Place,scale and the racial claims made for multiracial children in the 1990 US Census

Multiracial children embody ambiguities inherent in racial categorization and expose fictions of discrete races. Nevertheless, parents of multiracial children were asked for the 1990 US Census to report a single race for their offspring. Using confidential 1990 Census micro-data, we investigate the choices parents made for the three most common racially mixed household types (Asian-white, black-white and Latino-white) in twelve large metropolitan areas. We find that context affects the reporting of children's racial identity. We examine these effects with models that incorporate three spatial scales: households, neighbourhoods and metropolitan areas. Model estimates reveal that racial claims made by parents of Latino- and Asian-white (but not black-white) children varied significantly across metropolitan area. A neighbourhood's proportion white increased the probability that parents reported their children as white, while a neighbourhood's racial diversity increased the probability that black-white parents claimed a non-white race (black or ‘other’) for their children.     

Pondering Poi Dog: Place and racial identification of multiracial Native Hawaiians

Given the very large proportion of Hawaiians who are multiracial, our research examines Native Hawaiian identification in mixed-race Hawaiian families. We use the 1990 US Census, which affords a unique look at racial identification because multiracial people were required to choose one race over another. The results show support for our argument that place plays a central role in Pacific identity processes, illustrated in this case among Hawaiians. We find that strong ties to Hawai‘i – the spiritual and geographic home of the Hawaiian population – are vital to the intergenerational transmission of Hawaiian identification in both continental and island multiracial families. We compare our results for multiracial Native Hawaiians to prior studies of American Indians and Asian Americans to identify any general patterns in correlates of racial identification choices. In each group, we find that familial and geographic relationships to the cultural and ancestral lands are strongly linked to racial identification.     

A white side of black Britain: The concept of racial literacy

Opposition to transracial adoption on both sides of the Atlantic, has been based, in part, on the assumption that white parents cannot understand race or racism and thus cannot properly prepare children of multiracial heritage to cope with racism. In this article I draw on a seven-year ethnographic study to offer an intensive case study of white transracial birth parents that counters this racial logic. I draw on a subset of data collected from field research and in-depth interviews with 102 members of black-white interracial families in England. I provide an analysis of three practices that I discovered among white transracial birth parents who were attempting to cultivate ‘black’ identities in their children of multiracial heritage. I offer the concept of ‘racial literacy’ to theorize their parental labour as a type of anti-racist project that remains under the radar of conventional sociological analyses of racism and anti-racist social movements.     

Some observations about racial boundaries and the experiences of American Indians

The number of inter‐racial marriages has increased sharply in the last two decades. There are a number of factors that might account for this development ‐ for example, immigration, changing norms, and marriage market composition ‐ but one indisputable outcome has been a rise in the number of persons with multiracial backgrounds. This article argues that multiracial persons have a number of options about how they might identify their ancestry, and this is causing fluidity and instability in racial divisions that were once considered fixed and immutable. While this might be seen as a recent development, American Indians historically have had high rates of intermarriage with other racial groups. The experience of American Indians with regard to the dilemmas posed by shifting racial identities are discussed for the purpose of anticipating the experiences of other groups. In particular, these issues pose a number of challenges to public policies based on increasingly obsolete conceptions of race.     

‘I'm American,not Japanese!’: the struggle for racial citizenship among later-generation Japanese Americans

Abstract

As one of the oldest Asian American groups in the USA, most Japanese Americans are of the third and fourth generations and have become well integrated in mainstream American society. However, they are still racialized as foreigners simply because of their Asian appearance. Their Asian phenotype continues to have a foreigner connotation because of large-scale immigration from Asia and an American national identity that is racially defined as white. This paper analyses how later-generation Japanese Americans are racialized as outsiders in their daily interaction with mainstream Americans, which is often accompanied by essentialized assumptions that they are also culturally foreign. In response, they engage in everyday struggles for racial citizenship by demanding inclusion in the national community as Americans despite their racial differences. It is uncertain whether such attempts to contest their racialization will cause current mono-racial notions of American identity to be reconsidered in more inclusive and multiracial ways.     

Muslim Youth in Canadian Schools: Education and the Politics of Religious Identity

This article provides an ethnographic analysis of the schooling experiences of Muslim youth in Canada who are committed to maintaining an Islamic lifestyle despite the pressures of conformity to the dominant culture. Little attention has been paid to how religious identity intersects with other forms of social difference, such as race and gender in the schooling experiences of minoritized youth. Using a case study often Muslim students and parents, this article demonstrates how Muslim students were able to negotiate and maintain their religious identities within secular public schools. The participants' narratives address the challenges of peer pressure, racism, and Islamophobia. Their stories reveal how Muslim students are located at the nexus of social difference based on their race, gender, and religious identity. The discussion further explores the dynamics through which these youth were able to negotiate the continuity of their Islamic identity and practices within schools despite the challenges that they faced. Building upon existing theories of identity maintenance and construction, this research demonstrates how the interplay of the core factors of ambivalence, role performance, and interaction and isolation are implicated in the way Muslim students negotiate the politics of religious identity in their schooling experiences.     

Generational change and how we conceptualize and measure multiracial people and “mixture”

Until relatively recently, in countries such as the U.S.A. and U.K., individuals could only opt for “single race” categories with which they identified. However, in the 2000 decennial census, respondents in the U.S. were able to choose more than one racial category, while in 2001, a “Mixed” box (with further subcategories) was provided in the England and Wales census for the first time. But the very success of this racial project in these countries has spawned a number of questions for policy-makers and academics who theorize, enumerate and study the experiences of multiracial people. With demographic changes such as generational change, who counts as multiracial or mixed race? This question has yet to receive significant attention. Although mixing is becoming more commonplace, the question of who counts as multiracial is far from straightforward, especially as we look down the generational pipeline.     

Introduction: Expanding the Discourse on "Race"

In response to Mukhopadhyay and Moses's call for biological and cultural anthropologists to reestablish a dialogue on race, anthropologists from the four major subfields join colleagues from two allied disciplines to address the possible ways in which the anthropological discourse on race can become more holistic and amenable to the urgent needs and interests of the public. This essay offers an overview of the current resurgence of race-focused scholarship in anthropology, as well as a framework for an intertextual reading of the articles featured in this theme forum. Anthropologists' current conversation on race and racism is built on a rich legacy, elements of which are still being uncovered in gender- and racecognizant explorations of the discipline's past Despite the considerable hiatus since the last major juncture of race-centered debate and research, that legacy has recently inspired a promising upsurge of critical analysis which, if mobilized effectively, may contribute to the subversion of the often subtle cultural and structural logics of contemporary racism, as well as clear the ground for a new culture for multiracial democracy. Toward this end, anthropologists and others interested in using anthropological tools must cultivate more richly nuanced analyses and intervention strategies informed by insights emerging from the cross-fertilization of ideas from the various subfields along with such fields as human genetics and ethnic studies. Anthropology's unique role in interrogating, theorizing, and potentially disrupting the dynamics of racism may be dependent on understanding the conceptual and methodological significance of strategic intradisciplinary and interdisciplinary interfaces.     

Collage in Aluminum

An immediate critical task of the arts education field is to resolve the polarities of low-quality integrative and overly marginalized discipline-specific approaches to teaching in schools. In pursuing this challenge, the author defines three teaching approaches—arts as craftsmanship, arts as play, and arts as inquiry—and calls for re-weighted proportional use of all three through thoughtful policy and restructuring within the field. The article frames what a coequal process of collaborative curriculum planning between different types of teachers looks like, and challenges schools of education and schools of arts to rethink their approaches to educating the next generation of teachers.     

American Indians without tribes in the twenty-first century

Among American Indians and Alaska Natives, most aspects of ethnicity are tightly associated with the person's tribal origins. Language, history, foods, land and traditions differ among the hundreds of tribes indigenous to the USA. With this in mind, we ask why almost one million American Indians failed to respond to the tribal affiliation part of the Census 2000 race question. We investigate four hypotheses about why one-third of multiracial American Indians and one-sixth of single-race American Indians did not write any response to the tribal affiliation question: (1) survey item non-response that undermines all fill-in-the-blank questions; (2) a non-salient tribal identity; (3) a genealogy-based affiliation; and (4) a mestizo identity, which does not require a tribe. We use multivariate logistic regression models and high-density restricted-use Census 2000 data. We find support for the first two hypotheses and note that predictors differ substantially for single-race versus multiple-race American Indians.     

Bearing the burden of whiteness: the implications of racial self-identification for multiracial adolescents' school belonging and academic achievement

Previous literature on racial self-identification among multiracials demonstrates that self-identification differs by context. Moreover, among multiracial adolescents, identity, usually measured in school, is correlated with achievement. In addition, a few studies have indicated that for half-white, half-minority adolescents, school achievement falls in between the achievements of their monoracial counterparts. Using the in-school and in-home components of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), we examine the relationship between racial self-identification and school belonging and achievement. We find that among black/white and Asian/white adolescents, adolescents who self-identify as white are particularly disadvantaged in school, reporting lower grade point averages (GPA) than their multiracial counterparts. Our conclusions suggest that multiple contextual measures of self-identification better capture the relationship between racial identification and academic achievement among multiracial adolescents.     

Race differences in pubic symphyseal aging patterns in the male

A well-documented multiracial sample of 704 male pubic bones allows for rigorous testing for racial differences in pubic symphyseal metamorphosis. The relationship between estimated age (using a modified Todd six-stage system) and age is examined as a function of race (White, Black, Mexican). One set of analyses incorporates linear regression models, while a second set does not impose such structure on the relationship. The latter analyses incorporate analysis of variance and related procedures. Significant differences in age are found across racial groups; it is seen that Blacks and Mexicans with advanced pubic symphyseal patterns tend to have lower ages than Whites. We do not address the question of causality, which may involve genetic factors and/or environmental variables such as diet, alcoholism, or drug abuse.     

Post-racial futures: imagining post-racialist anti-racism(s)

Abstract

Can the theoretical insights of post-racialism contribute to the development of a progressive anti-racism? Drawing on interviews with anti-racist organizations in London, this article explores the translation of the theoretical insights of post-racialism into anti-racist praxis. Theoretically informed and empirically engaged, this article argues that post-racialism faces its own set of paradoxes and practical dilemmas complicating the process of deriving post-racialist practice(s) from post-racialist theory. The article concludes that, in spite of the challenges, the powerful questions that post-racialism raises create a much needed ethico-political space for critical reflection on the concept and category of race. Ultimately, post-racialist insights may refine understandings of the discriminatory practices performed in the name of race and point towards a methodological approach of working with and against race in anti-racism.     

Investigating genetic discrimination in Australia: opportunities and challenges in the early stages

Genetic discrimination, defined as the differential treatment of individuals or their relatives on the basis of actual or presumed genetic differences, is an emerging issue of interest in academic, clinical, social and legal contexts. While its potential significance has been discussed widely, verified empirical data are scarce. Genetic discrimination is a complex phenomenon to describe and investigate, as evidenced by the recent Australian Law Reform Commission inquiry in Australia. The authors research project, which commenced in 2002, aims to document the multiple perspectives and experiences regarding genetic discrimination in Australia and inform future policy development and law reform. Data are being collected from consumers, employers, insurers and the legal system. Attempted verification of alleged accounts of genetic discrimination will be a novel feature of the research. This paper overviews the early stages of the research, including conceptual challenges and their methodological implications.     

Ethnicity and class identity: The case of French‐ and English‐speaking Canadians*

This study addresses the racial and religious contexts of identity formation among Lebanese immigrants to the United States of America and Somali immigrants to Canada. Each enters with a different racial status: Lebanese as white; Somalis as black/visible minority. Ethnographic interviews explore the strategies of adaptation and identity development within these groups. Specifically, we compare and contrast the Lebanese and Somali experience through an analysis of ethnic relations in the country of origin, the conditions of immigration, and through accounts of their encounters and identity negotiation with the host society. We demonstrate the strategies each group implements to negotiate both race and religion in identity development. Our findings reveal that each group attempts to make their religious identity evident, however, Somali immigrants must negotiate the effects of ‘othering’ processes with both race and religion, while Lebanese immigrants build a religious identity from privileges afforded to them by virtue of their white racial status.     

Investigating genetic discrimination in Australia: opportunities and challenges in the early stages

Genetic discrimination, defined as the differential treatment of individuals or their relatives on the basis of actual or presumed genetic differences, is an emerging issue of interest in academic, clinical, social and legal contexts. While its potential significance has been discussed widely, verified empirical data are scarce. Genetic discrimination is a complex phenomenon to describe and investigate, as evidenced by the recent Australian Law Reform Commission inquiry in Australia. The authors research project, which commenced in 2002, aims to document the multiple perspectives and experiences regarding genetic discrimination in Australia and inform future policy development and law reform. Data are being collected from consumers, employers, insurers and the legal system. Attempted verification of alleged accounts of genetic discrimination will be a novel feature of the research. This paper overviews the early stages of the research, including conceptual challenges and their methodological implications.     

Conducting Studies with Fathers: Challenges and Opportunities

Traditionally, researchers interested in understanding father involvement in the lives of young children have relied on mothers as proxy respondents for fathers, yet recent research has made noteworthy strides in collecting data from fathers themselves yielding an unprecedented wealth of data on fathers' involvement in their children's lives. Despite this progress, there remain many methodological challenges in conducting studies with fathers and their children. Therefore, this article highlights several methodological challenges, including the identification of fathers, recruitment of fathers as participants, and retention of participants in small-scale studies with longitudinal designs, and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of several strategies our research team and others have used to collect data from fathers. The paper concludes with a set of suggestions for improving methodological approaches in fatherhood research, as well as remaining challenges in this area of study.     

Methods for Studying the Ecological Physiology of Feeding in Free-Ranging Howlers (Alouatta palliata) at La Pacifica, Costa Rica

We lack a general understanding of how primates perform physiologically during feeding to cope with the challenges of their natural environments. We here discuss several methods for studying the ecological physiology of feeding in mantled howlers (Alouatta palliata) at La Pacifica, Costa Rica. Our initial physiological effort focuses on recording electromyographic activity (EMG) from the jaw muscles in free-ranging howlers while they feed in their natural forest habitat. We integrate these EMG data with measurements of food material properties, dental wear rates, as well as spatial analyses of resource use and food distribution. Future work will focus on incorporating physiological measures of bone deformation, i.e., bone strain; temperatures; food nutritional data; and hormonal analyses. Collectively, these efforts will help us to better understand the challenges that howlers face in their environment and the physiological mechanisms they employ during feeding. Our initial efforts provide a proof of concept demonstrating the methodological feasibility of studying the physiology of feeding in free-ranging primates. Although howlers offer certain advantages to in vivo field research, many of the approaches described here can be applied to other primates in natural habitats. By collecting physiological data simultaneously with ecological and behavioral data, we will promote a more synthetic understanding of primate feeding and its evolutionary history.     

Anthropological insights into the use of race/ethnicity to explore genetic contributions to disparities in health

Anthropological insights into the use of race/ethnicity to explore genetic contributions to disparities in health were developed using in-depth qualitative interviews with editorial staff from nineteen genetics journals, focusing on the methodological and conceptual mechanisms required to make race/ethnicity a genetic variable. As such, these analyses explore how and why race/ethnicity comes to be used in the context of genetic research, set against the background of continuing critiques from anthropology and related human sciences that focus on the social construction, structural correlates and limited genetic validity of racial/ethnic categories. The analyses demonstrate how these critiques have failed to engage geneticists, and how geneticists use a range of essentially cultural devices to protect and separate their use of race/ethnicity as a genetic construct from its use as a societal and social science resource. Given its multidisciplinary, biosocial nature and the cultural gaze of its ethnographic methodologies, anthropology is well placed to explore the cultural separation of science and society, and of natural and social science disciplines. Anthropological insights into the use of race/ethnicity to explore disparities in health suggest that moving beyond genetic explanations of innate difference might benefit from a more even-handed critique of how both the natural and social sciences tend to essentialize selective elements of race/ethnicity. Drawing on the example of HIV/AIDS, this paper demonstrates how public health has been undermined by the use of race/ethnicity as an analytical variable, both as a cipher for innate genetic differences in susceptibility and response to treatment, and in its use to identify 'core groups' at greater risk of becoming infected and infecting others. Clearly, a tendency for biological reductionism can place many biomedical issues beyond the scope of public health interventions, while socio-cultural essentialization has tended to stigmatize 'unhealthy behaviours' and the communities where these are more prevalent.     

"Race" and the Construction of Human Identity

Race as a mechanism of social stratification and as a form of human identity is a recent concept in human history. Historical records show that neither the idea nor ideologies associated with race existed before the seventeenth century. In the United States, race became the main form of human identity, and it has had a tragic effect on low-status "racial" minorities and on those people who perceive themselves as of "mixed race." We need to research and understand the consequences of race as the premier source of human identity. This paper briefly explores how race became a part of our culture and consciousness and argues that we must disconnect cultural features of identity from biological traits and study how "race" eroded and superseded older forms of human identity. It suggests that "race" ideology is already beginning to disintegrate as a result of twentieth-century changes.