Mixed Race Studies

Inequality and African-American Health: How Racial Disparities Create Sickness

Policy Press
2016-10-05
224 pages
6¾ x 9½
Cloth ISBN-13: 978-1-4473-2281-8
Paper ISBN-13: 978-1-4473-2282-5

Shirley A. Hill, Professor of Sociology
Univeristy of Kansas

This book shows how living in a highly racialized society affects health through multiple social contexts, including neighborhoods, personal and family relationships, and the medical system.

Black-white disparities in health, illness, and mortality have been widely documented, but most research has focused on single factors that produce and perpetuate those disparities, such as individual health behaviors and access to medical care.

This is the first book to offer a comprehensive perspective on health and sickness among African Americans, starting with an examination of how race has been historically constructed in the US and in the medical system and the resilience of racial ideologies and practices. Racial disparities in health reflect racial inequalities in living conditions, incarceration rates, family systems, and opportunities. These racial disparities often cut across social class boundaries and have gender-specific consequences.

Bringing together data from existing quantitative and qualitative research with new archival and interview data, this book advances research in the fields of families, race-ethnicity, and medical sociology.

Contents

• Introduction
• Part One: Theorizing Social Inequalities in Health
  • Race, Racism, and Sickness
  • Slavery and Freedom
• Part Two: Health and Medicine
  • Health Behaviors in Social Context
  • Medical Care and Health Policy
• Part Three: Health and Families
  • Economic Decline and Incarceration
  • Love, Sexuality and (Non)Marriage
  • Children’s Health

Why Race Policy must include Multiracial Americans

Policy Press Blog at the University of Bristol
2016-01-27

Kathleen Odell Korgen, Professor of Sociology
William Paterson University, Wayne, New Jersey

Today’s guest blog by Kathleen Odell Korgen, whose book Race policy and multi-racial Americans published this month, examines the much overlooked issue of including multiracial Americans in policy making and explains why this oversight must stop.

Americans who identify as multiracial comprise approximately 7 percent of the U.S. population. With a growth rate three times that the rest of the population, this percentage will rise quickly (U.S. Census Bureau 2012; Frey 2014; Pew Research Center 2015).

One would never know this, however, by viewing the nation’s race policies. A look at policies across a variety of areas, including public school curricula, health policy, and prison regulations, reveals little trace of the existence of growing numbers of Americans who identify as multiracial…

Read the entire article here.

Race Policy and Multiracial Americans

Policy Press (Available in North America from University of Chicago Press)
2016-01-13
226 pages
234 x 156 mm
Hardback ISBN: 9781447316459
Paperback ISBN: 9781447316503

Edited by:

Kathleen Odell Korgen, Professor of Sociology
William Paterson University, Wayne, New Jersey

Race Policy and Multiracial Americans is the first book to look at the impact of multiracial people on race policies—where they lag behind the growing numbers of multiracial people in the U.S. and how they can be used to promote racial justice for multiracial Americans. Using a critical mixed race perspective, it covers such questions as: Which policies aimed at combating racial discrimination should cover multiracial Americans? Should all (or some) multiracial Americans benefit from affirmative action programmes? How can we better understand the education and health needs of multiracial Americans? This much-needed book is essential reading for sociology, political science and public policy students, policy makers, and anyone interested in race relations and social justice.

Contents

• Introduction ~ Kathleen Odell Korgen
• Multiracial Americans throughout the History of the U.S. ~ Tyrone Nagai
• National and Local Structures of Inequality: Multiracial Groups’ Profiles Across the United States ~ Mary E. Campbell and Jessica M. Barron
• Latinos and Multiracial America ~ Raúl Quiñones Rosado
• The Connections among Racial Identity, Social Class, and Public Policy? ~ Nikki Khanna
• Multiracial Americans and Racial Discrimination ~ Tina Fernandes Botts
• “Should All (or Some) Multiracial Americans Benefit from Affirmative Action Programs?”~ Daniel N. Lipson
• Multiracial Students and Educational Policy ~ Rhina Fernandes Williams and E. Namisi Chilungu
• Multiracial Americans in College ~ Marc P. Johnston and Kristen A. Renn
• Multiracial Americans, Health Patterns, and Health Policy: Assessment and Recommendations for Ways Forward ~ Jenifer L. Bratter and Chirsta Mason
• Racial Identity Among Multiracial Prisoners in the Color-Blind Era ~ Gennifer Furst and Kathleen Odell Korgen
• “Multiraciality and the Racial Order: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”~ Hephzibah V. Strmic-Pawl and David L. Brunsma
• Multiracial Identity and Monoracial Conflict: Toward a New Social Justice framework ~ Andrew Jolivette
• Conclusion: Policies for a Racially Just Society ~ Kathleen Odell Korgen

Obama and the Biracial Factor: The Battle for a New American Majority

Policy Press
February 2012
256 pages
234 x 156 mm
Hardback ISBN-10: 1447301005; ISBN-13: 978-1447301004

Andrew J. Jolivétte, Associate Professor of American Indian Studies (Also see biographies at Speak Out! and Native Wiki.)
Center for Health Disparities Research and Training
San Fransisco State University

Since the election in 2008 of Barack Obama to the Presidency of the United States there have been a plethora of books, films, and articles about the role of race in the election of the first person of color to the White House. None of these works though delves into the intricacies of Mr. Obama’s biracial background and what it means, not only in terms of how the President was elected and is now governing, but what multiraciality may mean in the context of a changing U.S. demographic. Obama and the Biracial Factor is the first book to explore the significance of mixed-race identity as a key factor in the election of President Obama and examines the sociological and political relationship between race, power, and public policy in the United States with an emphasis on public discourse and ethnic representation in his election. Jolivette and his co-authors bring biracial identity and multiraciality to forefront of our understanding of racial projects since his election. Additionally, the authors assert the salience of mixed-race identity in U.S. policy and the on-going impact of the media and popular culture on the development, implementation, and interpretation of government policy and ethnic relations in the U.S. and globally. This timely work offers foundational analysis and theorization of key new concepts such as mixed-race hegemony and critical mixed race pedagogy and a nuanced exploration of the on-going significance of race in the contemporary political context of the United States with international examples of the impact on U.S. foreign relations and a shifting American electorate. Demographic issues are explained as they relate to gender, race, class, and religion. These new and innovative essays provide a template for re-thinking race in a ‘postcolonial’, decolonial, and ever increasing global context. In articulating new frameworks for thinking about race and multiraciality this work challenges readers to contemplate whether we should strive for a ‘post-racist’ rather than a ‘post-racial’ society. Obama and the Biracial Factor speaks to a wide array of academic disciplines ranging from political science and public policy to sociology and ethnic studies. Scholars, researchers, undergraduate and graduate students as well as community organizers and general audiences interested in issues of equity, social justice, cross-cultural coalitions and political reform will gain new insights into critical mixed race theory and social class in multiracial contexts and beyond.

Contents

• Part I
  • Obama and the biracial factor: An introduction – Andrew Jolivette
  • Race, multiraciality, and the election of Barack Obama: Toward a more perfect union? – G. Reginald Daniel
  • “A Patchwork Heritage” Multiracial citation in Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father – Justin Ponder
  • Racial revisionism, caste revisited: Whiteness, blackness and Barack Obama – Darryl G. Barthé, Jr.
• Part II: Beyond black and white identity politics
  • Obama mamas and mixed race: Hoping for “A More Perfect Union” – Wei Ming Dariotis and Grace Yoo
  • Is ‘no one as Irish as Barack O’Bama’? Racial authenticity, cognitive flexibility and the racial Rorschach test – Rebecca Chiyoko King O’Riain
  • Mixed race kin-aesthetics in the Age of Obama – Wei Ming Dariotis
  • Mutt like me: Barack Obama and the mixed race experience in historical perspective – Zebulon Miletsky
• Part III: The battle for a new American majority
  • A different kind of blackness: The question of Obama’s blackness and intraracial variation among African Americans – Robert Keith Collins
  • Obama and race in the recessionary period of the colorblind era – Kathleen Odel Korgen and David L. Brunsma
  • Barack Obama and the rise to power: Emmett Till revisited – Andrew Jolivette