the family in the contemporary United Stales, i.e. on the consequences which birth into a given family has for the youngsters future social position. Let us first remember that the transfer of wealth in our society is largely accomplished by bequeathal from one family member to another. The possession of wealth in our society not only entitles one to receive regular monetary interest; it is also a source of power, credit, and prestige. Secondly, it must be recognized that although universalism is the predominant criterion for the matching of job applicants to job vacancies in our society, particularism is quite important for many segments of it. In particular, in the building trades, jobs cannot be obtained without admittance to the union’s apprenticeship program and in many instances it is almost impossible to obtain entree into the apprenticeship program unless one is a son or other close relative of a union member. Third, social science research has established that entree to elite positions in our society is most easily obtained by those who grow up from birth in a family having relatively high status.  Birth in a high status family, of course, provides the financial means for obtaining advanced education. In addition, however, it is invaluable for giving one a sense of familiarity with the activities and functioning of high status society. This familiarity not only reduces the fear of interpersonal contacts in such a society but also increases the motivation to become a full participant…

Read or purchase the article here.

CNN DIALOGUES: The 2010 Census and the New America?

The Cecil B. Day Chapel of The Carter Center
 453 Freedom Parkway, Atlanta, GA, 30307
2011-08-31, 19:00-20:30 EDT (Local Time)

Moderator:
Wolf Blitzer, CNN’s Lead Political Anchor and Anchor of “The Situation Room”

Panelists:

Heidi W. Durrow, author of the debut novel The Girl Who Fell From the Sky
Edward James Olmos, actor and activist
Yul Kwon, Host of PBS’ “America Revealed”
Kris Marsh, Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland at College Park
Dana F. White, Goodrich C. White Professor of Urban Studies at Emory University

If numbers don’t lie, what can the 2010 U.S. Census tell us about who we are and how we live? On August 31st, thought leaders in sociology, urban studies, and popular culture will come together in front of a live audience at The Carter Center in Atlanta to explore the implications of the 2010 census in the premiere session of CNN DIALOGUES.

This event, hosted by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, will feature Heidi Durrow, Edward James Olmos, Yul Kwon, Kris Marsh and Dana F. White.  This is the first in a series of three CNN DIALOGUES planned for 2011.

For more information, click here.

Indian Voices Creates a Bureau of Black Indian Affairs

Indian Voices
July/August 2011

Rose Davis, Publisher
Indian Voices

At last a true Separate But Equal—For the Good of the People

The Dawes Rolls (a census, used by the BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs] to determine identity of Tribal members and citizens) came into existence in the 1890’s. It was a time of “Separate but Equal” and this “flawed U.S. policy” became the basis for the Full-Blood/By-Blood vs. Freedman (no Indian Blood counted) rating system for Tribal Membership. US Dawes Rolls Enumerators using Separate but Equal techniques left the Freedman with an identity crisis which continues to this day.

The policy of using Separate but Equal data gathering techniques negated the U.S governments requirement in the 1866 treaties that Blacks be treated as equal citizens.

No one other than Phil Fixico has aggressively championed the cause of addressing and reversing this issue. As a Seminole Maroon descendant he has written, lectured, networked and labored exhaustively to bring this issue into the social consciousness. The resulting Bureau of Black Indian Affairs is his “brain child.” He has generously offered the project to the collective consciousness of the Indigenous community and has stated that he will take no part in it’s operation or management. As a networking partner Indian Voices humbly takes on the task of launching the first Bureau of Black Indian Affairs in this July/August 2011 issue…

Read the entire article here.