Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

This study adds to the growing body of literature on multiracial identity by illustrating the importance of reflected appraisals in shaping racial identity. Importantly, these findings also show how reflected appraisals are fundamentally shaped by the one-drop rule (for black-white Americans in particular). Few studies examine reflected appraisals as a determinant of racial identity (Khanna 2004), and I find that biracial respondents frequently explain their black identities as due, in part, to how they believe they are viewed by “others” and by “larger society.” As suggested by Brunsma and Rockquemore (2001), however, who argue that how biracial people think others view them is moderated by social context, many respondents draw distinctions between how they believe they are perceived depending upon whether the observers are white or black. Other white people, they argue, see them as black, while other black people are more likely to recognize their multiracial backgrounds. These conflicting perceptions have the potential to shape different “racial reflections” (e.g., as black or multiracial), yet I find that the one-drop rule affects the entire reflected appraisal process, subsequently shaping “internalized” black identities for the majority of respondents.

Nikki Khanna, “‘If You’re Half Black, You’re Just Black’: Reflected Appraisals and the Persistence of the One-Drop Rule,” Sociological Quarterly, Volume 51, Issue 1 (Winter 2010). 113-114. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1533-8525.2009.01162.x.

UNPOPULAR OPINION: 6 Reasons Why Your Utopic Vision for a Mixed-Race Future is My Nightmare

Posted in Anthropology, Articles, Asian Diaspora, History, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2014-12-10 17:54Z by Steven

xoJane
2014-12-10

Kristina Wong

Guess what? One day, when we’re all mixed race, racism won’t magically disappear.

Before you start trolling me (not that I don’t need the attention), let me tell you the specific sentiment that this whole essay addresses. It usually starts when someone chimes in with their wide-eyed vision for 2050, the year when people of color will outnumber white people in America:

“One day when all the races have mixed together, and we can’t tell what anyone is anymore, there won’t be racism! All our cultures will blend together! And…the babies will be beautiful!”

Ah yes! This magic mixed-race future, where everyone will have fucked the hate out of everyone and in the process, thousands of years of colonialism, violence, and systemic oppression disappear into the “interesting facial features” of mixed-race people!

I’m not indicting the lives of mixed-race people nor chastising interracial relationships. But let’s get real — the hypothetical “Future World of Mixed-Race Babies” being the end of racism suffers from frighteningly naive logic about how racism actually works.

Here are SIX reasons why racial utopia won’t suddenly appear once we pull our pants down and start boning across borders…

Read the entire article here.

Tags: Kristina Wong, xoJane

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Mixed Race Studies

UNPOPULAR OPINION: 6 Reasons Why Your Utopic Vision for a Mixed-Race Future is My Nightmare

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