Mixed Race Studies

Reproducing Race: The Paradox of Generation Mix

Lynne Rienner Publishers
October 2010
325 Pages
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-58826-751-1
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-58826-776-4

Rainier Spencer, Director and Professor of Afro-American Studies; Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies
University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Is postraciality just around the corner? How realistic are the often-heard pronouncements that mixed-race identity is leading the United States to its postracial future? In his provocative analysis, Rainier Spencer illuminates the assumptions that multiracial ideology in fact shares with concepts of both white supremacy and antiblackness.

Spencer links the mulatto past with the mulatto present in order to plumb the contours of the nation’s mulatto future. He argues cogently, and forcefully, that the deconstruction of race promised by the American Multiracial Identity Movement will remain an illusion of wishful thinking unless we truly address the racist baggage that serves tenaciously to conserve the present racial order.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• THE MULATTO PAST
  • The Mixed-Race Background
  • Of Tragic Mulattoes and Marginal Men
  • Mulatto Writers on Marginality
  • Imitations of Life
  • Rejecting a Shared Past
• THE MULATTO PRESENT
  • Postraciality, Multiraciality, and Antiblackness
  • Resurrecting Old Myths of Mulatto Marginality
  • The False Promise of Racial Bridging
  • Assessing the New Millennium Marginal Man
• THE MULATTO FUTURE
  • Whither Multiracial Militancy? Conserving the Racial Order
  • Mulatto (and White) Writers on Deconstructing Race
  • Beyond Generation Mix

Challenging Multiracial Identity

Lynne Rienner Publishers
2006
135 pages
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-58826-424-4

Rainier Spencer, Director and Professor of Afro-American Studies; Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies
University of Nevada, Las Vegas

What is multiracialism—and what are the theoretical consequences and practical costs of asserting a multiracial identity? Arguing that the multiracial movement bolsters, rather than subverts, traditional categories of race, Rainier Spencer critically assesses current scholarship in support of multiracial identity.

Table of Contents

• Introduction: Expecting Excellence in the Field of Multiracial Identity Studies
• Projection as Reality: Three Authors, Three Studies, One Problem
• Psychobabble, Socioblather, and the Reinscription of the Pathology Paradigm
• White Mothers, the Loving Legend, and Manufacturing a Biracial Baby Boom
• Distinction Without Difference: The Insidious Argument for First-Generation Black/White Multiracial Identity
• The Road Forward

Interracial families face unique challenges because of the historical legacy of white supremacy, the long-standing social barriers against interracial marriage, and the cultural norm of racial homogeneity in marriage patterns.  For interracial families, racial socialization is complicated for important several reasons.  First, parents bring different racial identities, experiences, and ideologies to their relationship that may result in different ideas about how to racially socialize their children.  In addition, the politics of race in our society are such that their mixed-race children exist in a marginal and undefined space.  There is no clear community of mixed-race people or a comprehensive understanding of the mixed-race experience that can be used to guide racial socialization of mixed-race childrenin a positive, cohesive manner.  Unlike white or black children, most multiracial children do not have a parent with whom they can directly identify as a multiracial person.  Unless a parent is also mixed-race, the majority of mixed-race children learn about race from on or more adults who cannot completely understand their racial reality.  This means that most mixed-race children rarely have the luxury of being raised by a parent whose on racial identity and socialization process are relevant to their experience.

Rockquemore, Kerry Ann, Tracey Laszloffy, Julia Noveske. “It All Starts at Home: Racial Socialization in Multiracial Families”, In Mixed Messages: Multiracial Identities in the “Color-Blind” Era, edited by David L. Brunsma, 207.  Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2006.

Brazil’s New Racial Politics

Lynne Rienner Publishers
2009
251 pages
ISBN: 978-1-58826-666-8

Edited by:

Bernd Reiter, Associate Professor of Political Science
University of South Florida

Gladys L. Mitchell (Gladys Mitchell-Walthour), Assistant Professor of Political Science
Denison University, Granville, Ohio

As the popular myth of racial equality in Brazil crumbles beneath the weight of current grassroots politics, how will the country redefine itself as a multiethnic nation? Brazil’s New Racial Politics captures the myriad questions and problems unleashed by a growing awareness of the ways racism structures Brazilian society.

 The authors bridge the gap between scholarship and activism as they tackle issues ranging from white privilege to black power, from government policy to popular advocacy, and from historical injustices to recent victories. The result is a rich exploration of the conflicting social realities characterizing Brazil today, as well as their far-reaching political implications.

Contents

• Foreword—Michael Mitchell.
• 1. The New Politics of Race in Brazil—Bernd Reiter and Gladys L. Mitchell.
• BLACK EMPOWERMENT AND WHITE PRIVILEGE.
  • 2. Whiteness as Capital: Constructing Inclusion and Defending Privilege—Bernd  Reiter.
  • 3. Politicizing Blackness: Afro-Brazilian Color Identification and Candidate Preference—Gladys L. Mitchell
  • 4. Out of Place: The Experience of the Black Middle Class—Angela Figueiredo.
  • 5. The Political Shock of the Year: The Press and the Election of a Black Mayor in São Paulo—Cloves Luiz Pereira Oliveira.
• AFFIRMATIVE ACTION CONTESTED.
  • 6. Affirmative Action and Identity—Seth Racusen.
  • 7. Opportunities and Challenges for the Afro-Brazilian Movement—Mónica Treviño González.
• THE NEW POLITICS OF BLACK POWER.
  • 8. Racialized History and Urban Politics: Black Women’s Wisdom in Grassroots Struggles—Keisha-Khan Y. Perry.
  • 9. Black NGOs and “Conscious” Rap: New Agents of the Antiracism Struggle in Brazil—Sales Augusto dos Santos.
  • 10. Power and Black Organizing in Brazil—Fernando Conceição.
  • 11. New Social Activism: University Entry Courses for Black and Poor Students—Renato Emerson dos Santos.
• CONCLUSION.
  • After the Racial Democracy—Bernd Reiter and Gladys L. Mitchell.

Asian American Racial Realities in Black and White

Lynne Rienner Publishers
June 2011
167 pages
ISBN: 978-1-935049-39-5

Bruce Calvin Hoskins, Professor of Sociology
MiraCosta College, Oceanside, California

What does it mean for an Asian American to be part white—or part black? Bruce Hoskins probes the experience of biracial Asian Americans, revealing the ways that our discourse about multiracial identities too often reinforces racial hierarchies.

Hoskins explores the everyday lives of people of Asian/white and Asian/black heritage to uncover the role of our society’s white-black continuum in shaping racial identity. Mixing intimate personal stories with cutting-edge theoretical analysis, he directly confronts the notion that multiracial identity provides an easy solution for our society’s racial stratification.

Read the introduction here.

Table of Conents

• Introduction
• Internal Racial Identity
• Public Racial Identity
• The External Context of Racial Identity Formation
• Learning Racial Hierarchy
• Conclusion

Mixed Messages: Multiracial Identities in the “Color-Blind” Era

Lynne Rienner Publishers
2006
405 pages
Hardcover: ISBN: 978-1-58826-372-8
Paperback: ISBN: 978-1-58826-398-8

Edited by David L. Brunsma, Professor of Sociology
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

The experiences and voices of multiracial individuals are challenging current categories of race, profoundly altering the meaning of racial identity and in the process changing the cultural fabric of the nation. Exploring this new reality, the authors of Mixed Messages examine what we know about multiracial identities—and the implications of those identities for fundamental issues of justice and equality.

Read the entire introduction here.

Table of Contents

• Mixed Messages: Doing Race in the Color-Blind Era—David L. Brunsma
• SHIFTING COLOR LINES.
  • Defining Race: Comparative Perspectives—F. James Davis.
  • Black, Honorary White, White: The Future of Race in the United States?—Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and David G. Embrick.
  • Racial Justice in a Black/Nonblack Society—George Yancey.
  • Carving Out a Middle Ground: The Case of Hawai’i—Jeffrey Moniz and Paul Spickard.
  • New Racial Identities, Old Arguments: Continuing Biological Reification—Rainier Spencer.
  • Color Blindness: An Obstacle to Racial Justice?—Charles A. Gallagher.
  • Racism, Whitespace, and the Rise of the Neo-Mulattos—Hayward Derrick Horton.
• MANIPULATING MULTIRACIAL IDENTITIES.
  • Race, Multiraciality, and the Neoconservative Agenda—G. Reginald Daniel and Josef Manuel Castañeda-Liles.
  • White Separatists in the Color-Blind Era: Redefining Multiracial and White Identities—Abby L. Ferber.
  • Defining Racism to Achieve Goals: The Multiracial and Black Reparations Movements—Johanna E. Foster.
  • Selling Mixedness: Marketing with Multiracial Identities—Kimberly McClain DaCosta.
• SOCIALIZATION IN MULTIRACIAL FAMILIES.
  • It All Starts at Home: Racial Socialization in Multiracial Families—Kerry Ann Rockquemore,
    Tracey Laszloffy, and Julia Noveske.
  • Racial Logics and (Trans)Racial Identities: A View from Britain—France Winddance Twine.
  • Black and White: Family Opposition to Becoming Multiracial—Erica Chito Childs.
• DILEMMAS OF MULTIRACIAL IDENTITY.
  • Negotiating Racial Identity in Social Interactions—R. L’Heureux Lewis and Kanika Bell.
  • Black/White Friendships in a Color-Blind Society—Kathleen Korgen and Eileen O’Brien.
  • Black and Latino: Dominican Americans Negotiate Racial Worlds—Benjamin Bailey.
  • Finding a Home: Housing the Color Line—Heather Dalmage.
  • Confronting Racism in the Therapist’s Office—Kwame Owusu-Bempah.
  • Culture and Identity in Mixed-Race Women’s Lives—Debbie Storrs.