“What Are You?”: Racial Ambiguity and the Social Construction of Race in the U.S. |
“What Are You?”: Racial Ambiguity and the Social Construction of Race in the U.S.
University of North Texas
May 2012
165 pages
Starita Smith
Dissertation Prepared for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
This dissertation is a qualitative study of racially ambiguous people and their life experiences. Racially ambiguous people are individuals who are frequently misidentified racially by others because they do not resemble the phenotype associated with the racial group to which they belong or because they belong to racial/ethnic groups originating in different parts of the world that resemble each other. The racial/ethnic population of the United States is constantly changing because of variations in the birth rates among the racial/ethnic groups that comprise those populations and immigration from around the world. Although much research has been done that documents the existence of racial/ethnic mixing in the history of the United States and the world, this multiracial history is seldom acknowledged in the social, work, and other spheres of interaction among people in the U.S., instead a racialized system based on the perception of individuals as mono-racial thus easily identified through (skin tone, hair texture, facial features, etc.). This is research was done using life experience interviews with 24 racially ambiguous individuals to determine how race/ethnicity has affected their lives and how they negotiate the minefield of race.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
- LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES
- CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION
- Research Questions
- CHAPTER 2 REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE
- Changing Definitions of Race
- Race under European Domination
- The One-Drop Rule or Hypo-Descent
- Color Stratification among Blacks
- Passing as White
- Challenge to the One-Drop Rule
- Biracial Identity
- Racial Classifications have Porous Borders
- Race as a Sorting Mechanism
- Tri-Racial Isolate Groups
- The Case of the Mississippi Choctaw Rejected
- Racial Misclassification and Native Americans
- Mixed Race Individuals and Kinship Networks
- Racial Fusion and the Hispanics
- The U.S. Census and the Social Construction of Race
- CHAPTER 3 THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES
- Racial Formation Theory
- Assimilation Theory
- The Latin Americanization Thesis
- Theoretical Perspectives: Discussion
- CHAPTER 4 METHODS
- Recruitment
- Data-Gathering Instruments
- Interview Locations
- The Interviewees
- The Interview Script
- Reflexivity
- CHAPTER 5 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF RACE ENDURES IN A “COLORBLIND SOCIETY”
- Race in Work and School
- Family life
- Romantic and Spousal Relationships
- CHAPTER 6 CONSTANT OBJECTIFICATION
- Objectification of Native Americans
- Being Constantly Doubted
- CHAPTER 7 STUBBORN STEREOTYPES
- CHAPTER 8 DEVELOPING AN ADULT CORE RACIAL IDENTITY
- “We’re All the Same in God’s Eyes, Then How Come I Don’t Look Like You?”
- Black is Bad
- Making up Your own Racial Identity
- CHAPTER 9 NAVIGATING THE RACIAL LANDSCAPE: THE MULTIFOCAL RACIAL IDENTITY
- Pride in Minority Identity
- Learning to be Resilient
- Being Flexible under Globalization
- CHAPTER 10 HURTFUL LIVES
- CHAPTER 11 THEORY REVISITED
- CHAPTER 12 CONCLUSION
- APPENDIX A CONSENT FORM
- APPENDIX B INTERVIEWEE PHOTO INSTRUMENT
- REFERENCE LIST
LIST OF TABLES
- Interviewee Demographic Data
- Thematic Codingg
- Sample of Thematic Coding for Indira
LIST OF FIGURES
- Racialized society
- Objectification of racially ambiguous people
- Adult core racial identity
Read the entire dissertation here.
Tags: Starita Smith, University of North Texas