Mixed Race Studies

A course originally called ‘The Problem of Whiteness’ returns to Arizona State

The Washington Post
2015-11-12

Yanan Wang

Freedom of speech. Racial inequality. Student activism. Safe spaces.

These are the phrases that have been lobbied about over the past week, in tones both fervent and contemptuous, as University of Missouri students successfully campaigned for the resignation of their system president.

Mizzou is, of course, just the most prominent example. As The Washington Post’s Michael Miller pointed out Tuesday, similar debates are being had and protests held across the country, for instance at Yale University and Ithaca College.

At the center of all these debates is another word: whiteness.

At some universities, there are classes dedicated to understanding the notions of whiteness, white supremacy and what the field’s proponents see as the quiet racism of white people. The professor of one such “whiteness studies” course, Lee Bebout of Arizona State University, announced recently that he would be teaching for the second time a course originally called U.S. Race Theory & the Problem of Whiteness.

The syllabus described Critical Whiteness Studies as a field “concerned with dismantling white supremacy in part by understanding how whiteness is socially constructed and experienced.” Readings included works by Toni Morrison, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (“Racism without Racists”) and Jane H. Hill (“The Everyday Language of White Racism”)…

Read the entire article here.

Intermarriage and Integration Revisited: International Experiences and Cross-Disciplinary Approaches

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
Volume 662, November 2015

Guest Edited by:

Dan Rodríguez-García, Associate Professor
Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology
Autonomous University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

Intermarriage has been a subject of study in the social sciences for more than a century.  Conventional wisdom (and some scattered research) holds that intermarriage is important to the  social integration of immigrants and minority peoples in majority cultures and economies, but we still have a great deal to learn about dynamics of intermarriage and integration. Which groups are  more likely to intermarry? Does crossing racial, ethno-cultural, national, religious or class  boundaries at the intimate level lead to greater integration of individuals and groups that have not  been considered part of the societal mainstream?

This special issue of The ANNALS investigates the intermarriage/integration nexus. The  research within shows the extent to which intermarriage is related to pluralism, cultural diversity,  and social inclusion/exclusion in the twenty-first century; we also evaluate the impact that mixed  marriages, families, and individuals have on shaping and transforming modern societies. We  identify patterns and outcomes of intermarriage in both North America and Europe, detecting  boundaries between native majorities and ethnic minorities.

Obviously, intermarriage and mixedness are often deeply entwined with immigration, so we also  scrutinize the relationship between intermarriage and various aspects of immigrant integration,  whether legal, political, economic, social, or cultural. Does intermarriage, in fact, contribute to  immigrant incorporation? How and to what degree? Findings – whether quantitative, qualitative,  or both – are presented in this volume for a wide variety of national contexts: Canada, the United States, Britain, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, and Sweden.

Specific findings include:

• Race and religion remain significant barriers to societal integration, and deep social cleavages exist even in countries with higher rates of intermarriage. Race is a significant barrier in the United States, and religion – Islam in particular – is a prominent barrier in Western Europe, where even “looking Muslim” is automatically a low-status attribute, making some basic social integration, from housing to employment, automatically more difficult.
• Diversity has never been greater in the United States, but social integration is context-bound and conditional:
  • White immigrants have an easier time with various forms of integration (e.g. educational attainment, housing, and labor), but the opposite is true for black immigrants, who are less likely to marry black natives or out-marry with other groups.
  • Asian Americans have become the most “marriageable” ethnoracial minority in America. Boundaries to integration in the U.S. for Asians have not disappeared, but the rising multiracial Asian population faces fewer social hurdles. This is particularly true for Asian women, who are seen as more desirable than Asian men, likely because of persistent ethnic stereotypes.
  • The earnings gap between immigrants who marry natives and those who marry other immigrants has increased over time in the U.S.
• In the U.S. and France, immigrants with high levels of education are more likely to marry natural born citizens.
• British multiracial people with part white ancestry and their children do not necessarily integrate into the white mainstream.
• EU citizens generally have a strong identification with Europe – they tend to feel “European” and take pride in being so; this is particularly true of those with a partner from a different EU27 country.
• The key to integration can lie in children who are products of mixed unions and the role that these families have in shaping societies where plural identities are normalized. In Quebec, for example, parents in mixed unions tend to make decisions that transmit identity, values, and culture to their children in ways that contribute to the “unique social pluralism” of the Quebecois.
• Immigrants in Canada with Canadian-born partners have similar levels of political engagement as the third-plus generation with Canadian-born partners; however, immigrants with foreign-born partners have lower political participation.
• The regulation of mixed marriages in the Netherlands has historically been gendered, to the detriment of Dutch women.
• The link between intermarriage and immigrant integration in Spain is complex and varied: outcomes for some aspects of integration may show a direct connection, while other results indicate either no relationship or a bidirectional association; further, the outcomes may be moderated by factors such as country of origin, gender, or length of residence.
• The social, cultural, and achievement outcomes for children of mixed marriages in England, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden are always in between the outcomes for immigrant children and native children, suggesting that mechanisms of both integration and  stigmatization, among other possibilities, play a role.

Together, these studies suggest a more complex picture of the nexus between intermarriage and integration than has traditionally been theorized, composing a portrait of what some scholars are calling “mixedness” – an encompassing concept that refers to intermarriage and mixed families, and the sociocultural processes attendant to them, in the modern world. We find that mixedness can be socially transformative, but also that it illuminates the disheartening persistence of ethnic and cultural divides that hinder inclusion and social cohesion.

Read or purchase this special issue here.

The Sweet (and Sour) Enchantment of Racism in Post-Racial America

University of South Florida
Patel Center for Global Solutions Auditorium
4202 E Fowler Ave, CGS101
Tampa, Florida 33620
Friday, 2015-11-13, 12:30-13:30 EST (Local Time)

Dr. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva will be on campus on November 13, 2015, for the purpose of discussing his recent works relating to racism, the “Latin Americanization” of racism in the United States, and the connections between these discourses and the topics of citizenship, democracy and human rights. Dr. Bonilla-Silva is an internationally acclaimed scholar and speaker with a history of motivating intellectual thought of young scholars.

USF World is please to co-sponsor this event with the College of Arts and Sciences, the Humanities Institute, the Institute for Latin America and the Caribbean (ISLAC), and the Department of Government and International Affairs (GIA).

Event is free and open to the public.

The Color of Love: Racial Features, Stigma, and Socialization in Black Brazilian Families

University of Texas Press
November 2015
328 pages
6 x 9
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4773-0238-5
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4773-0788-5

Elizabeth Hordge-Freeman, Assistant Professor of Sociology with a joint appointment in the Institute for the Study of Latin America & the Caribbean
University of South Florida

Drawing on more than one hundred interviews and observations within ten core families, this study of intimate relationships as sites of racial socialization reveals a new facet of race-based differential treatment and its origins—and the mechanisms that perpetuate these strata across generations.

The Color Of Love reveals the power of racial hierarchies to infiltrate our most intimate relationships. Delving far deeper than previous sociologists have into the black Brazilian experience, Elizabeth Hordge-Freeman examines the relationship between racialization and the emotional life of a family. Based on interviews and a sixteen-month ethnography of ten working-class Brazilian families, this provocative work sheds light on how families simultaneously resist and reproduce racial hierarchies. Examining race and gender, Hordge-Freeman illustrates the privileges of whiteness by revealing how those with “blacker” features often experience material and emotional hardships. From parental ties, to sibling interactions, to extended family and romantic relationships, the chapters chart new territory by revealing the connection between proximity to whiteness and the distribution of affection within families.

Hordge-Freeman also explores how black Brazilian families, particularly mothers, rely on diverse strategies that reproduce, negotiate, and resist racism. She frames efforts to modify racial features as sometimes reflecting internalized racism, and at other times as responding to material and emotional considerations. Contextualizing their strategies within broader narratives of the African diaspora, she examines how Salvador’s inhabitants perceive the history of the slave trade itself in a city that is referred to as the “blackest” in Brazil. She argues that racial hierarchies may orchestrate family relationships in ways that reflect and reproduce racial inequality, but black Brazilian families actively negotiate these hierarchies to assert their citizenship and humanity.

Why I teach about Whiteness.

Race and Reflection
2015-11-08

Lee Bebout, Associate Professor of English
Arizona State University

I will be teaching “the whiteness class” in a few weeks, and it seems like a good time to reflect on where I’ve been and where we’re going. Last spring was simultaneously a headache and a joy. I received national media attention, became the focus of neo-Nazi vitriol, and was asked not to respond to the media. But the class was great. One of those invigorating experiences that remind you why you became a professor: 19 of us gathered each week, committed to an in-depth interrogation of how race is made, experienced, and resisted.

Last year, many folks asked me why I teach critical whiteness studies. I was not speaking openly to the media, so I often could not answer. For those who asked and for myself, here is my answer: I do the work I do because racial inequality is a very real problem in the US and globally…

Read the entire article here.

W. E. B. Du Bois and The Souls of Black Folk

University of North Carolina Press
August 2015
288 pages
6.125 x 9.25, notes, index
Paper ISBN: 978-1-4696-2643-7

Stephanie J. Shaw, Professor of History
Ohio State University

In this book, Stephanie J. Shaw brings a new understanding to one of the great documents of American and black history. While most scholarly discussions of The Souls of Black Folk focus on the veils, the color line, double consciousness, or Booker T. Washington, Shaw reads Du Bois’ book as a profoundly nuanced interpretation of the souls of black Americans at the turn of the twentieth century.

Demonstrating the importance of the work as a sociohistorical study of black life in America through the turn of the twentieth century and offering new ways of thinking about many of the topics introduced in Souls, Shaw charts Du Bois’ successful appropriation of Hegelian idealism in order to add America, the nineteenth century, and black people to the historical narrative in Hegel’s philosophy of history. Shaw adopts Du Bois’ point of view to delve into the social, cultural, political, and intellectual milieus that helped to create The Souls of Black Folk.

The Souls of Black Folk

Yale University Press
2015-06-30 (Originally published in 1903)
240 pages
18 b/w illus.
5 1/2 x 8 1/4
Paper ISBN: 9780300195828

W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963)

Introduction and Chronology by:

Jonathan Scott Holloway, Edmund S. Morgan Professor of African American Studies, History, and American Studies; Dean of Yale College
Yale University

This collection of essays by scholar-activist W. E. B. Du Bois is a masterpiece in the African American canon. Du Bois, arguably the most influential African American leader of the early twentieth century, offers insightful commentary on black history, racism, and the struggles of black Americans following emancipation. In his groundbreaking work, the author presciently writes that “the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line,” and offers powerful arguments for the absolute necessity of moral, social, political, and economic equality. These essays on the black experience in America range from sociological studies of the African American community to illuminating discourses on religion and “Negro music,” and remain essential reading in our so-called “post-racial age.” A new introduction by Jonathan Scott Holloway explores Du Bois’s signature accomplishments while helping readers to better understand his writings in the context of his time as well as ours.

Probing Change in Racial Self-identification: A Focus on Children of Immigrants

Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
Published online before print 2015-10-26
DOI: 10.1177/2332649215611685

Thomas J. Mowen, Assistant Professor
Department of Criminal Justice
University of Wyoming

Richard Stansfield, Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice
Rutgers the State University of New Jersey, Camden

Recent studies have shown that racial identification varies across context and time. Although sociologists recognize many contextual factors associated with racial group membership, relatively little attention has been given to understanding the specific factors—such as self-perceptions, socioeconomic incentives, and family pressures—that relate to changes in racial self-identification, especially among children of immigrants individuals who may have a relatively high propensity for inconsistency in racial identification. Using two waves of data from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study and guided by social identity theory, the authors seek to (1) explore the prevalence of changes in racial self-identification over time within this sample and (2) understand the mechanisms that may contribute to changes in self-identification. The results indicate that self-esteem, self-worth, and family cohesion are related to an individual’s reporting a change in racial identification between waves. Socioeconomic status and depression are not related to changes in racial identification.

Read or purchase the article here.

Who Is Multiracial? Depends on How You Ask

Pew Research Center
2015-11-06

Eileen Patten, Research Analyst

In 2014, as Pew Research Center prepared to conduct the first major study of the views of multiracial Americans—a group that, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, is poised to triple by 2060—we faced a fundamental and unavoidable methodological challenge: how to define and measure the concept “multiracial” in a public opinion survey context.

Racial identity is far from a straightforward concept, and when multiple strands of identity come together this has the potential to increase the complexity. An individual’s racial self-identity may take into account a range of factors beyond genealogy, including family ties, physical appearance, culture and how others perceive them. In other words, being multiracial is more than just a straightforward summation of the races in an individual’s family tree.

Consider, for example, a man whose mother is Asian and whose father is white. This may seem like someone who could easily be categorized as multiracial. But if this man was raised with little or no interaction with his white relatives or had experiences that were more closely aligned with those of the Asian community, he may well select “Asian” and nothing else when describing his race. Furthermore, some adults may have relatives of different races farther back in their family tree. While some people may think to include a more distant relative of a different race when asked about their racial background, others may not, even if they are aware of their family history.

With this in mind, we set out to test six different ways of defining a population of mixed-race adults to survey, using as our primary vehicle Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), a probability-based, nationally representative online panel of adults in the United States. We tested these different approaches with impaneled individuals who participated in more than one Pew Research Center survey, allowing us to examine how the same individual might have changed his or her responses depending on the question asked.

In this report, we share the results of these six survey experiments with a focus on the ways in which the different wordings of the stem, different response options and different modes used impacted the projected size of the U.S. multiracial population. We also look at the consistency in selecting two or more races across different measures at the individual level, as well as how estimates of specific subgroups of multiracial adults—most notably white and American Indian biracial adults—vary by question type…

Read the entire report here.

Colored Perceptions: Racially Distinctive Names and Assessments of Skin Color

American Behavioral Scientist
Published online before print 2015-10-28
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.

Read or purchase the article here.