Mixed Race Studies

Boa Aparência (Good Appearance): How Colorism Plays Out in Latin America

50shadesofblack.com | Fueling Conversation
2012-10-08

Dash Harris
In.a.Dash.Media

“Go to the banks and you’ll see how racist, this country is.” This was a sentiment expressed ad nauseam in my interviews about how colorism drives societal treatment. Interviewees in every country I visited for the docu-series always cited airports, banks and TV shows as representations of the aesthetic their particular country strives for:
 
Whitewashed.
 
It was true, I only saw one tanned bank teller throughout my travels, in Honduras. For any of the others jobs that were pointed out, the standard was homogenous, light skin and straight hair. This preference is blatant even within advertisements and postings for jobs…

…White supremacy and the aspiration to be the closest you possibly can is rooted in the idea of ‘mejorando la raza’ or improving or bettering the race by marrying white, if not white then light. Almost all of my interviewees have heard this phrase from a family member or friend as advice in the dating and marrying game. One Honduran, whom her friends call her ‘negra’ because she is dark skinned said her family said she hit the jackpot when she started dating her current boyfriend, a redhead very pale skinned Honduran. On the other hand when someone who is light or pale chooses to date ‘dark,’ families insist they are ruining or damaging the race. To preserve the privilege of being light, some have even resorted to marrying within their own family, like actress Michelle Rodriguez found out about her kissing cousins. Many of my interviewees came from mixed family backgrounds where their parents different colors caused a lot of fighting, drama, discontent, and familial problems that still persist to present day. The most common, was a dark skinned father and light skinned mother…

Read the entire article here.

Hue & Phenotype: Colorism… Even More Complex

50shadesofblack.com | Fueling Conversation
2012-09-21

Dash Harris
In.a.Dash.Media

I have interviewed over 100 people for this docu-series and recently I’ve come across more and more interviewees who ask me about my background. I’ve had a handful of Caribbeans ask me if I were ‘dougla,’ a person of Indian or indigenous and African ancestry and when I was in Honduras I was called a mulatta, which means the same. Usually someone who identifies as a mulatto is of european and african ancestry but that’s not how it was used in Honduras among the people who described me as such. I asked the reasons for these assumptions and people pointed out that my skin wasn’t “very dark” and my hair was curly and my eyes were “different.” I found that interesting because I consider myself a chocolate brown, my hair has gone days without a comb being ran through it because of the wrangling that it calls for and I see my eyes as any other person’s eyes can be. One Garifuna young man said I wasn’t ‘black enough’ and I could remedy that by getting a ‘super black boyfriend,’ he graciously volunteered himself. All courting aside, I thought he and many others were just pointing out the phenotypes that guide perception and categorization of ancestry in Latin America and the Caribbean. It is important to note that the U.S. is the only country that followed the one drop rule of hypo-descent, where you were considered ‘Black’ no matter what other ancestry you had. This did not exist in Latin America so it gave way to many ways to describe someone based on skin tone, hair color, hair texture, size of nose, lips, eyes. These all decide what category you’ll fit into. Your desciptors may also vary just based on individual perception. In Brazil there are 134 color descriptors. In the Dominican Republic ‘javao’ describes someone who is of pale of light complexion with “African features,” the list below shows more…

Read the entire article here.

The Process of Forming a Multiracial Identity for Persons of Three or More Races

Alliant International University, San Diego, California
2012
197 pages
Publication Number: AAT 3524119
ISBN: 9781267582935

Maria Reyna Fowlks

A PsyD Clinical Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the California School of Professional Psychology at Alliant International University San Diego In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree Doctor of Psychology

The number of multiracial individuals (MRIs) in the United States continues to grow. As this number continues to grow, it is likely there will be an increase in MRIs of three or more races. However, the literature has not specifically looked at the experiences and process of forming a racial identity development of individuals of three or more races. This qualitative study based on grounded theory aimed to do this. Twelve MRIs were interviewed using a semi-structured interview guide. Ten themes and 34 subthemes emerged from the data and were deemed significant to the participants’ experiences and development. Themes included: parental influences on racial identity; varied extended family messages, dynamics, and relations; cultural and geographic influences on racial identity; development of racial awareness; wanting to fit in; getting teased and discriminated against; dealing with other people’s questions and assumptions; discovery and development of one’s racial identity; being mixed has had a positive impact on life; and ways to address race and being multiracial with children. Results indicated the process of developing a multiracial identity is complex with many factors interacting and influencing one’s racial identity. A proposed model is presented integrating the findings from this study to describe the experiences and multiracial identity development process for MRIs of three or more races. Finally, clinical implications, limitations of the study, and recommendations for future research are discussed.

Purchase the dissertation here.

Promoting Secure Multiracial Identity Development: A Qualitative Study Investigating Level of Knowledge, Awareness, and Concern among Parents of Multiracial Children

The Chicago School of Professional Psychology
2011-07-21
73 pages
Publication Number: AAT 3515236
ISBN: 9781267414342

Kelly Grace Arteaga

It has been widely supported through research that secure racial identity is positively correlated with overall psychological well-being and that parents are often considered the most important figures in the development and expression of racial identity. Previous research suggests that parents of multiracial individuals overwhelmingly neglect to address racial and ethnic issues both within and outside of the family home. This study reviewed current research and attempted to highlight the special role that parents play in multiracial identity development. Through phenomenological inquiry, the participants’ experiences of parenting a child that is racially different from themselves and their partners were explored. Further examined were the quality and quantity of discussions that occurred between parents and their children in which the focus was on their child’s racial identity. Overall, parents reported a high level of comfort and interest in discussing racial issues with their children, coupled with limited knowledge and understanding of multiracial identity and issues. Several other themes emerged including parents’ emphasis on their child’s physical appearance, the positive and negative aspects of integrating two or more cultures within the family, and curiosity about the racial and/or ethnic background of their child’s future romantic partner. Implications of the findings for future research and practice are discussed.

Purchase the dissertation here.

Bolivia’s Census Omits ‘Mestizo’ as Category

The New York Times
2012-11-21

The Associated Press

LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) — Bolivia is under a virtual curfew as census-takers count and classify the landlocked Andean nation’s population in its first census in 11 years.

Stirring controversy was the government decision not to include “mestizo” as a category of ethnicity.

People have the option of declaring themselves members of one of 40 ethnic groups, including Afro-Bolivians. But “mestizo,” or mixed-race, is not an option. Critics of President Evo Morales say he is afraid people won’t identify themselves with a particular indigenous group, thus delegitimizing the government…

Read the entire article here.

Perspectives and Research on the Concept of Race within the Framework of Multiracial Identity

Interpersona: An International Journal on Personal Relationships
Volume 5, Issue 2 (December 2011)
pages 168-203

Katherine Aumer, Assistant Professor of Psychology
Hawai’i Pacific University

Elaine Hatfield, Professor of Psychology
University of Hawai‘i, Manoa

William Swann, Professor of Social and Personality Psychology
University of Texas, Austin

Rosemary Frey
University of Technology, Jamaica

In recent years, according to U. S. Census reports, the number of people who classify themselves as “mixed race” is rapidly increasing. As a consequence, scholars have become increasingly interested in the nature of racial identity. Currently, scholars and laypersons tend to view the concept of race from a biological perspective, from a social-constructivist perspective, or from a mixture of the two. In this paper, we address several questions: How do political, religious, and legal experts classify various people (racially)? How do men and women (especially those of mixed ancestry) decide to what race they belong? Does one’s own identity, be it monoracial or multiracial, influence one’s perception of race as socially constructed or biologically determined? In order to understand how the concept of race is viewed in the U. S.—especially as the American landscape becomes increasingly complex—we reviewed 40 studies, conducted from 1986-2006, that explored the nature of racial and ethnic identity.2 This comprehensive review suggested that: 1. Americans often find it difficult to classify people of mixed ancestry. 2. Men and women (of mixed race) generally possess a complex view of race. They generally agree that race is, at least in part, a social construct. Nonethess, they are well aware that (at least in society’s eyes) ancestry, appearance, “blood,” and genetic make-up also play a part in one’s racial classification. 3. Multiracials appear to be more flexible in “choosing” a racial identity than are their peers. How they choose to present themselves depends on their physical appearance, how accepting their family and friends are of their claims, and how profitable they think it will be to identify with various aspects of their racial heritage.

Read the entire article here.

Children of Empire: The Fate of Mixed-Race Individuals in British India, the Caribbean, and the Early American Republic

127th Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association
New Orleans, Louisiana
2013-01-03 through 2013-01-06

AHA Session 105: North American Conference on British Studies
Friday, 2013-01-04, 10:30-12:00 CST (Local Time)
Chamber Ballroom III (Roosevelt New Orleans)

Chair: Kathleen Wilson, Stony Brook University

Papers

• “‘We Are an Indian People’: Mixed-Race Peoples on Virginia’s Eastern Shore” / Royce Gildersleeve, George Mason University
• “Global Citizens: Mixed-Race Jamaicans in the Caribbean, Britain, and India” / Daniel Livesay, Drury University
• “George Washington’s Anglo-Indian Relatives” / Rosemarie Zagarri, George Mason University

Comment: Kathleen Wilson, Stony Brook University

This session will examine the fate of mixed-race individuals in selected places in the English-speaking world from approximately 1775 through 1820. Royce Gildersleeve’s paper focuses on the Virginia government’s efforts to dispossess a group of Gingaskin Indians from their traditional lands on the Eastern Shore. Over time, intermarriage between free black people and the native population had altered the appearance of tribal members. By 1812, the Virginia government maintained that the community was no longer inhabited by Indians but by African Americans who did not deserve title to the land. Daniel Livesay investigates the stories of mixed-race individuals from Jamaica who moved first to Britain and then to British India in an effort to improve their social and economic status. Focusing on the story of three families of color, Livesay explores how British imperialism allowed mixed-race individuals to forge new identities in a new place, but also shows how the hardening of racial ideologies ultimately foreclosed some of the most promising avenues of advancement. Rosemarie Zagarri explores the effects of a migration that proceeded in the opposite direction. Thomas Law, a high-ranking British East India Company official, brought his three illegitimate children, born of an Indian concubine, first to England and then to the young United States. Law hoped that this move would allow his Eurasian children to escape India’s increasingly hostile environment for mixed-race children and secure his sons’ future in what he believed to be a land of unbounded opportunity. Kathleen Wilson, an eminent scholar of the “new” imperial history of Britain, is an ideal commentator for the session.

By focusing on a small group of individuals from a wide geographic expanse, scholars on this panel will directly address the 2013 convention theme, “Lives, Places, Stories.” By concentrating on mixed-race peoples, the panel will complicate our understanding of racial regimes that have been seen in terms of binary oppositions, such black and white, native American and white, Anglo and Indian. The panel will also provide an opportunity for the study of comparative imperialisms. Despite their common British origins, British India, the Caribbean, and the early American republic are seldom examined with reference to one another. Given the relatively flexible character of racial ideology in the mid-eighteenth century, mixed-race individuals from these places could often exploit the ambiguities of their descent to their own advantage. Yet in both British India and the early American republic, the rise of scientific forms of racial ideology in the early nineteenth century diminished their room to maneuver. White Europeans and Americans came to define “race” less in terms of a society’s degree of civilization and economic affluence and more in terms of its members’ skin color and physical characteristics. Nonetheless, the application of these ideas was highly contextual and differed from place to place. By juxtaposing the fate of individuals of mixed-race origins in a variety of English-speaking contexts, this panel will provide new insights into the development of racial identity and the ways in which different imperial regimes imposed shared racial ideologies.

For more information, click here.

In My Skin: Shaping the Multiracial Identity in Indiana

Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana
April 2012
18 pages

Earl L. Harris

A CREATIVE PROJECT SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE MASTER OF ARTS

This project takes viewers inside the lives of multiracial individuals in Indiana through a 60-minute documentary. The state was broken into three parts, broken into Northern, Central, and Southern parts, with each having a person chosen to profile. This is done to educate, inform, and eliminate myths in place about multiracial individuals. Shown is how each deals with day-to-day life not always being understood or fitting in. Life is explored and documented as it happens, including interviews with individuals as part of the production in order to hear “in their own words” about experiences. Other key people, family, friends, co-workers, share thoughts on the multiracial individuals also. The goal is to capture life without affecting what happens.

Read the entire thesis here.

Dr. Marcia Dawkins Discusses Her Book, Clearly Invisible

Mixed Race Radio
2012-09-21, 17:00Z (12:00 EST, 09:00 PST)

Tiffany Rae Reid, Host

Marcia Dawkins, Clinical Assistant Professor of Communications
University of Southern California, Annenberg

Marcia is an award-winning writer, speaker, educator and visiting scholar at Brown University. She is the author of Clearly Invisible: Racial Passing and the Color of Cultural Identity (Baylor UP, 2012) and Eminem: The Real Slim Shady (Praeger, 2013).

Marcia writes about racial passing, mixed race identities, media, religion, pop culture and politics for a variety of high-profile publications. Her expert opinion has been sought out by NPR, WABC-TV Boston, The New York Times and TIME Magazine. She earned her PhD in communication from USC Annenberg, her master’s degrees in humanities from USC and NYU and her bachelor’s degrees in communication arts and honors from Villanova.

Clearly Invisible (Baylor University Press, 2012), is the first to connect racial passing and classical rhetoric to issues of disability, gender-neutral parenting, human trafficking, hacktivism, identity theft, racial privacy, media typecasting and violent extremism.

By applying fresh eyes to landmark historical cases and benchmark popular culture moments in the history of passing Dawkins also rethinks the representational character and civic purpose of multiracial identities. In the process she provides powerful insights called “passwords” that help readers tackle the tough questions of who we are and how we can relate to one another and the world.

Who is Black in America? A Soledad O’Brien Report

Cable News Network
2012-12-09, 20:00 EST

Soledad O’Brien, Host

Black in America is a documentary series reported by CNN’s Soledad O’Brien.

In its fifth year, CNN’s Black in America takes a look at “Who is Black in America?” Soledad O’Brien follows two 17-year-olds, Becca Khalil and Nayo Jones, on their journeys to find their racial identities.