Mixed Race Studies

Adebe DeRango-Adem explores her identity in art and poetry

The Toronto Star
2016-02-26

Debra Black, Immigration Reporter

Adebe DeRango-Adem was recently hailed as a young Canadian author to watch by Canada’s poet laureate, George Elliott Clarke. She is a poet and doctoral student in English literature at University of Pennsylvania.

Adebe DeRango-Adem was recently hailed as a young Canadian author to watch by Canada’s poet laureate, George Elliott Clarke. She is a poet and doctoral student in English literature at University of Pennsylvania.

Adebe DeRango-Adem was recently hailed as a young Canadian author to watch by Canada’s poet laureate, George Elliott Clarke. DeRango-Adem is a poet and doctoral student in English literature at University of Pennsylvania. Her latest work, Terra Incognita, a collection of poetry published last year, examines racial identity. The winner of the Toronto Poetry Competition in 2005, she served as Toronto’s first junior poet laureate. She spoke to the Star about Black History Month and what it means to her, as well as the importance of exploring identity in art.

I’m wondering what your feelings are about the designation of Black History Month and what that means for you as a writer. Is it important?

A colleague of mine, Andrea Thompson, who is pretty well known in the poetry world, described my book as an excellent and complete mapping of racial topography in Canada. We’re still struggling with the notion of post-race world and post-racial identities. My book and how it speaks to Black History Month is about pushing for malleable borders of identity and identification, in terms of blackness. I happen to be of mixed race — black identified mixed race — and so my book kind of inhabits the same questions that I think are important for everyone to consider. Questions such as: What’s our fixation on the attempts to envision a post-racial world all about? Who is to say, for example, that this idea of mixed races — what makes that radical? That term blackness itself is being opened in good ways. So those are the questions that I think my book is asking. It’s referring to the inter-racial experience as a grounding, but it also wants to ask about immigration. I, myself, am a child of immigrant parents. From Italy and Ethiopia. I came to the U.S. to study, also making me an immigrant. My book is also about asking how blackness in Canada relates to roots, movement and differentiation…

Read the entire interview here.

The Louisiana Convention.

The Spirit of Democracy
Woodsfield, Ohio
1867-12-17
page 2, column 3

The Convention for the reconstruction of Louisiana, now in session at New Orleans, is one of the smallest affairs in the way of brains ever before assembled in the United States. It is composed of cooks, boot-blacks, field-hands, bureau officers, and men unknown five miles from their place of residence. It is with weapons of this sort that the Radical Revolutionists are ruling the South, and trampling the rights of White men under their feet. Here is a list of the  members, taken from the N. Y. World:

• W. Jasper Blackburn, white, is a Northern man who edits the Homer Iliad, a little Radical paper of intense bitterness published in Claiborne parish.
• O. C. Bladin is a New Orleans mulatto.
• Hyacinthe Bonseigneur is the same and chairman of a standing committee that on “conteengeent expanses.”
• Emile Bonnefoi is a mulatto.
• Wm. Brown is an unknown white
• Dennis Burrel is a negro.
• Wm. Butler is a negro.
• Wm. H. Cooley is a white man; a District Judge in Point Coupee and chairman of the standing committee on the new constitution. He is not so Radicals he was and swears freely.
• W. R.  Crane is a truly loyal man whose name appears subscribed to this oath: “I do solemnly swear that I am qualified according to the Constitution, and the laws of the State to vote. I will be faithful and true allegiance bear to the State of Louisiana and the Confederate States of America, and that I will support, protect, and defend the Constitution of the State and of the said Confederate States. So help me God. March 20, 1862.”Some years prior to this the reconstructing Crane offered a resolution in the Louisiana Legislature to unseat J. P. Benjamin then United States Senator; because the said Judah was in favor of Mr. Clay’s compromise measure, instead of being as Soule, Quitman and the reconstructing Crane then were for instantaneous secession. After Butler the beast came to this city, Mr. Crane became curator of the estates of persons sent beyond the line, and of registered enemies. In personal appearance he is adust as to the face, orange-tawny as to the beard, and stringy as to the neck, around which, without any intervention of a collar is twisted a wispy black cravat.
• Thos. S. Crawford is a melancholy unknown young white man in blue steel specs.
• R. J. Cromwell is a negro doctor.
• Samuel E. Curey is a very black negro.
• Geo. W. Dearing, Jr, is a mulatto.
• A. J. Demarestis white, unknown.
• Chas. Depasseau, is a mulatto.
• P. G. Deslonde, mulatto.
• Jos. DeBlonde, mulatto.
• Auguste Donator Jr., mulatto.
• Davis Douglas, mulatto.
• J. G. Drimkard, white, unknown.
• Gustavus Duparte, mulatto.
• Ulger Dupart, mulatto.
• C. H. B. Duplessis, white, unknown.
• J. B. Esnard, mulatto.
• G. W. Furgeson, white, unknown.
• John Gair, mulatto.
• R. G. Gardiner, a very black negro, temporary president of the Convention.
• Abraham N. Gould, negro.
• Leopold Guichard, mulatto.
• Peter Harper, Jno. S. Harris, Thos. P. Harrison, O. H. Hempstead, and W. .H. Hiestaud, all white and entirely unknown.
• J. H. Ingraham, mulatto, a cook in the Washington artillery during the war, and now Chairman of the Committee on Bill of Rights.
• R. H. Isabelle, mulatto.
• Thos. Isabelle, mulatto.
• Simon Jones, white.
• Geo. Y. Kelso, mulatto.
• Jas. H. Landers, white, wears a brimstone colored vest an is Solon Shinge to a hair. Otherwise unknown.
• Victor Lange, mulatto.
• Chas Leroy, mulatto.
• J. B. Lewis, Viite.
• Richard Lewis, black.
• Jno. J. Ludwig, white, a German—Has good sense, but speaks English fewly.
• Jno. Lynch, white. “Give ye me wor’rd of honor he has” said he the other day, sotto voce, in debate. And of such is delegate Lynch.
• Frederic Mane, white.
• Thomas M. Martin, mulatto.
• J. A. Massicot, white.
• Win. R. Meadows, white.
• Ben. McLeran, white.
• W. L. McMillan, white of Ohio, ex-U. S. A.
• Milton Morris, a very black negro.
• S. R. Moses, still blacker.
• Wm. Munell, mulatto.
• Jas. Mushaway, white.
• Theophile Myers, mulatto.
• J. P. Newsham, white, ex-U. S.
• Jos. C. Oliver, mulatto.
• S. B. Packard, white.
• Jno. Pierce, mulatto.
• P. B. S. Pinchback, mulatto. Great friend of. Banks, N. P.
• Curtis Pollard, negro, black as jet.
• Geo. W. Reagan, white, ex-U. S. A.
• D. Reese, white.
• Fortune Riard, mulatto.
• D. D. Riggs, white.
• J. A. N. Roberts, mulatto.
• L. Rodriquez, mulatto.
• N. Schawb, white, German.
• Charles Smith, white, Internal Revenue assessor.
• Sosthene Snacr, mulatto.
• Jno. Scott, negro.
• G. Snider, white.
• H. G. Steele, white.
• Chas. Thibaut, white.
• E. Twichant, mulatto.
• M. H. Twichell, white, ex-U. S. A.
• Napoleon Underwood, white.
• P. F. Valfroit, negro.
• Jno. B. Vandergriff, white.
• Michel Vidal, white.
• Rufus Naples, white.
• G. M. Wickliffe, white, is a truly loyal man. In 1860, he edited a paper at Clinton, in this State called The Spirit of the South, full of death to abolitionists, hang the abolitionist devils, whet the knife, prepare the fuel, etc., etc., in the very worst style of the fire-eating school. As before observed he is a truly loyal man. He looks, big black mustache “hilang!” air and all as though he had just dropped down out of the Bowery and with two negroes Williams and Wilson, closes the roll of this Convention.

Were the people of the South true to their own interests they would rise in the name of the Constitution of the United States, and wipe the vampire band of howling, blood-thirsty Niggers and unknowns, who are now engaged in eating out their substance and outlawing them, from existence.

Here is a specimen of the blood-thirsty speeches daily thrown into the faces of disfranchised white men:

New Orleans, December 7.—In the Convention to-day, while discussing the preamble and resolutions denying the statements contained in the memorial to congress expressing a fear of a war of races, a negro named Cromwell declared: “We will rule; until the last one of us goes down forever.” That negroes were going to have their rights, if it was by revolution and blood, in spite of Andy Johnson or any other man, and declared that he was ready for revolution.

From the above the people can very readily see what, the negro doctrines of Sumner and Wilson have brought the country too.

New Du Bois Review Study Confirms the Obvious: U.S. Latinos Are Not ‘Becoming White’

Latino Rebels
2015-05-28

Julio Ricardo Varela

Last year, we spent a lot of time countering slippery claims and misreporting by several nationally recognized writers (specifically Jamelle Bouie and Nate Cohn) who were pushing a mainstream media narrative that more and more U.S. Latinos were becoming “White” in this country. The pieces we published from several contributors were quick to refute how writers like Bouie and Cohn lacked any real knowledge or understanding of this topic.

A new study called “LATINA/O WHITENING? Which Latina/os Self-Classify as White and Report Being Perceived as White by Other Americans?” was recently published in the Du Bois Review. Dr. Nicholas Vargas, the study’s author, is an Assistant Professor in the School of Economic, Political, and Policy Sciences at The University of Texas at Dallas. After reading Vargas’ study (you can download the full study here), our founder and publisher @julito77 sent Dr. Vargas a few questions via email. Here is what Dr. Vargas sent back to us:

What prompted you to do this study?

VARGAS: As I became more familiar with the scholarly literature on assimilation, a literature that is informed primarily by the assimilation trajectories of Eastern and Southern European groups of the early 20th century, I came across a number of arguments that Latina/os would soon be following in their footsteps. The argument is that Latina/os will come to identify as White and look back on their Latina/o identities much the same way that many Whites today look back to a detached Irish or Italian heritage. Some of these arguments suggested that Latina/o racial self-identification as White on the U.S. Census and other surveys could be a sign that the process of Latina/o Whitening is already underway. Journalists proclaimed that if Latina/os are identifying as White, then they are probably “becoming White” the same way that others have in the past…

Read the entire interview here.

Melissa Harris-Perry Walks Off Her MSNBC Show After Pre-Emptions

The New York Times
2016-02-26

John Koblin, Television Reporter

Melissa Harris-Perry said she had received no word about whether her MSNBC show had been canceled. Credit Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Melissa Harris-Perry said she was refusing to go on the MSNBC show she hosts this Saturday, following several weeks of pre-emptions and what she described as a loss of editorial control.

In an email sent to people she works with this week, which was obtained by The New York Times, Ms. Harris-Perry said that her show had effectively been taken away from her and that she felt “worthless” in the eyes of NBC News executives.

“Here is the reality: Our show was taken — without comment or discussion or notice — in the midst of an election season,” she wrote. “After four years of building an audience, developing a brand and developing trust with our viewers, we were effectively and utterly silenced.”…

…Ms. Harris-Perry is black, and Mr. Lack and Mr. Griffin are white. In the phone interview on Friday, Ms. Harris-Perry clarified her remarks and said she did not think race played a role in her recent absence from the air.

“I don’t know if there is a personal racial component,” she said. “I don’t think anyone is doing something mean to me because I’m a black person.”…

Read the entire article here.

‘Myth of racial democracy is part of the education of the Brazilian,” says Congolese anthropologist living in Brazil

Black Women of Brazil
2016-02-16

Thiago de Araújo

The absence of Black nominees at the 2016 Oscars. ‘Black face’ is just a costume. Cotistas (quota students) surpass (scores) of non-cotista students. A black sponge doll on the reality show Big Brother Brazil (BBB) ​​of this year. Recent cases, controversial cases. In all, the discussion of the same topic: racism inside and outside of Brazil.

Historical victims of prejudice, blacks in their majority are outraged with every report of the genre. However, today there are those who deny that there is racism in Brazil. For these people, there is nothing to justify affirmative action policies, such as quotas in education and social sectors. It’s necessary to appreciate equality, crying out in the loudest voice.

Discussions of racism are not surprising to Congolese anthropologist Kabengele Munanga. At 73, the Doctor of Social Sciences and professor at the Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences at the University of São Paulo (USP) he always stresses that Brazil has a ‘stark’ framework of discrimination. Do you think it’s an exaggeration? It’s not what the numbers show.

“The data show that, on the eve of apartheid, South Africa had more blacks with college degrees than in Brazil today,” Munanga said in a public hearing organized by the Supreme Court (STF) in 2010. The debate revolved around access to higher education policies. Opponents announced that the country was about to experience a ‘race war’. It was not what we saw.

“There were no riots, racial lynchings anywhere. No Brazilian ‘Ku Klux Klan’ appeared,” said the anthropologist. “What is sought by the policy of quotas for black and the indigenous is not to be entitled to the crumbs, but rather to gain access to the top in all sectors of responsibility and of command in national life where these two segments are not adequately represented, as the true democracy mandates.”

But what about the well-known ‘racial democracy’ born at the hands of Gilberto Freyre?…

Read the entire interview here.

Nella Larsen Reconsidered: The Trouble with Desire in Quicksand and Passing

MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States
Volume 41, Issue 1 (Spring 2016)
pages 165-192
DOI: 10.1093/melus/mlv083

Rafael Walker
Department of English
University of Pennsylvania

This paper challenges the pervasive tendency to treat Larsen’s work as explorations of black women’s lives and examines the distinctly biracial perspective that her fiction attempts to elaborate. I argue that her novels employ narratives of frustrated desire in order to show the impossibility of the racially liminal subject in a society that thinks in black and white. In developing this argument, the essay explains the aesthetic and theoretical implications that ensue from taking this biracial perspective seriously. For instance, it shows how each novel mobilizes a distinct ontology of biracial identity—biraciality as synthesis in one case (Quicksand [1928]) and biraciality as oscillation in the other (Passing [1929]). In its discussion of the aesthetics of Larsen’s fiction, the essay demonstrates how this shift in racial perspective enables us to reassess her endings, which vexed critics in her day and continue to vex readers in ours (including the scholar arguably most responsible for Larsen’s current prominence, Deborah E. McDowell). Aware that aversion to the essentialist “tragic mulatta” trope has been one of the primary impediments to concentrating on biraciality in Larsen’s work, I offer ways of understanding Larsen’s focus on biraciality as more—rather than less—subversive of American racial ideology than previous studies suggest.

Read or purchase the article here.

Latina/o Whitening? Which Latina/os Self-Classify as White and Report Being Perceived as White by Other Americans?

Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race
Volume 12, Issue 01, Spring 2015
pages 119-136
DOI: 10.1017/S1742058X14000241

Nicholas Vargas, Assistant Professor of Sociology; Latino Studies
University of Florida

Some scholars argue that Latina/os in the United States may soon become White, much like the supposed Whitening of Eastern European immigrant groups in the early twentieth century. High rates of White racial identification on surveys among Latina/os is one explanation provided for this assertion. However, personal identification is but one element of racial boundary maintenance. It is when personal identification is externally validated that it is most closely associated with group-based experiences. This article maps components of the White-Latino racial boundary that may be permeable to White expansion by examining conditions under which Latina/os self-identify as White and report that they are externally classified as White by other Americans. Employing novel data from the 2006 Portraits of American Life Study, this article shows that nearly 40% of Latina/os sometimes self-identify as White, yet a much smaller proportion—only 6%—report being externally classified as White by others. Moreover, logistic regression analyses suggest that for those with light phenotypical features and high levels of socioeconomic status, the odds of reported external Whitening are increased. Interestingly, phenotypically light Latina/os with low-socioeconomic-status levels have low probabilities of reporting external classification as White when compared to their phenotypically light and high-socioeconomic-status counterparts, suggesting that the combination of both skin color and class may be central to the White-Latino racial boundary. Results also indicate that many who report external Whitening do not prefer to self-identify as White. In sum, multidimensional measures of racial classification indicate that only a very small minority of Latina/os may be “becoming White” in ways that some previous researchers have predicted.

Read or purchase the article here.

Latinos May Be More Educated, Wealthier: Here’s Why We Don’t Know It

NBC News
2016-02-24

Griselda Nevarez

U.S. Latinos may be more educated and have higher earnings than what current numbers suggest, and new research explores why.

There are individuals who have Latino ancestors, but do not self-identify as Hispanic in national demographic surveys. Therefore, these people are not included in the overall U.S. Latino population, according to Stephen Trejo, an economics professor at the University of Texas at Austin who co-authored a research paper on the topic.

This phenomenon — often referred to as ethnic attrition — is more common among second- and higher-generation Latinos who also tend to be more educated and have higher earnings than their counterparts.

As a result “we’re probably understating the educational progress” of Hispanics in the U.S., said Trejo to NBC News Latino. “Unfortunately, we don’t have a good idea of the magnitude of this because the data that we have isn’t perfect,” he added.

While 99 percent of first-generation Latinos identify as such, it drops to 93 percent in the second generation and 82 percent in the third generation, according to Trejo’s findings. And second- and third-generation Latinos who did not identify as Hispanic were more educated than their peers – by an average of 9 months for the second generation and about 10 months for the third, the study found…

Read the entire article here.

Trevor Noah Blasts Ben Carson for Claiming President Obama Was ‘Raised White’

The Daily Beast
2016-02-25

Matt Wilstein, Entertainment Writer

‘The Daily Show’ host hits back at the low-in-the-polls neurosurgeon for claiming Obama can’t relate to the ‘experience of black Americans.’

Believe it or not, Ben Carson is still running for president. And this week, he made some news by claiming in an interview that President Obama was “raised white” and therefore can’t identify with the “experience of black Americans.”

Trevor Noah isn’t having it. ”Like a glitched character on a video game, Ben Carson is just off facing the wrong direction,” The Daily Show host said Wednesday night. “Yeah, he is not attacking Trump or the other Republicans, but rather he’s chosen to attack President Obama. And it’s not for his policies and it’s not for his record. It’s for not being black enough.”

“So Ben Carson is saying that because Obama didn’t grow up poor, he didn’t grow up black,” Noah said after playing the clip of Carson’s comments. “That is such a bullshit argument. Being poor isn’t what makes you black.”…

Read the entire article here.

Did Obama Inspire A Big Debate On Identity? You Weighed In

Code Switch: Frontiers of Race, Culture and Ethnicity
National Public Radio
2016-02-23

Leah Donnella

Laurie Avocado/Flickr Creative Commons

Last week, Code Switch raised the curtain on “The Obama Effect,” our quest to understand what the nation’s first black president has to do with the big national conversations on identity and inclusion swirling in full force right now.

That quest began with you. On Friday, we took to Twitter with the hashtag #NPRObamaEffect and asked you to weigh in: If somebody else had come into office on Jan. 20, 2009, do you think we’d be having all these conversations about identity? Has the way you identify yourself as a person of color — or as a white person — changed over the last eight years? Have your personal politics around race shifted post-Obama?

Some people said yes, but weren’t lining up to credit Obama:…

Read the entire article here.