Mixed Race Studies

‘Thrall’ by Natasha Trethewey, the poet laureate of the United States

The Washington Post
2012-09-13

Elizabeth Lund

Thrall. By Natasha Trethewey. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 84 pp.

Natasha Trethewey’s “Thrall” is a must-read collection that equals the power and quality of her third book, “Native Guard,” which won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize . “Thrall” also demonstrates why this 46 -year-old writer is worthy of her recent appointment as poet laureate of the United States.

Trethewey, the daughter of an African American woman and a white man, explores racial attitudes and stereotypes throughout this slim volume, using both personal and historical lenses. The book opens with a gorgeous, understated poem about a fishing trip she and her father took years ago. That experience and their difficult relationship create an underlying tension that shapes the entire book. What readers notice first, though, is the poem’s engrossing imagery:

drizzle needling

the surface, mist at the banks like a net

settling around us —

everything damp

and shining…

Read the entire review here.

Lawsuit Challenging Obama’s Qualifications Is Tossed Out In Federal Court

AlaskaPublic.org
2012-09-12

Matt Miller, KTOO – Juneau

An Alaska-based federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit challenging President Barack Obama’s qualifications to appear as a candidate on the November general election ballot.

Gordon Warren Epperly of Juneau claims that Obama does not have the political right to hold federal office because he’s of mixed race. Epperly filed an objection with the state Division of Elections in April and sued in state Superior Court in July…

…The case was moved to U.S. District Court where Judge Timothy Burgess on August 24th dismissed the lawsuit ‘with prejudice.’ That means it can never be brought up again…

Read the entire article here.

Elections division turns aside Obama nomination challenge

KTOO News: Public Radio at 104.3
Juneau, Alaska
2012-03-06

Matt Miller

The state Division of Elections has turned down a challenge of President Barack Obama’s qualifications to be on the election ballot in Alaska. The challenge was filed by a Juneau resident who says the Democratic candidate is not qualified to run for re-election because he’s of mixed race.

It’s not a lawsuit filed in any court. Actually, it’s what’s called a nomination petition objection that was filed directly with the Division of Elections.

Division director Gail Fenumiai referred the objection to election attorneys within the Department of Law for further review.

“This is first time that we’ve received something like this,” says Fenumiai.

Gordon Warren Epperly is a retired bus driver in Juneau. He challenges Barack Obama’s qualifications to be on the ballot during Alaska’s presidential primary and general election. He says that Orly Taitz and others who’ve challenged Obama’s qualifications of being a ‘natural born citizen’ because of an alleged birth outside of the country went at it all wrong. He says there is no real requirement for a candidate to produce a birth certificate.

Epperly declined to talk on tape for this story. But in his filing he references the infamous Dred Scott decision which he says has never been overturned by the Supreme Court. He says Negros or Mulattos (he pronounces it mull-EYE-ttos) were not eligible to be citizens until the Fourteen Amendment was ratified in 1868. Even then, what Epperly calls ‘purported’ ratification of the amendment only allowed for civil rights, not political rights that allowed them and their descendants to hold federal office…

Read the entire article here.

Personalizing Medicine: Beyond Race

Virtual Mentor: American Medical Association Journal of Ethics
Volume 14, Number 8 (August 2012)
pages 628-634

Timothy Chang, MD-PhD Student
University of Wisconsin, Madison

McNearney TA, Hunnicutt SE, Fischbach M, et al. Perceived functioning has ethnic-specific associations in systemic sclerosis: another dimension of personalized medicine. J Rheumatol. 2009;36(12):2724-2732.

Considering the explosion in medical technology, from genomics and genetic biomarker testing to computerized imaging and detailed electronic medical records, personalized medicine may one day be common practice in our medical system. In “Perceived Functioning Has Ethnic-specific Associations in Systemic Sclerosis: Another Dimension of Personalized Medicine,” Terry McNearney et al. [1] found that “clinical, psychosocial, and immunogenetic variables had ethnic-specific associations with perceived functioning” in patients being treated for systemic sclerosis (SSc). The relationship of ethnicity both to the clinical, psychosocial, and immunogenetic variables and to perceived functioning raises ethical questions, especially if clinicians “personalize” treatment based on these findings.

Systemic sclerosis (SSc) is an autoimmune disease characterized by fibrosis of the skin and internal organs, commonly preceded by autoantibody production and vasculopathy [3]. Although management of complications has improved, the median survival after diagnosis is 11 years [4]. Currently, SSc is incurable, and health-related quality-of-life (QOL) measures are important indicators of disease outcome [5-9].

Conclusions from Study
 
In this cross-sectional study, Caucasian, Hispanic, and African American patients with recent-onset SSc were assessed for perceived physical and mental functioning using validated surveys and a self-reported physical disability instrument. Perceived functioning scores were then tested for association with demographic, socioeconomic, clinical, immunogenetic, psychological, and behavioral variables. Among Caucasians, immunogenetics, fatigue severity, helplessness, and social support were associated with perceived functioning, while among African Americans and Hispanics, immunogenetics, autoantibodies, illness behavior, and helplessness were associated with perceived functioning. This study is the first to identify associations between perceived SSc functioning and ethnically specific genetic markers and autoantibodies…

…Limitations…

..Using race and ethnicity to alert clinicians to greater likelihoods of certain health conditions became more controversial with the development of what was considered a race-specific drug. In 2005, the FDA approved isosorbide dinitrate/hydralazine (BiDil), a combination antihypertensive and vasodilator drug, specifically for African Americans. Major controversy ensued over whether a drug should be approved for use in a specific race since most drugs have long been tested on white subjects but not approved only for whites. Moreover, approval of BiDil for African Americans was not granted for biological or genetic reasons—the proposed differences in mechanism of nitric oxide uptake in African Americans were never tested…

…Is race a biological concept? Until now, I have been talking as though race has biological meaning. There is clear evidence, however, that race is not a genetic concept , and some would argue that it has no biologic basis. Only 5-10 percent of genetic diversity is explained by one’s membership in a given “race”. In actuality there is as much or more genetic diversity within a racial group as there is between racial groups.

Race is more a sociopolitical concept than a biologic one. The concepts of race and ethnicity were not developed for scientific use but are popular concepts, which, in the United States, were made official for census taking by the Office of Management and Budget Race and Ethnic Standards.

Membership in race is defined differently across research studies, time, and geography. Most studies do not report how race information is obtained, e.g., self-identified or clinician determined, let alone standardize the process. The definition of race is also time- and geography-dependent. How “black” and “white,” for example, are defined in the United States has changed from the 1800s to the 1900s. Because race is identified by one’s parents at birth and can be assigned by the medical examiner at death, a person may be born “black” but die “white”. Geographically, a light-skinned person may be considered white in the Bahamas but black in the United States. Inconsistencies in the definitions of race make its usage problematic at best…

Read the entire article in HTML or PDF format.

Obama Talks Race, Calls Himself a ‘Mixed Kid From Hawaii’

ColorLines: News for Action
2012-09-13

Jorge Rivas, Multimedia Editor / Pop Culture Blogger
Los Angeles, California

Lately it’s been a rare occurrence when President Obama talks race but at a campaign stop in Colorado Wednesday he mentioned it and even identified himself as mixed-raced.

“Education was a gateway for opportunity for me, let’s face it, as a mixed kid from Hawaii born to a single-mom, it’s not likely to become President of the United States,” Obama told supporters at a campaign stop Golden, CO…

Read the entire article here.

Interracial Brooklyn

Brooklyn Historical Society
Crossing Borders, Bridging Generations
September 2012

Michael J. Rosenfeld, Associate Professor of Sociology
Stanford University

Intermarriage has been rising in the United States steadily since about 1960. Before 1960 there were so few interracial marriages in the United States that Interraciality was really invisible. Prior to 1960, the idea of marrying someone from another race in the US was so unusual that social pressure, family pressure, and in some states the law made such marriages impossible.

So what explains the rise in interracial marriage?

One answer is that the law changed. In 1967, the US Supreme Court, in a brief but powerful and unanimous decision (Loving v. Virginia), struck down all the state laws that had made interracial marriage illegal. Overnight, Americans had the right to marry anyone from the opposite sex regardless of race. New York, however, was one of the states that had never had laws against interracial marriage. Take a look at this map of US states to see which states had laws against interracial marriage and when.

In the above graph (click to enlarge), you can see that intermarriage had a similar rise in the US, in Brooklyn, and in New York, starting near zero, and peaking at between 5% and 7% of all marriages in 2010. The trajectory of interracial marriage was so similar in Brooklyn and in the US as a whole that the blue US line is hidden underneath the green Brooklyn line in parts of the graph above. Since interracial marriage was always legal in Brooklyn but often illegal in the rest of the US before 1967, something other than the law (which never changed in Brooklyn) must explain the rise of intermarriage.

Even though interracial marriage has risen a great deal, Americans and Brooklynites still have a strong tendency to marry people from their own racial group…

…What explains the rise of Intermarriage?

• The US had a big immigration reform in 1965, which led to a sharp rise in immigration from Asia and Latin America. As the US population became more racially diverse, there was more opportunity for Americans to meet (and fall in love with) people from other races. Immigrant destinations like New York City tend to have more intermarriage as a result of having more racial diversity.
• The age at first marriage has been steadily rising since the 1960s. Age at first marriage in the US is now 27 or 28 years of age. In the past, age of first marriage was typically about 21 years. The later age at first marriage means that young people are more likely to travel away from home before they marry. Travel away from home increases the chances of meeting (and falling in love with) someone who is different from you.
• Attitudes have changed. Interracial marriage is not very controversial for people who were raised in the post- Civil Rights and post- Loving v. Virginia era. As interracial marriage has become more common and more visible, more Americans have gotten used to the idea that interracial couples are part of the panorama of American families. Opposition within families to intermarriage has declined, but has not disappeared…

…In order to figure out how many interracial couples there are, one must first divide people into separate and mutually exclusive racial/ethnic categories. In dividing people into mutually exclusive racial/ethnic categories, one immediately confronts a series of definition problems that have no unique solution.

The fact is that race exists in America only because we Americans believe in race and invest the categories with meaning…

Read the entire article here.

The Lure of Whiteness and the Politics of “Otherness”: Mexican American Racial Identity

University of Texas, Austin
2004
185 pages

Julie Anne Dowling

Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the The University of Texas at Austin In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Using a “constructed ethnicity” (Nagel 1994) approach, this project employs multiple methods to explore the racial identification of Mexican Americans. The U.S. Census has grappled with appropriate strategies for identifying the Mexican-ancestry population for over a century, including the use of a “Mexican” racial category in 1930. I examine historical documents pertaining to the 1930 Census and the development of the “Mexican” racial classification, as well as how Mexican Americans in the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) constructed “White” racial identities in their efforts to resist such racialization. I then explore contemporary Mexican American identity as reflected in current racial self-reporting on the U.S. Census. Finally, I conduct fifty-two in-depth interviews with a strategic sample of Mexican Americans in five Texas cities, investigating how such factors as socioeconomic status, racial composition of neighborhood, proximity to the U.S.-Mexico border, social networks, nativity/migration history, Spanish language fluency, physical appearance, and political attitudes affect their racial and ethnic identifications. Results indicate a complex relationship between personal histories and local community constructions of identity that influences racial identification.

Table of Contents

• List of Tables
• List of Figuresxii
• Chapter 1: Latinos and the Question of Race
• Chapter 2: Modernity and Texas Racial Politics in the Early Twentieth Century, LULAC and the Construction of the White Mexican
• Chapter 3: The “Other” Race of Mexican Americans: Exploring Racial Identification in the 1990 and 2000 U.S. Censuses
• Chapter 4: “Where’s Hispanic?” Mexican American Responses to the Census Race Question
• Chapter 5: What We Call Ourselves Here: Mexican American Racial and Ethnic Labeling in Texas
• Chapter 6: Just An(other) Shade of White? Making Meaning of Mexican American
• Whiteness on the Census.
• Appendix A: Census 1990 Race Question
• Appendix B: Census 2000 Race Question
• Bibliography
• Vita

Chapter 1: Latinos and the Question of Race

Introduction

The roots of this dissertation can be traced to a qualitative study I began as an undergraduate, interviewing persons of “biracial” mixed Mexican-Anglo heritage like myself. During the course of this research that became the basis for my master’s thesis, I discovered that according to the U.S. Census, Latinos are not a racial group. This did not fit my experience growing up in Texas where I found myself torn between two different worlds, one white and one brown.

This disjuncture between government classification and self-identification, between federal definitions and regional definitions of race, is at the heart of my project. The goal of this dissertation is to explore the historical roots of the census classification of Mexican Americans as “White,” and to examine who rejects this classification, identifying as “Other” race. Are there significant differences between these groups? What factors play into how Mexican Americans label themselves? And what are the meanings of these labels?

The most common “other race” response given on the racial identification question of the 1990 U.S. Census was a Hispanic identifier—Hispanic, Latino or a nationality such as Mexican, Puerto Rican, or Cuban (U.S. General Accounting Office 1993). While approximately 51% of Mexican Americans in the 1990 census identified as “White” on the racial identity question, an almost equal proportion (47%) identified as “Other.” In 2000, the numbers were similar with 48% of Mexican Americans identifying as “White” and 46% as “Other.” It is clear that a substantial number of Mexican Americans view themselves as a racial group outside of the current census classifications of White, Black, Native American, and Asian American…

Read the entire dissertation here.

The United States Census in Its Relations to Sanitation

Public Health Paper Report
Volume 15 (1889)
pages 43-46

John S. Billings, Surgeon, U.S.A. (1838-1913)

I have several times inflicted upon this patient and long-suffering Association papers relating to statistical matters and methods, which, it must be confessed, were better fitted to serve for occasional reference than to occupy any of the scanty time available for listening at our annual meetings. To-day, however, I have a very short discourse on the same subject which I want you to listen to, because, if the suggestions in it have any value, some of them should be acted on before the paper will probably appear in the volume of our proceedings.

Theoretically, we all agree that vital statistics are the foundation of public medicine, but, practically, I suppose that the majority of sanitarians and physicians think that they are not essential to the work of a health officer or board of health, although they may be desirable; that the main objects in sanitary work are to see that the water-supply is pure; that garbage and excreta are promptly removed or destroyed; that no filth is allowed to accumulate in the vicinity of habitations; that contagious diseases are controlled by isolation and disinfection; that plenty of fresh air be provided in schools, churches, etc.; and that all this can and should be done whether death-rates are known or not.

This is not my own view, because my observation of the progress of public health work in this and other countries for the last twenty years leads me to believe that this progress, in any locality, for any considerable length of time, depends upon the completeness of its vital statistics and the use that is made of them; because upon such completeness and use depend mainly the amount and regularity of appropriations from state or municipal funds for the payment of the expenses needed to secure the objects of the health department. Occasionally it is possible to get up a cholera, or yellow-fever, or small-pox, or typhoid fever scare, and to then get a little money for sewerage, or for street and alley cleaning; but these spasmodic reforms do not last long, and in most cases do not amount to much. You have got to produce constant, undeniable evidence that the work is needed, and is useful, evidence that will convince the press and the majority of the community; and this evidence must be mainly death-rates, to which should be added all the sickness rates that can be obtained…

…In investigating the details of the records of deaths kept in different cities, I have noted deficiencies in a few of them to which I wish to call the attention of all who have to do with the registration of vital statistics.

First. All deaths occurring in hospitals should be charged to the ward or district of the city from which the patient was taken to hospital, when this can be ascertained. Otherwise the death-rate in the ward in which the hospital is located will be too high, and in the other districts it will be too low.

Second. The birthplace of the parents of the decedent should be reported. We want to know the race of the decedent, whether he was Irish, German, Italian, or American, and to give merely his own birthplace is not sufficient.

Third. It is very desirable that in all cases of deaths of colored persons it should be stated whether the decedent was black or of mixed blood, such as mulatto or quadroon.

One of the most important questions in the vital and social statistics of this country relates to the fertility, longevity, and liability to certain diseases of those partly of negro and partly of white blood, and the only way to obtain data on this subject is through the registration of vital statistics.

Under the provisions of the law providing for the census, the living colored population is to be enumerated with distinction as to whether each person is black, mulatto, quadroon, or octoroon; and we need the same distinctions for all colored persons dying during the census year, to enable us to calculate comparative death-rates. Wherever there is a fairly accurate registration of deaths, which now exists in several states and in over one hundred cities, the next census will afford the means of calculating death-rates with distinctions of color, sex, and age, which will furniish important indications for sanitary work. For all cities of io,ooo inhabitants and upward, it is proposed to collect as complete information as possible with regard to altitude, climate, water-supply, density of population, sewerage, proportion of sewered and non-sewered areas, and other points bearing on the healthfulness of the place, which will permit of interesting comparisons with the death-rates.

Read the entire paper here.

Reflections of a Racial Queer

Multicultural Perspectives
Volume 12, Issue 2, 2010
pages 107-112
DOI: 10.1080/15210960.2010.481213

Aurora Chang-Ross
Beloit College, Beloit, Wisconsin

In this article, I reflect on my personal experiences of racial queerness. In an effort to speak my secrets, I explore my identity production as a Multiracial person by critically examining my positionality throughout various key stages in my life. I present Multiracial microaggressions –those accumulated moments that underscore my racial queerness and argue that these phenomena, while taxing, also confer agency. I propose a conceptual framework that incorporates both queer theory and borderlands theory as a potential framework from which to study how Multiracial individuals are positioned as racial queers. I argue that queerness, for the Multiracial individual, may denote both deviance (from the monoracial norm) and a unique individuality (stemming from one’s Multiracial background). By offering my testimonial as a racial queer and introducing the racial queer conceptual framework, I come a bit closer to naming my experience as a Multiracial individual and providing a space from which others can do the same.

Read or purchase the article here.

The Fate of the Afro-Turks: Nothing Left But the Colour

Qantara.de
Bonn, Germany
2012-08-27

Ekrem Eddy Güzeldere (Translated from the German by Michael Lawton)

The Afro-Turks, whose ancestors came to the Ottoman Empire as slaves in the nineteenth century, are still struggling for recognition. Now, though, their desire to assimilate into the wider society has become greater than their desire to maintain their own identity.

A banner with the text “Sixth Spring Festival” hangs across the street near the park in Cirpi, a small village about 20 kilometres away from Bayindir, a regional centre south-east of Izmir. Such festivals have become common in Anatolia, with hundreds of them occurring between March and May every year.

But in Cirpi, it’s something special. The Sixth Spring Festival is really the Sixth Festival of the Calf, the traditional celebration of the Afro-Turks, which they’ve been celebrating since the nineteenth century in and around Izmir, formerly known as Smyrna.
 
In 1924, the Turkish republic banned the celebration, and it was not until 2007 that the event could be re-established by the Association of Afro-Turks. The first five annual festivals were modest affairs, but the sixth turned into a big event with 400 participants. They’ve not yet slaughtered a calf though…

…Alev Karakartal, is an Afro-Turk woman who now lives in Istanbul. Speaking at a conference there in early June 2012, she described the strategy with which many Afro-Turks confront discrimination. “By entering into mixed marriages,” she said, “Afro-Turks try to have lighter-skinned children, so that eventually their colour will disappear altogether.” But Olpak responds, “We have nothing else left aside from the colour. There’s nothing left culturally any more.”
 
When Karakartal, who is herself of mixed descent, asked her parents about her origins, the answer was always, “We are Turks and Muslims,” and that roots weren’t important…

Read the entire article here.