Mixed Race Studies

Mixed Race 3.0: Risk and Reward in the Digital Age

USC Annenberg Press
2015-01-30
113 pages
ISBN: 9781625175564

Edited by:

Ulli K. Ryder
Department of Gender and Women’s Studies
University of Rhode Island

Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Clinical Assistant Professor
Annenberg School for Communication and Jounalism
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California

Have you been asked, “what nationality are you” or “what country are you from”?
Have you been puzzled when forms tell you to “select only one ethnicity”?
Have you been disturbed to hear that you’re the “face of a colorblind future”?

If you answered ‘yes’ to any of these questions, this book is for you.

Mixed Race 3.0: Risk and Reward in the Digital Age is an e-book that contains 17 contributions (many with exclusive photos) from award-winning writers, researchers and artists who embody a “mixed mindset.” Audacious and razor-sharp, Mixed Race 3.0 exposes the many monochromatic portrayals of multiracial people’s richness, variety and struggles in history, politics, mass-media and technology. Fans of Loving Day, Race Remixed, Mixed Chicks Chat, The Mixed Experience Podcast, Mixed Girl Problems and Critical Mixed Race Studies will be captivated, incensed and inspired by the powerful discussions of risks and rewards of being multiracial today.

Beyond memoir or case study, this book offers three versions of what it means to be mixed from a variety of voices. Version 1 is “Mixed Race 1.0: A Monologue.” Or, how did multiracial identities emerge in the U.S. and what challenges did they face? Version 2 is “Mixed Race 2.0: A Dialogue.” Or, what are some core differences between how multiracials think and talk about themselves and how U.S. and global cultures think and talk about them? Version 3 is “Mixed Race 3.0: A Megalogue.” Or, where in the world is this entire thing going as technology plays more of a role?

With honest storytelling and up-to-date critical inquiry, Mixed Race 3.0 plots a path not just to being mixed in the 21st century, but one open to anyone interested in simply “how to be.” The result is a poignant, intelligent, and daring journey that dissects the controversial label—multiracial—and challenges any politician, pundit or provocateur that purports to speak for or about all multiracial people.

Table of Contents

• Foreword
  • Herman S. Gray
• Introduction
• Section 1 Mixed Race 1.0: A Monologue
  • Gary B. Nash
  • Peggy Pascoe
  • Jordan Clarke
• Section 2 Mixed Race 2.0: A Dialouge
  • Ken Tanabe
  • Lori L. Tharps
  • Andrew K. Jolivette
  • Ulli K. Ryder
  • Marcia Alesan Dawkins
  • Stephanie Sparling
• Section 3 Mixed Race 3.0: A Megalogue
  • Rainier Spencer
  • Velina Hasu Houston
  • Lindsay A. Dawkins
  • Amanda Mardon
  • Shoshana Sarah
  • Mary Beltrán
  • Lisa Rueckert
• The Authors and Artists

Biracial males wanted to take part in research project

Centre for Ethnicity and Racism Studies
University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom
2014-12-21

Remi Joseph-Salisbury, Doctoral Researcher
R.Salisbury@leeds.ac.uk

• Are you a biracial male of black and white parentage?
• Are you aged between 16 and 21 and went to school in the U.S.?
• Would you like to take part in a discussion group or one-to-one interview considering the educational experiences of black/white biracial males?

Interviews can be conducted in person (I will be situated in Pennsylvania), using Skype, E-mail or an Instant Messaging program.

Participants will be offered a $15 gift voucher as a thank you for their participation.

To take part or for an informal chat about the project, please contact me, Remi Joseph-Salisbury, by e-mail. I look forward in hearing from you.

The Lazy Storytelling of ‘Black or White’: Love and Justice Are Not Colorblind

Christ and Pop Culture (CAPC)
2015-02-11

D. L. Mayfield

I was at a writing retreat once where a bunch of us gathered together to talk about how to write well about social justice issues in our world. A young singer-songwriter with a folksy vibe came and played a set for us. He introduced a song as inspired by how sad he was at the racial divide of the city, and how it seemed that white folks and blacks folks didn’t get along. He launched into a song, the chorus going something like this: we used to sing so beautifully together/perhaps one day we’ll sing together again.

After he was done singing, one of my fellow writers—the only black man in our cohort, who also happened to live in North Carolina—asked the singer-songwriter to elaborate on the interactions that inspired the song. The singer stumbled over his words and told a few stories of interacting with African-American folks who to his perception seemed less-than-friendly to white folks. We all sat quietly as he shared his perspective, and later debriefed about that particular song. Why did it make us all feel so uncomfortable? Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, the leader of our group (a man who has been involved in racial reconciliation work for decades now) leaned forward and in his southern drawl poignantly identified the trouble. What I want to know is this: and just when, exactly, did we ever all sing together?…

…The recent release starring Kevin Costner, Black or White, is uncomfortable in the exact same way. Ostensibly this is a movie which dares to look at race issues: Costner is a white grandfather parenting his bi-racial granddaughter who becomes entangled in a custody battle by the black father and his extended family. By turns a tragedy, a comedy, a courtroom drama, with a dash of heart-warming family film. Costner plays Elliot Anderson, a wealthy alcoholic lawyer reeling from the sudden death of his wife. Octavia Spencer plays Rowena, the paternal grandmother of Eloise, the girl in Elliot’s sole care. Rowena (Grandma “Wee Wee”) and the extended family she takes care of live in Compton; Elliot lives somewhere else—a better part of LA, we shall say. Rowena and the family want to see more of Eloise but Elliot resists. In exasperation, they retain Rowena’s younger brother, a lawyer, to sue Elliot for full custody of the child. Reggie, the birth dad, shows up halfway through the movie, adding emotional intrigue. The audience is left wondering at the motivations of Reggie, who is introduced as a crack-addict and absentee father (“you’re a stereotype, Reggie—you ruin it for all of us”—his uncle tells him).

The themes explored are certainly worthy of a full-length movie. Eloise and her biracial identity, the way economics affects both parenting and legal procedures, the stereotypes we put onto one another, how certain addictions are more culturally acceptable—these are all fascinating and could prove to be invaluable insights into the pulse of a nation that is currently struggling with racial injustice and unrest. But Black or White addresses all of these issues in both a superficial and strangely maudlin way—so much emotion, but so little truth behind it…

Read the entire article here.

What Are Words Worth: Hapa, Hafu or Mixed-Race?

Pacific Citizen: The National Newspaper of the JACL
Los Angeles, California
2015-01-27

Gil Asakawa

I’ve just finished writing revisions for a new edition of my book, “Being Japanese American: A JA Sourcebook for Nikkei, Hapa … & Their Friends,” which will be published this July by Stone Bridge Press. I mention this not just to pimp the book to you all, but because I wrote in the new foreword how I have decided not to use the word “hapa,” at least for now.

Instead, I wrote that I’ll use “mixed race” instead.

Hapa is a word originally used in Hawaii to describe mixed-race people, like half-Asian, half-Hawaiian. The term was used as a slur, but over the years, it’s become commonly used even by mixed-race people. In fact, I’ve heard mixed-race people other than Asian combinations refer to themselves as hapa.

But in 2008, when I moderated a panel in Denver titled “The Bonds of Community: Hapa Identity in a Changing U.S.” for a conference sponsored by the Japanese American National Museum, a man stood up during the question-and-answer period and said he thought it was a racist term. At the time, I pushed back gently and noted that it’s already a pretty common term.

The interchange with this man has stayed with me ever since…

Read the entire article here.

Katanga’s forgotten people

FRANCE 24
2010-03-16

Marlène Rabaud

Arnaud Zajtman

Like many mixed-race children in Congo, they were born of a Japanese father who came to work in the mines of Katanga in south-east of the country. Today, they accuse their fathers of wanting to kill them so as not to leave behind any traces when they returned to Japan. FRANCE 24 met these men and women seeking the recognition that has always been denied them.

Watch the video (00:10:51) here.

Identity as Skin Color: Performing a “White” Identity in Caucasia

Scholars: Journal of Undergraduate Research
Issue 16 – Winter 2011
McKendree University Online Journal of Undergraduate Research
Lebanon, Illinois

Anastasia Bierman

‘My body would fill in the blanks, tell me who I should become, and I would let it speak for me,’ says Birdie Lee, the lost and searching multiracial protagonist of Danzy Senna’s novel Caucasia (Senna 1). The ‘blanks’ are her identity, agency, and individuality. Satirically, Birdie acknowledges the impossibility of a body speaking for a person, but she also points out that with race, a person’s body does speak for him/her. Danzy Senna, in writing Caucasia, exposes identity and the race one affiliates with as a facade someone can assume rather than a concrete, unchangeable sense of self. As Birdie shows throughout the novel, identity is perception as she takes on the identity of Jesse Goldman, a young Jewish girl, in a small, racist New Hampshire town while she is really a young half-black, half-white girl who grew up in Boston during the racial upheaval of the 1970s. The novel follows Birdie from ages 8 to 14, from Boston to New Hampshire back to Boston again. Birdie’s parents, Deck and Sandy Lee, strive to create a family blind to the racial stratification surrounding them. Living blind to race eventually destroys the family and forces them to play the racial game, causing the family to split up and separating the sisters, Cole, Birdie’s darker and older sister, and Birdie. In this separation, they revert to the roles they are most able to fit, not the ones in which they most identify. For Sandy and Birdie, it is White, and for Deck and Cole, it is Black. Birdie loses her true sense of identity by passing and performing as opposed to possessing it. She feels fragmented and disembodied, looks to other people for her own sense of self, developing a double consciousness.

Race is like a crayon box configuration; it attempts to assign a distinct name to a color that could have various hues. A ‘black’ person is anyone with a brown tint to their skin while a ‘white’ person is more or less a peach colored person. As it relates to a person, the colors ‘black’ and ‘white’ are not exactly what they seem to be. Anyone with lighter complexion can be categorized as white even though the person’s ethnicity can be anything from Italian to Asian-American. Critics Joan Ferrante and Prince Browne Jr. agree with this by pointing out, ‘Whether people fit into a racial category or not, the categories remain central to how people think about their own identity and the racial identity of others’ (Ferrante 113). The key is the physical appearance and the perception of that physical appearance to others. Performing identity, however, is only essential because of the many problems race creates for Birdie Lee and her family. Race, in Caucasia, permeates everything around the Lee family, even the construction of the family. The effect, psychologically and socially, is the breakdown of their family unit, loss of relationships, and obsessive focus on color…

Read the entire article here.

My President

Abernathy: for gentlemen of culture
2015-02-09

Brian Kamanzi
Cape Town, South Africa

Barack Hussein Obama.

Let me start this off by an admission. The man is my hero. But, let me assure you that this has little to do with who he actually is. This isn’t about his foreign policy or about his commitment to his promises. It’s about how many of us see him as if we are holding a mirror in front of our faces.

Barack Hussein Obama.

He has a poise and a presence that he carries whenever he is called to address the world. He is one of the few black men in history to have an audience of this magnitude. His is a tone that with the sheer sound of the steadiness of his voice, brings me a sense of pride as if he somehow represents me. There is a sense of expectation when he speaks. The stream that often follows his announcements speaks directly to this. We want him to be more decisive. We want him to challenge the global economic structure. We expect him to be the voice of black consciousness in the White House. I know I’ve caught myself passively-actively drowning out the details of his positions; ones that I would not hesitate admonish a white man of his stature for uttering.

In fact, I am uncertain I am able to separate this man from what I want him to be; from what I hoped he would be. I keep my eyes closed when I look at him. Perhaps in fear that he is an obstacle of what I’d call “progress.” Perhaps in fear that he, much like me, is a contradiction unto himself…

Read the entire article here.

Part Asian-American, All Jewish?

Code Switch: Frontiers of Race, Culture and Ethnicity
National Public Radio
2015-02-10

Rachel Gross, Editor
Moment Magazine

I was five years old when my mother threatened to give me away to journalist Connie Chung.

Chung and her husband, Maury Povich, had just announced their intention to adopt a half-Chinese, half-Jewish child. At this, my mother, watching on TV in our living room, did a double take. She looked at the screen. Then she looked at me, her half-Chinese, half-Jewish, fully-misbehaving daughter. “How would you like to go live with that woman?” she said.

It was then that I had a startling realization: I was special. Not special in the way that everyone’s kids are special — I mean really special. I, with my chubby Chinese cheeks and frizzy Jewish hair, was a unique snowflake, shaped like the Star of David, dusted with matcha green tea powder.

“I’m special!” I announced. “Famous people want to adopt me!”

Mom rolled her eyes as if to say, oy vey.

Only later would I learn the truth: Not everyone was as thrilled about my heritage as I was. The problem was mainly on the Jewish side. As I grew up, announcing I was Jewish often felt “like trying to cross a border with borrowed credentials,” in Joan Didion’s words. “But you don’t look Jewish!” came the incredulous reply. Some even implied that the union that produced me was nothing less than a threat to the Jewish people — that I was what was wrong with Judaism today…

Read the entire article here.

Settlers, Servants and Slaves: Aboriginal and European Children in Nineteenth-century Western Australia

University of Western Australia Publishing
2002-08-31
246 pages
207 x 139 mm
ISBN: 978-1876268732

Penelope Hetherington

Settlers, Servants and Slaves documents the exploitation of both Aboriginal and European children by the settler elite of nineteenth-century Western Australia. In a struggling colony desperately short of labour, early settlers relied on the labour of children—their own and other people’s.

Convicted and neglected children from the poorest sections of this divided society were placed in institutions, where they were trained to become a useful part of the work force. Education services developed only slowly, and there was no system of secondary education provided by the government in the nineteenth century.

From the 1870s, Aboriginal children were widely ‘employed’, in a complex web of contract and apprenticeship law, in the pastoral and pearling industries in the North West. Often kidnapped by ‘blackbirders’, these children received no wages and had no opportunity to attend school.

Settlers, Servants and Slaves also shows how concern over ‘the problem’ of children of mixed descent in the last decade of the nineteenth century was to provide the rationale for infamous twentieth-century ‘solutions’: the removal of children from their parents and the establishment of Aboriginal Reserves.

Connecting the Dots in Suicide Prevention

Vassar Alumnae/i Quarterly
Poughkeepsie, New York
Spring/Summer 2014

Eric Marcus ’80

Rebecca Hyde ’92

According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP), suicide is the 10th leading cause of death for Americans. Christine Yu Moutier ’90 wants to do something about that.

Last fall, following two decades of working as a professor of psychiatry and assistant dean for student affairs and medical education at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine, Moutier was named chief medical officer for AFSP, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to understanding and preventing suicide.

From its headquarters in New York City, she manages a wide range of the organization’s work, including research funding ($5 million for current research), grant selection, and the dissemination of findings. She also oversees programs for survivors of suicide loss and coordinates educational efforts focused primarily on suicide prevention…

…While dedicated to her work as an academic, Moutier has always carved out time for clinical work. She considers her work with San Diego’s Asian refugee population a particular privilege.

“As a mixed-race person growing up in a town that was mostly Slavic and working class, I was teased, so I have special empathy for people who look and feel different. Also, because of mental illness in my own extended family, I grew up seeing how Western medicine wasn’t always trusted,” she says…

Read the entire article here.