Mixed Race Studies

“Not a Moor exactly”: Shakespeare, Serial, and Modern Constructions of Race

Shakespeare Quarterly
Volume 67, Number 1, 2016
pages 30-50
DOI: 10.1353/shq.2016.0009

Vanessa Corredera, Assistant Professor of English
Andrews University, Berrien Springs Michigan

As scholars of early modern literature know, Renaissance constructions of alterity were inconsistent and varied. This critical consensus regarding the fluidity of early modern conceptions of otherness has produced a dichotomy between “then” and “now” with which early modern race scholars in particular must grapple, and one that challenges all scholars and teachers of Shakespeare who engage with race in the classroom—if we concede we can talk about “race” at all. In the quest for responsible historical contextualization of early modern race, scholars have vigilantly attended to the differences between Renaissance culture and our own, leading to the assertion that early moderns conceived of race in a more protean way than our modern scientific, phenotypical, stable approach. In doing so, however, they enact a different methodological pitfall—imposing an assumed set of views about race upon moderns. This approach blinds us to the reality of our own racial discourses, which, I suggest, likewise depend on and perpetuate a fluid understanding of race. In turning to a specific example—the nexus of issues raised by a Shakespearean reference to Othello in season 1 of the hit NPR podcast Serial—we find that myriad factors like language, religion, and descent play pivotal roles in modern constructions of race. By recognizing this multiplicity, we can more effectively use nuanced understandings of early modern race to help us uncover the complexities of contemporary racial ideology. And just as significantly, we can employ current conversations about racial identity as a fresh way of reconsidering canonical Renaissance texts.

The Pleasures of Taxonomy: Casta Paintings, Classification, and Colonialism

The William and Mary Quarterly
Volume 73, Number 3, July 2016, 3rd series
pages 427-466

Rebecca Earle, Professor
School of Comparative American Studies
University of Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom

A new model for thinking about the socioracial categories depicted in casta paintings (remarkable eighteenth-century Spanish American images representing the outcome of “racial mixing”) takes seriously both their fluidity and their genealogical character. Approaching classification, and casta paintings, from this direction clarifies the underlying epistemologies that structured colonial society and helps connect the paintings more explicitly to the debates about human difference that captivated Enlightenment thinkers. Ultimately, however, these paintings were produced and collected in the hundreds not simply because they visualized Atlantic debates about classification and human difference but because these visualizations were interesting and pleasant to contemplate. They agreeably roused the pleasures of the imagination via their taxonomic as well as their narrative power. Linking casta paintings to the importance accorded to pleasure in both the scientific and the colonial imagination helps explain their fascination, which derived from their ability to condense the complex interconnections of classification, colonialism, and sexuality into appealing images.

From White to Yellow: The Japanese in European Racial Thought, 1300-1735

McGill-Queen’s University Press
November 2014
712 Pages, 6 x 9
32 b&w photos
ISBN: 9780773544550

Rotem Kowner, Professor
Department of Asian Studies
University of Haifa, Mount Carmel, Haifa, Israel

An examination of the evolution of European racial views of the Japanese.

When Europeans first landed in Japan they encountered people they perceived as white-skinned and highly civilized, but these impressions did not endure. Gradually the Europeans’ positive impressions faded away and Japanese were seen as yellow-skinned and relatively inferior.

Accounting for this dramatic transformation, From White to Yellow is a groundbreaking study of the evolution of European interpretations of the Japanese and the emergence of discourses about race in early modern Europe. Transcending the conventional focus on Africans and Jews within the rise of modern racism, Rotem Kowner demonstrates that the invention of race did not emerge in a vacuum in eighteenth-century Europe, but rather was a direct product of earlier discourses of the “Other.” This compelling study indicates that the racial discourse on the Japanese, alongside the Chinese, played a major role in the rise of the modern concept of race. While challenging Europe’s self-possession and sense of centrality, the discourse delayed the eventual consolidation of a hierarchical worldview in which Europeans stood immutably at the apex.

Drawing from a vast array of primary sources, From White to Yellow traces the racial roots of the modern clash between Japan and the West.

Table of Contents

• Figures
• Note on Translations and Conventions
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Introduction
• PHASE ONE SPECULATION: Pre-Encounter Knowledge of the Japanese (1300-1543)
  • 1 The Emergence of “Cipangu” and Its Precursory Ethnography
  • 2 The “Cipanguese” at the Opening of the Age of Discovery
• PHASE TWO OBSERVATION: A Burgeoning Discourse of Initial Encounters (1543-1640)
  • 3 Initial Observations of the Japanese
  • 4 The Japanese Position in Contemporary Hierarchies
  • 5 Concrete Mirrors of a New Human Order
  • 6 “Race” and Its Cognitive Limits during the Phase of Observation
• PHASE THREE RECONSIDERATION: Antecedents of a Mature Discourse (1640-1735)
  • 7 Dutch Reappraisal of the Japanese Body and Origins
  • 8 Power, Status, and the Japanese Position in the Global Order
  • 9 In Search of a New Taxonomy: Botany, Medicine, and the Japanese
  • 10 “Race” and Its Perceptual Limits during the Phase of Reconsideration
• Conclusion: The Discourse of Race in Early Modern Europe and the Japanese Case
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index

Michaela Angela Davis Strips Down For The “What’s Underneath Project,” Talks Racism, Insecurities

Madame Noire
2016-08-22

Brande Victorian, Managing Editor

Michaela Angela Davis has long been everything and then some to us, and our opinion of the writer, culture critique, and activist has only skyrocketed after watching her strip down for StyleLikeU’s highly regarded “What’s Underneath Project.”…

…And we’re thankful for that. Here are the highlights from Davis’ interview:

On assumptions people make about her because of how she looks

“The first, sort of obvious assumption is that I’m mixed race– like one parent is white, one parent is Black — and it’s not so. Both of my parents are light-skinned and Black. Both of my parents are products of what I call the great horror story of America and the great love story of America. In order to survive, often families would marry other light-skinned Blacks to stay alive…

Read the entire article here.

‘War Brides of Japan’ To Take Focus in New Documentary

NBC News
2016-08-10

Frances Kai-Hwa Wang

Journalist and filmmaker Yayoi Lena Winfrey is looking for more Japanese “war brides” to interview as she completes the filming for her feature-length documentary film, “War Brides of Japan.” With many of these women in their mid-80s, Winfrey said that time is critical to document their stories. With interviews already scheduled for 11 and their adult children in eight cities and three states this month, Winfrey hopes to find more women and families to interview along the way…

According to Winfrey, approximately 50,000 “war brides” came to the United States from Japan starting in 1947. Many were disowned by their families for marrying those who had bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki and then occupied Japan, Winfrey said. Others were rejected by their American in-laws for being foreigners. Some were abandoned by the American servicemen who married them while some were also ostracized by the Japanese-American community, only just released from the incarceration camps of World War II. Some were falsely stereotyped as prostitutes, while others were blamed for causing World War II, she said…

Read the entire article here.

Raising My Black Son

Brian, Child: the magazine for thinking mothers
2016-08-09

Suanne Schafer

Twenty years ago, I adopted an interracial child—I’ll call him M—thinking a mother’s love could overcome all barriers, even racial ones. Twenty years later, I’m not sure I did my son any favors. I’m a white mom trying to figure out how to raise a black child in a hostile—and potentially lethal—environment.

M came up for adoption during my fourth year of medical school, the unwanted love child of a sixteen-year-old white mother and a black seventeen-year-old father. Unable to take her mixed-race baby home to her blue-collar family, the young woman kept her pregnancy secret from everyone except her mother then gave the baby up for adoption.

My family was tickled to have a grandchild, whatever his color…

Read the entire article here.

Skin Color Still Plays Big Role In Ethnically Diverse Brazil

All Things Considered
National Public Radio
2013-09-19

Audie Cornish, Host

Melissa Block visits a historic section of Rio de Janeiro that pays homage to Afro-Brazilian history and the many slaves that came ashore there. She talks with Brazilian filmmaker Joel Zito Araujo about what it means to be black or mixed race in Brazil, and how skin color still dictates many aspects of life.

Download the story here. Read the transcript here.

The Effects of School Desegregation on Mixed-Race Births

The National Bureau of Economic Research
NBER Working Paper No. 22480
Issued in August 2016
47 pages
DOI: 10.3386/w22480

Nora Gordon, Associate Professor
McCourt School of Public Policy
Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.

Sarah Reber, Associate Professor of Public Policy
Luskin School of Public Affairs
University of California, Los Angeles

We find a strong positive correlation between black exposure to whites in their school district and the prevalence of later mixed-race (black-white) births, consistent with the literature on residential segregation and endogamy. However, that relationship is significantly attenuated by the addition of a few control variables, suggesting that individuals with higher propensities to have mixed-race births are more likely to live in desegregated school districts. We exploit quasi-random variation to estimate causal effects of school desegregation on mixed-race childbearing, finding small to moderate statistically insignificant effects. Because the upward trend across cohorts in mixed-race childbearing was substantial, separating the effects of desegregation plans from secular cohort trends is difficult; results are sensitive to how we specify the cohort trends and to the inclusion of Chicago/Cook County in the sample. Taken together, the analyses suggest that while lower levels of school segregation are associated with higher rates of mixed-race childbearing, a substantial portion of that relationship is likely due to who chooses to live in places with desegregated schools. This suggests that researchers should be cautious about interpreting the relationship between segregation—whether residential or school—and other outcomes as causal.

Read the paper here.

‘Blasian Narratives’ struggles with the question: Black enough? Asian enough?

Kore Asian Media
2016-08-16

Tae Hong

“Blasian Narratives” performs inside Stanford Theatre. (Harrison Troung/Courtesy photo)

Teaching third graders in an underserved area of Brooklyn, Cenisa Gavin often looks out at her mostly black and Latino students and is reminded of the failings of her own teachers when it came to discussions about race and identity.

Gavin, 23, is black on her father’s side, and Korean Eskimo on her mother’s side. She has long, thick hair and, by her own description, slanted eyes. Growing up as a mixed-race child in Anchorage, Alaska, was one thing – she could never, for one, converse with her Korean great-grandmother because of a language barrier, and that was always the way it had been for her family – but coming across the term “Blasian” as a high schooler, and then joining a group of them to talk about her heritage as black and Asian on a theater stage at Spelman College years later, was another.

“I think my teachers did us a disservice by not discussing what it is to be colorblind, and how being colorful is greater than that,” Gavin said. When she told her students about her mixed race last year, she said, and when they saw her black father, the kids were surprised: “They said, ‘Ms. Gavin’s dad is black? You’re black?’”

This is one of the themes carried in the stories told by the seven-member group with which Gavin has now starred in a film project, “Blasian Narratives,” started by Cambodian American director Omnes “Canon” Senmos and looking toward release this fall…

Read the entire article here.

The face of change: Census racial categories aren’t so black and white

The Dallas Morning News
2016-08-19

Jill Cowan, Staff Writer

Gloria Fortner, 13, says she values all of the influences of her parentage. Her father, Bruce Fortner, is a black pastor, and her mother, Florencia Velasco Fortner, is a Mexican immigrant who heads a nonprofit. (Ting Shen/The Dallas Morning News)

When Gloria Fortner was a little girl, a classmate of black and white parentage claimed to be a “better mix” than her. It was a jarring experience — one that has stayed lodged in her mind over the years.

But now, Gloria, the daughter of a black pastor and a Mexican immigrant who heads a nonprofit, said she’s forgiven if not forgotten.

“It’s OK,” the lanky violinist said on a recent afternoon. “We follow each other on Instagram now, so it’s fine.”

Gloria is 13…

Read the entire article here.