Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

In conclusion, then, mulattoes may be viewed as the apotheosis, or as the nadir, of Afro-American strength—as the hope or despair of the future. In this regard, these recent studies often differ profoundly. However, they do demonstrate significant points of agreement regarding the historical roots and role of Americans of mixed black-white ancestry—regarding their growing predominance within Afro-America itself, and regarding the very early origins of their distinctiveness. Under certain historical circumstances, their distinctiveness from black Americans was viewed and treated as an asset; under different circumstances it became a liability, particularly when and where white supremacy was threatened. During the Jim Crow era the one-drop ideology was used as a weapon to put them back in place—to prevent the growth of this “mongrelized race” which was neither white nor black. But ironically, it was this oppression which drove mulattoes to identify themselves with black Americans, thereby strengthening Afro-American solidarity and self-assertion…

Patricia Morton, “From Invisible Man to ‘New People’: The Recent Discovery of American Mulattoes,” Phylon (1960-), Volume 46, Number 2 (1985): 106-122.

Nothing made me feel worse than filling in the “Other” bubble during tests, because who was I, really?

Posted in Articles, Asian Diaspora, Autobiography, Media Archive, United States on 2017-07-13 00:18Z by Steven

Nothing made me feel worse than filling in the “Other” bubble during tests, because who was I, really?

The Tempest
2017-07-06

Meghan Lannoo

I don’t know why I felt a need to choose. I was only cutting myself in half.

My mom calls me hapa.

Everyone else would just call me half; half Asian and half white. Aside from the comments I sometimes receive from fascinated simpletons on how exotic I am (that’s an entirely separate issue), I get asked more often about what I am.

For the longest time, I struggled to answer that question. Whenever I took a scantron test, the questionnaire only specified to mark one ethnicity. This meant I belonged in the Other category.

Being the Other is more than an identity crisis, to me, it is my life…

Read the entire article here.

Tags: Meghan Lannoo, The Tempest

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Mixed Race Studies

Nothing made me feel worse than filling in the “Other” bubble during tests, because who was I, really?

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