Mixed Race Studies

Bi-Ethnic Identity: Converging Conversations

Language Literacy & Culture Review
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
2009

Anissa Sorokin
Univerisity of Maryland

This paper examines ethnic identity, with a focus on bi-ethnic identity, from academic, creative non-fiction, and personal perspectives. Social psychological models of ethnic identity development, along with salient aspects of ethnic identity, are explored and interpreted through the writings of qualitative researchers, creative writers, and the author. The paper centers on two factors of ethnic identity development, heritage language and religion, and makes connections between academic literature and personal narratives. A brief discussion of perceived cultural and personal responsibility concludes the paper.

Read the entire paper here.

Mummy’s Black, Daddy’s Yellow and I’m Orange: talking with young children about racial identity

National Children’s Bureau
Wednesday, 2010-02-24 from 09:30Z to 16:15Z
Islington, Islington

Overall aim

This newly developed course aims to give practitioners confidence and the tools for talking with young children about racial identity.

Intended learning outcomes

By the end of this course participants will:

• Understand how prejudice and racism impact on young children within and beyond settings
• Improve practitioners’ confidence in discussing racial identity, skin colour and racism with children, parents and carers and each other
• Consider specific issues for multi-ethnic and multi-heritage families

Trainer: Rachel Gillett

The programme will be led by Rachel Gillett, who has been a freelance trainer and consultant since 1994. Rachel works with a large range of charities, including National Children’s Bureau, Adoption UK, National Day Nurseries Association, Citizens Advice, LASA (London Advice Services Alliance) and Advice UK as well as many other smaller community organisations. She is based in Yorkshire, but works throughout the country. As well as delivering training courses, Rachel also writes training sessions and materials and offers supervision to trainers; she is a member for the Institute of Learning.

Rachel is a single parent with two children of mixed heritage.

For more information, click here.

Reloaded: Representing Asian Women Beyond Hollywood

Thursday, 2010-01-28, 16:00-17:30 PST (Local Time)
University of California, Berkeley
Center for Race & Gender
691 Barrows Hall

Elaine H. Kim, Professor of Asian American Studies
University of California, Berkeley

Join Prof. Elaine Kim for a screening and discussion of the new 30 minute documentary film, Reloaded: Representing Asian Women Beyond Hollywood (working title), a sequel to the 1988 documentary, Slaying the Dragon: Asian Women in U.S. Television and Film.

Over the past two decades, the world has changed dramatically as global capitalism moves production, people, technologies, and ideas over borders around the globe. New formations and new communities have emerged everywhere. Now there are many more Asians from diverse backgrounds living all over the world, including in the U.S. American people are becoming more racially mixed than ever, and old notions of race, gender, and identity have been called into question. How does today’s Hollywood reflect these changes? What is new and what’s been recycled? What interventions are being made in Asian American independent films and new media?

View the PDF flyer here.

What are you? For multiracial students, declaring an identity can be complicated

Princeton Alumni Weekly
Princeton University
2010-01-13 Issue

Maya Rock (Class of 2002)

In my first few weeks at Princeton, I became accustomed to fielding questions: What’s your background? Where are your parents from? And the strikingly ­existential: What are you?  

What the questioners really meant was, what race was I? The question said a lot to me about how important race was in America, even if direct discussion of the topic seemed reserved for special holidays or ­incendiary news stories. My answer was, “I’m half black and half white” — a response that made me an anomaly. People were used to divvying one another up into five neat racial categories. After giving my response, I knew, white students would censor what they said about race in front of me, and black students would expect a certain solidarity. I often wished I did not respond at all; I didn’t want to be a spokeswoman for an experience many considered fascinating but which was, for me, ­completely normal…

Read the entire article here.

The Future of Ethnicity Classifications 

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies
Volume 35, Issue 9
November 2009
pages 1417 – 1435
DOI: 10.1080/13691830903125901

Peter J. Aspinall, Senior Research Fellow
Centre for Health Services Studies (CHSS)
University of Kent

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, ‘diversity’ has emerged as a key value in its own right, celebrated through human rights and similar policies promoting identity and providing an additional focus to that of the more traditional equalities agenda and its concern with ‘statistical proportionality’. It has been conjectured that classifications rooted in diversity policy will either propel data collection practices into the use of finer-grained distinctions or that these measurement systems will collapse under their own weight. In Britain pressure to increase the number of categories in ethnicity classifications highlights the tension between the validity of granular categories and their utility (in terms of practicality of data collection). Similarly, the interest in identity evokes a trade-off between the selective attribution of such measures and the greater stability of operationally defined ethnicity. In meeting the challenge of the diversity agenda, a number of approaches—innovative for Britain—are now being debated to accommodate greater numbers of categories in census collections. These include multi-ticking across categories (thereby capturing multiplicity) and the shift from classifications framed by colour to those privileging ethnic background (but attended by category proliferation). Conceptually, the measurement of the multiple dimensions of ethnicity has found favour but not so far encompassing ethnic origin/ancestry collected in US and Canadian Censuses. While some have argued that ethnicity classifications are already unwieldy and that retrenchment is needed, validity—increasingly insisted upon by the collectivities themselves and other non-state organisations—is seen as winning out. The demands of inclusiveness and identity visibility indicate that classifications are headed in the direction of greater complexity. 

Read or purchase the article here.

Multiracial Identity and the U.S. Census

ProQuest Discovery Guides
January 2010

Tyrone Nagai, Supervising Editor of Social Sciences
ProQuest

Introduction: What is Multiracial Identity?
 
Back on April 23, 1997, 21-year-old golfer Tiger Woods made headlines on the Oprah Winfrey Show when he described his racial background as “Cablinasian,” an abbreviation representing his “Caucasian,” “Black,” “American Indian,” and “Asian” heritage. Woods explained that he felt uncomfortable being labeled “African American,” and he was reluctant to check only one box for his racial background on school forms.  His father is half African American, a quarter Chinese, and a quarter Native American while his mother is half Thai, a quarter Chinese, and a quarter Dutch…

Read the entire report in HTML format or in PDF format.

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.

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.

Freedom School: Which box do I check?

Ursinus College, Collegeville, Pennsylvania
Olin 101
Tuesday 2010-01-26, 19:00-20:00 EST (Local Time)

Speaker:
Fernando Jones, Class of 2010
 
An informal discussion on Mixed-Race identity as we see it in educational and social structures.

For more information, click here.

Re-SEAing SouthEast Asian American Studies. Memories & Visions: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow.

San Francisco State University
2011-03-10 through 2011-03-11

The third tri-annual interdisciplinary Southeast Asians in the Diaspora conference will take place at San Francisco State University. The San Francisco Bay Area is home to sizable populations of Burmese, Cambodian, Filipino, Hmong, Indonesian, Lao, Malaysian, Singaporean, Thai, and Vietnamese Americans. This conference will foreground the large Southeast Asian American communities of the Bay Area, Silicon Valley, and the Pacific Northwest, as well as continue to build momentum and grow just as the Southeast Asian American demographics increase in size and visibility here in the U.S. and in particular, on the West Coast.

The main objectives of this conference are:

• to encourage the interdisciplinary and comparative study of Southeast Asian
• American peoples and their communities
• to promote national and international cooperation in the field
• to establish partnerships between academia and the community

This two-day conference explores memories (e.g., memories of homeland; memories of war; memories of childhood and growing up American; historical memories; embodied memories; intergenerational memories; technologies of memories; and imagined/created memories) and visions (actual sightings and sites of Southeast Asian Americans and their communities, both real and imaginary). Because this conference takes place after the constitutionally mandated 2010 census, the focus will be on locating/situating Southeast Asian American Studies for the 21st century.

The conference invites proposals for panels, workshops, and individual papers from all disciplines and fields of study that explore the dialectical relationship between memories and visions related to the following topics:

• Southeast Asian American health and wellness
• Southeast Asian American social justice
• Southeast Asian American and critical pedagogy
• Southeast Asian American youth cultures
• Southeast Asian American folklore, folklife, and religions
• Southeast Asian American families, relationships, and communities
• Southeast Asian American queer cultures and spaces
• Southeast Asian American sexualities
• Southeast Asian Americans of mixed heritage/race
• Southeast Asian American transnationality, transnationalization, and transnationalism
• Sino-Southeast Asian Americans
• Explorations of how artists (writers, filmmakers, visual artists) “see” and envision themselves and their communities as Southeast Asian Americans
• The location and relationship of Southeast Asia to Southeast Asian America
• The shifting demographics of Southeast Asian Americans vis-à-vis (in)visibility

Papers will also be considered on any related topics in Southeast Asian American Studies. 250 word abstracts should be submitted by June 15, 2010 to Dr. Jonathan H. X. Lee at jlee@sfsu.edu with the following information: a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, and d) abstract with title.

All papers will go through an internal review process and decisions regarding acceptance of papers for the conference will be communicated by October 15, 2010. Information on previous conferences:

• 1st 2005 at University of California, Riverside
• 2nd 2008 at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Jonathan H. X. Lee, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies
San Francisco State University
Department of Asian American Studies
1600 Holloway Ave, EP 103
San Francisco, CA 94132