Mixed Race Studies

Multiple Voices: Racial and Ethnic Socialization Within Interracial Asian and White Families

Alliant International University, San Francisco
2012
138 pages
Publication Number: AAT 3517943
ISBN: 9781267486448

Sarah Kasuga-Jenks

Presented to the Faculty of The California School of Professional Psychology San Francisco Campus Alliant International University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Clinical Psychology

The current study focuses on racial and ethnic socialization in Asian and White interracial families. A qualitative study was conducted to examine ways in which parents communicate issues of race and ethnicity to their children. Narrative inquiry was utilized to access the lived experiences of members of interracial families. First, parents were interviewed; then, the entire family was interviewed together and finally, the entire family had the opportunity to review transcripts and results. Family stories were the main unit of analysis; family stories from the parent interview were examined in addition to family stories from the family interview. The guiding research questions included: How do individuals within interracial Asian and White families communicate with each other (e.g., do they use verbal or non-verbal styles and are they more proactive or reactive)? How do parents communicate issues of race and ethnicity (e.g., racial and ethnic identity, participation in cultural events, cultural values, discrimination, etc.) to their children?

Four themes emerged from the interviews: cultural practices, effects of interpersonal relationships, experiences of discrimination, and negotiating identity. Parents utilized a range of techniques, verbal and non-verbal, to communicate issues related to race and ethnicity. Responses varied in terms of which parent culture was emphasized and by whom. Many families did not report actively “socializing” their children about race and ethnicity, but incorporated cultural lessons into daily life as a way of communicating their cultural heritage to their children. Significant differences in terms of communication with children about race and ethnicity based on generational status of parents were not found.

Implications of this study include a better understanding of an understudied population, as well as potentially shaping the way in which socialization is understood in less traditional families (e.g., interracial families). Results from this study help to inform future research focused on interracial families, and specific recommendations for future work are made. Clinically, the results from this study provide practitioners with more information about interracial families to help guide interventions. The current study also contributes to theory on ethnic and racial socialization in interracial families as both parents and children were interviewed.

Purchase the dissertation here.

How “Commonsense” Notions of Race, Class and Gender Infiltrate Families Formed across the Color Line

Sociology Mind
Volume 2, Number 1 (January 2012)
pages 75-69
ISSN Print: 2160-083X
ISSN Online: 2160-0848
DOI: 10.4236/sm.2012.21010

Eileen T. Walsh, Assistant Professor of Sociology
California State University, Fullerton

This research presents data from in-depth interviews of sixty adults in Southern California who have formed families across the black/white color line. In a societal context where normative family formation remains mono-racial, many adults in multiracial families manage their social performances to mitigate the stigma associated with their unusual family pattern or to challenge social expectations associated with race, class, and gender. Their stories reveal how they deploy strategic exaggerations of gender and stereotypes of social class in their day to day lives. These deployments operate to manage social interactions when confronting commonsense expectations about what it means to be a man or woman who trespasses the color line in family formation.

Read the entire article here.

Negotiating Racial and Ethnic Lines in the Borderlands: Mixed Peoples in Transitional North America

127th Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association
New Orleans, Louisiana
2013-01-03 through 2013-01-06

AHA Session 108
Friday, 2013-01-04, 10:30-12:00 CST (Local Time)
Cornet Room (Sheraton New Orleans)

Chair: Stephen Aron, University of California, Los Angeles

Papers:

• “‘I Do Not Know at Times What To Do, Everything Turns Out Wrong’: Mixed Children Negotiating Anglo and Californio Worlds in Post-Conquest California” / Erika Perez, Loyola Marymount University
• “Major E. C. Watkins’ Frustrating Adventure: Defining Family in the Post-Civil War North American West” / Anne Hyde, Colorado College
• “The Man Who Talks Not: John L. Clarke and the Politics of Mixed-Race Identity in Montana, 1900–50” / Andrew R. Graybill, Southern Methodist University

Comments: Margaret Jacobs, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

The 2000 U.S. census revealed that an increasing number of Americans identified themselves as multi-racial and the recent 2010 census indicates the same trend. President Barak Obama’s 2008 election also called into question debates about multi-racial identities and the validity of racial categories given the long history of intimate mixing in the United States. This panel attempts to historically situate processes of identity-formation by people of mixed racial and ethnic backgrounds in North America, focusing particularly on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We argue that some mixed-race and multi-ethnic individuals and families struggled against mainstream racial discourses that discouraged any acceptance of complex identities. Some mixed individuals faced pressures to select and perform one racial identity in public and even within their communities and families. However, the research of this panel demonstrates that individual identities remained contested, negotiated, and in some cases fluid, especially in the American west where racial paradigms extended beyond black and white to include Native Americans and Mexicans in the evolution of racial categories and ideologies.

The first paper by Erika Perez evaluates how the offspring of Spanish-Mexican and European ancestry struggled to find their niche in the aftermath of the U.S. conquest of California in the wake of the Gold Rush. Mixed offspring soon discovered that their options for social mobility were shaped largely by gender, class, education and racial identity, and despite the presence of a European or Anglo-American father, this did not necessarily guarantee mixed offspring success in a changing social climate in American California. While mixed girls experienced increasing social and marriage options in California society, their brothers expressed fear and frustration that they would never attain the success of the previous generation. Anne Hyde’s paper demonstrates how U.S. bureaucrats and policy-makers of Indian affairs attempted to impose their own concepts of gender and the nuclear family upon Native American communities towards the latter part of the nineteenth century. However, Hyde shows that these bureaucratic efforts were contested by indigenous-influenced meanings of family and kinship, thereby contributing to confusion about racial categories, legal identities, and legitimacy in Indian country. Finally, Andrew Graybill’s paper tells the story of one man, John L. Clarke, a Montana artist, who held fast and firm to an Indian identity throughout his life and in his art despite the potential for him to lay claim to some white privilege because of his marriage and mixed heritage. Although other members of Clarke’s family claimed an “in-between” identity, affirming both their Indian and European roots, he remained determined to express himself as an Indian. As this abstract makes clear, all of these papers touch upon identity-formation and developing ideas of race in the North American borderlands and how this process was not always geared towards assimilation but entailed great complexity and negotiation among mixed individuals and even members of the same family. Members interested in racial identities, borderland studies, and the American West will find this panel useful.

What Can We Learn about White Privilege and Racism from the Experiences of White Mothers Parenting Biracial Children?

Wilfrid Laurier University
2008
175 pages

Shannon Cushing

A THESIS Submitted to the Department of Psychology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for Master of Arts Degree in Community Psychology

Despite progress in the movement toward anti-racism, racism remains a problem in Canada. While the presence of racism and the problem of racism are recognized by Canadian society, there is still a long way to go before racism and white privilege are eliminated. In the present study, I apply Community Psychology values to the examination of an as-yet relatively unexamined minority population: white mothers of biracial children. Guided by epistemological views that place my research within the critical and social constructivist research paradigms, I explore my research question, “How can the experiences of white mothers parenting biracial children inform us about white privilege and racism?”, using a grounded theory analysis of self-reported experiences of six white mothers living in Greater Waterloo Region, in Ontario, Canada. My informants participated in semi-structured individual and small group interviews and completed a photographic journaling project. While all the mothers were united by their common experience of being white women parenting biracial children, they represented a diverse range of socioeconomic classes and family compositions, and were parenting children whose fathers came from several ethnic backgrounds. Through my analysis of my informants’ stories, I identified a new perspective of the “experience of racism” in society. In addition, my findings led to the development of a theoretical framework that merges white privilege and racism into inseparable entities and fosters critical understanding of how racism is perpetuated in Canadian society. Recommendations for additional contributions to the anti-racism movement are suggested.

Read the entire dissertation here.

Learning to be different: A white mother of biracial children experiences racism

University of St. Thomas (Minnesota)
December 2004
194 pages
Publication Number: AAT 3154007
ISBN: 9780496146376

Jennifer Ann Greer Johnson

A Dissertation Submitted to the Education Faculty of the University of St. Thomas in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements of the Degree Doctor of Education

This qualitative autoethnographic study examines the experiences of an inner-city assistant principal in a multiracial high school who is also a Caucasian mother of biracial children of African American and Caucasian descent. The narratives throughout this study illustrate encounters with prejudice, discrimination, and racism in public and private places. The stories are analyzed through the lens of racial formation theory and Critical Race Theory. Results indicate that the identity of a mother of biracial children is complex as she straddles two cultures, that of the black and white community. An Ethnic Identity Development Model illustrates the struggles of rearing biracial children while working in an urban high school. This autoethnographic study illustrates the mother’s identity shift as she learns to be different in both worlds.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• ABSTRACT
• LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES.
• PREFACE
• CHAPTER 1: JUMPING THE BROOM
  • A journey into difference
  • Evolution of the study
  • Autoethnography
  • Data collection and analysis
  • Validity and ethics
  • Organization of the Dissertation
• CHAPTER 2: REVIEW OF LITERATURE
  • Interracial Relationships
  • Biracial Identity
  • Class Issues
  • Racial Formation Theory
  • Critical Race Theory
• CHAPTER 3: AWAKENINGS
  • Is she adopted?
  • Their father is Black.
  • Children are not supposed to be out in the sun
  • Intraracial Discrimination
  • We can only choose one
  • Would you buy a warranty on a Cadillac?
  • Another Awakening
  • Is that your child?
  • I will never be with another white woman again!
  • His mouth fell open, and he stared at my children and then at me
• CHAPTER 4: HAIR: POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF RACE
  • What is this, the next Shirley Temple?
  • Do you use this on your hair?
  • I decided that you need to do something with Jacqueline’s hair
  • Everyone stopped and stared at me
  • Shampoo and conditioner for one colored girl
  • I have to get their hair “right” in the eyes of the Black community
• CHAPTER 5: WILL MY CHILDREN HAVE A PLACE AT THE TABLE?
  • I was raised in a strict Catholic household
  • The Archbishop’s Letter
  • Racism is a sin
  • For my children’s sake, great changes need to be made
• CHAPTER 6: WILL MY CHILDREN BE LEFT BEHIND?
  • Appointment as Assistant Principal
  • “Are those your children?”
  • I circled ‘White’ even though my son does not look White
  • “She does not like you”
  • “So you’re kickin it with a black man”
  • You’re just picking on me because I am Black
  • Does anyone speak another language?
  • Mama, will you still like us even though your skin is white and mine is brown?
  • Let’s not just give people the boots, let’s give them the straps
  • Most of the International Baccalaureate students are white
• CHAPTER 7: A MOTHER’S STRUGGLE
  • “Second-Hand Racism”
  • Racism at school and the workplace
  • Rearing my children
  • Ethnic Identity Development Model
• REFERENCES
• BIBLIOGRAPHY

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

• TABLE 1 Changing Racial Combinations of Interracial Marriages in Minnesota.
• TABLE 2 My Journey in a Racialized Society
• FIGURE 1 2000 Census Self-Identification Questionnaire
• FIGURE 2 Ethnic Identity Development Model (Fluid)

Purchase the dissertation here.

Family Portrait in Black and White: Documentary by Julia Ivanova

Interfilm Productions
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
2011
Institutional Use: Double DVD (includes 85 and 52 minute versions)
Private Use: 85 minute DVD

Julia Ivanova, Director

Olga Nenya has 27 children. Four of them, now adults, are her biological children; the other 23 are adopted or foster children. Of those 23, 16 are biracial.

She calls them “my chocolates,” and is raising them to be patriotic Ukrainians. Some residents of Sumy, Ukraine, consider Olga a saint, but many believe she is simply crazy. An inheritance from the Soviet era, a stigma persists here against interracial relationships, and against children born as the result of romantic encounters between Ukrainian girls and exchange students from Africa. For more than a decade, Olga has been picking up the black babies left in Ukrainian orphanages and raising them together so that they may support and protect one another.

The filmmakers interview Neo-Nazis in Ukraine reveals the real dangers for a dark-skinned individual in the street. These white supremacist youth joke about their evening raids and how police seem to let them do it. Prosecutors are not particularly determined to give strict sentences to racially motivated crimes, and young thugs can get away with probation for beating someone nearly to death.

Olga sends her foster children to stay with host families in France and Italy in the summers and over Christmas, where they are cared for by charitable families who have committed to helping disadvantaged Ukrainian youth since the Chernobyl disaster. Olga’s kids now speak different languages, and the older girls chat in fluent Italian with each other even while cooking a vat of borscht. But Olga doesn’t believe in international adoption and has refused to sign adoption papers from host families that wanted to adopt her kids.

“At least when the kids grow up, they’ll have a mother to blame for all the failures that will happen in their lives,” she says.

AWARDS:

• 32nd GENIE AWARDS (Canada) (aka Canadian Oscars) “NOMINEE: Best Feature Documentary”
• 18th HOT DOCS FILM FESTIVAL (Canada) “Grand Prize: Best Canadian Film Award”
• 56TH VALLADOLID INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL (Spain) “Cultural Diversity Award” and “Time of History Third Prize”
• 6TH MIRADASDOC –DOCUMENTARY FILM FESTIVAL (Spain) “Audience Award”
• 6TH ADDIS INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL (Ethiopia) “Jury Award – Best Documentary”

SCREENINGS:

• Sundance Film Festival (USA)
• International Documentary Film Festival (Amsterdam)
• Los Angeles Film Festival (USA)
• Mumbai Film Festival (India)
• Haifa International Film Festival (Israel)
• Hamptons International Film Festival (USA)
• Cleveland International Film Festival (USA)
• Glasgow International Film Festival (UK)
• Thessaloniki Film Festival (Greece)
• Message To Man Documentary Festival (Russia)
• Bergen International Film Festival (Norway)
• Vancouver International Film Festival (Canada)
• New Zealand International Film Festival
• Seattle International Film Festival (USA)
• One World Film Festival (Romania, Czechoslovakia)
• Human Watch Film Festival (UK)
• Watchdocs (Poland)

What are the areas of interest? The major areas of interest covered by the film include:

• human rights
• critical mixed-race studies
• ideology
• institutionalization
• identity politics
• transitional economy
• international adoption
• foster homes

Who can benefit from the film? Family Portrait in Black and White is valuable for anyone with research interest in the following:

• African Studies
• Slavic Studies
• Child and Family Studies
• Sociology
• Women’s Studies
• Film and Media Studies
• Mixed-Race Studies

White Mothers of Biracial Sons and Daughters in U.S. Schools:  Colliding, Colluding, and Contending with White Privilege

Jennifer Little, a Ph.D. candidate in the Leadership for the Advancement of Learning and Service program at Cardinal Stritch University, is looking to build out her list of mothers to interview for her dissertation—which is titled “White Mothers of Biracial Sons and Daughters in U.S. Schools: Colliding, Colluding, and Contending with White Privilege”

The purpose of this study is to collect and examine descriptions and portrayals from White mothers of biracial sons and daughters of their interactions with the teachers and principals who work at the public schools in the United States (US) that their children attend. The research questions are:

1. What common discourse components are contained in their descriptions?
2. How do the location differences among the mothers play a role? How do mothers who live in locations where the majority of residents self-identify as White compare to locations where the majority of the residents are not White?
3. How do the mothers’ depictions of the interactions compare to the teachers’ and principals’ portrayals?

A critical discourse analysis approach is planned for examining the descriptions provided by the study participants. The study will interview White mothers of biracial sons and daughters attending public schools across the US. In order to support triangulation, interviews or focus groups with teachers and principals will also be conducted. All the interviews and focus groups will be video recorded. The analysis of the data collected will be completed by reviewing the videos.

If you or someone you know would like to participate in her study, or if you have questions please contact her via e-mail.

She plans to start the interviewing phase in January 2013. She plans to travel to several metropolitan areas around the United States to conduct the interviews. She also plans to video record the interviews for use in a documentary. Some interviews she may need to do via the internet.

Mixed-race Jewish children locate their communal comfort zone

The Jewish Chronicle Online
2009-11-12

Sue Fishkoff

Dafna Wu, a 48-year-old San Francisco nurse, was born to a Jewish mother and Chinese father. She was raised Jewish but looks Asian, as does her daughter, nine-year-old Amalia, whose father was also Chinese.

The Hebrew School Amalia attends is filled with mixed-race children, but the parents in the congregation are all white, as is the majority of American Jewry. That concerns her mother.
 
“All my life I’ve had to defend being Jewish,” says Ms Wu. “When I go to a new synagogue, people ask who I’m with. I don’t want her to have to explain her Judaism, or be exoticised for it. I just want her to be a kid, not ‘that special, multi-racial kid’.”
 
That’s why Ms Wu brings Amalia to Be’chol Lashon (In Every Tongue), a San Francisco-based organisation for ethnically and racially diverse Jews. At the group’s most recent retreat last month, at a camp north of San Francisco, Amalia played with other Jewish children who are black, Hispanic and Asian. They sang Hebrew songs, built a succah, and learned about tzedakah, but they also talked openly with their counsellors about what it means to be Jews of colour, to have an identity people do not see due to the colour of their skin.

About 5.4 per cent of America’s Jews are either non-white or Hispanic, according to the 2000-2001 National Jewish Population Survey. A 2004 study by the Institute for Jewish and Community Research, Be’chol Lashon’s parent organisation, puts that number at about 10 per cent. Nevertheless, say activists in the field, the prevailing assumption is that Jews are white, and that Jews of other racial or ethnic backgrounds are adoptees or converts. Sometimes they are, but increasingly they are not, as the children of mixed-race couples grow to adulthood and begin raising their own Jewish children…

Read the entire article here.

Jewish multiracial families grow in numbers and commitment

The Denver Post
Denver, Colorado
2012-09-25

Electa Draper

Three Denver mothers heading multiracial families are seeking to build on what it means to live in Jewish community.

The community is changing.

It’s perhaps a surprising slice of demography that shows that 16 percent of metro Denver Jewish households headed by people ages 39 and younger are multiracial.

Among all age groups, 9 percent are multiracial, according to the 2007 Metro Denver/Boulder Jewish Community Study. National organizations note that the trend is increasing through conversion, marriage and adoption…

…For years, American Jews have been characterized as a “white” ethno-religious group, “both in terms of their racial classification and in terms of their cultural alignment in American society,” reported the UJA-Federation of New York in its comprehensive 2011 study released in June.

“However, several factors — intermarriage and adoption among them — have been working to alter that nearly all-white imagery and reality to some extent,” the report states…

Read the entire article here.

I’m Chocolate, You’re Vanilla: Raising Healthy Black and Biracial Children in a Race-Conscious World

Jossey-Bass
May 2000
304 pages
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-7879-5234-1

Marguerite A. Wright

A child’s concept of race is quite different from that of an adult. Young children perceive skin color as magical—even changeable—and unlike adults, are incapable of understanding adult predjudices surrounding race and racism. Just as children learn to walk and talk, they likewise come to understand race in a series of predictable stages.

Based on Marguerite A. Wright’s research and clinical experience, I’m Chocolate, You’re Vanilla teaches us that the color-blindness of early childhood can, and must, be taken advantage of in order to guide the positive development of a child’s self-esteem.

Wright answers some fundamental questions about children and race including:

• What do children know and understand about the color of their skin?
• When do children understand the concept of race?
• Are there warning signs that a child is being adversely affected by racial prejudice?
• How can adults avoid instilling in children their own negative perceptions and prejudices?
• What can parents do to prepare their children to overcome the racism they are likely to encounter?
• How can schools lessen the impact of racism?
• With wisdom and compassion, I’m Chocolate, You’re Vanilla spells out how to educate black and biracial children about race, while preserving their innate resilience and optimism—the birthright of all children.

Table of Contents

• THAT MAGICAL PLACE: RACE AWARENESS IN THE PRESCHOOL YEARS
  • Chocolate and Vanilla: How Preschoolers See Color and Race
  • How Preschoolers Begin to Learn Racial Attitudes
  • When to Be Concerned That Race Is a Problem for Preschoolers
  • Raising the Racially Healthy Preschooler
• THE WANING OF RACIAL INNOCENCE: THE EARLY SCHOOL YEARS
  • Shades of Brown and Black: How Early Grade-Schoolers See Color and Race
  • Black Children’s Self-Esteem: The Real Deal
  • How School Influences Children’s Awareness of Color and Race
• REALITY BITES: RACE AWARENESS IN MIDDLE CHILDHOOD AND ADOLESCENCE
  • Fading to Black and White: How Children in the Middle Years See Race
  • How School Influences Older Children’s Ideas About Race
  • Preparing for Adolescence: The Lines are Drawn
  • A Healthy High School Experience: You Can Make the Difference
• Epilogue
• Appendix: Stages of Race Awareness
• Notes
• About the Author
• Index