Mixed Race Studies

Colored Perceptions: Racially Distinctive Names and Assessments of Skin Color

American Behavioral Scientist
Volume 60, Number 4 (April 2016)
pages 420-441
DOI: 10.1177/0002764215613395

Denia Garcia
Department of Sociology
Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey

Maria Abascal
Department of Sociology
Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey

Scholars are increasingly employing skin color measures to investigate racial stratification beyond the dimensions of self- or other-classification. Current understandings of the relationship between phenotypic traits, like skin color, and racial classification are incomplete. Scholars agree that perceptions of phenotypic traits shape how people classify others; it remains to be seen, however, whether racial classification in turn shapes people’s perceptions of phenotypic traits. The present study is based on an original survey experiment that tests whether assessments of others’ skin color are affected by a subtle racial cue, a name. Results indicate that skin color ratings are affected by the presence of a racially distinctive name: A significant share of people will rate the same face darker when that face is assigned a distinctively Hispanic name as opposed to a non-Hispanic name. In addition, ratings of male faces are more sensitive to racially distinctive names. The findings bear important lessons for our understanding of the social construction of race and its role in producing inequalities.

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Shades of Race: How Phenotype and Observer Characteristics Shape Racial Classification

American Behavioral Scientist
Volume 60, Number 4 (April 2016)
pages 390-419
DOI: 10.1177/0002764215613401

Cynthia Feliciano, Associate Professor of Sociology and Chicano/Latino Studies
University of California, Irvine

Although race-based discrimination and stereotyping can only occur if people place others into racial categories, our understanding of this process, particularly in contexts where observers categorize others based solely on appearance, is limited. Using a unique data set drawn from observers’ assessments of photos posted by White, Black, Latino, and multiracial online daters, this study examines how phenotype and observer characteristics influence racial categorization and cases of divergence between self-identities and others’ classifications. I find that despite the growth in the multiracial population, observers tend to place individuals into monoracial categories, including Latino. Skin color is the primary marker used to categorize others by race, with light skin associated with Whiteness, medium skin with Latinidad, and, most strongly, dark skin with Blackness. Among daters who self-identify as Black along with other racial categories, those with dark skin are overwhelmingly placed solely into a Black category. These findings hold across observers, but the proportion of photos placed into different racial categories differs by observers’ gender and race. Thus, estimates of inequality may vary depending not only on how race is assessed but also on who classifiers are. I argue that patterns of racial categorization reveal how the U.S. racial structure has moved beyond binary divisions into a system in which Latinos are seen as a racial group in-between Blacks and Whites, and a dark-skin rule defines Blacks’ racial options.

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Interrogating Race: Color, Racial Categories, and Class Across the Americas

American Behavioral Scientist
Volume 60, Number 4 (April 2016)
pages 538-555
DOI: 10.1177/0002764215613400

Stanley R. Bailey, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of California, Irvine

Fabrício M. Fialho
University of California, Los Angeles

Andrew M. Penner, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of California, Irvine

We address long-standing debates on the utility of racial categories and color scales for understanding inequality in the United States and Latin America, using novel data that enable comparisons of these measures across both broad regions. In particular, we attend to the degree to which color and racial category inequality operate independently of parental socioeconomic status. We find a variety of patterns of racial category and color inequality, but that in most countries accounting for maternal education changes our coefficients by 5% or less. Overall, we argue that several posited divergences in ethnoracial stratification processes in the United States, compared with Latin America, might be overstated. We conclude that the comparison of the effects of multiple ethnoracial markers, such as color and racial categories, for the analysis of social stratification holds substantial promise for untangling the complexities of “race” across the Americas.

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Documenting Contested Racial Identities Among Self-Identified Latina/os, Asians, Blacks, and Whites

American Behavioral Scientist
Volume 60, Number 4 (April 2016)
pages 442-464
DOI: 10.1177/0002764215613396

Nicholas Vargas, Assistant Professor of Latin American Studies and Sociology
University of Florida

Kevin Stainback, Associate Professor of Sociology
Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana

A contested racial identity refers to incongruence between personal racial identification and external racial categorization. For example, an individual may self-identify as White, but be perceived by most others as non-White. Documenting racial contestation is important because racialized experiences are shaped not only by the racial classification that individuals claim for themselves but also the external racial attributions placed on them by others. Focusing solely on monoracial identifying adults, this study answers three key questions about racial contestation: (a) How common is it? (b) Who is most likely to report experiencing it? and (c) How is it related to aspects of racial identity such as racial awareness, racial group closeness, and racial identity salience? Employing the 2006 Portraits of American Life Study, results suggest that reports of racial contestation among monoracial identifying adults are more common than some studies suggest (6% to 14%)—particularly among the fastest growing racial groups in the United States, including Latina/os and Asians—and that experiences of racial contestation are often associated with immigrant generation, ancestry, and phenotypical characteristics. Ordinal logistic regression analyses indicate that individuals who report experiencing racial contestation are no more aware of race in everyday life than other U.S. adults, but they feel less close to other members of the self-identified racial group and report lower levels of racial identity salience than their noncontested counterparts. These results point to a thinning of racial identity among the racially contested.

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The Latinos of Asia: How Filipino Americans Break the Rules of Race

Stanford University Press
March 2016
227 pages
Cloth ISBN: 9780804793940
Paper ISBN: 9780804797542
Digital ISBN: 9780804797573

Anthony Christian Ocampo, Associate Professor of Sociology
California State Polytechnic University, Pomona

Is race only about the color of your skin? In The Latinos of Asia, Anthony Christian Ocampo shows that what “color” you are depends largely on your social context. Filipino Americans, for example, helped establish the Asian American movement and are classified by the U.S. Census as Asian. But the legacy of Spanish colonialism in the Philippines means that they share many cultural characteristics with Latinos, such as last names, religion, and language. Thus, Filipinos’ “color”—their sense of connection with other racial groups—changes depending on their social context.

The Filipino story demonstrates how immigration is changing the way people negotiate race, particularly in cities like Los Angeles where Latinos and Asians now constitute a collective majority. Amplifying their voices, Ocampo illustrates how second-generation Filipino Americans’ racial identities change depending on the communities they grow up in, the schools they attend, and the people they befriend. Ultimately, The Latinos of Asia offers a window into both the racial consciousness of everyday people and the changing racial landscape of American society.

Afro-Latin America: Black Lives, 1600–2000

Harvard University Press
March 2016
136 pages
6-1/8 x 9-1/4 inches
2 maps, 2 graphs, 4 tables
Hardcover ISBN: 9780674737594

George Reid Andrews, Distinguished Professor of History
University of Pittsburgh

Of the almost 11 million Africans who came to the Americas between 1500 and 1870, two-thirds came to Spanish America and Brazil. Over four centuries, Africans and their descendants—both free and enslaved—participated in the political, social, and cultural movements that indelibly shaped their countries’ colonial and post-independence pasts. Yet until very recently Afro-Latin Americans were conspicuously excluded from narratives of their hemisphere’s history.

George Reid Andrews seeks to redress this damaging omission by making visible the past and present lives and labors of black Latin Americans in their New World home. He cogently reconstructs the Afro-Latin heritage from the paper trail of slavery and freedom, from the testimonies of individual black men and women, from the writings of visiting African-Americans, and from the efforts of activists and scholars of the twentieth century to bring the Afro-Latin heritage fully into public view.

While most Latin American countries have acknowledged the legacy of slavery, the story still told throughout the region is one of “racial democracy”—the supposedly successful integration and acceptance of African descendants into society. From the 1970s to today, black civil rights movements have challenged that narrative and demanded that its promises of racial equality be made real. They have also called for fuller acknowledgment of Afro-Latin Americans’ centrality in their countries’ national histories. Afro-Latin America brings that story up to the present, examining debates currently taking place throughout the region on how best to achieve genuine racial equality.

Table of Contents

• 1. On Seeing and Not Seeing
• 2. On Counting and Not Counting
• 3. Afro-Latin American Voices
• 4. Transnational Voices
• 5. On Acting and Not Acting
• Notes
• Acknowledgments
• Index

2016 Duke Global Brazil Conference

Duke University
Ahmadieh Family Lecture Hall (FHI Garage)
C105, Bay 4, Smith Warehouse
Durham, North Carolina
2016-03-04, 09:00-17:30 EST (Local Time)

Co-sponsored by FHI Global Brazil Lab and the Duke Brazil Initiative

Invited guests include:

• Keynote: Dr. Elizabeth Hordge-Freeman (USF) – The Color of Love in Bahia
• Dr. John Collins (CUNY) – Race, Violence, and the State in Bahia
• Dr. William Pan (Duke) – Environment and Health in the Amazon
• Dr. Bryan Pitts (U.Ga) – Sound and Politics
• Guilherme Andreas (JMU) – Flute recital with piano by Gianne Ge Zhu

For more information, click here.

That moment you look in the mirror and realize you’re black

Fusion
2016-02-28

Tim Rogers, Senior Editor

Brazil’s Black Awakening

SAO PAULO, Brazil— Jessica Moreira was 21 years old when she realized she’s black. Natalia Paiva had turned 20 before she made the discovery. And Cleyton Vilarino dos Santos is sneaking up on his 26th birthday and says he’s still not sure if he’s black, white or what.

Welcome to Brazil, one of the most racially intermixed countries in the world. Racial identity is a complex issue anywhere, but perhaps nowhere more so than here, where the difference between black and white is not so black-and-white.

Generations of interracial marriages have led to a rich tapestry of phenotypes and skin tones in every conceivable hue. But it can make racial identity an evolving or fluid situation that can change as a person gets older, learns more about the world, and their relationship to it.

As a result, it’s not uncommon for young people to spend the first 20 years of their lives looking in the mirror without fully understanding the race of the person staring back at them…

Read the entire article here.

‘Myth of racial democracy is part of the education of the Brazilian,” says Congolese anthropologist living in Brazil

Black Women of Brazil
2016-02-16

Thiago de Araújo

The absence of Black nominees at the 2016 Oscars. ‘Black face’ is just a costume. Cotistas (quota students) surpass (scores) of non-cotista students. A black sponge doll on the reality show Big Brother Brazil (BBB) ​​of this year. Recent cases, controversial cases. In all, the discussion of the same topic: racism inside and outside of Brazil.

Historical victims of prejudice, blacks in their majority are outraged with every report of the genre. However, today there are those who deny that there is racism in Brazil. For these people, there is nothing to justify affirmative action policies, such as quotas in education and social sectors. It’s necessary to appreciate equality, crying out in the loudest voice.

Discussions of racism are not surprising to Congolese anthropologist Kabengele Munanga. At 73, the Doctor of Social Sciences and professor at the Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences at the University of São Paulo (USP) he always stresses that Brazil has a ‘stark’ framework of discrimination. Do you think it’s an exaggeration? It’s not what the numbers show.

“The data show that, on the eve of apartheid, South Africa had more blacks with college degrees than in Brazil today,” Munanga said in a public hearing organized by the Supreme Court (STF) in 2010. The debate revolved around access to higher education policies. Opponents announced that the country was about to experience a ‘race war’. It was not what we saw.

“There were no riots, racial lynchings anywhere. No Brazilian ‘Ku Klux Klan’ appeared,” said the anthropologist. “What is sought by the policy of quotas for black and the indigenous is not to be entitled to the crumbs, but rather to gain access to the top in all sectors of responsibility and of command in national life where these two segments are not adequately represented, as the true democracy mandates.”

But what about the well-known ‘racial democracy’ born at the hands of Gilberto Freyre?…

Read the entire interview here.

Latina/o Whitening? Which Latina/os Self-Classify as White and Report Being Perceived as White by Other Americans?

Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race
Volume 12, Issue 01, Spring 2015
pages 119-136
DOI: 10.1017/S1742058X14000241

Nicholas Vargas, Assistant Professor of Sociology; Latino Studies
University of Florida

Some scholars argue that Latina/os in the United States may soon become White, much like the supposed Whitening of Eastern European immigrant groups in the early twentieth century. High rates of White racial identification on surveys among Latina/os is one explanation provided for this assertion. However, personal identification is but one element of racial boundary maintenance. It is when personal identification is externally validated that it is most closely associated with group-based experiences. This article maps components of the White-Latino racial boundary that may be permeable to White expansion by examining conditions under which Latina/os self-identify as White and report that they are externally classified as White by other Americans. Employing novel data from the 2006 Portraits of American Life Study, this article shows that nearly 40% of Latina/os sometimes self-identify as White, yet a much smaller proportion—only 6%—report being externally classified as White by others. Moreover, logistic regression analyses suggest that for those with light phenotypical features and high levels of socioeconomic status, the odds of reported external Whitening are increased. Interestingly, phenotypically light Latina/os with low-socioeconomic-status levels have low probabilities of reporting external classification as White when compared to their phenotypically light and high-socioeconomic-status counterparts, suggesting that the combination of both skin color and class may be central to the White-Latino racial boundary. Results also indicate that many who report external Whitening do not prefer to self-identify as White. In sum, multidimensional measures of racial classification indicate that only a very small minority of Latina/os may be “becoming White” in ways that some previous researchers have predicted.

Read or purchase the article here.