Mixed Race Studies

U.S. more diverse than ever: Census

The Toronto Star
2010-12-23

Timothy R. Homan
Bloomberg News

WASHINGTON—The ethnic makeup of the world’s largest economy will be increasingly diverse, with more mixed-race Americans, according to the head of the U.S. Census Bureau.

“This is the decade of Tiger Woods and Barack Obama, where we talked about race combinations,” Robert Groves, director of the federal agency, said about forthcoming 2010 Census data in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt”. “I can’t wait to see the pattern of responses on multiple races. That’ll be a neat indicator to watch.”

The 2010 Census was the second consecutive decennial count to allow residents to identify as more than one race, and Groves said it’s likely that more respondents checked off multiple races.

The nation’s population grew 9.7 per cent to 308,745,538 in 2010, from the previous decade, with the fastest gains coming in the South and West, the agency said this week. The release included only national and state population figures, with more data on race, ethnicity, housing and other variables provided in February and March for all levels of geography…

Read the entire article here.

2010 Census Data Products: United States (At a Glance – Version 1.0)

• Planned Release date: 2011-02-01 through 2011-03-31
• Product: 2010 Census Redistricting Data (P.L. 94-171) Summary File by State
• Category: State population counts for race and Hispanic or Latino categories / State housing unit counts by occupancy status (occupied units, vacant units)
• Lowest Level Geography: Blocks
• Media: Internet tables, DVD, download capability

View the file structure (in Microsoft Excel) here.

Defying the Civil Rights Lobby: The American Multiracial Movement

Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change
University of Memphis
April 2007
35 pages

Kim M. Williams, Associate Professor of Public Policy
Harvard University

Throughout the 1990s a handful of advocates argued to stunning if partial success that it was both inaccurate and an affront to force multiracial Americans into monoracial categories. They called for the addition of a multiracial designator on the U.S. Census to bolster the self-esteem of multiracial children; furthermore, they maintained that the recognition of racial mixture could help defuse American racial polarization. Fearing the potential dilution of minority numbers and political power, ironically, civil rights groups emerged as the staunchest opponents of the multiracial category effort. Nevertheless, from 1992 to 1998, six states passed legislation to add a multiracial category on state forms. Further, in 1997 the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) announced an unprecedented “mark one or more” (MOOM) decision, which did not add a multiracial category to the census, but nevertheless, allowed Americans to identify officially with as many racial groups as they saw fit. Although in some ways its immediate impact might seem negligible, I argue in in Race Counts: American Multiracialism & Post-Civil Rights Politics [Mark One or More: Civil Rights in Multiracial America] (The University of Michigan Press, Forthcoming) that MOOM will eventually reach deeply into the nation’s civil rights agenda. Ultimately this recent restructuring of the American racial classification system, in tandem with coexisting trends, could push the nation to rethink the logic of civil rights enforcement.

The multiracial movement started with a handful of adult-based groups that formed on the West Coast in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Currently there are approximately thirty active adult-based multiracial organizations across the United States and about the same number of student organizations on college campuses. Most of the adult-based groups are oriented toward social support more than political advocacy, but in 1988, a number of these local organizations joined forces to create the Association for Multi-Ethnic Americans (AMEA). At that point, the primary political goal of this new umbrella group was to push the Census Bureau to add a multiracial category on the 1990 census. Soon after the establishment of AMEA, two other national umbrella organizations formed: Project RACE (Reclassify All Children Equally) and A Place for Us. Beyond agenda setting, this small, disorganized social movement exerted little to no influence over the aforementioned outcomes. At the height of movement activity it involved no more than 1,000 individuals in a loose network of groups (Figure 5.1) scattered across the country and only twenty or so core, committed activists at the helm…

Read the entire paper here.

Social Status, Race, and the Timing of Marriage in Cuba’s First Constitutional Era, 1902-1940

Journal of Family History
Volume 36, Number 1 (December 2010)
pages 52-71
DOI: 10.1177/0363199010389546

Enid Lynette Logan, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis

This article examines the practice of marriage among whites, mestizos, blacks, Cubans, and Spaniards during the first constitutional era, focusing upon the reported ages of brides and grooms. The study consists of a quantitative examination of trends found in the records of 900 Catholic marriages celebrated in Havana during the opening decades of independence. The first major finding of the research is that according to most major indicators of status, age was negatively correlated with rank. Thus, contrary to the conclusions of studies conducted in many other contexts, those in the highest strata of society married younger. Furthermore, very significant differences were detected in the marital patterns of those identified as mixed-race and those labeled as black. This finding offers empirical weight to the notion that the early-mid twentieth-century Cuban racial structure would best be characterized as tripartite, rather than binary in nature.

Read or purchase the article here.

I’ve got a Story to Tell: Critical Race Theory, Whiteness and Narrative Constructions of Racial and Ethnic Census Categories

Bowling Green State University
December 2010
245 pages

Candice J. LeFlore-Muñoz

A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

This study examines the embedded nature of whiteness in the use of racial and ethnic categories on U.S. census forms. Specifically, this study focuses on people’s perceptions of racial and ethnic categories, how those categories have been historically used on U.S. census forms, and the relationship between this discourse on racial and ethnic categories and elements of whiteness. Like (Nobles, 2000), in this study, I argue that the rhetorical construction of race and ethnicity on census forms is not a trivial matter since the way that we structure these words and categories significantly influences how we understand them. Thus, this study practices critical rhetoric (McKerrow, 1989) and employs the use of critical race theory (Delgado & Stefanic, 2001) to investigate the relationship between the 20 counter narratives and the larger master narrative about racial and ethnic categorization in this country. Throughout this dissertation, I use Omi and Winant’s (1994) racial formation and racial projects to highlight several themes that emerge in the master narrative and counter narratives. By focusing on these themes, this analysis explores past, present, and future racial projects that may emerge in relation to the use of racial and ethnic categories on census forms and elements of whiteness.

Table of Contents

• INTRODUCTION
  • Unveiling Whiteness in Discourse
  • Chapter Breakdown
• CHAPTER ONE: EXPLORING RACE AND ETHNICITY THROUGH THE LENS OF WHITENESS
  • Muddled Memories of a Multiracial Past
  • Situating Race and Ethnicity within Whiteness Studies and Critical Rhetoric
  • Whiteness Studies: An Overview of Scholarship
• CHAPTER TWO: PAST TO PRESENT – TRACES OF RACIAL AND ETHNIC CATEGORIZATION
  • Early Racial Classification Systems
  • Race as a Biological Construction
  • Race as a Social Construction
  • Race, Power, and Dominance
• CHAPTER THREE: RACE, ETHNCIITY, AND THE U.S. CENSUS
  • Upholding Whiteness: Racial and Ethnic Classification on the U.S. Census
  • Self-Identification and Official Racial and Ethnic Categories
  • Check ONE Box: Monoracial Ideology and the U.S. Census
  • Hypodescent Racial Projects and Census Classification
  • Maintaining the Rigid Color Line: Anti-Miscegenation Laws and the U.S. Census
  • Free White Persons: Intersections of Citizenship, Whiteness, and the Census
  • Mark One or More: Census 2000
• CHAPTER FOUR: CRT AND THE PRACTICE OF A CRITICAL RHETORIC
  • Critical Race Theory (CRT)
  • Critical Rhetoric
  • Dismantling Power: Complimentary Aspects of Critical Rhetoric and CRT
  • Telling Whose Stories: Data Collection and Study Design
• CHAPTER FIVE: THE MASTER NARRATIVE
  • Box Checking and Socialization
  • Box Checking and Self-Identity/Self-Esteem
  • Defining Race and Ethnicity
  • Well What are You? Stereotyping, Social Rules, and Racial/Ethnic Categories
• CHAPTER SIX: COUNTER NARRATIVES, CATEGORIES, AND PRIVILEGE: HOW WHITENESS WORKS WITH BOX CHECKING
  • Privilege, Passing, and Box Checking
    • The White Category and Privilege
    • Minority Categories and Privilege
  • Passing for Privilege
    • Skin Color and Privilege
• CHAPTER SEVEN: SHATTERING THE PAST: CRACKS IN THE FOUNDATION OF THE MASTER NARRATIVE
  • What Race What Space?
  • Boxes Not Inclusive
    • Asian Groups – No Hyphen American
    • Cultural and National Identity
    • Boxes Not Inclusive for Whites
    • Boxes Not Inclusive for Latinos
  • Wording & the Use of Negro
• CHAPTER EIGHT: PRESERVING AND DISMANTLING THE AUTHORITY OF WHITENESS
  • Self-Identification, Public Policy, and Civil Rights Legislation
  • The Black/White Binary and Some Other Race
  • Possibilities for Change
    • Color Blindness
    • Honorary Whites and Collective Blacks
    • White Minority or White Majority?
  • Whiteness Deconstructed
    • Boxes Not Inclusive
  • Considerations for the Future
  • What Can Reasonably be Done?
    • Reducing Skepticism & Promoting Intersectionality
    • Limitations & Future Research
• REFERENCES
• APPENDIX A: LIST OF STUDY PARTICIPANTS
• APPENDIX B: RECRUITMENT FLYER
• APPENDIX C: CONSENT FORM
• APPENDIX D: NARRATIVE PROMPT
• APPENDIX E: CENSUS QUESTIONS HANDOUT
• APPENDIX F: INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

Introduction

Wondering…
1st grade: Wondering why my mom calls my light-skinned aunt Black, when I think she looks more White. 3rd grade: Wondering why Black and Native American are not considered mixed… wondering why my father is called Black when he is Native American too…

Acknowledging and Believing…
6th grade: Mutually acknowledging with one of my best friends from 1st grade (who is a White- appearing blond-haired, blue-eyed Native American boy) that we shouldn’t hang around each other because now the kids at school tend to hang out with the people who look like them and we are tired of getting teased. Middle school: Believing the one-drop rule… or that if you are anything mixed with Black, you are just Black. High school: Acknowledging that there are five “official” racial and ethnic categories—White, Black, Asian, Native American, and Latino. Knowing that White always comes first, but not fully understanding why… wondering why it is so easy for me to just say the five categories when there are other racial and ethnic categories out there.

Wondering and Questioning…
College: Being happy about the new Black golfer Tiger Woods even though he doesn’t describe himself as Black, but as multiracial. Wondering why he has to just be Black? Grad School: Being skeptical about all of the media referring to the new president (Barack Obama) as the first Black president… again because he is multiracial… then realizing that he refers to himself as Black. Questioning the very racial and ethnic categories that have framed so much of my life.

Since the first census in 1790, the United States has been a country that is obsessed with labels and the use of racial and ethnic categories. These labels have become a fundamental part of how individuals view the world, and they play a significant role in how reality is constructed. Whether a person identifies as Black or African American, Latina or Hispanic, Asian or Chinese American, these words have roots of significance far beyond the words that appear on the page. These labels carry their historical significance with them every time they are uttered, written, or seen on a page. Thus, given the fact that racial and ethnic labels enjoy widespread use, these terms are important in society and they become a central factor in how individuals craft their identity (Yanow, 2003)….

…Likewise, I also acknowledge the fact that my personal experiences with race and ethnicity have been undoubtedly shaped by their discursive constructions and the embedded nature of whiteness in our language system. As Fanon (1967) points out, “a man who has a language consequently possesses the world expressed and implied by that language” (p. 18). In their discussion of the importance of whiteness studies to rhetoric and composition studies, Kennedy, Middleton, and Ratcliff (2005) also highlight this when they point out that whiteness is prevalent in the ways in which it socializes how we talk about groups of people through our racially-inflected language. This reminds me of Lorde‟s (1984) warning that “the master‟s tools will never dismantle the master‟s house” (p. 112).

As a result, I feel that it is necessary to briefly address the problematic nature of using a language system which is inherently shaped by whiteness, while simultaneously maintaining the ultimate goal of trying to deconstruct it. Thus, while I do not systematically place words like race and ethnicity in quotation marks throughout this dissertation, I envision them to be this way in order to serve as a reminder of their socially constructed status and their historical connection to notions of White superiority and pseudo-scientific research. Likewise, this also applies to my use of multiracial and mixed race since they are premised on the idea that pure, distinct racial groups exist that can be mixed and result in multiracial people. Furthermore, I also acknowledge the problematic nature of using words like White, non-White, people of color, other, minority and majority since the use of these terms rhetorically re-centers whiteness and demonstrates how notions of whiteness are normalized in the current language system. Thus, despite my use of people of color, I also envision White as a color even as I search for ways in which to talk about non-White people without re-centering whiteness…

Read the entire dissertation here.

Sociology Professor Chronicles Rising Latino Culture

Inside Fordham Online
Fordham University
In Focus: Faculty and Research
2010-11-15

Patrick Verel

Already the largest minority group in the United States, Latinos will be an even bigger presence in the years to come, according to demographic studies. Clara Rodriguez, Ph.D., professor of sociology in Fordham College at Lincoln Center, is making sure their stories are told.

Through 10 books, dozens of papers and consulting projects with Dora the Explorer and Sesame Street, Rodriguez has developed a deep knowledge about a group that now accounts for 15 percent of the population.

Her analyses of United States census data have resulted in papers such as “Contestations Over Classifications: Latinos, the Census and Race in the United States” (Journal de la Société des Américanistes, 2009) and “Implications and Impact of Race on the Health of Latinos,” a chapter in Health Issues in Latino Males: A Social and Structural Approach (Rutgers University Press, 2010).

As part of her study of census data, Rodriguez cast a critical eye on racial classifications in the decennial censuses. Examining how respondents who identified themselves as Hispanic or Latino reported their race, she found that 40 percent chose “some other race,” and many of them wrote in what is known as a Latino identifier, such as Dominican, Panamanian or Chicano.

This happened in the last three decennial censuses, despite the fact that the census allowed them to choose more than one racial category in the last census…

…“People who could choose more than one race didn’t choose white and black; they still chose the category ‘some other race.’ This 40 percent has increased—I think this time it was 42 percent—even though the Census Bureau has really tried to discourage this response,” she said.

“This raises the question, ‘What is race?’ Science was raising that question. Children of mixed-race families were raising that question. So are people from all over the world who came here with very different identities and are now being folded into one of our five major groups.”…

Read the entire article here.

Video from 2010 Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference at DePaul now available on iTunes U

If you missed the Nov 5-6, 2010 “Emerging Paradigms in Critical Mixed Race Studies” conference or any of the keynote talks or the welcoming address, you can now download the videos via Apple’s iTunes U.

Here is a link to the following videos:

• November 5th (00:19:48): Welcoming Remarks by DePaul’s Liberal Arts & Sciences Dean Charles Suchar and conference organizers Camilla Fojas, Wei Ming Dariotis, and Laura Kina.
• November 5th (00:50:36): Keynote Address by Andrew Jolivette, “Critical Mixed Race Studies: New Directions in the Politics of Race and Representation”
• November 6th(01:00:04): Keynote Address by Mary Beltrán, “Everywhere and Nowhere: Mediated Mixed Race and Mixed Race Critical Studies”
• November 6th (00:57:08): Keynote Address by Louie Gong, “Halfs and Have Nots”

Please note that your computer must have Apple’s iTunes installed in order to view the video.  It can be download here.

Mixed: A Mixed Heritage

Daily Bruin
University of California, Los Angeles
2010-11-09

Nicholas Greitzer

America has always been considered a melting pot – a melting pot of ideas, of ethnicities, of religions, of experiences and of people.

In the 2000 census, for example, this miscegenation resulted in more than 6.8 million Americans self-identifying as multiracial. While there may not be any similar statistics for UCLA, a look at the enrollment figures for 2009 lists 4.4 percent of students as having an ethnicity of unstated, unknown or other, close to the national percentage in 2000 of 2.4 of those who identify themselves as multiracial.

Second-year international development studies and Chicana/Chicano studies student Camila Lacques falls into that group that cannot be adequately fit into the racial options provided by the U.S. Census Bureau or the University of California undergraduate application.

“People want to put you in a box, but mixed people don’t fit into a box,” said Lacques, who identifies herself as half Mexican, a quarter Irish and a quarter eastern European Jewish.

Lacques’ cultural makeup is not limited to those backgrounds found within her blood, as she was raised in a predominantly black neighborhood and attended an elementary and middle school that was comprised primarily of Korean students…

…In a similar vein, for second-year sociology student Ay’Anna Moody, being multiracial revolves around teaching others that they need to be intellectually curious.

“I needed to know who I was in order for me to move forward, culturally and socially,” said Moody, whose dad is black Creole and whose mom is Scott-Irish, German and black.

While Moody said that Irish traditions such as St. Patrick’s Day held a prominent place in her family, it was the black cultural influence that dominated her household, which she shared with her mother and stepfather…

Read the entire article here.

Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference

DePaul University, Lincoln Park Campus
DePaul University Student Center
2250 N. Sheffield
Chicago, Illinois USA 60614
2010-11-05 through 2010-11-06

Sponsored by DePaul University Asian American Studies and Latin American and Latino Studies and co-sponsored by the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University and the MAVIN Foundation.

“Emerging Paradigms in Critical Mixed Race Studies,” the first annual Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference, will be held at DePaul University in Chicago on November 5-6, 2010.

The CMRS conference brings together scholars from a variety of disciplines nationwide. Recognizing that the diverse disciplines that have nurtured Mixed Race Studies have reached a watershed moment, the 2010 CMRS conference is devoted to the general theme “Emerging Paradigms in Critical Mixed Race Studies.”

Critical Mixed Race Studies (CMRS) is the transracial, transdisciplinary, and transnational critical analysis of the institutionalization of social, cultural, and political orders based on dominant conceptions of race. CMRS emphasizes the mutability of race and the porosity of racial boundaries in order to critique processes of racialization and social stratification based on race. CMRS addresses local and global systemic injustices rooted in systems of racialization.

Fanshen Cox, Tiffany Jones, and myself will participate in a Greg Carter (University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee) moderated round-table discussion titled “Exploring the Mixed Experience in New Media” on 2010-11-05 from 10:15 to 12:15 CDT at the conference.

View the finalized schedule here.

Organizers:

Wei Ming Dariotis, Assistant Professor Asian American Studies
San Francisco State University, IPride Board
dariotis@sfsu.edu

Camilla Fojas, Associate Professor and Chair
Latin American and Latino Studies
DePaul University

Laura Kina, Associate Professor Art, Media and Design and Director Asian American Studies
DePaul University

America’s Changing Color Lines: Immigration, Race/Ethnicity, and Multiracial Identification

Annual Review of Sociology
Volume 30 (August 2004)
pages 221–242
DOI: 10.1146/annurev.soc.30.012703.110519

Jennifer Lee, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of California, Irvine

Frank D. Bean, Chancellor’s Professor of Sociology and Economics; Director of the Center for Research on Immigration, Population, and Public Policy
University of California, Irvine

Over the past four decades, immigration has increased the racial and ethnic diversity in the United States. Once a mainly biracial society with a large white majority and relatively small black minority—and an impenetrable color line dividing these groups—the United States is now a society composed of multiple racial and ethnic groups. Along with increased immigration are rises in the rates of racial/ethnic intermarriage, which in turn have led to a sizeable and growing multiracial population. Currently, 1 in 40 persons identifies himself or herself as multiracial, and this figure could soar to 1 in 5 by the year 2050. Increased racial and ethnic diversity brought about by the new immigration, rising intermarriage, and patterns of multiracial identification may be moving the nation far beyond the traditional and relatively persistent black/white color line. In this chapter, we review the extant theories and recent findings concerning immigration, intermarriage, and multiracial identification, and consider the implications for America’s changing color lines. In particular, we assess whether racial boundaries are fading for all groups or whether America’s newcomers are simply crossing over the color line rather than helping to eradicate it.

Read the entire article here.