Mixed Race Studies

Scratching the surface: Artist Laylah Ali explores the social dynamics that lie beyond appearances

Boston Globe
2008-08-29

Cate McQuaid, Globe Correspondent

WILLIAMSTOWN – Laylah Ali doesn’t let many people into her studio.

“It’s a private space,” the artist says, welcoming a visitor. “It’s like being in my brain. I’m inviting you into my private brain space – the chaos and the mess.”

As far as chaos goes, this isn’t bad. In the basement of a building on the outskirts of the Williams College campus, where Ali teaches art, an airy studio is filled with white illustrator’s tables. Colored pencils and squat bottles of ink clutter the tables. But what catches the eye are the drawings Ali has tacked to the white walls with pushpins: Portraits, made in her signature cartoon style, of haunted figures with garish headdresses, scarification, and false beards, and smaller drawings that feature ruminative lists with oddly adorned figures drawn over them…

…Growing up in Buffalo as the daughter of an African-American father and a white mother, Ali attuned herself early to social dynamics and covert aggression. The family lived in an all-white neighborhood.

“I was the only black kid in my school,” Ali says. “I’ve been able to negotiate different social places because of that. . . . More people are seeing this now because of Barack Obama, but there have always been biracial people in the US, with the ability to move between these worlds and notice what’s different and what’s not different.

“I developed heightened powers of observation not just from curiosity,” she adds, “but for survival.”

As a child, the artist saw implicit judgment many places, and it wasn’t always black and white.

“It’s not just race. It’s also class,” Ali points out. “My mom’s family had come from some money. It was gone, but they still had the idea of what it’s like to have nice silver, a nice oriental rug. They had an aspiration from what they had lost.

“Dad’s family was from the farming Mississippi South. He grew up working the land. I keep asking him questions and finding out more things. He walked five miles to school and had no electricity at home.”

“My family is very American,” she sums up…

Read the entire article here.

Bruno Mars in Ascension

New York Times
2010-10-05

Jon Caramanica

When history books address the pop seismology of the early 21st century, a chapter will have to be set aside for a discussion of the Sheraton Waikiki in the late 1980s. That’s where Bruno Mars, then just a few years old, performed as part of a tourist-trap family band, singing doo-wop, Elvis and more. He even made a cameo as a baby Elvis in the 1992 film “Honeymoon in Vegas,” appearing as a bouffant-haired tyke in a blue jumpsuit, with a fierce hip shake.

“I can’t believe that’s my past,” Mr. Mars said in an interview before his first solo New York performance, a sold-out show at the Bowery Ballroom in late August. “I wish I could tell you me and my rock band were traveling around, strung out. No, we were a family band. Straight Partridge Family.”

Still, there’s something to be said for learning a wide repertory at a young age, and also to feel no shame in people-pleasing. It’s made Mr. Mars, 24, one of the most versatile and accessible singers in pop, with a light, soul-influenced voice that’s an easy fit in a range of styles, a universal donor. There’s nowhere he doesn’t belong…

…But his placelessness hasn’t always been an asset. Born Peter Gene Hernandez, Mr. Mars is primarily of Puerto Rican and Filipino descent, which proved to be an obstacle in his industry dealings. “I was always like, girls like me in school, how come these labels don’t like me?” he said.

An early record deal with Motown went nowhere. Race was always a concern. “Sadly, maybe that’s the way you’ve got to look at it,” he said. “I guess if I’m a product, either you’re chocolate, you’re vanilla or you’re butterscotch. You can’t be all three.” He named his debut EP, released this year, “It’s Better if You Don’t Understand”—a taunt.

“Don’t look at me—listen to my damn music,” he said. “I’m not a mutant.”…

Read the entire article here.

Curriculum corner

The Daily of The University of Washington
2010-10-01

Laurel Christensen

Despite talk of budget cuts, swelling classes and disappearing instructors, the UW is offering more than 50 new courses this quarter. These are a few unique courses now available to students…

…Intergenerational Roots: A Mixed Heritage Family Oral History Project

Offered through the School of Social Work, Intergenerational Roots: A Mixed Heritage Family Oral History Project forgoes papers and exams to explore the history of mixed-heritage families directly by interviewing people of mixed race.

Instructor Theresa Ronquillo hopes that the course will teach students new skills in art, public relations, history, interviewing and event planning, as well as to help students understand the issues faced by the mixed-heritage community.

“I consider this very much a student-driven course, so while I am here to provide structure and guidance, my expectation is for participating students to take on the challenge and just go with it,” said Ronquillo.

Open to all students, this 1-credit course takes no more than 12 students per quarter.

Ronquillo hopes to work with students who have, “a willingness to learn new skills and [to] develop [and] engage in a creative, dynamic learning community.”

Taken over three quarters, this class is designed to be continuous, culminating in an oral history art exhibit at the end of the year. Each quarter can also be taken individually.

“Fall quarter will focus on student outreach, curriculum development and networking with potential university and community partners,” said Ronquillo. Winter and spring quarters will be more focused on interviewing, community art and event planning…

Read the entire article here.

Mixed-race models ignored by British fashion industry

The Independent
2010-10-03

Emily Dugan

They are under-represented on the catwalk – so they are holding their own glamorous contest

From triumph in the White House to Olympic and Formula One garlands, via just about every stage and screen, mixed-race people have made massive leaps forward in the past decade: everywhere, it seems, except in British fashion.

Though there is no shortage of glamorous mixed-race celebrities in public life – think Lewis Hamilton, his girlfriend Nicole Scherzinger, or Thandie Newton – it’s quite a different story on the UK’s catwalks. Britain’s first modelling contest exclusively for mixed-race entrants will take place later this month amid accusations that the fashion industry is overlooking them because they are too hard to pigeonhole.

The competition, set up by Mix-d, a social enterprise aimed at tackling racism, will allow only entrants who have parents of different racial backgrounds. Bradley Lincoln, the charity’s founder and a judge in the Mix-d: Face 2010 final on 30 October, said: “I noticed that there was a problem in the fashion industry for mixed-race models who weren’t seen as black enough to be black and not white enough to be white. I don’t think it’s conscious; [the industry] will pick what they like and think is current and mixed-race models often aren’t what they think of.”…

…Researchers believe the benefits of being from different races go far beyond just good looks. Dr Michael Lewis, lead researcher in the Cardiff University study, said: “There is evidence, albeit anecdotal, that the impact [of being mixed race] goes beyond just attractiveness. This comes from the observation that, although mixed-race people make up a small proportion of the population, they are over-represented at the top level of a number of meritocratic professions, such as acting with Halle Berry, Formula One racing with Lewis Hamilton and, of course, politics with Barack Obama.”…

Read the entire article here.

Diversity That Matters: A Commitment to Social Justice

CCCC: Supporting and promoting the teaching and study of college composition and communication
2009-06-04

Annette Harris Powell, Assistant Professor of English
Bellarmine University

I teach at a university with a mission grounded in the Catholic Intellectual tradition of faith and reason and focused on the examined life as a way to encourage students to be discerning. We also teach students to become critically engaged in social justice issues that support global sustainability as it embraces “cross-cultural and inter-faith awareness and diversity.” Yet, I frequently get the following student responses to readings:

“I really can’t relate to this experience; it’s very different.”
“These kinds of things don’t really happen here.” Or,
“I don’t really understand why they live like this.”

Commentary such as this is nothing new to me—majority students, in particular, have always been somewhat resistant when asked to reflect on the limits of their own experiences. They continue to be skeptical of, or indifferent to diversity and multiculturalism. This view is doubly complicated by the apparent shifting dynamics of race in this age of “change.” There is growing popular discourse about the imminence of a post-race era. Increasing numbers of both majority students and students of color are now more resistant to “diversity talk,” often asserting that they see no need in dredging up history—“it’s a different day.” The civil rights movement was successful—there is so much more access today…

…Though it’s difficult to say with certainty what accounts for the above responses, economic and class demographics are, I suspect, one indicator. Recently, some scholars (See Jared Sexton’s Amalgamation Schemes: Antiblackness and the Critique of Multiracialism and Catherine R. Squires’s Dispatches From the Color Line: The Press and Multiracial America) have critiqued multiracialism and its attendant ambiguity as “bridges between the races.” Squires argues that “this ambiguity is about exoticism and intrigue, providing opportunities for consumers to fantasize and speculate about the Other with no expectations of critical consideration of power and racial categories.” This re-positioning of race by many Americans contributes to the conception of race as fluid and neutral. This view is acontextual and ahistorical—race and its underlying societal meaning can be manipulated so that “choice” (the decision to belong/not belong, to be fluid, to move in/out) will maintain the current paradigm of inequality. In the May 29, 2009 issue of The Chronicle Review, Rainier Spencer, a professor of anthropology argues that “what popular wisdom tells us is the supposed twilight of how Americans have thought about race is merely a minor tweaking of the same old racial hierarchy that has kept African-Americans at the bottom of our paradigm since its very inception. Multiracial ideology simply represents the latest means of facilitating and upholding that hierarchy—while claiming quite disingenuously to be doing the opposite” (B5). I would suggest that students and scholars in the field question this facile conception of race…

Read the entire article here.

Colorblind parents could handicap their biracial kids

The Grio
2010-09-16

Jennifer H. Cunningham

When he was still a toddler, Rebecca Romo’s son, Emilio asked her why his skin was darker than hers.

The now 8-year-old Emilio, who is of Mexican and African-American heritage, also went through a stage where he hated his hair, telling his mother that he wished it was straight and blonde instead of curly and brown.

Romo realized that Emilio had been exposed to — and possibly internalized — what many perceive to be a normal standard of appearance. It was a standard that didn’t look like him.

“I had to reinforce a positive image that curly hair was beautiful,” said Romo, Mexican-American sociology doctoral student at University of California, Santa Barbara. “I would have to constantly tell him that. I realized that I had to start with him very young in fostering a positive self-image.”…

…Non-African-American mothers with biracial children can struggle not only with issues like hair and skin tone, but also with intangible matters, like fostering a sense of African-American identity or heritage in their children. And that can be especially difficult for single, non-African-American mothers.

“To me, honesty and being straightforward is really critical,” said G. Reginald Daniel, Ph.D, professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “When a child raises a question, it needs to be addressed immediately.”

Daniel said it is key that parents address their children’s questions about race, racial differences and racism in an empathetic manner, but also in a way that the child can understand. They may believe that by not addressing the child’s query that they are shielding the child or sharing their pain. But in reality, ignoring their concerns can do the exact opposite…

Read the entire article here.

The Language of Ham and the Language of Cain: “Dialect” and Linguistic Hybridity in the Work of Adam Small

The Journal of Commonwealth Literature
Volume 45, Number 3 (September 2010)
pages 389-408
DOI: 10.1177/0021989410377550

Nicole Devarenne, Lecturer in English
University of Dundee, Scotland, United Kingdom

The “coloured” South African writer Adam Small has made an important and largely unrecognized contribution to anti-apartheid literature in Afrikaans. His pioneering use of “Kaaps” (a linguistic variety spoken by “coloured” Afrikaners at the Cape) in his poetry and plays complicated the racial designation of Afrikaans as a “white” language and challenged the dominance of the “white” Afrikaans literary tradition. In a literature where the variety used by the white nationalist government was also that used by (albeit some of them dissident) Afrikaans writers, he created an appetite and appreciation for vernacular language as a medium of resistance against white supremacy. His work has helped to make possible a continuing investment by Afrikaans writers (white as well as “coloured”) in non-standard language as resistance to cultural imperialism and nationalism. During apartheid, however, he faced considerable criticism for his use of what was seen as a degraded and degrading “dialect”, and for his ostensible complicity in apartheid as a self-avowed “brown Afrikaner”. This article examines some of the difficulties which faced “coloured”Afrikaans writers during apartheid, taking Small as a specific example of a writer whose career displays the impact of the collision between “coloured” separatism and a politically pragmatic universalism, and proposes a reconsideration of his work as a subversive, ironic and ground-breaking intervention in South African literature.

Read or purchase the article here.

Mixed Is/Mixed Ain’t

Mixed Dreams: towards a radical multiracial/ethnic movement
2010-08-09

Nicole Asong Nfonoyim, Assistant Director, Multicultural Resource Center and Africana Community Coordinator
Oberlin College

…As someone who has never passed as anything other than black (and maybe a lil’ somethin’ else from time to time, but always black), I was surprised to find just how much of Birdie’s story resonated with me—the idea that our mixed bodies become at once the canvas and the mirror upon which others cast their perceptions of who we are. At the same time, I kept wanting to get inside Cole’s head. I wanted to hear her side of the story—the story of the sister “left behind”—the sister who’s “black” body could not be erased or so easily forgotten. Instead of feeling like Birdie, I found I felt much more like Cole. We only hear about Cole through Birdie and see her through Birdie’s eyes. Birdie seems envious of the ease with which her sister can pass through and into the black community, while she struggles to make her blackness visible. Ultimately, Birdie passes as white, Cole passes as black.

Lately, this idea of passing has been nagging me. Racial ambiguity and passing are big issues in our multi experiences, yet  are they prerequisites? How do our current conceptions of passing support the centering of white/non-white identities in the mixed community? Can we think of passing as multidirectional—not just passing as white, but also the ability to pass as black, Asian, Latin@ or even races/ethnicities we don’t identify with at all?…

Read the entire essay here.

America’s Changing Color Lines: Immigration, Race/Ethnicity, and Multiracial Identification

Annual Review of Sociology
Volume 30 (August 2004)
pages 221–242
DOI: 10.1146/annurev.soc.30.012703.110519

Jennifer Lee, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of California, Irvine

Frank D. Bean, Chancellor’s Professor of Sociology and Economics; Director of the Center for Research on Immigration, Population, and Public Policy
University of California, Irvine

Over the past four decades, immigration has increased the racial and ethnic diversity in the United States. Once a mainly biracial society with a large white majority and relatively small black minority—and an impenetrable color line dividing these groups—the United States is now a society composed of multiple racial and ethnic groups. Along with increased immigration are rises in the rates of racial/ethnic intermarriage, which in turn have led to a sizeable and growing multiracial population. Currently, 1 in 40 persons identifies himself or herself as multiracial, and this figure could soar to 1 in 5 by the year 2050. Increased racial and ethnic diversity brought about by the new immigration, rising intermarriage, and patterns of multiracial identification may be moving the nation far beyond the traditional and relatively persistent black/white color line. In this chapter, we review the extant theories and recent findings concerning immigration, intermarriage, and multiracial identification, and consider the implications for America’s changing color lines. In particular, we assess whether racial boundaries are fading for all groups or whether America’s newcomers are simply crossing over the color line rather than helping to eradicate it.

Read the entire article here.

Race-ing Performativity through Transculturation, Taste and the Mulata Body

Theatre Research International
Volume 27, Number 2 (2002)
pages 136-152
DOI: 10.1017/S0307883302000226

Alicia Arrizón, Professor of Women’s Studies
University of California, Riverside

A Cuban cocktail called mulata inspires an examination of the mulata body. Beyond an analysis of the cocktail as a commercial commodity, the mulata body can be placed within an intercultural space shaped by the processes of colonization, slavery and race relations. By examining the grammars in the mulata cocktail, the discussion moves the subject through other texts and discourses in order to mediate the mulata’s embodied genealogy as a form of transculturation. As a hybrid body that inhabits a ‘racialized’ performativity, the mulata’s subaltern agency is imagined beyond the exoticism charged to its presence in the Latin American and Caribbean contexts. A closer look at the mulata body helps to trace not only the process of objecthood affected by masculinist power and desire, but also by the way the process of subjecthood is performatively achieved.

Read or purchase the article here.