What Constitutes Intermarriage for Multiracial People in Britain?

Intermarriage is of great interest to analysts because a group’s tendency to partner across ethnic boundaries is usually seen as a key indicator of the social distance between groups in a multiethnic society. Theories of intermarriage as a key indicator of integration are, however, typically premised upon the union of white and nonwhite individuals, and we know very little about what happens in the unions of multiracial people, who are the children of intermarried couples. What constitutes intermarriage for multiracial people? Do multiracial individuals think that ethnic or racial ancestries are a defining aspect of their relationships with their partners? In this article, I argue that there are no conventions for how we characterize endogamous or exogamous relationships for multiracial people. I then draw on examples of how multiracial people and their partners in Britain regard their relationships with their partners and the significance of their and their partners’ ethnic and racial backgrounds. I argue that partners’ specific ancestries do not necessarily predict the ways in which multiracial individuals regard their partners’ ethnic and racial backgrounds as constituting difference or commonality within their relationships

Valuing Governance

Book Summary: As has been abundantly documented in the popular and academic press, the humanities are facing challenging times marked by national debate regarding the importance of the humanities in higher education, program and budget cuts, and an ever-decreasing number of tenure-track jobs. In addition, the humanities face quite literally a quantification of their value as the Academy adopts a more corporate mindset. This volume provides advice to professionals in the humanities on how to forge a useful, compelling, and productive career. The book’s 13 chapters address professional approaches to developing and maintaining an active research agenda, fomenting the ideals of the teacher-scholar model, managing the service demands within and outside the college or university, and navigating institutional politics. The collection offers practical and theoretical approaches to higher education, personal anecdotes, intelligent advice, and interviews with colleagues in the humanities. Specific themes addressed include the transition from graduate student to humanities professional, diverging from prescribed paths, the humanities professor as creative writer, moving from secondary to post-secondary education, humanities in an international, market-based context, and participation in governance structures. [From the publisher] Chapter Summary: This essay focuses on providing insight and practical advice on how committed participation in the governance process offers many positives at any stage of the academic ladder. Drawing upon a practical, theoretical, and anecdotal approach, this article reflects on four areas that are enhanced by participation in governance: 1) visibility; 2) knowledge of the institution and its culture; 3) establishing meaningful friendships campus-wide; and 4) governance as a resource of invaluable advice

Shifting Winds: Using Ancestry DNA to Explore Multiracial Individuals\u27 Patterns of Articulating Racial Identity

This study explored how genotype information affects identification narratives of multiracial individuals. Twenty-one multiracial individuals completed individual interviews before and after receiving a DNA analysis to clarify their genetically based racial ancestry. Based on results, this article proposes patterns of articulating racial identity by multiracial individuals. Four patterns extend evolving research in multiracial identification, namely (1) the individual articulates a monoracial identity; (2) the individual articulates one identity, but this can shift in response to various conditions; (3) the individual articulates an extraracial identity, opting out of traditional categories applied to race; and (4) the person distinguishes traditional categories of race from culture and owns the two identities in different ways. Implications of these findings are discussed. First, adding new ancestry DNA information further muddles the neat categories of race, consistent with the view of race as socially constructed. Second, results emphasize the fluidity of identification for multiracial individuals. Third, DNA information challenges the neat percentages people tend to associate with their backgrounds. Particularly for younger multiracial individuals, there was less of a sense that race was a real thing and more that culture played a big part in how they saw themselves

Blatant, Subtle, and Insidious: URM Faculty Perceptions of Discriminatory Practices in Predominantly White Institutions

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/136705/1/soin12147.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/136705/2/soin12147_am.pd

Perceptions of mixed-race

The psychology of race is in its infancy, particularly in the United Kingdom and especially regarding mixed-race. Most use untimed explicit indexes and qualitative/self-report measures. Here, we used not only explicit responses (participants’ choice of response categories) but also implicit data (participants’ response times, RT). In a Stroop task, 92 Black, White, and mixed-race participants classified photographs of mixed-race persons. Photos were accompanied by a word, such as Black or White. Participants ignored the word, simply deciding whether to categorize photos as White or Black. Averaged across three different instructional sets, White participants categorized mixed-race slightly to the White side of the center point, with Black participants doing the converse. Intriguingly, mixed-race participants placed mixed-race photos further toward Black than did the Black group. But for RT, they now indicated midway between White and Black participants. We conclude that at the conscious (key-press) level, mixed-race persons see being mixed-race as Black, but at the unconscious (RT) level, their perception is a perfect balance between Black and White. Findings are discussed in terms of two recent theories of racial identity

Is There Evidence of "Whitening" For Asian/White Multiracial People in Britain?

Growing rates of interracial unions in multi-ethnic societies such as Britain are notable, and point to significant changes in the blurring and possibly shifting nature of ethnic and racial boundaries. Asian Americans who partner with White Americans are assumed to engage in “whitening” – both in terms of their aspirations and their social consequences. Yet little is still known about the aftermath of intermarriage, even in the USA. Drawing on this US literature, this paper considers the whitening thesis in relation to multiracial people in Britain, with a particular focus on Asian/White multiracial people. I draw upon the findings of two British studies – one of multiracial young people in higher education (Aspinall & Song 2013), and another of multiracial people who are parents (Song 2017) – to explore these questions. I argue that conceptualizations of part Asian people (in the USA) as leaning toward their White heritages are often unsubstantiated, and deduced primarily from one key factor: their high rates of intermarriage with White spouses. In addition to the variable ways in which part Asian people may relate to their minority and White ancestries, we must consider the ambivalence, tensions, and contextually variable identifications and practices adopted by multiracial people

Grow, Thrive, Be: Building Healthy Communities and Preserving Culture through Designing Children's Outdoor Play

Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2014New Zealand is a unique island nation with a history of European colonization overlaying earlier Polynesian settlement which results in unprecedented cultural challenges and opportunities. Confronting issues of urbanization, and more specifically questions surrounding city rebuilding following the devastating February 2011 earthquake in Christchurch, the questions of how design can support and facilitate development of healthy communities make the study of New Zealand particularly relevant with regard to design fields and professions. This study looks at the influence and relevance of children's outdoor play environments in Maori language immersion early childhood education (ECE) centers as they contribute towards larger-scale community health, well-being and development. In addition, this study is an in-depth exploration of how particular outdoor play environments may function as approaches for cultural preservation within Maori communities. As an explorative study, my main objective is to understand how the design of a Maori immersion early childhood education (ECE) play environment can contribute towards building a healthy community

Is racial mismatch a problem for young ‘mixed race’ people in Britain? The findings of qualitative research.

Recent evidence concerning the racial identifications of ‘mixed race’ people suggests growing latitude in how they may identify. In this article, we examine whether mixed race young people believe that their chosen identifications are validated by others, and how they respond to others’ racial perceptions of them. While existing studies tend to assume that a disjuncture between self-identification and others’ perceptions of them is problematic, this was not necessarily the case among our respondents. While a racial mismatch between expressed and observed identifications was a common experience for these individuals, they varied considerably in terms of how they responded to such occurrences, so that they could feel: (1) misrecognized (and there were differential bases and experiences of misrecognition); (2) positive about the mismatch; or (3) indifferent to how others racially categorized them in their day-to-day interactions. Some differences in responses to such mismatch emerged among disparate types of mixed people. This study also found that we need to consider national identity, and other forms of belonging, in making sense of the diverse and often multilayered identifications and experiences of mixed race young people in Britain