Mixed Race Studies

Interracial Brooklyn

Brooklyn Historical Society
Crossing Borders, Bridging Generations
September 2012

Michael J. Rosenfeld, Associate Professor of Sociology
Stanford University

Intermarriage has been rising in the United States steadily since about 1960. Before 1960 there were so few interracial marriages in the United States that Interraciality was really invisible. Prior to 1960, the idea of marrying someone from another race in the US was so unusual that social pressure, family pressure, and in some states the law made such marriages impossible.

So what explains the rise in interracial marriage?

One answer is that the law changed. In 1967, the US Supreme Court, in a brief but powerful and unanimous decision (Loving v. Virginia), struck down all the state laws that had made interracial marriage illegal. Overnight, Americans had the right to marry anyone from the opposite sex regardless of race. New York, however, was one of the states that had never had laws against interracial marriage. Take a look at this map of US states to see which states had laws against interracial marriage and when.

In the above graph (click to enlarge), you can see that intermarriage had a similar rise in the US, in Brooklyn, and in New York, starting near zero, and peaking at between 5% and 7% of all marriages in 2010. The trajectory of interracial marriage was so similar in Brooklyn and in the US as a whole that the blue US line is hidden underneath the green Brooklyn line in parts of the graph above. Since interracial marriage was always legal in Brooklyn but often illegal in the rest of the US before 1967, something other than the law (which never changed in Brooklyn) must explain the rise of intermarriage.

Even though interracial marriage has risen a great deal, Americans and Brooklynites still have a strong tendency to marry people from their own racial group…

…What explains the rise of Intermarriage?

• The US had a big immigration reform in 1965, which led to a sharp rise in immigration from Asia and Latin America. As the US population became more racially diverse, there was more opportunity for Americans to meet (and fall in love with) people from other races. Immigrant destinations like New York City tend to have more intermarriage as a result of having more racial diversity.
• The age at first marriage has been steadily rising since the 1960s. Age at first marriage in the US is now 27 or 28 years of age. In the past, age of first marriage was typically about 21 years. The later age at first marriage means that young people are more likely to travel away from home before they marry. Travel away from home increases the chances of meeting (and falling in love with) someone who is different from you.
• Attitudes have changed. Interracial marriage is not very controversial for people who were raised in the post- Civil Rights and post- Loving v. Virginia era. As interracial marriage has become more common and more visible, more Americans have gotten used to the idea that interracial couples are part of the panorama of American families. Opposition within families to intermarriage has declined, but has not disappeared…

…In order to figure out how many interracial couples there are, one must first divide people into separate and mutually exclusive racial/ethnic categories. In dividing people into mutually exclusive racial/ethnic categories, one immediately confronts a series of definition problems that have no unique solution.

The fact is that race exists in America only because we Americans believe in race and invest the categories with meaning…

Read the entire article here.

Stir Builds Over Actress to Portray Nina Simone

The New York Times
2012-09-12

Tanzina Vega

In the digital age Hollywood casting decisions leaked from behind closed doors can instantly become fodder for public debate. And when the decision involves race and celebrity, the debate can get very heated.

The online media world has been abuzz with criticism for nearly a month now over the news — first reported by The Hollywood Reporter — that the actress Zoe Saldana would be cast as the singer Nina Simone in the forthcoming film “Nina” based on her life.

Few have attacked Ms. Saldana for her virtues as an actress. Instead, much of the reaction has focused on whether Ms. Saldana was cast because she, unlike Simone, is light skinned and therefore a more palatable choice for the Hollywood film than a darker skinned actress.

“Hollywood and the media have a tendency to whitewash and lightwash a lot of stories, particularly when black actresses are concerned,” said Tiffani Jones, the founder of the blog Coffee Rhetoric. Ms. Jones wrote a blog post titled “(Mis)Casting Call: The Erasure of Nina Simone’s Image.”…

…Recently an online petition was circulated to protest the casting of the light-skinned actress Thandie Newton in the film based on Ngozi Adichie’s novel “Half of a Yellow Sun,” which centers on the Nigerian Civil War (1967-70); there was some criticism of the casting of the biracial Jaqueline Fleming as Harriet Tubman in the film “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.”…

…Casting an actress who does not look like Simone is troubling, said Yaba Blay, a scholar of African and diaspora studies and the author of a forthcoming book called “(1)ne Drop: Conversations on Skin Color, Race, and Identity.”

“The power of her aesthetics was part of her power,” Dr. Blay said. “This was a woman who prevailed and triumphed despite her aesthetic.” Dark-skinned actresses, she added, are “already erased from the media, especially in the role of the ‘it girl’ or the love interest.”…

Read the entire article here.

The Lure of Whiteness and the Politics of “Otherness”: Mexican American Racial Identity

University of Texas, Austin
2004
185 pages

Julie Anne Dowling

Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the The University of Texas at Austin In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Using a “constructed ethnicity” (Nagel 1994) approach, this project employs multiple methods to explore the racial identification of Mexican Americans. The U.S. Census has grappled with appropriate strategies for identifying the Mexican-ancestry population for over a century, including the use of a “Mexican” racial category in 1930. I examine historical documents pertaining to the 1930 Census and the development of the “Mexican” racial classification, as well as how Mexican Americans in the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) constructed “White” racial identities in their efforts to resist such racialization. I then explore contemporary Mexican American identity as reflected in current racial self-reporting on the U.S. Census. Finally, I conduct fifty-two in-depth interviews with a strategic sample of Mexican Americans in five Texas cities, investigating how such factors as socioeconomic status, racial composition of neighborhood, proximity to the U.S.-Mexico border, social networks, nativity/migration history, Spanish language fluency, physical appearance, and political attitudes affect their racial and ethnic identifications. Results indicate a complex relationship between personal histories and local community constructions of identity that influences racial identification.

Table of Contents

• List of Tables
• List of Figuresxii
• Chapter 1: Latinos and the Question of Race
• Chapter 2: Modernity and Texas Racial Politics in the Early Twentieth Century, LULAC and the Construction of the White Mexican
• Chapter 3: The “Other” Race of Mexican Americans: Exploring Racial Identification in the 1990 and 2000 U.S. Censuses
• Chapter 4: “Where’s Hispanic?” Mexican American Responses to the Census Race Question
• Chapter 5: What We Call Ourselves Here: Mexican American Racial and Ethnic Labeling in Texas
• Chapter 6: Just An(other) Shade of White? Making Meaning of Mexican American
• Whiteness on the Census.
• Appendix A: Census 1990 Race Question
• Appendix B: Census 2000 Race Question
• Bibliography
• Vita

Chapter 1: Latinos and the Question of Race

Introduction

The roots of this dissertation can be traced to a qualitative study I began as an undergraduate, interviewing persons of “biracial” mixed Mexican-Anglo heritage like myself. During the course of this research that became the basis for my master’s thesis, I discovered that according to the U.S. Census, Latinos are not a racial group. This did not fit my experience growing up in Texas where I found myself torn between two different worlds, one white and one brown.

This disjuncture between government classification and self-identification, between federal definitions and regional definitions of race, is at the heart of my project. The goal of this dissertation is to explore the historical roots of the census classification of Mexican Americans as “White,” and to examine who rejects this classification, identifying as “Other” race. Are there significant differences between these groups? What factors play into how Mexican Americans label themselves? And what are the meanings of these labels?

The most common “other race” response given on the racial identification question of the 1990 U.S. Census was a Hispanic identifier—Hispanic, Latino or a nationality such as Mexican, Puerto Rican, or Cuban (U.S. General Accounting Office 1993). While approximately 51% of Mexican Americans in the 1990 census identified as “White” on the racial identity question, an almost equal proportion (47%) identified as “Other.” In 2000, the numbers were similar with 48% of Mexican Americans identifying as “White” and 46% as “Other.” It is clear that a substantial number of Mexican Americans view themselves as a racial group outside of the current census classifications of White, Black, Native American, and Asian American…

Read the entire dissertation here.

The United States Census in Its Relations to Sanitation

Public Health Paper Report
Volume 15 (1889)
pages 43-46

John S. Billings, Surgeon, U.S.A. (1838-1913)

I have several times inflicted upon this patient and long-suffering Association papers relating to statistical matters and methods, which, it must be confessed, were better fitted to serve for occasional reference than to occupy any of the scanty time available for listening at our annual meetings. To-day, however, I have a very short discourse on the same subject which I want you to listen to, because, if the suggestions in it have any value, some of them should be acted on before the paper will probably appear in the volume of our proceedings.

Theoretically, we all agree that vital statistics are the foundation of public medicine, but, practically, I suppose that the majority of sanitarians and physicians think that they are not essential to the work of a health officer or board of health, although they may be desirable; that the main objects in sanitary work are to see that the water-supply is pure; that garbage and excreta are promptly removed or destroyed; that no filth is allowed to accumulate in the vicinity of habitations; that contagious diseases are controlled by isolation and disinfection; that plenty of fresh air be provided in schools, churches, etc.; and that all this can and should be done whether death-rates are known or not.

This is not my own view, because my observation of the progress of public health work in this and other countries for the last twenty years leads me to believe that this progress, in any locality, for any considerable length of time, depends upon the completeness of its vital statistics and the use that is made of them; because upon such completeness and use depend mainly the amount and regularity of appropriations from state or municipal funds for the payment of the expenses needed to secure the objects of the health department. Occasionally it is possible to get up a cholera, or yellow-fever, or small-pox, or typhoid fever scare, and to then get a little money for sewerage, or for street and alley cleaning; but these spasmodic reforms do not last long, and in most cases do not amount to much. You have got to produce constant, undeniable evidence that the work is needed, and is useful, evidence that will convince the press and the majority of the community; and this evidence must be mainly death-rates, to which should be added all the sickness rates that can be obtained…

…In investigating the details of the records of deaths kept in different cities, I have noted deficiencies in a few of them to which I wish to call the attention of all who have to do with the registration of vital statistics.

First. All deaths occurring in hospitals should be charged to the ward or district of the city from which the patient was taken to hospital, when this can be ascertained. Otherwise the death-rate in the ward in which the hospital is located will be too high, and in the other districts it will be too low.

Second. The birthplace of the parents of the decedent should be reported. We want to know the race of the decedent, whether he was Irish, German, Italian, or American, and to give merely his own birthplace is not sufficient.

Third. It is very desirable that in all cases of deaths of colored persons it should be stated whether the decedent was black or of mixed blood, such as mulatto or quadroon.

One of the most important questions in the vital and social statistics of this country relates to the fertility, longevity, and liability to certain diseases of those partly of negro and partly of white blood, and the only way to obtain data on this subject is through the registration of vital statistics.

Under the provisions of the law providing for the census, the living colored population is to be enumerated with distinction as to whether each person is black, mulatto, quadroon, or octoroon; and we need the same distinctions for all colored persons dying during the census year, to enable us to calculate comparative death-rates. Wherever there is a fairly accurate registration of deaths, which now exists in several states and in over one hundred cities, the next census will afford the means of calculating death-rates with distinctions of color, sex, and age, which will furniish important indications for sanitary work. For all cities of io,ooo inhabitants and upward, it is proposed to collect as complete information as possible with regard to altitude, climate, water-supply, density of population, sewerage, proportion of sewered and non-sewered areas, and other points bearing on the healthfulness of the place, which will permit of interesting comparisons with the death-rates.

Read the entire paper here.

Reflections of a Racial Queer

Multicultural Perspectives
Volume 12, Issue 2, 2010
pages 107-112
DOI: 10.1080/15210960.2010.481213

Aurora Chang-Ross
Beloit College, Beloit, Wisconsin

In this article, I reflect on my personal experiences of racial queerness. In an effort to speak my secrets, I explore my identity production as a Multiracial person by critically examining my positionality throughout various key stages in my life. I present Multiracial microaggressions –those accumulated moments that underscore my racial queerness and argue that these phenomena, while taxing, also confer agency. I propose a conceptual framework that incorporates both queer theory and borderlands theory as a potential framework from which to study how Multiracial individuals are positioned as racial queers. I argue that queerness, for the Multiracial individual, may denote both deviance (from the monoracial norm) and a unique individuality (stemming from one’s Multiracial background). By offering my testimonial as a racial queer and introducing the racial queer conceptual framework, I come a bit closer to naming my experience as a Multiracial individual and providing a space from which others can do the same.

Read or purchase the article here.

The Fate of the Afro-Turks: Nothing Left But the Colour

Qantara.de
Bonn, Germany
2012-08-27

Ekrem Eddy Güzeldere (Translated from the German by Michael Lawton)

The Afro-Turks, whose ancestors came to the Ottoman Empire as slaves in the nineteenth century, are still struggling for recognition. Now, though, their desire to assimilate into the wider society has become greater than their desire to maintain their own identity.

A banner with the text “Sixth Spring Festival” hangs across the street near the park in Cirpi, a small village about 20 kilometres away from Bayindir, a regional centre south-east of Izmir. Such festivals have become common in Anatolia, with hundreds of them occurring between March and May every year.

But in Cirpi, it’s something special. The Sixth Spring Festival is really the Sixth Festival of the Calf, the traditional celebration of the Afro-Turks, which they’ve been celebrating since the nineteenth century in and around Izmir, formerly known as Smyrna.
 
In 1924, the Turkish republic banned the celebration, and it was not until 2007 that the event could be re-established by the Association of Afro-Turks. The first five annual festivals were modest affairs, but the sixth turned into a big event with 400 participants. They’ve not yet slaughtered a calf though…

…Alev Karakartal, is an Afro-Turk woman who now lives in Istanbul. Speaking at a conference there in early June 2012, she described the strategy with which many Afro-Turks confront discrimination. “By entering into mixed marriages,” she said, “Afro-Turks try to have lighter-skinned children, so that eventually their colour will disappear altogether.” But Olpak responds, “We have nothing else left aside from the colour. There’s nothing left culturally any more.”
 
When Karakartal, who is herself of mixed descent, asked her parents about her origins, the answer was always, “We are Turks and Muslims,” and that roots weren’t important…

Read the entire article here.

Marcia Dawkins Booksigning

Eso Won Books
4327 Degnan Blvd (Leimert Park Business Center)
Los Angeles, California 90008
Phone: 323-290-1048
2012-09-12, 19:00-21:00 PDT (Local Time)

Clearly Invisible: Racial Passing and the Color of Cultural Identity by Marcia Alesan Dawkins. Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2012, 285 pages. Hardback ISBN: 9781602583122.

Passing (def): usually understood as an abbreviation for “racial passing.” Describes the fact of being accepted, or categorized successfully as, a member of people classifed as white.

Clearly Invisible journeys to sometimes uncomfortable but unfailingly learned places as Dawkins retells the contemporary expressions and past experiences of individuals who pass as white people. Along the way these former non-white people’s stories sound familiar but take subtle turns to reveal tensions lurking beneath the surface, non-white people who ultimately expose as much about white supremacy/racism as they conceal about themselves.

Bring your questions, put on your thinking cap and enjoy this controversial topic.

For more information, click here.

An Exploration of Factors Influencing Multiracial/Multiethnic Identity Development: A Qualitative Investigation

University of St. Thomas, Saint Paul, Minnesota
2012-05-12

Anesh S. Patel

A Doctoral Project Presented to the Graduate School of Professional Psychology in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Psychology

As of 2000, one in forty Americans identified themselves as multiracial/multiethnic (Lee & Bean, 2004), with 70% of the multiracial/multiethnic population younger than thirty-five years of age (U.S. Census Bureau, 2001). Population trends predict that the multiracial population will continue to increase, possibly reaching 21% of the population by the year 2050 (Smith & Edmonston, 1997). With the burgeoning number of multiracial/multiethnic individuals in our society, it is important for counseling psychologists to understand the ways in which they identify with race/ethnicity, and how that identification is formed.
 
This qualitative study was designed to explore the lived experiences of a multiracial/multiethnic individual’s life to in order to better understand their process of racial identification/ethnic identification and thus identity for the express purpose of enhancing therapeutic interventions with this population. The way in which experiences were explored was through addressing the following questions: What are the influencing factors on identity development in multiracial/multiethnic individuals? What, if any, implications do these factors have for the practice of psychology when working with mixed race/ethnicity individuals?
 
This study revealed three themes that most strongly influenced identity development in the eight participants. The first theme that arose was influential people as participants highlighted social and family groups that made an impact on participants overall sense of belonging. Secondly, the theme of influential moments arose, which joined together experiences in participant’s lives that made them stop and think specifically about their different races/ethnicities. It could be defined for some as their “eureka moment” in their identity selection process. The final theme that emerged from the eight interviews was influential cultural experiences. This theme ranged from specific college courses taken by individuals to pressure around learning cultural rituals, either way, it was experiences in their lives directly linked to increasing knowledge and understanding of one’s specific culture/racial/ethnic group.

Read the entire project here.

Biracial and monoracial infant own-race face perception: an eye tracking study

Developmental Science
Published online: 2012-09-07
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-7687.2012.01170.x

Sarah E. Gaither
Department of Psychology
Tufts University

Kristin Pauker, Assistant Professor of Psychology
University of Hawaii

Scott P. Johnson, Professor of Psychology
University of California, Los Angeles

We know that early experience plays a crucial role in the development of face processing, but we know little about how infants learn to distinguish faces from different races, especially for non-Caucasian populations. Moreover, it is unknown whether differential processing of different race faces observed in typically studied monoracial infants extends to biracial infants as well. Thus, we investigated 3-month-old Caucasian, Asian and biracial (Caucasian-Asian) infants’ ability to distinguish Caucasian and Asian faces. Infants completed two within-subject, infant-controlled habituation sequences and test trials as an eye tracker recorded looking times and scanning patterns. Examination of individual differences revealed significant positive correlations between own-race novelty preference and scanning frequency between eye and mouth regions of own-race habituation stimuli for Caucasian and Asian infants, suggesting that facility in own-race face discrimination stems from active inspection of internal facial features in these groups. Biracial infants, however, showed the opposite effect: An ‘own-race’ novelty preference was associated with reduced scanning between eye and mouth regions of ‘own-race’ habituation stimuli, suggesting that biracial infants use a distinct approach to processing frequently encountered faces. Future directions for investigating face processing development in biracial populations are discussed.

Read or purchase the article here.

The black experience in postwar Germany

University of Connecticut
Honors Scholar Program
2012-05-06
36 pages

Jamie Christopher Morris

This paper endeavors to find the extent of anti-black racism in various sectors of German society following World War Two through an examination of primary sources and secondary scholarship. While some Germans, often women, tolerated and even loved African-American soldiers, many German men actively sought to keep black GIs out of their communities, encouraged by white GIs. Afro-German children were viewed as a huge and shameful problem to be dealt with en masse by the government. The development of German anti-black racism is interesting to track how the German people shifted from Nazi attitudes towards Americanized ones.

Introduction

In the late 1940s a young and frightened German girl believed that the African-American soldiers marching through her town had tails hidden in their trousers, a rumor that had been told to her by a passing white soldier. A decade later that girl was dating one of those same black GIs, and had in fact approached him first to get his attention. She may have been recalling the fact that it was the black soldiers who had treated her the best as a child, giving her gifts and making sure she was clean, or she may have simply desired an American boyfriend in the hopes that he would lavish her with his comparatively rich lifestyle. The girl’s attitude reflects that of many Germans towards blacks in the late 1940s and 1950s. Public opinion of black soldiers grew locally in the towns that hosted them, driven in no small part by their generosity and kindness compared to that of white GIs, but their exotic appearance and unique American outlook also attracted attention and praise.

Of course there was also some strong resistance to the stationing of black American soldiers in occupied Germany. Vestiges of the National Socialist ideology of racial purity remained in many Germans’ thoughts, if not always in their speech and actions, as well as the traditional prejudice against anything different from themselves that clung still to most Europeans. But because of the intense Nazi focus on race and cleansing, and the uncovering of the Nazi atrocities, Germany was forced into a unique position of having to prove its mended ways; as historian Heide Fehrenbach notes, “The postwar logic of race that emerged in Germany was beholden to an internationally enforced injunction that Germans differentiate their polity and policies from the Nazi predecessor.” Thus over the 1950s the language of “race” all but disappeared in Germany, although prejudices were often just as strong as previously. These hatreds, however, were turned towards the new and highly visible group of racial “others”: blacks.3 Germans maintained a unique outlook towards this new racial group, convincing themselves that they were not racist but proving hostile towards blacks and those who associated with them. An overwhelmingly conservative system of values warred with the Germans’ vehement denial of the feelings of the past to create a uniquely hostile yet also inviting environment for African-Americans…

Read the entire thesis here.