Mixed Race Studies

New class: The Multiracial Experience

The Portland State Vanguard
Portland, Oregon
2013-01-16

Gwen Shaw

The eye of the storm.

That’s what Black Studies professor Ethan Johnson calls the Northwest, when it comes to multiracialism.

“The Northwest has some of the highest rates, within the black community in particular, of marrying outside of their race—in the whole country,” Johnson said.

This fact, along with many others, is discussed in Johnson’s course, titled “The Multiracial Experience.”

Johnson explained that the course has three focuses: interracial relationships, both friend and romantic; transracial adoptions; and people who identify as, or are identified as, multiracial.

With a primary focus on discussion, the class looks into these topics and considers how gender, class and sexuality play roles in the multiracial experience. In class, students will look at and discuss poetry, commercials, pop culture, music and documentaries.

“I see myself as a facilitator of discussion,” Johnson said…

Read the entire article here.

Schooling, Blackness and national identity in Esmeraldas, Ecuador

Race Ethnicity and Education
Volume 10, Issue 1, (March 2007)
pages 47-70
DOI: 10.1080/13613320601100377

Ethan Allen Johnson, Assistant Professor of Black Studies
Portland State University, Portland, Oregon

In Esmeraldas, Ecuador, students of African descent make sense of racial identity and discrimination in multiple and contradictory ways as they negotiate the dominant discourse of national identity. In Ecuador two simultaneous processes shape the dominant discourse of national identity: racial mixture and the movement towards Whiteness. This study is based primarily on formal interviews and classroom and school site observations. In this article I focus on the relationship between educational practices at the national and local level and the perceptions and negotiations of students of African descent concerning racial identity and discrimination. I show that the racial and spatial topography of the nation of Ecuador is transposed onto the cultural landscape of the city of Esmeraldas. I show that the formal curriculum attempts to erase the significance of Black people and Blackness from the economic and social development of the nation, while racial discrimination is pervasive inside and outside of the classroom at the research site. Finally, I show that students of African descent often attempt to move towards Whiteness as they negotiate the dominant discourse of national identity. I conclude with a summary of my findings and suggest what the implications are for schooling in Esmeraldas, Ecuador and more broadly.

Read or purchase the article here.

Student and teacher negotiations of racial identity in an Afro-Ecuadorian region

International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education
Volume 22, Issue 5 (September-October 2009)
pages 563-584
DOI: 10.1080/09518390902915439

Ethan Allen Johnson, Assistant Professor of Black Studies
Portland State University, Portland, Oregon

In this article, using data collected primarily through interviews and observations the researcher explores how students and teachers of African descent at the Jaime Hurtado Academy understand and interpret race and racism in the city and province of Esmeraldas, which is the only region of the country where Afro-Ecuadorians comprise the largest proportion of the population. The findings reveal that students often distanced themselves from their Blackness through racial mixture, and that parents played a critical socializing role in their students’ negotiations of racial identity. Additionally, it was found that teachers universally embraced their Blackness, although they simultaneously acknowledged their mixed racial ancestry. These findings contest literate understandings of race and ideological attempts by elites to exclude Afro‐Ecuadorians within the dominant discourse of national identity.

Read or purchase the article here.

Multiracial meditations

The Portland State Vanguard
Portland State University, Portland, Oregon
2012-02-13

Jeoffry Ray

PSU panel to discuss growing up biracial in context of novel The Girl Who Fell from the Sky

How does one begin to discuss the experience of belonging to more than one “race”?

It’s really up to the participants,” said Dr. Maude Hines, organizer of the Portland State and Multnomah County Libraries’ 2012 Everybody Reads project, which will hold a panel discussion titled “Growing Up Biracial” Thursday, Feb. 16, at the university’s Millar Library.

The discussion will focus on the panel members’ experiences growing up as multiracial individuals and will be presented in the context of The Girl Who Fell from the Sky (Algonquin, 2008) by Heidi Durrow, the novel that is the focus of this year’s Everybody Reads program.

The panel will include associate professor of the PSU Black Studies Department Dr. Ethan Johnson, graduate student Adrienne Croskey and undergraduate Kevin Thomas…

Read the entire article here.