Mixed Race Studies

Sexual Naturalization: Asian Americans and Miscegenation

Stanford University Press
2005
224 pages
Cloth ISBN-10: 0804747288; ISBN-13: 9780804747288
Paper ISBN-10: 0804747296; ISBN-13: 9780804747295

Susan Koshy, Associate Professor of English and Asian American Studies
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Sexual Naturalization offers compelling new insights into the racialized constitution of American nationality. In the first major interdisciplinary study of Asian-white miscegenation from the late nineteenth to the end of the twentieth century, Koshy traces the shifting gender and racial hierarchies produced by antimiscegenation laws, and their role in shaping cultural norms. Not only did these laws foster the reproduction of the United States as a white nation, they were paralleled by extraterritorial privileges that facilitated the sexual access of white American men to Asian women overseas. Miscegenation laws thus turned sex acts into race acts and engendered new meanings for both.

Koshy argues that the cultural work performed by narratives of white-Asian miscegenation dramatically transformed the landscape of desire in the United States, inventing new objects and relations of desire that established a powerful hold over U.S. culture, a capture of imaginative space that was out of all proportion to the actual numbers of Asian residents.

Read an excerpt of chapter 1 here.

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part One: Sexual Orients and the American National Imaginary
  • Mimic Modernity: “Madame Butterfly” and the Erotics of Informal Empire
  • Eugenic Romances of American Nationhood
• Part Two: Engendering the Hybrid Nation
  • Unincorporated Territories of Desire: Hypercorporeality and Miscegenation in Carlos Bulosan’s Writings
  • Sex Acts as Assimilation Acts: Female Power and Passing in Bharati Mukherjee’s Wife and Jasmine
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index

Mixed Blood: Intermarriage and Ethnic Identity in Twentieth-Century America

University of Wisconsin Press
December 1989
544 pages
6 x 9, 4 tables
Paperback ISBN-10: 0-299-12114-3
Paperback ISBN-13: 978-0-299-12114-3

Paul R. Spickard, Professor of History
University of California, Santa Barbara

Named an “Outstanding Book on Human Rights in the United States” by the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights.

More Than Black? Humanitis Series

University of California Television
February 2003
00:50:32

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

Introduced by:

Paul R. Spickard, Professor of History
University of California, Santa Barbara

In the United States, anyone with even a trace of African American ancestry has been considered Black. Even as the twenty-first century opens, a racial hierarchy still prevents people of color, including individuals of mixed race, from enjoying the same privileges as Euro-Americans. In his book, G. Reginald Daniel argues that we are at a cross-roads, with members of a new multiracial movement pointing the way toward equality. Presented as part of the Humanitas Lecture Series at UC Santa Barbara. Series: “Humanitas” [2/2003] [Humanities] [Show ID: 7094]

G. Reginald Daniel discusses his book, More Than Black? Multiracial Identity and the New Racial Order.

Negotiating Social Contexts: Identities of Biracial College Women

Information Age Publishing
2007
79 pages
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-59311-596-8
eBook ISBN: 9781607527107

Edited by:

Andra M. Basu, Dean of Adult and Professional Studies
Albright College, Reading, Pennsylvania

This book examines the identification choices of a group of biracial college women and explores how these identifications relate to their choices and constructions of different social contexts. It is a qualitative study that draws on recent psychological literature, as well as personal interviews and focus groups with a group of biracial college women. The book includes 1) a review of the relevant literature concerning biracial individuals, 2) a discussion of some of the unique issues facing researchers who work with biracial populations, and 3) an indepth examination of the relationship between identity and different social contexts for a group of biracial women. The book addresses issues critical to educators, counselors, policy makers and researchers who work with biracial students, as well as biracial individuals and their families. For example, it shows how, for this group of biracial college women, identity choices did influence their choices and constructions of social contexts, particularly at the school that they all attended. Yet while identification choices did influence their perceptions about their social contexts, other factors such as social barriers also influenced them. Family members played a role in their identification choices as well, but siblings were found to be more influential than parents. In addition, the book demonstrates how educators and biracial mentors had a significant impact on this particular group of biracial women. The implications of these findings for parents, educators and future researchers are considered, as the number of biracial individuals living in the United States continues to grow.

Working with Multiracial Students: Critical Perspectives on Research and Practice

Information Age Publishing
2006
Paperback: 1-59311-250-5
Hardcover: 1-59311-127-4

Edited By:

Kendra R. Wallace
University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Working with Mixed Heritage Students offers a collection of writings that bridges the social science and educational literature related to mixed heritage identity development and schooling in diverse contexts. As such, it is the first book of its kind to provide a direct focus on multiracial/ethnic identity and formal education in the United States based on the scholarship of educational researchers. The two common threads linking the chapters are: the flexible, yet situated nature of ethnic and racial identities among mixed heritage students; and the importance of theorizing social contexts when interpreting and representing identity, community, and belonging. In addition to exploring general themes of identity development, Working with Mixed Heritage Students addresses theoretical and methodological issues in conducting research on topics related to mixed heritage students, as well as implications for teacher preparation and educational practice. Ultimately, the authors brought together in this volume share a focus on recently mixed heritage students of first, or second, or third generation multiracial and multiethnic descent. This diversity of perspectives on such a complex topic creates a tension within the book, one that naturally emerges through interdisciplinary collaboration. But it is hoped that this tension is just one of many that will lead to further reflection, dialogue, and action by researchers and educators working with like populations.

Counseling Multiracial Families

SAGE Publications
1999
208 pages
Paperback ISBN: 9780761915911
Hardcover ISBN: 9780761915904

Bea Wehrly, Professor Emeritus of Counselor Education
Western Illinois University

Kelley R. Kenney, Professor of Counseling & Human Services
Kutztown University, Kutztown, Pennsylvania
Multicultural Education and Consulting, Sinking Spring, Pennsylvania

Mark Kenney, Adjunct Professor
Kutztown University, Kutztown, Pennsylvania
Multicultural Education and Consulting, Sinking Spring, Pennsylvania

Multiracial families (families in which one member of the family has a different racial heritage than the other member(s) of the family) comprise a rapidly growing U.S. population. Counseling Multiracial Families addresses this population that has been neglected in the counseling literature. In the first chapter, readers are given a comprehensive history of racial mixing in the United States special needs and issues of multiracial families as well as special strengths of multiracial families are addressed. Challenges of interracially married couples are explored as are the social and cultural issues related to parenting and child rearing of multiracial children in today’s society. The results of biracial identity development research are translated into counseling practice with the children, adolescents, and adults in multiracial families.

Table of Contents

• Historical Overview
• Multiracial Individuals, Interracial Couples and Families
• Interracial Marriage
• Current Conditions and Challenges
• Multiracial Individuals
• Issues across the Lifespan
• Other Multiracial Families
• Intervention and Treatment of Multiracial Individuals, Couples and Families
• Case Studies

Phillip Handy examines how children form racial identities in multiracial families

Research Highlights
Rutgers University
2009-04-22

The election of America’s first mixed-race president has created new interest in what it’s like to grow up as a multiracial child. A Rutgers senior majoring in sociology and psychology has already received input from about 930 multiracial people from across the country to help provide some answers.

Phillip Handy, who grew up in Howell and has a white mother and an African-American father, was actually pondering the phenomenon before the presidential campaign ever began. In 2006, he helped form an organization called Fusion, the Rutgers Union of Mixed People, aimed at uniting people who identify with, or are interested in, the multiracial experience. A year ago, Handy was included in a New York Times article and video about mixed race.

Handy’s early interest in the field has now blossomed into academic research, which he will discuss in a panel presentation at the Aresty Undergraduate Research Symposium called Race and Gender in the Family: A Mixed-Race Perspective.

Handy’s work explores how the strength of the relationship between a multiracial child and his or her parent of the same gender impacts racial identity and awareness. He hypothesizes that the children closer to the same-gender parent will gravitate toward that parent’s characteristics. In addition, he predicts that this effect will be more prominent in families where gender roles are more clearly defined…

Read the entire article here.