Mixed Race Studies

More Than Black? Multiracial Identity and the New Racial Order

Temple University Press
December 2001
280 pages
7×10; 1 figure
Paperback: EAN: 978-1-56639-909-8, ISBN: 1-56639-909-2

G. Reginald Daniel, Professor of Sociology
University of California at Santa Barbara

In the United States, anyone with even a trace of African American ancestry has been considered black. Even as the twenty-first century opens, a racial hierarchy still prevents people of color, including individuals of mixed race, from enjoying the same privileges as Euro-Americans. In this book, G. Reginald Daniel argues that we are at a cross-roads, with members of a new multiracial movement pointing the way toward equality.

Tracing the centuries-long evolution of Eurocentrism, a concept geared to protecting white racial purity and social privilege, Daniel shows how race has been constructed and regulated in the United States.  The so-called one-drop rule (i.e., hypodescent) obligated individuals to identify as black or white, in effect erasing mixed-race individuals from the social landscape. For most of our history, many mixed-race individuals of African American descent have attempted to acquire the socioeconomic benefits of being white by forming separate enclaves or “passing.”  By the 1990s, however, interracial marriages became increasingly common, and multiracial individuals became increasingly political, demanding institutional changes that would recognize the reality of multiple racial backgrounds and challenging white racial privilege.

More Than Black? regards the crumbling of the old racial order as an opportunity for substantially more than an improvement in U.S. race relations; it offers no less than a radical transformation of the nation’s racial consciousness and the practice of democracy.

Read the introduction here.

Table of Contents

• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
  • Part I: White Over Black
  • 1. Eurocentrism: The Origin of the Master Racial Project
  • 2. Either Black or White: The United State and the Binary Racial Project
• Part II: Black No More
  • 3. White by Definition: Multiracial Identity and the Binary Racial Project
  • 4. Black by Law: Multiracial Identity and the Ternary Racial Project
• Part III: More than Black
  • 5. The New Multiracial Identity: Both Black and White
  • 6. The New Multiracial Identity: Neither Black nor White
  • 7. Black by Popular Demand: Multiracial Identity and the Decennial Census
• Part IV: Black No More or More than Black?
  • 8. The Illusion of Inclusion : From White Domination to White Hegemony
  • 9. The New Millennium: Toward a New Master Racial Project
• Epilogue: Beyond Black or White: A New United States Racial Project
• Notes
• Index

Eurocentrism in Social Work Education: From Race to Identity Across the Lifespan as Biracial Alternative

Journal of Social Work
Volume 5, Number 1 (April 2005)
pages 101-114
DOI: 10.1177/1468017305051238

Ronald E. Hall, Professor of Social Work
Michigan State University, East Lansing

• Summary: Consequent to Eurocentric hegemony, race has been erroneously validated as the standard identity construct by social work education as well as much of Western science. For example, the approach utilized in this study includes reference to the literature of biologists and medical personnel who contend that race is scientifically meaningless.
• Findings: The findings suggest that for those who are biracial, living in the midst of race constructionists encourages a life of identity conflict. That conflict is more often irrelevant to monorace subjects who by skin color are assigned to a single race category. This is an important notion for those, such as social workers, working in the human services.
• Applications: The application proposes a human development across the lifespan construct to serve as an ecological alternative to the pathologizing influences of race. Although race and other Eurocentric constructs may have had their place at one time, the rapidly changing demographic dynamics of Western populations, including Britain, Europe and the Americas, and the inconceivable pace at which diversity is becoming the norm necessitate a commensurate change in policy, practice and theory. Identity across the lifespan in preparation of social workers for the 21st century is a viable alternative.

Read or purchase the article here.