Mixed Race Studies

Color and Cultural Identity

BlogTalkRadio
Bruce Hurwitz Presents
2012-01-12, 18:00Z (13:00 EST, 10:00 PST)

Bruce Hurwitz, Host

Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Visiting Scholar
Brown University

Ph.D. Forum introduces listeners to doctoral and post-doctoral students and their cutting-edge research in the arts, sciences, or humanities.

As part of our Ph.D. Forum, I will be joined by Marcia Dawkins.  Marcia received her doctorate from the University of Southern California, Annenberg.  We will be discussing her dissertation which focused on racial passing—pretending to be a member of a race different from the one to which you actually belong—and multi-racial identity.

Listen to the episode here.

What Does the Brazilian Census Tell Us About Race?

Psychology Today
2011-12-06

Jefferson Fish, Ph.D.

Problems with Brazilian and U.S. census data on race.

In 2010 I posted a six-part series on the U. S. census and race (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). In it I pointed out numerous changes in race categories and sub-categories over the 23 censuses, and multiple contradictions between scientific knowledge about human variation and the census race categories. I also offered a simple solution that would allow the government to collect the information it needs without contradicting science and offending or perplexing many citizens.

Because race is a cultural concept, beliefs about race vary dramatically from one culture to another. In this regard, America and Brazil are amazingly different in the categories they use. The United States has a small number of racial categories, based overwhelmingly on ancestry. Thus, it is possible for an American who “looks white” to “really be black” because he or she has “black blood.”

In contrast, Brazilians classify people according to what they look like, using a large number of different terms. For example, one study in the Brazilian northeast conducted by the Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE)—the entity responsible for the census—asked people what color (cor) they were, and received 134 different answers! (Other studies have found even larger numbers; and the results vary regionally, with much fewer categories used in the south of the country.) In many Brazilian families different racial terms are used to refer to different children, while such distinctions are not possible in the United States because all the children—no matter what they look like—have the same ancestry.

Thus, I was fascinated to read that “For the first time, non-white people make up the majority of Brazil’s population, according to preliminary results of the 2010 census.”…

Read the entire article here.

It’s dual-race for 1 in 6 babies of mixed parentage

The Straits Times
Singapore
2012-01-11

Amanda Tan

One in six newborn babies of mixed parentage was registered as having a double-barrelled race last year after a new policy kicked in allowing parents to do so.

This full-year figure, released for the first time to The Straits Times, comes a year after the policy was implemented in January last year.

The Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) said 16 per cent of mixed-race babies born last year were recorded as being of dual race…

Read the entire article here.

On the Commixture of the Races of Man as Affecting the Progress of Civilisation

Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London
Volume 3 (1865)
pages 98-122

John Crawfurd (1783-1868)

AFRICA

I continue in this paper the subject of the Commixture of Races, beginning my illustrations with the continent of Africa. The narrow strip of land which lies between the Mediterranean and the Great Desert, and which is irrigated from the range of the Atlas, has a fertile soil, with a climate nearly the same as that of Southern Europe. Its aboriginal inhabitants, fair men compared with other African races, speak a language differing from all other known tongues. These people, still numerous in the mountains, are the Berbers or Kabyles. Their race is clearly a peculiar and distinct one, perhaps more European than African or Asiatic.

Notwithstanding the possession of a fine climate and fertile soil, the Berber race, whether under the name of Lybians, Numidians, or Mauritanians, has never, within the bounds of authentic history, attained such a measure of civilisation and power as to have established a powerful united state, capable of maintaining its own independence, of repelling foreign settlement, and of re- sisting foreign invasion and conquest. A commixture with foreign races has, therefore, been in progress for at least thirty centuries. In this long time the native blood has been intermixed with Greek and Phenician through colonisation; with Italian blood through the Roman conquests and an occupation of six hundred years ; with Teutonic blood through the dominion of the Vandals, which was of a century’s duration; with Greek blood again for one hundred and thirty-six years; and, finally, by the con? quest of the Arabs, which may be said to have now lasted for close on seven centuries. To this may be added the Turkish con? quest, without occupation, and the French conquest, which em- braces a large portion of the country, and is likely enough in due time to embrace the whole of it…

Read the entire article here.

A Note on the Possibility of Analysing Race Mixtures Into Their Original Elements by the Mendelian Formula

The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland
Volume 41, (January-June, 1911)
page 179-199

John Brownlee (1868-1927)

Anthropology has thrown much light on the problem of race. What is still wanting, however, is a means of ascertaining even roughly to what extent different races go to make up the different inhabitant* of modern countries. Analyses have been made by many authorities. Teste, such as the index of nigrescence, degree of brunetness.etc., have been proposed, but none have been found satisfactory. Again, the different scales, by which data like the colour of hair and eyes have been classified, have differed in different observers’ hands. I have, in the succeeding pages, followed chiefly the observations of Dr. Beddoe. The application of a mathematical analysis to these observations suggests that these are fundamentally correct; and also that from the beginning of his work to the end he held fast to a fixed scale which had origin not merely in bis own mind, but in the nature of things.   Hitherto, analysis of his results has not been attempted.

In the light of Mendel’s theorem of Heredity it now seems possible to make a beginning. As it is, however, only possible to make a population analysis on the basis of free mating and equal fertility, some consideration of the extent to which these can be postulated is first necessary.

The general theorem governing successive generations is very simple. Let there be at any one time two races mixing in a district. Lot these consist of m persons of constitution (a, a) and n persons of constitution (b, b) where (a, a) denotes an individual having two a elements, and (a, b) and (b, b) have like meanings, then the stable population found, when mating is free and fertility equal, is easily seen to have the proportions…

Purchase the article here.

“African and Cherokee by Choice”: Race and Resistance under Legalized Segregation

American Indian Quarterly
Volume 22, Numbers 1/2 (Winter – Spring, 1998)
pages 203-229

Laura L. Lovett, Associate Professor of History
University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Zora Neale Hurston once boasted that she was “the only Negro in the United States whose grandfather on the mother’s side was not an Indian chief.”‘ In the same breath, Hurston confessed that she was of mixed blood, but differed “from the party line in that I neither consider it an honor or a shame.” This difference from “the party line,” as she referred to African American perspectives on Native American ancestry, must have been especially striking to Hurston because she had helped to document race mixture during her brief stint as a research assistant to anthropologist Melville Herskovits. Hurston participated in a 1928 study of the ancestry and physical traits of African Americans, which surveyed 1,551 Howard University students and found that 27.2 percent claimed to have some Native American ancestry. Herskovits reports that he went to great lengths to adjust for the “distinct prestige value” of having Native American ancestry within African American communities, but neither he nor Hurston explained why Native American ancestry would have bestowed prestige.

Herskovits’s study was aimed at a long tradition of scientific research on the nature of racial difference. Strongly influenced by the work of anthropologist Franz Boas, Herskovits wanted to explain the achievement of those African Americans with lighter skin and European features in terms of the dominant system of values in American culture. Since the 1860s, Social Darwinists and later hereditarian eugenicists had sought to explain racial differences in terms of the value of innate biological traits possessed by what were considered to be separate and distinct races. Indeed, the perception that all characteristics were biologically determined and maintained in bloodlines, which were then regulated by “blood quantum” standards, formed an important part of how family identity was constructed. Herskovits questioned the biological framework of “racial integrity” by appealing to cultural and social differences to explain differences ascribed to races. However, this scientific attack did not work its way into American racial ideology for quite some time. In the interim, people renegotiated what were understood to be scientific racial categories in various ways, pointing to places where biological classificatory schema denied the historical realities of interracial relations…

The American Negro

Science Magazine
Volume 69, Number 1787 (1929-03-29)
pages 337-341
DOI: 10.1126/science.69.1787.337

Robert J. Terry (1871-1966), Professor of Anatomy [See: The Robert J. Terry Anatomical Skeletal Collection]
Washington University Medical School, St. Louis

Under the comprehensive title chosen, it is my intention to discuss a single problem fundamental to studies of the colored population of the United States: the physical constitution of the American negro.

Students of the negro are aware of the lack of knowledge concerning this problem. Careful determination of the racial elements of the individual or group has been carried out in exceptional cases by relatively few investigators. A number of researches, economic, social, medical, have been completed or are now in progress, the results of which may be directly influenced by the factor of racial constitution, and this factor is generally unknown. The literature of the American negro abounds in contradictory claims concerning his native ability, his endurance of city life, resistance to disease, etc. Throughout the literature the environmental factors are usually recognized, the constitutional element commonly neglected, and to this circumstance some of the opposing results may be attributed.

The colored hybrids and pure-blood negroes are generally dealt with as a biological unit, when in fact the negroid population of the United States is composed of many different types. The hybrid is distinguished biologically from the white and from the negro, but society tries to make him a negro; and as a negro be enters into various records which are used as sources for study. Under such circumstances the conclusions of s research not only fail to convince but often add further complications to the question. Negro problems of importance in their relation to all elements of the population are undertaken without consideration of the racial mixtures of the groups used in the study.

Attempts to differentiate pure negroes and hybrids present many difficulties and it is recognized that the criteria used are inadequate. Further reparation of the hybrids into the subgroups resulting from successive intermixtures with whites or blacks offers greater difficulties and permits less definite conclusions…

Read or purchase the article here.

Multiplicity within Singularity: Racial Categorization and Recognizing “Mixed Race” in Singapore

Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs
Volume 30, Number 3 (2011)
pages 95-131
ISSN: 1868-4882 (online), ISSN: 1868-1034

Zarine L. Rocha, Research Scholar
Department of Sociology
National University of Singapore

“Race” and racial categories play a significant role in everyday life and state organization in Singapore. While multiplicity and diversity are important characteristics of Singaporean society, Singapore’s multiracial ideology is firmly based on separate, racialized groups, leaving little room for racial projects reflecting more complex identifications. This article explores national narratives of race, culture and belonging as they have developed over time, used as a tool for the state, and re-emerging in discourses of hybridity and “double-barrelled” racial identifications. Multiracialism, as a maintained structural feature of Singaporean society, is both challenged and reinforced by new understandings of hybridity and older conceptions of what it means to be “mixed race” in a (post-)colonial society. Tracing the temporal thread of racial categorization through a lens of mixedness, this article places the Singaporean case within emerging work on hybridity and recognition of “mixed race”. It illustrates how state-led understandings of race and “mixed race” describe processes of both continuity and change, with far-reaching practical and ideological impacts.

Introduction

“Race” and racial categories have long played a significant role in everyday life and state organization in Singapore. From colonization to independent statehood, narratives of racial distinctiveness and classification underpinned Singapore’s development at macro and micro levels. While multiplicity and diversity are important characteristics of contemporary Singaporean society, Singapore’s multiracial ideology is firmly based on separated, racialized groups, leaving little room for more complex individual and institutional racial projects. However, hybridity and “mixed race” are increasingly important characteristics and identifications in Singaporean society, and in fact have historically provided an important thread linking colonial and postcolonial national identifications. This article traces the emergence of mixed identities against a background of racial structuring in Singapore, moving from colonial understandings of race towards the recent state-led efforts at recognizing hybridity: acknowledging ancestral and personal complexity within a singular racial framework…

…Mixedness, Diversity and Identity

In contrast to the neat delimitations of the census, colonial Singaporean society was diverse and complicated, made up of interacting groups that blurred at the edges. The Peranakans, otherwise known as Babas and Nonyas, or Straits Chinese, provide a good example of this complexity, as an ethnic group which traced its descent to seventeenth century Chinese migrants who married local women in Southeast Asia (Beng 1993; Stokes-Rees 2007). Characterized by Chinese and Malay influences and inflected by European and Indonesian customs, Peranakan (meaning “descendent” in Malay) culture illustrated the fusion and intermingling of cultures in everyday life (Goh 2008a: 237).

In keeping with the eurocentric understanding of racial hierarchy, much intermixing (particularly inter-Asian intermixing, as in this case) was left unrecorded and unremarked. It was the intermixing between Europeans and Asians that was of greater concern to the colonial authorities (Stoler 1992), reflecting the gendered and racialized bases for colonialism. Of concern was the fact that despite practical and prejudicial limitations, as in all of Europe’s colonies, relationships between the colonizers and the colonized produced offspring: children of “mixed race”, who transgressed the ostensibly fixed racial lines demarcated by the administration (Pomfret 2009).

Individuals of mixed European and Asian descent in Singapore were known as Eurasians. Interestingly, Eurasians were among the earliest migrants to Singapore after 1819, coming from regions with an established European presence, such as Goa, Malacca, Macau and Timor (Braga-Blake 1992; Pereira 2006). Eurasians were frequently classified as European due to similarities in style of dress, custom and religion, and as such were accorded higher socio-economic status, often working in the civil service and in higher ranking jobs (Braga-Blake 1992; Pereira 1997). As greater numbers of Europeans arrived after 1869, this privileged position became more precarious (Pereira 2006). Eurasians continued to occupy an intermediate position, between the “local” population and the British colonizers in terms of employment, education and socio-economic status, but a firmer line was drawn between European and Eurasian – effectively limiting social interaction and employment prospects, but maintaining a certain privilege (Braga-Blake 1992)…

Read the entire article here.

Jackie Kay wins Scottish Book of the Year

The Edinburgh Reporter
2011-08-26

Creative Scotland is delighted to announce that award winning poet and author, Jackie Kay, has been awarded the 2011 Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book of the Year, in partnership with Creative Scotland, for her autobiography Red Dust Road.

Jackie Kay received her £30,000 prize at a ceremony hosted by Dame Jenni Murray this afternoon at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.
 
Born in Edinburgh to a Scottish nurse and a Nigerian student, Kay was adopted at birth by a white couple and brought up in Glasgow.  Red Dust Road, published by Picador, is an autobiographical account of Jackie’s search to find her birth parents, a journey that is full of unexpected twists, turns and deep emotions.  In an amazing new chapter, a recent Guardian Podcast by Jackie Kay led to her making contact with her birth sisters for the first time…

Read the entire article and listen to the interview here.

Multiracial identity development: developmental correlates and themes among multiracial adults

Ohio State University
1997
111 pages

Jessica Lyn Adams

A Dissertation  Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for The Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of the Ohio State University

This study examined some of the common experiences that have been theorized to characterize the racial/ethnic identity development of multiracial individuals. The construct of ethnic identity was examined along with factors identified in the literature as influencing racial/ethnic identity development such as family support of multiracial heritage, sense of belonging, coping with discrimination, and racial/ethnic legitimacy testing. An attempt was also made to explore how ethnic identity and other factors such as self-esteem, racial diversity of the community in which one was raised, and choice of self-label are related.

Seventy-three multiracial adults completed measures that assessed ethnic identity, self-esteem, racial/ethnic legitimacy testing experiences, family support of multiracial heritage and coping. Results indicated that a majority of participants had experienced racial/ethnic legitimacy testing from those racial groups which were part of their racial/ethnic heritage. While self-esteem was not found to be related to racial/ethnic legitimacy testing as predicted, statistically significant relationships were obtained between self-esteem and ethnic identity, and self-esteem and family support of multiraciality. Given these findings, it was proposed that family support of the individual’s mixed heritage may have served as a buffer for the effects of racial legitimacy testing on self-esteem. Family support of multiraciality and racial diversity of neighborhood in which individual was raised were found to be significant predictors of ethnic identity. This finding is consistent with existing literature which has identified these two factors as having a positive impact on racial identity resolution. Participants were asked to identify a stressful situation in which they felt rejected due to some aspect of their multiracial heritage. A component of ethnic identity labeled ethnic identity achievement was found to be related to coping strategies that involved attempts to either alter this stressful situation or create some positive meaning from it. No significant predictors of choice of monoracial or multiracial self-label were identified.

Methodological limitations of some of the measures, as well as the small sample size, were identified as reasons for interpreting these findings with caution. Further research using improved measures to assess the constructs of interest was recommended. Implications for counseling were discussed.

Read the entire dissertation here.