Counseling Single-Parent Multiracial Families

Posted in Articles, Family/Parenting, Media Archive, Social Work, United States on 2013-08-24 17:55Z by Steven

Counseling Single-Parent Multiracial Families

The Family Journal
Volume 21, Issue 4 (October 2013)
pages 386-395
DOI: 10.1177/1066480713488526

Henry L. Harris, Associate Professor of Education
Department of Counseling
University of North Carolina, Charlotte

Single-parent families represent a growing segment of the family households in the United States today and while some literature has addressed racial differences, information focusing on single parents of multiracial children in the United States is virtually nonexistent. Single-parent multiracial families (SPMFs) must not only contend with societal challenges related to their single-parent status but also racial issues related to their multiracial children. This article will address some of the unique challenges encountered by SPMFs and offer suggestions to counselors and other mental health professionals working with this unique population.

Read or purchase the article here.

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“A Universe of Many Worlds”: An Interview with Ruth Ozeki

Posted in Articles, Asian Diaspora, Interviews, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, United States, Women on 2013-08-24 17:49Z by Steven

“A Universe of Many Worlds”: An Interview with Ruth Ozeki

MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States
Volume 38, Issue 3 (September 2013)
pages 160-171
DOI: 10.1093/melus/mlt028

Eleanor Ty, Professor of English and Film Studies
Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

That’s what it felt like when I was growing up, like I was a random fruit in a field of genetically identical potatoes.—Ruth Ozeki, All Over Creation (4)

Is death even possible in a universe of many worlds? —Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being (400)

Immigrant and ethnic writing frequently addresses the dilemma of being caught between two worlds. More often than not, the protagonists in these works are torn between the desire to assimilate into American culture while negotiating with the original culture of their parents and the realization that their ethnic, racial, or religious difference is what makes them special as hyphenated subjects. For Ruth Ozeki, filmmaker and internationally acclaimed author of My Year of Meats (1998), being in between two cultures becomes a source of inspiration and strength. As the daughter of a Japanese mother and an American father, she feels that being outside of the mainstream can be an advantage. In an interview with Barbara Palmer, Ozeki said, outside “is the only place for a writer to be. Otherwise, you lose your perspective, your edge. You stop seeing things.”

In both My Year of Meats and her second novel, All Over Creation (2003), the protagonists are mixed-race Japanese Americans who do not quite fit the image of the “attractive, appetizing, and all-American” ideal woman represented in popular media (My 8). Jane Takagi-Little of My Year of Meats tries to explode this nostalgic “illusion of America” (9) by deliberately focusing on nonwhite, non-heterosexual, and nontraditional families when she gets a chance to direct a television show called My American Wife! for a Japanese audience. In All Over Creation, Yummy Fuller, who always had to play “Indian princess” in Liberty Falls Elementary School when she was growing up (7), runs away from her farming family…

Read or purchase the article here.

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A Blunt Chief Justice Unafraid to Upset Brazil’s Status

Posted in Articles, Brazil, Caribbean/Latin America, Law, Media Archive, Social Science on 2013-08-24 17:27Z by Steven

A Blunt Chief Justice Unafraid to Upset Brazil’s Status

The New York Times
2013-08-23

Simon Romero, Brazil Bureau Chief

BRASÍLIA — Brazil’s highest court has long viewed itself as a bastion of manners and formality. Justices call one another “Your Excellency,” dress in billowing robes and wrap each utterance in grandiloquence, as if little had changed from the era when marquises and dukes held sway from their vast plantations.

But when the chief justice, Joaquim Barbosa, strides into the court, the other 10 excellencies brace themselves for whatever may come next.

In one televised feud, Mr. Barbosa questioned another justice about whether he would even be on the court had he not been appointed by his cousin, a former president impeached in 1992. With another justice, Mr. Barbosa rebuked him over what the chief justice considered his condescending tone, telling him he was not his “capanga,” a term describing a hired thug.

In one of his most scathing comments, Mr. Barbosa, the high court’s first and only black justice, took on the entire legal system of Brazil — where it is still remarkably rare for politicians to ever spend time in prison, even after being convicted of crimes — contending that the mentality of judges was “conservative, pro-status-quo and pro-impunity.”

“I have a temperament that doesn’t adapt well to politics,” Mr. Barbosa, 58, said in a recent interview in his quarters here in the Supreme Federal Tribunal, a modernist landmark designed by the architect Oscar Niemeyer. “It’s because I speak my mind so much.”

His acknowledged lack of tact notwithstanding, he is the driving force behind a series of socially liberal and establishment-shaking rulings, turning Brazil’s highest court — and him in particular — into a newfound political power and the subject of popular fascination.

The court’s recent rulings include a unanimous decision upholding the University of Brasília’s admissions policies aimed at increasing the number of black and indigenous students, opening the way for one of the Western Hemisphere’s most sweeping affirmative action laws for higher education…

In a country where a majority of people now define themselves as black or of mixed race — but where blacks remain remarkably rare in the highest echelons of political institutions and corporations — Mr. Barbosa’s trajectory and abrupt manner have elicited both widespread admiration and a fair amount of resistance.

As a teenager, Mr. Barbosa moved to the capital, Brasília, finding work as a janitor in a courtroom. Against the odds, he got into the University of Brasília, the only black student in its law program at the time. Wanting to see the world, he later won admission into Brazil’s diplomatic service, which promptly sent him to Helsinki, the Finnish capital on the shore of the Baltic Sea.

Sensing that he would not advance much in the diplomatic service, which he has called “one of the most discriminatory institutions of Brazil,” Mr. Barbosa opted for a career as a prosecutor. He alternated between legal investigations in Brazil and studies abroad, gaining fluency in English, French and German, and earning a doctorate in law at Pantheon-Assas University in Paris…

Read the entire article here.

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Who is an Indian?: Race, Place, and the Politics of Indigeneity in the Americas

Posted in Anthologies, Anthropology, Books, Brazil, Canada, Caribbean/Latin America, History, Law, Media Archive, Native Americans/First Nation, Politics/Public Policy, Social Science, United States on 2013-08-24 17:12Z by Steven

Who is an Indian?: Race, Place, and the Politics of Indigeneity in the Americas

University of Toronto Press
August 2013
272 pages
Paper ISBN: 9780802095527
Cloth ISBN: 9780802098184

Edited by:

Maximilian C. Forte, Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology
Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Who is an Indian? This is possibly the oldest question facing Indigenous peoples across the Americas, and one with significant implications for decisions relating to resource distribution, conflicts over who gets to live where and for how long, and clashing principles of governance and law. For centuries, the dominant views on this issue have been strongly shaped by ideas of both race and place. But just as important, who is permitted to ask, and answer this question?

This collection examines the changing roles of race and place in the politics of defining Indigenous identities in the Americas. Drawing on case studies of Indigenous communities across North America, the Caribbean, Central America, and South America, it is a rare volume to compare Indigenous experience throughout the western hemisphere. The contributors question the vocabulary, legal mechanisms, and applications of science in constructing the identities of Indigenous populations, and consider ideas of nation, land, and tradition in moving indigeneity beyond race.

Contents

  • Preface
  • Introduction: “Who Is an Indian?” The Cultural Politics of a Bad Question / Maximilian C. Forte (Concordia University, Sociology and Anthropology)
  • Chapter One: Inuitness and Territoriality in Canada / Donna Patrick (Carleton University, Sociology and Anthropology and the School of Canadian Studies)
  • Chapter Two: Federally-Unrecognized Indigenous Communities in Canadian Contexts / Bonita Lawrence (York University, Equity Studies)
  • Chapter Three: The Canary in the Coalmine: What Sociology Can Learn from Ethnic Identity Debates among American Indians / Eva Marie Garroutte (Boston College, Sociology) and C. Matthew Snipp (Stanford University, Sociology)
  • Chapter Four : “This Sovereignty Thing”: Nationality, Blood, and the Cherokee Resurgence / Julia Coates (University of California Davis, Native American Studies)
  • Chapter Five: Locating Identity: The Role of Place in Costa Rican Chorotega Identity / Karen Stocker (California State University, Anthropology)
  • Chapter Six: Carib Identity, Racial Politics, and the Problem of Indigenous Recognition in Trinidad and Tobago / Maximilian C. Forte (Concordia University, Anthropology)
  • Chapter Seven: Encountering Indigeneity: The International Funding of Indigeneity in Peru / José Antonio Lucero (University of Washington, The Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies)
  • Chapter Eight: The Color of Race: Indians and Progress in a Center-Left Brazil / Jonathan Warren (University of Washington, International Studies, Chair of Latin American Studies)
  • Conclusion: Seeing Beyond the State and Thinking beyond the State of Sight / Maximilian C. Forte (Concordia University, Sociology and Anthropology)
  • Contributors
  • Index
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Research Project on “Mixed Race” Identity: Call for Participants

Posted in Canada, Media Archive, Social Science, Wanted/Research Requests/Call for Papers on 2013-08-23 22:32Z by Steven

Research Project on “Mixed Race” Identity: Call for Participants

University of Alberta
2013-08-23

Jillian Paragg, Ph.D. Student
Department of Sociology

Are you of mixed racial background? Do you/have you identified as “mixed race”, “multiracial”, or with other “mixed” self-identifications (i.e. biracial, mulatto, eurasian, happa, creole etc.)? Do other people identify you as “mixed”?

I am looking for residents in the GTA (Greater Toronto Area) to participate in life story interviews who:

  • are 40-60 years of age
  • are of mixed racial parentage
  • have been in Canada since the 1970s

I am conducting a project on mixed race identity for my doctoral dissertation in the Department of Sociology at the University of Alberta. The purpose of the project is to explore respondents’ experiences growing up and living as “mixed race” during the multicultural era in Canada.

Interviews will involve a minimum of two sittings, each taking at least 1 to 1.5 hours – for a total time commitment of 2 to 4 hours.

If you would like to be part of this study or have questions, please contact Jillian Paragg (paragg@ualberta.ca) by early November 2013 (will be in the GTA until end of November). This project is supervised by Dr. Sara Dorow, who can be contacted at sara.dorow@ualberta.ca.

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The Black Irish Onscreen: Representing Black and Mixed-Race Identities on Irish Film and Television

Posted in Books, Communications/Media Studies, Europe, Media Archive, Monographs on 2013-08-23 20:34Z by Steven

The Black Irish Onscreen: Representing Black and Mixed-Race Identities on Irish Film and Television

Peter Lang Publishing
Reimagining Ireland. Volume 16
2013
203 pages
5 black and white illustrations
Paperback ISBN: 978-3-0343-0839-7
DOI: 10.3726/978-3-0353-0507-4

Zélie Asava, Lecturer and Programme Director of Video and Film
Dundalk Institute of Technology, Louth, Ireland

This book examines the position of black and mixed-race characters in Irish film culture. By exploring key film and television productions from the 1990s to the present day, the author uncovers and interrogates concepts of Irish identity, history and nation.

In 2009, Ireland had the highest birth rate in Europe, with almost 24 per cent of births attributed to the ‘new Irish’. By 2013, 17 per cent of the nation was foreign-born. Ireland has always been a culturally diverse space and has produced a series of high-profile mixed-race stars, including Phil Lynott, Ruth Negga, and Simon Zebo, among others. Through an analysis of screen visualizations of the black Irish, this study uncovers forgotten histories, challenges the perceived homogeneity of the nation, evaluates integration, and considers the future of the new Ireland. It makes a creative and significant theoretical contribution to scholarly work on the relationship between representation and identity in Irish cinema.

This book was the winner of the 2011 Peter Lang Young Scholars Competition in Irish Studies.

Contents

  • Acknowledgements
  • Introduction: Positioning the Black Irish: Theoretical, Historical and Visual Contexts
  • Chapter One: ‘No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish’: Being Black and Irish in Neil Jordan’s The Crying Game (1992) and Breakfast on Pluto (2005)
  • Chapter Two: Gendering the Other: Raced Women in Irish Television (Prosperity (RTE, 2007), Love is The Drug (RTE, 2004) and Fair City (RTE, 1989–present))
  • Chapter Three: New Identities in the Irish Horror Film: Isolation (O’Brien, 2005) and Boy Eats Girl (Bradley, 2005)
  • Chapter Four: Black and Mixed Masculinities in Irish Cinema: The Nephew (Brady, 1998), Irish Jam (Eyres, 2006) and The Front Line (Gleeson, 2006)
  • Chapter Five: Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me: Trafficked (O’Connor, 2010) and the Multicultural Irish Thriller
  • Chapter Six: The Raced Stranger in Contemporary Cinema: Between the Canals (O’Connor, 2011), Sensation (Hall, 2010), The Good Man (Harrison, 2012) and The Guard (McDonagh, 2011)
  • Conclusion
  • Framing the Future of the Black Irish Onscreen
  • Bibliography
  • Index
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Researching the Experiences of Multiracial People Having their Racial Group Membership Denied by Others

Posted in Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, United States, Wanted/Research Requests/Call for Papers on 2013-08-23 00:43Z by Steven

Researching the Experiences of Multiracial People Having their Racial Group Membership Denied by Others

University of Maryland, College Park
Department of Psychology
2013-08-22

Marisa Franco, Doctoral Student
Counseling Psychology

Greetings!

My name is Marisa Franco and I am a doctoral student in counseling psychology at the University of Maryland. I am conducting a survey examining Multiracial people’s experiences of having their racial group membership denied by others.

I would appreciate if you could participate and/or forward this study to potential participants. We are looking for participants that identify as Multiracial and are over the age of 18.

All participants will have the option of being entered into a raffle to receive one of three $25 gift cards.

To participate in the study, please click here: https://umd.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_8ChXJARNTErFm0l

Prospective participants can click on the link provided above and will be directed to the informed consent document, which includes additional information on study participation. Participation in the study is expected to take approximately 30 minutes.

Participation is confidential and participants may withdraw from the study at any time. If participants have any questions, they may contact me at mgf269@umd.edu.

Thank you.

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What the ‘Mixed Kids Are Always So Beautiful’ Meme Really Means

Posted in Articles, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2013-08-23 00:32Z by Steven

What the ‘Mixed Kids Are Always So Beautiful’ Meme Really Means

The Huffington Post
2013-08-22

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

The New York Times’ Motherlode blog recently posted a thought-provoking article called, “Mixed Kids Are Always So Beautiful.” The author’s experiences as a parent to a racially-ambiguous mixed child are proof that beauty and race are concepts societies create that may not actually exist in nature. As a result, beauty and race are associated with and impacted by our experiences and perceptions related to class, immigration, gender, sexuality and marketing. Case in point: Since the Time magazine “New Eve” cover in the 1990s, multiracial individuals are more and more said to be the face of 21st century America and its evolved standard of beauty. But what’s less known is that even this image was altered to look less “Hispanic/Latino” (read: brown) and more “European” (read: white) after focus group testing.

The “mixed race faces are prettier” meme is related directly to hybrid vigor, the biological phenomenon that predicts that crossbreeding leads to offspring that are genetically fitter than their parents. Hybrid vigor makes mixed race people somehow biologically different and prettier than non-mixed (non-white) people by nature. Equally dangerous is the added effect that focusing on mixed-race offspring continues to make interracial relationships about sex and heterosexuality and to marginalize those who do not identify as heterosexuals and/or come from same-sex interracial families…

…My parents reminded us that real beauty is measured more accurately by intelligence, interests and healthy relationships rather than by a racially ambiguous appearance and others’ reactions to it. They also taught me not to “believe the (racist) hype” that mixed kids are more beautiful than anyone else…

Read the entire article here.

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Notorious in the Neighborhood with Joshua Rothman, Ph.D. [on Research at the National Archives and Beyond]

Posted in Audio, History, Interviews, Media Archive, Slavery, United States, Virginia on 2013-08-22 23:59Z by Steven

Notorious in the Neighborhood with Joshua Rothman, Ph.D.

Research at the National Archives and Beyond
BlogTalk Radio
Thursday, 2013-08-22, 21:00 EDT, (Friday, 2013-08-23, 01:00Z)

Bernice Bennett, Host

Joshua D. Rothman, Professor of History and African American Studies
University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa

Notorious in the Neighborhood: Sex and Families Across the Color Line in Virginia, 1787-1861

Laws and cultural norms militated against interracial sex in  Virginia before the Civil War,. Nonetheless, it was ubiquitous in urban, town, and plantation communities throughout the state. In Notorious in the Neighborhood, Joshua Rothman examines the full spectrum of interracial sexual relationships under slavery-from Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings, and the intertwined interracial families of Monticello and Charlottesville to commercial sex in Richmond, the routinized sexual exploitation of enslaved women, and adultery across the color line.

White Virginians allowed for an astonishing degree of flexibility and fluidity within a seemingly rigid system of race and interracial relations, Rothman argues, and the relationship between law and custom regarding racial intermixture was always shifting. As a consequence, even as whites never questioned their own racial supremacy, the meaning and significance of racial boundaries, racial hierarchy, and ultimately of race itself always stood on unstable ground—a reality that whites understood and about which they demonstrated increasing anxiety as the sectional crisis intensified.

Joshua Rothman is Professor of History and African American Studies at the University of Alabama, where he is also Director of the Frances S. Summersell Center for the Study of the South.

For more information, click here.

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Multiracial Experiences Survey

Posted in Identity Development/Psychology, New Media, Wanted/Research Requests/Call for Papers on 2013-08-22 23:55Z by Steven

Multiracial Experiences Survey

Self in Social Context Lab
Psychology Department
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada
2013-02-18

Lisa S. Giamo, M.A., Ph.D. Candidate
Experimental Social Psychology

I am conducting research as part of my dissertation at Simon Fraser University. As part of research being conducted on behalf of the Self in the Social Context Lab at Simon Fraser University, we are currently working on a study examining the experiences of multiracial people in today’s society. Psychology is just starting to study multiracial people more in depth, and we think it is important to understand more about the experiences of multiracial people and how they see themselves. We are specifically interested in people with one White and one Asian parent, as this population is the fastest growing of all of the multiracial combinations.  Since multiracial people are found all across the globe, it is difficult to do this type of research without assistance with online recruiting.

The anonymity and confidentiality of all participants are guaranteed.  If you are interested in being a part of this research, please use the following link to our survey: https://cgi.sfu.ca/~sisclab/cgi-bin/v5/rws5.cgi?FORM=MultiracialExperience1

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