Mixed Race Studies

Fade to Black and White: Interracial Images in Popular Culture

Rowman & Littlefield
May 2009
250 pages
Cloth: 0-7425-6079-1 / 978-0-7425-6079-6
Paper: 0-7425-6080-5 / 978-0-7425-6080-2

Erica Chito Childs, Associate Professor of Sociology
Hunter College, City University of New York

There is no teasing apart what interracial couples think of themselves from what society shows them about themselves. Following on her earlier ground-breaking study of the social worlds of interracial couples, Erica Chito Childs considers the larger context of social messages, conveyed by the media, that inform how we think about love across the color line. Examining a range of media—from movies to music to the web—Fade to Black and White offers an informative and provocative account of how the perception of interracial sexuality as “deviant” has been transformed in the course of the 20th century and how race relations are understood today.

Table of Contents

• Introduction: Fade to Black and White
• 1. Historical Realities and Media Representations of Race and Sexuality
• 2. The Prime-Time Color-Line: Interracial Couples and Television
• 3. It’s a (White) Man’s World
• 4. When Good Girls Go Bad
• 5. Playing the Color-Blind Card: Seeing Black and White in News Media
• 6. Multiracial Utopias: Youth, Sports and Music
• Conclusion

Jarocho’s Soul: Cultural Identity and Afro-Mexican Dance

University Press of America (an Imprint of Rowman & Littlefield)
February 2004
182 pages
Size: 5 1/2 x 7 3/4
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-7618-2775-7

Anita González, Associate Professor and Associate Chair of Theatre Arts
State University of New York, New Paltz

Brown-skinned men and women move across Mexico’s national stages dancing the folkloric jarocho, a symbolic blend of Spanish, Native American, and African cultures. Jarocho’s Soul: Cultural Identity and Afro-Mexican Dance traces the evolution and transformation of an Afro-Mexican dance form into a national cultural icon. It is an ethnographic study that compares and contrasts Mexican performance of national identity with Untied States dance styles. The book uses the image of the jarocho as a window to explore the phenomena of racial/cultural mixing that is endemic to Mexico and increasingly apparent in the politics and aesthetics of United States cultural performances.

Table of Contents

• Chapter 1 List of Illustrations
• Chapter 2 Preface
• Chapter 3 Acknowledgments
• Chapter 4 Introduction: Crafting Self; Frames of Reference; Locale and Methodology; Chapter Overviews
• Chapter 5 Cultural Mixing and Mexican Performance: Mapping Art: Cultural Contexts; Studies in Revolutionary Nationalism: Manuel Ponce; Amalia Hernandez; Celestino Gorostiza; A Legacy of Performance Strategies; Provincial Identity
• Chapter 6 Roots of Jarocho Dance
• Chapter 7 Jarocho as Folkloric Dance: State Images Ballet Folklórico del la Universidad Veracruzana; Miguel Velez and the Authenticity Mission; Raices del Pueblo (The Peoples’ Roots)
• Chapter 8 Jarocho as Theater: Company History, Veracruz, Veracruz Interprets Jarocho; Actors’ Interpretive (Re)Circulations in Veracruz, Veracruz; Implications and Interpretations
• Chapter 9 Remembering and Transforming the Past: Fiesta de las Cruces; Rewriting Government Agendas
• Chapter 10 Conclusion
• Chapter 11 Glossary
• Chapter 12 References
• Chapter 13 Index

Her Majesty’s Other Children: Sketches of Racism from a Neocolonial Age

Rowman & Littlefield
288 pages
August 1997
Size: 6 1/4 x 9 1/4
Hardback ISBN: 978-0-8476-8447-2
eBook ISBN: 978-0-585-20172-6

Lewis R. Gordon, Laura H. Carnell Professor of Philosophy, Director of the Institute for the Study of Race and Social Thought and Director of the Center for Afro-Jewish Studies
Temple University

Winner of the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award for the Study of Human Rights in North America.

In this exploration of race and racism, noted scholar Lewis R. Gordon offers a critique of recent scholarship in postcolonial Africana philosophy and critical race theory, and suggests alternative models that respond to what he calls our contemporary neocolonial age; an age in which cultural, intellectual, and economic forms of colonial domination persist. Through essays that address popular culture, the academy, literature, and politics, Gordon unsettles the notion of race and exposes the complexity of antiblack racism. An important book for philosophers, political theorists, sociologists, cultural critics, and anyone concerned with the overt and subtle ways of injustice.

Table of Contents

• Chapter 1 Foreword
• Chapter 2 Introduction: Her Majesty’s Other Children
• Part 1
  • Chapter 3 Philosophy, Race, and Racism in a Neocolonial World
  • Chapter 4 Context: Ruminations on Violence and Anonymity
  • Chapter 5 Fanon, Philosophy, and Racism
  • Chapter 6 Race, Biraciality, and Mixed Race—in Theory
  • Chapter 7 Sex, Race, and Matrices of Desire in an Antiblack World
  • Chapter 8 Uses and Abuses of Blackness: Postmodernism, Conservatism, Ideology
  • Chapter 9 In a Black Antiblack Philosophy
  • Chapter 10 African Philosophy’s Search for Identity: Existential Considerations of a Recent Effort
• Part 2
  • Chapter 11 The Intellectuals
  • Chapter 12 Lorraine Hansberry’s Tragic Search for Postcoloniality: Les Blancs
  • Chapter 13 Tragic Intellectuals on the Neocolonial—Postcolonial Divide
  • Chapter 14 Exilic “Amateur” Speaking Truth to Power: Edward Said
  • Chapter 15 Black Intellectuals and Academic Activism: Cornel West’s “Dilemmas of the Black Intellectual.” Right-Wing Celebration, Left-Wing Nightmare: Thoughts on the Centennial of Plessy v. Ferguson
• Part 3
  • Chapter 16 Aisthesis Demokrate
  • Chapter 17 Sketches of Jazz
  • Chapter 18 Aesthetico-Political Reflections on the AMTRAK: Rap, Hip-Hop, and Isaac Julien’s Fanon along the Northeast Line
• Chapter 19 Epilogue: The Lion and the Spider (An Anticolonial Tale)

Beyond White Ethnicity: Developing a Sociological Understanding of Native American Identity Reclamation

Lexington Books (an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield)
October 2006
262 pages
Cloth: 0-7391-1393-3 / 978-0-7391-1393-6
Paper: 0-7391-1394-1 / 978-0-7391-1394-3

Kathleen J. Fitzgerald, Professor of Sociology
University of New Orleans, New Orleans, Louisiana

Through qualitative analysis of individuals, Kathleen J. Fitzgerald studies the social construction of racial and ethnic identity in Beyond White Ethnicity. Fitzgerald focuses on Native Americans, who despite a previously unacknowledged and uncelebrated background, are embracing and reclaiming their heritage in their everyday lives. Focusing on the purpose, process, and problems of this reclamation, Fitzgerald’s research provides an understanding of these issues. She also exposes how institutional power relations are racialized and how race is a social and political construction, and she helps us understand larger cultural transformations. This insightful collection of research sparks the interest of those who study sociology, anthropology, and cultural studies.

Table of Contents

1. Reclaimer Narratives: Exposing the Duality of Structure in Identity Formation
2. Challenging White Hegemony: Reclaimers and the Culture Wars
3. Reclaimer Practices: Religion, Spirituality, Language, Family, and Food
4. “If It Looks Like a Duck”: Physical Appearance and Reclaimer Identity
5. “Wanna-bes” and “Indian Police”: The Battle Over Authenticity

Crossing Lines: Race and Mixed Race Across the Geohistorical Divide

Rowman & Littlefield
Paper: 0-9700-3841-0 / 978-0-9700-3841-8
June 2005
190 pages

Edited by

Marc Coronado
DeAnza College

Rudy P. Guevarra
University of California, Santa Barbara

Jeffrey A. S. Moniz, Associate Professor and Director
University of Hawai’i

Laura Furlan Szanto
University of California, Santa Barbara

Crossing Lines addresses the issues of race and mixed race at the turn of the 21st century. Representing multiple academic disciplines, including history, ethnic studies, art history, education, English, and sociology, the volume invites readers to consider the many ways that identity, community, and collectivity are formed, while addressing the challenges that multiracial identity poses to our understanding of race and ethnicity. The authors examine such subjects as social action, literary representations of multiracial people, curriculum development, community formation, Whiteness, and demographic changes.

List of Contributors
Marc Coronado (DeAnza College), Carina Evans (UC Santa Barbara), Melinda Gandara (UC Santa Barbara), Rudy P. Guevarra, Jr. (UC Santa Barbara), Tomas Jimenez (Harvard University), George Lipsitz (UC San Diego), Jeffrey Moniz (University of Hawai’i), Paul Spickard (UC Santa Barbara), Laura Furlan Szanto (UC Santa Barbara), and Nicole Marie Williams (UC Santa Barbara).

Table of Contents

• Introduction

• Clueless
  Rudy P. Guevarra, Jr.

• Noises in the Blood: Culture, Conflict, and Mixed Race Identities
  George Lipsitz

• Does Multiraciality Lighten? Me-Too Ethnicity and the Whiteness Trap
  Paul Spickard

• “My Father? Gabacho?” Ethnic Doubling in Gloria Lopez Stafford’s A Place in El Paso
  Marc Coronado

• Burritos and Bagoong: Mexipinos and Multiethnic Identity in San Diego, California
  Rudy P. Guevarra, Jr.

• Challenging the Hegemony of Multiculturalism: The Matter of the Marginalized Multiethnic
  Jeffrey A.S. Moniz

• Beyond Disobedience
  Nicole M. Williams

• “Fictive Imaginings”: Constructing Biracial Identity and Senna’s Caucasia
  Carina A. Evans

• The Beginning
  Laura Furlan Szanto

• Los Angeles Museum of Art: Looking Forward
  Melinda Gandara

• Multiethnic Mexican Americans in Demographic and Ethnographic Perspectives
  Tomas R. Jimenez

Raising Biracial Children

AltaMira Press an Imprint of Rowman & Littlefield Publishing
November 2005
208pp
Cloth: 0-7591-0900-1 / 978-0-7591-0900-1
Paper 0-7591-0901-X / 978-0-7591-0901-8

Kerry Ann Rockquemore
University of Illinois

Tracey A. Laszloffy  

As the multiracial population in the United States continues to rise, new models for our understanding of mixed-race children and how their conception of racial identity must be developed.  A wide divide between academics who research biracial identity, and the everyday world of parents and practitioners who raise and deal with mixed-race children exists. This book aims to fill this gap by providing an extensive synthesis of the existing research in the field, as well as a model for better understanding the unique process of racial identity development for mixed-race children. Raising Biracial Children provides parents, educators, social workers, and anyone interested in multiracial issues with an accessible framework for understanding healthy mixed-race identity development and to translate those findings into practical care-giving strategies.

About the Authors
Kerry Ann Rockquemore is associate professor of African-American studies and sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is co-author of Beyond Black: Biracial Identity in America. Her research focuses on racial socialization in inter-racial families and racial identity development. Tracey A. Laszloffy is a marriage and family therapist in private practice in Connecticut. Prior to this she served on the faculty at Seton Hall University where she directed the masters level Marriage and Family Therapy Program. Dr. Laszloffy has published extensively in the area of race, oppression, and family therapy.

Table of Contents

• Preface and Acknowledgments
• Chapter One: Moving Beyond Tragedy: A Multidimensional Model of Mixed-Race Identity (Read the chapter here).
• Chapter Two: Acceptance and Denial: Shifting Our Gaze from Labels to Pathways
• Chapter Three: Racism in America: What Parents Need to Know
• Chapter Four: Starting at Home: Families and Racial Socialization
• Chapter Five: Beyond the Family: Community Influences on Racial Identity Development
• Chapter Six: More than Skin Deep: Appearances and Mixed-Race Identity
• Chapter Seven: Just between Sisters: The Intersection of Race and Gender in the Lives of Mixed-Race Girls
• Chapter Eight: Multiracialism in America: Reflections and New Directions
• Appendix A: Multiracial Organizations
• Appendix B: Online Resources
• Appendix C: Research and Reading for Interracial Families
• Appendix D: Movies and Documentaries
• References

Shades of Difference: A History of Ethnicity in America: Perspectives on Multiracial America

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
June 2006
208 pages
Cloth: 0-7425-4316-1 / 978-0-7425-4316-4
Paper 0-7425-4317-X / 978-0-7425-4317-1
 
Richard Rees, Assistant professor of American Literature
Antioch College

From its prehistory in the biological theories of racial difference formulated in the 1800s to its current position in academic debate, Richard Rees investigates the diverse fields of scholarship from which the multifaceted understanding of the term ethnicity is derived. At the same time, Rees traces the broader historical forces that shaped the needs to which the concept of ethnicity responded and the social purposes to which it was applied. Centrally, he focuses upon the emergence of ethnicity in the early 1940s as a means of resolving contradictions and ambiguities in the racial status of European immigrants and its subsequent legacy and implications on race and caste. Shades of Difference introduces new perspectives on the definition of “whiteness” in America, and makes an original contribution to the larger discussion of race through a detailed account of ethnicity’s original meaning and its revaluation when later appropriated by the discourse of Black Nationalism in the 1960s and 70s. Rees has produced a powerful new analysis of the cultural and political history of ethnicity in America.

Table of Contents

• The Invention of (the Concept of) Ethnicity
• Introduction: From the Invention of Race to the Rise of the Inbetween People, 1840 – 1924
• Whiteness and the Limits of the New Environmentalism
• Inventing Ethnicity in the Context of Race and Caste, 1930 – 45
• Black Ethnicity and the Transformation of a Concept, 1962 – 72
• Conclusion: Toward a Hybrid Discourse of Ethnicity

American Mixed Race: The Culture of Microdiversity

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
March 1995
420 pages
6 1/4 x 9 1/4
Cloth ISBN: 0-8476-8012-6 / 978-0-8476-8012-2
Paper ISBN: 0-8476-8013-4 / 978-0-8476-8013-9

Edited by Naomi Zack, Professor of Philosophy
University of Oregon

This exciting multidisciplinary collection brings together twenty-two original essays by scholars on the cutting edge of racial theory, who address both the American concept of race and the specific problems experienced by those who do not fit neatly into the boxes society requires them to check.

List of Contributors
Linda Alcoff, Debra A. Barrath, Jennifer Clancy, Susan Clements, F. James Davis, Abby L. Ferber, Carlos A. Fernandez, Freda Scott Giles, David Theo Goldberg, Susan R. Graham, Helena Jia Hershel. M. Annette Jaimes, Cecile Ann Lawrence, Zena Moore, Maria P.P. Root, Laurie Shrage, Stephen Satris, Carol Roh Spaulding, Mariella Squire-Hakey, Teresa Kay Williams, Bruentta R. Wolfman, and Naomi Zack.

Table of Contents

• Introduction – Naomi Zack
• Autobiography
  • Five Arrows – Susan Clements
  • Color Fades Over Time – Brunetta R. Wolfman
  • Racelessness – Cecile Ann Lawrence
  • Check the Box That Best Describes You – Zena Moore
  • What Are They? – Stephen Satris
• Art
  • From Melodrama to the Movies – Freda Scott Giles
  • The Theater of Identity – Teresa Kay Williams
  • The Go-Between People – Carol Roh Spaulding
• Social Science
  • The Hawaiian Alternative to the One-Drop Rule – F. James Davis
  • Some Kind of Indian – M. Annette Jaimes
  • Exploring the Social Construction of Race – Abby L. Ferber
  • Therapeutic Perspectives on Biracial Identity Formation and Internalized Oppression – Helena Jia Hershel
• Public Policy
  • Grassroots Advocacy – Susan R. Graham
  • Testimony of the Association of Multi Ethnic Americans – Carlos A. Fernàndez
  • Multiracial Identity Assertion in the Sociopolitical Context of Primary Education – Jennifer Clancy
  • Yankee Imperialism and Imperialist Nostalgia – Mariella Squire-Hakey
• Identity Theory
  • The Multiracial Contribution to the Psychological Browning of America – Maria P. P. Root
  • Made in the USA – David Theo Goldberg
  • Mestizo Identity – Linda Alcoff
  • Race and Racism – Debra A. Barrath
  • Ethnic Transgressions: Confessions of an Assimilated Jew – Laurie Shrage
  • Life After Race – Naomi Zack

Louisiana Creoles: Cultural Recovery and Mixed-Race Native American Identity

Lexington Books an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
December 2006
Cloth: 0-7391-1896-X / 978-0-7391-1896-2
Paper: 0-7391-1897-8 / 978-0-7391-1897-9

Andrew J. Jolivétte, Associate Professor of American Indian Studies
San Francisco State University

Foreword by Paula Gunn Allen

Louisiana Creoles examines the recent efforts of the Louisiana Creole Heritage Center to document and preserve the distinct ethnic heritage of this unique American population. Dr. Andrew Jolivétte uses sociological inquiry to analyze the factors that influence ethnic and racial identity formation and community construction among Creoles of Color living in and out of the state of Louisiana. By including the voices of contemporary Creole organizations, preservationists, and grassroots organizers, Jolivétte offers a comprehensive and insightful exploration of the ways in which history has impacted the ability of Creoles to self-define their own community in political, social, and legal contexts. This book raises important questions concerning the process of cultural formation and the politics of ethnic categories for multiracial communities in the United States. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina the themes found throughout Louisiana Creoles are especially relevant for students of sociology and those interested in identity issues.

Table of Contents

• Foreword: Paula Gunn Allen
• Introduction: Who Is White?
• The Reconfiguring of Creole-Indian Identity in Louisiana: Situating the Other in Social Discourse
• Including Native Identity in the Creole of Color Movement: Ethnic Renewal and Cultural Revival within a Black-Indian Population
• Migratory Movement: The Politics of Ethnic Community (Re)Construction Among Creoles of Color, 1920-1940
• Examining the Regional and Multi-Generational Context of Creole and American Indian Identity
• Conclusion: (Re)Imagining and (Re)Writing Racial Categories

Beyond Black: Biracial Identity in America (Second Edition)

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
December 2007
220 pages
Cloth ISBN: 0-7425-6054-6 / 978-0-7425-6054-3
Paper ISBN: 0-7425-6055-4 / 978-0-7425-6055-0

By Kerry Ann Rockquemore and David L. Brunsma
Foreword by Joe Feagin

Beyond Black is a groundbreaking study of the dynamic meaning of racial identity for multiracial people in post-Civil Rights America. Kerry Ann Rockquemore and David Brunsma document the wide range of racial identities that individuals with one Black and one White parent develop, and they provide a incisive sociological explanation of the choices facing those who are multiracial.

Stemming from the controversy of the 2000 Census and whether an additional “multiracial” category should be added to the survey, this second edition of Beyond Black uses both survey data and interviews of multiracial young adults to explore the contemporary dynamics of racial identity formation. The authors raise even larger social and political questions posed by expanding racial categorization on the U.S. Census.

About the Authors
Kerry Ann Rockquemore is associate professor of African American Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and coauthor of Raising Biracial Children.

David L. Brunsma is associate professor of sociology at the University of Missouri-Columbia and coeditor of The Sociology of Katrina: Perspectives on a Modern Catastrophe.

Table of Contents

• List of Tables and Figures
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword: Joe Feagin
• Chapter 1: Who is Black? Flux and Change in American Racial Identity
• Chapter 2: Biracial Identity Research: Past and Present
• Chapter 3: What it Means to be Mixed-Race in Post-Civil Rights America
• Chapter 4 : Sociological Factors Influencing Biracial Identity
• Chapter 5: The Color Complex: Appearances and Multiracial Identity
• Chapter 6: Who is Black Today and Who Will be Black Tomorrow?
• Endnotes
• Appendices
• References
• Index