Mixed Race Studies

Promoting Secure Multiracial Identity Development: A Qualitative Study Investigating Level of Knowledge, Awareness, and Concern among Parents of Multiracial Children

The Chicago School of Professional Psychology
2011-07-21
73 pages
Publication Number: AAT 3515236
ISBN: 9781267414342

Kelly Grace Arteaga

It has been widely supported through research that secure racial identity is positively correlated with overall psychological well-being and that parents are often considered the most important figures in the development and expression of racial identity. Previous research suggests that parents of multiracial individuals overwhelmingly neglect to address racial and ethnic issues both within and outside of the family home. This study reviewed current research and attempted to highlight the special role that parents play in multiracial identity development. Through phenomenological inquiry, the participants’ experiences of parenting a child that is racially different from themselves and their partners were explored. Further examined were the quality and quantity of discussions that occurred between parents and their children in which the focus was on their child’s racial identity. Overall, parents reported a high level of comfort and interest in discussing racial issues with their children, coupled with limited knowledge and understanding of multiracial identity and issues. Several other themes emerged including parents’ emphasis on their child’s physical appearance, the positive and negative aspects of integrating two or more cultures within the family, and curiosity about the racial and/or ethnic background of their child’s future romantic partner. Implications of the findings for future research and practice are discussed.

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In My Skin: Shaping the Multiracial Identity in Indiana

Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana
April 2012
18 pages

Earl L. Harris

A CREATIVE PROJECT SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE MASTER OF ARTS

This project takes viewers inside the lives of multiracial individuals in Indiana through a 60-minute documentary. The state was broken into three parts, broken into Northern, Central, and Southern parts, with each having a person chosen to profile. This is done to educate, inform, and eliminate myths in place about multiracial individuals. Shown is how each deals with day-to-day life not always being understood or fitting in. Life is explored and documented as it happens, including interviews with individuals as part of the production in order to hear “in their own words” about experiences. Other key people, family, friends, co-workers, share thoughts on the multiracial individuals also. The goal is to capture life without affecting what happens.

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The Skin We’re In: A Literary Analysis of Representations Of Mixed Race Identity in Children’s Literature

University of Illinois, Chicago
2012
232 pages
Publication Number: AAT 3530952
ISBN: 9781267715739

Amina Chaudhri, Assistant Professor of Teacher Education
Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago

A Thesis Submitted as partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Curriculum and Instruction in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Chicago

This study systematically analyzed novels of contemporary and historical fiction with mixed race content intended for readers age 9-14. In the context of an increasingly multiracial and multicultural society, this study was primarily concerned with the question of identity representation: What is contemporary children’s literature saying about the experience of being racially mixed? This question was investigated along three strands: 1) How can literature about multiracial identity be usefully described and define? 2) What historical perspectives inform books about multiracial people? and 3) To what degree are contemporary authors maintaining or challenging racial paradigms?

A content analysis of ninety novels with mixed race content was undertaken to determine specific features such as gender, age, racial mix, family situation, socio-economic situation, racial makeup of environment, and setting. Three categories were created based historical paradigms about mixed race identity, and themes that emerged from the novels: 1) Mixed Race In/Visibility, 2) Mixed Race Blending, and 3) Mixed Race Awareness. All ninety novels were evaluated with respect to the criteria of the categories. Thirty-three novels were selected for deep literary analysis, demonstrating the ways historical perspectives about mixed race identity inform contemporary children’s literature.

Findings indicated three broad trends in representations of mixed race identity in children’s literature with novels falling almost equally between the three categories. Books in the Mixed Race In/Visibility category depicted stereotypically traumatic experiences for mixed race characters and provide little or no opportunity for critique of racism. Books in the Mixed Race Blending category featured characters whose mixed race identity was descriptive but not functional in their lives. Mixed Race Awareness books represented a range of possible life experiences for biracial characters who respond to social discomfort to their racial identity in complex and credible ways.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• I. INTRODUCTION
  • Background
  • Rationale
  • Overview of the Study
  • Research Questions
• II. REVIEW OF LITERATURE
  • Literary Criticism
    • Literary Criticism in Children’s Literature
  • Critical Race Theory
    • Critical Race Theory in Children’s Literature
  • Mixed Race Perspectives
    • Theorizing Mixed Race Identity
    • Mixed Race Research in Children’s Literature
    • Setting the Stage
• III. METHODOLOGY
  • Text Identification
  • Search Parameters
    • Publication Date
    • Genre
    • Age of Intended Readership
  • Text Selection for Literary Analysis
  • Text Analysis – Content Analysis
  • Text Analysis – Literary Analysis
  • Terminology
• IV. FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS OF REPRESENTATIVE TEXTS
  • The Big Picture
  • Mixed Race Identity in the Categories
    • Mixed Race In/Visibility (MRIV)
    • Mixed Race Blending (MRB)
    • Mixed Race Awareness (MRA)
  • Trends in Contemporary Realistic Fiction
  • Trends in Historical Fiction
  • Literary Analysis of Representative Books in Each Category
    • MRI/V in Contemporary Realistic Fiction
    • MRI/V in Historical Fiction
    • MRB in Contemporary Realistic Fiction
    • MRB in Historical Fiction
    • MRA in Contemporary Realistic Fiction
    • MRA in Historical Fiction
• V. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
  • Themes in the Categories
    • Mixed Race In/Visibility
      • Wounded by Words
      • Inferior Vitality
      • Incomplete Amalgamation
      • Conclusion: Mixed Race In/Visibility
    • Mixed Race Blending
      • One Drop Still Rules
      • Revelations
      • All-American Biracials
      • Conclusion: Mixed Race Blending
    • Mixed Race Awareness
      • Conclusion: Mixed Race Awareness
  • Talking About Mixed Race Identity
  • Contributions
  • Limitations
  • Future Research
  • Conclusion
• VI. APPENDICES
  • APPENDIX A: Books Identified for this Study
  • APPENDIX B: Books Listed by Genre
  • APPENDIX C: Books Listed by Category
  • APPENDIX D: Books Listed by Racial Mix
  • APPENDIX E: Instrument for Collecting Individual Text Data
• VII. REFERENCES
  • CHILDREN’S LITERATURE CITED
• VIII. CURRICULUM VITAE

LIST OF TABLES

• TABLE III–1. Categories for Content Analysis
• TABLE IV–1. Author Race
• TABLE IV–2. Features of Books With Mixed Race Characters
• TABLE IV–3. Mixed Race Representation Across Genre and Category

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Carnival, Convents, and the Cult of St. Rocque: Cultural Subterfuge in the Work of Alice Dunbar-Nelson

Georgia State University
2012-08-09
57 pages

Sibongile B. N. Lynch

A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University 2012

In the work of Alice Dunbar-Nelson the city and culture of 19th century New Orleans figures prominently, and is a major character affecting the lives of her protagonists. While race, class, and gender are among the focuses of many scholars the eccentricity and cultural history of the most exotic American city, and its impact on Dunbar-Nelson’s writing is unmistakable. This essay will discuss how the diverse cultural environment of New Orleans in the 19th century allowed Alice Dunbar Nelson to create narratives which allowed her short stories to speak to the shifting identities of women and the social uncertainty of African Americans in the Jim Crow south. A consideration of New Orleans’ cultural history is important when reading Dunbar-Nelson’s work, whose significance has often been disregarded because of what some considered its lack of racial markers.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• 1. “CREOLES OF ANY COLOR”
• 2. CARNIVAL AND CULTURAL SUBTERFUGE
• 3. CONVENTS AND CULTS
• CONCLUSION
• BIBLIOGRAPHY

“Well, It Is Because He’s Black”: A Critical Analysis of the Black President in Film and Television

Bowling Green State University
August 2011
183 pages

Phillip Lamarr Cunningham

Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

With the election of the United States’ first black president Barack Obama, scholars have begun to examine the myriad of ways Obama has been represented in popular culture. However, before Obama’s election, a black American president had already appeared in popular culture, especially in comedic and sci-fi/disaster films and television series. Thus far, scholars have tread lightly on fictional black presidents in popular culture; however, those who have tend to suggest that these presidents—and the apparent unimportance of their race in these films—are evidence of the post-racial nature of these texts.
 
However, this dissertation argues the contrary. This study’s contention is that, though the black president appears in films and televisions series in which his presidency is presented as evidence of a post-racial America, he actually fails to transcend race. Instead, these black cinematic presidents reaffirm race’s primacy in American culture through consistent portrayals and continued involvement in comedies and disasters. In order to support these assertions, this study first constructs a critical history of the fears of a black presidency, tracing those fears from this nation’s formative years to the present. This history is followed by textual analyses of those films and television series featuring a black president, with an emphasis on showing how the narratives and codes within these films reflect those historic fears.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• INTRODUCTION
  • Filling the Void: Situating the Black President in Film Studies
• CHAPTER I: THE THING SO GREATLY FEARED: HISTORICIZING FEARS OF A BLACK PRESIDENCY
  • Harding, Jefferson, and Lincoln: White Presidents as the First “Black” Presidents
  • Fear of a Black Republic
  • From Impossible to Improbable
  • Jesse Jackson and the Changing Face of Politics
  • Powell for President
  • Return of the Black Cinematic President
• CHAPTER II: BEING BLACK MATTERS: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE MAN
  • The Man and the Apparently Declining Significance of Whiteness and Racism
  • Black Militancy as Barrier to Racial Harmony
  • Douglas Dilman: “A Well-Dressed Rebuttal to the Militants”
• CHAPTER III: THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT: BLACK CINEMATIC PRESIDENTS IN CRISIS
  • Fear of a Black President: The Birth of a Nation as Precursor
  • From Deep Impact to 2012: The Black President in Crisis
  • Modern Day Ben Camerons: White Heroes in Black Presidential Films
• CHAPTER IV: THIS COUNTRY IS UPSIDE DOWN! THE ABSURD BLACK CINEMATIC PRESIDENT
  • Not Exactly Ideal Presidents: Rufus Jones for President and Idiocracy
  • “That Ain’t Right”: Black Cinematic Presidents and the Act of “Laughing Mad”
• EPILOGUE: POLITICS AS USUAL: BLACK CINEMATIC PRESIDENTS IN THE OBAMA AGE
• WORKS CITED

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Being Amerasian in South Korea: Purebloodness, Multiculturalism, and Living Alongside the U.S. Military Empire

The Ohio State University
June 2012
96 pages

Yuri W. Doolan

Honors Research Thesis Presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation with Honors Research Distinction in History in the undergraduate colleges of The Ohio State University

This thesis focuses on the history of U.S. neo-colonialism in South Korea through the lens of mixed race Amerasians—a population generally regarded and understood to have been produced through the liaisons between South Korean camptown women and American military personnel. In this project, I discuss the historical and contemporary status and identity of mixed race individuals in South Korea as the country’s national ideology evolved from an embrace of purebloodedness to multiculturalism. My analysis is chronologically framed around intercountry adoption policies in the years immediately following the Korean War (formed to excise the presence of mixed race GI babies from South Korea) and state-sponsored multicultural policy initiatives beginning in 2005. I research the production of Amerasian subjectivity and identity in South Korea over the past six decades through an analysis of pureblooded constructions of Koreanness, U.S. militarism and camptowns, androcentric Nationality and Family Laws, contemporary multicultural policy formations, and the popular culture and lived experiences of Amerasians in South Korea.

I also offer a comparative analysis of a new mixed race group in South Korea called Kosian (Korean/Asian). I critique multiculturalism in South Korea, which targets this emerging Kosian demographic, arguing that multicultural policy is primarily one of assimilation rather than a recognition of cultural and racial differences. I suggest that the marginal status of mixed race Amerasians has not changed much since the Korean War and is linked to South Korea’s persistent status as a neo-colony of the United States—a history of national shame and subjugation that Amerasians have come to symbolize. Primary sources for this study include legal and government documents, popular media representations, interviews with pureblooded Koreans, as well as oral histories of Amerasians that I conducted in South Korea during the summer of 2011.

Table of Contents

• Preface
• Introduction
• A Note on Terminology
• Chapter One
  • Introduction
  • Pureblooded Constructions of Race
  • The G.I. Baby and Camptowns
  • Intercountry Adoption
  • Gendered Citizenship and Korean Family Law
  • Conclusion
• Chapter Two
  • Introduction
  • A “Multicultural” Era
  • White Privilege in Contemporary South Korean Society
  • Conclusion
• Conclusion
• Bibliography

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What Can We Learn about White Privilege and Racism from the Experiences of White Mothers Parenting Biracial Children?

Wilfrid Laurier University
2008
175 pages

Shannon Cushing

A THESIS Submitted to the Department of Psychology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for Master of Arts Degree in Community Psychology

Despite progress in the movement toward anti-racism, racism remains a problem in Canada. While the presence of racism and the problem of racism are recognized by Canadian society, there is still a long way to go before racism and white privilege are eliminated. In the present study, I apply Community Psychology values to the examination of an as-yet relatively unexamined minority population: white mothers of biracial children. Guided by epistemological views that place my research within the critical and social constructivist research paradigms, I explore my research question, “How can the experiences of white mothers parenting biracial children inform us about white privilege and racism?”, using a grounded theory analysis of self-reported experiences of six white mothers living in Greater Waterloo Region, in Ontario, Canada. My informants participated in semi-structured individual and small group interviews and completed a photographic journaling project. While all the mothers were united by their common experience of being white women parenting biracial children, they represented a diverse range of socioeconomic classes and family compositions, and were parenting children whose fathers came from several ethnic backgrounds. Through my analysis of my informants’ stories, I identified a new perspective of the “experience of racism” in society. In addition, my findings led to the development of a theoretical framework that merges white privilege and racism into inseparable entities and fosters critical understanding of how racism is perpetuated in Canadian society. Recommendations for additional contributions to the anti-racism movement are suggested.

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Learning to be different: A white mother of biracial children experiences racism

University of St. Thomas (Minnesota)
December 2004
194 pages
Publication Number: AAT 3154007
ISBN: 9780496146376

Jennifer Ann Greer Johnson

A Dissertation Submitted to the Education Faculty of the University of St. Thomas in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements of the Degree Doctor of Education

This qualitative autoethnographic study examines the experiences of an inner-city assistant principal in a multiracial high school who is also a Caucasian mother of biracial children of African American and Caucasian descent. The narratives throughout this study illustrate encounters with prejudice, discrimination, and racism in public and private places. The stories are analyzed through the lens of racial formation theory and Critical Race Theory. Results indicate that the identity of a mother of biracial children is complex as she straddles two cultures, that of the black and white community. An Ethnic Identity Development Model illustrates the struggles of rearing biracial children while working in an urban high school. This autoethnographic study illustrates the mother’s identity shift as she learns to be different in both worlds.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• ABSTRACT
• LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES.
• PREFACE
• CHAPTER 1: JUMPING THE BROOM
  • A journey into difference
  • Evolution of the study
  • Autoethnography
  • Data collection and analysis
  • Validity and ethics
  • Organization of the Dissertation
• CHAPTER 2: REVIEW OF LITERATURE
  • Interracial Relationships
  • Biracial Identity
  • Class Issues
  • Racial Formation Theory
  • Critical Race Theory
• CHAPTER 3: AWAKENINGS
  • Is she adopted?
  • Their father is Black.
  • Children are not supposed to be out in the sun
  • Intraracial Discrimination
  • We can only choose one
  • Would you buy a warranty on a Cadillac?
  • Another Awakening
  • Is that your child?
  • I will never be with another white woman again!
  • His mouth fell open, and he stared at my children and then at me
• CHAPTER 4: HAIR: POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF RACE
  • What is this, the next Shirley Temple?
  • Do you use this on your hair?
  • I decided that you need to do something with Jacqueline’s hair
  • Everyone stopped and stared at me
  • Shampoo and conditioner for one colored girl
  • I have to get their hair “right” in the eyes of the Black community
• CHAPTER 5: WILL MY CHILDREN HAVE A PLACE AT THE TABLE?
  • I was raised in a strict Catholic household
  • The Archbishop’s Letter
  • Racism is a sin
  • For my children’s sake, great changes need to be made
• CHAPTER 6: WILL MY CHILDREN BE LEFT BEHIND?
  • Appointment as Assistant Principal
  • “Are those your children?”
  • I circled ‘White’ even though my son does not look White
  • “She does not like you”
  • “So you’re kickin it with a black man”
  • You’re just picking on me because I am Black
  • Does anyone speak another language?
  • Mama, will you still like us even though your skin is white and mine is brown?
  • Let’s not just give people the boots, let’s give them the straps
  • Most of the International Baccalaureate students are white
• CHAPTER 7: A MOTHER’S STRUGGLE
  • “Second-Hand Racism”
  • Racism at school and the workplace
  • Rearing my children
  • Ethnic Identity Development Model
• REFERENCES
• BIBLIOGRAPHY

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

• TABLE 1 Changing Racial Combinations of Interracial Marriages in Minnesota.
• TABLE 2 My Journey in a Racialized Society
• FIGURE 1 2000 Census Self-Identification Questionnaire
• FIGURE 2 Ethnic Identity Development Model (Fluid)

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“Incestuous Sheets” and “Adulterate Beasts”: Incest and Miscegenation in Early Modern Drama

University of Michigan
2011
199 pages

Kentston D. Bauman

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (English Language and Literature)

This dissertation explores the centrality of incest and miscegenation in the early modern cultural imaginary. Incest, which occurs with surprising frequency in the drama of the period but with equally surprising scarcity in everyday social life, is frequently invoked in conjunction with miscegenation in all of its various forms (social, religious, ethnic/cultural/racial). As boundary phenomena – the two extreme ends of the spectrum of sexual alliance – incest and miscegenation served as powerful and surprisingly flexible dramatic tropes, providing a useful means of interrogating the social processes that create, instill, and redefine acceptable choices in sexual and social partners. I divide the project into two sections. In the first, I investigate the interplay among incest, social miscegenation, and social mobility. Looking at Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy and Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, I explore how these issues become filtered through the figure of the incestuous widow, whose treatment serves as both a critique of aristocratic hierarchies and a means of promoting sexual and social mobility. The second, which examines the relations between incest and ethnic miscegenation, centers on Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus. Noting that Shakespeare takes the incestuous rape in Ovid’s tale of Philomel and replaces it with the miscegenistic rape of Lavinia, I investigate how this transposition interrogates the family’s relationship to itself and to the state. I situate my readings of these plays in a socio-political context that takes into account two different, yet intricately connected, cultural issues: the painful transition of a society still highly stratified along feudal lines to one suddenly faced with the possibilities for radical economic and political advancement; and the anxieties of a culture just as suddenly exposed, through exploration and trade, to other geographic and cultural realms. The attempt to navigate the new terrain opened up by changes in the social, political, and geographic climate, I argue, disrupts long-established institutions – the family, marriage, hierarchical stratification. Significantly, the tensions between incest and miscegenation so apparent in the period’s drama express, in part, cultural anxieties fostered by a new social openness combined with a newly heightened sense of an enticing yet threatening Other.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• DEDICATION
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• CHAPTER
  • Introduction. Incest and Miscegenation on the Early Modern Stage
  • One. The Incestuous Widow and Social Mobility in Early Modern Drama
  • Two. Aristocratic Endogamy and Social Miscegenation in Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy and Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi
  • Three. “Unkind and Careless of Your Own”: Incest, Miscegenation, and Family in Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus
  • Epilogue. Looking Forward: A Pattern for Reading
• BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Drawn in Bloodlines: Blood, Pollution, Identity, and Vampires in Japanese Society

University of Texas, Austin
May 2012
117 pages

Benjamin Paul Miller

Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts

This thesis is an examination of the evolution of blood ideology, which is to say the use of blood as an organizing metaphor, in Japanese society. I begin with the development of blood as a substance of significant in the eighth century and trace its development into a metaphor for lineage in the Tokugawa period. I discuss in detail blood’s conceptual and rhetorical utility throughout the post-Restoration period, first examining its role in establishing a national subjectivity in reference to both the native intellectual tradition of the National Learning and the foreign hegemony of race. I then discuss the rationalization of popular and national bloodlines under the auspices of the popular eugenics movement, and the National Eugenics Bill. Then, I discuss the racialization this conception of blood inflicted on the Tokugawa era Outcastes, and its persistent consequences. Through the incongruity of the Outcastes ability to “pass” despite popular expectations that their blood pollution was visibly demonstrative, I introduce the notion of blood anxiety. Next, I address the conceptual and rhetorical role blood played in articulating Japan’s empire and imperial ambitions, focusing on the Theory of Common Descent and the Investigation of Global Policy with the Yamato Race as Nucleus report. I follow this discussion with a detailed examination of the postwar reconceptualization of national subjectivity, which demands native bloodlines and orthodox cultural expressions, and which effectively de-legitimized minority populations. As illustration of this point, I describe the impact of this new subjectivity on both the Zainichi and the Nikkeijin in lengthy case studies. Finally, I conclude this examination with a consideration of blood ideology’s representation in popular culture. I argue that the subgenre of vampire media allegorizes many of the assumptions and anxieties surrounding blood that have developed since the Restoration, and demonstrates the imprint of blood ideology on contemporary society.

Table of Contents

• List of Tables
• Introduction
  • Blood Matters
  • Thesis Organization
• Chapter One: The Development of Blood as an Organizing Metaphor
  • The Blood Bowl Sutra and the Feminization of Blood Pollution
  • Sōtō Zen and the Dissemination of Blood Determinism
  • Lineage and a New Vocabulary
• Chapter Two: Bloodlines in Modern Japanese Society
  • A State Without a Nation
  • The Formulation of the Family-State
  • Civil Code and Constitution
  • Eugenics and the Rationalization of Bloodlines
    • Race, Science, and the Introduction of Eugenic Thought
    • Popular Eugenics
    • State Eugenics
  • From Outcastes to Burakumin
    • Outcastness as Pollution
    • The Racialization of the Outcastes
    • Infiltration and Blood Anxiety
• Chapter Three: The Empire
  • Blood-Kinship and Overseas Expansion
  • Imperial Manifesto
• Chapter Four – Postwar Reconceptualization and the De-legitimization of Minority Populations
  • The Aesthetics of Ethnic Homogeneity
  • Blood and Culture
  • Zainichi
    • Colonial Koreans and Their Subjective Shift
    • Hereditary Foreigners
  • The Nikkeijin
    • Immigration and the Racially Homogenous State
    • The Sakoku-Kaikoku Debate
    • 1990 Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act
    • Culture Clash
• Chapter Five – Blood Ideology in the Popular Media
  • The Vampire Boom
  • The Vampire as Blood Allegory
• Bibliography
• Vita

Read the entire dissertation here.