Pondering My Black, Biracial and Multiracial Identity Post Hurricane Maria

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

We evaluated two distinct but not mutually exclusive scenarios for the underlying mechanism that prompted reclassification of individuals as white in the 1920 Puerto Rican census: the movement of individuals across racial boundaries (boundary crossing) and the movement of racial boundaries across individuals (boundary shifting). The underlying boundary dynamics that drove racial reclassification in the 1920 census are illuminated by the results of our counterfactual multinomial regression analysis, which suggests that changes in individual characteristics account for roughly one-fifth of the whitening between 1910 and 1920, together with our cohort analysis, which reveals clustering of the white surplus population among children and young adults (especially women), and our analyses of trends in union formation and classification of children between 1910 and 1920. Our analysis of the unusual changes in union combinations suggests that individual boundary crossing, via union with a lighter spouse, was a likely trigger of reclassification between 1910 and 1920. Intergenerational boundary crossing via miscegenation, procreation, and acceptance as “white” of physically lightened offspring may have contributed to Puerto Rico’s gradual whitening trend in the first half of the twentieth century, but it does not appear significant to explain the unparalleled increase in the enumerated white population that took place between 1910 and 1920.

Mara Loveman and Jeronimo O. Muniz, “How Puerto Rico Became White: Boundary Dynamics and Intercensus Racial Reclassification,” American Sociological Review, Volume 72, Number 6 (December 2007). 934. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/000312240707200604. (See also here.)

Pondering My Black, Biracial and Multiracial Identity Post Hurricane Maria

Pondering My Black, Biracial and Multiracial Identity Post Hurricane Maria

Multiracial Media: Voice of the Multiracial Community
2018-05-27

Sarah Ratliff

I have been writing from the Biracial and Multiracial perspective since I co-authored the book, Being Biracial: Where Our Secret Worlds Collide in 2015. Being Biracial is an anthology of essays from either Multiracial people or parents of mixed race kids.

In my essay I wrote about being the product of a Black and Japanese mother and a White (German, Dutch and Irish) father who were married in New York City in 1960.

I wrote about my experiences being “light, bright and clearly half White” while being raised to self-identify as Black, and of course, having to explain for the elevendy millionth time why I self-identified this way. I shared moments of complete vulnerability and isolation because I grew so frustrated trying to explain that being Black isn’t just about complexion but lived experiences as well…

Read the entire article here.

Tags: Hurricane Maria, Multiracial Media, Multiracial Media: Voice of the Multiracial Community, Puerto Rico, Sarah Ratliff, Sarah Sarita Ratliff

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 30th, 2018 at 23:29Z and is filed under Articles, Autobiography, Latino Studies, Media Archive, United States. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Mixed Race Studies

Pondering My Black, Biracial and Multiracial Identity Post Hurricane Maria

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