Mixed Race Studies

The Globalization of Light Skin Colorism: From Critical Race to Critical Skin Theory

American Behavioral Scientist
Volume: 62 issue: 14 (The Implications of Colorism vis-à-vis Demographic Variation in a New Millennium)
DOI: 10.1177/0002764218810755
pages 2133–2145

Ronald E. Hall, Professor of Social Work
Michigan State University

On the cusp of Western civilization, Caucasians aspired to a racial world order defining Caucasian as superior race status. Today, racial diversity is a societal theme facilitated by laws, which deems racial equality a right and racial discrimination illegal. Nevertheless, by globalization, a racial world order exists by locating light skin at the zenith of humanity. As pertains to the globalization of light skin, culture and social criteria are most significant considering the demands of a racist racial hierarchy. The existence of such a hierarchy by replacing racism with colorism then necessitates moving beyond race category. Critical race theory (CRT) per light skin as new world order must defer to critical skin theory (CST). Colorism per CST operates identical in manner to racism per CRT. CST must then be elevated to priority over CRT such that the future of humanity may be rescued from the tenacious transgressions of a racist societal past.

Read or purchase the article here.

Shocking Role in History After ‘Boy Evangelist’

Lost Buxton: Information about Buxton, Iowa by Rachelle Chase
2019-01-09

Rachelle Chase

Lonnie Lawrence Dennis as a child

“At a revival we used to have, I remember this little boy was preaching,” said Gertrude Stokes, an African American resident of Buxton, Iowa. “He used to wear a little white robe. He ran our revival and that’s when I joined the church.”

The little boy was eight-year-old Lonnie Lawrence Dennis. On November 16, 1902, Lonnie appeared at St. John’s A.M.E. Church in Buxton. To a full house, he preached “The Life of Christ,” after which a long line formed at the altar. At least 50 men, women and children had decided to “follow the story of Christ.”¹ Lonnie remained in Buxton for 10 days, where he continued to convert many, like Stokes.

During this time, locals trudged through mud to hear him. Others traveled from surrounding towns, such as Albia, Lovilia and Oskaloosa. Lonnie had become known nationwide and everyone wanted to hear the renowned child evangelist…

…But not only had he ditched his first name, he had apparently ditched his parents and all public references to being black. In 1913, he entered a prestigious prep school, Phillips Exeter Academy, and in 1915 he entered Harvard. After serving briefly in WWI in France, he resumed his studies at Harvard, graduated in 1920, and landed a job with the State Department.

But it was his activities beginning in the 1930s that shocked (and appalled) me—activities that made him “widely known as the most influential person in American fascism”…

Read the entire article here.

Kamala Harris Has No Problem Being Black, But Why Doesn’t She Say Publicly She’s Part Asian?

Diverse: Issues In Higher Education
2019-06-30

Emil Guillermo

Kamala Harris likes to say she’s American. Of course. But she’s not generic. Her racial subtext is this: On her father’s side she’s half-Jamaican, and on her mother’s side she’s half-Asian Indian. Harris should say it proudly and often. Because there’s a lot of misunderstanding out there. Just ask Donald Trump Jr.

He never heard that she was half-Asian (Then again, he thought that meeting in Trump Tower was about Russian adoptions or something).

When it comes to Harris, I like pointing out her Asian side often because wouldn’t that be cool to have the first Asian American president of the United States be half-Black and a woman?

The 2020 Democratic presidential field is nothing but diverse, filled with a demography of riches. There’s men, women, young, old, gay, straight, from North, South, East, West, and Wester (Hawaii), Blacks, Latino and Asians, all of whom yearning for the chance to say they too “Habla Espanol.”

But of them all, I’d say Harris has emerged as diversity’s candidate. She’s what America’s becoming. She’s the face of the American future, mixed race, not just one thing. And definitely she’s not White, though she married one. Diversity!…

Read the entire article here.

Mixed Doesn’t Always Mean Part White: Uplifting Non-White Mixed Race Identities

The Body Is Not An Apology
2019-07-08

Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda
University of California, Berkeley

Growing up queer, mixed race, and Asian in the American South, my identity often felt like an absence of any identity at all. For a long time I existed in a kind of limbo state, not having a language to describe myself. Until my early twenties, I was unaware the word “mixed race” existed, much less as a term I had the option to identify with.

Because I neither knew nor saw any other mixed race children or people around me, for a long time my sense of self was only defined as a negation: I was certainly not white, and certainly not Japanese (at least by the standards of ethnic purity operative within my Japanese family and community). But as to what I was, actually, no one could really say.

So it was more than a breath of fresh air — more like a sense of psychic and spiritual relief — when I learned that such a thing as a mixed race identity existed, and that it was something I could identify as, with no other qualifications or explanations. When I finally encountered a community of other mixed race people during my twenties, I felt I was able to inhabit my body and experiences more fully and comfortably…

Read the entire article here.

I Was a Black Nazi Skinhead

Narratively
2018-11-12

Story by Leo Oladimu [Leo Felton], as told to Shawna Kenney

Illustration by Ben Passmore

When I went to prison I was black. By the time I got out 11 years later I was crazy, fascist and white.

A framed photo of American fascist Francis Parker Yockey glared down at me from a wall in my two-room studio in Boston’s North End. Next to me was a 50-pound bag of ammonium nitrate and other materials that I planned to make into package bombs and hand deliver to the offices of a short list of organizations I felt were at war with my culture.

Below me was the naked, athletic body of my 21-year-old comrade in arms. We’d just had sex, and I was as consumed by the tattoo covering her back as I was with the girl herself. Four black hatchets, bound together at the handles, formed the most beautifully rendered swastika I’d ever seen.

I hadn’t told her I was black. In a few months, though, she would learn my secret — along with the rest of the world — and I would begin my trip out of the most batshit-crazy ideological corner anyone has ever painted themselves into…

Leo Oladimu in prison. (2014-04-18)

Read the entire article here.

Genealogy, Family History, and the Fruit of Restorative Justice

Who Is Nicka Smith?
2019-02-12

Nicka Sewell-Smith

Restorative justice is already happening. But how can genealogists and family historians contribute and make even more of a difference?

Reparations is a dirty word. It’s heavily soiled, drug through the mud. It needs to be bleached, sanitized, and dried in the sun. It’s a term that polls badly. Most people hear the word and think of an ATM that won’t stop spitting out money for African Americans or of programs that only elevate Blacks and while everyone else suffers. Even our elected officials can’t even come together to get a bill through the House that will “examine slavery and discrimination in the colonies and the United States from 1619 to the present and recommend appropriate remedies.”

But what if I told you that reparations efforts and programs already exist all over the country? What if I told you that universities, corporations, and private citizens were already practicing restorative and transformative justice for past wrongs connected to the enslavement of the ancestors of African Americans and that these things are totally a form of reparations?…

Read the entire article here.

Familial racial-ethnic socialization of Multiracial American Youth: A systematic review of the literature with MultiCrit

Developmental Review
Volume 53, September 2019
DOI: 10.1016/j.dr.2019.100869

Annabelle L. Atkin, Graduate Teaching Assistant
T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics
Arizona State University

Hyung Chol Yoo, Associate Professor of Asian Pacific American Studies
Arizona State University

Highlights

• Seven types of racial-ethnic socialization messages were identified.
• Most parents do not discuss Multiracial identity with their children.
• The qualitative studies reviewed mostly focused on Black and White biracial youth.
• There are no measures of racial-ethnic socialization for Multiracial families.

Multiracial youth are currently the largest demographic group among individuals 18 and under in the United States (Saulny, 2011), and yet there is a dearth of research examining the development of these uniquely racialized individuals. In this article, we systematically review the qualitative and quantitative research available across disciplines regarding how caregivers engage in racial-ethnic socialization with Multiracial American youth to transmit knowledge about race, ethnicity, and culture. We also critique the use of monoracially framed theoretical models for understanding Multiracial experiences and provide directions for future research using a Critical Multiracial Theory, henceforth referred to as MultiCrit, perspective (Harris, 2016). MultiCrit situates the understanding of Multiracial experiences in the context of the racially oppressive structures that affect Multiracial realities. In light of the findings of this review, we suggest that future studies are needed to learn how racial-ethnic socialization processes look in Multiracial families with different racial makeups and diverse family structures while considering the intersectional identities of Multiracial youth and their caregivers. Furthermore, new theoretical frameworks specific to Multiracial families are necessary to move this field forward, and quantitative measures need to be developed based on qualitative studies to capture the nuances of racial-ethnic socialization messages for Multiracial youth. Suggestions for additional factors to consider in the process of racial-ethnic socialization for Multiracial families and implications of this research are provided in the discussion.

Read the entire article on HTML or PDF format.

Indian allies and white antagonists: toward an alternative mestizaje on Mexico’s Costa Chica

Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies
Volume 11, 2016 – Issue 3: Mestizo Acts: The Politics and Performance of Mestizaje in Guatemala, Mexico, Bolivia, Peru and Colombia
pages 222-241
DOI: 10.1080/17442222.2015.1094873

Laura A. Lewis, Professor of Anthropology in Modern Languages and Linguistics
University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom

San Nicolás Tolentino, Guerrero, Mexico, is a ‘mixed’ black-Indian agricultural community on the coastal belt of Mexico’s southern Pacific coast, the Costa Chica. This article examines local expressions of race in San Nicolás in relation to Mexico’s national ideology of mestizaje (race mixing), which excludes blackness but is foundational to Mexican racial identities. San Nicolás’s black-Indians are strongly nationalistic while expressing a collective or regional identity different from those of peoples they identify as Indians and as whites. Such collective expression produces an alternative model of mestizaje, here explored through local agrarian history and several village festivals. It is argued that this alternative model favors Indians and distances whites, thereby challenging dominant forms of Mexican mestizaje.

Read or purchase the article here.

That little Mexican part of me: race, place and transnationalism among U.S. African-descent Mexicans

Ethnic and Racial Studies
Published online: 2019-06-05
DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2019.1626016

Laura A. Lewis, Professor of Anthropology in Modern Languages and Linguistics
University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom

This article uses semi-structured interviews and participant observation to examine transnationalism and notions of race among first- and second-generation young adult Afro-descended Mexicans and Mexican-Americans in the United States. I suggest that transnationally inflected understandings of race encourage both generations to privilege place-based over ancestry-based racial identities. For the first generation, which is mostly undocumented, place is part of their socialization as Mexicans and a way to forge a more secure sense of belonging in the United States. For members of the second generation, place resolves their position as an anomalous “race” not recognized in the United States.

Read or purchase the article here.

Ukraine mixed-race wrestler tackles prejudice in run for parliament

France 24
2019-07-16

Boyarka (Ukraine) (AFP)

Zhan Beleniuk, an Olympic wrestler with Rwandan roots, is running to become the first mixed-race member of Ukraine’s parliament AFP

Zhan Beleniuk, an Olympic wrestler with Rwandan roots, is seeking to enter Ukraine’s parliament as the first mixed-race MP in a bid to overcome racist attitudes and support the country’s young new leader.

The Greco-Roman style wrestler, who won silver for Ukraine at the Rio Olympics, is standing for the party of the new Ukrainian president, comedian and actor Volodymyr Zelensky, in Sunday’s polls.

The 28-year-old is the son of a Ukrainian dressmaker and a Rwandan pilot killed in that country’s civil war in the 1990s. He grew up in a one-room flat in the capital Kiev.

“Volodymyr Zelensky invited me to join his party, we knew each other before,” Beleniuk told AFP in an interview as he campaigned in the small town of Boyarka just outside Kiev.

“It seems like he saw qualities in me that will help promote the development of Ukrainian sport,” said the athlete after holding a training session for children.

Describing himself as “100 percent Ukrainian”, Beleniuk said his election would prove “we’re really a country that’s modern and that treats all races, all ethnic groups the same.”…

Read the entire article here.