Mixed Race Studies

Hip Chick Alert puts the spotlight on Tessa Souter

Hip Chick Alert
2017-03-02

Perez

Tessa Souter was born in London to a Trinidadian father and an English mother. She studied piano from the age of 8 until, at 12, her piano teacher heard her voice and encouraged her to take up singing. She learned guitar by ear to accompany herself and began writing songs. She graduated with a degree in English literature from London University and got her first job in journalism at Parents magazine, before going on to freelance as a features writer for, among other British press The Independent, The Times, Elle, Vogue, as well as Australian Elle, Sydney Morning Herald and HQ….

Read the entire article here.

Brazil’s Ongoing Race Problem: Recent Study Uncovers Shocking Treatment of Darker-Skinned Children in Interracial Families

Atlanta Black Star
2017-07-01

D. Amari Jackson

SALVADOR, BRAZIL -Social psychologist finds Black Brazilian children in interracial families face shocking racism. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

“The most shocking story I heard was told by a young woman, a university student who came to see me… she was phenotypically ‘Black’ but her mother was ‘white.’ She told me that when she was little, her mother would sing a lullaby with these words: ‘Plantei uma cenoura no meu quintal / Nasceu uma negrinha de avental / Dança negrinha / Não sei dançar / Pega no chicote, ela dança já’ [I planted a carrot in my backyard. / It sprouted a nigger girl in an apron. / Dance, little nigger girl! / I can’t dance. / Show her the whip, she’ll dance alright.] Her mother’s lullaby wasn’t just racist, it was a slave owner’s song.” — Social psychologist Lia Vainer Schucman from a June 2017 interview with Agência FAPESP in Brazil

Perhaps you’ve heard of the ‘bleach bath,’ a popular process designed to significantly lighten one’s skin. Or maybe the clothespin, the laundry drying device that doubles as a nighttime nasal clamp to narrow the width of what is regarded as a phenotypically Black nose. Here in the 21st century, such tragic racialized practices and psychoses are, unfortunately, still alive and well in countries across the globe.

This acknowledged, there is a common perception that the more racially diverse and interracial a society and its relationships become, the less racism it will endure. It is a questionable line of reasoning particularly prevalent in Brazil where racially mixed societies and families are the norm. It fuels the popular national narrative that racial prejudice cannot exist in South America’s largest country since “somos todos iguais” (“we are all equal”).

A recent study by social psychologist and researcher Lia Vainer Schucman says otherwise. In it, Schucman interviewed interracial families from regions across Brazil willing to discuss the manifestations and impact of racism within their units as part of her postdoctoral work at the University of São Paulo. Sponsored by Agência FAPESP, a media service of the São Paulo Research Foundation, Schucman’s research is the subject of her upcoming book, “Famílias Inter-Raciais: Tensões entre Cor e Amor” (Inter-Racial Families: Tensions Between Color and Love)…

Read the entire article here.

Ethno-racial identity (politics) by law: “Fraud” and “choice”

Nationalities Papers: The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity
Published online: 2017-06-12
20 pages
DOI: 10.1080/00905992.2017.1311846

András L. Pap
Hungarian Academy of Sciences Center for Social Sciences, Institute for Legal Studies, Budapest, Hungary; Slovak Academy of Sciences, Institute of Sociology, Bratislava, Slovakia; Nationalism Studies Program, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary; Department for Law Enforcement Theory, National Public Service University, Faculty of Law Enforcement, Budapest, Hungary

Following an introduction to the changes in how ethno-racial identity is conceptualized in the social sciences and humanities by the destabilization of categorical frameworks, the author looks at how law reacts to these discussions and paradigm shifts, and argues that legal and administrative approaches face severe linguistic and conceptual limitations by operating within a “choice” and “fraud” binary. The article then questions if the free choice of identity exists as a principle of international minority protection law, a legal field that arguably represents a global political and ethical consensus. The author makes two claims. First, according to the basic tenet of legal logic, a proper right to free choice of identity allowing people to opt out of racial, ethnic, or national (minority) communities would necessitate the freedom to opt in to the majority or to any chosen group. The second claim, however, is that international law would not actually construct an approach to opting in. Thus, the right to free choice of identity is not an autonomous, sui generis right under international law.

Read or purchase the article here.

Electronica With A Human Heart: Meet Little Dragon Lead Singer Yukimi Nagano

Phoenix Magazine
London, United Kingdom
July 2017

Interview: Muki Kulhan
Words: Hannah Kane
Photographer: Jamie Gray at Blood & Co.
Fashion Editor: Nini Khatiblou
Hair: Shukeel Murtaza at Frank
Makeup: Ammy Drammeh
Nail Technician: Jessica Thompson at Frank

The dynamic frontwoman talks production values, the ‘ugly beautiful’, and why being in ‘the band that almost made it’ is the best thing ever

Summer in the city, and the iconic Camden Jazz Café is packed. The crowd jostles towards the front of the stage as Swedish electro-synth band Little Dragon emerges to cheers and whistles. Band members take up their positions: Erik Bodin on drums, Fredrik Källgren Wallin on bass and Håkan Wirenstrand at the keyboards. The petite frame of lead vocalist Yukimi Nagano, decked in a crystal embellished baseball cap and tulle veil, moves forward and she takes the mic. A persistent electronic beat ripples through the hall and Yukimi’s voice joins to fill the humid air. She moves deliberately and with a dancer’s expression, leading her audience as if in a shamanic trance…

…Yukimi has always been drawn to boundary-pushing musicians, from the first Jimi Hendrix records she bought to her all-time musical heroes Kate Bush, Janet Jackson, Fleetwood Mac, Prince and Grace Jones. Born and raised in Gothenburg to a Japanese father, Yusuki Nagano, and her Swedish-American mother, Joanne Brown, Yukimi had a musical childhood alongside her sister Sumie, now a respected folk musician. “My mom played piano and I used to sit on her lap and destroy her playing,” she remembers. “That’s where my love of Fleetwood Mac comes from.”…

Read the entire article here.

‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’ Having A Biracial Love Interest For Peter Is Monumental

Bustle
2017-07-07

Olivia Truffaut-Wonga

Sony Pictures Releasing

Spider-Man: Homecoming isn’t just bringing Spider-Man back into the Marvel Cinematic Universe — it’s bringing diversity with it. Not only is a huge chunk of the movie’s supporting cast not white, but Homecoming provides the MCU with the universe’s first prominent women of color, Liz (Laura Harrier) and Michelle (Zendaya). Moreover, with Liz, Spider-Man: Homecoming introduces Marvel’s first biracial love interest. Yes, for the first time in the entire MCU, the white hero is involved in an interracial relationship, and this could not be more important when it comes to the representation of women of color on-screen.

You see, Homecoming marks the first MCU film with two prominent female characters of color and two prominent biracial characters. This distinction might sound unimportant, but to the many biracial fans out there, it actually means a lot, because it expands diversity in the MCU beyond easily defined ethnic boxes. In big studio movies, biracial characters are rare, and tend to appear only when being biracial is a part of the story. For the most part, major films stick to easily defined ethnic categories — black, white, Asian, Latinx, etc. The fact that Homecoming has two biracial female supporting characters and doesn’t make their race part of their storyline is monumental, not just for Marvel, but for Hollywood overall…

Read the entire article here.

Why You Should Think Twice About Those DNA-By-Mail Results

Cosmos & Culture: Commentary on Science and Society
National Public Radio
2017-07-06

Barbara J. King, Professor Emerita of Anthropology
College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia

iStockphoto

In a new book, University of North Carolina, Charlotte anthropologist Jonathan Marks says that racism in science is alive and well.

This stands in sharp contrast to creationist thinking, Marks says, which is, like racism, decidedly evident in our society but most certainly not welcome in science.

In Is Science Racist? Marks writes:

“If you espouse creationist ideas in science, you are branded as an ideologue, as a close-minded pseudo-scientist who is unable to adopt a modern perspective, and who consequently has no place in the community of scholars. But if you espouse racist ideas in science, that’s not quite so bad. People might look at you a little askance, but as a racist you can coexist in science alongside them, which you couldn’t do if you were a creationist. Science is racist when it permits scientists who advance racist ideas to exist and to thrive institutionally.”

This is a strong set of claims, and Marks uses numerous examples to support them. For example, a 2014 book by science writer Nicholas Wade used genes and race to explain, as Michael Balter put it in Science magazine, “why some people live in tribal societies and some in advanced civilizations, why African-Americans are allegedly more violent than whites, and why the Chinese may be good at business.”…

Read the entire article here.

Millennial women are more likely to identify as mixed race

The Lily
2017-07-06

Kristal Brent Zook

(iStock/Lily illustration)

ANALYSIS | Why men and women see themselves differently may have more to do with societal perceptions

The multiracial population in the U.S. is increasing each year, but here’s a riddle: Why are young mixed-race women more likely to identify as multiracial than men?

According to a 2016 study of 37,000 first year college students by Stanford University political scientist Lauren Davenport, 74 percent of biracial black/white women said they were multiracial, while only 64 percent of men from the same background labeled themselves that way. The numbers broke down along similar lines for mixed-heritage Latino and Asian men and women.

Who raises you can play a role on how you identify racially, as well as your neighborhood, family income, and educational level. But why men and women see themselves differently may have more to do with societal perceptions of what’s beautiful, or dangerous…

Read the entire article here.

The ‘Father of Black History’ Was Afro-Puerto Rican

Latino USA
National Public Radio
2017-06-30

Janice Llamoca, Digital Media Editor
Futuro Media Group

There’s a building in Harlem that houses, some say, the largest collection of Black history in the world. At the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, you can see and touch original documents like the Malcolm X papers and the Nate King Cole papers. The center also holds specialized exhibits, film screenings, and panel discussions.

The center is named after Arturo Schomburg, also known as the “Father of Black History,” who sold his personal collection of books, pamphlets, manuscripts, and data to the New York Public Library in 1926…

Listen to the story (00:09:28) here.

Fighting for Black Lives in Colombia: ‘The People Do Not Give Up, Damn It’

The Root
2017-07-01

Lori S. Robinson

iStock

Editor’s note: This story is the first in a three-part series looking at the fight for rights of black people in Colombia. This first piece explores the history of Afro-Colombians and the impact of the recently ended war with the FARC. Subsequent stories will examine the current political environment. 

Black activism started in Colombia when Africans arrived in chains.

Spaniards were early kingpins in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, first importing kidnapped Africans into what was then New Granada in the 1520s—a century before the British brought this epic crime against humanity to North America.

Concentrated along the country’s Pacific coast, enslaved people were forced to do agricultural labor and, primarily, to mine gold. This region became majority black during colonial times. It still is…

…Colombia never had legal segregation after slavery, like the United States. The national narrative of Colombia, like most of Latin America, has been that inequality is economic, not racial, and that significant racial mixing throughout the country’s history proves that racism doesn’t exist. According to Perea, Colombians have gone so far as to say that “racism was solely an expression of North American culture.”

Meanwhile, the largest numbers of black Colombians have been isolated, abandoned by their own government, without educational or employment opportunities, living in poverty…

Read the entire article here.

From Loving v. Virginia To Barack Obama: The Symbolic Tie That Binds

Creighton Law Review
Volume 50, Number 3 (2017)
pages 641-668

G. Reginald Daniel, Professor of Sociology
University of California, Santa Barbara

Jasmine Kelekay
Department of Sociology
University of California, Santa Barbara

I. INTRODUCTION

The year 2017 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the 1967 United States Supreme Court decision in Loving v. Virginia, which declared anti-miscegenation laws to be unconstitutional. For many, the Loving decision represents a symbolic turning point in the history of United States racial politics. Some even celebrate the Loving decision and the argued subsequent “biracial baby boom” as the beginning of a post-racial United States. Indeed, statistics indicating that fifteen percent of all new marriages are interracial and polls suggesting that a majority of Americans today approve of interracial marriage are cited as evidence of the erosion of racial boundaries and tensions. For many, the 2008 election of Barack Hussein Obama, the offspring of an African father and European American mother, as the forty-fourth President—and the first Black President—of the United States similarly marked a symbolic victory affirming that racism has finally been overcome and the United States is a truly post-racial society. However, the year 2017 also marks the end of Obama’s presidency and—importantly—the inauguration of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States. Consequently, we are not only forced to examine this critical juncture in the history of United States racial politics, but are also required to critically examine the past fifty years and ask the following question: to what extent have the symbolic victories of Loving and the election of Obama been imbued with aspirations that have yet to be fully actualized? Loving and the election of President Obama are undoubtedly important milestones in the history of United States jurisprudence and racial politics. Yet a careful analysis of interracial marriage trends, the politics of mixed race identity, and the waves of backlash against Obama’s presidency—which range from contesting his legitimacy and opposing his political efforts to explicitly racist rhetoric and the recent election of Donald Trump as President—suggest that the post-racial potential promised by Loving has remained more aspirational than actualized. Accordingly, in order to understand the legacy of Loving, we must think critically about interracial intimacy and contemporary United States race relations, taking into account the persistent inequities imbedded in the United States racial order and the continued relevance of anti-Blackness in the struggles for a more egalitarian society.

Read the entire article here.