Mixed Race Studies

In Strangers’ Glances at Family, Tensions Linger

The New York Times
2011-10-13

Susan Saulny

TOMS RIVER, N.J. — “How come she’s so white and you’re so dark?”

The question tore through Heather Greenwood as she was about to check out at a store here one afternoon this summer. Her brown hands were pushing the shopping cart that held her babbling toddler, Noelle, all platinum curls, fair skin and ice-blue eyes.

The woman behind Mrs. Greenwood, who was white, asked once she realized, by the way they were talking, that they were mother and child. “It’s just not possible,” she charged indignantly. “You’re so…dark!”

It was not the first time someone had demanded an explanation from Mrs. Greenwood about her biological daughter, but it was among the more aggressive. Shaken almost to tears, she wanted to flee, to shield her little one from this kind of talk. But after quickly paying the cashier, she managed a reply. “How come?” she said. “Because that’s the way God made us.”

The Greenwood family tree, emblematic of a growing number of American bloodlines, has roots on many continents. Its mix of races — by marriage, adoption and other close relationships — can be challenging to track, sometimes confusing even for the family itself…

…Jenifer L. Bratter, an associate sociology professor at Rice University who has studied multiracialism, said that as long as race continued to affect where people live, how much money they make and how they are treated, then multiracial families would be met with double-takes. “Unless we solve those issues of inequality in other areas, interracial families are going to be questioned about why they’d cross that line,” she said.

According to Census data, interracial couples have a slightly higher divorce rate than same-race couples — perhaps, sociologists say, because of the heightened stress in their lives as they buck enduring norms. And children in mixed families face the challenge of navigating questions about their identities…

…Once, on a beach chair at a resort in Florida years ago, a white woman sunning herself next to Mrs. Dragan bemoaned the fact that black children were running around the pool. “Isn’t it awful?” Mrs. Dragan recalled the woman confiding to her.

Within minutes, Mrs. Dragan, ever feisty despite her reserved appearance, had her brood by her side. “I’d like to introduce you to my children,” she told the woman. Awkward silence ensued…

Read the entire article here.

Child Poverty at a Racial Cross Roads: Assessing Child Poverty for Children in Mono- and Multiracial Families

Colloquium Series
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Hamilton Hall 271
2011-09-21, 12:00-13:00 EDT (Local Time)

Jenifer L. Bratter, Associate Professor of Sociology
Rice University

Jenifer L. Bratter (PhD 2001, University of Texas at Austin) is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Rice University. Her research explores the implications of race and racial mixing (i.e. interracial families, multiracial identity) in the areas of family, identity, and social inequality.  Current projects focus on indicators of social well-being such as poverty, residential segregation, and health and the new ways that race is linked to these phenomena. She had been awarded the 2009 Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation for Career Enhancement to study patterns of residential segregation for mixed-race families. Dr. Bratter has recently published works appearing in Demography, Social Forces, Family Relations, Population Research and Policy Review, and several upcoming book chapters.

For more information, click here.

What about These Children? Assessing Poverty Among the ‘Hidden Population’ of Multiracial Children in Single-Mother Families

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research
Discussion Paper Series: DP 2010-09
2010
ISSN: 1936-9379
48 pages

Jenifer L. Bratter, Associate Professor of Sociology
Rice University

Sarah Damaske, Assistant Professor of Labor Studies and Employment Relations
Pennsylvania State University

Capturing the conditions of children of color living in single-parent families has become more complex due to the growing presence of interracial households. This analysis assesses the size and poverty status of single-female headed families housing multiracial children. Using data from the 2000 Census, we find that 9 percent of female-headed families house either children who are classified with more than one race or are classified as a single race different than their mother’s compared to only 3 percent of married couple families. Logistic regression analyses assessing the odds of poverty status for families finds that being a multiracial family does not constitute a uniform advantage or disadvantage for female headed households. Rather, these families, like most families of color, are more likely to experience poverty than white monoracial families. The two exceptions are White multiracial families who are more likely to be in poverty relative to this reference group and Asian multiracial families who have similar poverty rates as white monoracial families (and a lower rate than Asian monoracial families).

Read the entire report here.

As the mixed-race population grows, the stigma of the past fades

jcOnline.com (Journal and Courier)
Lafayette – West Lafayette, Indiana
2011-05-01

Taya Flores

Gerald and Susan Thomas experienced a hurtful racial climate in Greater Lafayette when they dated during the 1970s.

A drive-by verbal assault in Lafayette early in their marriage is one Gerald still remembers today.

He said the couple was driving in a convertible when some white men called out a racial insult. “Those type of things happen. Fortunately, now I think it’s more subtle,” he said. “It’s still there, but it’s much more subtle than it was in the past.”…

…There can also be discrimination from people who might not approve of a person’s interracial parentage, said Carolyn Liebler, a University of Minnesota sociology professor who studies ethnicity.

That is more common among older generations.

Initially, Robinson’s maternal grandparents did not approve of her parents’ interracial relationship.

“I know my grandparents (mom’s parents) didn’t approve of my mom and dad being together, but once my (older) sister was born they accepted the fact,” she said.

Some black-white biracials can penetrate the color line because they have white relatives. These relatives broaden the biracial’s social connections and improve their access to resources such as good schools or employment networks, Liebler said.

These biracials tend to be better off than their minority counterparts but worse off than whites, according to Liebler…

For example, the percentage of black-white biracials who reported fair to poor health (13.4 percent) was closer to whites than blacks who had relatively poorer health.

However, the percentage for white-Asians (7.8 percent) was closer to Asians. But Asians had relatively better health than whites, according to a sociology study published online in the February edition of the journal Demography.

The research was conducted by Rice University sociologists Jenifer Bratter and Bridget Gorman. They used a seven-year (2001-2007) sample from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, a national health survey, to examine differences in health as reported by participants.

Many social inequalities, such as poverty or health disparities, are passed down from generation to generation. Factors besides race, such as parents’ occupation and family wealth, childhood upbringing and education, also play a role in a person’s success, Liebler said. But racial stereotypes and discrimination have historically caused differences in these socioeconomic factors even among biracial people.

“This is not turning the world upside down. It’s just sort of adding a nuance,” she said…

Read the entire article here.

Does Multiracial Matter? A Study of Racial Disparities in Self-Rated Health

Demography
Volume 48, Number 1
pages 127-152
DOI: 10.1007/s13524-010-0005-0

Jenifer L. Bratter, Associate Professor of Sociology
Rice University

Bridget K. Gorman, Associate Professor of Sociology
Rice University

How do self-identified multiracial adults fit into documented patterns of racial health disparities? We assess whether the health status of adults who view themselves as multiracial is distinctive from that of adults who maintain a single-race identity, by using a seven-year (2001–2007) pooled sample of the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS). We explore racial differences in self-rated health between whites and several single and multiracial adults with binary logistic regression analyses and investigate whether placing these groups into a self-reported “best race” category alters patterns of health disparities. We propose four hypotheses that predict how the self-rated health status of specific multiracial groups compares with their respective component single-race counterparts, and we find substantial complexity in that no one explanatory model applies to all multiracial combinations. We also find that placing multiracial groups into a single “best race” category likely obscures the pattern of health disparities for selected groups because some multiracial adults (e.g., American Indians) tend to identify with single-race groups whose health experience they do not share.

Read or purchase the article here.

Who Are We? New Dialogue on Mixed Race

The New York TImes
2008-03-31

Mireya Navarro

Jenifer Bratter once wore a T-shirt in college that read “100 percent black woman.” Her African-American friends would not have it.

“I remember getting a lot of flak because of the fact I wasn’t 100 percent black,” said Ms. Bratter, 34, recalling her years at Penn State.

“I was very hurt by that,” said Ms. Bratter, whose mother is black and whose father is white. “I remember feeling like, Isn’t this what everybody expects me to think?”

Being accepted. Proving loyalty. Navigating the tight space between racial divides. Americans of mixed race say these are issues they have long confronted, and when Senator Barack Obama recently delivered a speech about race in Philadelphia, it rang with a special significance in their ears. They saw parallels between the path trod by Mr. Obama and their own.

They recalled the friends, as in Ms. Bratter’s case, who thought they were not black enough. Or the people who challenged them to label themselves by innocently asking, “What are you?” Or the relatives of different races who can sometimes be insensitive to one another.

“I think Barack Obama is going to bring these deeply American stories to the forefront,” said Esther John, 56, an administrator at Northwest Indian College in Washington, who identifies herself as African-American, American Indian and white.

“Maybe we’ll get a little bit further in the dialogue on race,” Ms. John said. “The guilt factor may be lowered a little bit because Obama made it right to be white and still love your black relatives, and to be black and still love your white relatives: to love despite another person’s racial appearance.”

Americans of mixed race say that questions about whether Mr. Obama, with a white mother from Kansas and a black father from Kenya, is “too black” or “not black enough,” as the candidate himself brought up in his speech on March 18, show the extent to which the nation is still fixated on old categories.

“There’s this notion that there’s an authentic race and you must fit it,” said Ms. Bratter, an assistant professor of sociology at Rice University in Houston who researches interracial families. “We’re confronted with the lack of fit.”…

Read the entire article here.

Multiethnicity and Multiethnic Families: Development, Identity, and Resilience

Xlibris
2010
384 pages
ISBN 13 Softcover: 978-1-4500-1231-7
ISBN 13 Hardcover: 978-1-4500-1232-4
ISBN 13 Ebook: 978-1-4500-0340-7

Edited By:

Hamilton McCubbin, Krystal Ontai, Lisa Kehl, Laurie McCubbin, Ida Strom, Heidi Hart, Barbara DeBaryshe, Marika Ripke and Jon Matsuoka

Guided by the increasing number of interracial marriages, cross-cultural adoptions and resulting multiethnic individuals and  families, scholars and scientists reveal the complex and persistent changes in the ethnic profile of Americans, families and their communities. 

The editors of this book selected the research of 31 nationally and internationally recognized scholars who present 14 chapters of current knowledge on the changing demographics of multiethnicity and their implications for human development and identity development, social and family relationships, functioning, stress, coping and resilience.

The senior contributing scholars and their disciplines are:  Sharon Lee, PhD, Demography; Emmy Werner, PhD, Child Development; Jonathan Okamura, PhD, Sociology; Cathy Tashiro, PhD, Nursing;  Hamilton McCubbin, PhD, Family Science; Barbara DeBaryshe, PhD, Human Development; Cardell Jacobson, PhD, Sociology; Jenifer Bratter, PhD, Psychology;  Xuanning Fu, PhD, Anthropology; Richard Lee, PhD, Psychology;  Laurie McCubbin, PhD, Counseling Psychology;  Farzana Nayani, PhD, Ethnic Studies; Jeannette Johnson,  PhD, Psychology; and Michael Ungar, PhD, Social Work.

Multiethnicity and Multiethnic Families: Development, Identity, and Resilience (Le`a Publications) addresses core theoretical, methodological and policy issues surrounding the changing demographics of multiethnic and particularly indigenous groups in the United States. The issues of historical trauma, schema, appraisal, adaptation, measurement and intervention are magnified. The introduction and fourteen chapters aim to build upon prior writings and research and to improve upon our understanding of these populations with all their complexities. Present and future research and knowledge gained on what it means to be multiethnic is vital to our efforts to shape their futures and improve upon our professional understanding and investment in enabling this emerging population to thrive as well as survive.

Chapters include:

Multiraciality and health disparities: Encountering the contradictions and conundrums of race, ethnicity, and identity, by Cathy Tashiro

Read the front matter here.

In mixed-race couples, fathers profoundly influence their children’s racial identifications

Research@Rice
2006-09-15

In mixed-race couples, fathers profoundly influence their children’s racial identifications. Interracial marriage increased seven-fold from 1970 to 2000, and how the children of these marriages view their racial identity has a lot to do with their father’s race and the number of father-child interactions, according to Rice University sociologist Holly Heard. In particular, children in families where the father is African-American are much more likely to identify with their father’s race, compared to children with fathers of other races.

With the rising number of interracial marriages, more children are questioning their racial identity. Currently, 6.4 percent of all U.S. children live in households headed by interracial married couples, and the number of children likely to deal with the racial-identity question will continue to grow.

It’s something that children of same-race parents never have to think about, said Rice University sociologist Holly Heard. Heard and Rice colleague Jenifer Bratter, both assistant professors of sociology, collaborated on research to understand how children from mixed-race families identify themselves. “Children do not racially identify in a vacuum; multiple factors are involved,” Heard explained. “However, the important influence dads have on racial identification became very clear.”…

Read the entire article here.

Multiracial Americans and Social Class: The Influence of Social Class on Racial Identity

Routledge
2010-04-21
256 pages
Hardback ISBN: 978-0-415-48397-1
Papeback ISBN: 978-0-415-48399-5
E-Book ISBN: 978-0-203-88373-0

Edited by

Kathleen Odell Korgen, Professor of Sociology
William Paterson University

As the racial hierarchy shifts and inequality between Americans widens, it is important to understand the impact of social class on the rapidly growing multiracial population. Multiracial Americans and Social Class is the first book on multiracial Americans to do so and fills a noticeable void in a growing market.

In this book, noted scholars examine the impact of social class on the racial identity of multiracial Americans in highly readable essays from a range of sociological perspectives. In doing so, they answer the following questions: What is the connection between class and race? Do you need to be middle class in order to be an ‘honorary white’? What is the connection between social class and culture? Do you need to ‘look’ White or just ‘act’ White in order to be treated as an ‘honorary white’? Can social class influence racial identity? How does the influence of social class compare across multiracial backgrounds?

Multiracial Americans and Social Class is a key text for undergraduate and postgraduate students, researchers and academics in the fields of Sociology, Race and Ethnic Studies, Race Relations, and Cultural Studies.

Table of Contents

Part 1: Who are Multiracial Americans?

• 1. Multiracial Americans and Social Class, Kathleen Odell Korgen
• 2. In-Between Racial Status, Mobility and Promise of Assimilation: Irish, Italians Yesterday, Latinos and Asians Today, Charles Gallagher
• 3. ‘What’s Class Got to Do with It?’: Images and Discourses on Race and Class in Interracial Relationships, Erica Chito Childs
• 4. Social Class: Racial/Ethnic Identity, and the Psychology of Choice, Peony Fhagen-Smith
• 5. Stability and Change in Racial Identities of Multiracial Adolescents, Ruth Burke and Grace Kao

Part 2: Culture, Class, Racial Identity, and Blame

• 6. Country Clubs and Hip-Hop Thugs: Examining the Role of Social Class and Culture in Shaping Racial Identity, Nikki Khanna
• 7. Language, Power, and the Performance of Race and Class, Benjamin Bailey
• 8. Black and White Movies: Crash between Class and Biracial Identity Portrayals of Black/White Biracial Individuals in Movies, Alicia Edison and George Yancey
• 9. ‘Who is Really to Blame?’ Biracial Perspectives on Inequality in America, Monique E. Marsh

Part 3: Social Class, Demographic, and Cultural Characteristics

• 10. ‘Multiracial Asian Americans’, C. N. Le
• 11. A Group in Flux: Multiracial American Indians and the Social Construction of Race, Carolyn Liebler
• 12. Socioeconomic Status and Hispanic Identification in Part-Hispanic Multiracial Adolescents, Maria L. Castilla and Melissa R. Herman

Part 4: Social Class, Racial Identities, and Racial Hierarchies

• 13. Social Class and Multiracial Groups: What Can We Learn from Large Surveys? Mary E. Campbell
• 14. The One-Drop Rule through a Multiracial Lens: Examining the Roles of Race and Class in Racial Classification of Children of Partially Black Parents, Jenifer Bratter
• 15. It’s Not That Simple: Multiraciality, Models, and Social Hierarchy, Ingrid Dineen-Wimberly and Paul Spickard

Contributors

Benjamin Bailey is an Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. His research on the interactional negotiation of ethnic and racial identity in US contexts has appeared in Language in Society, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology and International Migration Review.

Jenifer L. Bratter is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Associate Director of the Institute for Urban Research at Rice University. Her research focuses on the dynamics of racial intermarriage, marriage and multiracial populations, and has recently been published in Social Forces, Sociological Quarterly, Sociological Forum and Family Relations.

David L. Brunsma is Associate Professor of Sociology and Black Studies at the University of Missouri. He is author or editor of numerous books, including Beyond Black: Biracial Identity in America. His research has appeared in Social Forces, Social Science Quarterly, Sociological Quarterly, and Identity.

Ruth H. Burke is a Graduate Student in Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on racial inequality in the United States and racial identification.

Mary E. Campbell is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Iowa. Her research focuses on racial inequality and identification, and has recently been published in American Sociological Review, Social Problems, Social Science Quarterly and Social Science Research.

Maria Castilla earned her BA in 2009 from Dartmouth College, with high honors in sociology. She currently attends Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University.

Erica Chito Childs is an Associate Professor at Hunter College. Her research interests focus on issues of race, black/white couples, gender and sexuality in relationships, families, communities and media/popular culture. Her publications include Navigating Interracial Borders: Black-White Couples and Their Social Worlds (2005) and Fade to Black and White (2009).

Ingrid Dineen-Wimberly is a historian and lecturer at UC Santa Barbara, whose forth-coming book, By the Least Bit of Blood, examines the uplift potential a vocal Black identity provided mixed-raced leaders during the 19th and 20th centuries. Her analysis extends beyond the U.S. to include the function of race in the process of Latin-American nation-making.

Alicia L. Edison is a Graduate Student at the University of North Texas. Her research focuses on race and ethnicity, biracial identity formation, and the perpetuation of racial stereotypes within the media.

Peony Fhagen-Smith is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Wheaton College in Norton, MA. Her research centers on racial/ethnic identity development across the life-span and has published in Journal of Black Psychology, Journal of Counseling Psychology, Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development, and The Counseling Psychologist.

Melissa R. Herman, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Dartmouth, studies how identity affects developmental outcomes among multiracial adolescents. Her current research projects examine perceptions of multiracial people and interracial relationships. Her recent work appears in Child Development, Sociology of Education, and Social Psychology Quarterly.

Charles A. Gallagher is Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology, Social Work and Criminal Justice at La Salle University in Philadelphia. In addition to numerous book chapters, his research on how the media, popular culture and political ideology shapes perceptions of racial and social inequality has been published in Ethnic and Racial Studies, Social Forces and Race, Gender and Class.

Grace Kao is Professor of Sociology and Education at University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on race and immigrant differences in educational outcomes. Currently, she serves on the editorial boards of Social Science Research, Social Psychology Quarterly and Social Science Quarterly.

Nikki Khanna is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Vermont. Her research on racial identity negotiation and gender in group processes has been published in Social Psychology Quarterly, Advances in Group Processes, and The Sociological Quarterly.

C. N. Le is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Director of Asian/Asian American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He focuses on racial/ethnic relations, immigration, institutional assimilation among Asian Americans, and public sociology through his Asian-Nation.org website.

Carolyn A. Liebler is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Minnesota. Her research on indigenous populations, racial identity and the measurement of race has been published in Ethnic and Racial Studies, Social Science Research, and Social Science Quarterly.

Monique E. Marsh is a Graduate Student of Sociology at Temple University. Her research focuses on racial inequality and identification, and has recently been presented at the Eastern Sociological Society Annual Conference and at the National Science Foundation’s GLASS AGEP Research Conference.

Paul Spickard teaches history and Asian American studies at UC Santa Barbara. The author of fourteen books, including Almost All Aliens: Immigration, Race, and Colonialism in American History and Identity. He is currently studying race in Hawaii and in Germany.

George A. Yancey is a Professor of Sociology at the University of North Texas. His work has focused on interracial families and multiracial churches. His latest book is Interracial Families: Current Concepts and Controversies.

Counting Multiracial People in the Census: The Unfulfilled Wish for More Data

Racism Review
2010-03-26

Jenifer L. Bratter, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Associate Director of the Institute for Urban Research
Rice University

People who study the multiracial population are constantly confronted with the problem of small numbers to work with.  A recent article I co-authored on the multiracial health (Bratter, Jenifer and Bridget K. Gorman. Forthcoming. “Does Multiracial Matter? A Study of Racial Disparities in Self Rated Health.” Demography)  required combining seven years of data from a health survey (over 1.7 million cases) to get 20,000 mixed-race folks for analysis.  The 2000 Census, with its “check all that apply” race question, remains the database with the largest number of cases and the 2010 Census will be the first to count race the same way as the preceding installment. While this may sound like a mundane detail, this will allow us to gauge growth, decline, or stability of this population and whether this will affect the population bases of single-race communities.  If the sheer anticipation doesn’t shake you to your core, perhaps you have forgotten the history of introducing this option into the Census…

Read the entire article here.