Mixed Race Studies

Negotiating the (Non)Negotiable: Connecting ‘Mixed-Race’ Identities to ‘Mixed-Race’ Families

Journal of Intercultural Studies
Volume 39, 2018 – Issue 4: Critical Mixed Race in Global Perspective
Published 2018-08-01
pages 414-428
DOI: 10.1080/07256868.2018.1486292

Mengxi Pang
Department of Sociology
University of Glasgow, Glasgow, United Kingdom

Whilst being a global phenomenon, ‘mixed-race’ means different things in different contexts. ‘Mixed-race’ individuals make sense of their mixed heritages by drawing on interactions with intimate others from their social networks. Based on an empirical study conducted in Scotland, this paper seeks to explore the linkage between mixed identities, society and families. Examining first-person accounts derived from interviews with self-identified mixed Scots, this paper delineates the dynamics involved in ‘mixed-race’ identifications and it contends that the ways in which mixed individuals make sense of their mixedness are profoundly influenced by their early experiences at home. This paper analyses qualitative data from in-depth interviews to examine the interrelationship between expressed identities and their experiences at home. The focus of analysis is placed upon the ways in which families are factored into the process of negotiating racialised differences by those who had grown up with limited knowledge about their non-Scottish heritage. This paper suggests that the role of families is two-folded: on one hand, it generates symbolic resources for children to negotiate racialised difference; on the other hand, it serves as a key site for the development of racial ideologies. The two roles of families shed light to understand the formation of mixed identities.

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Critical Mixed Race in Global Perspective

Journal of Intercultural Studies
Volume 38 (2018)
2018-08-01

• Introduction
  • Critical Mixed Race in Global Perspective: An Introduction / Erica Chito Childs
• Hierarchies of Mixing: Navigations and Negotiations
  • An Unwanted Weed: Children of Cross-region Unions Confront Intergenerational Stigma of Caste, Ethnicity and Religion / Reena Kukreja
  • Mixed Race Families in South Africa: Naming and Claiming a Location / Heather M. Dalmage
  • Negotiating the (Non)Negotiable: Connecting ‘Mixed-Race’ Identities to ‘Mixed-Race’ Families / Mengxi Pang
  • Linguistic Cultural Capital among Descendants of Mixed Couples in Catalonia, Spain: Realities and Inequalities / Dan Rodríguez-García, Miguel Solana-Solana, Anna Ortiz-Guitart & Joanna L. Freedman
  • ‘There is Nothing Wrong with Being a Mulatto’: Structural Discrimination and Racialised Belonging in Denmark / Mira C. Skadegård & Iben Jensen
  • Exceptionalism with Non-Validation: The Social Inconsistencies of Being Mixed Race in Australia / Stephanie B. Guy
• Mixed Matters Through a Wider Lens
  • Recognising Selves in Others: Situating Dougla Manoeuvrability as Shared Mixed-Race Ontology / Sue Ann Barratt & Aleah Ranjitsingh
  • What’s Love Got To Do With It? Emotional Authority and State Regulation of Interracial/national Couples in Ireland / Rebecca Chiyoko King-O’Riain
  • Re-viewing Race and Mixedness: Mixed Race in Asia and the Pacific / Zarine L. Rocha

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Journal of Intercultural Studies: Call for Papers: Special Issue

Journal of Intercultural Studies
2016-11-04

Deadline: 2017-07-31

Studying mixed race in a global perspective is an increasingly important phenomenon. The global economy, growing rates of migration, and rapidly advancing information and communication technologies have brought diverse groups in closer contact in more areas of the globe, even those previously regarded as racially and ethnically homogenous. Intermarried couples and mixed race celebrities are often heralded in media reports as examples of a growing phenomenon where race, culture and colour are argued to no longer matter, even when that is far from the reality. Amidst these widespread claims of a post-racial or colourblind world, the Othering of certain groups and racialized discourse remains, and is often most clear in debates over the possibility or perceived threat of intimacy and sex with racialized Others. In an ever-changing globalised world, mixing across established boundaries of race, ethnicity, religion or tribe can be celebrated, yet it can also be constructed as very dangerous, and these complexities need to be studied globally. While countless academic studies and media reports have been devoted to investigating, documenting and/or explaining this phenomenon of mixed identities and relationships, many questions remain unanswered.

• What does mixed race mean across the globe?
• What are the lived experiences of mixed couples and mixed race individuals in different countries and contexts?
• What are attitudes toward ‘mixing’?
• How do the children of mixed couples identify?
• Is there a way to understand the experiences of mixed people and families in a global context, or is there too much difference – different histories, different populations and different contexts – to find common ground?

Submission Instructions

We are looking for original papers that critically address the issue of mixed race globally from new and innovative perspectives to make up this Special Issue.

Papers to be between 7,000–8,000 words in length, and submitted to https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/cjis (when submitting please label your manuscript a ‘Special Issue Paper’).

The Critical Mixed Race special issue will be published early–2018: we are accepting papers up until the 31st July 2017

Editorial information

Guest Editor: Erica Chito Childs, Hunter College and CUNY Graduate Centre

For more information, click here.

Mistura for the fans: performing mixed-race Japanese Brazilianness in Japan

Journal of Intercultural Studies
Volume 36, Issue 6, 2015
pages 710-728
DOI: 10.1080/07256868.2015.1095714

Zelideth María Rivas, Assistant Professor of Japanese
Department of Modern Languages
Marshall University, Huntington, West Virginia

In this article, I examine fans’ consumption of mixed-race Japanese Brazilian female bodies in Japan. The article does this by examining two case-study representations of Japanese Brazilian female bodies: Miss Nikkei in Karen Tei Yamashita’s mixed-media collection of essays and short stories, Circle K Cycles (2001); and performances by the Japanese idol group Linda Sansei (2013 debut). I argue that although the Japanese Brazilian population has largely been represented as minor characters in Japanese history, literature, and culture, the degree of consumption by fans belies this and points to the multiplicity of Japanese Brazilian identities. Moreover, the gendered, feminized body in these texts becomes a stereotyped, Orientalized, and fetishized Japanese body that is oftentimes juxtaposed to a sexualized, racialized Brazilian body. While this could distance fans and disavow the mixed-race Japanese Brazilian female body, Miss Nikkei and Linda Sansei perform gender and race in ways that demand recognition of their bodies as different to preconceived stereotypes. Fans consume the commodification of these new identitarian representations in a way that allows the mixed-race Japanese Brazilian female to attain social mobility, disavowing traditional categorizations as lower socio-economic class dekasegi, or foreign labourers.

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A Global Look at Mixing: Problems, Pitfalls and Possibilities

Journal of Intercultural Studies
Volume 35, Issue 6, 2014
pages 677-688
DOI: 10.1080/07256868.2014.968305

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

The importance of studying mixed race in a global perspective is gaining momentum. The global economy, growing rates of immigration, and rapidly advancing information and communication technologies have brought diverse groups in closer contact in more areas of the globe, even those previously regarded as racially and ethnically homogenous. Intermarried couples and mixed race celebrities are often heralded in media reports as examples of a growing phenomenon where race, culture and color are argued to no longer matter, even when that is far from the reality. Amidst these widespread claims of a post-racial or colorblind world, the othering of certain groups and racialized discourse remains, and is often most clear in debates over the possibility or perceived threat of intimacy and sex with racialized Others. Mixing across established boundaries of race, ethnicity, religion or tribe is still dangerous, and these realities need to be studied globally. While countless academic studies and media reports have been devoted to investigating, documenting and/or explaining this phenomenon of mixed identities and relationships, many questions remain unanswered. Who can marry whom? What are attitudes toward “mixing?” How do the children of mixed couples identify? What differences matter? How are these differences articulated and what are the underlying reasons that these perceived differences matter, particularly when it comes to intimate and familial relations? And in an ever-changing globalised world, is there a way to understand the experiences of mixed people and families in a global context, or is there too much difference—different histories, different populations and different contexts to find common ground? Therefore this article will briefly review the current state of “mixed” research, why it is important to study this issue while highlighting the problems with existing approaches and emphasizing the need for a global framework for understanding mixed marriage and mixed identities.

Read the entire article here.

Mixed Race Okinawans and Their Obscure In-Betweeness

Journal of Intercultural Studies
Volume 35, Issue 6 (November 2014)
pages 646-661
DOI: 10.1080/07256868.2014.963531

Mitzi Uehara Carter

While critical mixed race studies and popular discourse of haafu (half) are proliferating in Japan, the case of mixed race people in Okinawa remains obscure within these studies as exceptional cases of non-serial mixed bodies. Locally mixed Okinawans have been used to demonstrate incompleteness of sovereignty in Okinawa yet globally have been hailed under the haafu boom as ‘bridge people’ under a liberalist ideology of difference, sometimes naturalizing and justifying the controversial US base presence. This paper centers on the lives of mixed Okinawans I interviewed. I analyze how they engage with various mixed race discourses, concepts of Okinawan difference, and security imaginaries. Through their stories, I suggest that in Okinawa, mixed race as situated transnationally ‘in-between’ circulates against rationales of modernity that are embedded in security narratives in ways that the haafu boom does not address and therefore encapsulates mixed Okinawans as obscure. I argue that despite this positioning, many mixed Okinawans have cautiously rooted themselves locally through language, fluctuating imaginaries of citizenship, and diasporic meanings of Okinawan belonging.

Read the entire article here.

Eurasians: Celebrating Survival

Journal of Intercultural Studies
Volume 28, Issue 1 (2007)
DOI: 10.1080/07256860601082988
pages 129-141

Christine Choo
University of Western Australia

The search for my Asian ancestors and my discoveries in archives, the crumbling pages, the eroding ink, the disappearance of the word, are a metaphor for the simultaneous emergence of the will to recover memories and the slow fading away of the material traces of memory. Eurasians of Malaysia and Singapore once epitomised the blurring of boundaries between cultures and societies in colonial and immediate post-colonial periods. In exploring their cultural and social heritage in the archives and by networking with the Eurasian diaspora on the internet, individuals shape and reaffirm their identities on new and old frontiers. This paper presents Eurasians and their experiences as transcultural or in the middle ground – the space where new ways of being are developed and lived in a cross-cultural environment. It explores how the definition of Eurasian is changing in the context of contemporary globalised society.

Who is Eurasian?

This essay is a personal reflection on the position of Eurasians as “in-betweeners” and the changes experienced by the Eurasian communities of Malaysia from historically, geographically and socially grounded minority communities to imagined communities of a diaspora with families linked by the internet. Paradoxically, in the expanded globalised context of our contemporary world where cross-cultural intermarriage or partnering is common, historic Eurasian communities like those in Malaysia are fading away through intermarriage and migration. Many Eurasian extended families connect and discover their common heritage and family links through the internet. In another reality, unrelated individuals across the world with Asian-European heritage rely on the imagined communities created by the internet to help them gain a sense of identity and community…

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Historicizing Hybridity and the Politics of Location: Three Early Colonial Indian Narratives

Journal of Intercultural Studies
Volume 28, Issue 1 (2007)
pages 143-155
DOI: 10.1080/07256860601082996

Adrian Carton
Centre for Cultural Research
University of Western Sydney, Australia

From White Mughals to Vikram Seth, novels, historical blockbusters and more nuanced anthropological and postcolonial critiques have exposed the fiction of fixed notions of “race” through sensitive understandings of the liminal space of the “inter-racial” relationship and the “mixed-race” experience. In an era where the textual and cultural production of hybridity has become a new form of cultural capital, articulations of racial “inbetween-ness” have also become somewhat universalised and romanticised. While acknowledging the radical potential of these new paradigms of transnational slippage and métissage as an affront to the old narratives of racial certainty, this article challenges the universalization of the term “mixed-race” in the context of colonial India, both ontologically and historically. By historicising cultural difference according to the social syntax that gives it meaning, it asks whether the term “mixed race” has political relevance in all colonial spaces and across time and culture or whether it needs to be interrogated as an historical product in itself. Finallly, this article turns to the politics of location in a global context to illustrate the limits of Homi Bhabha’s notion of the “third space” by moving beyond celebratory and static notions of the “mixed-race” experience.

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Memories of Interracial Contacts and Mixed Race in Dutch Cinema

Journal of Intercultural Studies
Volume 28, Issue 1 (2007)
Pages 69 – 82
DOI: 10.1080/07256860601082947

Pamela Pattynama, Professor of Media and Culture
University of Amsterdam

This essay explores the (post)colonial relationship between the present-day Netherlands and its former colony the Dutch East Indies—a continuing relationship that has generated a wide range of memories. Exploring two Dutch films on the colonial past and comparing them with two autobiographical writings of Dutch writers of mixed race, it argues that the recurrent theme of interracial contacts emerges as the privileged metaphor for the relation between Holland and its ex-colony. A recurring feature of Dutch representations of interracial contacts, it is specifically the figure of the Indonesian concubine, the so-called nyai, which continues to obsess the male gaze. The essay concludes that through their focus on loss, separation and failure in representing interraciality, the films speak primarily to the incapacity of the Dutch nation to engage effectively with its colonial past.

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Anglo-Indians in Hollywood, Bollywood and Arthouse Cinema

Journal of Intercultural Studies
Volume 28, Issue 1 (February 2007)
pages 55-68
DOI: 10.1080/07256860601082939

Glenn D’Cruz, Senior Lecturer of Performance Studies
Deakin University, Australia

Apart from a few disparaging remarks about offensive stereotypes by Anglo-Indian writers and politicians such as Gloria Jean Moore, Frank Anthony and Gillian Hart, critics have paid very little attention to the representation of “mixed-race” Anglo-Indians in the cinema. Drawing on screen theory and recent theories of cinema spectatorship, this essay provides a comparative analysis of how Hollywood, Bollywood and arthouse films represent Anglo-Indians. More specifically, it analyses three paradigmatic films: Bhowani Junction (1956), Julie (1975), and 36 Chowringhee Lane (1981). Combining formal analysis of narrative structure, mise-en-scne and genre with historical analysis, the paper examines the ideological work performed by these texts, which use Anglo-Indians to dramatise specific political conflicts in India such as those generated by the British partition of India in 1947 and the more recent issue of globalisation.

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