Mixed Race Studies

1.1 But Where are You Really From? Part IV: Oh, really? You were born in Guelph?

Schema Magazine
Schema In-Depth
2009-08-03

Araba Ocran-Caesar, Guest Contributor

Perhaps growing up in Vancouver has changed the way I approach the question, “But where are you really from?” There is no doubt that my geographical position in this country changes the climate in which that question is asked. Since I’ve had the opportunity to live and work in Toronto, I have been able to switch gears and not view this infamous question as such a nagging issue. Some might say that it’s a compliment to be asked because that means people are genuinely interested in me and my origins. Hmm. Not so much.

Because so many Canadians are from immigrant families I rarely thought it was unusual for people to ask about my background. It was only when people started to focus on one aspect of my ancestry that I caught on to some other, deeply rooted motivations. My heritage is European, African and Caribbean; I do not place an emphasis on any one culture over another (but let me tell you, other people do). In my case, all components of my heritage make me who I am, and, yes, over time I have felt offended when people pick apart my African and Caribbean backgrounds. Let me explain further: Once my “blackness” is confirmed, the revelation is followed up with labels and snap judgements. It’s painfully evident that my Welsh heritage is not tackled with the same stereotyping determination. Fortunately, every now and again, the odd person appears with whom I can dialogue and we both walk away learning something about each other…

…Perhaps you are all familiar with the “one drop” philosophy, adopted by American slave owners. Essentially, as long as an individual had even one drop of African blood, that individual was considered Black, regardless of what could sometimes be a very mixed lineage. Well, the “one drop” concept is, in some ways, alive and well today and is the unspoken subtext that spurs someone to ask “What are you,” when I am clearly and visibly something other than white. So possibly the question could more precisely be phrased as “What part of you is black?” Not, “Where are you from?” After all, when I truthfully answer with Guelph, Ontario, no one is never satisfied!…

Read the entire article here.

See Also:

• Intro: But Where are You Really From? by Founding Senior Editor Jen Sookfong Lee
• Part I : Guessing Game by Guest Contributor Mauree Aki Matsuska
• Part II : I Come From A Land Down Under (Or a Song by Men In Hats?) by Guest Contributor Naomi Ward
• Part III: Kinda Chinese by Guest Contributor Cedric Sam
• Part V: Same same, but different by Guest Contributor Julia Lin
• Part VI: Really Not That Simple by Guest Contributor Paul Dhillon

The Obama Era: A New Age in American Politics

The Huffington Post
2012-12-05

Brandon Hill
Stanford University

Barack Obama’s elections—both 2008 and 2012—have inaugurated a new political reality in America. He has rewritten history in two consecutive elections, and his groundbreaking victories will forever change the game of politics in our country. Before 2008 the political process was perceived as exclusive and elusive, accessible to only a few privileged players. But after two presidential elections of unprecedented campaign involvement and voter turnout, historically soft-spoken and underrepresented groups like African-Americans, Hispanics, gays, women, and young people are now reclaiming ownership of their political destinies. And the revolution is only just beginning.

Welcome to the Obama era.

President Obama has reengineered America’s political atmosphere, where political inclusion has now replaced the status quo. Obama brings a new face to political leadership. He is a refreshing departure from the markedly un-diverse brand of presidents and politicians that preceded him. He is real and relatable and able to reach more people, which encourages new groups to become engaged in the political process. In the Obama era, politics is no longer an enterprise reserved for old balding White men. It is no longer an old boys’ network or a country club aristocracy. Instead, it is a democracy built for and by the everyday American, and it is this inclusiveness that is politically energizing young people, women, and communities of color…

…Obama connects with a broader spectrum of people than past candidates and presidents have. Reagan alienated Black voters with his Welfare Queen caricature. Romney dyed his face orange trying to appeal to Hispanic Univision viewers. Bush refused to let Hurricane Katrina ruin the end of his vacation, surveying the ruined low-income communities from the comfort of Air Force One instead of consoling families on the ground. These types of blunders make it clear why many groups historically have felt disconnected from political leadership.

Obama’s massive appeal to minorities, women, and youth is that he is relatable. He’s real. Little Black boys find confidence in the fact that the president’s hair texture is the same as theirs. Latino parents find assurance in the fact that their president speaks their native tongue. Middle age women find solace in the fact that their president has two young daughters and will protect a woman’s right to her own body. College students across the nation find inspiration in the fact that their president can shoot the breeze with foreign heads of state, shoot down terrorist masterminds, and shoot a wicked jump shot all at the same time. Obama has both swagger and substance, a potent combination that prior commanders in chief have lacked. It’s simple. More people feel connected to the political process because now more people feel connected to their political leader.

The Obama era is a new age that politically empowers the people that the political process has historically overlooked. It is an age where those who were once voiceless have become the most vocal; where the most apathetic have claimed significant authority. Now that minorities and women and youth have taken the reins in the past two elections, I don’t see this trend changing any time soon…

Read the entire article here.

No longer your father’s electorate

The Los Angeles Times
2012-11-08

Paul West, Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — Even more than the election that made Barack Obama the first black president, the one that returned him to office sent an unmistakable signal that the hegemony of the straight white male in America is over.

The long drive for broader social participation by all Americans reached a turning point in the 2012 election, which is likely to go down as a watershed in the nation’s social and political evolution — and not just because in some states voters approved of same-sex marriage for the first time.

 On Tuesday, Obama received the votes of barely 1 in 3 white males. That too was historic. It almost certainly was an all-time low for the winner of a presidential election that did not include a major third-party candidate.

“We’re not in the ’50s any more,” said William Frey, a Brookings Institution demographer. “This election makes it clear that a single focus directed at white males, or at the white population in general, is not going to do it. And it’s not going to do it when the other party is focusing on energizing everybody else.”…

… “Obama lost a lot of votes among whites,” said Matt Barreto, a University of Washington political scientist. “It was only because of high black turnout and the highest Latino turnout ever for a Democratic president that he won.”

Obama planted his base in an America that is inexorably becoming more diverse. If left unchecked by Republicans, these demographic trends would give the Democrats a significant edge in future presidential elections.

Latinos were an essential element of Obama’s victories in the battlegrounds of Nevada and Colorado. States once considered reliably Republican in presidential elections will probably become highly competitive because of burgeoning Latino populations, sometimes in combination with large African American populations. North Carolina, where Obama won narrowly in 2008 and came close this time, is one. The Deep South state of Georgia is another. Texas and Arizona in the Southwest are future swing states — by 2020, if not sooner…

Read the entire article here.

1.1 But Where are You Really From? Intro

Schema Magazine
Schema In-Depth
2009-05-05

Jen Sookfong Lee, Founding Senior Editor

With no easy answer to this often complicated question, author of End of East, Jen Sookfong Lee, begins our inaugural special series, featuring no less than SIX highly unique “But where are you really from?” stories.

A seemingly innocent question, one that many people would never even imagine to contain layers of subtext or carry with it a history of exclusion and authenticity. “But where are you really from?” rarely appears in a conversation all by itself. It’s the sum in a complicated equation that reaches deep into personal identity, diversity and belonging.

 Many of us know that feeling, that combination of anger, resentment, hesitation and confusion that bubbles up from your gut whenever someone asks you the question, “Where are you from?” Yes, it’s a simple question, and, yes, you know that the answer can be simple as well, but that’s not the problem. Before you even open your mouth to respond, a very familiar thought runs circles inside your head, “No matter what I say, this person will not understand.”

Canada is a great country. I love living here. I love that I was born and educated here. I’m attached to cold winters and ice hockey and the very particular delights of poutine and the polar bear swim (not that I’ve ever participated in the polar bear swim, but I appreciate the urge that propels half-naked people to run screaming into frigid bodies of water on New Year’s Day, the urge, that is, to flout the cold and thumb my nose at my fellow Canadians who run away to Arizona every holiday season to play golf in short pants). I love that we’re a country built on immigration, a country where indigenous peoples and newcomers have the opportunity to live together and constantly renew the pains and processes of diversity, which is the very thing that marks us as uniquely Canadian and which pushes us to learn and re-learn what it means to be part of this human community…

Read the entire article here.

See Also:

• Part I : Guessing Game by Guest Contributor Mauree Aki Matsuska
• Part II : I Come From A Land Down Under (Or a Song by Men In Hats?) by Guest Contributor Naomi Ward
• Part III: Kinda Chinese by Guest Contributor Cedric Sam
• Part IV : Oh, really? You were born in Guelph? by Guest Contributor Araba Ocran-Caesar
• Part V: Same same, but different by Guest Contributor Julia Lin
• Part VI: Really Not That Simple by Guest Contributor Paul Dhillon

Why Do Pacific People with Multiple Ethnic Affiliations Have Poorer Subjective Wellbeing? Negative Ingroup Affect Mediates the Identity Tension Effect

Social Indicators Research
Published online: December 2012
18 pages
DOI: 10.1007/s11205-012-0220-8

Sam Manuela
Department of Psychology
University of Auckland

Chris G. Sibley, Senior Lecturer in Psychology
University of Auckland

We argue that multi-ethnic affiliation as a member of both the Pacific and majority (European) group creates tension in psychological wellbeing for Pacific peoples of mixed ancestry. Study 1 showed that multi-ethnic Pacific/non-Pacific people were lower in Pacific Familial Wellbeing relative to mono-ethnic Pacific and multi-ethnic Pacific/Pacific people (n = 586). Study 2 replicated this effect in a New Zealand (NZ) national probability sample using a measure of self-esteem (n = 276). Study 2 also modelled the mechanism driving the identity tension effect, and showed that group differences in negative affect toward Pacific peoples fully mediated the effect of ethnic mixed or mono-ethnic group affiliation on self-esteem. This currently affects the one-third of Pacific people who identify as Pacific/non-Pacific in NZ and occurs because multi-ethnic identification promotes the endorsement of negative societal attitudes toward Pacific peoples. Our model indicates that endorsement of such attitudes produces a more negative self-evaluation and generally corrodes subjective wellbeing and family integration. Population projections indicate that this potentially at-risk Pacific/non-Pacific group may increase dramatically in subsequent generations (upwards of 3.3% of the population by 2026). Implications for the study of Pacific wellbeing, and avenues for applied research targeting this newly-identified emerging social problem are discussed.

Read the entire article here.

Eric Garcetti invokes Latino-Jewish ancestry in mayor’s race

The Los Angeles Times
2013-01-02

Michael Finnegan

Working a recent breakfast gathering of business owners in Northridge, Los Angeles mayoral contender Eric Garcetti introduced himself in Hindi when a Sikh businessman approached.

A few hours later, Garcetti donned a colorful Peruvian headpiece with ear flaps as he spoke Spanish with immigrants on the steps of City Hall, part of a show of solidarity for designating a stretch of Hollywood’s Vine Street as “Peru Village.”

After lunch, Garcetti joined rabbis at a City Hall menorah lighting. Wearing a yarmulke, the Hollywood-area councilman sang Hanukkah songs in Hebrew, English and Spanish. “Toda la familia,” Garcetti said as the group huddled for a photo.

A top contender to succeed Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Garcetti prides himself on his ease with the city’s diverse cultures. He sees his mixed ancestry (“I have an Italian last name, and I’m half Mexican and half Jewish,” he says) as a powerful part of his appeal in a city where voters for decades have split along racial and ethnic lines in mayoral elections…

Read the entire article here.

Denying Brazil (Review)

African Film Festival: More than just a festival
Essays & Articles
2002

John D. H. Downing, Professor Emeritus of International Communication
Southern Illinois University

The documentary, Denying Brazil, is a plain-speaking and fascinating unmasking of the white racism endemic in Brazilian television’s most popular genre, which in the USA we would call the soap opera, but which throughout Latin America is known as the telenovela.
 
The telenovela is more than a soap opera. It has a centrality in everyday life in much of Latin America way beyond its cousin in the USA. At times a series will comment very directly on current events, rather like the special “West Wing” episode produced after 9/11. People are glued to the set across social classes, the audience includes lots of men as well as women — and we’re talking prime time, not daytime. Telenovelas are not only amazingly prominent, but also have a format different to soap operas. Soaps usually run once a week and often for years on end, whereas telenovelas run every weekday night for some months and then come to a final climax.

The genre is now worldwide. Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela, in particular, but also other Latin American countries even export their telenovelas quite successfully around the world. Exclusive US rights to the plot-concept of Colombia’s hugely popular “Ugly Betty (Betty La Fea)” were not long ago sold for serious money. In other words, when we’re talking telenovelas, we’re talking about something ultra high profile.

So how they portray— or don’t— people of color is a really big deal in our multi-colored hemisphere. There have been some hard-hitting documentaries on racism in US media, such as the late Marlon Riggs’ Ethnic Notions and Color Adjustment, and Deborah Gee’s Slaying The Dragon. In Denying Brazil Brazilian director Joel Zito Araújo zeroes in on the very same issue: persistent white racism in media, with Brazilian telenovelas — usually acknowledged as the best there are in Latin America — in close-up…

…To properly grasp the documentary’s message, one needs to take a step back and understand the way race works in Brazil and many Latin American nations. In the USA for most purposes, there is a binary code — one is either black or white, however light-skinned. In much of Latin America, however, the code that dominates is one which puts value on the lightness of skin color, the nearness to being white.
 
This code obviously still prizes being white as the index of both beauty and intelligence, and disfavors being black as signifying unattractiveness and stupidity, but there is no fixed In-Out as there is in the USA. There is instead a microscopically detailed ladder of racial acceptability, where the more you can “whiten” yourself the better things get for you. It is referred to as branqueamento in Portuguese, blanqueamiento in Spanish and can be translated to whitening in English.
 
Over the past hundred years this different system has permitted many Latin American commentators to claim that racism is peculiar to the USA, and that Brazil, for instance, is a “racial democracy” or that Venezuela is a “coffee-colored” country where lots of folk are at least a little mixed in origin, so being lack doesn’t matter. Denying Brazil rips the mask off this comforting myth…

Read the entire review here.

A Rising Hockey Star With N.B.A. DNA

The New York Times
2012-12-20

Jeff Z. Klein

Seth Jones probably should have wound up a basketball player. He is tall, with a great vertical leap, and his father is Popeye Jones, who played 11 years in the N.B.A. and is now an assistant coach with the Nets.

But instead, Seth Jones, 18, is projected to be a top pick in the N.H.L. draft and may be on his way to becoming hockey’s first African-American star.

“I’d be shocked myself if I heard a story like that,” Jones said, when asked if people are surprised by the combination of a basketball father and a hockey son. “Me and my two brothers all play hockey, so it was weird, I guess, that none of us played basketball.”…

…Now in his first year with the Portland Winter Hawks of the Western Hockey League, Jones has 28 points in 31 games, third among rookies, and a plus-27 mark, fourth among all players. On the ice he is a commanding presence, a hard hitter. But more often he is the rare defenseman who can control a game’s tempo with his stickhandling and passing — a “full-package defenseman,” in the words of Phil Housley, the United States coach.

Probably not what anyone expected from a son of Popeye Jones…

…The N.H.L., mired in a lockout and struggling to renew fan interest, would probably welcome the marketing potential of a young African-American star, especially if Jones were to play, say, in Brooklyn when the Islanders move there in 2015.

Seth, whose mother, Amy, is white, said he would prefer that race not be part of the conversation when it comes to his hockey career.

“I don’t want to be looked at as an African-American, you know?” he said. “I want to be looked at as someone who has good character, and people know me for the person I am, not my color.”…

Read the entire article here.

Changing Families

Sh’ma: A Journal of Jewish Ideas
December 2007

Caryn Aviv, Senior Instructor in Secular Jewish Society & Civilization
University of Colorado, Boulder

A Different Sexual Revolution

The Colors of Jews: Racial Politics and Radical Diasporism, by Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz, Indiana University Press, 2007. 320 pages

The Family Flamboyant: Race Politics, Queer Families, Jewish Lives, by Marla Brettschneider, SUNY Press, 2006. 232 pages

Two new books provide food for thought about contemporary Jewish identities in the United States. The Family Flamboyant: Race Politics, Queer Families, Jewish Lives by Marla Brettschneider, and The Colors of Jews: Racial Politics and Radical Diasporism, by Melanie Kaye Kantrowitz, have much in common. Both books are informed by the authors’ deep commitment to social justice, their insights as Ashkenazi Jewish lesbians, and their experiences as coalition organizers. And both authors offer a nuanced, passionate, and sophisticated analysis of slippery Jewish identities in relationship to racial politics and inequality in the United States.

Each author inserts compelling autobiographical experiences into their political analyses. Brettschneider reveals the unsavory and overt racism and homophobia of the adoption system in the United States based on her own experiences of trying to adopt as an outspoken Jewish lesbian. Kaye/Kantrowitz draws upon her experiences of living in diverse places in the U.S., her struggles for racial and economic justice, and her memories of growing up in a secular, Yiddish-inflected family in Brooklyn. And both books provide meticulously documented empirical and theoretical evidence for the arguments they advance, offering a veritable bibliographic trove of resources for scholars and lay readers interested in these literatures…

Read the entire review here.

The Pedagogy of the Meaning of Racism: Reconciling a Discordant Discourse

Social Work: A Journal of the National Association of Social Workers
Volume 57, Issue 3 (July 2012)
pages 225-234
DOI: 10.1093/sw/sws009

Carlos Hoyt, Jr., MSW, LICSW, Associate Dean of Students
Phillips Academy Andover, Andover, Massachusetts

Racism is a term on which a great deal of discourse does and should turn in all realms of social work theory, practice, policy, and research. Because it is a concept heavily freighted with multiple and conflicting interpretations and used in a wide variety of ways, the idea and action of racism is not easy to teach or learn in a simple and straightforward manner. It is a term the meaning of which has been the subject of so much argument and mutation that its utility as a clear and reliable descriptor of a crucial form of ideology or behavior is less than certain. In this article, an analysis of the dispute over the proper definition of racism is undertaken, and an approach to teaching about the term is offered in an effort to provide both teachers and students with a clear, consistent, and useful understanding of this important and challenging phenomenon.

Having taught courses in which the concept of racism is a phenomenon of critical focus, I have been consistently struck by the challenge students confront when the subject of how to define this term becomes a topic of consideration and discussion. Although several key concepts in the study of diversity, social bias, and social justice are somewhat nebulous and overlapping (for example, “culture,” “race,” and “ethnicity”), there is perhaps no term that provokes the level of confusion, consternation, and conflict that the term “racism” does. As will be seen in this article, this is due to the dispute that has destabilized use of the term for much of its short history and boils down to a sharp disagreement among both professionals and laypeople about whether the original definition of racism, the belief in the superiority/inferiority of people based on racial identity, should be revised to exclusively and strictly mean the use of power to preserve and perpetuate the advantages of the dominant social identity group—that is, white people in American society.

In this article, an analysis of the dispute about the definition of racism within academia will be conducted to elucidate the arguments by those who promote the revised definition and those who resist the revision. Following this analysis, based on the strengths and weaknesses of each, a pedagogical approach to teaching the definition of racism that resolves the dispute will be presented. At the outset it will be useful to provide the definitions of key terms in the discourse on racism. The following definitions, while not copied verbatim from any dictionary, reflect what can be found in standard dictionaries and usage and will serve as the meanings of the terms used in this article.

DEFINITIONS OF CRITICAL TERMS IN THE DISCOURSE ON RACISM

Prejudice—preconceived opinion not based on reason or actual experience; bias, partiality.

Racism—(original definition) the belief that all members of a purported race possess characteristics, abilities, or qualities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or other races. Racism is a particular form of prejudice defined by preconceived erroneous beliefs about race and members of racial groups.

If one is to be thoroughgoing a la Muir, then racism is in evidence at the point that one subscribes to the notion of race itself, because belief in race is the fallacious prerequisite for the belief in differences between races (Muir, 1993).

Power—the capacity to exert force on or over something or someone.

Oppression—the exercise of authority or power in a burdensome, cruel, or unjust manner.

With a clear understanding of these terms as the atomic elements of the discourse on the definition of racism, we can proceed with an elucidation of the problem…

Read or purchase the article here.