Mixed Race Studies

Identity Production in Figured Worlds: How Some Multiracial Students Become Racial Atravesados/as

The Urban Review
June 2013

Aurora Chang

Using Holland et al.’s (Identity and agency in cultural worlds, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1998) theory of identity and their concept of figured worlds, this article provides an overview of how twenty-five undergraduates of color came to produce a Multiracial identity. Using Critical Race Theory methodology with ethnographic interviewing as the primary method, I specifically focus on the ways in which Multiracial figured worlds operate within a racial borderland (Anzaldúa in Borderlands: La Frontera—The New Mestiza, Aunt Lute Books, San Francisco, 1987), an alternate, marginal world where improvisational play (Holland et al. in Identity and agency in cultural worlds, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1998) and facultad became critical elements of survival. Participants exercised their agency by perforating monoracial storylines and developed a complex process of identity production that informed their behaviors by a multifaceted negotiation of positionalities. I end by focusing on implications for urban education that can be drawn from this study.

Read or purchase the article here.

Mixed Remixed: a media festival celebrating connection

October 2013

Mixed Remixed is an exciting new media festival celebrating racial and cultural connectedness which will be held June 14, 2014 at the Japanese American National Museum in downtown Los Angeles. Mixed Remixed brings together film and book lovers, innovative and emerging artists, and multiracial families and individuals for workshops, readings, film screenings and live performance including music, comedy and spoken word.

Mixed Remixed is brought to you by the co-founder of the original [The Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival] multiracial/multicultural film and book festival  and an incredible group of volunteers.  The original festival showcased many talented filmmakers, writers, and performers including Key & Peele, Rebecca Walker, Kip Fulbeck, Danzy Senna, Carleen Brice, Kim Wayans & Kevin Knotts, Angela Nissel, Neil Aitken, Mat Johnson, Faith Adiele, Sundee Frasier, Karyn Parsons, Dr. Maya Soetoro-Ng and many many more.  Mixed Remixed promises to be even bigger and better and will also highlight playwrights, visual artists, and multidiscliplinary artists!

Through film screenings, readings, workshops and performance, Mixed Remixed highlights previously untold stories of our connectedness as a community and a nation across cultural, racial and religious divides; provides a safe, positive forum for honest discussions about race and culture; creates a platform for emerging storytellers’ careers; and promotes the Mixed experience as a valuable prism with which to view issues of social justice and change…

For more information, click here.

Transcending blackness: from the new millennium mulatta to the exceptional multiracial [Aspinall Review]

Ethnic and Racial Studies
Volume 37, Issue 5, 2014
pages 850-851
DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2013.831934

Peter J. Aspinall, Emeritus Reader in Population Health
University of Kent, UK

Transcending blackness: from the new millennium mulatta to the exceptional multiracial, by Ralina L. Joseph. Durham and London. Duke University Press. 2013.
xx+ 226 pp., (paperback). ISBN 978-0-8223-5292-1

This book is concerned with representations of mixed-race African American women, notably, the two categories into which fall the mainstream images of mixed-race blackness: the new millennium mulatta. exceedingly tragic, always divided, alone, and uncomfortable, and the exceptional multiracial, unifying, strikingly successful post-racial ideal. The analysed texts which form the main body of the book belong to the 1998-2008 era (following the debates about capture of the multiracial population in the 2000 US Census), a period during which representations crystallized into this two-sided stereotype. Both are rooted in a condemnation of blackness which is either implicit as where blackness is stigmatized through the presentation of tragic mulatta inevitability or explicit, where discarding the burden of blackness means arriving at a safely post-racial state. Both representations take place in the context of gendered and sexualized as well as racialized performances.

An in-depth approach is adopted in which four representative works are examined with regard to the textual nuances that construct the two stereotypes. Part 1 explores the new millennium mulatlas: the bad race girl’ in Jennifer Beals’s portrayal of Bette Porter on the cable television drama The L Word (2004-2008), in which Bette is mired in the tragic misfortune and destiny of the mulatta: and the ‘sad race girl’ in Danzy Senna’s novel ‘Caucasia‘ (1998), which investigates how Senna reinterprets the tragic mulatta heroine in her production of a new millennium mulatta representation. Race and gender arc the drivers that torture the protagonists who are unable to achieve the states of post-race and post-feminism. In part II, ‘The Exceptional Multiracial’. Joseph interrogates representations that develop the character of the racial-transforming mixed-race title character in Alison Swan’s independent film ‘Mixing Nia‘ (1998) and the racial-switching mixed-race contestant in an episode of Tyra Banks’s reality television show ‘America’s Next Top Model‘ (2005). These representations portray blackness as an irrelevant entity for the multiracial, something that can and should be transcended through racialized performances. Blackness, the cause of sadness and pain for the multiracial African American, must be erased or surpassed in order to reach a state of health or success.

These particular works were chosen by Joseph as they were ‘representations of this particular time period and particular subgenre of multiracial African American representations’ and are not isolated representations of mixed-race African Americans but representative texts. Indeed, she contends that contemporary black-white representations do not go beyond this binary, the idea that blackness is a deficit that black and multiracial people must overcome…

Read or purchase the review here.

New faculty: Amy Non links health disparities to genetics and environment

Research News @ Vanderbilt
Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee
2012-11-30

Liz Entman, (615) 322-NEWS

For decades, researchers have struggled to identify the root causes behind racial disparities in health. Amy Non, assistant professor of anthropology, takes a multidisciplinary approach.

A molecular anthropologist specializing in epigenetics, the study of how environment and behavior affect the expression of genes, her work integrates genetics, anthropology and public health.

For example, why are African Americans at greater risk for many chronic diseases? “We don’t really know what’s causing it—whether it’s their genetic ancestry or whether it’s something about their social or cultural environment,” Non said. She has found no evidence that African genetic ancestry plays a role and is now trying to identify psychosocial mechanisms—such as stress—that may contribute to these disparities.

Stress triggers a release of hormones that can lead to inflammation or dysregulation of other biological processes, she said. Prolonged exposure to stress can permanently interfere with the genes that regulate these hormones, which can have long-term consequences on a person’s health.

Read the entire article here.

Education, Genetic Ancestry, and Blood Pressure in African Americans and Whites

American Journal of Public Health
August 2012, Volume 102, Number 8
pages 1559-1565
DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2011.300448

Amy L. Non, Assistant Professor of Anthropology,
Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee

Clarence C. Gravlee, Associate Professor of Anthropology;  affiliate appointments in the Department of Behavioral Science and Community Health
University of Florida, Gainesville

Connie J. Mulligan, Professor of Anthropology; Associate Director, University of Florida Genetics Institute
University of Florida, Gainesville

• Objectives. We assessed the relative roles of education and genetic ancestry in predicting blood pressure (BP) within African Americans and explored the association between education and BP across racial groups.
• Methods. We used t tests and linear regressions to examine the associations of genetic ancestry, estimated from a genomewide set of autosomal markers, and education with BP variation among African Americans in the Family Blood Pressure Program. We also performed linear regressions in self-identified African Americans and Whites to explore the association of education with BP across racial groups.
• Results. Education, but not genetic ancestry, significantly predicted BP variation in the African American subsample (b = –0.51 mm Hg per year additional education; P = .001). Although education was inversely associated with BP in the total population, within-group analyses showed that education remained a significant predictor of BP only among the African Americans. We found a significant interaction (b = 3.20; P = .006) between education and self-identified race in predicting BP.
• Conclusions. Racial disparities in BP may be better explained by differences in education than by genetic ancestry. Future studies of ancestry and disease should include measures of the social environment. (Am J Public Health. 2012; 102:1559–1565. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2011.300448)

In recent decades, researchers have struggled to determine the causes of racial disparities in health. Many biomedical researchers have speculated that underlying genetic differences between races may contribute to these disparities. With the increasing availability of high-throughput genotyping platforms, a wealth of genomic data is now available to help address this issue. One consequence is that more researchers are estimating genetic ancestry to capture a presumed genetic basis of racial disparities in health. However, any associations found between genetic ancestry and disease could alternatively be explained by unmeasured environmental factors that are also associated with African genetic ancestry and contribute to health disparities, such as socioeconomic status (SES), neighborhood environment, and psychosocial factors including perceived stress or discrimination. Therefore, to avoid unwarranted inferences about the magnitude of genetic influences on health disparities, it is critical for any analysis of ancestry and disease to include appropriate social–environmental variables.

Social–environmental factors may be especially important when one is studying a complex disease such as hypertension. Complex diseases, by definition, involve multiple environmental and genetic causes, as well as interactions within and between them. Many studies have identified important social–environmental influences on racial inequalities in hypertension, such as SES, psychosocial stressors, and neighborhood environment, whereas other studies have begun to identify relevant genetic variants, such as those in the rennin–angiotensin–aldosterone axis and the adrenergic system. Few studies, however, have examined genetic and environmental factors simultaneously. The limited scope of this research to date has slowed progress toward explaining racial inequalities in hypertension and other complex diseases.

To address the relevance of both genetic and environmental factors in racial inequalities in hypertension, we tested associations between genetic ancestry, education, and blood pressure (BP) among Whites and African Americans in the Family Blood Pressure Program (FBPP) study. A previous analysis of this data set by Tang et al. found no evidence of a statistically significant association between African genetic ancestry and blood pressure. They concluded nonetheless that the results were “suggestive of genetic differences between Africans and non-Africans that influence blood pressure, but such effects are likely to be modest compared to environmental ones.” No environmental variables were included in their study, however. Here we reexamine the FBPP data set to test how the addition of education affects the association between ancestry and BP in African Americans. We also explored the association between education and blood pressure across racial groups. We hypothesized that education would show a greater association with BP than would African ancestry among African Americans, and that the association between education and BP may vary by racial and gender groups…

Read the entire article here.

Purple Boots, Silver Stars … and White Parents

The New York Times
2013-10-13

Frank Ligtvoet, Founder
Adoptive Families With Children of African Heritage and Their Friends, New York, New York

“WHEN I wear my cap backwards, don’t copy me,” our 8-year-old son says to his 7-year-old sister. “O.K.,” she answers, “I will put it on sideways.”

Recently our African-American daughter, Rosa, had gone with an older black friend to Fulton Mall, a crowded commercial area in our Brooklyn neighborhood, where the shoppers are mostly black. Fulton Mall is not only about shopping, it’s also a place to flirt, talk, laugh and argue, and to listen in passing to gospel, soul, hip-hop and R & B.

Rosa had seen some purple canvas boots with silver stars and lost herself in an all-consuming desire to have them. Immediately. I bought them, a bit later. A day later. And to be “fair,” I bought our son, Joshua, who is also African-American, a pair of black and yellow basketball shorts. Pretty cool as well.

The next day they want to show off their new stuff and, somewhat to my surprise, they decide to do so at Fulton Mall. I am their white adoptive dad, and by now, at their age, they see the racial difference between us clearly and are not always comfortable with it in public. But they know they are too young to go alone to the mall. Before we leave, Rosa, who had always seemed indifferent to fashion, changes into tight jeans and a black short-sleeve T-shirt. Joshua twists his head to see how he looks from behind. He pushes his new shorts a bit lower over his hips, but doesn’t dare to go all the way saggy. And then — after they have their cap conversation — we go.

They walk ahead. I am kept at a distance, a distance that grows as we get closer to the mall. I respect that; I grin and play stranger.

Joshua walks with the wide, tentative yet supple steps he sees black teenage boys make, steps he has practiced at home in the mirror. I realize that this is the first time in their lives they are asserting their blackness in a black environment, maybe not in opposition to but in conscious separation from the whiteness of my male partner and me. And we are a bit proud of their budding racial independence, since it comes after years of their having expressed feelings that ranged from “I don’t want to be black” to “I hate white people.” Being black with us was safe now. Being black at Fulton Mall was sort of a test of how safe it was out there in the world. I take a picture with my phone to catch this moment, which they hate. Of course…

…In the case of transracial adoption, there is the force of horizontal identity, where the child looks for others with the same experience of being adopted, but the vertical identity is complicated as well. When we wake them up in the morning, our kids don’t see parents who look like them. For many young transracial adoptees, every time they look in the mirror it’s a shock to see that they are black or Asian and not white like their parents. (In most transracial families, the parents are white.) The children have to grow out of their internalized whiteness into their own racial identity. Some fail and suffer tremendously…

Read the entire opinion piece here.

Identity issues

Harvard Gazette
2011-01-28

Stephanie Schorow, Harvard Correspondent

‘Black in Latin America’ examines perceptions of race

There were laughs of recognition as Silvio Torres-Saillant, professor of English and humanities at Syracuse University, told a story that underscored a major point of the “Black in Latin America” conference, which kicked off on Jan. 27 at Harvard.

Torres-Saillant, a former director of the Syracuse Latino-Latin American Studies Program, described being approached about joining a black campus caucus some years ago. A representative asked the carefully considered question: “Do you consider yourself more Hispanic or more black?”

His bemused silence may have been seen as an answer by the representative, but it reveals the false dichotomy that, for far too long, has been applied to the study of people of African descent who hail from South, Central, or North America and the Caribbean.

In what many participants called a “historic moment,” scholars from around the world gathered for three days at Harvard to explore issues of race, racial identity, and racism in countries as diverse as Haiti, Brazil, Mexico, and Peru. Of the estimated 12.5 million Africans shipped to the New World during the Middle Passage of the slave trade, the vast majority were taken to the Caribbean and Latin America.

“This is not just about Africa; this is not just about Latin America; this is how it all comes together,” said Caroline Elkins, Harvard history professor…

…In the first session of the conference, which focused on racial identity in the Dominican Republic, anthropologist Juan Rodriguez examined how Dominicans emphasize their European ancestry and distinguish themselves from Haitians who are perceived as the darker “other” or even as “foreigners,” even though the two countries share the same land mass.

Yet, Rodriguez said, examination of DNA from maternal lines of Dominicans finds that 85 percent have African ancestors, 9.4 Indian, and less than .08 European. DNA from paternal lines found 58 percent from European ancestors, 36 from African, and 1 percent Indian, he said. This emphasizes the abusive role played by the European male in relation to enslaved native and African women, he said.

In his humorous, yet poignant, remarks, Rodriguez discussed the use of race on Dominican national identification cards, rattling off some of the 12 classifications of skin color from the early 1970s, including white, black, ashen, discolored, so pale as to appear sick, light with freckles or moles, and purple. He also cited the 15 kinds of hair texture that ranged on a spectrum from “bueno” (good) for straight hair to “malo” (bad) for kinky hair.

Frank Moya Pons, a professor of Latin America and a former minister in the Dominican government, discussed his research into census data that reveals just how reluctant Dominicans have been over the decades to call themselves “mulatto,” preferring to identify themselves as Indians or the native people of the region. “We are in the presence of a mulatto population that calls itself Indian, which gives us much food for thought,” he said…

Read the entire article here.

The Influence of Spirituality on the Implicit Identity of Racial African American Women of Ethnically Cherokee Ancestry

Argosy University, Washington, D.C.
December 2009
141 pages

Daryl Harris Thorne

Submitted to the Faculty of Argosy University – Washington, DC Campus College of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences In partial fulfillment of The requirements for the  Degree of Doctor of Education

This dissertation examines the influence of spirituality on implicit identity using a heuristic-case study approach. This research attempted to recognize the complexity of identity construction by acknowledging the myriad of factors that contribute to the human experience beneath surface identity. Historical trauma, marginalization, and the Virginia Racial Integrity Act of 1924 were also explored using Symbolic Interaction as a theoretical frame. Based on the findings, counselors are reminded to remain open to the possibility that there are people who present a certain way, externally, due to external features or socialization yet, internally, identify in a different way. This study adds a substantive dimension to theories of identity formation that place primary focus on spirituality vs. racial, historical and societal constructions.