Mixed Race Studies

The Invisibility of Multiracial Students: An Emerging Majority by 2050

University of California, San Diego
January 2009
252 pages

Gina Acosta Potter

A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership

By the nature of their existence, multiracial people call to question deeply held notions of race and racial classification held tightly by Americans. To acknowledge a person as multiracial, or a blending of more than one race, defies the conventional social construct that delineates clear, discernible, and discrete races. Even as multiracial students become increasingly visible in our nation’s schools, multiracial identity is seldom recognized as a critical topic of diversity within the educational arena. By 2050, the multiracial population will surface as a majority group of people whose presence will require our nation to redefine our current constructs of race, racial identification, and racial classification (Anderson, 2002; Winters & DeBose, 2003). This qualitative research study seeks to address the primary research question: How and to what extent do public policy decisions regarding academic accountability affect educational outcomes for multiracial students in two states that differ in their multiracial categorization policies?

The purpose of this study is to illuminate racial subgroups identified within accountability systems, determine the degree to which multiracial students are rendered visible in the academic accountability movement, and examine the needs of multiracial students. The research design is a comparative case study of two state education agencies and the public policies they employ when monitoring the academic achievement of multiracial students.

The major findings of this study reveal: 1) a misalignment between federal and state accountability systems for racial classification; 2) a variance in how two state education agencies racially classify mixed race students; 3) a nonstandardized approach to school enrollment categorization of multiracial students; 4) controversy regarding the meaning of race and ethnicity; 5) various approaches taken by multiracial students when self-identifying 6) data methodology challenges; and 7) a more than ten year lapse in time before the federal Department of Education moved towards complying with the White House Office of Management and Budget regulations allowing multiracial individuals to identify as more than one race.

The implications of this research indicate a significant need for the United States’ educational system to face the challenge of recognizing and responding to the histories, experiences, and identities of multiracial students within our schools.

Read the entire dissertation here.

Ambiguity in Jean Toomer’s Cane

Berkely Undergraduate Journal
Volume 24, Issue 3 (2011)
pages 79-92

Amanda Licato
Department of English ’13
University of California, Berekely

When Jean Toomer’s modernist experimental novel Cane was published in 1923, both he and the text were taken to be representative voices of African American life, even though Toomer explicitly renounced these labels during Cane’s pre-publication promotion. The larger project of the Harlem Renaissance, during which Toomer lived and wrote Cane, was to validate and celebrate African American artists and their work. As a result, the author’s claims of racial ambiguity and multiracial identication, and their expression in his work, were poorly received. This paper looks at the tension between the aesthetically ambiguous qualities of the text as well as its role as a cultural artifact that can be explored and interpreted against different backdrops. Cane’s aesthetic elements work primarily through the text’s structural and linguistic ambiguity, a blurring of various themes that allow for readers to search for and conceive of their own meanings and experiences. To that end, I examine interpretations of racial identity in Cane during three signicant cultural periods: Cane’s initial publication in 1923 during the Harlem Renaissance, its re-publication at the cusp of the modern Civil Rights movement in 1951, and our current age of supposed “post-raciality” in which the modern reader first discovers the text.

Read the entire article here.

Spring 2008 Feature: Acting on a Dream

Farmington First: Alumni Magazine
University of Maine, Farmington
Spring 2008

Marc Glass

The stages of H’Nette DeTroy’s dramatic life include theater, dance and even commercial casting

Looking at H’Nette DeTroy’s resume, you might think she suffers from career wanderlust. Since graduating from UMF in 2006, she’s been a nurse, a cheerleader and a bus-commuting business executive—not to mention a disgruntled gas-station patron, a terminally ill hospital patient and a drunk-driving fatality. A southern Maine-based actor, DeTroy takes pride in her many professional personas—whether that means extolling the virtues of an alternative-fuel Mercedes Benz in a television commercial, playing a nurse in a hospital training video, dramatizing the perils of operating under the influence in an MTV-aired public service announcement or taking to the stage in a community theater production of Disney’s High School Musical.

“It’s a lot of fun to lose yourself in a role, creatively making it whatever you want it to be,” said DeTroy on a rare day of downtime away from auditions, teaching children’s dance lessons and rehearsing with the Portland-based hip-hop dance company Rhythm Factor. “When I’m acting, dancing or singing, I lose all concept of time and the trivial stuff in life. This is something I love. It’s what life is about for me.”…

…With what she calls her “multiracial” background (courtesy of a German father and Vietnamese mother), DeTroy has been slating of sorts for most of her life.

“People have always asked me ‘What are you?’ or ‘Are you Latina?’ My mom is as third-world as you can get. Growing up in as unforgiving and wealthy a place as Fairfield County makes you aware of your identity. I’m used to defining myself in the first three seconds,” she said. “I remember growing up and thinking ‘there’s no one on TV who looks like me.’ Seeing Jennifer Lopez in the film Selena, a minority actress actually making it, was very motivational.”…

Read the entire article here.

Louis Riel and the Creation of Modern Canada: Mythic Discourse and the Postcolonial State

University of Manitoba Press
November 2008
314 pages
6 × 9
Paper, ISBN: 978-0-88755-734-7

Jennifer Reid, Professor of Religion
University of Maine, Farmington

Politician, founder of Manitoba, and leader of the Métis, Louis Riel led two resistance movements against the Canadian government: the Red River Uprising of 1869–70, and the North-West Rebellion of 1885, in defense of Métis and other minority rights.

Against the backdrop of these legendary uprisings, Jennifer Reid examines Riel’s religious background, the mythic significance that has consciously been ascribed to him, and how these elements combined to influence Canada’s search for a national identity. Reid’s study provides a framework for rethinking the geopolitical significance of the modern Canadian state, the historic role of Confederation in establishing the country’s collective self-image, and the narrative space through which Riel’s voice speaks to these issues.

Table of Contents

• Foreword
• Chapter 1: Setting the Stage: The North-West to 1885
• Chapter 2: Canadian Myths and Canadian Identity
• Chapter 3: Nation-states and National Discourses
• Chapter 4: Violence and State Creation
• Chapter 5: Revolution, Identity, and Canada
• Chapter 6: Riel and the Canadian State
• Chapter 7: Heterogeneity and the Postcolonial State
• Conclusion
• Notes