Mixed Race Studies

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

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

Edited by

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

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

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

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

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction

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

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

Reading the Dougla Body: Mixed-race, Post-race, and Other Narratives of What it Means to be Mixed in Trinidad

Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies
Volume 3, Issue 1 (March 2008)
pages 1-31
DOI: 10.1080/17442220701865820

Sarah England, Associate Professor of Anthropology
Soka University of America, Aliso Viejo, California

In recent years there has been a great deal of scholarship addressing the ‘mixed-race’ question in the Americas. Much of this literature is concerned with documenting the experiences of mixed-race peoples and exploring how their existence alters racial ideologies and racial formations in their respective societies. This essay contributes to that literature through an analysis of the experience of mixed-race peoples in Trinidad and Tobago. Through interviews with people of Indo-Trinidadian and Afro-Trinidadian parentage (douglas) I show how the dougla experience both challenges traditional ways that race is understood ontologically, and is shaped by those same ideologies. I further examine the place that douglas see themselves as occupying in a society where racial mixing is both heralded as the essence of the national character and seen as threatening to the traditional division between Indo-Trinidadians and Afro-Trinidadians.

Read or purchase the article here.

Multiracial Identity in the Post-Civil Rights Era

Social Identities
Volume 11, Issue 5 (September 2005)
pages 531-549
DOI: 10.1080/13504630500408164

Gino Michael Pellegrini, Adjunct Assistant Professor of English
Pierce College, Woodland Hills, California

This article, which utilizes personal experience as well as other perspectives and theories on race and mixed race, suggests that multiracial identity is a manifestation of recent date that differs from traditional conceptions and descriptions of mixed race that conform to the dichotomous and hierarchical logic of the binary racial system. As delineated in this article, the emergence of multiracial identity is properly understood in the context of the post-civil rights era and has been coextensive with multiculturalism, the proliferation of information technologies, and with the emergence of the multiracial political movement in the 1990s. Further, this article suggests that multiracial identity is also in part a by-product of multicultural American universities of the 1980s and 1990s. That is, multiracial identity has to a certain extent taken shape in reaction to the rigid ethnoracial boundaries and discourses that are imposed on mixed race students in the multicultural academy.

Read or purchase the article here.

Mixed and Multiracial in Trinidad and Honduras: Rethinking Mixed-race Identities in Latin America and the Caribbean

Ethnic and Racial Studies
Volume 33, Issue 2 (2010)
pages 195-213
DOI: 10.1080/01419870903040169

Sarah England, Associate Professor of Anthropology
Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences
Soka University of America, Aliso Viejo, California

The purpose of this paper is to explore what it means to be mixed in Latin America and the Caribbean and to ask if mixing in the ‘South’ can always be understood within the so-called racial continuum as opposed to the racial binary of the ‘North’. I do this through a comparison of two potentially mixed-race identities, the afro-indigenous Garifuna of Honduras and peoples of East Indian and African mixture (douglas) in Trinidad. Through this comparison I show that in both Honduras and Trinidad classification of mixed-race peoples can follow the logic of the racial binary or of the racial continuum depending on the historical context and the particular mix. I also discuss the way that mixed-race identities can sometimes be radical critiques of state racial projects of pluralism and at other times they can be the basis of state racial projects meant to obfuscate racial pluralism.

In his 1967 book, The Two Variants in Caribbean Race Relations, Harry Hoetnik argued thai the main gauge of racism within a society is not so much the degree to which different racial groups are integrated on the level of work and social interaction, but rather the degree to which inter-racial mixing (sexual, reproductive) is accepted and gradations between racial categories are recognized. Based on this premise he set out to characterize the racial systems of the Caribbean, within which he included the United Stales South and Brazil. He argued thai (here are basically three different systems: 1) the North American variant, characterized by a high degree of segmentation between black and white based on strict definitions of whiteness and rules of hypodescent that relegate any mixed people into the non-white…

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An Examination of Social Science Literature Pertaining to Multiracial Identity: A Historical Perspective

Journal of Multicultural Social Work
Volume 6, Issue 1 & 2
August 1997
pages 117 – 138
DOI: 10.1300/J285v06n01_08

Jack S. Kahn, Professor of Psychology
Curry College

Jacqueline Denmon
Department of Anthropology
College of William and Mary

This article traces the history of the construct, multiracial identity, within social science literature. This research evolves from an emphasis on demonstrating the inferiority of multiracial individuals to understanding their phenomenological experiences. Over time, the emphasis seems to shift from categorizing by race to a focus on ethnicity. The method of inquiring about racial identity appears to have shifted from behavioral observation to self-report. Empirical research examining this phenomenon also seems to become more methodologically rigorous over time. Historically, the struggle to understand multiracial individuals as either marginal or healthy may have been more the result of ethnocentric beliefs on the part of the researchers rather than the identification process of multiracial individuals. It is additionally urged that further research continue to explore this often overlooked and misrepresented subgroup.

Using the extended case method to explore identity in a multiracial context

Ethnic and Racial Studies
Volume 32, Number 9
November 2009
pp. 1599-1618
DOI: 10.1080/01419870902749117

Gina Miranda Samuels, Assistant Professor
School of Social Service Administration
University of Chicago

Increasingly, multiracial research calls upon scholars to reconcile and clarify their stances on race as a biological versus a social construct and to situate their theorizing of racialized identities historically, sociopolitically and as experienced subjectively. While multiracial scholarship offers both critiques against and support for a so-called ‘multiracial’ identity, few have outlined the methodological implications of pursuing inquiry responsive to this diverse body of work. This paper highlights the methodological challenges posed by empirical inquiry pursuing nonessentialist but structurally and subjectively grounded analyses of multiracial identity. The extended case method (Burawoy 1998) is introduced as one approach that epistemologically reflects these conceptual challenges in the field. Three elements of its application within a study of black-white multiracial adoptees are offered: 1) use of fluid concepts of race and identity; 2) conducting multi-systemic analyses; and 3) using interpretative findings to extend existing theory.

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White Mothers Negotiating Race and Ethnicity in the Mothering of Biracial, Black-White Adolescents

Journal of Ethnic And Cultural Diversity in Social Work
Volume 14, Issue 3 & 4
June 2006
pages 125 – 156
DOI: 10.1300/J051v14n03_07

Margaret O’Donoghue, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Social Work
School of Social Work, New York University

Eleven White mothers of biracial, Black/White adolescents were interviewed in a qualitative study to determine whether and how these mothers socialize their children to issues of race and ethnicity. The majority of the women were raising their children with a focus exclusively on an African American culture and not including elements of an ethnicity germane to the mother. Their children identified as biracial privately and Black publicly. The specific strategies utilized by the women to foster ecological competence are discussed.