Mixed Race Studies

The Gil Gross Program with Marcia Dawkins

The Gil Gross Program
Talk 910, KKSF AM
San Francisco, California
Monday, 2013-05-13

Gil Gross, Host

Gil speaks with Marcia Dawkins, author of “Clearly Invisible; Racial passing and the Color of Cultural Identity“, about the growth of our mulit-racial nation.

Download the audio here.

Checking More Than One Box: A Growing Multiracial Nation

All Things Considered
National Public Radio
2013-05-12

Arun Rath, Host

[Note from Steven F. Riley: My wife and I live in the White Oak neighborhood of Silver Spring, Maryland, USA.]

Larry Bright holds his 3-year-old son’s hand while the boy steps through a leafy playground in Silver Spring, Md., and practices counting his numbers in English.

At the top of the slide, the boy begins counting in his other language: Vietnamese.

Bright, the boy’s father, is African-American; his mother, Thien Kim Lam, is Vietnamese. The couple has two children.

“They are a perfect mix between the two of us,” Lam tells Arun Rath, host of weekends on All Things Considered.

Bright and Lam’s son and 7-year-old daughter are multiracial, just two of thousands born in what’s been called a multiracial baby boom. Today, 15 percent of marriages are interracial and inter-ethnic…

…Evolving Perspectives

Multiracial people identifying as just one race is part of a long trend. University of Southern California professor Marcia Alesan Dawkins’ father was one such man: part black and part white.

“He has lived his life as an African-American man. He lived through segregation, he lived through civil rights,” Dawkins says. “And though he acknowledges these other aspects of his identity, he sees the world from the perspective of a black man. That’s how he chooses to identify.”

But just one generation makes all the difference for Dawkins herself, who claims black, white and Latino heritage. Dawkins and her sister see the world a little differently, she says.

“I don’t think it’s better or worse, but I think it’s a credit to the progress in both ways that people can choose to identify just as one, or choose to identify as two or more,” Dawkins says.

Despite the trend, Dawkins says it is important to remember that it is still less than 3 percent of the population that identifies as multiracial. The overwhelming majority of Americans identify as having one race only.

“That’s not a bad thing, but we have to be really careful how we read and interpret and spin these census results,” she says.

Read the entire story here. Listen to the story here.  Download the audio here.

‘Mixed Kids Are the Cutest’ Isn’t Cute?

The Root
2013-04-08

Jenée Desmond-Harris, Staff Writer

“I’m a Caucasian woman with a biracial child (her father is black). I live in a predominantly white community. Why is it that whenever people discover that I have a ‘mixed’ child, they always say things like, ‘Oh, he/she must be so cute/gorgeous/adorable, those kids are always the best looking. You are so lucky.’

I know they mean well, but it seems off to me, and maybe racist. Do they mean compared to ‘real’ black children? When a German and Italian or an Asian and Jewish person have a child, black people don’t say, ‘Mixed children like yours are always the best looking.’ (Plus, it’s not true—not all black-white biracial kids are the ‘best looking.’)

Am I being overly sensitive by feeling there’s something off about these comments? If not, what’s the best way to respond?”

I chose this question for the first installment of Race Manners, The Root’s new advice column on racial etiquette and ethics, because it hits close to home. Like your daughter, I’m biracial. Like you, my white mother has developed an acute sensitivity to the subtle ways prejudice and bigotry pop up in daily life. I should know. She calls me to file what I’ve deemed her “racism reports.”

And let’s be clear. Americans of all races say bizarre things to and about mixed people, who can inspire some of the most revealing remarks about our black-white baggage. Just think of the public debates about how MSNBC’s Karen Finney, and even President Obama, should be allowed to identify…

…As Marcia Dawkins, the author of Clearly Invisible: Racial Passing and the Color of Cultural Identity, told me, “The myth that mixed-race offspring are somehow better than nonmixed offspring is an example of ‘hybrid vigor,’ an evolutionary theory which states that the progeny of diverse varieties within a species tend to exhibit better physical and psychological characteristics than either one or both of the parents.”

And just take a wild guess how this idea has popped up for black people. You got it: In order to demean and oppress African Americans, thought leaders throughout history, including the likes of Thomas Jefferson, have said that black-white mixed offspring are better, more attractive, smarter, etc., than “real” blacks and not as good or attractive or smart as “real” whites, Dawkins explains….

Read the entire article here.

We are going to need new terms that reflect numerical reality and social-political reality. Part of that implies thinking about what race and ethnicity mean in general and what specific racial and ethnic, and multiracial and multiethnic, identities mean in particular. At the same time, we’ve got to remember that every racial or ethnic community has some issues and experiences in common and is also unique.

For one, these changes mean that the white-black and white-people of color binaries need to be rethought and replaced with a full-color perspective on race and ethnicity. A full-color perspective acknowledges that racial and ethnic mixing has been part of our social fabric since Europeans met and mated with Native Americans; that it continued on through African enslavement and segregation and Asian exclusion and internment; that it progressed with increased rates of Hispanic immigration and is still with us as increasing numbers of interracial and multiracial couples get together and have children today. A full-color perspective must also acknowledge that racial and ethnic mixing has been occurring for centuries in same-sex communities as well.
 
On one hand, sociologists predict that the definition of whiteness will expand to include Hispanic and Asian groups but will always exclude those with African-American descent in order to maintain political and social power. On the other hand, this prediction is reductive because it assumes that only those who will continue to identify as white will be privileged and that those who will continue to identify as black will be non-privileged. It also ignores the fact that, generally speaking, to be African American is to be racially mixed…

Marcia Alesan Dawkins, “The Future of the ‘Tan Generation’,” (interview with Jenée Desmond-Harris), The Root, June 6, 2012, http://www.theroot.com/views/browner-america-marcia-dawkins-qa.

Clearly Invisible: Racial Passing and the Color of Cultural Identity

Baylor University Press
2012-08-01
285 pages
9in x 6in
5 b/w images
Hardback ISBN: 9781602583122

Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Clinical Assistant Professor of Communications and Journalism
University of Southern California

Everybody passes. Not just racial minorities. As Marcia Dawkins explains, passing has been occurring for millennia, since intercultural and interracial contact began. And with this profound new study, she explores its old limits and new possibilities: from women passing as men and able-bodied persons passing as disabled to black classics professors passing as Jewish and white supremacists passing as white.
 
Clearly Invisible journeys to sometimes uncomfortable but unfailingly enlightening places as Dawkins retells the contemporary expressions and historical experiences of individuals called passers. Along the way these passers become people—people whose stories sound familiar but take subtle turns to reveal racial and other tensions lurking beneath the surface, people who ultimately expose as much about our culture and society as they conceal about themselves.
 
Both an updated take on the history of passing and a practical account of passing’s effects on the rhetoric of multiracial identities, Clearly Invisible traces passing’s legal, political, and literary manifestations, questioning whether passing can be a form of empowerment (even while implying secrecy) and suggesting that passing could be one of the first expressions of multiracial identity in the U.S. as it seeks its own social standing.
 
Certain to be hailed as a pioneering work in the study of race and culture, Clearly Invisible offers powerful testimony to the fact that individual identities are never fully self-determined—and that race is far more a matter of sociology than of biology.

Contents

• Preface
• Introduction: Passing as Passé?
• 1. Passing as Persuasion
• 2. Passing as Power
• 3. Passing as Property
• 4. Passing as Principle
• 5. Passing as Pastime
• 6. Passing as Paradox
• Conclusion: Passing as Progress?
• Appendix
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index

Clearly Invisible, by Marcia Alesan Dawkins

The Christian Century: Thinking Critically. Living Faithfully.
2013-01-23

Rachel Stone

The one time I visited my maternal grandfather’s house, we had planned to stay four days. I was ten and had seen my grandfather just once before in my life. I don’t recall if he ever spoke to me, but my mother and I are fairly certain that he never called me by my name. That was probably a matter of principle for him—Rachel being a Hebrew name and he being an active anti-Semite.

In the spaces around his desk where family photos might have hung were portraits of Hitler, Goebbels and Himmler. When I put my summer shorts and T-shirts in the creaky oak dresser of the guest room, there was a red, white and black swastika armband in the drawer. We stayed for the night but left the next morning. I never saw him again.

As strange as that story is, the stranger part is this: my grandfather was Jewish, a fact that seems to have been unknown or ignored by the white supremacist groups to which he belonged. He was a Jew passing as a white Christian separatist.

But what about me? My mother became a Christian in her teens after a thoroughly secular upbringing, and my dad was raised Catholic and is now a Baptist pastor. I’m told I don’t look Jewish, or at least that I don’t have a “Jewish nose.” So am I Jewish? Am I passing? Does it matter?

In Clearly Invisible, Marcia Alesan Dawkins explores passing—presenting oneself as a member of a racial group to which one does not belong. Dawkins argues that passing is a rhetorical act that “forces us to think and rethink what, exactly, makes a person black, white or ‘other,’ and why we care.” She articulates a critical vocabulary of 13 “passwords” that can help us understand passing as “a form of rhetoric that is racially sincere, compatible with reasoned deliberative discourse, and expresses what fits rightly when people do not fit rightly with the world around them.”…

Read the entire review here.

Dr. Marcia Dawkins Discusses Her Book, Clearly Invisible

Mixed Race Radio
2012-09-21, 17:00Z (12:00 EST, 09:00 PST)

Tiffany Rae Reid, Host

Marcia Dawkins, Clinical Assistant Professor of Communications
University of Southern California, Annenberg

Marcia is an award-winning writer, speaker, educator and visiting scholar at Brown University. She is the author of Clearly Invisible: Racial Passing and the Color of Cultural Identity (Baylor UP, 2012) and Eminem: The Real Slim Shady (Praeger, 2013).

Marcia writes about racial passing, mixed race identities, media, religion, pop culture and politics for a variety of high-profile publications. Her expert opinion has been sought out by NPR, WABC-TV Boston, The New York Times and TIME Magazine. She earned her PhD in communication from USC Annenberg, her master’s degrees in humanities from USC and NYU and her bachelor’s degrees in communication arts and honors from Villanova.

Clearly Invisible (Baylor University Press, 2012), is the first to connect racial passing and classical rhetoric to issues of disability, gender-neutral parenting, human trafficking, hacktivism, identity theft, racial privacy, media typecasting and violent extremism.

By applying fresh eyes to landmark historical cases and benchmark popular culture moments in the history of passing Dawkins also rethinks the representational character and civic purpose of multiracial identities. In the process she provides powerful insights called “passwords” that help readers tackle the tough questions of who we are and how we can relate to one another and the world.

Left of Black S3:E9 | Racial Passing and the Rise of Multiracialism

Left of Black
John Hope Franklin Center
Duke University
2012-11-12

Mark Anthony Neal, Host and Professor of African & African American Studies
Duke University

Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Clinical Assistant Professor of Communications
University of Southern California, Annenberg

Habiba Ibrahim, Associate Professor of English
University of Washington

Left of Black is a weekly Webcast hosted by Mark Anthony Neal and produced in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University.

For many African Americans, the practice of ‘Passing’—where light-skinned Blacks could pass for White—remains a thing connected to a difficult racial past. In her new book, Clearly Invisible: Racial Passing and the Color of Cultural Identity (Baylor University Press), Marcia Dawkins, a professor in the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Southern California provides a fresh take on the practice arguing that passing in the contemporary moment transcends racial performance.

Dawkins talks about her new book with Left of Black host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal, via Skype.  Neal is also joined by University of Washington Professor Habiba Ibrahim for part one of a two-part interview about her new book Troubling the Family: The Promise of Personhood and the Rise of Multiracialism (University of Minnesota Press) in which she links the rise of Multiracialism in the 1990s to the maintenance of traditional gender norms.

The Future Is Now: What PR Pros and Marketers Need to Know About the “Mixed Mindset”

The Huffington Post
2012-10-17

Marcia Dawkins, Clinical Assistant Professor of Communications
University of Southern California, Annenberg

Don’t believe the hype! Multiracials are not new. They are the products of racial blending of various groups—beginning with Native Americans and European settlers–throughout US history. Multiracial identities have been leveraged for social and anti-social purposes since the dawn of print media. Even in today’s networked world we are still figuring out how this “full color” demographic fits into a historically black-and-white racial context.

Welcome to the second decade of the 21st century and to the era of the “Mixed Mindset,” which is highly mediated, intensely personal, and increasingly political. On one hand, the Mixed Mindset represents a step backward – into the history of mixing that predates a black-white only mentality. On the other hand, the Mixed Mindset represents a step forward—it’s about everyday contact and practical encounters that acknowledge racial categories, disturb racial common sense, and create a mindset within which it is okay to name and question racial meanings. The logical end of the mixed mindset is a space where many racial categories and meanings can exist simultaneously, even if they’re contradictory, making it more difficult to maintain neat and independent groupings.

Here’s how that works. The Mixed Mindset is about answering questions like “who are you?” and “what do you need?” Here are a few facts about who today’s multiracials are based on how they answered the 2010 US Census.

But to keep things moving, let’s turn our attention to what today’s multiracials are saying they need. I call these needs the three As: Adaptation, Acknowledgment and Affection…

Read the entire article here.

Marcia Dawkins Booksigning

Eso Won Books
4327 Degnan Blvd (Leimert Park Business Center)
Los Angeles, California 90008
Phone: 323-290-1048
2012-09-12, 19:00-21:00 PDT (Local Time)

Clearly Invisible: Racial Passing and the Color of Cultural Identity by Marcia Alesan Dawkins. Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2012, 285 pages. Hardback ISBN: 9781602583122.

Passing (def): usually understood as an abbreviation for “racial passing.” Describes the fact of being accepted, or categorized successfully as, a member of people classifed as white.

Clearly Invisible journeys to sometimes uncomfortable but unfailingly learned places as Dawkins retells the contemporary expressions and past experiences of individuals who pass as white people. Along the way these former non-white people’s stories sound familiar but take subtle turns to reveal tensions lurking beneath the surface, non-white people who ultimately expose as much about white supremacy/racism as they conceal about themselves.

Bring your questions, put on your thinking cap and enjoy this controversial topic.

For more information, click here.