Mixed Race Studies

CAMD Scholars Take On Variety of Complex Racial Issues in MLK Jr. Day Presentations

Phillips Academy
Andover, Massachusetts
2008-01-28

Sally Holm

January 28, 2008 — Simone Hill ’08 had good reason to be excited last Monday. Chosen as a featured speaker for one of Phillips Academy’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day special events, the CAMD scholar presented her research on diversity, whose trail led her back more than 150 years into the dust of family history. And in the audience were not just her peers and teachers: her parents, Everett Hill ’77 and Dr. Yasmin Tyler-Hill from Atlanta, and her grandparents, from tiny Ridgeland, S.C., where the trail ended, were right there as well.

…The CAMD Scholars program was created last spring by the Office of Community and Multicultural Development (CAMD) to allow students to apply for research grants to pursue topics in multiculturalism during their summer vacations from school. Funded by the Abbot Academy Foundation, the scholarship provides a small stipend and a faculty advisor to each student selected. Three scholars presented during the fall term and three others spoke on MLK Jr. Day….

CAMD Scholar Britney Achin ’08 began her session with an exercise meant to educate her audience on the difficulties biracial teenagers face with identity in today’s social milieu. She asked everyone to answer the question “What am I?” in a brief phrase, then share it with a small group in the audience. Most seemed to find it difficult to capture complex selves—especially the offspring of interracial parents, as Achin is herself. Her research project was titled “I Am: A Study of Self Identification among Biracial Teenagers.” Mundra served as her advisor.

Achin surveyed hundreds of biracial adolescents through MySpace and Facebook, personal connections, and random interviews, asking probing personal questions of how they viewed themselves. She found that their responses clustered into five categories of identity: “Monoracials,” who defined themselves predominantly by a primary peer group; “Bidentifiers,” who identify confidently with more than one racial identity; “Sliders,” who were able to identify with whatever group in which they found themselves; “Raceless,” who refused to identify with any race, but prefer race-neutral descriptors such as “American”; and “Partial People,” who identify themselves as half a person, mostly as half-white, rarely as half-black.

Achin compared relative levels of turmoil and self-doubt, as well as confidence and self-knowledge, reflected by each group. She said she found that, without fail, PA students offered the most insightful responses. “I believe that speaks very highly of the work done by the school to make us aware of ourselves and others—our differences and similarities, racial and otherwise,” Achin said…

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School counselors’ perceptions of biracial students’ functioning

Columbia University
September 2010
178 pages
Publication Number: AAT 3400544
ISBN: 9781109673753

Mai Margaret Kindaichi

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy under the Executive Committee of The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Columbia University

The number of biracial school-aged youth has continued to increase dramatically (Jones & Smith, 2001), and has drawn timely attention to the extent to which practicing school counselors address biracial youths’ concerns in a culturally competent manner. This study examined the perceptions of a nationally-based random sample of 203 White school counselors who provided their assessment of a students functioning (i.e., GAF) and case conceptualizations (i.e., multicultural case conceptualization ability [MCCA]; Ladany et al., 1997) in response to a summary of a fictitious student. In the summary, the student was identified as White, Black, Asian, Biracial Black-White, Biracial Black- Asian, or Biracial Asian-White; the student summaries were identical less the racial background of the identified student. Potential differences in assessments of students’ functioning and inclusion of racial-cultural information in case conceptualizations were examined across the six student conditions, which yielded non-significant results. Nearly 89% and 93% of participants failed to address race or culture in their conceptualizations of students’ presenting concerns and treatment conceptualizations, respectively. Additionally, school counselors’ denial of racism (i.e., color-blind racial attitudes) was shown to moderate their inclusion of racial-cultural information in their treatment conceptualizations across students’ racial backgrounds. Implications of the findings, future research directions, and multicultural education in school counseling curricula are discussed.

Table of Contents

• CHAPTER I
  • INTRODUCTION
    • Multicultural Counseling Competence in School Counselors
    • Color-Blind Racial Attitudes
    • Attitudes toward Multiracial Youth
    • Overview of the Dissertation Project
• CHAPTER II
  • LITERATURE REVIEW
    • Multicultural Counseling Competence in School Settings
    • Explanation of Terms
    • Research concerning Biracial Individuals
      • Unique Challenges in Research Concerning Biracial and Multiracial Individuals
      • Perceptions of Biracial and Multiracial Individuals and Interracial Marriage
      • Empirical Literature on Biracial Adolescents’ Psychological Well-Being and Adjustment
      • Summary Models of Biracial Identity Development and Identity Resolution
      • School Professionals’ Attitudes toward Biracial and Multiracial Children and Adolescents
    • Color-Blind Racial Attitudes
    • Summary and Research Questions
• CHAPTER III
  • METHOD
    • Research Goals
    • Participants and Sampling Method
    • Sample
    • Instruments
• CHAPTER IV
  • RESULTS:
    • Preliminary Analyses
    • Main Analyses
      • Question 1
      • Question 2
      • Question 3
      • Question 4
      • Question 5
    • Summary
• CHAPTER V
  • DISCUSSION
    • Limitations
    • Implications for Education and Training
    • Future Research Directions
• REFERENCES
• APPENDICES
• APPENDIX A. SAMPLE SURVEY PACKET
• APPENDIXB. COLOR-BLIND RACIAL ATTITUDES SUBSCALES
• APPENDIX C. ATTITUDES TOWARD MULTIRACIAL CHILDREN CODING
• APPENDIX D. CODING SCHEME FOR MULTICULTURAL CASE CONCEPTUALIZATION ABILITY

List of Tables

• Table 1. Summary of Stage Progressions in Linear Biracial Identity Development Models
• Table 2. Demographic Characteristics of Participants
• Table 3. Participants’ Demographic Information across Student Conditions
• Table 4. Participants’ Descriptions of School Counseling Settings
• Table 5. Mean GAF, MCCA Etiology, and MCCA Treatment Scores across Student Conditions and Participants’ Race/Ethnicity
• Table 6. Mean CoBRAS Subscale and AMCS Scores by Student Condition and Participants’ Race/Ethnicity
• Table 7. Correlations among White School Counselors’ Experience, Race-Related Attitudes, Case Conceptualization Ability, and GAF Scores
• Table 8. Analysis of Variance in GAF by Student Conditions (N=201)
• Table 9. Hierarchical Regression of School Counselors’ AMCS and CoBRAS Scores on GAF Scores for Biracial Students (N = 83)
• Table 10. Analyses of Variance in MCCA Etiology and MCCA Treatment by Students’ Backgrounds (N=201)
• Table 11. Multivariate Analysis of Variance in MCCA Etiology, MCCA Treatment, and GAF Scores
• Table 12. Summary of Hierarchical Multiple Regression Analyses for Moderator Effects

List of Figures

• Figure 1: Frequency Distribution of MCCA Etiology Scores Offered by White School Counselors across Student Conditions
• Figure 2: Frequency Distribution of MCCA Treatment scores offered by White School Counselors across Student Conditions
• Figure 3: Interaction Effect of Color-Blind Racial Attitudes across Student Conditions on Mean MCCA Treatment Scores

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West Meets East: Nineteenth-Century Southern Dialogues on Mixture, Race, Gender, and Nation

The Mississippi Quarterly
Volume 56, Number 4 (Fall 2003)

Suzanne Bost, Associate Professor of English
Loyola University

When I was growing up in the Eastern half of the United States, American history was presented to me in neatly binary terms: Cowboys and Indians, North and South, Black and White. There were binaries when my family moved out West, too, but the demarcations were in different places: North or South of the border, English or Spanish, hamburgers with or without green chile. Here, sometimes cowboys were Indians, and Mexicans were Americans. The fact that my Eastern home was North and my Western home was South complicated matters further, and I learned to accept that Southerners, though never victorious, were not always as misguided as my first teachers had suggested they were. The deconstruction of American myths and binaries began for me long before I learned to see the world through the lenses of postmodernism or the new American Studies. Moreover, this racial and national decentering occurred not by way of contemporary globalization or NAFTA but throughout American history.

Mestizaje and hybridity are popular concepts today because they lift identity from singular categories and frameworks. They are celebrated, along with Tiger Woods, fusion cuisine, and the Internet, as transracial, transnational frameworks for new, millennial Americans. For Mexicans and Mexican Americans, however, hybridity and racial and national decentering are not a postmodern horizon but rather long-standing historical facts. Racial mixture was part of the Spanish colonial strategy for, literally, “hispanicizing” the natives and acquiring their lands. As such, mixture has been central to the formation of racism, nationalism, resistance, and identity politics in most Southern Americas for centuries. In nineteenth-century Mexico, mestizaje was nationalistic, not transgressive or defiant of norms, while in the Southeastern United States, miscegenation represented a breakdown in the definition of American identity…

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Blood groups of Whites, Negroes and Mulattoes from the State of Maranhão, Brazil

American Journal of Physical Anthropology
Volume 6, Issue 4 (December 1948)
pages 423–428
DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.1330060412

E. M. da Silva
Department of Hematology
Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Within the Brazilian “melting pot” the intensity and variation of the racial mixture rises to a high point in the State of Maranhão. Of the three main races entering into this mixture, Indian, Negro and White, remnants are still to be found in more or less pure condition. As would be expected, however, all possible combinations of these primary groups are now abundantly present. Thus the population of this State presents unlimited opportunities for research in the problems of physical anthropology growing out of race mixture.

The present study deals with the classical blood groups in Whites and Negroes and in mixtures of these two races. The observations were made in the city of São Luiz and in the village of Santo Antonio dos Pretos (Municipe of Codó), a little over 300 km southeast of the former.

The Negroes were selected on the basis of their well-known physical characteristics. The series totals 198 and includes representatives of different African groups.

The Whites are mainly from Arabian (Syrian) stock, with some Portuguese and a few Spanish individuals. The series totals 196.

The individuals of mixed origin, which we will call Mulattoes in accordance with Brazilian custom, are mostly if not all first generation crosses. Selection was made by examining…

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Studies in Melanin Pigmentation of the Skin of Racial Crosses in Port Moresby

Oceania
Volume 33, Number. 4 (June, 1963)
pages 287-292

R. J. Walsh
New South Wales Red Cross Blood Transfusion Service, Sydney, Australia

A. V. G. Price
Department of Public Health, Territory of Papua and New Guinea

The colour of the skin in different populations has always been of great interest but until recently few attempts have been made to study the factors determining the nature and amount of skin pigment. Perhaps the greatest difficulty lias been the lack of a reliable method of quantitative assessment. Davenport and Davenport (1910) devised a “colour top”—a rotating disc with sectors of different colours. The areas of the sectors were varied until the blended colours on rotation corresponded to the colour of the skin. Ruggles Gates (1949) approached the problem by producing a series of coloured papers which could be matched against the skin.  These methods, however, did not permit separate analysis of the multiple factors contributing to skin colour (haemoglobin and bilirubin contained in the skin, and carotene pigments, for example). Reflectance measurements of light at various wavelengths have therefore been used by a number of workers (Wiener. 1945 ; Harrison, 1957 ; Baraicot, 1958).

During a recent visit to New Guinea measurements were made of the reflectance of light from the skin of various subjects. A photo-electric reflectometer was used with a filter having maximum transmission at 650 millimicrons. The instrument was adjusted with a rheostat so that a meter reading of 100 corresponded to the reflectance from a magnesium oxide surface.  This instrument is described in another paper (Walsh, 1963) and reasons are given for believing that the reflectance value is related to the melanin content of the skin. Batnicot (1958) also concluded that the reflectance value at this wavelength is a measure of the melanin pigment.

There is now clear evidence that melanin is produced by the melanotytes of the skin from the amino acids phenylalaninc and tyrosine. In the initial stages of this production the copper-containing enzyme, tyrosinase, is important. Absence of tyrosinase, but not of melanocytes, is responsible for albinism and a deficiency of tyrosinase is probably the basis of the pathological condition known as vitiligo, A number of physical conditions, of which the most important is exposure to ultraviolet light, can increase the melanin content of the skin, and some chemical conditions inhibit production. These factors have recently been reviewed by Fitzpatrick and Szaba (1959).

However, there is no information available as to what determines the varying amounts of melanin in human skin of different ethnic groups. Obviously genetic factors must be responsible because there are great differences between people of…

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