Mixed Race Studies

From Manenberg to Soweto: race and coloured identity in the black consciousness poetry of James Matthews 

African Studies
Volume 62, Issue 2 (December 2003)
pages 171-186
DOI: 10.1080/0002018032000148740

Mohamed Adhikari, Associate Professor of Historical Studies,
University of Cape Town

The Black Consciousness poetry of James Matthews, internationally recognised Coloured writer from the Cape Flats, reflects the growing popularisation amongst politicised Coloured people during the 1970s of the idea that racial distinctions in general, and Coloured identity in particular, had historically been used by the white supremacist establishment to divide and rule the black majority. This insight, by no means novel, provided the main thrust to the popular rejection of Coloured identity in the anti-apartheid movement of the 1980s. Coloured rejectionism had, however, originated within a small section of the Coloured intelligentsia, in particular amongst those active within the Non-European Unity Movement (NEUM) in the early 1960s (Adhikari 2002: 186-87, 213-14, 243-48) and grew into a significant movement by the time it peaked at the end of the 1980s. Though confined to a politicised minority within the Coloured community itself, and observed mainly in public discourse or for pragmatic reasons, the disavowal of Coloured identity had by the early 1980s nevertheless become a politically correct orthodoxy within the anti-apartheid movement, especially in the Western Cape. In response to the overt racism of apartheid, the democratic movement embraced non-racism as a cornerstone of its philosophy and any recognition of Coloured identity was condemned as a concession to apartheid thinking. This tendency was, however, reversed during the four-year transition to democratic rule as radical changes to the political landscape in the first half of the 1990s once again made the espousal of Coloured identity acceptable in left-wing and “progressive” circles (Adhikari 2000: 349; 2002: 23-24, 281-87). 

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Race Classification at the University of KwaZulu-Natal: Purposes, Sites and Practices

IOLS‐Research, Dr. Shaun Ruggunan and ccrri
For: Centre for Critical Research on Race and Identity (ccrri)
University of Kwazulu-Natal
2010-11-08
59 pages

Race classification has long been a feature of South African life, in daily life and its cognitive processes, and also in formal state-driven bureaucratic forms. In the post-apartheid period, classification of individuals on the basis of race has continued despite a stated commitment to principles of non-racialism. Primarily, this is justified in its formal manifestation because of the acknowledged need for redress of apartheid generated inequalities both in the labour market and in access to opportunities and resources (such as higher education).

Investigating the purposes and practices of race classification in an institution of higher learning in South Africa—in this case, the University of KwaZulu-Natal as one of the largest employers in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, as well as one of the largest national universities—offers a particularly interesting insight into these issues and provides an example of sites where this occurs. The research project has three key aims. Firstly it seeks broadly to identify the purpose of race classification, secondly the project investigates the processes followed in classifying people according to race, thirdly the study is interested in the effects, if any, of both classifying and being classified (from the perspective of the classifier) and the challenges involved in race classification. The project concludes by suggesting alternatives to race based classification.

…7. Challenges of classification

The challenges of classification on the basis of race at UKZN identified by interviewees mainly relate to ‘misclassifications’ (a term that holds true only if there is a notion of true/accurate classification of race). These cases of misclassification result from a myriad of problems including:

1. Problems with inaccurate data capturing. For example the data capturer could accidentally misclassify someone, or even make a subjective judgement call and change the person’s self classification to match a racial category deemed more appropriate by the data capturer.
2. The difficulties in making judgements of race classification in a society that is increasingly integrated and becoming increasing racially mixed. This problem extends beyond the mixed race category of ‘coloured’ (Erasmus, 2007).
3. The problem presented by the current four categories in use (African, Indian, Coloured and White). The use of these four categories has meant that Chinese South Africans, for example, have seen their identity collapsed under the generic category of Black. Racial classification in this sense assumes an economic currency and imperative (see Erasmus and Park, 2008) when related to Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE) for example.
4. The challenges related to race classification where it is perceived to relate to access to jobs, funding or placement at University were noted…

…7.2. The ‘Coloured’ question

Classifying people of ‘mixed race’ heritage is becoming more and more difficult and this challenge was noted by a number of respondents. ‘Coloured’ in South Africa may be understood to refer to people of ‘mixed race’ heritage but it is also sometimes seen as tied to a particular cultural identity, that of ‘Cape Coloured’; or of specific races in the mix. As a result, people of mixed race heritage that do not belong to this cultural formation that is tied to a ‘black-white’ racial heritage may feel uncomfortable adopting this category for classification. Interviewees observed:

The one might be when it comes to this classification of coloured which is a bit of a, you know, what does it mean (Interview Fihlela, 2009).

If they want to keep the mixed box or the bi-racial box they can maybe have subsections under that because I think that is really going to grow in the future. There’s more interracial families […] coming forward (Interview Van Soelen et al, 2009).

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It is known that neither the Indian nor Negro contends in dignity and esteem with the Spaniard; nor do any of the others envy the lot of the Negro, who is the “most dispirited and despised”. […] It is held as systematic that a Spaniard and an Indian produce a mestizo; a mestizo and a Spaniard, a castizo; and a castizo and a Spaniard, a Spaniard. It is agreed that from a Spaniard and a Negro a mulatto is born; from a mulatto and a Spaniard, a morisco; from a morisco and a Spaniard, a torna atrás; and from a torna atrás and a Spaniard, a tente en el aire. The same thing happens from the union of a Negro and Indian, the descent begins as follows: Negro and Indian produce a lobo; lobo and Indian, a chino; and chino and Indian, an albarazado, all of which incline towards the mulatto. [For more terms, see here.]

Pedro Alonso O’Crowley, 1774

The whole story on being ‘hafu’

CNN International
CNN Go
2010-11-29

Daniel Krieger

The movie ‘Hafu’ explores the limbo world of people who are half-Japanese and half something else, as they try to find their place in society

What does it mean to be half-Japanese in 21st-century Japan?

This is what filmmakers Megumi Nishikura and Lara Takagi set out to explore in their documentary film, “Hafu,” of which they showed a preview screening last month at the Kansai Franco-Japanese Institute in Kyoto.

The film, which is not yet completed, is an offshoot of the Hafu Project, which was set up in London two years ago by sociologist Marcia Yume Lise and photographer Natalie Maya Willer, both half-Japanese.

The project profiles hafus with photos and interviews that shed light on the experience of living between two cultures.

“We wanted to create an opportunity to discuss contemporary Japan through the lens of half Japanese,” says Lise…

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Biracial Youth and Families in Therapy: Issues and Interventions

Journal of Marital and Family Therapy
Volume 26, Issue 3 (July 2000)
pages 305–315
DOI: 10.1111/j.1752-0606.2000.tb00300.x

Stephanie Milan, Assistant Professor of Psychology
University of Connecticut

Margaret K. Keiley, Professor Director of Clinical Research
Center for Children, Youth, and Families
Auburn University

Empirical research and clinical resources focusing specifically on minority youth and families have increased tremendously in the last 2 decades. Despite this trend, certain groups continue to be relatively neglected. In particular, very few resources exist for understanding the unique challenges that often face biracial youth and their families. In this article, we use a nationally representative database to compare functioning in biracial youth to white adolescents and other minority adolescents. Results suggest that biracial/biethnic youth are a particularly vulnerable group in terms of self-reported delinquency, school problems, internalizing symptoms, and self-regard. As a group, they are also more likely to receive some form of psychological intervention. Given these findings and the shortcoming of clinical resources for work with this population, we provide an in-depth discussion of why biracial youth may be particularly vulnerable from a social-constructionist framework and offer several strategies based on narrative family therapy for working with biracial youngsters and their families.

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Characterizing the Admixed African Ancestry of African Americans

Genome Biology
Volume 10, Issue 12 (2009)
R141
DOI: 10.1186/gb-2009-10-12-r141

Fouad Zakharia
Department of Genetics
Stanford University School of Medicine

Analabha Basu
Institute for Human Genetics
University of California, San Francisco

Devin Absher
HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology, Huntsville, Alabama

Themistocles L. Assimes
Division of Cardiovascular Medicine
Stanford University School of Medicine

Alan S. Go
Division of Research
Kaiser Permanente, Oakland, California

Mark A. Hlatky
Department of Health, Research and Policy
Stanford University School of Medicine

Carlos Iribarren
Division of Research
Kaiser Permanente, Oakland, California

Joshua W. Knowles
Division of Cardiovascular Medicine
Stanford University School of Medicine

Jun Li
Department of Human Genetics
University of Michigan

Balasubramanian Narasimhan
Department of Health, Research and Policy
Stanford University School of Medicine

Steven Sidney
Division of Research
Kaiser Permanente, Oakland, California

Audrey Southwick
Department of Infectious Diseases
Stanford University School of Medicine

Richard M. Myers
HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology, Huntsville, Alabama

Thomas Quertermous
Division of Cardiovascular Medicine
Stanford University School of Medicine

Neil Risch
Institute for Human Genetics
University of California, San Francisco

Division of Research
Kaiser Permanente, Oakland, California

Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics
University of California, San Francisco

Hua Tang
Department of Genetics
Stanford University School of Medicine

Background: Accurate, high-throughput genotyping allows the fine characterization of genetic ancestry. Here we applied recently developed statistical and computational techniques to the question of African ancestry in African Americans by using data on more than 450,000 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) genotyped in 94 Africans of diverse geographic origins included in the HGDP, as well as 136 African Americans and 38 European Americans participating in the Atherosclerotic Disease Vascular Function and Genetic Epidemiology (ADVANCE) study. To focus on African ancestry, we reduced the data to include only those genotypes in each African American determined statistically to be African in origin.

Results: From cluster analysis, we found that all the African Americans are admixed in their African components of ancestry, with the majority contributions being from West and West-Central Africa, and only modest variation in these African-ancestry proportions among individuals. Furthermore, by principal components analysis, we found little evidence of genetic structure within the African component of ancestry in African Americans.

Conclusions: These results are consistent with historic mating patterns among African Americans that are largely uncorrelated to African ancestral origins, and they cast doubt on the general utility of mtDNA or Y-chromosome markers alone to delineate the full African ancestry of African Americans. Our results also indicate that the genetic architecture of African Americans is distinct from that of Africans, and that the greatest source of potential genetic stratification bias in case-control studies of African Americans derives from the proportion of European ancestry.

…Although much attention has been paid in the genetics literature to the continental admixture underlying the genetic makeup of African Americans, less attention has been paid to the within-continental contribution to African Americans, in particular from the continent of Africa. Studies have focused primarily on the matrilineally inherited mitochondrial DNA(mtDNA) and patrilineally inherited Y chromosome. These two DNA sources have gained wide prominence owing, in part, to their use by ancestry-testing companies to identify the regional and ethnic origins of their subscribers. Yet these two sources provide a very narrow perspective in delineating only two of possibly thousands of ancestral lineages in an individual.

The majority of African Americans derive their African ancestry from the approximately 500,000 to 650,000 Africans that were forcibly brought to British North America as slaves during the Middle Passage. These individuals were deported primarily from various geographic regions of Western Africa, ranging from Senegal to Nigeria to Angola. Thus, it has been estimated that the majority of African Americans derive ancestry from these geographic regions, although more central and eastern locations also have contributed.  Recent studies of African and African-American mtDNA haplotypes and autosomal microsatellite markers also confirmed a broad range of Western Africa as the likely roots of most African Americans…

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