'Mixed Race' Studies: A Reader

by Jayne O. Ifekwunigwe (Editor), Kim TallBear (Contributor)

Mixed race studies is one of the fastest growing, as well as one of the most important and controversial areas in the field of race and ethnic relations. Bringing together pioneering and controversial scholarship from both the social and the biological sciences, as well as the humanities, this reader charts the evolution of debates on 'race' and 'mixed race' from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century. The book is divided into three main sections:

*tracing the origins: miscegenation, moral degeneracy and genetics
*mapping contemporary and foundational discourses: 'mixed race', identities politics, and celebration
*debating definitions: multiraciality, census categories and critiques.

This collection adds a new dimension to the growing body of literature on the topic and provides a comprehensive history of the origins and directions of 'mixed race' research as an intellectual movement. For students of anthropology, race and ethnicity, it is an invaluable resource for examining the complexities and paradoxes of 'racial' thinking across space, time and disciplines.

Genres: Theory, Academic, Race, Nonfiction

352 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2004

Reviews

[Amira Hanafi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, this book is intense. It elucidates some of the origins of attitudes toward miscegenation and people of mixed race and the laws that resulted by excerpting, chronologically, a variety of books, articles and essays. Notably, it covers some scary territory in eugenics including one essay on Nazi sterilization of Afro-Germans that demonstrates how the Nazis were inspired by American racial policies. Some of the views represented here made me laugh out loud, mostly because I didn't know what else to do. (e.g., "Some browns had 'the long legs of the Negro and the short arms of the white, which would put them at a disadvantage in picking up things off the ground'.") One of the things I've learned from this book is that ideas developed before the scientific method became popular sometimes formed the basis for hypotheses that were then "proven" by the scientific method. I've also learned that 'race' is an entirely social construction.