Mixed Race Studies

Multiple Realities: A Relational Narrative Approach in Therapy With Black–White Mixed-Race Clients

Family Relations
Volume 52, Issue 2 (April 2003)
pages 119–128
DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-3729.2003.00119.x

Kerry Ann Rockquemore

Tracey A. Laszloffy

Notions of a racial identity for persons with one Black and one White parent have assumed the existence of only a singular identity (first Black and later biracial). Emerging empirical research on racial identity formation among members of this group reveals that multiple identity options are possible. In terms of overall health, the level of social invalidation one encounters with respect to racial self-identification is more important than the specific racial identity selected. Here a relational narrative approach to therapy with Black–White mixed-race clients who experience systematic invalidation of their chosen racial identity is presented through a detailed case illustration.

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Theorizing Interracial Families and Hybrid Identity: And Australian Perspective

Educational Theory
Volume 49, Issue 2 (June 1999)
pages 223–249
DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-5446.1999.00223.x

Carmen Luke, Emeritus Professor of Education
University of Queensland

Allan Luke, Research Professor
Queensland University of Technology

This essay is a theoretical exploration at how interracial families are sites for the development and articulation of hybrid identity: complex ways of representing and positioning oneself within larger social constructs of racial, social class, gender, and cultural difference. Our aim here is to examine the significance of place, locality, and situated “racializing practices” in the constitution of  identity. We draw on Stuart Hall’s concepts of “New Times” and “hybridity” to argue that interracial subjects or family formations have always been and continue to be of cultural and political concern in both postcolonial and post-industrial nation states and economies. Our cases and illustrations come from the context of the current public and political debate over immigration and multiculturalism, in Australia, a debate that highlights once again the centrality of “race” in the popular imaginary. Working from postcoloinial and feminist theory, we argue that “between two cultures” theorizations, and extant research and social policies on multiculturalism do not adequately account for the hybridity and multiply situated character of several generations of interracial subjects. Throughout we offer comments from interracial families we interviewed. In closing, we turn to more specific narratives of the development of racializmg practices and racial identities in two specific local sites: the cities of Darwin and Brisbane.  We conclude by drawing implications from this study for multicultural and antiracist educational theorizing and practices.

The Study

This essay draws on interview narratives from the initial phase uf a three year study ot mtciethmc families in Australia, In the first two years of the study (1996-1997), we interviewed couples in 42 visibly mixed-race marriages, where one partner was visibly Caucasian, white Australian and the other was of visibly Indo-Asian background. Because a key focus was on the effects of the visibility of mixed-race families in what historically has been a predominantly white Anglo-European society, we selected cuuples where one member was of visible racial difference. Because we were also concerned with understanding how the development of…

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Race Categorization and the Regulation of Business and Science

Law & Society Review
Volume 44, Issue 3-4 (September/December 2010)
pages 617–650
DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-5893.2010.00418.x

Catherine Lee, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research
Rutgers University

John D. Skrentny, Director, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies and Professor of Sociology
University of California, San Diego

Despite the lack of consensus regarding the meaning or significance of race or ethnicity amongst scientists and the lay public, there are legal requirements and guidelines that dictate the collection of racial and ethnic data across a range of institutions. Legal regulations are typically created through a political process and then face varying kinds of resistance when the state tries to implement them. We explore the nature of this opposition by comparing responses from businesses, scientists, and science-oriented businesses (pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies) to U.S. state regulations that used politically derived racial categorizations, originally created to pursue civil rights goals. We argue that insights from cultural sociology regarding institutional and cultural boundaries can aid understanding of the nature of resistance to regulation. The Food and Drug Administration’s guidelines for research by pharmaceutical companies imposed race categories on science-based businesses, leading to objections that emphasized the autonomy and validity of science. In contrast, similar race categories regulating first business by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and later scientific research sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) encountered little challenge. We argue that pharmaceutical companies had the motive (profit) that NIH-supported scientists lacked and a legitimate discourse (boundary work of science) that businesses regulated by the EEOC did not have. The study suggests the utility of a comparative cultural sociology of the politics of legal regulation, particularly when understanding race-related regulation and the importance of examining legal regulations for exploring how the meaning of race or ethnicity are contested and constructed in law.

…Drug companies and their industry association representatives argued that other conflicts could arise in using these categories outside the United States. Test subjects outside the United States would be unwilling, they claimed, to answer questions that many Americans might not find objectionable. A number of the pharmaceutical companies commented that in clinical studies conducted outside the United States, the Latino or Hispanic ethnicity question would render meaningless information from places such as Spain, where all subjects could be classified as Hispanic but whose cultural experiences and history may be more in alignment with France than with those of American Hispanics. Equally troubling as the Hispanic question was the lack of group specificity for the Asian category and uncertainty related to how multiracial subjects should be counted. In raising these concerns about how to identify and count Australian Aborigines, Spaniards, or Asians, these companies and organizations challenged the scientific integrity, applicability, and generalizability of the OMB categories. The lack of external validity violated a central tenet of the scientific method…

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Gene admixture in human populations: Models and predictions

American Journal of Physical Anthropology
Volume 29, Issue Supplement S7 (1986)
pages 1–43
DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.1330290502

Ranajit Chakraborty, Robert A. Kehoe Professor and Director of Center for Genome Information
University of Cincinnati

Brief accounts of methods for estimating proportions of admixture in populations and individuals of hybrid origin are presented with the objective of appraising their underlying assumptions. In view of the uncertainties introduced by assumptions under which admixture estimates are obtained, it is concluded that the reliability of estimates derived from different methods cannot be formally compared. With examples from several admixed populations, it is shown that all methods do not necessarily give discordant results when identical data are used to obtain admixture estimates.

Even though past experiences using admixed populations to detect selection or to understand disease etiology have not been very successful, it is believed that admixed human populations can be regarded as a natural experiment. Hence, they are suitable for microevolutionary and epidemiological studies.

The proper identification of ancestral populations and the degree of asymmetry in gene flow (sex-biased admixture) are important issues in admixture studies. These aspects can be examined in the statistical properties of allele frequency distributions, but corroboration of particular models should be made from in-depth investigations of historical demography and social structure of admixed populations.

Future studies of admixture with DNA polymorphism data may resolve some of the uncertainties associated with current techniques of detecting genetic polymorphisms. Because of the abundance of genetic data, it is argued that morphological traits are of limited use in resolving current problems of human admixture studies.

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