Mixed Race Studies

Mary Beltrán and Camilla Fojas (Eds.), Mixed Race Hollywood, New York University Press, 2008, 325 pp. [Review]

International Journal of Communication
Issue 4 (2010)
pages 139-141

Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Visiting Scholar
Brown University

In the wake of “Obama-mania,” conventional wisdom about racial identity is facing a set of new and unique challenges. It is therefore imperative for scholars and industry professionals to reflect on multiracial identification, representation, history and post-racial politics as they pertain to art and to life. This is exactly what Mixed Race Hollywood, four parts, the book examines representations of multiracial people as integral yet often silenced parts of our real and imagined communities. A truly interdisciplinary study, the essays explore a wide range of topics—from early mixed race film characters to Blaxploitation and “multiracial chic” to children’s television programming, same-sex romance and the “outing” of mixed race stars online. Both provocative and timely, the collection helps its readers better understand the evolving conceptions of what race actually is and can be—mixed. The threads running through each essay are these two questions: How are mixed race people deployed as subjects and/or objects in Hollywood? And, when it comes to issues of mixed race, does art imitate life or does life imitate art?…

Read the entire review here.

What is ‘post-racial’?

The Spectator
Seattle University
2011-02-16

Frances Dinger

Since Barack Obama became the first black president in 2008, the word “post-racial” has been liberally used by some media groups. We are, according to some, at a point in our country’s history when we can be past race but minorities are still incarcerated at a disproportionate rate to whites and are more often living below the poverty line, especially in urban areas (whites outnumber minorities in the case of poverty in rural areas, according to the U.S. Census Bureau). So, what does it mean to say we are a post-racial nation when the numbers suggest otherwise?

“We’re not post-racial,” said sociology professor Gary Perry. “We’re post-talking about race.”

With the rise of the multi-racial and multi-cultural movement, some ethnic groups are becoming less visible. And the issue is complicated further considering races are not measured uniformly across government agencies. A 20-year-old student named Michelle López-Mullins who is of Peruvian, Chinese, Irish, Shawnee and Cherokee descent is counted as “Hispanic” by the Board of Education but the National Center for Health statistics would count her both as “Asian” and “Hispanic,” according to a Feb. 9 New York Times article by Susan Saulny.

During the 2010 census, individuals had the option of checking a box marked “mixed race,” making counting all the more complicated.

While trivial to some, racial statistics help government agencies consider disparities in health, education, employment and housing, among other protections. So, where are we in the race discussion when even government agencies are sometimes unsure how to group individuals? Does a movement for “mixed race” mean we are moving toward greater equality or acceptance?

“Symbolically, there’s this idea that we’ve arrived at a place absent of race,” Perry said. “[…] It’s not that we’re post-racial, but the mixing we’re seeing indicates race doesn’t matter.”

Perry emphasized that what we see in the media from minority celebrities is not the reality faced by many Americans of color…

Read the entire article here.