Mixed Race Studies

Shades of Complexity: A History of Racial Passing

Literature and Digital Diversity
Department of English
Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts
2017-12-11

Elizabeth Maddock Dillon, Professor of English

Sarah Connell, Assistant Director, Women Writers Project

This archival exhibit was created by Vanessa Gregorchik in Literature and Digital Diversity, fall 2017.

Introduction

On the surface, race appears as a simple category to quantify—the color of one’s skin, the box one circles on the census, even the percentage that appears on an at-home DNA testing kit. But the reality of one’s racial identity is hardly objective. This archive outlines the stories of individuals who chose to “pass” as a different race, or as a portion of their racial background, often in pursuit of societal advancement that their given race prevented them from obtaining. The decision to accept or deny any aspect of one’s identity is a complex and difficult decision, and this collection aims to educate the public on those challenges and intricacies faced by those of multiracial backgrounds in both the era of segregation and today.

Organization

This archive is structured around the environments and dominant factors in each individual’s decision to pass—including emancipation, education, and employment. This division is not intended to claim that these are the sole or even intentional reasons to racially pass, but rather to thematically organize stories that share similar domains. To best tell the narrative of both the individuals and the broader social climate they lived in, I collected individual and family portraits, illustrations, and newspaper clippings. I aimed to represent both the singular person and the communities they were joining or leaving…

Read this entire digital archive here.

The Ineradicable Color-Line: Danzy Senna’s “New People”

Los Angeles Review of Books
2017-08-01

Gabrielle Bellot, Staff Writer
Literary Hub

Danzy Senna, New People, A Novel (New York: Riverhead, 2017)

IN LONDON IN JULY, at the dawn of a new century, W. E. B. Du Bois spoke in front the Pan-African Conference about the challenges of the era to come. “[T]he problem of the Twentieth Century,” he said, in a statement that would later appear in and come to define his epochal collection of essays, The Souls of Black Folk, “is the problem of the color-line.” The idea of describing American antiblack racial segregation by the simple, if not even deceptively charming, term color-line, had appeared two decades earlier in the title of Frederick Douglass’s 1881 essay, “The Color Line,” but it would come to be associated particularly with The Souls of Black Folk. So seductive was the phrase for Du Bois that he used it two more times to bookend an essay in the book, “Of the Dawn of Freedom,” but it was, of course, more than a memorable line. The color-line was as explicit as it was psychic, delineated in signs, denials, and public executions as much as it was in one’s choice of path, one’s footfalls, one’s bones and dreams. Racism is merely obvious when it becomes visible; its potential existence follows us, invisibly and phantasmally, when we’ve come to expect it…

The problem of the 21st century in the United States is still the color-line, a line that extends back into prior centuries. This is the age of identity — as all ages have been, really, but the very notions of what it means to have an identity or to be something are now, more than ever, at the fore. But even as we have blurred racial lines in ways scarcely imaginable when The Souls of Black Folk appeared in 1903, we still have our clear-cut demarcations. And in many ways, lines of color, alongside the complexities of what it means to pass as one thing or another, may be what best defines Danzy Senna’s epochal — in its most literal sense — new novel, New People. Du Bois is not an explicit presence in the novel, yet his thematic and political concerns — updated, as it were, for this new era — haunt New People. These themes of passing and racial demarcations informed Senna’s first novel, Caucasia, as well. New People also explores an idea common in Percival Everett’s fiction — the two, incidentally, are married — of reclaiming and repackaging racial stereotypes as a person of color…

Read the entire review here.

Interview: Phoebe Boswell “I always want drawings to be open and moving and shifting”

Moving Histories: History and Memory through the Moving Image and its dialogue with other media
2017-04-13

Yvette Greslé

Phoebe Boswell, wall drawing, “For Every Real Word Spoken”, Tiwani Contemporary, 2017. © Sylvain Deleu, courtesy of the artist and Tiwani Contemporary.

This interview (Yvette Greslé and Phoebe Boswell) was conducted at Tiwani Contemporary, 14 March 2017.

Phoebe Boswell was born in 1982 in Nairobi, Kenya and raised, as an expatriate, in the Middle East. Boswell, who is now based in London, studied painting at the Slade School of Fine Art and 2D Animation at Central St Martins. Her dialogue with her Gikuyu-Kenyan born mother (Joyce) and British-Kenyan (Timothy) father underpins her first major multimedia installation The Matter of Memory (2014) shown, together with work by John Akomfrah and Rashaad Newsome, at Carroll/Fletcher (London) in 2014. In 2015, The Matter of Memory was shown at the Gothenburg International Biennial for Contemporary Art (GIBCA) curated by Elvira Dyangani Ose. A second major multimedia installation, Mutumia (2016) was commissioned and produced for the Biennial of Moving Images at the Centre d’Art Contemporain in Geneva in 2016. In 2017, Mutumia was exhibited in Kiev for the Future Generation Art Prize for which Boswell was shortlisted; and subsequently awarded the Special Prize which supports a residency program. In addition to The Matter of Memory and Mutumia, Boswell has produced a number of works notably Prologue: The Lizard of Unmarriedness (It’s All About How You Tell It) and The Stranger in the Village (both 2015). She was awarded a Sky Academy Arts Scholarship in 2012 and has been an artist-in-residence at the Florence Trust and the Konstepidemin, Gothenburg (2015). Since 2016 she has been an artist-in-residence at Somerset House (London). Boswell’s film Dear Mr Shakespeare, directed by Shola Amoo, was selected for the Sundance Film Festival in 2017. The medium of drawing, as an art practice encompassing animation, is central to Boswell’s oeuvre thus far. Her drawing work is also situated in relation to audience participation; architectural and spatial environments; video art; sound; and found objects and materials.

Yvette Greslé: What was the impetus for the work produced for For Every Real Word Spoken at Tiwani Contemporary? It is preceded by Mutumia and emerges from this work?

Phoebe Boswell: A friend of mine sent me an image of naked, older African women lying in a dirt path in Uganda. My own immediate visceral reaction was: “What’s happening to these women? What’s being done to them? How are they being violated?” I was horrified by this image. Then, my friend sent me the story of the photograph and I discovered that these were Acholi women. The Acholi people had been fighting for their land rights for a long time. On this specific day, the government had sent in people to physically remove people. The women decided: “Enough is enough, we’re going to do something”. They took off their clothes. It’s a taboo for men to see women naked, to see their mothers naked. So they took off their clothes and lay down in the path. They affected what happened next. They were not removed from the land that day. Actually, the image that I was looking at is a very heroic image but my conditioning made me read the naked female body and black women’s bodies through the filter of my own conditioning. I was so sure that this was a terrible image…

Read the entire interview here.

My resolution for 2018 is to trace the family who don’t yet know I exist

The Guardian
2017-12-30

Georgina Lawton

Two years ago I discovered I was not related to my white father. Now, I intend to find out the origins of my blackness

When it comes to setting new year’s resolutions, I am not that bothered about losing weight, exercising more, or becoming more productive (although it would be good to finally get a grip on all those things). Instead, I have decided to make 2018 the year in which I make a serious, wholehearted attempt to trace a family who don’t yet know I exist, and to find out once and for all, in as much detail as I can, the origins of my blackness.

No one realises the difficult nature of this task more than me. As I have previously written, I was raised by two white parents who always assured me that I was related to them both, which led me to identify as white until I was about 15.

The nadir of my life came almost two years ago, when my dad died and a subsequent DNA test confirmed my deepest fears, which had wrapped themselves around my life like the tendrils of a poisonous plant. I was not related to my fantastic father; my mother had been unfaithful with a man she knows little about. It had never been spoken about…

Read the entire article here.

On Growing Up Mexican Italian American

the Parent Voice
2018-01-08

Gino Pellegrini

I became aware of the world around me during the Reagan era in a middle-class, conservative, predominantly white suburb of Los Angeles.

Growing up Mexican Italian American in this context was difficult and dissonant for me. If I had grown up in a different place or class, my mixed experience might have been very different, but then I would not have this story to tell…

Read the entire article here.

An Interview and a Snapshot

Neither/Both LLC: Counseling for Mixed individuals and interracial families
Minneapolis, Minnesota
2018-01-2018

Lola Osunkoya, MA, LPCC

Lola Osunkoya

Recently, I was contacted by someone out of state who wanted to interview me for a documentary they are filming for their thesis. They needed a professional or expert to discuss Mixed identity. I said no a couple of times due to time constraints as well as concerns about the project. A portion was sent to me that featured a White mother offering commentary about her Mixed children that was problematic—tone deaf comments about “good hair” and her perspective that her kids had no problems with their racial identity. After being reassured that this was exactly why they were seeking my perspective to add, I agreed to answer their questions via email.

I thought my answers turned out to be a pretty good snapshot of where I was at in December 2017 in the way I would describe my perspectives and experiences. It’s always tricky as a therapist to answer personal questions. Part of me wants to be completely transparent when talking about being Mixed, and part of me knows I need to take good care of my boundaries. It’s a flexible balance. The questions and my answers:

Read the entire article here.

‘You’re basically white’: my blackness on debate

Media Diversified
2017-09-11

Sam Kaner
Oxford, England

Sam Kaner talks about experiences of racialization as a person of mixed heritage

‘You’re basically white’

A phrase I frequently heard from white students at my school. They would tell me this after I had crossed a particular threshold in my relationship with them where their racialization of me as Other would soften. It was the point at which they questioned whether they should confer the same amount of respect to me as their white friends, operating under the assumption that being a light-skinned biracial person, I would receive their newfound perception of me as a compliment.

I recently fell into an argument with a white person because they had insisted to me that Mariah Carey couldn’t be black; she didn’t look black, she wouldn’t be racialized as black, and therefore, she should stop claiming to be something she’s not.

I find it concerning how white people will repeatedly make attempts to determine and declare who may claim blackness and who may not; and I wonder, in doing so, if they have ever instead critically considered how this interjection recalls the colonial imposition of blackness as something non-negotiable and as a marker of subjugation…

Read the entire article here.

Elizabeth Warren’s Native American problem goes beyond politics

The Boston Globe
2018-01-19

Annie Linskey, Chief national correspondent

Keith Bedford/Globe Staff Senator Elizabeth Warren says now, as she has from the first days of her public life, that she based her assertions about her heritage on her reasonable trust in what she was told about her ancestry as a child.

WASHINGTON — There’s a ghost haunting Elizabeth Warren as she ramps up for a possible 2020 presidential bid and a reelection campaign in Massachusetts this year: her enduring and undocumented claims of Native American ancestry.

Warren says now, as she has from the first days of her public life, that she based her assertions on family lore, on her reasonable trust in what she was told about her ancestry as a child.

“I know who I am,” she said in a recent interview with the Globe.

But that self-awareness may not be enough, as her political ambitions blossom. She’s taken flak from the right for years as a “fake Indian,” including taunts from President Trump, who derisively calls her “Pocahontas.’’ That clamor from the right will only grow with her increasing prominence…

…Warren’s family has ties to Oklahoma dating from the end of the 19th century — before it was a state. Oklahoma is now home to more than 35 federally recognized tribes, and it’s common for people there to claim Native American ancestry, often based on little more than family mythology. That’s partially because there is, for some, a certain mystique in popular culture associated with American Indian ties and many families liked to include those ties in their lore.

But claiming Native blood without evidence cuts to the very core of Native American identity because it usurps the rights American Indians have to define their own people and nations, according to native advocates.

“The problem with Elizabeth Warren is she is not the average wannabe,” said David Cornsilk, a Cherokee historian and genealogist. “She is an academic. She has a higher level of aptitude to examine these issues. And a higher responsibility to examine them, and accept the research that is done, or to counter it with alternative research.”…

Read the entire article here.

The Olympian

Sporting News
2018-01-08

Evan Sporer

Jordan Greenway (right)

Jordan Greenway is set to become the first African-American to play for USA Hockey at an Olympic tournament. The 20-year-old, who will break a color barrier nearly a century old, shares his story.

BOSTON – With the band A Perfect Circle performing that night at Agganis Arena, the Boston University men’s hockey team had been transplanted up Commonwealth Avenue to its sister rink, Walter Brown Arena, for a Wednesday practice. After spending the beginning portions of this session on breakouts — “We stink at breakouts,” groans David Quinn — the head coach shrinks the ice by two-thirds, beginning a small-area game from the blue line down, a close-quarters, three-on-three drill.

It’s there where one can truly see the how much bigger Jordan Greenway is than anyone else. Standing 6-5, 235 pounds, Greenway isn’t just the biggest player on the ice, because that doesn’t encompass the gap between him and his teammates.

When he’s summoned to jump into the drill, Greenway skates right into the play, pushing one of his teammates off the puck like a windshield wiper to a raindrop. After winning possession, the action transitions toward the other goal. Greenway parks himself roughly 30 feet from the net and bangs his stick on the ice, calling for the puck, demanding it. In one motion, all the time he’s afforded in this fast-paced game, Greenway accepts a pass and releases the puck, firing it through traffic, off the crossbar and in…

…The town of Canton sits in the northwest corner of upstate New York. About 10 miles north, the St. Lawrence River divides the United States from Canada. But Canton very much has the feel of a small Canadian town.

“There’s like one Walmart, and that’s where you get your food or whatever the hell you need for your house,” Greenway said. “It’s cold as hell. There’s a lot of farmland, so a lot of people hunt, and everyone plays hockey. That’s how I got into it.”

The town is also predominantly white. A 2015 United States census report listed Canton’s population at 6,665 and 4.7 percent black.

Shannon Sullivan and the Greenway brothers

“We spoke about color a lot because primarily where we came from, the majority here are white people,” said Shannon Sullivan, Greenway’s mother. “I made that very known to them. We spoke about it openly in the house, about the background, and don’t have the stereotype of what people think.”

Canton is where Greenway grew up, along with brother James or “J.D.,” 434 days his junior. The boys, as Shannon refers to them, were inseparable as children. They shared a bedroom, though J.D. said most of their time was spent outside, playing one sport or another.

“Him and I just always went at it, you know?” Jordan said. “That’s probably why we’re a little bit more competitive now after growing up. Him and I always had some good battles one on one, whether it was in the rink or at the house, whatever the case was.”

House rules were set, according to Sullivan, but “they’re two boys, right?” Sullivan, much like Jordan, has a laid-back personality and was lenient when a wrestling match broke out or a hockey puck sailed over the couch…

Read the entire article here.

‘I’d Never Seen My Fears as an African-American Man Onscreen’

The Carpetbagger
The New York Times
2017-12-06

Cara Buckley

Jordan Peele said he worried that the themes of white villainy and black victimization of “Get Out” would draw protests. Credit Andrew White for The New York Times

Jordan Peele, writer-director of “Get Out,” says his own concerns almost prevented it from being made. Now prize givers love it. Will the academy agree?

“Get Out,” the box office smash and awards season honey, almost didn’t get made, because its writer and director Jordan Peele figured it couldn’t happen.

The broad strokes of the story line — white girl brings black boyfriend home to meet her family — evoked “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” but with a crucial and sinister twist (spoilers ensue): The boyfriend’s suspicions about the white folks having it in for him become increasingly, and terrifyingly, justified.

Mr. Peele, 38, is known for his subversive comedy sketch show with Keegan-Michael Key, and had never before seen a movie like the one he desperately wanted to make. But he worried that its themes of white villainy and black victimization would keep people away in droves. Also, being biracial, he felt discouraged by the lack of people of color in the industry.

“I didn’t have enough role models telling me this movie could be made,” Mr. Peele said during a chat in mid-November at the Whitby Hotel in Manhattan. “But to me, it was the missing piece of the conversation. I’d never seen my fears as an African-American man onscreen in this way.”…

Read the entire article here.