Mixed Race Studies

Reconstructing the Household: Families, Sex, and the Law in the Nineteenth-Century South

University of North Carolina Press
March 1998
382 pages
6.125 x 9.25
8 tables, notes, bibl., index
Paper ISBN  978-0-8078-4712-1

Peter W. Bardaglio, Associate Professor of History
Goucher College, Baltimore, Maryland

Winner of the 1996 James A. Rawley Prize, Organization of American Historians

In Reconstructing the Household, Peter Bardaglio examines the connections between race, gender, sexuality, and the law in the nineteenth-century South. He focuses on miscegenation, rape, incest, child custody, and adoption laws to show how southerners struggled with the conflicts and stresses that surfaced within their own households and in the larger society during the Civil War era. Based on literary as well as legal sources, Bardaglio’s analysis reveals how legal contests involving African Americans, women, children, and the poor led to a rethinking of families, sexuality, and the social order. Before the Civil War, a distinctive variation of republicanism, based primarily on hierarchy and dependence, characterized southern domestic relations. This organic ideal of the household and its power structure differed significantly from domestic law in the North, which tended to emphasize individual rights and contractual obligations. The defeat of the Confederacy, emancipation, and economic change transformed family law and the governance of sexuality in the South and allowed an unprecedented intrusion of the state into private life. But Bardaglio argues that despite these profound social changes, a preoccupation with traditional notions of gender and race continued to shape southern legal attitudes.

Read the preface here.

Rethinking Mestizaje: Ideology and Lived Experience

Journal of Latin American Studies
2005
Number 37, Issue 2
Pages 239–257
DOI: 10.1017/S0022216X05008990

Peter Wade, Professor of Social Anthropology
University of Manchester

The ideology of mestizaje (mixture) in Latin America has frequently been seen as involving a process of national homogenisation and of hiding a reality of racist exclusion behind a mask of inclusiveness. This view is challenged here through the argument that mestizaje inherently implies a permanent dimension of national differentiation and that, while exclusion undoubtedly exists in practice, inclusion is more than simply a mask. Case studies drawn from Colombian popular music, Venezuelan popular religion and Brazilian popular Christianity are used to illustrate these arguments, wherein inclusion is understood as a process linked to embodied identities and kinship relations. In a coda, approaches to hybridity that highlight its potential for destabilising essentialisms are analysed.

Rethinking mestizaje as embodied experience

This article explores a key concept in the complex of ideas around race, nation and multiculturalism in Latin America, that of mestizaje – essentially the notion of racial and cultural mixture. I address mestizaje not just as a nation-building ideology – which has been the principal focus of scholarship on the issue, but also as a lived process that operates within the embodied person and within networks of family and kinship relationships. I consider how people live the process of racial-cultural mixture through musical change, as racially identified styles of popular music enter into their performing bodies, awakening or engendering potentialities in them; through religious practice, as racialised deities possess them and energise a dynamic and productive embodied diversity ; and through family relationships, as people enter into sexual and procreative relations with others identified as racially-culturally different, to produce ‘mixed’ children.

This approach emphasises the ways in which mestizaje as a lived process, which encompasses, but is not limited to, ideology, involves the maintenance of enduring spaces for racial-cultural difference alongside spaces of sameness and homogeneity. Scholars have recognised that mestizaje does not have a single meaning within the Latin American context, and contains within it tensions between sameness and difference, and between inclusion and exclusion.  Yet a scholarly concern with mestizaje as ideology has tended to privilege two assumptions: first, that nationalist ideologies of mestizaje are essentially about the creation of a homogeneous mestizo (mixed) future, which are then opposed to subaltern constructions of the nation as racially culturally diverse ; and second, that mestizaje as a nationalist ideology appears to be an inclusive process, in that everyone is eligible to become a mestizo, but in reality it is exclusive because it marginalises blackness and indigenousness, while valuing whiteness…

Read the entire article here.

Options: Racial/Ethnic Identification of Children of Intermarried Couples

Social Science Quarterly (September 2004)
Volume 85, Issue 3
Pages 746 – 766
DOI: 10.1111/j.0038-4941.2004.00243.x

Zhenchao Qian, Professor of Sociology
Ohio State University

Objective. Whites of various European ethnic backgrounds usually have weak ethnic attachment and have options to identify their ethnic identity (Waters, 1990). What about children born to interracially married couples?

Methods. I use 1990 Census data—the last census in which only one race could be chosen—to examine how African American-white, Latino-white, Asian American-white, and American Indian-white couples identify their children’s race/ethnicity.

Results. Children of African American-white couples are least likely to be identified as white, while children of Asian American-white couples are most likely to be identified as white. Intermarried couples in which the minority spouse is male, native born, or has no white ancestry are more likely to identify their children as minorities than are those in which the minority spouse is female, foreign born, or has part white ancestry. In addition, neighborhood minority concentration increases the likelihood that biracial children are identified as minorities.

Conclusion. This study shows that choices of racial and ethnic identification of multiracial children are not as optional as for whites of various European ethnic backgrounds. They are influenced by race/ethnicity of the minority parent, intermarried couples’ characteristics, and neighborhood compositions.

Read the entire article here.

Raising Multiracial Awareness in Family Therapy through Critical Conversations

Journal of Marital and Family Therapy
Volume 31, Issue 4
Pages 399 – 411
October 2005
DOI: 10.1111/j.1752-0606.2005.tb01579.x

Teresa McDowell
School of Family Studies
University of Connecticut

Lucrezia Ingoglia
Greater Lakes Mental Healthcare
Tacoma, Washington

Takiko Seizawa
Family Service Associates
San Antonio, Texas

Christina Holland
Behavioral Medicine Clinic
Olympia, Washington

Wayne Dashiell Jr.
Tacoma, Washington

Christopher Stevens
Renton Youth and Family Services
Renton, Washington

Multiracial families are uniquely affected by racial dynamics in U.S. society. Family therapists must be prepared to meet the needs of this growing population and to support racial equity. This article includes an overview of literature related to being multiracial and offers a framework for working with multiracial identity development in therapy. A critical conversation approach to working with multiracial identity is shared along with case examples. The authors’ experiences developing the model via a practitioner inquiry group are highlighted.

Read or purchase the article here.

Racially Socializing Biracial Youth: A Cultural Ecological Study of Parental Influences on Racial Identity

2009

Alethea Rollins
University of North Carolina, Greensboro

Advisor:
Andrea G. Hunter, Associate Professor, Human Development and Family Studies
University of North Carolina, Greensboro

A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of The Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy

As our society becomes increasingly multiracial, it is imperative that parents, teachers, counselors, and researchers consider the complex processes associated with crossing racial boundaries and occupying a biracial social location. Few investigations have explored racial socialization within biracial families, and none have empirically examined the relationship between racial socialization and the multidimensional components of racial identity. Using a cultural ecological framework, this study explored the racial socialization messages used by mothers of biracial adolescents and evaluated the relative impact of these messages on the racial identity of biracial adolescents. Data for this study were taken from a public-use subsample of the longitudinal Maryland Adolescent Development in Context Study (MADICS; Eccles, 1997). For this investigation, participants were 104 biracial adolescents and their mothers. Mothers of biracial adolescents engaged in a full range of racial socialization messages, including cultural, minority, mainstream, egalitarian, and no racial socialization messages. Racial socialization varied by maternal race, such that Black mothers were most likely to use mainstream socialization messages while White and other minority mothers were more likely to provide no direct racial socialization. In general, Black mothers provided more socialization than their White and other minority counterparts. Mothers of biracial adolescents reported using a combination of racial socialization messages, which can be conceptually reduced into three racial socialization strategies, namely, proactive, protective, and no racial socialization strategies. Proactive socialization was associated with racial identity salience, such that biracial adolescents who received proactive racial socialization reported less racial salience. In addition, maternal race was associated with racial salience, private regard, and exploration, such that biracial adolescents with a White mother reported lower racial salience, private regard, and racial exploration.

Read the entire dissertation here.

“Being Raised by White People”: Navigating Racial Difference Among Adopted Multiracial Adults

Journal of Marriage and Family
Volume 71, Issue 1, February 2009
Pages 80-94
DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-3737.2008.00581.x

Gina Miranda Samuels, Associate Professor
School of Social Service Administration
University of Chicago

There are increasing numbers of multiracial families created through marriage, adoption, birth, and a growing population of multiracial persons. Multiracials are a hidden but dominant group of transracially adopted children in both the United Kingdom and the United States. This paper introduces findings from an interpretive study of 25 transracially adopted multiracials regarding a set of experiences participants called “being raised by White people.” Three aspects of this experience are explored: (1) the centrality yet absence of racial resemblance, (2) navigating discordant parent-child racial experiences, and (3) managing societal perceptions of transracial adoption. Whereas research suggests some parents believe race is less salient for multiracial children than for Black children, this study finds participants experienced highly racialized worlds into adulthood.

Read the entire article here.

Listen to the interview on Chicago Public Radio, Eight Forty-Eight from 2009-03-01 here.

Communicative Correlates of Satisfaction, Family Identity, and Group Salience in Multiracial/Ethnic Families

Journal of Marriage and Family
Volume 71, Issue 4
Pages 819-832
Published Online: 2009-10-23
DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-3737.2009.00637.x

Jordan Soliz, Assistant Professor of Communication Studies
University of Nebraska, Lincoln

Allison R. Thorson, Assistant Professor, Communication Studies
University of San Francisco

Christine E. Rittenour, Assistant Professor of Communication Studies
West Virginia University

Guided by the Common Ingroup Identity Model (S. L. Gaertner & J. F. Dovidio, 2000) and Communication Accommodation Theory (C. Shepard, H. Giles, & B. A. LePoire, 2001), we examined the role of identity accommodation, supportive communication, and self-disclosure in predicting relational satisfaction, shared family identity, and group salience in multiracial/ethnic families. Additionally, we analyzed the association between group salience and relational outcomes as well as the moderating roles of multiracial/ethnic identity and marital status. Individuals who have parents from different racial/ethnic groups were invited to complete questionnaires on their family experiences. Participants (N = 139) answered questions about relationships with mothers, fathers, and grandparents. The results of the multilevel modeling analyses are discussed in terms of implications for understanding multiracial/ethnic families and family functioning.

Read or purchase the article here.

Deconstructing Race: Biracial Adolescents’ Fluid Racial Self-labels

2008-12-01

Alethea Rollins
University of North Carolina, Greensboro

Andrea G. Hunter, Associate Professor, Human Development and Family Studies
University of North Carolina, Greensboro

Biracial people shatter the idea of effortless categorization of race, identity, and group membership. Multirace membership forces scholars to examine what race is, how they use it, and what it tells them about people. Lopez (1994) defined race as, “neither an essence nor an illusion, but rather an ongoing, contradictory, self-reinforcing process subject to the macro forces of social and political struggle and the micro effects of daily decisions” (p. 42). Studies of biracial people require that we explore the boundaries, intersections, and fluidity of race and challenge us to deconstruct race as a social construct.

The aims of this investigation are to:

• Explore similarities and differences in adolescent racial self-labels reported by parents and adolescents
• Illustrate fluidity and change in adolescent racial self-labels over time
• Examine method variance in adolescents’ selection of racial self-labels

Read the poster summary here.

Secret Daughter: A Mixed-Race Daughter and the Mother Who Gave Her Away

Viking Press an imprint of the Penguin Group
2006-05-17
320 pages
8.26 x 5.23in
Paperback ISBN: 9780143112112
eBook (Adobe reader) ISBN: 9781429515375
eBook (eReader) ISBN: 9781429517829
eBook (Microsoft Reader) ISBN: 9781429512923

June Cross, Professor of Journalism
Columbia University

June Cross was born in 1954 to Norma Booth, a glamorous, aspiring white actress, and James “Stump” Cross, a well-known black comedian. Sent by her mother to be raised by black friends when she was four years old and could no longer pass as white, June was plunged into the pain and confusion of a family divided by race. Secret Daughter tells her story of survival. It traces June’s astonishing discoveries about her mother and about her own fierce determination to thrive. This is an inspiring testimony to the endurance of love between mother and daughter, a child and her adoptive parents, and the power of community.

Visit the official website here.

Visit the PBS Frontline site about Secret Daughter here.

“Obama’s People”: A New Identity for Biracials and Mixed Heritage

Xlibris Press
2009
102 Pages
ISBN: 1-4363-9510-0 (Trade Paperback 6×9 )
ISBN13: 978-1-4363-9510-6 (Trade Paperback 6×9 )
ISBN: 1-4363-9511-9 (Trade Hardback 6×9 )
ISBN13: 978-1-4363-9511-3 (Trade Hardback 6×9 )

Phillip MacFarland

Since President Barack Obama is from a biracial heritage and is now the leader of the free world, he has become an icon for the biracial and mixed person’s ethnic and national identity. The author, also of biracial heritage, illuminates the reader on how he and other Americans of mixed heritage are now,more than ever, proud to be an American. Having high self-esteem,and a challenging, but bright future.Whether one is White, Black, Asian, Latino, Native American or mixed…  President Obama represents all of us. As Americans, we will continue making important contributions to America and the world,with determination and a model for success….Yes We Can! and Yes We Are!… “Obama´s People.”

Read an excerpt here.