Mixed Race Studies

Mixed race, mixed racism and mental health (Sponsored by the National Mental Health Development Unit)

Thursday, 2009-10-29, The Kings Fund, Central London

People in Harmony is offering a rare opportunity to hear from a range of experts about the impact of mental health on young people and families of mixed race. The keynote speakers will be Professor Suman Fernando, London Metropolitan University, formerly a consultant psychiatrist in the NHS and now a highly respected international academic and advisor on mental health and race; and Melba Wilson, Director of Equalities at the National Mental Health Development Unit.

For more information, click here.

Friendship choices of multiracial adolescents: Racial homophily, blending, or amalgamation?

Social Science Research
2007
Number 36
pages 633-653

Jamie Mihoko Doyle
Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology
University of Pennsylvania

Grace Kao, Professor of Sociology, Education, and Asian American Studies
University of Pennsylvania

Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), we utilize the concepts of homophily, blending, and amalgamation to describe the possible friendship patterns of multiracials.  Homophily occurs when multiracials are most likely to choose other multiracials as friends. Blending occurs when friendship patterns of multiracials are somewhere in-between those of their monoracial counterparts. Amalgamation consists of friendship patterns that are similar to one of their monoracial counterparts. All groups exhibit signs of amalgamation such that non-white multiracials resemble Blacks, and White multiracials resemble whites except for Black-White multiracials. Black-Whites, Asian-Whites, and Asian-Blacks also exhibit signs of blending, while only Native American multiracials show signs of homophily. Multiracials have different experiences depending on their specific racial composition, and while they seem to bridge the distance between racial groups, their friendship patterns also fall along Black and White lines.

Introduction

In Robert E. Park’s seminal essay in 1928, he argues that a multiracial person lives in “two worlds, in both of which he [or she] is more or less a stranger,” (Park, 1928, p. 893).  This idea, often referred to as The Marginal Man Theory, has dominated sociological thinking about multiracials and their position in the racial structure of the United States and elsewhere. In the new millennium where multiracial identities are more prevalent and are officially recognized by the 2000 US Census, one emerging question is how multiracial people might self-identify in the modern racial landscape. Do they remain in the racial borderlands or act as a bridge between their two or more racial groups, as Park and Stonequist suggest, or do they simply assimilate into one of their monoracial counterparts?

To address this question, we investigate the extent to which self-identified multiracials are integrated into single-race groups by examining their best friend choices during adolescence. We know that racial groups are salient in part because peer groups tend to be racially homogeneous. Friendship choice offers a gauge of the social distance between groups; best friends, in particular, show with whom people feel the closest identification and greatest sense of acceptance.

Our paper proceeds as follows. We first delineate the specific contributions of previous research, focusing on the limited literature on multiracials and research on the determinants of peer selection. Then, drawing on key points from selected literature, we sketch our theoretical approach to this study and outline our hypotheses. We then describe our data, the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). The survey instrument not only allows individuals to check two or more races, but unlike other datasets, provides linkages to the respondent’s friendship network, making it possible to directly examine survey responses by the respondent’s friends. Race of both the respondent and his/her best friend is self-reported, reflecting the racial identity of the respondent as well as his/her best friend. Lastly, we estimate logistic models using Generalized Estimating Equations (GEE) to examine the actual friendship choices of multiracial youth, taking into account the opportunities for interaction…

Read the entire article here.

Are Racial Identities of Multiracials Stable? Changing Self-Identification Among Single and Multiple Race Individuals

Social Psychology Quarterly
Volume 70, Number 4 (December 2007)
Pages 405–423
DOI: 10.1177/019027250707000409

Jamie Mihoko Doyle
Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology
University of Pennsylvania

Grace Kao, Professor of Sociology, Education, and Asian American Studies
University of Pennsylvania

Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), we estimate the determinants and direction of change in individual racial identification among multiracial and monoracial adolescents as they transition to young adulthood. We find that while many multiracials subsequently identify as monoracials, sizable numbers of monoracials also subsequently become multiracials. Native American-whites appear to have the least stable identification. We find strong support that socioeconomic status, gender, and physical appearance shape the direction of change for multiracials, and that black biracials are especially compelled to identify as monoracial blacks.

Read or purchase the article here.

The Sociological Significance of President Barack Obama

The American Sociological Association
Mini-Symposium
San Francisco, California
2009-08-08 through 2009-08-09

The historic campaign and election of Barack Obama constitutes a compelling and timely context for examining the program theme. In response, the 2009 ASA Program Committee and ASA President Patricia Hill Collins have organized a mini-symposium, a meeting within the general meeting, which explores how the historic election of Barack Obama might signal a new politics of community in action. The mini-symposium consists of a cluster of sessions that are scheduled throughout the meetings that will examine how the 2008 presidential election engages the conference theme The New Politics of Community.

1. Plenary Session. Why Obama Won (and What that Says About Democracy and Change in America)
2. Presidential Panel. A Defining Moment? Youth, Power and the Obama Phenomenon
3. Presidential Panel. Through the Lens of Gender, Race, Sexuality and Class: The Obama Family and the American Dream
4. Thematic Session. Understanding Democratic Renewal: The Movement to Elect Barack Obama
5. Thematic Session. The Future of Community Organizing During an Obama Presidency
6. Thematic Session. Asian-American Movements, Identities, and Politics: A New Racial Project in the Obama Years?
7. Professional Workshop. The Next Generation of MFP Scholarship in Service to Social Justice
8. Open Forum. Does the Obama Administration Need a Social Science Scholars Council?: A Public Forum

Read the entire description here.

Racial Thinking in the United States: Uncompleted Independence

University of Notre Dame Press
2004
376 pages
Cloth ISBN 10: 0-268-04103-2
Cloth ISBN 13: 978-0-268-04103-8
Paper ISBN 10: 0-268-04104-0
Paper ISBN 13: 978-0-268-04104-5

Edited by:

Paul Spickard, Professor of 20th Century U.S. Social and Cultural History
University of California, Santa Barbara

G. Reginald Daniel, Professor of Sociology
University of California at Santa Barbara

Racial Thinking in the United States is a comprehensive reassessment of the ideas that Americans have had about race. This useful book draws on the skills and perspectives of nine scholars from the fields of history, sociology, theology, American studies, and ethnic studies. In thirteen carefully crafted essays they tell the history of the American system of racial domination and of twentieth-century challenges to that racial hierarchy, from monoracial movements to the multiracial movement.

The collection begins with an introduction to how Americans have thought about race, ethnicity, and colonialism. The first section of the book describes the founding of racial thinking in the United States along the racial binary of Black and White, and compares that system to the quite different system that developed in Jamaica. Section two describes anomalies in the racial binary, such as the experiences of people of mixed race, and of states such as Texas, California, and Hawai`i, where large groups of non-Black and White racial groups co-exist. Part three analyzes five monoracial challenges to racial hierarchy: the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, the Chicana/o movement, the Asian American movement, Afrocentricity, and the White studies movement. Part four explores the multiracial movement which developed in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, and assesses whether it constitutes a successful challenge to racial hierarchy and binary racial thinking.

Racial Thinking in the United States provides excellent summaries of historical events and cultural movements, as well as analysis and criticism. It will be a welcome text for undergraduate courses in ethnic studies and American history.

Contributors: Paul Spickard, G. Reginald Daniel, Stephen A. Small, Hanna Wallinger, Lori Anne Pierce, Ralph Armbruster-Sandoval, William Wei, Michael C. Thornton, and Zipporah G. Glass.

Mix-d: uk (Photography Exhibition)

New Walk Museum & Art Gallery
2009-10-17 through 2009-12-31

Opening Times:
Monday – Friday: 10:00 – 19:00
Saturday: 10:00 – 17:00
Sunday: 11:00 – 17:00
Closed: 24th, 25th, 26th, 31st December.

Address:
53 New Walk
Leicester
LE1 7EA
 
Telephone: +44 (0)116 225 4900
Email: museums@leicester.gov.uk

Looking at mixed-race identities on its own terms. The exhibition puts people from mixed-race backgrounds at the centre of the discussion, looking at the subject through their shared, similar and sometimes completely different experiences.

The Multiple Heritage Project based in Manchester has developed this thought-provoking exhibition under the leadership of Bradley Lincoln.
 
The Multiple Heritage Project has successfully brought the thoughts and feelings of the mixed race community into the public realm.
 
Partnering a mixture of photographic images taken by Richard Milnes together with brief captions explaining how the individuals regard themselves.

A powerful view of many different faces, of different ages, describing their shared identity in very different ways.
 
Providing the viewer an understanding of how diverse mixed raced backgrounds are, and the terminology chosen by the people themselves. Prompting the viewer to question how they would like to be described.
 
Not just a collection of images, the exhibition places people of mixed race backgrounds at the centre of the discussion and looks at the subject through their shared, similar and different experiences.

Raiding The Gene Pool: The Social Construction of Mixed Race

Pluto Press an imprint of MacMillan Publishing
February 2002
ISBN: 978-0-7453-1764-9
ISBN10: 0-7453-1764-2
5.5 x 8.25 inches
224 pages

Jill Olumide, Researcher
Swansea University, School of Health Science

High profile ‘mixed race’ stars like Tiger Woods have brought the politics of identity into the mainstream. Jill Olumide argues that we must examine the contradictions inherent in the term “mixed race” in order to reach a fuller understanding of the variety in human experience and identity. Olumide demonstrates that there are distinctive features of mixed race experience that span time and place. By comparing contemporary experiences of mixed race, collected through interviews and workshops, with those of past populations in different parts of the world, she explains how its meaning alters with national boundary, historical context, class, gender and ethnicity. Showing how different communities are linked by social ambiguity, dependency and the denial of social space, she reveals that the underlying ideology is transformed by social, economic and political change. As mixed race groups across the world call for the right of self-definition, this book reveals that it is through understanding the plurality of the category of mixed race that we are best able to transcend the idea of ‘race’ and challenge the racial axes of social division. The book includes an examination of the folklore around racism and anti-racism, and the agencies through which ideologies of race are propagated, including social welfare groups, religious groups, scientific texts, and the family.

Table of Contents

• Preface
• 1. A Spell to Make Them Balance: Introduction
  • Dangerous Knowledge
  • Importance of Studying Mixed Race
  • Divisions
  • The Mixed race Condition
  • Group Identity
  • A Theory of Lived Experience
  • Social Construction: Passing and Being Passed
  • Passing As…
  • Structure of the book
• 2. The Hall of Mirrors: Structures of Power
  • The Babalawo and the Sociologist
  • Ideology and State
  • Ideology For What?
  • Race and its Provenance
  • Religion and Race
  • Ethnocentricism
  • European Roots of Race Thinking
  • Spain
  • Classification and Race
  • The Ground of Racialisation in the Capitalist Era
  • A Missing Link: Whiteness as a Racial Category
  • Ethnicity
  • Women and the Racial Order
  • Endpiece
• 3. Parallel Fictions: Writing About Mixed Race
  • ‘Natural’ Science.
  • Politics of Biology
  • Eugenics
  • UNESCO and Race
  • Stonequist and the Psychologising Tendency
  • Marginal Man Goes East
  • Mixed Race and the Question ofIdentity
  • Fostering Mixed Race
  • Proving that Mixed Race Works
  • The Mothers of Mixed Race Children
  • Counting Mixed Race
  • Multiracial People
  • Biographical and Autobiographical Writing
• 4. Changing Illusions: Some Excerpts From the History of Mixed race
  • Patterns in the Career of mixed Race
  • Heredity
  • Division and Exploitation:Slavocracy Style
  • White Women and Black Women
  • Losing Caste
  • Group Consciousness
  • Metissage
  • Divide and Rule
  • The Mixed Race Condition and Genocide
  • The Purposeful Concept of Mixed Race
• 5. Behind the Facade: Race Mixing
  • Background to the Research Population
  • Access and Understanding
  • Difference as Liberation
  • Bridging
  • No Positive Images
  • Parents Must Prepare
  • Knowledge is Power
  • The Wrong Parents
  • Set Up to Fail
  • Terminology
  • Not White/Black Enough
  • Siblings and step-Families
  • Conclusion
• 6. The Balancing Act: Race Separating
  • Sanctions
  • Rejection
  • ‘Looks’
  • Abuse
  • Reputation
  • Pigeonholing
  • Repatriation
  • Suspicion of Unsuitable Combinations
  • Strategies
  • Hold Hands and Stick Together
  • Challenge-Cure Ignorance
  • Hard Work and Rightful Expectations
  • The Goodness of Mixture
  • Pass Amongst
  • Imaginary Homelands
  • Keep Your Distance
  • Humour
• 7. The Very Foundation of Order: Social Origins of Mixed Race
  • Theorising Mixed race
  • Ethnic Leakage
  • The Slimy Category
  • Mixed race Undermines Black and White
  • Women and the Reproduction of Own-Kind
  • Family
  • Religion
  • Professionals
  • Welfare Professionals in Particular
  • Race Does Not Always Over-Determine Class
  • and Gender
  • The Need to Talk
• 8. Communities to Conjure With: Concluding Remarks
  • Five Features of Mixed Race Ideology
  • An Ambiguous Social Location
  • A Contested Site
  • A Measure of Induced Dependency is Inolved
  • It is a Conditional State
  • It is a Point of Articulation in the Ordering of Race Gender and Other Divisions
  • Emotional Subjects
  • Giving Voice to Mixed Race
• Notes
• Index

Mixed-Race, Post-Race: Gender, New Ethnicities and Cultural Practices

Berg Publisher
November 2003
212pp, 10 bw illus bibliog index
Paperback ISBN: 9781859737705
Hardback ISBN: 9781859737651
Ebook ISBN: 9781845205553

Suki Ali, Lecturer in Sociology
London School of Economics

Social scientists claim that we now live in a post-race society, where race has been replaced by ‘ethnicity’. Yet racism is endemic to British society and people often think in terms of black and white. With a marked rise in the number of children from mixed parentage, there is an urgent need to challenge simplistic understandings of ‘race’, nation and culture, and interrogate what it means to grow up in Britain and claim a ‘mixed’ identity.

Focusing on mixed-race and inter-ethnic families, this book not only explores current understandings of ‘race’, but it shows, using innovative research techniques with children, how we come to read race. What influence do photographs and television have on childrens ideas about ‘race’?  How do children use memories and stories to talk about racial differences within their own families?  How important is the home and domestic culture in achieving a sense of belonging? Ali also considers, through data gathered from teachers and parents, broader issues relating to the effectiveness of anti-racist and multicultural teaching in schools, and parental concerns over the social mobility and social acceptability of their children.

Rigorously researched, this book is the first to combine childrens accounts on ‘race’ and identity with contemporary cultural theory. Using fascinating case studies, it fills a major gap in this area and provides an original approach to writing on race.