Mixed Race Studies

Making it Last: A Couple Who See Race Clearly

The New York Times
2013-08-23

Erika Allen

Booming’s “Making It Last” column profiles baby boomer couples who have been together 25 years or more.

Christopher and Laura Castoro met when she asked him to tutor her in German. They didn’t realize they were of different race till their first date, and when they decided to marry, “We knew it was going to be us against the world,” she said.

Christopher and Laura Castoro celebrated their 45th wedding anniversary on June 8. In 2000, he retired as the director of transportation for a chemical and technology company. She is an author (also writing under her maiden name, Laura Parker) who writes, among other things, romance novels, including “Love on the Line,” “Rose of the Mists,” “A Rose in Splendor” and “The Secret Rose.” The couple lives in Fort Worth. They have three adult children and nine grandchildren. A condensed and edited version of our conversation follows.

You met in college?

Christopher: Yes, I went to Howard University to study chemistry. As a high-schooler in Brooklyn I’d taken a test that secured me a scholarship — a full ride to Howard. I was studying German during my junior year and this girl with very fair skin and curly blond hair shyly asked me to tutor her.

Laura: I was on scholarship, too. I had to make Bs in all of my classes. But six weeks into the year I was getting a C+ in German. Money and pride were at stake so I asked a boy from the front row to tutor me.

First impressions?

Laura: He was cute and professional, but he was older and I thought he had a girlfriend.

Christopher: Even though we were at Howard I assumed that Laura was a white girl. As it turned out, she’d assumed that I was African-American and we both had it wrong.

How did you sort things out?

Laura: The tutoring went on for a while before we decided to go out and the first place we went was a German restaurant. Halfway through the meal he mentioned being Italian and I said, “Oh, you have Italian in your family?” and he said that yes, his whole family was Italian.

Your reaction?

Laura: I was stunned. I am from the segregated South. At the time one in six people at Howard was not African-American, but I assumed he was black. I was out with a white person and I had not done this intentionally. And he was out with a black woman and didn’t know it. The schools in my town in Arkansas were just being integrated, but I graduated from an all-black high school. I just did not know white people. And even though I am very fair, everyone knew my family and they knew I was black. This was the first time I realized that it wasn’t obvious that I was black.

Christopher: I was surprised, but I had been at Howard for two years and she wasn’t the first black woman I dated…

Read the entire interview here.

Counseling Single Mothers of Multiple Heritage Children: What Is the Difference?

The Family Journal
Volume 21, Issue 4 (October 2013)
pages 396-401
DOI: 10.1177/1066480713488527

Kristin Harris, MA
Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, Texas

Richard Henriksen, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Education
Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, Texas

Anthony J. Onwuegbuzie, Ph.D., Professor of Education
Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, Texas

An instrumental qualitative multiple case study design was conducted on 3 single mothers raising multiple heritage children concerning issues involved in being a single mother and attempting to juggle socializing their children among two different cultures. Using constant comparison analysis, themes were assigned by analyzing the single mothers’ interview responses to determine the advantages and disadvantages that single mothers might face while raising multiple heritage children. Results indicate an array of pertinent issues single mothers might face while attempting to juggle family and social issues pertaining to raising a multiple heritage child on their own. Recommendations for counselors working with single mothers of multiple heritage children are presented.

Read or purchase the article here.

Counseling Single-Parent Multiracial Families

The Family Journal
Volume 21, Issue 4 (October 2013)
pages 386-395
DOI: 10.1177/1066480713488526

Henry L. Harris, Associate Professor of Education
Department of Counseling
University of North Carolina, Charlotte

Single-parent families represent a growing segment of the family households in the United States today and while some literature has addressed racial differences, information focusing on single parents of multiracial children in the United States is virtually nonexistent. Single-parent multiracial families (SPMFs) must not only contend with societal challenges related to their single-parent status but also racial issues related to their multiracial children. This article will address some of the unique challenges encountered by SPMFs and offer suggestions to counselors and other mental health professionals working with this unique population.

Read or purchase the article here.

‘Mixed Kids Are Always So Beautiful’

Motherlode: Adventures in Parenting
The New York Times
2013-08-19

Nicole Soojung Callahan

Like many other people of color, I am no stranger to awkward conversations about race. Strangers have complimented my English, remarked on how tall I am “for an Asian” and — more times than I can count — asked where I am really from. Since becoming a parent five years ago, I’ve had to learn to field a whole new set of questions and comments regarding my multiracial children.

“Korean, Irish and Lebanese is such a unique combination,” a friend exclaimed after my eldest daughter was born. “She’s like a poster baby for the U.N.!”

Several people in our diverse suburb of the District of Columbia have asked if I am my daughters’ baby sitter, presumably because they cannot spot the resemblance between us. At a party last year, a white woman asked if I was surprised when my children were born: “Did you expect them to look, you know, less white?” (No, I was pretty sure who their father was, so I wasn’t really shocked.)

Another person wanted to know if I thought the girls’ “coloring” would stay the same or “get darker” over time. Then there was the mother at the park who looked at my girls on the swing set and said bluntly: “What are they, exactly?”

The girls have even received compliments for not looking fully Korean. “Your daughter is so pretty,” a Chinese friend said to me last month. “Have you thought about having her model?”

“No,” I replied (possibly the truest thing I have ever said)…

Read the entire article here.

Narratives from a Nottingham council estate: a story of white working-class mothers with mixed-race children

Ethnic and Racial Studies
Volume 36, Issue 8 (August 2013)
Special Issue: Mothering Across Racialised Boundaries
pages 1342-1358
DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2013.776698

Lisa McKenzie, Research Fellow, Faculty of Social Sciences
University of Nottingham

This paper introduces a group of white working-class women living on a council estate in the UK drawing on an ethnographic study conducted between 2005 and 2009, examining the impact of class inequality and a stigmatized living space in an ethnically diverse urban neighbourhood. All of the women are mothers and have mixed-race children; they reside on the St Ann’s estate in Nottingham, an inner-city neighbourhood that has been subject to poor housing, poverty and unemployment for many generations. The women who live on this estate say that they suffer from negative stereotypes and stigmatization because of the notoriety of the estate, because they are working class and because they have had sexual relationships with black men. However, there is a sense of connectedness to the estate and there are strong cultural meanings that are heavily influenced by the West Indian community. This paper then highlights the importance of place when focusing upon families, class inequality and intercultural relationships.

Read or purchase the article here.

Multiracial Daughters of Asian Immigrants: Identity and Agency

Women & Therapy
Volume 36,  Issue 3-4, 2013
Special Issue: Women and Immigration
pages 268-285
DOI: 10.1080/02703149.2013.797776

Leilani Salvo Crane
Counseling and Psychological Services
University of Pennsylvania

Multiracial daughters of Asian immigrants must navigate complex pathways to adulthood, self-efficacy, and self-concept. Frequently they are required by family and society to bridge the cultural divide among a variety of Asian and American norms. Conflicting loyalties at times manifest as psychological struggles, which the daughter may be unable to resolve without therapeutic intervention. This article describes a culturally responsive approach to therapeutic intervention that takes into account both developmental and multiracial identity models, along with specific tools for exploring the complexities of cultural background, familial expectations, and issues of power and oppression. Both Hays’ ADDRESSING model (2001, 2009) and construction of the genogram are used to explore individual differences. Case examples are presented to illustrate interventions.

Daughters of Asian immigrants must navigate complex pathways to adulthood, self-efficacy, and self-view. As noted in the Handbook of Girls’ and Women’s Psychological Health (Worell & Goodheart, 2006), immigrant women and their children must be considered within the family system, rather than as Isolated individuals (Goodheart, 2006). Those with disempowered and or traumatized parents travel an especially difficult road due. in part, to the absence of multiracial role models with whom to identify, as well as to frequently conflicting cultural demands. Multiracial daughters of at least one Asian immigrant parent frequently face demands from family of origin to lie closely connected to family…

Read or purchase the article here.

Multiracial Child Resource Book: Living Complex Realities

MAVIN Foundation
2003
288 pages
8 x 7.9 x 0.7 inches
Paperback ISBN: 978-0972963909

Edited by:

Maria P. P. Root

Matt Kelley

As America experiences a multiracial baby boom, parents, teachers and child welfare professionals must be equipped with resources to help raise happy and healthy mixed heritage youth. Published in 2003, this groundbreaking, 288-page volume edited by Maria P. P. Root, Ph.D. and Matt Kelley, offers 35 chapters to assist the people who work with children to serve multiracial youth with compassion and competence. Providing both a developmental and mixed heritage-specific approach, the Multiracial Child Resource Book provides a layered portrait of the mixed race experience from birth to adulthood, each chapter written by the nation’s experts and accompanied by first-person testimonials from mixed heritage young adults themselves.

Exploring African-American Fatherhood

The New York Times
Lens: Photography, Video and Visual Journalism
2012-06-15

David Gonzalez, Co-editor of Lens

What compels you to shoot? That was the question David Alan Harvey asked his students during a workshop last year in Brooklyn. We all have our reasons — if not our obsessions — flashes of realization that come through the viewfinder and into our hearts. For Zun Lee, one of the students, the answer was uneasily evident.

As a street photographer, he had always been attracted to fleeting scenes of fathers and children. He was drawn to those moments, even if he wasn’t quite sure why.

Well, maybe he was.

“In 2004, I discovered my biological dad was African-American,” said Mr. Lee, who had been raised in a Korean family in Germany. “It had basically been a one-night stand. He ran away when he learned she was pregnant. She doesn’t even remember his name anymore.”

That revelation would inform his latest work — “Father Figure,” an exploration into the lives of black fathers.  Working over the last year in New York, Chicago and Toronto, where he now lives and works as a health consultant, he has delved into the lives of men who have made the choice to stay near their children as best they can…

…“Learning about my biological father wasn’t just a traumatic experience,” Mr. Lee said. “Learning the news was in a weird sense a homecoming.”…

Read the entire article here.

Relevance of Race: Children and the Shifting Engagement with Racial/Ethnic Identity among Second-Generation Interracially Married Asian Americans

Journal of Asian American Studies
Volume 16, Number 2, June 2013
pages 189-221
DOI: 10.1353/jaas.2013.0019

Kelly H. Chong, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of Kansas

Asian Americans have historically enjoyed one of the highest rates of intermarriage of any racial/ethnic group. By exploring the dynamics of interracial marriages among middle-class, professional Asian Americans in Chicago, this article examines what interracial marriages mean for these putative racial/ethnic “boundary crossers” and what they signify about assimilation, racial/ethnic identity, and redrawing of color boundaries in America. This article finds that for Asian Americans in this study, interracial marriage is far from an unproblematic indicator of assimilation; rather, it is a terrain in which complex subjective negotiations over ethnic/racial identities are waged over lifetimes. For both female and male Asian Americans, personal struggles over racial/ethnic identity are thrown into full relief when they begin the process of raising mixed-race children, which forces a reexamination of their own identities, and of those of their children. This article makes a distinctive contribution to the interrelationship of intermarriage, race, and ethnic identity development by comparing the views of Asian Americans and those of their non-Asian spouses regarding marital dynamics and children, which helps to further illuminate the uniqueness of the Asian American experience.

Since the 1960s, Asian Americans have enjoyed one of the highest rates of ethnic/racial intermarriage in the United States. In recent years, overall racial/ethnic intermarriages have declined somewhat for Asian Americans, while interethnic marriage (pan-Asian) rates among them have increased. A number of works have examined aggregate trends in Asian American intermarriage over time to make sense of the structural reasons behind these trends/ but studies that focus on the subjective dimensions of intermarriage are relatively lacking. To understand fully why people intermarry, and what intermarriages actually signal about assimilation and changes in intergroup social distance, we need to gain a better understanding of the meaning of intermarriage for those who choose it, especially how it relates to their sense of group and individual identities and struggles over identity.

This article explores the meanings and dynamics of intermarriage for Asian Americans by examining the experiences of a group of interracially married middle-class, professional Asian Americans in Chicago and their non-Asian spouses. Given that the vast majority of Asian American interracial marriages are to white ethnics—about 92 percent in 2000—this study focuses mostly on those with white ethnic partners. By examining how ethnicity and race come to matter for these “boundary crossers” over time, particularly how ethnic/racial identities and relationships to ethnic culture evolve as they marry and begin to raise children, this article offers…

Read or purchase the article here.

Black-White Biracial Children’s Social Development from Kindergarten to Fifth Grade: Links with Racial Identification, Gender, and Socioeconomic Status

Social Development
Volume 23, Issue 1 (February 2014)
pages 157–177
DOI: 10.1111/sode.12037

Annamaria Csizmadia, Assistant Professor of Human Development and Family Studies
University of Connecticut, Stamford

Jean M. Ispa, Professor of Human Development and Family Studies
University of Missouri, Columbia

In this study, we investigated trajectories of Black-White biracial children’s social development during middle childhood, their associations with parents’ racial identification of children, and the moderating effects of child gender and family socioeconomic status (SES). The study utilized data from parent and teacher reports on 293 US Black-White biracial children enrolled in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K). Growth curve models suggested increasing trajectories of teacher-reported internalizing and externalizing behaviors between kindergarten and fifth grade. Parents’ racial identification of children predicted child externalizing behavior trajectories such that teachers rated biracially identified children’s externalizing behaviors lower relative to those of Black- and White-identified children. Additionally, for White-identified biracial children, the effect of family SES on internalizing behavior trajectories was especially pronounced. These findings suggest that in the USA, how parents racially identify their Black-White biracial children early on has important implications for children’s problem behaviors throughout the elementary school years.

Read or purchase the article here.