Mixed Race Studies

Race in an Era of Change: A Reader

Oxford University Press
September 2010
544 pages
ISBN13: 9780199752102
ISBN10: 0199752109

Edited By:

Heather Dalmage, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Mansfield Institute
Roosevelt University

Barbara Katz Rothman, Professor of Sociology
Baruch College of the City Univerity of New York

Featuring a wide range of classic and contemporary selections, Race in an Era of Change: A Reader is an affordable and timely collection of articles on race and ethnicity in the United States today. Opening with coverage of racial formation theory, it goes on to cover “racial thinking” (including the challenging and compelling concept of “whiteness”) and the idea of “assigned and claimed” racial identities. The book also discusses the relationships between race and a variety of institutions—including healthcare, economy and work, housing and environment, education, policing and prison, the media, and the family—and concludes with a section on issues of globalization, immigration, and citizenship.

Editors Heather Dalmage and Barbara Katz Rothman have carefully edited the selections so that they will be easily accessible to students. A detailed introduction to each article contains questions designed to help students focus as they begin reading. In addition, each article is followed by a “journaling question” that encourages students to share their responses to the piece. Offering instructors great flexibility for course use—the selections can be used in any combination and in any order—Race in an Era of Change: A Reader is ideal for any undergraduate course on race and ethnicity.

Table of Contents

PART I: RACIAL FORMATION THEORY

1. Michael Omi and Howard Winant, from Racial Formation in the United States
2. Eva Marie Garroutte, “The Racial Formation of American Indians”
3. Nicholas DeGenova and Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas, “Latino Racial Formations in the United States: An Introduction”

PART II: RACIAL THINKING

Essentialism

4. Joanne Nagel, “Sex and Conquest: Domination and Desire on Ethnosexual Frontiers”
5. Janell Hobson, “The “Batty” Politics: Towards an Aesthetic of the Black Female Body”
6. Barbara Katz-Rothman, from The Book of Life: A Personal Guide to Race, Normality, and the Implications of the Genome Project
A Voice from the Past: Franz Boas, “Race and Progress”

The Social Construction of Race

7. Eduardo Bonilla Silva, David Embrick, Amanda Lewis, “‘I did not get that job because of a Black man…’ The storylines and testimonies of color-blind racism”
8. Margaret Hunter, “The Beauty Queue: Advantages of Light Skin”
9. Heather Dalmage, “Discovering Racial Borders”
A Voice from the Past: W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Conservation of the Races”

Outing Whiteness

A Special Introduction by the Editors
10. France Winddance Twine and Charles Gallagher, “Introduction: The Future of Whiteness: A Map of the ‘Third Wave'”
11. Troy Duster, “The Morphing Properties of Whiteness”
12. Jennifer L. Eichstedt, “Problematic Identities and a Search for Racial Justice”
A Voice from the Past: Frederick Douglass, “The Color Line”

PART III: RACIAL IDENTITIES

A Special Introduction by the Editors
13. Joy L. Lei, “(Un) Necessary Toughness?: ‘Those Loud Black Girls’ and Those ‘Quiet Asian Boys'”
14. Nada Elia, “Islamophobia and the ‘Privileging’ of Arab American Women”
15. Nina Asher, “Checking the Box: The Label of ‘Model Minority'”
16. Patty Talahongva, “Identity Crisis: Indian Identity in a Changing World”
17. Juan Flores, “Nueva York – Diaspora City: U.S. Latinos Between and Beyond”
18. Nancy Foner, “The Social Construction of Race in Two Immigrant Eras”

PART IV: RACIALIZED AND RACIALIZING INSTITUTIONS

Economy and Work

19. Sherry Cable and Tamara L. Mix, “Economic Imperatives and Race Relations: The Rise and Fall of the American Apartheid System”
20. Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan, “Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination”

Housing & Environment

21. Benjamin Howell, “Exploiting Race and Space: Concentrated Subprime Lending as Housing Discrimination”
22. Mary Patillo, “Black Middle Class-Class Neighborhoods”
23. Kari Marie Norgaard, “Denied Access to Traditional Foods Including the Material Dimension to Institutional and Environmental Racism”

Education

24. Linda Darling-Hammond, “Race, Inequality, and Educational Accountability: The Irony of ‘No Child Left Behind'”
25. Amanda E. Lewis, Mark Chesler, and Tyrone Forman, “The Impact of ‘Colorblind’ Ideologies on Students of Color: Intergroup Relations at a Predominantly White University”

Policing and Prison

26. Loic Wacquant, “Deadly Symbiosis: When Ghetto and Prison Meet and Mesh”
27. David Harris, “U.S. Experiences with Racial and Ethnic Profiling: History, Current Issues, and the Future”

Media

28. Jose Antonio Padin, “The Normative Mulattoes: The Press Latinos. And the Racial Climate on the Moving Immigration Frontier”
29. Jonathan Markovitz, “Anatomy of a Spectacle: Race, Gender, and Memory in the Kobe Bryant Rape Case”

Family

30. Dorothy Roberts, from Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare
31. Krista M Perreira, Mimi V Chapman, and Gabriela L Stein, “Becoming an American Parent: Overcoming Challenges and Finding Strength in a New Immigrant Latino Community”

Healthcare

32. Mathew R. Anderson, Susan Moscou, Celestine Fulchon and Daniel R. Neuspiel, “The Role of Race in the Clinical Presentation”
33. Susan Starr Sered and Rushika Fernandopulle, “Uninsured in America: Life and Death in the Land of Opportunity”

PART V: GLOBALIZATION, IMMIGRATION AND CITIZENSHIP

34. Anupam Chander, “Flying the Mexican Flag in Los Angeles”
35. Patricia Hill Collins, “New Commoditites, New Consumers: Selling Blackness in a Global Marketplace”
36. William I. Robinson, “‘Aqui estamos y no nos vamos!’: Global capital and immigrant rights”

Counseling Interventions with Biracial Black/White Adolescents

East Bay Therapist
California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists – East Bay Chapter
Jan/Feb 2005

Venita Antonia-Maria Lue, PhD, MFT

Adolescence is an especially vulnerable time for many biracial individuals because identity issues become racial problems when the interracial person starts dating. All dating is potentially interracial for these adolescents.

The important questions for these biracial teenagers seem to be “Who am I?” and “Where do I fit?” In adolescence the question of social acceptance is very important. Biracial adolescents report anxiety over social acceptance based on exclusion groups in which they were accepted as children. There is an abrupt recognition of the need to redefine and renegotiate their social relationships and status. The process of finding friends who will accept them as individuals and show them unconditional acceptance can be a painful one for some biracial adolescents of either gender…

Read the entire article here.

The President, the Professor, and the Wide Receiver

When the biracial U.S. President Barack Obama visits South Korea tomorrow, he will be visiting a country grappling with its prejudices about race.

Foreign Policy
2009-11-17

James Card

This week, U.S. President Barack Obama, the son of a black father and white mother, is making his landmark visit to Asia, including a Wednesday stop in Seoul, where South Korea is in the midst of a racial reckoning. His visit could have positive repercussions for years to come. Race is a thorny issue in the country, and biracial persons especially so. Both North and South Koreans embrace pure bloodlines, untainted by non-Korean DNA. Biracial children are broadly considered unadoptable, and children and adults of mixed race endure ostracism and bullying. But in the past few years, a number of events and people have made South Koreans reconsider racism and persons of mixed race…

Read the entire article here.

Do Racist Attitudes Hinder Mothers of Mixed-Race Children?

Science Daily
2010-04-28

Professor Ravinder Barn and Dr. Vicki Harman from the Centre for Criminology and Sociology at Royal Holloway, University of London are carrying out research into white mothers of mixed-race children. It is part of a wider study of mixed-race children and young people that has spanned more than two decades.

Parenting as an activity has become the focus for much concern at a policy and academic level, and the experiences of white women mothering mixed-race children is also receiving considerable attention…

…”In the academic and popular discourse, there is now a concern that ‘mixed families’ have become problematised. White mothers in these settings are often subjected to a racialised critical social gaze in a way that their parenting is placed under scrutiny,” says Professor Barn…

Read the entire article here.

University of Royal Holloway London (2010, April 28). Do racist attitudes hinder mothers of mixed-race children?. ScienceDaily. Retrieved April 28, 2010, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­/releases/2010/04/100428121600.htm

A cross-cultural marriage is an adventure I’d recommend

The Observer
2009-12-27

Anushka Asthana, Education Correspondent

Mixed-race unions in this country are on the increase, a magical journey that benefits all the families involved

One visit to India and a childhood playing cricket was never going to be quite enough to prepare Toby, a white Englishman who grew up in Oxfordshire, for his marriage. After all, you don’t just marry an Indian woman—you marry her large (and often eccentric) family and all that brings with it.

The realisation began to sink in for Toby at the Hindu part of our wedding, three months ago. He got out of arriving on the back of a white horse, but we persuaded him to go along with the rest of it. That included being dressed up from head to toe, with a red turban with white tassels hanging over his face, embroidered scarf, full-length white coat with gold trimmings and his very own pair of what he called “Aladdin” shoes. He took part in the “baraat“, an Indian tradition in which the groom arrives with family and friends dancing around him.

So there they were: swinging their arms to the bhangra beat of a dhol drum with shell-shocked smiles as they were met by the cheering crowd of “aunties” and “uncles” (not real ones—that is how we address any Indian person above the age of 40) and bending down to have garlands draped around their necks and red marks smeared on their foreheads.

The image of a white British groom at the centre of a mass of ecstatic Indian aunties would once have been a rarity. But research released earlier this year found that one in 10 people in Britain with Indian heritage who is in a relationship has a partner of a different race. The study, by the Institute for Social and Economic Research, found the same was true of half of all Caribbean men, one in five black African men and two out of five Chinese women. The result so far: one in 10 children in Britain is living in a mixed-race family…

Read the entire article here.

Biracial Children Learn To Self-Identify

Tell Me More
National Public Radio
2010-04-20

Michel Martin, Host

Interview with:

Kip Fulbeck, Professor of Performative Studies, Video
University of California, Santa Barbara
Author of: Mixed: Portraits of Multiracial Kids

Peggy Orenstein
Author of: Waiting for Daisy: A Tale of Two Continents, Three Religions, Five Fertility Doctors, An Oscar, An Atomic Bomb, A Romantic Night, and One Woman’s Quest to Become a Mother

Heidi W. Durrow
Author of: The Girl Who Fell from the Sky
Co-Host of: Mixed Chicks Chat

An installment of Tell Me More‘s weekly parenting segment focuses on the new book Mixed. It’s a collection of photographs of multiracial children that includes stories celebrating their heritage. Host Michel Martin is joined by the book’s author, Kip Fulbeck, as well as authors Peggy Orenstein and Heidi Durrow, who discuss their own experiences living in multiracial families.

Read the transcript of the interview here.  Listen to the interview here.

Note by Steven F. Riley: The term “Hapa” is incorrectly spelled as “Hoppa” in the transcript.

Parenting children from ‘mixed’ racial, ethnic and faith backgrounds: typifications of difference and belonging

Ethnic and Racial Studies
First Published on: 2009-10-29
Volume 33, Issue 6 (preview)
DOI: 10.1080/01419870903318185

Rosalind Edwards, Professor in Social Policy
Families & Social Capital Research Group
London South Bank University

Chamion Caballero, Senior Research Fellow
Families & Social Capital Research Group
London South Bank University

Shuby Puthussery, Senior Research Fellow
Family and Parenting Institute, London

In this article, we draw on data from an in-depth study of thirty-five parent couples from different racial, ethnic and faith backgrounds to explore how they understood and negotiated difference and belonging in bringing up their children. We identify and abstract three main typifications the mothers and fathers drew on in their accounts: open individualized, mix collective and single collective, and elaborate their constituent discursive motifs. Using in-depth case studies, we then consider the part played by these typifications in how parents negotiate their understandings with their partner where they hold divergent views. We conclude that parents’ understandings are developed and situated in different personal and structural contexts that shape rather than determine their understandings and negotiations.

Read or purchase the article here.

Intercultural Marriage and Family: Beyond the Racial Divide

The Family Journal
Volume 9, Number 1 (2001)
pages 39-42
DOI: 10.1177/1066480701091008

John McFadden, The Benjamin Elijah Mays Distinguished Professor Emeritus
University of South Carolina

Intercultural marriages have emerged as a central theme in discussion, not only among helping professionals but also the general public. Issues surrounding these conversations involve areas such as race, ethnicity, culture, and religion. The racial divide certainly permeates the thinking of many individuals as it affects couples and families. This article focuses on trends in intercultural marriages and how these relationships influence dynamics among families and the development of children and adolescents. Stages of acceptance toward intermarriages beyond the racial divide and empowerment traits for interracial marriages and family are introduced.

Read or purchase the article here.

Biracial Identity Development and Recommendations in Therapy

Psychiatry (Edgemont)
Volume 5, Number 11 (November 2008)
pages 37-44

Raushanah Hud-Aleem, DO
Department of Psychiatry
Boonshoft School of Medicine, Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio

Jacqueline Countryman, MD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry
Department of Psychiatry
Boonshoft School of Medicine, Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio

Identity development is an important area with which therapists who work with children should be familiar. The number of biracial children in the United States is increasing, and although this may not be the reason that a child presents for therapy, it is an area that often should be explored. This article will review the similarities and differences between Black and White racial identity development in the United States and address special challenges for the biracial child. Recommendations for treatment in therapy are reviewed.

Read the entire article here.

Biracial Youth and Their Parents: Counseling Considerations for Family Therapists

The Family Journal
Volume 12, Number 2 (2004)
pages 170-173
DOI: 10.1177/1066480703261977

Laurie McClurg
University of Virginia

In spite of recent developments in the area of multicultural family therapy, interracial families and their biracial children remain a neglected population in the mental health field. Very little research exists, and few suggestions have been made for working with this unique population. This article addresses the developmental needs of such families and provides suggestions for family counselors and therapists.

Read or purchase the article here.