Mixed Race Studies

Double the trouble, twice the joy for Japan’s hāfu

The Japan Times
2013-10-03

Kaori Shoji, Special To The Japan Times

Until about 10 years ago, the standard Japanese image of kids of mixed blood was that they were 1) gorgeous, 2) rich and 3) able to live in Japan with none of the kinks and hang out at Azabu clubs when they were 13. In high school, my girlfriends scorned their own Japanese heritage. The common reply to what we wanted to be when we graduated was “gaijin” (foreigner). Failing that, the next best option was to marry a gaijin and bear hāfu (mixed-race) kids, who would then automatically go on to have brilliant careers as newscasters or supermodels.

Megumi Nishikura and Lara Perez Takagi’s documentary “Hafu” shows quite a different picture. “One of the reasons we made this film,” Nishikura tells The Japan Times, “is that the growing number of hāfu here are not celebrities or models. We wanted to put a hole in the stereotype of hāfu — to show that not everyone is Caucasian, well-to-do and beautiful. There are a lot of people who aren’t like that, who are struggling with the language, with life in Japan and with their own identities.”

Both the filmmakers, who each have a background in documentaries, are mixed-race. Perez Takagi was born to a Japanese mother and Spanish father, and her childhood was divided by vacations spent in Japan at her grandmother’s house in Chiba and daily home life in Madrid…

Read the entire article here.

Descendants of Norwich slave, owner meet

Norwich Bulletin
Norwich, Connecticut
2012-03-29

Adam Benson

Norwich, Conn.—When descendants of Norwich slave Guy Drock and the man who owned him met  for the first time Thursday, they weren’t sure what would happen.

Grant Hayter-Menzies’ fifth-generation great-grandfather, Capt. Benejah Bushnell, owned Drock for a decade in the mid-1700s in Norwich.

Hayter-Menzies, of British Columbia; Daryl D’Angelo, of Amherst, N.H.; and her cousin, Donald Roddy, of Spokane, Wash. — all of them white — came to Karen Cook’s U.S. history class at Norwich Free Academy with a story they said had to be told.

“I don’t have any of the cultural and social legacies of someone who grew up identified as an African-American, and I still had a moment of, ‘What does this guy want from me,’” D’Angelo said of meeting Hayter-Menzies.

Hayter-Menzies was apprehensive, too…

… Roddy, a retired airline pilot, said he stumbled across his Drock lineage several years ago, while doing genealogical research on his family.

“I had no idea I had African ancestors until a few years ago,” Roddy said. “No one in my living family had a clue about that.”

Hayter-Menzies said he’s forged a unique bond with D’Angelo and Roddy, and quickly felt a kinship with them once they finally met.

“My first reaction was to reach out and hug you,” Hayter-Menzies told D’Angelo. “We feel like friends already.”…

Read the entire article here.

Owning white privilege and then what?

Transracial Parenting: A Race Together
2013-04-09

Rachel Dangermond

My own brand of narrow vision at work here: I’m not a big coffee shop person; I go rarely and usually when I have a deadline that I have put off until I can’t bear it anymore and I need a change of venue to focus. I’ve always thought this pastime was a European and Middle Eastern activity. So the other day when I was in CC’s on Esplanade working through a deadline, I was surprised I was the only white person in the whole place. Who knew?

I sat down at a window table and a woman I know came in, but I couldn’t recall her name, so I just smiled in greeting. She sat behind me and soon two older gentlemen joined her and they began talking about their organization that is helping to economically empower black owned businesses. I know this because I am a consummate eavesdropper. I actually was going to approach the woman and ask what they are doing to see if it in any way aligned with my efforts, but I never found my in and my friend had come to meet me.

It’s an odd phenomenon that once you become aware of something, you start seeing the signposts of that awareness everywhere and certainly that is the hope of anyone who is working in this country to end racism…

…But this morning, I had a truly wonderful Skype session with a similarly like-minded woman, Jennifer Chandler. She is a PhD candidate at Cardinal Stritch University in Milwauke and her thesis is to study white mothers of biracial daughters or sons and cull descriptions of their interactions with the teachers and principals at the children’s school. She is pursuing her Doctorate degree in Leadership for the Advancement of Learning and Service…

Read the entire article here.

Paint the White House Black: Barack Obama and the Meaning of Race in America [Review]

Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews
Volume 42, Number 5 (September 2013)
page 763
DOI: 10.1177/0094306113499714e

Paint the White House Black: Barack Obama and the Meaning of Race in America, by Michael P. Jeffries. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013. 210pp. paper. ISBN: 9780804780964.

The ascendancy of Barack Obama from an orphan raised by his grandparents to the most powerful man on the planet is extraordinary not only due to its rapid progression, but also because of its impact on racism in America. Surely the election of a black President will heal America’s wounds of modern racism and erase the scars of slavery. However, in his poignant book Paint the White House Black, Michael P. Jeffries points out that President Obama’s election has placed the United States no closer to the idealized post-racial society that many Americans seem to strive for. Indeed, if anything, the election of America’s first black President raises interesting questions about the nature and pervasiveness of race.

In his book, Jeffries skillfully outlines his thesis, beginning with a description of the politics of inheritance, the racialized natureof patriotism, and the intersectionality of black identity and nationalism. He proceeds with a discussion of multiracial identity and its impact on black politics by incorporating theoretical arguments made by others, as well as his own analysis of self-collected interview data. Next, Jeffries discusses the intersection of gender and blackness by focusing on the First Lady, Michelle Obama, before concluding with a concise chapter that summarizes his arguments quite nicely. The writing is both accessible and direct. Though the scholarly nature of this work requires the inclusion of specialized jargon, the detailed notes section leaves the reader with all the information needed to fully understand this topic…

Read the entire review here.

Film Review: Multiracial Identity

Teaching Sociology
Volume 41, Number 4 (October 2013)
pages 397-399
DOI: 10.1177/0092055X13496205

Sara McDonough
Department of Sociology
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

David L. Brunsma, Professor of Sociology
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Multiracial Identity. 77 minutes. 2010. Brian Chinhema , director. Bullfrog Films. PO Box 149, Oley, PA 19547. 610.779.8226. http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/.

Released in 2011, Multiracial Identity is a timely, well-crafted film written and directed by Brian Chinhema that presents many of the key concepts, debates, and questions surrounding mixed-race identity and multiraciality in American society. Narrated by Dieter Weber, the film integrates both scholarly and nonscholarly voices to present a number of key discussions and tensions about the place and recognition of multiracial people in U.S. society while also providing space for multiracial individuals or the parents of mixed-race children to talk about their experiences and insights on the meanings of multiraciality in the United States. Featuring prominent scholars in the field of multiracial identity, such as Rainier Spencer and Naomi Zack, as well as Aaron Gullickson and Aliya Saperstein, the film provides some basic historical background to contextualize contemporary discussions about multiraciality. While the numbers show an increase of 33 percent in the multiracial population between 2000 and 2010, the existence of multiracial people is not a new phenomenon. The film sets the historical and conceptual stage early, so students might ask, “What has changed in terms of (multi)race and (multi)racial identity in the United States?”

Viewers are provided with an introductory overview of the existence, status, and sociocultural dilemmas that have faced multiracial populations historically. The film does a good job showing the changing meaning of multiraciality across time and space (e.g., regional differences and across racial/ethnic combinations). Though the historically central organizing principle of the black/white binary is discussed, the film raises the question of the utility of this paradigm for understanding multiraciality as it gives attention to the experience of other multiracial individuals (e.g., Hapa-Haoles/Asian-white). Interfacing with the changing demographics associated with the repeal of certain anti-immigration laws in the 1960s, and the increase in Asian and Hispanic/Latino migration in particular, the film more than adequately …

Read or purchase the review here.

“I’ve Never Heard of the Métis People”: The Politics of Naming, Racialization, and the Disregard for Aboriginal Canadians

ActiveHistory.ca
2012-10-18

Crystal Fraser
University of Alberta

Mike Commito
McMaster University

The controversial selection of a hamburger name by a Toronto restaurant had customers and critics raising their eyebrows this past August. Holy Chuck Burgers, located on Yonge Street, specializes in gourmet hamburgers, some of which sport clever titles like “Go Chuck Yourself” and “You Fat Pig.” Recently, the restaurant has come under criticism, not for its indulgent offerings, but because of the names of two of its items: “The Half Breed” and “The Dirty Drunken Half Breed.” It was not long before Twitterverse exploded, slamming Holy Chuck Burgers for its use of racially-charged, insensitive discourse that has had a longstanding history against Canada’s Indigenous peoples. While the criticism was well deserved, the apparent disconnect to Aboriginal issues is unfortunately part of a much larger and longer colonial mentality of indifference.

Like many racial designations in Canada, the term ‘half-breed’ is both complex and problematic. Historically, the designation was used to describe people of ‘mixed’ descent whose lineage originated from intimate relationships between non-Aboriginal newcomers and Aboriginal people. The racial designation of ‘half-breed’ was applied not only to Métis people, but also to other Aboriginals as a way to essentialize and deauthenticate all forms of indigenity. Today, by way of colonial discourse, the Métis are sometimes linked to the historic understanding of ‘half-breed.’ This was demonstrated when Holy Chuck Burgers’ racist food names were viewed as a direct attack on Métis people. But the equation of ‘half breed’ to Métis is intrinsically problematic, since many Indigenous peoples are of ‘mixed’ ancestry but not labelled as such. Nevertheless, Holy Chuck Burgers’ owner explained that the poor selection in burger names originated from the fact that the burger patties consist of a mixture of ground pork and beef. In “The Dirty Drunken Half Breed,” “dirty” refers to the chili that was poured all over the burger and “drunken” denotes the wine that was used in the cooking preparation. When considering Holy Chuck Burgers’ choice of language, it is difficult not to think about racial stereotypes about Aboriginal people that have been historically imposed and, to some extent, continue to be used…

Read the entire article here.

Antlers, glass mark exhibit of California sculptor in College Park

Gazette.Net: Maryland Community News Online
Gaithersburg, Maryland
2013-09-12

Virginia Terhune, Staff writer

Always looking for new materials, Los Angeles sculptor Alison Saar heard that an organization she knew needed to sell a pile of antlers cast off by deer in Montana. So she bought 200 pairs.

Eager to work with glass, she spent time at the Pilchuck Glass School near Seattle learning about the medium’s malleable properties and how to incorporate them into her work.

Both antlers and glass are integral to the 11 sculptures in her exhibit “Still …” coming to the David C. Driskell Center at the University of Maryland, College Park.

In the exhibit, Saar, who is biracial, explores issues of racial identity and bigotry as well as sexism, ageism and love and loss…

…In “Black Lightning” (a play on the slang term “white lightning”), Saar presents a charred stool, a mop, a bucket and a set of glass boxing gloves hanging from a pole and filled with a liquid tinged with red.

She said it’s about black men and the futures once thought suitable for them — to work as a janitor or a boxer but not to work as a president.

Hateful comments about Obama also stirred up her own feelings about being biracial in a culture where often neither black nor white groups accept you as their own.

In “50 Proof,” Saar presents a metal stand holding a basin filled with a dark liquid. Tubing runs through the basin up through a glass heart and into a clear glass head that is half filled with the dark liquid, which drips from the eyes as tears.

“It’s about the theme of the ‘tragic mulatto,’ about being between two worlds, about feeling compelled to align myself,” she said…

Read the entire article here.

What’s Wrong with Race-Based Medicine?: Genes, Drugs, and Health Disparities

Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology
Volume 12, Issue 1 (Winter 2011)
pages 1-21

Dorothy E. Roberts, George A. Weiss University Professor of Law and Sociology; Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights
University of Pennsylvania

In June 2005, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced a historic decision: it approved the first pharmaceutical indicated for a specific race. BiDil, a combination drug that relaxes the blood vessels, was authorized to treat heart failure in self-identified black patients. BiDil had been tested in the African-American Heart Failure Trial (A-HeFT) launched in 2001. A-HeFT enrolled 1,050 subjects suffering from advanced heart failure, all self-identified African Americans. A-HeFT showed that BiDil worked; in fact, it worked so spectacularly that the trial was stopped ahead of schedule. BiDil in-creased survival by an astonishing 43 percent. Hospitalizations were reduced by 39 percent. It was a momentous accomplishment for Jay Cohn, the University of Minnesota cardiologist who invented BiDil and had pioneered vasodilators as an important treatment for heart failure.

Given evidence of BiDil’s efficacy, but little evidence that race mattered to its efficacy, the FDA should have made one of two decisions: reject the request for race-specific approval or approve BiDil for all heart failure patients, regardless of race. Instead, the FDA put race at the center of its decision, sparking controversy and paving the way for a new generation of racial medicines.

No one is complaining that BiDil is available to people who will benefit from it. The problem is that BiDil was made available on the basis of race. Its racial label elicited three types of criticism: scientific, commercial, and political. I will discuss the first two controversies en route to what I consider the main problem with race-based medicine, its political implications. By claiming that race, a political grouping, is important to the marketing of drugs and that race-based drugs can reduce health disparities, which are caused primarily by social inequality, those who promote racialized medicine have made it a political issue. Yet, having made these political claims, these very advocates answer criticism by saying that we must put aside social justice concerns in order to improve minority health. This article explains why marketing pharmaceuticals on the basis of race is more likely to worsen racial inequities than cure them…

Read the entire article here.

An Inconvenient Truth: “Hispanic” is an ethnic origin, not a “race”

National Institute for Latino Policy, Inc.
2013-08-24

Nancy López, Guest Commentator and Associate Professor of Sociology
University of New Mexico

Kenneth Prewitt’s provocative August 21st New York Times commentary calls us to “fix the census archaic racial categories.” He contends that the current national statistical system is untenable because it has not kept pace with post-1965 demographic shifts. However, it is puzzling that while Dr. Prewitt chides the Census for conflating race and nationality, he proceeds to do just that.

His solution is to ask two new questions: “One based on a streamlined version of today’s ethnic and racial categories/’ and a second, separate comprehensive nationality question. This recommendation would effectively conflate race with ethnic origin as if these were one and the same thing. But the inconvenient truth is that knowing a person’s ethnicity, (for example, their cultural background, nationality or ancestry), tells you nothing about their race or their social position in society that is usually related to the meanings assigned to a conglomeration of one’s physical traits, including skin color and facial features.

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of Dr. Prewitt’s recommendation for a streamlined version of today’s ethnic and racial categories is his proposal to make Hispanics a “race.” He points to the fact that 37% of Hispanics marked “some other race” in the 2010 Census race question as proof that the question is flawed. But could it be that it is that many Hispanics or Latinos occupy an in-between racial status that precludes them from being readily identified as white, black, Asian or Native American in the U.S. context?…

Read the entire article here.

Never-Ending Story

The New York Times
2013-09-27

A. O. Scott, Chief Film Critic

‘Conversation About Race’ Has Not Brought Cultural Consensus

The “conversation about race” that public figures periodically claim to desire, the one that is always either about to happen or is being prevented from happening, has been going on, at full volume, at least since the day in 1619 when the first African slaves arrived in Jamestown. It has proceeded through every known form of discourse — passionate speeches, awkward silences, angry rants, sheepish whispers, jokes, insults, stories and songs — and just as often through double-talk, indirection and not-so-secret codes.

What are we really talking about, though? The habit of referring to it as “race” reflects a tendency toward euphemism and abstraction. Race is a biologically dubious concept and a notoriously slippery social reality, a matter of group identity and personal feelings, mutual misunderstandings and the dialectic of giving and taking offense. If that is what we are talking about, then we are not talking about the historical facts that continue to weigh heavily on present circumstances, which is to say about slavery, segregation and white supremacy.

But of course we are still talking about all that, with what seems like renewed concentration and vigor. Nor, in a year that is the sesquicentennial of the Gettysburg Address and the semicentennial of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, are we simply looking back at bygone tragedies from the standpoint of a tranquil present. The two big racially themed movies of the year, “Lee Daniels’ The Butler” and Steve McQueen’s “12 Years a Slave,” are notable for the urgency and intensity with which they unpack stories of the past, as if delivering their news of brutal bondage and stubborn discrimination for the first time…

Read the entire article here.