Mixed Race Studies

In Ireland, Lifting a Veil of Prejudice Against Mixed-Race Children

The New York Times
2021-01-15

Caelainn Hogan

Jess Kavanagh says she always knew that her mother, Liz, was adopted. “It was obvious,” she said. “My grandparents were white and my mam was Black.” Paulo Nunes dos Santos for The New York Times

The singer Jess Kavanagh is working to raise awareness about the experiences of mixed-race Irish people, particularly those born in the country’s infamous mother and baby homes.

While helping her mother work merchandise tables at some of Dublin’s most respected venues, Jess Kavanagh first got a taste for the music scene. When she started doing gigs herself — a petite singer with a belter of a voice — people would come up after to tell her she sounded “like a Black person,” the last words half whispered.

They were assuming she was white.

Ms. Kavanagh, a rising solo star in Ireland after years touring with acts like Hozier and the Waterboys, had to form what she calls a “linguistic arsenal” to express her experience as a mixed-race Irish woman. What drives her to speak out is a legacy of silence. As the daughter of a Black Irish woman who was born in one of Ireland’s infamous mother and baby homes, she is raising awareness about how those institutions hid away generations of mixed-race Irish children.

More than five years ago, reports that children were interred in a sewage system at a mother and baby institution in Tuam, in western Ireland, compelled the Irish government to open an investigation into the institutions, where unmarried women and girls who became pregnant were sent. They were run by religious orders.

The final report, published on Tuesday, confirmed that of the 57,000 children born in Ireland’s 18 homes over several decades starting in 1920, around 9,000 died…

Read the entire article here.

Raising Multiracial Children, Part 2: Anti-Blackness in Multiracial Families

EmbraceRace
2020-07-24

Hosted By:

Andrew Grant-Thomas, Co-Founder
Melissa Giraud, Co-Founder

Guest Speakers:

Dr. Victoria K. Malaney Brown, Director of Academic Integrity
Columbia University, New York, New York

Dr. Marcella Runell Hall, Vice President for Student Life and Dean of Students
Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts

Dr. Kelly Faye Jackson, Associate Professor of Social Work
Arizona State University

In Part 2 of this conversation about raising multiracial kids, our guests – Drs. Victoria Malaney Brown, Marcella Runell Hall and Kelly Faye Jackson – return to discuss anti-Blackness and how anti-Black messaging shows up in multiracial families (including non-Black families). Referencing recent examples from social media, our guests breakdown three common myths that perpetuate anti-Blackness within multiracial families, and describe how these myths negatively impact the identity development of multiracial Black children specifically. We also talk about concrete steps that parents and caregivers can take now to actively reject White supremacy and anti-Blackness and build resilience as a multiracial family.

Be sure to check out the previous conversation in this pair, Raising Multiracial Children, Part 1: Examining Multiracial Identity.

Watch the video and read the transcript here.

Raising Multiracial Children, Part 1: Examining Multiracial Identity

EmbraceRace
2020-07-24

Hosted By:

Andrew Grant-Thomas, Co-Founder
Melissa Giraud, Co-Founder

Guest Speakers:

Dr. Victoria K. Malaney Brown, Director of Academic Integrity
Columbia University, New York, New York

Dr. Marcella Runell Hall, Vice President for Student Life and Dean of Students
Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts

Dr. Kelly Faye Jackson, Associate Professor of Social Work
Arizona State University

Roughly one in seven U.S. infants (14%) are multiracial or multiethnic (Pew, 2017), but what does it mean to be multiracial? It’s complicated!

In Part 1 in this conversation about raising multiracial kids we speak with our guests – Drs. Victoria Malaney Brown, Marcella Runell Hall and Kelly Faye Jackson – about some of the complexities of identifying with more than one race, and about the pivotal role families play in shaping how multiracial children come to understand themselves and the world around them. This dynamic is especially complex in this historical moment as the United States comes to terms with its own White supremacist roots.

Our guests describe the challenges and strengths of identifying with more than one racial group, highlighting examples from recent research, and draw from their own personal experiences as multiracial individuals and parents of multiracial children. As always we end with your questions and comments.

Watch the video and read the transcript here.

Rosemary Adaser: ‘Two-thirds human’ — growing up black in Ireland’s institutions

Irish Examiner
2020-10-31

Rosemary Adaser

Rosemary Adasar, founder of the Association of Mixed Race Irish.

Ahead of the publication of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes report and as Black History Month ends, survivor Rosemary Adaser describes how mixed-race children were at the bottom of the ladder in institutions here.

OCTOBER was Black History Month, everywhere in Europe, it seems, except Ireland. In the UK, Black History Month is firmly established and, in the last two years, we have begun to celebrate a Black and Green History Month where the historical connections between people of African and Irish descent are celebrated; it is an exciting new development. In June, Black Lives Matter went global, bringing new meaning to Black History Month.

One of Ireland’s best-known mixed-race people was the late, great Christine Buckley, a heroine of mine and a fellow industrial school survivor. Christine was born in 1950s Ireland, as was I. She was far more sensible than I; she married a lovely Irish man, enjoyed a career, had beautiful children, and changed Ireland forever. That was not to be my path.

In the Ireland of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, colourism existed. Efforts to get the good people of Ireland to foster, not adopt, us “difficult and hot-tempered children, especially the girls”, according to a 1966 Department of Education official memo, led to the placement of advertisements in newspapers mentioning how light a child’s skin colour was.

In Margaret McCarthy’s 2001 book My Eyes Only Look Out, one of the interviewees among six mixed-race Irish children fostered to an Irish couple commented that “the darker kids had it worse”. I was one of the darker kids, and I did have it worse…

Read the entire article here.

My Eyes Only Look Out: Experiences of Irish People of Mixed Race Parentage

Brandon Books
2001-12-31
240 pages
5.46 x 0.74 x 8.43 inches
Paperback ISBN-13: 978-0863222849

Margaret McCarthy

Much has been written on the subject of ethnic minorities and the problems they experience in integrating into a predominantly white society, but very little on persons of mixed parentage. Based on interviews, this book provides an eloquent account of the lives of people of mixed race. It comes at an opportune time, as the increasing presence of immigrants, refugees and people of colour has seen increased problems of ignorant prejudice and active racism.

‘Believe us’: Black Jews respond to the George Floyd protests, in their own words

Jewish Telegraphic Agency
2020-05-31

Josefin Dolsten, Staff Writer

Top left, clockwise, April Baskin, Anthony Russell, Yitz Jordan and Tema Smith. (Baskin: Jill Peltzman; Russell: Courtesy of Russell; Jordan: Courtesy of Jordan; Smith: Courtesy of Smith)

(JTA) — As Enzi Tanner participated in an online havdalah ceremony marking the end of Shabbat Saturday night, his city — Minneapolis — was being torn apart during a fifth night of unrest following the death of George Floyd, a black man, in police custody there last week.

Tanner, a social worker who supports LGBT families experiencing homelessness, said the ceremony — hosted by Jewish Community Action, a local social justice group, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, a national organization and Edot Midwest Regional Jewish Diversity Collaborative — conveyed a powerful message for black Jews like him.

“As the Jewish community reaches in and says how do we support their cause and how do we support the black community, it’s really important that people reach in to black Jews and other Jews of color and realize that we’re here,” Tanner said. “And we need our community.”

We reached out to black Jews like Tanner to understand their feelings at this wrenching moment and what their message is for the broader Jewish community. Here’s what they told us…

Read the entire article here.

HALF MEASURES: California’s Journey Toward Counting Multiracial People By 2022

Multiracial Americans of Southern California (MASC)
2020
30 pages

Thomas Lopez, Editor
Sarah Gowing, Lead Researcher

Reviewers:

G. Reginal Daniel, Ph.D., Professor and Vice Chair, Department of Sociology
University of California, Santa Barbara

Kelly F. Jackson, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Social Work
Arizona State University

Racial and ethnic data is collected by the government to enable the enforcement of civil rights laws, ensure equitable distribution of resources, and measure inequality. In 2016, the State of California released new policy standards for the collection and public reporting of racial/ethnic demographic data. All State agencies, boards, and commissions that collect this data must comply by January 1, 2022, allowing respondents to select multiple racial/ethnic categories. They must also disseminate this information in such a way as to not obscure mixed-race individuals. Potentially the most significant change to the standards would be the counting of people with mixed Latina/o and non-Latina/o identity. California will be the first state in the nation to do this.

This study’s aim is to determine whether these agencies are in compliance or whether there are still changes to be made. After reviewing organizations and aims from four sectors (education, business, health, and criminal justice), it was found that only one system is in compliance with the data collection, and none have followed the standards for race/ethnic data presentation. The counting of mixed Latina/o identified people is the most conspicuous gap in both the data collection and reporting methods. With less than two years to make the required changes, agencies must ensure that they are beginning the process now due to the time and resources required.

Table of Contents

• Executive Summary
• About MASC
• Terminology
• Introduction
• Current vs. Future Standards
  • Future Data Collection Compliance
  • Future Data Presentation Compliance
• Methodology
• Results
  • Data Collection
  • Data Presentation
• Discussion & Recommendations
• About the Authors
• Works Cited
• Appendix A: Assembly Bill 532
• Appendix B: Supporting Data

Read the entire report here.

Episode 281 – Dr. Kelly Jackson and Dr. Gina Miranda Samuels: Multiracial Attunement: Shifting Social Work Towards a Culture of Inclusivity

inSocialWork^® Podcast Series
School of Social Work
State University of New York, Buffalo
2020-02-25

Interviewer: Josal Diebold, Ph.D. Candidate

Kelly Jackson, MSW, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Social Work
Arizona State University

Gina Miranda Samuels, Ph.D., MSW, Associate Professor at the School of Social Service Administration; Faculty Affiliate of the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture
University of Chicago

In this episode, our guests Dr. Kelly Jackson and Dr. Gina Miranda Samuels discuss the topic of multiracial cultural attunement and deliberate why the issue of multiraciality lacks prominence in social work literature and research. Given the growing multiracial population, the importance of going beyond the black-white dichotomy is emphasized in order to address the disproportionate challenges and risks multiracial individuals and families face. The episode concludes with a discussion on Multiracial Cultural Attunement, a book designed to help social workers apply skills and tools to leverage the strength and resilience of multiracial individuals and families.

Listen to the interview (00:40:54) here. Download the interview here. Read the transcript here.

“What Are You?” Navigating Mixed-ish Challenges and Opportunities in Social Work

The New Social Worker: The Social Work Careers Magazine
2020-02-19

Kelly F. Jackson, PhD, MSW, Associate Professor of Social Work
Arizona State University

A 12-year-old girl and her two younger siblings reluctantly enter the cafeteria of their new school for the first time. It is almost impossible not to notice the awkward stares and cupped whispers from other students in the room. Then, a brazen question from one of the perplexed pupils seemingly brings the activity in the cafeteria to a standstill. A boy, his faced wrinkled in confusion asks, “What are you weirdos mixed with?”

This is actually a scene from the first episode of the ABC family comedy Mixed-ish, which premiered in September 2019 and follows the experiences of a mixed-race pre-teen named Bow and her interracial family during the 1980s. However uncomfortable the episode, it is not much of a departure from reality for many. The scene loosely reenacts true experiences for the increasing number of multiracial individuals and families with whom social workers interact every day. It is also another rueful reminder of why social workers and other helping professionals need to expand their understanding of diversity in ways that are inclusive of multiracial individuals and families…

Read the entire article here.

Multiracial Cultural Attunement

NASW Press
October 2019
2018 pages
Item #5440
ISBN: ISBN: 978-0-87101-544-0

Kelly Faye Jackson, Associate Professor
School of Social Work
Arizona State University

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

“What are you?” “But you don’t sound black!” “Aw, mixed-race babies are so cute!” These microaggressions can deeply affect an individual’s basic development, identity, sense of security, and belonging. Rather than having “the best of both worlds,” research suggests that multiracial people and families experience similar or higher rates of racism, bullying, separation, suicide, and divorce than their single-race-identified peers. Multiracial people and families don’t face these challenges because they are multiracial, but because dominant constructions of race, rooted in white supremacy, privilege single-race identities. It is this foundation of monocentrism that perpetuates the continued pathologizing and exotifying of people and families of mixed-race heritage. Furthermore, pervasive but misguided claims of colorblindness often distort the salience of race and racism in our society for all people of color. This reinforces and enables the kind of racism and discrimination that many multiracial families and people experience, often leaving them to battle their oppression and discrimination alone.

In this book, Jackson and Samuels draw from their own research and direct practice with multiracial individuals and families, and also a rich interdisciplinary science and theory base, to share their model of multiracial cultural attunement. Core to this model are the four foundational principles of critical multiraciality, multidimensionality and intersectionality, social constructivism, and social justice. Throughout, the authors demonstrate how to collaboratively nurture clients’ emerging identities, identify struggles and opportunities, and deeply engage clients’ strengths and resiliencies. Readers are challenged to embrace this model as a guide to go beyond the comfort zone of their own racialized experiences to disrupt the stigma and systems of racism and monoracism that can inhibit the well-being of multiracial people and families.

With case studies, skill-building resources, tool kits, and interactive exercises, this book can help you leverage the strengths and resilience of multiracial people and families and pave the way to your own personal growth and professional responsibility to enact socially just practices.