Mixed Race Studies

Black Through a Distortion Pedal

San Fransisco Bay Press
2010-01-01

Eric Wilkinson

Black Through a Distortion Pedal is a poetry compilation about indulgence in and resistance to a racialized world from the perspective of a white youth who found his voice in hip-hop.

Wilkinson explores the genesis of multiple selves in an era of increasingly fluid and unstable identity, concerned not so much with issues of art’s authenticity, as with how words and music heal, break down boundaries and re-imagine the world in terms of summer nights spent freestyle rapping, philosophizing, and reveling in strange experiences of love, loss, and becoming. Wilkinson offers stories of personal intimacy and everyday resistance in the context of reconnecting with people that history has alienated him from.

He draws inspiration from black and white artists, musicians, and critical social theorists as he confronts the race divide in his personal life and the corporate divide that acts to homogenize the world and silence voices of dissent. Wilkinson’s poetry sees resistance in all walks of life, from eating WTO banned Roquefort cheese, to inter-racial dating, to writing hip-hop songs that resist the trappings of mainstream music.

The Virginia Racial Integrity Act Revisited: The Plecker-Laughlin correspondence: 1928-1930

American Journal of Medical Genetics
Volume 16, Issue 4
Pages 483 – 492
December 1983
DOI: 10.1002/ajmg.1320160407

Philip Reilly
University of Houston Law Center, Houston, Texas
 
Margery Shaw
University of Houston Law Center, Houston, Texas

Correspondence between Walter Ashby Plecker, Virginia State Registrar of Vital Statistics between 1912 and 1938, and Harry Hamilton Laughlin, Superintendent of the Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor between 1910 and 1939, provides evidence of efforts to enforce the Virginia Racial Integrity Act of 1924. After antimiscegenation policy is placed in a historical context, excerpts from the letters are offered to demonstrate the zeal with which one state official pursued this eugenic policy.

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Mulattoes and métis. Attitudes toward miscegenation in the United States and France since the seventeenth century

International Social Science Journal
Volume 57, Issue 183
Pages 103 – 112
DOI: 10.1111/j.0020-8701.2005.00534.x

George M. Fredrickson, Edgar E. Robinson Professor of United States History, Emeritus
Stanford University

This essay surveys and compares American and French attitudes toward miscegenation or métissage since the extensive contacts with non-European peoples that began in the Atlantic world of the seventeenth century. It develops a typology of possible responses to such race mixture and argues that the English colonies that became the United States quickly developed a highly restrictive attitude toward racial intermarriage, especially between blacks and whites, that has persisted through most of American history and is still influential today. The French in the eighteenth, nineteenth and early-to-mid twentieth century often adhered to concepts of race as innate or biologically determined, but their attitudes toward interracial marriage or concubinage tended to be more pragmatic. In some situations French theorists of race and empire defended and even advocated certain forms of métissage. The difference can be summed up as follows: white Americans have historically pursued the ideal of racial purity with much more intensity and consistency than the French. The difference is best explained with reference to the unique status of African-Americans as a colour-coded pariah group with no real equivalent in metropolitan France.

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Transforming Mulatto Identity in Colonial Guatemala and El Salvador; 1670-1720

Transforming Anthropology
Volume 12, Issue 1-2 (January 2004)
Pages 9 – 20
DOI: 10.1525/tran.2004.12.1-2.9

Paul Lokken, Assistant Professor of Latin American History
Bryant University, Smithfield Rhode Island

This article examines an important moment in the history of people of African origins in the region now encompassed by the republics of Guatemala and El Salvador. That moment has received relatively little attention in modern scholarship because the entire subject of the colonial African presence in the region was largely ignored until recently. The lingering effects of nineteenth-century scientific racism contributed to the “forgetting” of African origins, but developments during the colonial era initiated the process. During that era, the dependence of Spaniards primarily on the labor of the region’s indigenous majority allowed members of an African-defined minority—both free and enslaved—to rework the contours of the identity assigned to them, via marriage, militia service, and other avenues. This transformation in identity was marked by shifts away from association with the “inferiority” of tributary status and toward incorporation into a broader category—gente ladina (hispanized people)—that carried connotations unrelated to African identity.

…Increased fluidity in classification was perhaps inevitable, at least where identification of “mixed” origins was concerned. For instance, while marriage records demonstrate clearly that in seventeenth-century Guatemala the term “mulato” was generally applied to people who actually possessed some African origins, examples of labeling “mistakes” were beginning to crop up as well, notably in San Salvador and San Miguel. In 1671, the son of an “espafiol” and an “india” from San Miguel was identified as “mulato libre” in a marriage record produced in Olocuilta, just outside San Salvador, and in 1691, a record filed in Amapala listed the parents of a “mulato libre” as “indios vecinos” (Indian residents) of San Miguel.” The vulnerability of Spanish efforts to enforce boundaries between “types” of individuals with plural origins as a means of divide-and-rule (Cope 1994:3-26, Lutz 1994:79-112, 140) is also underscored in court cases in which people whom others defined as mulatto claimed mestizo status in order to avoid tribute or otherwise dissociate themselves from the “taint” of African ancestry (Few 1997:120).”…

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‘Whose colour was no black nor white nor grey, But an extraneous mixture, which no pen Can trace, although perhaps the pencil may’: Aspasie and Delacroix’s “Massacres of Chios”

Art History
Volume 22, Issue 5 (December 1999)
Pages 676-704
DOI: 10.1111/1467-8365.00182

Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby, Professor of Art History
The University of California, Berkeley

While painting Massacres of Chios in 1824, Eugène Delacroix wrote in his journal that ‘The mulatto will do very well.’  This paper asks why a ‘mixed-blood’ would figure in a picture painted on behalf of the Greek War of Independence and argues that Chios must be understood as material evidence of the history of France’s imperial aspirations, as a vestige of its confusions as well as its experiments. To broaden the geopolitical horizon of interpretation of Chios is to appreciate the extent to which global politics were performed and remembered in the studio space of an ambitious, insecure and sexually preoccupied young French male painter.

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Options: Racial/Ethnic Identification of Children of Intermarried Couples

Social Science Quarterly (September 2004)
Volume 85, Issue 3
Pages 746 – 766
DOI: 10.1111/j.0038-4941.2004.00243.x

Zhenchao Qian, Professor of Sociology
Ohio State University

Objective. Whites of various European ethnic backgrounds usually have weak ethnic attachment and have options to identify their ethnic identity (Waters, 1990). What about children born to interracially married couples?

Methods. I use 1990 Census data—the last census in which only one race could be chosen—to examine how African American-white, Latino-white, Asian American-white, and American Indian-white couples identify their children’s race/ethnicity.

Results. Children of African American-white couples are least likely to be identified as white, while children of Asian American-white couples are most likely to be identified as white. Intermarried couples in which the minority spouse is male, native born, or has no white ancestry are more likely to identify their children as minorities than are those in which the minority spouse is female, foreign born, or has part white ancestry. In addition, neighborhood minority concentration increases the likelihood that biracial children are identified as minorities.

Conclusion. This study shows that choices of racial and ethnic identification of multiracial children are not as optional as for whites of various European ethnic backgrounds. They are influenced by race/ethnicity of the minority parent, intermarried couples’ characteristics, and neighborhood compositions.

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Raising Multiracial Awareness in Family Therapy through Critical Conversations

Journal of Marital and Family Therapy
Volume 31, Issue 4
Pages 399 – 411
October 2005
DOI: 10.1111/j.1752-0606.2005.tb01579.x

Teresa McDowell
School of Family Studies
University of Connecticut

Lucrezia Ingoglia
Greater Lakes Mental Healthcare
Tacoma, Washington

Takiko Seizawa
Family Service Associates
San Antonio, Texas

Christina Holland
Behavioral Medicine Clinic
Olympia, Washington

Wayne Dashiell Jr.
Tacoma, Washington

Christopher Stevens
Renton Youth and Family Services
Renton, Washington

Multiracial families are uniquely affected by racial dynamics in U.S. society. Family therapists must be prepared to meet the needs of this growing population and to support racial equity. This article includes an overview of literature related to being multiracial and offers a framework for working with multiracial identity development in therapy. A critical conversation approach to working with multiracial identity is shared along with case examples. The authors’ experiences developing the model via a practitioner inquiry group are highlighted.

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Impacts of Multiple Race Reporting on Rural Health Policy and Data Analysis

Working Paper No. 73
Working Paper Series
North Carolina Rural Health Research and Policy Analysis Center
Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

2002-05-01
39 pages

Randy Randolph, M.R.P.

Rebecca Slifkin, Ph.D.

Lynn Whitener, Dr.P.H.

Anna Wulfsberg, M.S.P.H.

This work was supported by Cooperative Agreement 1-U1C-RH-00027-01 with the federal Office of Rural Health Policy.

Introduction

In the 1990s the policy goal of improving the rural minority population’s health status and access to health care gained prominence.  The President’s Initiative on Race, announced in 1998, established goals for improvements in health indicators and declared 2010 as the target year for achieving these goals. In A National Agenda for Rural Minority Health, the National Rural Health Association outlined strategies to realize the President’s goals in rural America. The plan identified three priority areas associated with these goals: Information and Data, Health Policy and Practices, and Health Delivery Systems. All three of these areas require a consistent stream of data describing the racial composition of rural areas and rural residents’ health status. The information and data section recommends that “Data collection systems will incorporate core data sets and employ uniform definitions for relevant terms to facilitate information sharing and comparisons among and across minority populations and nonminority populations as well” (NRHA, 1999).

Recent changes in federal policy will complicate achieving NRHA’s stated goal and measuring the rural success of the Initiative on Race. On October 30, 1997, the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) announced the first revised federal standards for collecting data on race and ethnicity since 1977. The revisions are to be adopted by all federal agencies working with race-based information.  The modifications to Statistical Policy Directive No. 15, Race and Ethnic Standards for Federal Statistics and Administrative Reporting (the existing policy) contained changes in both content and naming of racial and ethnic categories requiring that respondents be allowed to choose one or more of five race categories: “American Indian or Alaska Native,” “Asian,” “Black or African American,” “Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander,” and “White”; an optional “Other Race” is allowed, but not encouraged, under the rule. Two categories for data on ethnicity—“Hispanic or Latino” and “Not Hispanic or Latino” are offered in a separate question. The separate ethnicity choice is only a change in category naming with the addition of Latino to the category—the option of also including Spanish Origin is permitted. Some of the new race categories defined by the revision to Directive 15 were changes from the 1977 rule. The most obvious change was disaggregating the “Asian or Pacific Islander” category to distinct “Asian” and “Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander” categories. The population covered by the “American Indian or Alaskan Native” category has been expanded from the 1977 classification—which included the indigenous peoples of the United States and Canada—to also include those indigenous to Central America and South America…

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Multiracial Self-Identification and Adolescent Outcomes: A Social Psychological Approach to the Marginal Man Theory

Social Forces
Volume 88, Number 1 (September 2009)
ISSN: 1534-7605 Print ISSN: 0037-7732
DOI: 10.1353/sof.0.0243

Simon Cheng, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of Connecticut

Kathryn J. Lively, Associate Professor, Sociology
Dartmouth College

Recent public health research has consistently reported that self-identified multiracial adolescents tend to display more problem behaviors and psychological difficulties than monoracial adolescents. Relying on insights from qualitative analyses using small or clinical samples to interpret these empirical patterns, these studies implicitly assume a pejorative stance toward adolescents’ multiracial self-identification. Building on the social psychological arguments underlying [Robert] Park’s and [Everett V.] Stonequist’s seminal discussions of the “marginal man,” we derive hypotheses indicating that self-identified multiracial adolescents may show more psychological difficulties, but are also likely to have more active social interaction and participation than monoracial groups. We also incorporate later elaborations of the marginal man theory to develop alternative hypotheses regarding multiracial youth’s school and behavioral outcomes. Based on a nationally representative sample of racially self-identified youth, the results suggest that patterns of multiracial-monoracial differences are generally consistent with the hypotheses derived closely from the marginal man theory or its subsequent elaborations. We examine the heterogeneities within these general patterns across different multiracial categories and discuss the implications of these findings.

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Secret Agent Insiders to Whiteness: Mixed Race Women Negotiating Structure and Agency

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
2007
325 pages

Silvia Cristina Bettez, Assistant Professor
Department of Educational Leadership and Cultural Foundations
University of North Carolina, Greensboro

A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the School of Education.

In this dissertation, I explore the life stories of sixteen adult mixed race women who have one white parent and one parent who is a person of color. I examine how these women navigate their hybridity, what we can learn from their stories in our efforts to communicate across lines of racial difference, and what experiences the participants share that cross racial and ethnic lines. Data sources include multiple individual and group interviews with predominately middle-class, educated women living in San Francisco/Oakland [California], Albuquerque [New Mexico], and Boston [Massachusetts]. I coded the interview transcripts for themes and patterns and situated my analyses in relation to discourses of postcolonial hybridity, multiraciality, and social justice.

In relation to navigating hybridity, the women’s experiences reveal an interplay between personal agency, claimed through fluid identities, and limitations to social mobility and acceptance created by social, cultural, and institutional structures. When asked or compelled to choose, all participants chose to align themselves with people of color. I identify several factors that contribute to their ability to communicate across lines of racial difference including physical ambiguity, learning about multiple world views early in life, keen observation, and active listening. Several shared experiences emerged that crossed racial lines. The women in my study largely rejected their white identities, experienced their identities in fluid ways despite this rejection, claimed the right to self-identify racially/ethnically, and sought community with other mixed race people. One of the most significant findings is the degree to which many of the participants’ stories were dedicated to discussions of cultural whiteness, which they viewed as inextricably linked to racism and white supremacy.

This work adds to the small but growing field of mixed race studies and provides information on improving education for social justice. These narratives serve as embodied experiences of hybridity, challenging the disembodied postcolonial hybridity theories prevalent in the literature that disregard the actual lived experiences of “hybrid”/mixed race people. The stories and analysis also reveal ways in which racism and white privilege are enacted on social and institutional levels, and raise questions about theories of diversity built on racial binaries.

Read the entire dissertation here.