Mixed Race Studies

Ethnicity and Ethnically “Mixed” Identity in Belize: A Study of Primary School-Age Children

Anthropology & Education Quarterly
Volume 29, Issue 1 (March 1998)
pages 44–67
DOI: 10.1525/aeq.1998.29.1.44

Sarah Woodbury Haug

This article focuses on the ehtnic identity of children in Belize. Belizean nationalism, as taught in the primary schools, is both pan-ethnic and multiethnic. However, because the increasingly widespread practice of ethnic mixing is unacknowledged, there is a discrepancy between what is taught in school and the daily life of children. This has resulted in a paradox. Whereas the overt intent is to recognize and celebrate difference, the result has been to silence children’s voices.

Teacher: “Everyone here belongs to an ethnic group. You will draw the clothing of your group.”
Mixed Mestizo/Garifuna girl: “What if you are mixed?”
Teacher: “It doesn’t matter if you are mixed… you draw the Creole outfit.”
[Teacher tells four other children of mixed ethnicity which clothing they will draw.]
Anthropologist to teacher: “What ethnic group are you?”
Teacher: “I am mixed with Creole and Spanish but my husband is an East Indian.”
Anthropologist: “What ethnic group do your children belong to?”
Teacher [laughs and waves her hand dismissively]: “They are just mixed.”
Anthropologist: “Oh. What did you do with the mixed children in your class?”
Teacher: “Well, I assigned them to a group.”

This article illuminates the subjective nature of ethnic identification in a nation-state that promotes multiculturalism and ethnic diversity within its borders. The government of Belize supports the cultures of all its ethnic groups and teaches about them in schools as part of its program of nationalism. The scene above illustrates the combination of issues that are involved in locating children of mixed ethnicity within the government’s ethnic framework in Punta Gorda, a small town of 3,500 people on the southern coast. Because ethnic mixing is unacknowledged by the Belizean government and not discussed in schools, there is a great discrepancy between what is taught in the schools, and the daily life of such children. What schools teach and what children understand are not the same. The silence on the part of the government, however, speaks loudly to children as they attempt to place themselves within the ethnic framework of their community and country.

To many adults, not only Punta Gordans, children are reflections of the adult world. They are thought of as simple creatures who absorb all that is taught to them (Jenks 1996:2; Stephens 1996:12), or viewed as a means of measuring the values of society (Ndebele 1996:322). They are not, as Stephens writes, “social actors in their own right, engaged in making sense of and recreating the social worlds they inherit” (1996:23-24). However, my research shows that children clearly are active participants in the construction of their own identity, even if their constructions are not recognized by the adult community and even if children are labeled by adults according to adult needs and perceptions…

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Race Bending: “Mixed” Youth Practicing Strategic Racialization in California

Anthropology & Education Quarterly
Volume 35 Issue 1 (March 2004)
Pages 30-52
DOI: 10.1525/aeq.2004.35.1.30

Mica Pollock, Associate Professor of Education
Harvard University

As more U.S. youth claim “mixed” heritages, some adults are proposing to erase race words altogether from the nation’s inequality analysis. Yet such proposals, as detailed ethnography shows, ignore the complex realities of continuing racialized practice. At an urban California high school in the 1990s, “mixed” youth strategically employed simple “race” categories to describe themselves and inequality orders, even as they regularly challenged these very labels’ accuracy. In so “bending” race categories, these youth modeled a practical and theoretical strategy crucial for dealing thoughtfully with race in 21st century America.

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