Mixed Race Studies

Fluid Identity Discrimination

American Business Law Journal
Volume 52, Issue 4, Winter 2015
pages 789–857
DOI: 10.1111/ablj.12056

Leora F. Eisenstadt, Assistant Professor (Research)
Fox School of Business and Management
Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

According to the most recent Census, the multiracial population of children has increased dramatically in the last decade, and the number of people of any age who identify as both white and black more than doubled in that time. In addition, there is a growing number of increasingly vocal transgender individuals who cannot be defined by existing sexual categories. Nonetheless, most courts have retained a categorical approach to Title VII that demands membership in a protected class even as American society becomes increasingly mixed and less conducive to simple categorization. In light of this new reality, this article considers the jurisprudence and scholarship on multiracial and transgender plaintiffs and argues that scholars and courts in both areas are dealing with discrimination against these increasingly visible individuals in an overly narrow way, leading to incomplete or unsatisfactory solutions. Rather than approach issues of racial identity and sexual identity separately, this article contends that these issues are symptomatic of a larger problem with Title VII, namely, an enduring attempt to fit increasingly amorphous identities into a strict categorical structure that no longer matches the reality of American society. Fluid Identity Discrimination proposes a rethinking of the protected class paradigm in light of a changed American populace with the goal of providing clarity and better alignment between law and social reality.

Read the entire article here.

Race Relations In Brazil

Odyssey
2015-10-12

Evan Mextorf

Is racial democracy real?

If one was to ask a member of the Brazilian government if racism exists within the country, they would more than likely say no. They might say “Brazil is a racial democracy. Sure, there are social factors such as gender and class that could inhibit one’s climb up the economic ladder, but race has no bearing.” The fact, however, that the country imported more slaves than any country in the world, and that Brazil was the last country in the New World to abolish slavery, makes it hard for outsiders to understand the concept of racial democracy in Brazil.

Portugal founded its first settlement in Brazil in 1532, and from that point on, the Portuguese began to expand throughout South America, originally using mainly indigenous slaves for agricultural purposes. Unlike the island of Hispaniola, the indigenous people of Brazil were not killed off at such an alarming rate, which made them much cheaper slaves than African slaves that needed to be imported. African slaves. however, lived longer under their extreme working conditions than those of indigenous descent due to their previous exposure to European diseases. Even though indigenous slaves were cheaper, African slaves were imported at a rapid rate, because it was cheaper to import slaves rather than to “breed” slaves through families, a practice most notably performed by the United States. Brazil imported more African slaves from the sixteenth through the eighteenth century than anywhere else in the Western hemisphere. Following the Haitian revolution, some slaves in Brazil wanted to fight for their rights as humans…

Read the entire article here.

African American Interest & Experiences in Russia: A Brief History

Afropean: Adventures in Afro Europe
2015-10-28

Robert Fikes, Jr., Reference Librarian
San Diego State University

Robert Fikes, Jr., Librarian at San Diego State University, recounts the history of the African American presence in Russia from the 19th century, noting that African Americans have had a long and prominent history in the region, continuing to the present day, with a focus on the scholarly interest in the history and language by members of the African American intelligentsia.

In early February 1869, Cassius M. Clay, the liberal American ambassador to Russia, was uncertain how Czar Alexander II would react to his personal request to have “a colored American citizen, presented to his Imperial Majesty, as there was not precedent.” He need not have worried however, as Civil War veteran and pioneering black journalist Capt. Thomas Morris Chester from Pennsylvania, was then asked to accompany the czar riding alongside the monarch and his staff in the annual grand review the Imperial Guard – stalwart men splendidly attired in tall black leather boots and gleaming gold and silver helmets crowned with a doubled-headed eagle – and following the awe-inspiring pageantry was treated to a fine meal at the dining table of the royal family. The educated and proudly erect son of an ex-slave, he gladly accepted the invitation and enjoyed an experience unparalleled for an African American in the 19th century. The black editors of the New Orleans Tribune thought the event significant enough that the ambassador’s dispatch to Washington concerning Capt. Chester’s gracious treatment in St. Petersburg was reprinted in the newspaper, believing it would be “instructive to the (racist) white population of the Southern States,” an example of how they should, in the ambassador’s words, “elevate the African race in America.”…

Read the entire article here.

Professor Minelle Mahtani on ‘Raising Mixed Race’ in Canada

Multiracial Asian Families
2015-10-29

Sharon H. Chang

Following are closing remarks given by Minelle Mahtani after the premiere of my new book Raising Mixed Race: Multiracial Asian Children In a Post-Racial World at Hapa-Palooza Festival 2015, Vancouver B.C. Minelle Mahtani is Associate Professor of Human Geography and Journalism at University of Toronto-Scarborough. Currently she is on sabbatical to host new show ‘Sense of Place‘ on Roundhouse Radio. She is also author of the recent book ‘Mixed Race Amnesia: Resisting the Romanticization of Multiraciality.’

My book ‘Raising Mixed Race’ will be released December 11, 2015.

Hi everybody. I’m going to keep this really short and sweet because I just think that we’ve heard so many really important things. But I just want to say thank you, Jeff, for that really warm introduction. And I just want to thank Sharon and Professor Wei Ming Dariotis for the extraordinary contribution they made here tonight.

For me being in this room really means a lot. I think it’s really rare that so many mixed people come together to have these conversations… I think it’s really valuable to remember that you’re not alone in this and that there’s other people around who want to share in these conversations. I grew up as a person of mixed race identity. I’m [of] Indian, Iranian, Muslim, Hindu background. And that was a really complicated identity to have in the suburbs of Toronto, mostly white area, that I grew up in…

Read the entire article here.

Guest Commentary: Student searches for identity outside of race

The Ithacan: Serving the Ithaca College community since 1931.
Ithaca, New York
2013-02-20

Derek Crossman

Senior Derek Crossman struggled to identify as a person of color living in a predominately white community. He argues that as the multiracial population grows, racial constructs should end.  Shawn Steiner/The Ithacan

I learned I was different from my friends in gym class in 7th grade. My classmates joked that I was brown and called me a “nigger” and a “beaner.” It was the first time race ever became a factor in my life, and from then on I’ve been hyper-aware of my skin color.

Simply put, I’m a mix between my Caucasian mother and black father. It becomes complicated when ethnicity is involved. My father was born in Panama and moved to the U.S. in his teens, and my mother was born in the U.S. and is a mix of several European nationalities. That’s a great deal to consider for the curious person who asks about my heritage — I’m not easily categorized…

Read the entire article here.

Mixed, Passing For White

Youth Radio
2015-10-12

Maya Cueva

What’s it like to be a mixed race person who passes as white? Complicated, according to Youth Radio’s Maya Cueva. She often finds herself struggling to represent the part of her racial identity that people can’t see.

My whole life, I’ve always been the girl who’s white face didn’t quite match my last name — “Cueva”.

In my family we always celebrated our identity: My mom’s Jewish and my dad’s Peruvian.

Sometimes my dad tries to say things in Yiddish. Words like schmatta, except for with his Spanish accent. My mom calls that meshugganismo — combining the Yiddish word meshugganah, meaning crazy, with the Spanish ismo…meaning ism. Quirks like this always come up in my family all the time.

Ever since I can remember, my mom has always searched for things that connect our Jewish and Latino identities. But out in the world, I often face identity policing. Because I pass as white, people ask if I’m actually a person of color or not. So I’m constantly having to prove my Peruvian heritage. Like having to tell my dad’s immigration story soon after I meet people. I call it “coming out as mixed.”…

Read the entire story here. Listen to the story here. Download the story here.

Look! A Zombie! Race and Passing in ‘iZombie’

PopMatters
2015-10-30

Rukmini Pande
University of Western Australia

iZombie’s “passing” narrative complicates its broader racial politics.

As the fall season of US TV swings into gear, the CW’s undead caper iZombie seems poised for an interesting second outing. Helmed by Rob Thomas (of Veronica Mars fame), the show’s first season was received well by both critics and audiences, and was quickly renewed.

To recap briefly, the show follows Olivia (Liv) More (Rose McIver), a driven MD whose life is turned upside down when she is turned into a zombie. Now working in a morgue, Liv finds out that the brains she eats give her memories of the deceased persons’ lives, specifically, murder victims’ memories.

She teams up with police detective Clive Babineaux (Malcolm Goodwin) to track down various killers, while also attempting to find a cure for zombie-ism (with her ally/boss, Ravi Chakrabarthi [Rahul Kohli]). She also has to try and outwit Blaine (David Anders), an ex-drug dealer turned zombie who has created a new business out of infecting influential people and controlling them through their desire for brains.

The show has garnered kudos for its interesting plot and diverse casting—Ravi is British-Indian, Clive is African-American, and Blaine has a number of non-white accomplices—yet its narrative choices end up complicating its broader racial politics…

…Passing and Survival

The practice of passing is a complex one but may be broadly seen as occurring when, as Brooke Kroeger explains, “people effectively present themselves as other than who they understand themselves to be” (Kroeger Passing: when people can’t be who they are. New York: Public Affairs; 2003: 7). This is a deliberate fashioning of identity presentation and has been practiced across demarcations of race, gender, sexuality, and sometimes religion. While the reasons that people attempt to pass are diverse, it’s most often a “strategy for managing stigma” (Einwohner, Rachel L. “Identity Work and Collective Action in a Repressive Context: Jewish Resistance on the “Aryan Side” of the Warsaw Ghetto.” in Identity Work in Social Movements. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press; 2006: 121–139.126) and is employed in situations where being “outed” carries heavy consequences.

Interconnected to this is the acknowledgement that the ability to pass depends on various factors, including physical appearance, income, and community relations. As Allyson Hobbs writes in A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in America (2014), to pass successfully a person must distance themselves from their community, and the community in turn must do the same. All these factors play into the narrative of iZombie at various points, but by making this a conversation about white bodies, it ignores the historical conditions of that construction, especially in America. In a culture where the raced body is always the one under scrutiny and most likely to suffer policing, the effects of structuring a narrative that places white bodies into that space without adequate critical engagement is dangerous…

Read the entire article here.

La melaza que llora: How to Keep the Term Afro-Latino from Losing Its Power

Latino Rebels
2015-10-16

Jason Nichols, Lecturer in African American Studies
University of Maryland

Me quiere hacer pensar/ que soy parte de una trilogía racial/ donde todo el mundo es igual/ sin trato especial/ se perdonar/ eres tú que no sabe disculpar/ so, como justifica tanto mal/ es que tu historia es vergonzosa/ Entre otras cosas/ cambiaron las cadenas por esposas —Tego Calderon, “Loiza”

Recently, it has become en vogue for Latinos (Latinx) to acknowledge their African “roots.” This understanding is a leap forward in racial formation for many in a region that is often known for hiding their Black grandmother in the closet. However, acknowledging her existence doesn’t always mean taking her out from behind that closed door.

Rosa Clemente is one of the first to contextualize Afro-Latinidad as an identity that is becoming more what she calls “trendy” than progressive. The Bronx-born Puerto Rican activist alludes to the fact that Afro-Latino identity has fed into, rather than disrupted the myth of a multicultural democracy that is often the dominant narrative in Latin America. Puerto Ricans and some other Latino groups have always acknowledged that they have African ancestry, but it is couched in the idea that the people are a perfect blend of the African slave, proud and noble Spaniard, and the humble native Taíno. This conception is problematic because it is a convenient way to deny institutional and in some cases individual racism. When Venezuelan TV personality Rodner Figueroa called Michelle Obama “planet of the apes,” he quickly defended himself from accusations of racism by stating that he comes from a racially plural family. Clemente doesn’t reject the term Afro-Latino completely, but states that there is a difference between identifying as Afro-Latino and identifying as Black, with the latter being a more progressive racial identity. Unlike many who believe in Latin multiracial democracy, Clemente states that she does not acknowledge the Spaniards in her lineage because she would “never claim my rapist.”…

Read the entire article here.

Neither One Nor The Other: Why I Love Being Mixed-Race

Discover Nikkei
2015-10-20

Mia Nakaji Monnier

I love those parts that seem incompatible but that, in a person, come together.

During my first week of college, I met a guy who, like me, had a long, four-part name. When I told him mine, he said, “Mine are better because they all match.”

This guy wasn’t exactly representative of my classmates at this New England liberal arts college. He was pretty obnoxious, and our friendship ended right along with freshman orientation. But he had a point. His name did match. It was a nice, genteel name, the kind you could transplant out of the 21st century and into a Jane Austen novel without anyone noticing the difference.

My name, on the other hand, is mixed and messy, alternately Japanese and French but, all together, a completely American whole: Mia Gabrielle Nakaji Monnier. In a 19th century novel, I might sound like an invading alien. But I love that. My name is a constant reminder that I’m mixed, on a borderline between worlds…

Read the entire article here.

Is There an Identity Beyond Race? Four Case Studies

Michigan Quarterly Review
Volume XLI, Issue 3, Summer 2002

Paula Marantz Cohen, Distinguished Professor of English
Drexel University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Love on Trial: An American Scandal in Black and White. By Earl Lewis and Heidi Ardizzone. New York: W.W. Norton, 2001. Pp. 301. $26.95.

Black, White and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self. By Rebecca Walker. New York: Riverhead Books, 2001. Pp. 336. $14.

Pearl’s Secret: A Black Man’s Search for his White Family. By Neil Henry. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. Pp. 321. $24.95.

The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother. By James McBride. New York: Riverhead Books, 1996. Pp. 228. $23.95 (hb), $14 (pb).

All four books under review here are concerned with telling dramatic tales about singular, real lives. But they are also books about race. They are driven by the larger goal of making the individual story stand for more than itself.

To write something that is true to the distinctiveness of human experience while also being socially and politically illuminating is hard to achieve. Earl Lewis and Heidi Ardizzone’s Love on Trial: An American Scandal in Black and White seems the most successful, perhaps because it is the only book in the group that is not a memoir. Lewis explains in an Afterword that he first stumbled on the subject while working on his dissertation seventeen years earlier, then returned to it when, as a professor at the University of Michigan, he began directing Ardizzone’s doctoral research on interracial identity in the first half of the twentieth century. They eventually decided to collaborate. The long period of gestation as well as the collaborative approach help to account for the book’s judicious tone in telling a story at once private and public, full of subjective elements yet illuminating of its social moment.

Love on Trial takes as its point of departure a sensational news story from the 1920s. Pursuing the story through careful research into court transcripts and newspaper archives, the authors piece together a fascinating narrative in which the personal intersects the social with tragic consequences.

The story centers on the marriage of Alice Jones, a nanny from Westchester, to Leonard “Kip” Rhinelander, a young scion of one of New York’s oldest and richest society families. It seems that the couple met, courted, and married without apparent difficulty until their relationship became publicized by the New York press, probably through the instigation of Leonard’s disapproving father. A scandal erupted when it was alleged that Alice Jones was black—a fact that Leonard subsequently claimed he did not know and which he made the basis for an annulment suit against his wife…

Read the reviews here.