Mixed Race Studies

More Minnesotans say they’re multiracial in 2010 Census

TwinCities.com: Pioneer Press
2011-04-17

Richard Chin and MaryJo Webster

Maybe it’s hip to be mixed.

That could be one explanation for Minnesota’s 51 percent increase over the past decade in the number of people who say they are multiracial, substantially higher than the national increase.

According to the recent U.S. census, about 125,000 people in Minnesota identified themselves as being of two or more races, up from about 83,000 in the previous census.

Almost all of that increase took place in the metro-area suburbs and outstate, where the number of multiracial people jumped more than 75 percent.

About 2.4 percent of Minnesota’s population is multiracial, about the same as the nation as a whole.

But multiracial people represent a larger part of the state’s minority population than of the U.S. population. Almost one of six nonwhite people in the state are multiracial, compared with about one in 10 nationwide.

University of Minnesota sociologist Carolyn Liebler, an expert in racial identity, said she thinks three things are driving the increase:

• More children are from interracial marriages, with parents in those marriages increasingly likely to identify their offspring as multiracial.
• Immigration has increased, with people born in another country who have a mixed background more likely to say they come from two or more races.
• More people are deciding to label themselves multiracial because they face increasing acceptance and opportunity to make that choice.

Mixed-race people are nothing new. Most American blacks, for example, have some white ancestry.

But throughout much of American history, mixed-race people were forced legally and socially to identify with just one race…

Read the entire article here.

Afro-Saxon psychosis or cultural schizophrenia in African-Caribbeans?

The Psychiatrist
Volume 24, Issue 3 (2000)
pages 96-97
DOI: 10.1192/pb.24.3.96

Hari D. Maharajh, Psychiatric Hospital Director
St Ann’s Hospital, Trinidad, West Indies

“Everybody in Miguel Street said that Man-man was mad, and so they left him alone, but I am not sure now that he was mad and I can think of many people much madder than Man-man was… That again was another mystery about Man-man. His accent, if you shut your eyes while he spoke, you would believe an Englishman—a good class Englishman who wasn’t particular about grammar—was talking to you.” (Naipaul, 1959)

The experience of both the psychiatrist and population is of critical importance in the description of indigenous phenomena. This becomes even more relevant when both the researcher and the tested population are influenced by diverse cultures. In the paper entitled ‘Roast breadfruit psychosis’ (Hickling & Hutchinson, 1999), the authors have extrapolated a cultural concept enshrined in Caribbean humour and pathos into a diseased state. We wish to demonstrate the widespread use of a host of metaphors within the Caribbean and other communities illustrating the concept of cultural marginalisation. This is reflected in the song, prose, poetry and art of the region.

The effect of social and cultural factors in the aetiology, course and outcome of mental illness appears to be an area of renewed interest in British psychiatry. While British psychiatrists have abandoned the fading image of the visiting messianic doctor, the island-hopping academic and the colourful description of culture-bound syndromes in exotic and distant lands, it appears as though there is today a reversal of role.

More recently, new African-Caribbean psychiatrists in Britain seem content to invent syndromes exhibiting mimicry, defying nosology, logic and rational thought and devoid of scholarly description.

The ‘Black-White man’ has never been an issue of the ‘windrush’ of 300 000 West Indians who migrated to Britain between 1951-1961. Nevertheless, politicians, poets, writers and calypsonians have adequately described the phenomenon of ‘Black people who think themselves White’ in the Caribbean. These social commentators did not consider acculturation and assimilation into a new culture as negative factors but as processes of social ascendancy and respectability. This transition was actively pursued voluntarily en masse; in fact, the Jamaican poet Louise Bennett described the exodus from her island as follows:

“By de hundred, by de t’ousan From country and from town By de ship-load, by de plane-load Jamaica is Englan boun.” (Ferguson, 1999)

Following independent status from Britain in 1962, a Trinidadian academic, Lloyd Best introduced into the Caribbean literature the term ‘Afro-Saxon’. It was not intended to be a pejorative term, but a descriptive analysis of the ruling class then, that had adopted, absorbed and internalised the values of the White colonial masters. This, he pointed out was a natural phenomenon, since post-colonialisation, the ruling elites pursued the norms of respectability of the White man and aspired to it for acceptance and survival (Best, 1965). Similarly, Samuel Selvon’s (1956) novel The Lonely Londoners captured the feelings and aspirations of West Indian immigrants in Britain.

Selvon, a Trinidadian of mixed Indian and Scottish parentage arrived in London in 1950. Creating from his own experience, he captured in narrative form, the atmosphere of West Indians in London. In his novel, which is part comic, part tragic, Selvon sought “to evoke the bittersweet existence of a rootless community that is both excited and terrified by its new life and the leaving behind of the old” (Ferguson, 1999). Through a number of characters, he most vividly described differing responses to the experience of migration. Such feelings would be expected of any migrant group into a new environment regardless of their colour, race or culture. Disturbed racial identification is, therefore, a natural phenomenon of any colonised or migrant people. It is non-specific and no ethnic group should be singled out.

Read the entire article here.

For some, question of race a struggle

The Providence Journal
Providence, Rhode Island
2011-04-05

Karen Lee Ziner, Journal Staff Writer

Face to face with the question of racial identity, Providence lawyer Kas R. DeCarvalho chose a write-in option under “Other” in the 2010 census form.

“I put in mixed and called it a day,” said DeCarvalho, whose father is from Angola in southwest Africa, and whose mother is an American of Scottish-Irish descent.

“It has been my entire life, something of a struggle to figure out exactly what to do,” DeCarvalho said. “Only in recent years have any sorts of government forms offered an option, mixed race. Until then, you had to pick one or the other, or neither.”

He added, “I could have put white, and I suppose I could have [also] filled in black. I identify as a black American. That’s how I’m perceived but, culturally, I’m much more complicated than that. I don’t think there’s really a way to encapsulate that in some sort of census document.”

DeCarvalho is one of 9 million people, or 2.9 percent of the population, who selected or indicated more than one race on their 2010 Census forms, a roughly 32-percent increase since 2000. Some 3.3 percent of Rhode Islanders did so, slightly above the national average. He said, “I wish we lived in a world where we didn’t have to fill in anything.”

DeCarvalho isn’t alone…

Read the entire article here.

Census Says There Are More Biracial People, But That Depends On Your Definition of Mixed

The Black Snob
2011-04-07

Danielle C. Belton

Since 2000, the population of biracial and multiracial people has boomed by 50 percent according to 2010 Census data. The New York Times recently ran a story saying that because of changes in Census reporting, more people reported they are more than one race, but has our multiracial population actually boomed or is it just that both our government and society are more accepting of multiracial people?

There have always been biracial and multiracial people, especially among America’s most common mix—African American and white American, which makes up more than 20 percent of the mixed race population. And you could easily argue that those African Americans mixing with whites were mixed themselves, the results of other mixed African Americans who were part of that original mix of black slave and white slavemaster. But no one ever called themselves mixed as in America, post-Reconstruction, you were just black.

In America, people understood the concept of mixed race until the exact minute slavery ended. Many Southern states considered you to be white if you were only 1/8 or a quarter black. Entire groups of mixed race people were at times absolved into the majority white culture. There were such concepts of mulatto, quadroon and octaroon. There were Creoles and free people of color and various social groups and class differences among those with some African bloodline. But once slavery ended, anyone who had black blood was isolated from society in a brown muddle of dreaded otherness…

…Because of this, most black Americans are mixed—with something—from somewhere at some time. But the mix happened a long time ago and generations of mixed black people were only marrying or having children with other people of African descent, hence why a black Americans’ looks can be as diverse as Clarence Thomas and Thurgood Marshall.

But I realize that this is confusing to people who come from places where there were no such “black or white” divisions. Most Americans, black and white, struggle with the concept of mixed race, even in the face of so many mixed race people self-defining. Even the President, who describes himself as a black man of mixed race, sometimes deals with the irony of being called someone who hates white people (even though he was raised by them) or that he’s denying his whiteness (in a country that constantly tells biracial black people they must do this because they sure as hell aren’t “accepting” that whiteness)…

Read the entire article here.

America’s Diverse Future: Initial Glimpses at the U.S. Child Population from the 2010 Census

Brookings
State of Metropolitan American
Number 29 (2011-04-06)
14 pages

William H. Frey, Senior Fellow, Metropolitan Policy Program

For some time, Americans have been aware that “new minorities”—particularly Hispanics, Asians, and people of more than one race—are becoming a more important part of our nation’s social fabric. 

Initial results from the 2010 Census now make clear why the contributions of these groups are so important.  With a rapidly aging white population, the United States depends increasingly on these new minorities to infuse its youth population—and eventually its labor force—with needed demographic heft and vitality…

Read the entire report here.

Census data suggests increased acceptance of being multiracial

The Daily Texan
University of Texas, Austin
2011-04-01

Shamoyita DasGupta, Daily Texan Staff

More Americans than ever before identify as multiracial, according to the 2010 census.
 
Of the 9 million people who listed themselves as more than one race, 4.2 million are children. The percentage rose from 2.4 percent to 2.9 percent in the last 10 years.
 
In Texas, the number increased from 514,633 in 2000 to 679,001 in 2010, with the majority of those people identifying themselves as being white and any other race, said Jenna Arnold, a spokeswoman for the Dallas region of the U.S. Census Bureau.
 
The significant increase is not particularly surprising to those who study population trends, said sociology professor Ronald Angel.  “There’s more intermarriage,” he said. “[Being multiracial] just seems to be more accepted, just from the data.”
 
Those who were more likely to list themselves as being of more than one race tended to be Native Hawaiians, American Indians and Pacific Islanders, while blacks and whites were less likely to report being multiracial, according to The New York Times…

PRico sees increase in blacks, American Indians

The Seattle Times
2011-03-31

Danica Coto
Associated Press

The number of Puerto Ricans identifying themselves solely as black or American Indian jumped about 50 percent in the last decade, according to new census figures that have surprised experts and islanders alike.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico—The number of Puerto Ricans identifying themselves solely as black or American Indian jumped about 50 percent in the last decade, according to new census figures that have surprised experts and islanders alike.
 
The increase suggests a sense of racial identity may be growing among the various ethnic groups that have long been viewed as a blurred racial mosaic on the U.S. territory, although experts say it is too soon to say what caused the shift.
 
“It truly breaks with a historic pattern,” said Jorge Duany, an anthropology professor at the University of Puerto Rico…

…

…In addition, there was a grassroots effort to target dark-skinned Puerto Ricans through social media websites including Facebook that urged them to identify themselves as “Afro-Puerto Rican” in the 2010 census.
 
It was an option that appealed to Barbara Abadia-Rexach, a 30-year-old sociology and anthropology professor at the University of Puerto Rico…

…The island’s population is a fusion of races where phrases such as “coffee with milk” abound to identify various varieties of skin color.
 
“There is no authentic or pure race,” Abadia-Rexach said. “We are all mixed.”
 
Puerto Ricans are known as “boricuas,” a name derived from the Taino Indian word for the island’s indigenous people who were colonized by the Spaniards.
 
One possible reason for the increase in Puerto Ricans who identify themselves as American Indian is that the U.S. Census Bureau allowed responders to write down their tribe…

Read the entire article here.

Census Data Presents Rise in Multiracial Population of Youths

The New York Times
2011-03-24

Susan Saulny, National Correspondent

WASHINGTON — Among American children, the multiracial population has increased almost 50 percent, to 4.2 million, since 2000, making it the fastest growing youth group in the country. The number of people of all ages who identified themselves as both white and black soared by 134 percent since 2000 to 1.8 million people, according to census data released Thursday.

Census 2010 is the first comprehensive accounting of how the multiracial population has changed over 10 years, since statistics were first collected about it in 2000. It has allowed demographers, for the first time, to make comparisons using the mixed-race group—a segment of society whose precise contours and nuances were largely unknown for generations. The data shows that the multiracial population is overwhelmingly young, and that, among the races, American Indians and Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders are the most likely to report being of more than one race. Blacks and whites are the least likely.

In what experts view as a significant change from 2000, the most common racial combination is black and white. Ten years ago, it was white and “some other race”—a designation overwhelmingly used by people of Hispanic origin, which is considered by the government to be an ethnicity not a race.

“I think this marks a truly profound shift in the way Americans, particularly African-Americans, think about race and about their heritage,” said C. Matthew Snipp, a professor in the sociology department at Stanford University…

Read the entire article here.

Mixed Dreams: Exploring “Multi” Experiences in the U.S.

EXCO (Experimental College)
Spring 2011
Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio

Nicole Asong Nfonoyim

The experiences and identities of mixed-race people in the United States have often been marginalized if not rendered invisible, silenced and subsumed under the dominant black-white binary. While mixed identities have been part of U.S. history since the nation’s birth, the year 2010 marked only the second time in U.S. history that Americans will be able to check more than one racial/ethnic category in the census. From the overwhelming 6.8 million individuals who checked “more than one box” in the 2000 U.S. Census to the election of President Barack Obama (a self-proclaimed “mutt”)—“multi”* Americans are gaining unprecedented visibility in the 21st century. With this visibility, however comes inevitable scrutiny and ambivalence as evidenced by debates over Obama’s racial identity as well as the mixed racial ancestry of the growing number of U.S-born Latino/as who are gaining considerable social and political ground. With a nation so obsessed with race and yet as intent on hastening a post-racial era on the backs of Americans of color, re-imagining conceptions of race and mixed identities has never been more important.

This course will provide an introduction to contemporary discussions, debates and narratives surrounding multi America. By reading and discussing scholarly, literary, editorial, and visual texts we will critically examine the spaces multi people occupy in the U.S. as well as the identity politics and perspectives that mark these experiences. We will also explore the growing narratives and spaces being created to build communities and express multi subjectivities. Through class discussions, assignments and a final project, students will also be encouraged to explore their own identities and subjectivities as they relate to larger discourses and narratives around race and intersecting identities.

Oberlin’s Experimental College (ExCo) is a student-run initiative that allows all members of the Oberlin community to teach and take courses outside the scope of the college’s traditional curriculum. With its flexible nature, the program reflects the current intellectual, social, and aesthetic trends of the Oberlin community, providing opportunities to explore or expand upon subject matter beyond the usual course offerings.

For more information, click here.

Making (mixed-)race: census politics and the emergence of multiracial multiculturalism in the United States, Great Britain and Canada

Ethnic and Racial Studies
Volume 35, Issue 8, 2012
pages 1409-1426
DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2011.556194

Debra Thompson, Assistant Professor of Political Science
Ohio University

During the same time period, the United States, Great Britain and Canada all moved towards ‘counting’ mixed-race on their national censuses. In the United States, this move is largely attributed to the existence of a mixed-race social movement that pushed Congress for the change—but similar developments in Canada and Britain occurred without the presence of a politically active civil society devoted to making the change. Why the convergence? This article argues that demographic trends, increasingly unsettled perceptions about discrete racial categories, and a transnational norm surrounding the primacy of racial self-identification in census-taking culminated in a normative shift towards multiracial multiculturalism. Therein, mixed-race identities are acknowledged as part of—rather than problematic within—diverse societies. These elements enabled mixed-race to be promoted, at times strategically, as a corollary of multiculturalism in these three countries.

Read or purchase the article here.