Mixed Race Studies

Interview 01: Charise Sowells

Caffeinated Cinema
2019-10-31

Charise Sowells is a biracial singer-songwriter, scriptwriter, and filmmaker. As a New York University graduate, she has found acclaim in all her fields. Her work has led her to be praised by names such as NPR, San Francisco Weekly, and many more. Sowells’ scripts have been put up for the screen and the stage. Most currently, her newest play An Ocean In My Soul sold out the Santa Monica Playhouse, and she is raising funds to support an extended run. Additionally, her production company, #UNABASHT, enables her to find her place as an artist in her multitudes of creative pursuits. She kindly accepted to be interviewed on her experiences as an artist.

Q. You’re quite the jack of all trades–– from music to film. You’re an acclaimed songwriter, playwright, and you’ve worked in both film and television. Have you decided to continue in just one field or are you upholding them all and why?

A. There was definitely a period where you really needed to put yourself in a box or other people would do it for you. Since I’ve never been one to limit myself that way personally, I struggled with it career wise too. And that was the impetus behind me starting my company ten years ago, Unabashed Productions. Our motto is, “Don’t just think outside the box. Live there.”

#UNABASHT functions as a record label, an online store, a production company, and a publisher which allows me to release all my projects independently and switch gears as the muse moves me, without any hiccups. As the years have gone on, more people seem to be open to the idea that things aren’t so inflexible. In fact, the more you do, the better in some circumstances. So I’ve been embracing all my passions and letting things flow freely.,,

…Q. What was the inspiration for An Ocean In My Soul?

A. It’s two fold – I’m mixed myself and after struggling with my identity throughout my youth, I joined a group in high school that traveled around the U.S. and Canada raising awareness about race as a social construct and the concepts of systemic racism and white privilege. When I decided to study playwriting at NYU, I had hopes of expanding people’s horizons about experiences and characters not typically seen onstage or screen through my work. To better inform myself, I took classes about the African Diaspora. One of those classes introduced me to the idea of the Black Atlantic, a graveyard of African souls who died while crossing over to the Americas against their will and in horrendously inhumane conditions. That was the seed for this play…

Read the entire interview here.

Meaning, Without the White Gaze

The Atlantic
2019-08-07

Rebecca Carroll, Host
WNYC Radio, New York, New York

Kate Martin / The Atlantic

I’m writing my memoir for the late, great Toni Morrison.

I had been writing it for her. For her, and for Pecola Breedlove. Perhaps too ambitious or presumptuous or high-minded, I had, until the announcement of her death this week, been writing my memoir, Surviving the White Gaze, for Toni Morrison and Pecola Breedlove. Because I survived the white gaze for Pecola, and Morrison taught me how.

I knew Pecola first. I lived inside her skin, her ache; felt sickened, ashamed, and unseen by that baby doll’s dead blue eyes on one of the book’s early covers. Page after page of The Bluest Eye, I felt Pecola’s mind curl into anguish and succumb to a delusion better than reality. Pecola lost her mind because she wanted the blue eyes set inside the ceaseless standard of white beauty—a gaze so narcotic that it ravaged her body from flesh to bone—and I almost did, too.

I say that I knew Pecola first because Morrison’s writing of her was so thorough and fully realized that in my initial reading of The Bluest Eye, the character loomed larger than the author. This is what will happen to me, I remember thinking. If I keep internalizing the white gaze and contorting my own reflection in response to it, I will spiral into madness and still be seen as ugly…

Read the entire article here.

Seeking Participants for Studies on Stereotyping and Romantic Partner Choices

University of Massachusetts, Lowell
2019-11-03

Rianna M. Grissom, Ph.D. Candidate and Research Assistant
Applied Psychology and Prevention Science Program

Hello! I’m a researcher recruiting people for two different studies on intergroup relations. Study 1 examines modern racial stereotypes in the United States and Study 2 investigates personal and societal factors that influence our romantic choices.

Participating in both studies will take approximately 30 minutes, but is not required. You have the option of completing one study of your choice as well.

Anyone 18 years or older who is living in the U.S. can participate, regardless of race or relationship status. There is no compensation for participating in these studies. However, your contribution will help us better understand current race relations in the U.S., which includes the growing multiracial population.

To participate in the surveys, click here.

P.S. We are especially in need of more male and racial minority participants. Please consider sharing the link with your networks!

Illusions: A Film by Julie Dash

Women Make Movies
1983
34 minutes
BW
16mm/DVD
Order No. 99306

Julie Dash, Director/Writer

This critically acclaimed drama from filmmaker Julie Dash (Daughers of the Dust) takes place in 1942 at a fictitious Hollywood motion picture studio.

The time is 1942, a year after Pearl Harbor; the place is National Studios, a fictitious Hollywood motion picture studio. Mignon Duprée, a Black woman studio executive who appears to be white and Ester Jeeter, an African American woman who is the singing voice for a white Hollywood star are forced to come to grips with a society that perpetuates false images as status quo. This highly-acclaimed drama by one of the leading African American women directors follows Mignon’s dilemma, Ester’s struggle and the use of cinema in wartime Hollywood: three illusions in conflict with reality.

For more information, click here.

A powerful look into the invisible world of children and mothers who are rejected by their nations because of mixed lineage

International Examiner
Seattle, Washington
2019-10-29

Midori Friedbauer

Fredrick D. Kakinami Cloyd makes a powerful debut with Dream of the Water Children, a book which transcends genres and enlightens readers with ethereal beauty and judicious use of research in a memoir which recounts his relationship with his family.

Kakinami Cloyd is the child of a Japanese war bride and an African American soldier, and in his book, he offers readers a glimpse into the invisible world of the children and mothers rejected by their nations because of their mixed lineage.

One of the many legacies of World War II are the children of unions between occupiers and the occupied, and all too often these children have been forgotten. Kakinami Cloyd has gifted the world with the knowledge he gathered through survival. He has also uncovered the circumstances of mixed-race children who did not survive the U.S. occupation of Japan; including children who were killed by their own mothers…

Read the entire review here.

Seeking biracial women for an online research study!

Department of Psychology
University of Akron
290 East Buchtel Avenue
Akron, OH 44325-4301

2019-10-29

Kiarra King, Graduate Student
Department of Psychology

My name is Kiarra King and I am a graduate student at the University of Akron currently seeking biracial women for an online research study!

The purpose of this study is to gain insight into biracial women’s experiences with their racial identity, relationships, and other difficult experiences.

For the purposes of this research, biracial is defined as being a combination of two of the following racial categories; Black or African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, White/Caucasian, Asian, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, or some other race. Thus, in order to participate in this survey, you must have parents of two different racial backgrounds, identify as a woman, currently be in an adult intimate relationship or have been in one within the last twelve months, and be age 18 years or older.

Survey responses are confidential and you will not be asked to provide your name. As a result of your participation in this study, you can be entered into a drawing for one of three $50 (USD) Amazon Gift Cards.

This survey is specific to U.S. residents. If anyone has any questions at all feel free to ask!  To begin the survey, click here.

Thanks!

Approaching Conceptions of “Blackness” and “Mixed-Race” in Legal Scholarship and Housing Segregation

The Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration
Yale University
2019-11-13

Zaire Dinzey-Flores, Associate Professor of Latino and Caribbean Studies at Rutgers University and Tanya Herńandez, Archibald R. Murray Professor of Law at Fordham University discuss “Approaching Conceptions of “Blackness” and “Mixed-Race” in Legal Scholarship and Housing Segregation.”

The Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration (RITM) hosted the discussion. To learn more about the Center visit ritm.yale.edu.

Who Do Multiracials Consider Part of Their Racial In-Group?

Social Psychological and Personality Science
First Published 2019-10-24
11 pages
DOI: 10.1177/1948550619876639

A. Chyei Vinluan, Graduate Students
Department of Psychology
Tufts University, Medford Massachusetts

Jessica D. Remedios, Principal Investigator
Social Identity and Stigma Laboratory
Tufts University, Medford Massachusetts

We propose that Multiracials have flexible racial in-groups in that Multiracials can potentially consider members from three target racial groups as in-group members: same-race Multiracials, racial component Monoracials, and different-race Multiracials. Across three studies, we find that Black/Whites and Asian/Whites consider racial component Minorities (i.e., Blacks or Asians) and different-race Multiracials who share their Minority identity (i.e., Black/Asians) as in-group members in addition to, but to a lesser extent than, same-race Multiracials (i.e., Black/Whites or Asian/Whites). Moreover, participants who reported frequently encountering discrimination related to their Black or Asian backgrounds were more likely to consider individuals who share their Minority background as in-group members. Implications for Multiracials’ psychological well-being and the broader intergroup literature are discussed.

Read the entire article in HTML or PDF format.

How ‘mixed-ish’ Failed To Tackle Biracial Identity and Chose To Rely On Tropes

Wear Your Voice
2019-10-02

Nylah Burton

Set in the 1980s, ABC’s mixed-ish, the newest black-ish spin-off, tells the story of Dr. Rainbow “Bow” Johnson’s (Arica Himmel) experience growing up biracial. The Johnson family — white father Paul (Mark-Paul Gosselaar), Black mother Alicia (Tika Sumpter), Bow and her siblings Johan (Ethan William Childress) and Santamonica (Mykal-Michelle Harris) — are also former members of a “hippy” commune, where presumably, neither race nor racism existed.

The show’s premise is that being forced into the “real world,” where race and racism do exist, is a major source of culture shock that the entire family must now navigate.

As a Black multiracial woman who doesn’t have a white parent, I’m tired of portrayals of mixedness that mock Blackness, portray multiraciality and interracial marriages as the more “righteous” path, and ignore experiences that don’t fit into POC/white binaries.

Unfortunately, mixed-ish embodies all this and more…

Read the entire article here.

My Asian Mom bought me a Blonde Wig.

Medium
2019-10-25

Kate Rigg

Yeah I wore it ONE TIME. To Wigstock at the end of high school. Doesn’t count.

And Other Adventures in Internalized Racism

“It will make you feel like success! You can be anyone you want in America. So why not have blonde hair and blue eyes?”

My mom’s big idea was that I should go to my first day of high school wearing a blonde wig and blue eye contacts.

“Why not? It will be a change! Fantastic! I will buy them for you! we can get matching it will be fun!”

So many exclamation points! So much fun! Gesturing at me with a People magazine with Pam Anderson on the cover! I was fourteen; and even then I knew that this situation was no fun. Not for me. And deep down, I bet, not for her.

I tried to verbally tap dance out of it. “I don’t have time for all that. I have to get school supplies and clean my room. Ok see you later byeeee.” Tried to lie my way out of it. “Oh yeah, sure I would totally do that, but I want to pay for it myself so it really feels like me.” Tried out reverse psychology out of it “People should like me for who I really am. Isn’t that what you taught me?”

The one thing I didn’t do was flat out say “No.”…

Read the entire article here.