Mixed Race Studies

From Medical Innovation to Sociopolitical Crisis: How Racialized Medicine Has Shifted the Scope of Racial Discourse and its Social Consequences

Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut
May 2013
51 pages

Danielle Antonia Craig

An essay submitted to the faculty of Wesleyan University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Departmental Honors in Sociology

Using a case study of a congestive heart failure, BiDil, patented in 2005 for use only in African Americans, I attempt to understand and analyze how the movement of racialized medicine has informed and effected American understandings of race, racial identity, and health.

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Multiracial Identity Development and the Impact of Race-Oriented Student Services

Kansas State University
2013
46 pages

Margaret Roque

A REPORT submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree MASTER OF SCIENCE Department of Special Education, Counseling, and Student Affairs College of Education

Multiracial identity development has been a topic of study that has slowly begun to grow interest in academia. While it is important to acknowledge the process of multiracial identity development in and of itself, it is also essential to understand how this development is influenced by different ecological factors in higher education, such as when and where a multiracial student may encounter instances of marginalization, as well as instances of mattering. One of the more prominent facets of this ecology is race-oriented student services, which can provide either a space in which multiracial students feel marginalized, or one in which they feel that they matter. This report will examine multiracial identity development and why it is needed in order to better understand multiracial students’ needs, as well as how race-oriented student services affect development and expression of their identity.

Table of Contents

• List of Tables
• Chapter 1 – Introduction
  • Concepts and Key Terms
  • Race as a Social Construct
  • Mattering and Marginalization
  • Summary
• Chapter 2 – Review of the Literature
  • Introduction
  • Monoracial Identity Development
    • Cross & Fhagen-Smith’s Life Span Model of Black Identity Development
  • Multiracial Identity Development
    • Poston’s Biracial Identity Development Model
    • Root’s Five Types of Identity
    • Renn’s Identity Patterns
    • Multiracial Identity Denial
      • External Identity Denial
      • Internal Identity Denial
    • The Effects of Marginalization
  • Race-Oriented Student Services
  • The Influence of Campus Ecology on Multiracial Identity
  • Monoracial Race-Oriented Student Services
    • External Denial
    • Marginalization
  • Multiracial Race-Oriented Student Services
    • Providing a Sense of Mattering
    • Making Meaning of Marginalizing Experiences
  • Summary
• Chapter 3 – Analysis through Personal Reflection
  • Personal Narrative
• Chapter 4 – Implications for Student Affairs Practitioners and Future Research
  • Implications for Student Affairs Practitioners
  • Need for Future Research
  • Conclusion
• References

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Race, Policy, and Culture: An Identity Crisis for Sickle Cell Disease in Brazil

Melissa S. Creary, MPH, Doctoral Candidate
Graduate Institute of Liberal Arts
Emory University

Professor Howard Kushner, Chair
Professor Jeffrey Lesser, Co-Chair

Abstract of Dissertation Prospectus

In 2001, Cândida and Altair, a married couple, started a national organization to increase the rights of sickle cell patients, and thereby gave birth to the sickle cell disease (SCD) movement in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. Cândida, the wife, who carries sickle cell trait, now heads the municipal SCD unit for Salvador. She, with light skin and wavy brown hair, might be considered white in the United States, but when I asked her why she had created the organization she responded: “Eu sou negra!” (I am black). Her darker-skinned husband, who considers himself a black activist, coordinates the national SCD association and helped craft policy for SCD. As a family, Cândida and Altair shift between multiple roles: genetic carrier, parent, government official, and SCD advocate. Together these two activists have helped shape the racial discourse on SCD by associating the disease with “blackness” on the individual, organizational, and national level.

Sickle cell disease is the most common hereditary hematologic disorder in Brazil and throughout the world. In Brazil, the estimated prevalence is between 2% and 8% of the population. My research explores how patients, non-governmental organizations, and the Brazilian government, at state and federal levels, have contributed to the discourse of SCD as a “black” disease, despite a prevailing cultural ideology of racial mixture. Specifically, this project analyzes how the Brazilian state, advocacy, and patient communities within the nation have, at times, branded SCD an Afro-Brazilian disease. At the state level, I’ll describe the reigning racial ideology and how the development of racialized health policy contests their own viewpoint. On the organizational level, I’ll investigate the alignment of the SCD movement with the black movement of Brazil and the decisions made by some of these organizations to influence health policy using anti-racist motives. Lastly, I will explore the actual embodiment of SCD in the patient population and the “identity crisis” many may experience upon being diagnosed with a “black” disease.

With this framework in mind, I aim to answer the question—How are different actors (re)defining race and health through culture, biology, policy and politics in contemporary Brazil? This multi-level identity crisis is in constant contestation of competing racial frameworks at the micro, meso, and macro level. I will manage these complexities with a flexible notion of biological citizenship that considers frameworks of biology, social determinants, and policy in ways that is uniquely responsive to the cultural and historical specifics of how race, identity, health, and legitimacy operate in Brazil.

To do this, I will spend ten months in Brasília, Salvador, and Rio de Janeiro investigating the construction of sickle cell disease on three different levels: advocacy organization around patient rights, individual patient and family experience, and governmental policy development and implementation. To assess the social, geographical, and political context of my subjects, I will use a series of historical and qualitative methodologies.

My work will deepen and re-think narratives of Brazil’s racial history through the lens of SCD. It also stands to generate a better understanding of the historical genealogy as it informs the current implementation of SCD policy. This analysis can provide lessons to both Brazil and the US on how future policy can be designed. Specifically, whether policy developed around populations (or sub-set of populations) can be measured against and be as effective as policy developed around disease.

White Without Soap: Philanthropy, Caste and Exclusion in Colonial Victoria 1835-1888, A Political Economy of Race

University of Melbourne
November 2003
328 pages

Marguerita Stephens

Submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of History

The thesis explores the connections between nineteenth century imperial anthropology, racial ‘science’, and the imposition of colonising governance on the Aborigines of Port Phillip/Victoria between 1835 and 1888. It explores the way that particular, albeit contested, images of Aborigines ‘became legislative’. It surveys the declining influence of liberal and Evangelical ‘philanthropy’ at the end of the 1830s, the pragmatic moral slippages that transformed humanitarian gestures into colonial terror, and the part played by the Australians in the emergence of the concept of race as the chief vector of colonial power. The thesis contrasts the rhetoric of the British Evangelicals with governmental rationalisations in connection with Major Lettsom’s murderous raid on the Kulin on the outskirts of Melbourne. It then probes two mid century ‘scientific’ discourses – one concerning the purported infertility of Aboriginal women in connection with white men (a thesis that captivated Social Darwinists but was belied by the ubiquitous presence of children of mixed descent); the other concerning the purported propensity of the Australians to wantonly destroy their own offspring – to illustrate how self-serving misinterpretations of the effects of colonisation, and of Aboriginal cultural practices, presented the Kulin as less than human and underwrote the removal of their children into ‘protective’ incarceration. It explores how a policy originally intended to ‘domesticate’ and transform the children of the Kulin into model citizens turned into a project designed to eradicate the Aborigines of Victoria by ‘breeding them out’. It considers the contestations between humanitarians and racialists at the Board for the Protection of the Aborigines and how, in the 1870s, an arcane theory that the Aborigines were of Caucasian origins came to underwrite an intentionally genocidal ‘absorption’ policy that deployed the arithmetics of caste. Throughout the thesis, the determination of the Kulin survivors to adapt to the new circumstances, their efforts to farm the Coranderrk station lands as independent, free farmer-citizens, their resistance to the Board’s efforts to ‘board out’ their children and dispossess them of every acre of land in the colony, is juxtaposed against representations of the Aborigines as primitives, savages, as less than human and inherently bound for extinction on the one hand, and as a people passively awaiting the remedy of being made ‘white without soap’ on the other.

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What’s Black and White and Black Or White?: The Effects of Category Assignment on the Evaluation of and Memory for Multi-raced Faces

University of Colorado
2007
85 pages
ISBN: 9780549508632

Eve C. Willadsen-Jensen

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Colorado in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Psychology

This paper examines the effect of social categorization, from the initial category assignment to perceiver evaluations and memory, on a racially ambiguous target. In a series of 3 studies, racial categorization at the initial stage of person perception was manipulated by providing a race cue prior to viewing racially-ambiguous faces. The studies demonstrated that categorization of an ambiguous target lead to differences in the initial processing of the face as well as evaluation and memory. Racially ambiguous faces were evaluated in a manner consistent with the race cue. In Studies 1 and 2, racially ambiguous faces cued with the word “Black” primed more biased responses than racially ambiguous faces cued with the word “White”. This difference was reflected in participants’ event-related potentials (Study 2) with larger initial attention to faces primed by “Black” followed by a shift in attention to faces primed by “White”. This pattern was for both ambiguous and unambiguous faces. The pattern continued into memory effects (Study 3) with better memory for “White” than “Black” cued faces. These results demonstrate how initial category assignment during early face processing affects the entire person perception process.

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More than the Sum of My Parts: Multiracial Teen Identity Development and Experiences of Appeasement and Objection in a Mono-Racialized Context

University of Minnesota
2013
321 pages

Brynja Elisabeth Halldórsdóttir Gudjonsson

Dissertation SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

This dissertation examines multiracial student cultural awareness and how their experiences provided them insight into their current educational environment. The multiracial students in this study had significant self-awareness and cultural literacy due to their early identity formation and their continued navigation of disparate cultures. Because these students have received little attention in academic research, this dissertation explored multiracial identity in adolescents and the student experiences in a secondary educational context. This ethnographic study explores the students’ experiences through participant observations, in-depth interviews of students, teachers and school administrators, ethnographic reflections and field notes. The dissertation found that students encountered pressures in the school environment which affected their interactions in the school setting with teachers and peers. These encounters could be racially charged, although at times they could be so subtle that adults might not have recognized them as racially charged. In spite of these difficulties the students found supportive teachers and academic success. Based on the study’s findings the dissertation proposed a new lens through which to view multiracial student behavior. Since students were sensitive to others expectations, they mold their behavior to conform to these expectations. Through appeasement and objection the student actively chose how to react to others’ perceptions of them. Appeasement and objection in response to expectations could have stressful impacts on students as they sublimated portions of their identities in order to better fit into their environments.

Table of Contents

• Abstract
• Acknowledgements
• Dedication
• List of Tables
• Table of Figures
• Chapter 1
  • Categories of Self
  • Historical Understanding of Mixed Race Individuals
  • Racial Mixing and History
  • Definition of Modern Multiracial Identity
  • Schooling in Central City
  • Racism Entrenched in Schools
  • Research Questions
  • Methodology
  • Author Subjectivity
  • Data Discussion
  • Conclusions and Further Research
• Chapter 2 “My grandmother told me:” Race, History, School and Multiracial Identity Theory
  • In White and Black: Race and Dichotomy in U.S. Social Systems
  • Whiteness: Conception, History and Meaning
  • Black Identity: History and Context
  • Urban Education and Student Experience
  • Equal Education?
  • Multiracial Identity and Schooling
  • Multiracial History
  • Official Categorization of Multiracial and Multi-ethnic People
  • Identity Theory and the Multiracial Student
  • Contemporary Multiracial Identity Models and Theory
  • Conclusion and Research Questions
• Chapter 3: The Elusive Methodology of Critical Ethnography
  • Objective
  • The Ethnographic Frame
  • Embedding Ethnographers
  • Methods
  • Analysis
  • Cultural Politics in the Research
  • School Population
  • Sample Selection
  • Conclusion
• Chapter 4: This Examined Life An Exploration of Identity Creation and Projection for Multiracial Teens
  • Sorting the M&M’s: Seeing Multicultural and Multiracial Students at MWHS
  • Getting to Know You: Seeing Identity Changes
  • The Opportunity to Choose
  • Asking Permission: Finding Mixed Race Students
  • School Choice
  • “What are you?”
  • Friendship Groups
  • Foreclosure of Categorizing
  • Conclusion
• Chapter 5 “You think you’re special light-skind’ed bitch:”Student Interactions and School Curriculum
  • “You don’t just belong:” Finding Place in Social Groups in and out of School
  • Complex Problems with Simple Answers: Student Classroom Experiences
  • “Our history is still not their history too:” Student Connection to School Curriculum
• Chapter 6 “Ear-hustling” and Unsavory Experiences: Micro-aggressions are the Hidden Racial Interactions in School
  • Who is Listening? And What Do They Hear?
  • Micro-aggressions
  • Not Enough: Stepping Outside of the Expected Limits
  • Power and Control: Student Misbehavior and Punishment
  • Sit here not there: How negative attention affects students
  • Punishment: How Did it Affect Multiracial Students?
• Chapter 7 “To thine ownself be true:” Appeasement, Objection and Cultural Compliance
  • Additive Parts: Making up Identity
  • More than Code-switching: When Linguistic Analysis is not Enough
  • Act More White and Play School
  • Assimilation or Acculturation
  • Appeasement or Objection: How Mixed Students Reflect Expectations
  • Repercussions of objection and appeasement
• Chapter 8 Beyond All of the Pieces: What was Missing and Next Steps
  • Recommendations
  • The Matter of Power and Punishment
  • Directions for Future Research
  • The Last Pieces of the Puzzle
• References
• Appendix A: Research protocols
  • Observation protocol
  • Student questions:
  • Teacher questions:
• Appendix B
  • Male participant coding rubric
  • Female participant coding rubrique

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The Politics of “Passing”: American Indians and Racial “Passing”

University of Arizona
2004
80 pages

Veronica R. Hirsch

Introduction

How is the racial “passing” behavioral concept applicable to American Indians, and what political forces created the socio-cultural circumstances that prompted this behavior? Beyond these immediate, sociologically-focused questions, what generational impacts does racial “passing” have upon tribal sovereignty and how does tribal sovereignty effect certain forms of racial “passing?” Until now, racial “passing” has been oversimplified as an exclusively Black/White social phenomenon, given the term “passing” was originally coined to describe an African-American’s attempts to identify him/herself, or to accept identification as a white person (Caughie 1999, p. 20). However, racial “passing” is neither historically nor contemporarily unique to the African-American community, since racial “passing” is facilitated by any social organization, such as the United States, that holds certain “subordinate” groups in disesteem (Sollors 1997, p. 248). Taking the United States’ “trust responsibility,” American Indian nations’ “domestic dependent” statuses, and documented history of Indian-specific, institutionalized racism together, one readily witnesses that the societal “disesteem” to which American Indians are and were subjected also positions and positioned them as both participants in and subjects of racial “passing.”…

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Authentic, Transformational Leadership: A Phenomenological Study of the Experiences of Black/White Biracial Leaders

University of Nebraska, Lincoln
May 2013
182 pages

Carmen R. Zafft

Presented to the Faculty of The Graduate College at the University of Nebraska In Partial Fulfillment of Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Major: Human Sciences (Leadership Studies)

This phenomenological study described the racial identity and leadership experiences of eight community, education, and business Black/White biracial leaders. Four central themes emerged relating to the participants’ racial identity choices: (a) family discourse, (b) social networks, (c) appearance, and (d) identity work. Three central themes emerged relating to the participants’ leadership experiences: (a) cultural agility: “Blessed to be flexible”, (b) perceived representation: “I look like them”, and (c) transformational leadership: “I lead so others can grow.” Because the participants were conscious of their identity development experience, all demonstrated a strong sense of self which influenced how they experienced leadership. As a result, the essence of experiencing leadership as a biracial leader was to be authentic and transformational.

Chapter One: Introduction

In an interview for CBS news in 2007, Presidential candidate Barack Obama was asked, “How important is race in defining yourself?” to which he responded, “I am rooted in the African-American community, but I’m not defined by it. I am comfortable in my racial identity, but that’s not all I am” (Kroft, 2007). Historically, a presidential candidate’s racial identity has not to this degree been questioned. This question was due, in part, to his identification as a Black American yet his racial lineage consists of a White, Midwest-American mother and a Black, Kenyan father. Walters (2007) brought attention to the conflict surrounding President Obama’s racial and cultural heritage:

He appeared to be of African descent, but the cultural markers to which traditional American Blacks were exposed presented him as someone born of a White American mother and a Kenyan father and raised in Hawaii. Also, the fact that he had lived for a while in Indonesia complicated the matter further. In short, his identity omitted many of the cultural markers with which Blacks are more familiar to the extent that it has promoted a curiosity of ‘cultural fit’ that in turn has become an issue of political trust. (p. 13)

These “cultural markers” influence how Black Americans make sense of and fit in the world around them. Essentially, these markers have traditionally defined Blackness in America. Though Obama identified as a Black American, his racial heritage and social influences did not fit the cultural markers typical of a Black American male leader. This caused voters, Black and White, to question whose interests Barack Obama was committed to and if they could follow him. For these reasons, Obama’s racial lineage, his cultural influences, his racial identification, and his post-racial rhetoric communicated a welcomed, albeit “mixed message” to the American public.

Despite this mixed message, President Obama’s election signified substantial racial gains for African Americans. Of equal significance is the special attention his biracial parentage brings to this growing population. His election led me to consider how a biracial leaders’ racial identity influences their leadership experiences.

The purpose of this phenomenological study is to describe how biracial leaders identify racially and how they experience leadership. Biracial leaders are defined as an individual with a Black biological parent and a White biological parent who exercises leadership in an organization or group…

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“Founding Mothers:” White Mothers of Biracial Children in the Multiracial Movement (1979-2000)

Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut
April 2012
142 pages

Alicia Doo Castagno

A thesis submitted to the faculty of Wesleyan University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Departmental Honors in American Studies

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Interrogating Multiracial Advocacy
  • The Multiracial Movement
  • Methodology
  • Chapter Outline
• Chapter 1: The Multiracial Movement
  • Pre-History of the Multiracial Movement
  • First Steps Towards a Movement: Interracial Family Organizations
  • AMEA, Project RACE, and Multiracial Activism
  • Census 2000
  • Post-Census 2000
• Chapter 2: Founding Mothers – A Study in White Privilege
  • Altered Perspectives, Shifting Identities
  • Race and Family: Locating Interracial Relationships
  • White Racial Identity Development
  • White Racial Identity and Interracial Family Organizations
  • Flesh and Blood: Complicating Sentimental Politics
• Chapter 3: Whiteness and Privilege in the Multiracial Movement – Project RACE as Case Study
  • Complicating the Multiracial Politics of Recognition
  • Project RACE
• Conclusion: The Thwarted Utopian Potential of Multiracial Politics
• Appendix I: Sample Interview Permission Form
• Appendix II: Transcript of Telephone Interview with Mandy – I-Pride
• Appendix III: Transcript of Interview with Mandy – I-Pride
• Appendix IV: Transcript of Telephone Interview with Anonymous – I-Pride
• Appendix V: Transcript of Telephone Interview with Susan Graham – Project RACE (part I)
• Appendix VI: Transcript of Telephone Interview with Susan Graham – Project RACE (part II)
• Appendix VII: Helms’s White Racial Identity Development Model
• Bibliography

INTRODUCTION: INTERROGATING MULTIRACIAL ADVOCACY

In early November 2010, I interrupted my junior semester abroad in Lima, Peru, to attend the Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference hosted by DePaul University in Chicago. I had been asked to participate in a roundtable discussion regarding the student forum I co-created and co-taught the fall semester of my sophomore year at Wesleyan University entitled, “Mixed Heritage Identity in Contemporary America.” After speaking only Spanish for three months, I found myself clumsy and thick-tongued in English as I attempted to describe my experience as a student facilitator and my involvement with mixed race activism. Later in the day, DePaul featured another roundtable entitled, “Community-Based Multiracial Movements: Learning from the Past, Looking toward the Future.” Representatives from multiracial organizations MAVIN; Swirl, Inc.; Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival; Multiracial Americans of Southern California (MASC); Lovingday.org; and Biracial Family Network (BFN) Chicago led the discussion. I have been involved with mixed heritage politics since the age of fifteen, when I was an intern at Seattle’s MAVIN Foundation, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that deals specifically with mixed heritage issues. I was already aware of the history of the Multiracial Movement and some of its internal tensions. It was not until I attended the DePaul roundtable, however, that I began to question some of the movement’s more unusual historical characteristics…

…Chapter Outline

In Chapter 1, “The Multiracial Movement,” I chronicle the history of the Multiracial Movement from 1979-2000, focusing specifically on the role of interracial family organizations within the movement. I reveal the tensions between different players within the movement, such as AMEA and Project RACE, as well as the tension between multiracial activists and monoracial civil rights groups. I briefly outline the pre-Multiracial Movement socio-political history that set the foundations for Census 2000 and formal multiracial recognition to become the movement’s cornerstones. I argue that focusing on multiracial politics of recognition limited the movement’s potential for radical change.

Chapter 2 is entitled, “Founding Mothers: A Study in White Privilege,” and tracks the various ways in which being part of an interracial relationship or family altered the way white women in the 1970s-90s perceived themselves and the world. I situate white women’s political involvement in a historical context that favors monoracial families and emphasizes racial belonging as an important aspect of healthy childrearing. Moreover, I link white mothers’ campaigning for multiracials to separate spheres ideology and sentimental politics. I assert that the coping mechanisms white mothers of biracial children employed to deal with being an interracially married white woman in the 1970s-90s ultimately resulted in the formation of interracial family groups and participation in multiracial politics that unwittingly attempted to regain racially privileged experiences and status.

In Chapter 3, entitled “Whiteness And Privilege In The Multiracial Movement—Project RACE as Case Study,” I examine the ways in which white female involvement led to the movement’s focus on multiracial politics of recognition, and the ways in which these politics of recognition ultimately limited the movement’s potential. I connect the arguments I have laid out in my first two chapters through the example of Project RACE, and elaborate on the history of the Multiracial Movement discussed in Chapter 1. Susan Graham did groundbreaking political work as the head of Project RACE, and facilitated the entry of multiracial politics into the OMB’s discussion of changing racial categories for Census 2000. However, her politics remained grounded in a perspective of white privilege. The political alliances she made and her unwillingness to sympathize with monoracial civil rights groups’ concerns lost her the support both of monoracial people of color and multiracial activists…

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The use of popular media in multicultural education: Stressing implications for the Black/non-Black biracial North American student

Syracuse University
1999
206 pages

Wendy Cecille Thompson

Instructor usage of popular media in the classroom has spawned studies on the impact of the visual image on minority populations. These studies range from examining the effects of films as role models on the self-concepts of Black elementary school children (Dimas, 1970), to Black college women’s persistence in viewing a popular television show in which none of the cast members were Black (Strother, 1994). This study is the first to examine the effects of classroom usage of popular media on populations that are racially “in the middle”—biracial individuals. Moreover, it is believed that popular media recommended for use with Blacks may be used with these individuals to reify the notion that the world’s population can be categorized into five socially-constructed groups called race. Lastly, a thorough examination of the relevant literature reveals that no models or paradigms of multicultural education specifically address the educational needs of biracial persons.

This study, through the use of unstructured and semi-structured qualitative interviews with 15 informants, seeks to discover how parental and cultural influences aid in the formation of a racial identity. The study is also concerned with the informants’ views on whether or how multicultural education served their educational needs. This study also attempts to discover how this marginalized population has responded to the use of popular media in multicultural education.

This study concludes that, although biracial persons have their own process of racial self-definition that is unique to them, society views them as Blacks. Parents and cultural influences greatly affect the biracial process of racial identification. Such influences minimize the effects of media on the biracial formation of a self-image. Media images, however, enable others to harbor perceptions of biracial persons based on essentialized notions of race and culture.

Such essentialized notions permeate educational structures, and thwart efforts at multicultural education. These efforts further marginalize biracial people by forcing them into rigid racial categories and by providing stereotypical images of those races when using popular media to further instructional goals.

This study should provide recommendations for popular media use in diverse fields, such as education, communication, and media studies.

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