Mixed Race Studies

Two or Three Spectacular Mulatas and the Queer Pleasures of Overidentification

Camera Obscura
Volume 23, Number 1 67 (2008)
pages 113-143
DOI: 10.1215/02705346-2007-026

Hiram Perez, Assistant professor of English
Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Building on feminist and queer scholarship on the relationship of film spectatorship to subjectivity, this essay conjectures subaltern spectatorships of the two US film adaptations of Fannie Hurst‘s 1933 novel Imitation of Life as a means of tracing the impossibly entangled discourses of race and sexuality, as well as of formulating “queer of color” as a kind of critical modality. Much like Harriet Beecher Stowe‘s Uncle Tom’s Cabin functions, according to Sigmund Freud, as a cultural artifact prized in the form of an idealized beating fantasy by the Victorian (white) child, Imitation of Life stages for black and queer of color spectators originary traumas, in particular the formative (and compounded) experiences of racial and sexual shame. This essay seeks to reconcile the dissonant emotions evoked by Imitation of Life by reading the overidentifications of subaltern spectators with the figure of the tragic mulatto as instances of queer pleasure, both self-shattering and subject forming. In so doing, the essay pays tribute to that tragic mulatto as a spectacular mulata and diva. The spectacular mulata diva summons queer subjectivities; furthermore, she betrays larger national and colonial secrets, locating the racially hybrid genealogies of the classic diva and the universalized subject of psychoanalysis, heretofore presumably white (European).

Read or purchase the article here.

Counseling Multiple Heritage Individuals, Couples and Families

American Counseling Association
2009
235 pages
Order Number: 72883
ISBN: 978-1-55620-279-7

Written and edited by:

Richard C. Henriksen Jr., Associate Professor of Education
Department of Educational Leadership and Counseling
Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, Texas

Derrick A. Paladino, Assistant Professor of Counseling
Department of Graduate Studies
Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida

This book examines the strengths of and the challenges facing multiple heritage individuals, couples, and families and offers a framework for best practice counseling services and interventions specifically designed to meet their needs. Topics covered include historical and current racial classification systems and their effects; identity development; transracial adoptions; and counseling strategies for children, adolescents, college students, adults, couples and families, and GLBT individuals. Poignant case studies illustrate important concepts and techniques throughout the book, and chapter review questions provide a starting point for lively classroom discussion.

Table of Contents

• Foreword. Patricia Arredondo
• Prologue. Richard C. Henriksen Jr. and Derrick A. Paladino
• Preface xiii
• About the Authors
• About the Contributors
• Chapter 1: History of Racial Classification. Richard C. Henriksen Jr. and Derrick A. Paladino
• Chapter 2: History of Antimiscegenation. Richard C. Henriksen Jr. and Derrick A. Paladino
• Chapter 3: Identity Development in a Multiple Heritage World. Richard C. Henriksen Jr. and Derrick A. Paladino
• Chapter 4: Counseling Multiple Heritage Children. Henry L. Harris
• Chapter 5: Counseling Multiple Heritage Adolescents. Michael Maxwell and Richard C. Henriksen Jr.
• Chapter 6: Counseling Multiple Heritage College Students. Derrick A. Paladino
• Chapter 7: Counseling Multiple Heritage Adults. Derrick A. Paladino and Richard C. Henriksen Jr.
• Chapter 8: Counseling Multiple Heritage Couples and Families. Kelley R. Kenney and Mark E. Kenney
• Chapter 9: Navigating Heritage, Culture, Identity, and Adoption: Counseling Transracially Adopted Individuals and Their Family. Amanda L. Baden, Laura A. Thomas, and Cheri Smith
• Chapter 10: Intersecting Socially Constructed Identities With Multiple Heritage Identity. Andrew C. Benesh and Richard C. Henriksen Jr.
• Chapter 11: Bridging the Margins: Exploring Sexual Orientation and Multiple Heritage Identities. Tiffany Rice and Nadine Nakamura
• Chapter 12: Multiple Heritage Case Studies, Analysis, and Discussion
  • What’s in a Name? An International Adoption Case Study. L. DiAnne Borders and Christine E. Murray
  • The Case of Michael: Searching for Self-Identity. Nancy J. Nishimura
  • Family Case Study: Identity Lost. Jose A. Villalba and Derrick A. Paladino
  • Working With a Multiple Heritage Couple: A Couple’s Case Study. Mary G. Mayorga
  • The Balancing Act of Multiple Heritage Family Counseling. Leigh H. de Armas and Amanda K. Bailey
  • Working With a Multiple Heritage Client With Indigenous Roots. Janet Windwalker Jones
• Appendix
• Resources
• Index

Read the front matter of the book here.

The Multiracial Experience: Racial Borders as the New Frontier

SAGE Publications
1995
512 pages
Paperback ISBN: 9780803970595

Edited by Maria P. P. Root

In her bold new edited volume, The Multiracial Experience, Maria P. P. Root challenges current theoretical and political conceptualizations of race by examining the experience of mixed-race individuals. Articulating questions that will form the basis for future discussions of race and identity, the contributors tackle concepts such as redefining ethnicity when race is less central to the definition and how a multiracial model might dismantle our negative construction of race. Researchers and practitioners in ethnic studies, anthropology, education, law, psychology, nursing, social work, and sociology add personal insights in chapter-opening vignettes while providing integral critical viewpoints. Sure to stimulate thinking and discussion, the contributors focus on the most contemporary racial issues, including the racial classification system from the U.S. Census to the schools; the differences between race, ethnicity, and colorism; gender and sexuality in a multicultural context; ethnic identity and identity formation; transracial adoption; and the future of race relations in the United States. The Multiracial Experience opens up the dialogue to rethink and redefine race and social relations in this country. This volume provides discussions key to all professionals, practitioners, researchers, and students in multicultural issues, ethnic relations, sociology, education, psychology, management, and public health.

Table of Contents

The Multiracial Experience: Racial Borders as a Significant Frontier in Race Relations – Maria P. P. Root

PART ONE: HUMAN RIGHTS

• A Bill of Rights for Racially Mixed People –  Maria P. P. Root
• Government Classification of Multiracial/Multiethnic People – Carlos A. Fernandez
• The Real World – Susan R. Graham
• Multiracial Identity in a Color-Conscious World – Deborah A. Ramirez
• Transracial Adoptions: In Whose Best Interest? – Ruth G. McRoy and Christine C. Iijima Hall
• Voices from the Movement: Approaches to Multiraciality – Cynthia L. Nakashima

PART TWO: IDENTITY

• Hidden Agendas, Identity Theories, and Multiracial People –  Michael C. Thornton
• Black and White Identity in the New Millenium: Unsevering the Ties That Bind – G. Reginald Daniel
• On Being and Not-Being Black and Jewish – Naomi Zack
• An `Other’ Way of Life: The Empowerment of Alterity in the Interracial Individual – Jan R. Weisman

PART THREE: BLENDING AND FLEXIBILITY

• LatiNegra Lillian: Mental Health Issues of African –  Lillian Comas-Diaz
• Race as Process: Reassessing the `What Are You?’ Encounters of Biracial Individuals – Teresa Kay Williams
• Piecing Together the Puzzle: Self-Concept and Group Identity in Biracial Black/White Youth – Lynda D. Field
• Changing Face, Changing Race: The Remaking of Race in the Japanese American and African American Communities – Rebecca Chiyoko King and Kimberly McClain DaCosta
• Without a Template: The Biracial Korean/White Experience – Brian Chol Soo Standen

PART FOUR: GENDER AND SEXUAL IDENTITY

• In the Margins of Sex and Race: Difference, Marginality, and Flexibility – George Kitahara Kich
• (Un)Natural Boundaries: Mixed Race, Gender, and Sexuality – Karen Maeda Allman
• Heterosexual Alliances: The Romantic Management of Racial Identity-  Francine Winddance Twine
• Ambiguous Bodies: Locating Black/White Women in Cultural Representations – Caroline A. Streeter

PART FIVE: MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION

• Making the Invisible Visible: The Growth of Community Network Organizations – Nancy G. Brown and Ramona E. Douglass
• Challenging Race and Racism: A Framework for Educators – Ronald David Glass and Kendra R. Wallace
• Being Different Together in the University Classroom: Multiracial Identity as Transgressive Education – Teresa Kay Williams et al
• Multicultural Education – Francis Wardle

PART SIX: THE NEW MILLENIUM

• 2001: A Race Odyssey – Christine C. Iijima Hall

Earthquake Weather

University of Arizona Press
1996
87 pages
5.5 x 8.5
Paper ISBN: 978-0-8165-1630-8

Janice Gould

It’s unmistakable, that strangely calm air and sky that signals big change ahead: earthquake weather. These are familiar signs to Janice Gould, a poet, a lesbian, and a mixed-blood California Indian of Koyangk’auwi Maidu descent. Her sense of isolation is intense, her search for identity is relentless, and her words can take one’s breath away. Sometimes accepting, sometimes full of anger, Gould’s work is rare, filtered through the feelings, thoughts, and experiences of a lesbian of Indian heritage. Over and over again, she speaks as an outsider looking in at the lives of others–through a doorway, out of a car window, or from the shambles of a broken relationship. Showing a steady courage in the midst of this alienation, her words are also stark testimony to the struggle of an individual caught in social and emotional contexts defined by others. In Earthquake Weather, as in an evolving friendship, Gould opens herself to the reader in stages. “I did not know how lonely I was / till we began to talk,” she writes in an opening section, setting the introspective tone of what’s to come. She begins with a focus on those universal truths that both bind us and isolate us from each other: the pain of loss, the finality of death, our longing to see beneath the surface of things. Next, the poet turns to her growing-up years during the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement. She describes a family in turmoil and an Indian heritage that, oddly, was one of the factors that made her feel most disconnected from other people. And she writes poignantly about her increasing alienation from prescribed sexual roles. “What’s wrong with me? / Where do I belong? Why / am I here? Why can’t I / hold on?” Finally, as in a trusting friendship, Gould offers the reader vivid word portraits of relationships in her life–women she has loved and who have loved her. Erotic and deeply personal, these poems serve as both a reconciliation and affirmation of her individuality. “Yet would you deny / that between women desire exists / that in our friendship a delicate / and erotic strand of fire unites us?” The poems in this book, says critic Toby Langen, are most powerful for their “courageous drawing on experience and feelings.” They will speak to many general readers as well as anyone interested in questions of gender and identity, including students of literature, lesbian/women’s studies, social/cultural studies, or American Indian studies.

Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (Third Edition)

Aunt Lute Books
1987
ISBN 1879960125

Gloria Anzaldúa

• Chosen one of the “Best Books of 1987” by Library Journal.
• Selected by Utne Reader as part of its “Alternative Canon” in 1998.
• One of Hungry Mind Review’s “Best 100 Books of the 20th Century”

Rooted in Gloria Anzaldúa’s experience as a Chicana, a lesbian, an activist, and a writer, the groundbreaking essays and poems in this volume profoundly challenge how we think about identity. Borderlands/La Frontera remaps understandings of what a “border” is, seeing it not as a simple divide between here and there, us and them, but as a psychic, social, and cultural terrain that we inhabit, and that inhabits all of us.

New to this edition:

Includes an Introduction by Sonia Saldívar-Hull; an interview with Gloria Anzaldúa; and contributions by Norma Alarcón, Julia Alvarez, Paola Bacchetta, Rusty Barcelo, Norma Elia Cantú, Sandra Cisneros, T. Jackie Cuevas, Claire Joysmith, and AnaLouise Keating.

Interracial Relationships in the 21st Century

Carolina Academic Press
2009
160 pp
Paper ISBN: 978-1-59460-571-0
LCCN: 2009001612

Earl Smith, Professor of Sociology and Rubin Professor and Director of Ethnic Studies
Wake Forest University

Angela J. Hattery, Professor of Sociology
Wake Forest University

Interracial Relationships in the 21st Century is a unique set of essays—both personal and research based—that explore a variety of issues related to interracial couplings in the 21st Century United States. Edited by Earl Smith and Angela Hattery, professors of sociology at Wake Forest University, this volume brings together the leading scholars in both the social sciences and the humanities who explore interracialities.

The chapters cover a wide range of topics related to navigating interracial relationships, including a chapter by George Yancey and colleagues that focuses on the tensions around interracial relationships in conservative Christian churches, to the role that racism and patriarchy play in shaping intimate partner violence among interracial couples—Smith and Hattery’s own contribution. Kerry Ann Rockquemore and Tracey A. Laszloffy focus on the children of interracial unions and their attempts to negotiate a racial identity. Wei Ming Dariotis uses a personal narrative to explore the discourse and cooption of the term “Hapa” by a variety of Asian Americans. And, Amy Steinbugler offers an examination of the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality in her chapter on interracial, same sex couples. Other contributors include Kellina M. Craig-Henderson, Emily J. Hubbard and Amy Smith.

In light of the recent election of the first African American president, Barack Obama, himself a bi-racial individual living in a multi-racial family, this book could not be more timely.

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgments

The Blurring of the Lines: Children and Bans on Interrracial Unions and Same-Sex Marriages

Fordham Law Review
May 2008
Volume 76, Number 6
pages 2733-2770

Carlos A. Ball, Professor of Law and Judge Frederick Lacey Scholar
Rutgers University School of Law, Newark

When Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter drove from their hometown of Central Point, Virginia, to Washington, D.C., on June 2, 1958, in order to get married, Mildred was several months pregnant Later that year—a few weeks before the couple pled guilty to having violated Virginia’s antimiscegenation law—Mildred gave birth to a baby girl. Richard and Mildred had two more children, a son born in 1959 and a second daughter born a year after that.

The legal commentary on Loving v. Virginia usually does not discuss the fact that the couple had children. In some ways, this is not surprising given that their status as parents was not directly relevant to either their violation of the Virginia statute, or to their subsequent constitutional challenge to that law. Concerns about the creation of interracial children, however, were one of the primary reasons why antimiscegenation laws were first enacted in colonial America and why they were later adopted and retained by many states. It is not possible, in other words, to understand fully the historical roots and purposes of antimiscegenation laws without an assessment of the role that concerns related to interracial children played in their enactment and enforcement.

The offspring of interracial unions were threatening to whites primarily because they blurred the lines between what many of them understood to be a naturally superior white race and a naturally inferior black race. As long as there was a clear distinction between the two racial categories—in other words, as long as the two categories could be thought to be mutually exclusive—then the hierarchical racial regimes represented first by slavery, and later by legal segregation, could be more effectively defended. The existence of interracial children destabilized and threatened the understanding of racial groups as essentialized categories that existed prior to, and independent of, human norms and understandings. To put it differently, interracial children showed that racial categories, seemingly distinct and immutable, were instead highly malleable. Therefore, from a white supremacy perspective, it was important to try to deter the creation of interracial children as much as possible, and the ban on interracial marriage was a crucial means to attaining that goal.

Although it is possible to disagree on how much progress we have made as a society in de-essentializing race, it is (or it should be) clear that an essentialized and static understanding of race is both descriptively and normatively inconsistent with the multicultural American society in which we live. In fact, it would seem that we have made more progress in deessentializing race than we have in de-essentializing sex/gender. One of the best examples of this difference in progress is that while we no longer, as a legal matter, think of the intersection of race and marriage in essentialized ways, legal arguments against same-sex marriage are still very much grounded in an essentialized (and binary) understanding of sex/gender.

The conservative critique of same-sex marriage is premised on the idea that men and women are different in essential and complementary ways and that these differences justify the denial of marriage to same-sex couples.  One of the most important of these differences relate to the raising of children. The reasoning—which is found in the arguments of conservative commentators, in the briefs of states defending same-sex marriage bans, and in some of the judicial opinions upholding those bans—is that there is something unique to women as mothers and something (separately) unique to men as fathers that makes different-sex couples able to parent in certain valuable ways that same-sex couples cannot.

These arguments continue to resonate legally and politically because our laws and culture continue to think about sex/gender in essentialized and binary ways. In fact, one of the reasons why same-sex marriage is so threatening to so many is that the raising of children by same-sex couples blurs the boundaries of seemingly preexisting and static sex/gender categories in the same way that the progeny of interracial unions blur seemingly preexisting and static racial categories…

Read the entire article here.

The Politics of Bisexual/Biracial Identity: A study of Bisexual and Mixed Race Women of Asian/Pacific Islander Descent

San Diego State University
First Published: 1999
Reprint: 2006
120 pages
ISBN 1-23456-789-0

Beverly Yuen Thompson, Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies
Texas Woman’s College

The construction of certain behaviors and physical characteristics into an acceptable and recognized “identity” is a phenomenon that is meaningful to the specific location and historical moment. “Identities” may not travel well across certain places and historical epochs because of the intricate cultural meanings associated with them. The United States in the late twentieth century is one location in which certain identities are constructed and understood in relation to national history and to political and social issues of the historical era that created such locations. “Identities” in the U.S. have largely been based on membership in groups and classes in which people experience oppression or are denied opportunity because of that membership. For an identity to be understood as such, two factors are typically present: (1) the identity is forced upon the group in a manner which often reduces the group to stereotype and homogeneity for certain reasons such as to justify their (marginal) position in society; (2) the group members more or less accept the identity or label as significant to their self-understanding (and their position in society), although they may or may not accept the meanings that come along with the identity. Identities, therefore, are understood by both group members and non-group members as a legitimate self-label, though the ways in which either view the identity may diverge. Identities based on hegemonic cultural membership, such as white, male, heterosexual, or middle class, are often not employed as self descriptive terms unless one is differentiating one’s self from members of oppressed groups. Identities have largely been constructed in American society based on membership in recognized oppressed groups….

..Biracial identity challenges the construction of mutually exclusive racial categorizations by incorporating an understanding of miscegenation and racial mixing that produces individuals who have a diverse background of racial and ethnic characteristics. This racial mixing may stem from parents or grandparents from different racial and/or ethnic groups or from a cultural history in which racial intermixing was a common occurrence, such as the Caribbean or Hawaii. Biracial identity implies that individuals have an understanding of their diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds and believe that this is an important aspect of their identity and use this concept to describe their racial makeup.

Bisexuality and biraciality as occurrences and concepts involve more than our current construction and indeed it has been argued that they have been present throughout human history (e.g., Stonequist; Haeberle & Gindorf). However, our understanding of bisexuality and multiraciality is relatively recent and the construction of them as identities is arguably quite unique. In order to understand bisexual and biracial identities in their present construction, it is crucial to review briefly the historical, legal, political, economic and social processes that influenced their treatment and embodiment. Therefore in the remainder of this introduction I will review the historical construction of Asian American experiences within the U.S. I will also give an overview of the treatment of bisexuality and homosexuality in relation to the socio-political context of placing bisexuality and homosexuality together based on the premise that it was under “homosexuality” that bisexuals were persecuted. I will then compare and contrast the historical process in the creation of biracial and bisexual identities and the issues that arise when both these identities reside in the same subject…

Read the entire thesis here.

Fence Sitters, Switch Hitters, and Bi-Bi Girls: An Exploration of “Hapa” and Bisexual Identities

Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies
Vol. 21, No. 1/2 (2000)
Asian American Women
pp. 171-180.

Beverly Yuen Thompson, Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies
Texas Woman’s College

I had been wondering about taking part in a student theatre project about being Asian American, and I said to Tommy, “The thing is, I don’t feel as though I’ve really lived the . . . Asian American experience.” (Whatever I thought that was.)

Tommy kind of looked at me. And he said, “But, Claire, you are Asian American. So whatever experience you have lived, that is the Asian American experience.”

I have never forgotten that.

-Claire Huang Kinsley, “Questions People Have Asked Me. Questions I Have Asked Myself.”

Claire Huang Kinsley articulates a common sentiment among multiracial Asian Americans regarding their racial and ethnic identity. She describes the reaction that her mixed heritage has provoked from Asians and Anglos, both of whom frequently view her as the “other.” In response to these reactions, her faith in her racial identity has been shaken, and she feels unable to identify herself-fearful of being alienated for choosing either her Chinese or Anglo heritage, or both. Although she knows that she is mixed race, the question that still plagues her is whether or not she is included in the term “Asian American.”‘

When I first read Kinsley’s article, I was elated to find recognition of a biracial Asian American experience that resembled my own. I have a Chinese mother and an Anglo-American father, as does she, and I am constantly confronted with questions about my ethnic background from curious individuals. Like Kinsley, I also question my ability to call myself Asian American because of my mixed heritage. However, in addition to my mixed heritage, I am also bisexual, which brings with it additional complications and permutations around my identity formation and self-understanding. The process of identity formation, especially of multiple identities, is complex and lifelong, and my experiences have been no exception.

Though I have always understood that I was mixed race, a true understanding of what this meant in terms of my self-understanding and my relation to the dominant culture and Asian American communities did not develop until I was much older. My first exposure to the political side of identity politics came at the ages of fourteen and fifteen when I began to develop a feminist understanding of the world around me. Then, at seventeen, I first began to call myself bisexual after two years of questioning my sexuality and believing that the only options that were available were either a lesbian or straight identity. Finally at the age of nineteen I began to uncover the history of Asians in America through my college course work and developed a newfound understanding of my racial identity and its political implications. Yet, as is usually the case, this process was never as linear as it may sound…

Read the entire article here.

Multiracial America: A Resource Guide on the History and Literature of Interracial Issues

The Scarecrow Press, Inc.
March 2005
264 pages
Paper ISBN: 0-8108-5199-7; ISBN-13: 978-0-8108-5199-3

Edited by

Karen Downing, Foundation and Grants Librarian
Hatcher Graduate Library, University of Michigan

Darlene Nichols, Psychology Librarian and Coordinator of Instruction
Hatcher Graduate Library, University of Michigan

Kelly Webster, Associate Librarian
Hatcher Graduate Library, University of Michigan

Multiracial America addresses a growing interest in interracial people and relationships in America. Over the past decade, there have been numerous books and articles written on interracial issues. Despite the rampant growth in publishing, locating these often-scattered and inaccessible materials remains a challenge. This resource guide provides easy access to the available literature. Topical chapters on the most often researched themes are included, such as core historical literature, books for children and young adults, hot-button issues (passing, identification, appearance, fitting in, and blood quantification), interracial dating and marriage, families, adoption, and issues pertaining to race and queer sexuality. Each chapter includes a brief discussion of the literature on the topic, including historical context and comments on the breadth and depth of the available literature, and followed by annotations of books, popular and scholarly journals, magazines, and newspaper articles, videos/films, and websites. Other useful sections include a chapter on the depiction of interracial relationships in film, teaching an interracial issues course, and how to search for materials given changing terminology and classification issues. Indexes by race and non-print media are included.

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction

1. Accessing the Literature by Karen Downing
2. Teaching an Interracial Issues Course by David Schoem
3. Hot Button Issues by Karen Downing and Kelly Webster
4. Core Historical Literature by Chuck Ransom
5. The Politics of Being Interracial by Karen Downing
6. Interracial Dating and Marriage by Alysse Jordan
7. Interracial Families by Renoir Gaither
8. Transracial Adoption by Darlene Nichols
9. Books for Children and Young Adults by Darlene Nichols
10. Multiracial Identity Development by Kelly Webster
11. The Intersection of Race and Queer Sexuality by Joseph Diaz
12. Representations of Interracial Relationships and Multiracial Identity on the American Screen by Helen Look and Martin Knott

• Appendix I. Subject Heading/Descriptor Vocabularly to Assist in Searching by Karen Downing
• Appendix II. Definitions of Terms Used in Interracial Literature by Karen Downing
• Appendix III. Sociology 412 — Ethnic Identity and Intergroup Relations Syllabus by David Schoem
• Appendix IV. OMB Directive 15
• Appendix V. Resources by Race
• Index
• About the Contributors