Mixed Race Studies

Four-country newspaper framing of Barack Obama’s multiracial identity in the 2008 US presidential election

Ecquid Novi: African Journalism Studies
Volume 35, Issue 3, 2014
pages 23-38
DOI: 10.1080/02560054.2014.955867

Kioko Ireri, Assistant Professor of Journalism & Mass Communication
United States International University-Africa, Nairobi, Kenya

Though Barack Obama was the first African American presidential nominee for a major party in the history of the US presidential election, his multiracial identity put him under intense scrutiny during the 2008 election – more than any other previous black aspirants for the White House. Using quantitative content analysis of election stories in the newspapers of four countries (New York Times – US; Times – Britain; China Daily – China and Daily Nation – Kenya), this comparative study examines the prevalence of four racial frames associated with Obama’s multilayered racial identity: ‘African American’, ‘black’, ‘Kenyan roots’ and ‘white roots’. In addition, the study investigates the four newspapers’ valence coverage of the four racial frames in relation to Obama’s candidacy. The findings indicate that ‘Kenyan roots’ was the racial frame which occurred most frequently, followed by the ‘black’ frame. Overall, Obama received more positive coverage than negative across the racial frames depicted in the four newspapers.

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Redefining Racial Categories: The Dynamics of Identity Among Brazilian-Americans

Immigrants & Minorities: Historical Studies in Ethnicity, Migration and Diaspora
Volume 33, Issue 1, 2015
pages 45-65
DOI: 10.1080/02619288.2014.909732

Catarina Fritz
Department of Sociology and Corrections
Minnesota State University, Mankato

Research based on a sample of Brazilian youth living in Massachusetts reveals a variety of responses to racialisation of their phenotypes. Caught between the fluid patterns of colour categories found in Brazilian society and the more rigid racial stratification that characterises the USA, Brazilian-Americans have followed a variety of strategies to adapt to this situation. By exploring the reactions of these young adults of different appearance along the colour continuum to the constraints of the dominant society, questions concerning the future dynamics of race relations in the USA are raised against a background of the continuing post-racialism debate.

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Adolescent Racial Identity: Self-Identification of Multiple and “Other” Race/Ethnicities

Urban Education
Published online before print: 2015-03-18
DOI: 10.1177/0042085915574527

Bryn Harris, Assistant Professor of Psychology
University of Colorado, Denver

Russell D. Ravert, Associate Professor
Department of Human Development & Family Studies
University of Missouri, Columbia

Amanda L. Sullivan, Associate Professor of Psychology
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis

This mixed methods study focused on adolescents who rejected conventional singular racial/ethnic categorization by selecting multiple race/ethnicities or writing descriptions of “Other” racial/ethnic identities in response to a survey item asking them to identify their race/ethnicity. Written responses reflected eight distinct categories ranging from elaborative descriptions of conventional race categories to responses refusing the construct of race/ethnicity. Students’ endorsement of multiple or “Other” ethnicities, and the resultant categories, differed by gender, grade, school type, and school compositions. Findings support scholars’ concern that common conceptualizations of race may not capture the complexity of self-identified racial categories among youth.

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Locating queer-mixed experiences: Narratives of geography and migration

Qualitative Social Work
Volume 14, Number 5 (September 2015)
pages 651-669
DOI: 10.1177/1473325014561250

Kimberly D. Hudson
School of Social Work
University of Washington

Gita R. Mehrotra, Assistant Professor of Social Work
Portland State University, Portland, Oregon

Social work scholarship concerned with mixed-race and queer identities is growing and ever-changing, yet often treats race and sexuality as separate experiences independent from context and environment. In addition, in studies of mixed-race people, the legacy of the Black-White/US-based multiracial paradigm and the history of such research using race as the only or primary analytic has left a dearth of studies that seek to understand mixed-race experiences within geographical, transnational and intersectional contexts. In this paper, we extend previous work focused on situational and contextual multiracial identities through an interview-based study of a sample of 12 queer and mixed-race individuals. We employ a narrative analysis to explore how emergent themes of geography and migration are salient to self-making processes of participants. Findings include: (1) diverse geographic and migration histories among participants; (2) interviewees’ use of discursive strategies that draw upon experiences of geography and migration within the narrative structure; and (3) the critical role of geography and migration in expanding and changing participants’ identity discourses and in shaping individuals’ identity and sense of community. Ultimately, this work serves as a call for on-going attention to how geography and migration, as well as intersectional and transnational perspectives, add depth and texture to studies of queer-mixed people while also offering specificity to social work’s broader commitment to context and environment.

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More than that, The Sneetches taps into one of the fears that segregationists held, and which was represented as an ever-present danger in the Northern as well as the Southern states: the fear of “passing.” In a country where “one drop of African blood” made a person black and not white, worries about being able to place people in the racial hierarchy if they could “pass” for white emerged through various forms of cultural production. Mark Twain, Charles Chestnutt, and Nella Larsen all wrote novels about African-Americans passing for white. The 1930s musical “Showboat,” twice made into a film (in the 1930s and the 1950s), has a tragic plot involving passing. Another film, based on a Fannie Hurst novel, was made twice by Hollywood (again in the 1930s and the 1950s). “Imitation of Life,” in its second incarnation became the fourth-most successful movie of 1959—just two years before The Sneetches was published.

Karen Sands-O’Connor, “Dr. Seuss and Racial Passing,” theracetoread: Children’s Literature and Issues of Race, February 11, 2015. https://theracetoread.wordpress.com/2015/02/11/dr-seuss-and-racial-passing.

Does ‘Half Chinese, Half Jewish’ Condemn Me To Being Neither?

Forward
2015-08-21

Rachel E. Gross

When I was four years old, my father introduced me to his colleague, Jing. “Are you Chinese?” I asked, eyeing her shrewdly. “Yes,” she replied. “So am I,” I said. “And shoe-ish, too!”

My father likes to tell this story, I think, because it illustrates my self-assurance: Even at that young age, I knew exactly who I was.

What I didn’t anticipate was that others might have opinions, too. That hit home recently when I wrote a NPR column on being “half-Chinese, half-Jewish.” Suddenly, people on the Internet were dictating my identity to me. “The author is not half Jewish,” one wrote in the comments, citing Orthodox halacha that deems you Jewish only if your mother is. “She is not Jewish at all.” How did he know which of my parents was Jewish? “I Googled her,” he wrote…

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