Mixed Race Studies

Being Mixed in Today’s America

Diverse: Issues in Higher Education
2014-02-07

Jonathan Ng
California State University, San Bernardino

For me, being mixed ethnicity has been a multiple-way street ― like a giant intersection. I am Black, White and Chinese; however, based on my skin color, most people classify me as Black. I look racially ambiguous, so people like to ask me what I am. When I tell them that I am Black and White, they think, “Oh, that’s kind of what I guessed.” But then when I finish and say that I am Chinese, it absolutely blows their minds. They respond “How?” or “No you are not!”

It is strange to think that people actually deny me of my own heritage like I am wrong, but when I tell them that my last name is Chinese (Ng), they accept it and say, “Oh so that’s where your last name comes from. I thought it was different.” Here’s something I found to be interesting, though. When I tell people that I am Black, White and Chinese, they understand that I am mixed; however, the only thing they care about is the Black and Chinese part. I think they selectively hear Black and Chinese because it seems the most interesting to them. I often get asked questions like, “What part of you is Chinese?” I have to explain my family history to just about everybody I meet. When I tell them that my family has been mixed since my great-grandparents on one side and my grandparents on my other side, they are absolutely shocked. Yes, I have a family of rebels.

This has become a daily routine for me ― let’s say weekly routine, because, yes, it has become that common for me to explain my heritage to people I meet. I don’t really mind it as much because I try to put myself in their shoes and understand how hard it is to grasp that my family has been mixed for so many generations back…

Read the entire article here.

Pacifically Possessed: Scientific Production and Native Hawaiian Critique of the “Almost White” Polynesian Race

University of California, San Diego
2013
320 pages

Maile Renee Arvin

A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Ethnic Studies

This dissertation analyzes how scientific knowledge has represented the Polynesian race as an essentially mixed, “almost white” race. Nineteenth and twentieth century scientific literature—spanning the disciplines of ethnology, physical anthropology, sociology and genetics—positioned Polynesians as the biological relatives of Caucasians. Scientific proof of this relationship allowed scientists, policymakers, and popular media to posit European and American settler colonialism in the Pacific as a peaceful and natural fulfillment of a biological destiny. Understanding knowledge as an important agent of settler colonial possession—in the political as well as supernatural, haunting connotations of that word— this project seeks to understand how Polynesians (with a particular focus on Native Hawaiians) have been bodily “possessed,” along with the political and economic possession of their lands. Thus, the project traces a logic of “possession through whiteness” in which Polynesians were once, and under the salutary influence of settler colonialism, will again be white.

The project’s analysis coheres around four figures of the “almost white” Polynesian race: the ancestrally white Polynesian of ethnology and Aryanism (1830s- 1870s), the Part-Hawaiian of physical anthropology and eugenics (1910s-1920s), the mixed-race “Hawaiian girl” of sociology (1930s-1940s), and the mixed-race, soon-to-be white (again) Polynesian of genetics, whose full acceptance in Hawaiʻi seemed to provide a model of racial harmony to the world (1950s). Rather than attempting to uncover “racist” scientific practices, the project reveals how historical scientific literature produced knowledge about the Polynesian race that remains important in how Native Hawaiians are recognized (and misrecognized) in contemporary scientific, legal and cultural spheres.

In addition to the historical analysis, the project also examines contemporary Native Hawaiian responses to the logic of possession through whiteness. These include regenerative actions that radically displace whiteness, such as contemporary relationship building between Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders. At the same time, other regenerative actions attempt to reproduce Native Hawaiian-ness with a standard of racial purity modeled on whiteness, including legal fights waged over blood quantum legislation. Overall, the project provides a scientific genealogy as to how Polynesians have been recognized as “almost white,” and questions under what conditions this possessive recognition can be refused.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Signature Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Vita
• Abstract of the Dissertation
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The Polynesian Problem and its Genomic Solutions
  • Part 1: Defining the Polynesian Problem
    • 1.1.1: From Who to Whose: Origins, Identity, and Possession of the Indigenous Pacific
    • 1.1.2: Polynesia Through the Christian Lens of Degeneration
    • 1.1.3: Heirlooms of the Aryan Race
  • Part 2: (Un)Mapping Humanity: Genetic Sameness and Mixture in the Pacific
    • 1.2.1: Genetically “Solving” the Polynesian Problem
    • 1.2.2: The Hawaiian Genome Project
• Chapter 2: “Still in the Blood”: Past and Present Configurations of the “Part-Hawaiian”
  • Part 1: Eugenic Thinking About Native Hawaiian Betterment
    • 2.1.1: Eugenics Pedagogy in Hawaiʻi: Uldrick Thompson’s Hopes for the Hawaiian “Remnant”
    • 2.1.2: Sullivan’s “Two Types” of Polynesians
  • Part 2: Leveraging Blood and Whiteness
    • 2.2.1: Polynesian Blood and the Pre-requisite of Whiteness
    • 2.2.2: Calling the Law on “Native Hawaiians with a Capital N”
• Chapter 3: Re-envisioning “Hybrid” and “Hapa”: Race, Gender and Indigeneity in Hawaiʻi as Racial Laboratory
  • Part 1: Hybrid Hawaiian Types: Native Hawaiian Women in Hawaiʻiʻs Racial Laboratory
    • 3.1.1: The Racial Laboratory of Romanzo Adams and the Chicago School of Sociology
    • 3.1.2: Hybrid Hawaiian Girls
  • Part 2: Hapa and Whole
    • 3.2.1: Kip Fulbeck’s Vision of Hapa as a “Whole” New Race
    • 3.2.2: Re-constellations of Asian Settlers, Haoles Settlers, and Native Hawaiians
• Chapter 4: Beyond Recognition: Native Hawaiians, Human Rights, and Global Indigenous Identities
  • Part 1: Polynesia and Hawaiʻi in the Science of Race After World World II
    • 4.1.1: The Polynesian Problem as Anti-Racist Example
    • 4.1.2: “Tropical Democracy” and the Science of Stabilizing Mixed Race
  • Part 2: Reframing Recognition: Indigenous Rights and Relationships in Oceania and Beyond
    • 4.2.1: Polynesian / Pacific / Pacific Islander
    • 4.2.2: Indigenous / Non-Self-Governing Territory
    • 4.2.3: Native American / Alaska Native / Idle No More
• Conclusion
• Bibliography

Read the entire dissertation here.

The invisible weight of whiteness: the racial grammar of everyday life in contemporary America

Ethnic and Racial Studies
Volume 35, Issue 2, 2012
pages 173-194
DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2011.613997

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Professor of Sociology
Duke University

Racial domination, like all forms of domination, works best when it becomes hegemonic, that is, when it accomplishes its goal without much fanfare. In this paper, based on the Ethnic and Racial Studies Annual Lecture I delivered in May 2011 in London, I argue there is something akin to a grammar – a racial grammar if you will – that structures cognition, vision, and even feelings on all sort of racial matters. This grammar normalizes the standards of white supremacy as the standards for all sort of social events and transactions. Thus, in the USA one can talk about HBCUs (historically black colleges and universities), but not about HWCUs (historically white colleges and universities) or one can refer to black movies and black TV shows but not label movies and TV shows white when in fact most are. I use a variety of data (e.g., abduction of children, school shootings, etc.) to illustrate how this grammar works and highlight what it helps to accomplish. I conclude that racial grammar is as important as all the visible practices and mechanisms of white supremacy and that we must fight its poisonous effects even if, like smog, we cannot see how it works clearly.

Read the entire article here.

[View Dr. Bonilla-Silva’s lecture at the Fall 2010 Honors Colloquium at the University or Rhode Island here.]

Mixed-race children ‘are being failed’ in treatment of mental health problems

The Guardian
2014-02-22

Tracy McVeigh, Chief Reporter
The Observer

The fastest growing ethnic group in Britain is still being treated as if it is only integrated into black culture, says report

Children of mixed race are at greater risk of suffering from mental health problems and are not getting the support they need, says a report.

Despite mixed-race children belonging to the fastest-growing ethnic group, the research, backed by the National Children’s Bureau, found that they faced “unrealistic” expectations from teachers and other adults who did not understand their backgrounds.

While mixed-race young people are over represented in the care, youth justice and child protection systems, the authors said they were “invisible” in public service practice and policy.

The report – Mixed Experiences – growing up mixed race: mental health and wellbeing – drew on several studies and interviews with 21 people about their experiences as children.

Co-author Dinah Morley was concerned at the lack of understanding over what it meant to be mixed race, a group most likely to suffer racism. “I was surprised at how much racism, from black and white people, had come their way,” she said. “A lot of children were seen as black when they might be being raised by a white single parent and had no understanding of the black culture. The default position for a child of mixed race is that they are black.”…

Read the entire article here.

Mixed Experiences: Growing up mixed race – mental health and well-being

Jessica Kingsley Publishers
February 2014
96 pages
210mm x 148mm / 8.5in x 5.5in
Paperback ISBN: 9781909391154

Dinah Morley and Cathy Street

Mixed race is the fastest growing population group of children and young people in England and Wales. The diversity of the mixed race group’s does not allow for a one-size-fits-all assessment of needs, and this is the challenge for practitioners.

This guide offers practitioners an insight into the experiences of racism, discrimination and identity confusion that mixed race children and young people encounter. With a focus on mental health, it discusses the policy context and considers the learning from projects and local services that have targeted mixed race children, young people and families.

It will be of value to all practitioners working with children and young people, especially those in the mental health field, and also in health more generally, early years services, social care, education, youth justice and the voluntary sector.