Why mixed-race comic was ‘born a crime’

Posted in Africa, Articles, Arts, Media Archive, South Africa, United States on 2014-12-29 22:35Z by Steven

Why mixed-race comic was ‘born a crime’

Cable News Network (CNN)
2014-12-04

Jessica Ellis

Teo Kermeliotis

London (CNN) — When it comes to getting ready for a show, fast-rising South African comedian Trevor Noah has it all figured out.

“My ideal setting is I walk from the streets, backstage and straight onto the stage,” says Noah, who last year became the first African comedian to perform on Jay Leno’s The Tonight Show in the United States.

“Two minutes and I am on the stage. That way in my head I have gone from my world and then into a social setting with my friends. I want my audience to be my friends — that is when they will get the best comedy. If they see me as a performer, they won’t get the best show.”

At just 28 years old, Noah is already a big name in his country’s fledgling standup scene, as well as a cover star for Rolling Stone South Africa. But despite treating the audience as friends, he’s not afraid of provocative subject matter, with his latest show called “The Racist.”

he son of a black South African woman and a white Swiss man who met when interracial relationships were illegal in South Africa, Noah jokes that he was “born a crime.” On stage, he draws upon his particular life experiences to tackle thorny issues with his funny, and sometimes trenchant, punchlines…

Read the entire article here.

Tags: , , , ,

Woman turned away from 1958 Rose Parade because of race to ride in 2015 parade

Posted in Articles, Media Archive, United States, Videos, Women on 2014-12-29 03:27Z by Steven

Woman turned away from 1958 Rose Parade because of race to ride in 2015 parade

Eyewitness News, KABC 7
Los Angeles, California
2014-12-27

Leanne Suter, Reporter

PASADENA, Calif. (KABC) — A woman who was denied the honor of riding in the Rose Parade in 1958 because of her race will finally get her chance in 2015.

Joan Williams, 83, was named Miss Crown City in 1958, representing Pasadena. It was an honor she received after being nominated by her coworkers at city hall.

However, she was denied the honor after city officials discovered she is African American. She said it was devastating to be told she wasn’t worthy because of her race…


A woman who was denied the honor of riding in the Rose Parade in 1958 because of her race will finally get her chance in 2015.

Read the entire article here.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Ophelia DeVore-Mitchell (Born 1921): Teaching America that black was beautiful.

Posted in Articles, Arts, Biography, Media Archive, Passing, United States on 2014-12-29 02:56Z by Steven

Ophelia DeVore-Mitchell (Born 1921): Teaching America that black was beautiful.

The Lives They Lived
The New York Times Magazine
2014-12-25

Touré


DeVore-Mitchell during her modeling days. Photograph by Rupert Callender from the DeVore family archive

One day in 1946, a black woman showed up at the Vogue School of Modeling in New York, seeking to learn the trade. Her arrival caused a stir. The nascent modeling industry was as deeply segregated as America was then, and she was turned away. At the time, the Vogue School of Modeling did not accept black women. Or so it thought.

Unknown to the school, one was already enrolled: Ophelia DeVore-Mitchell. And she had no idea that Vogue was unaware. “I thought they knew what I was,” DeVore-Mitchell would tell Ebony magazine years later. She had not lied to get in; she was so light-skinned that no one thought to ask. She passed inadvertently…

Read the entire article here.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Rose Parade 2015: Woman to ride float 60 years after she was denied because of African-American heritage

Posted in Articles, Arts, Media Archive, United States, Women on 2014-12-28 18:49Z by Steven

Rose Parade 2015: Woman to ride float 60 years after she was denied because of African-American heritage

Pasadena Star-News
Pasadena, California
2014-12-27

Sarah Favot, Pasadena Star-News


Joan Williams, 82, of Pasadena, holding a portrait of herself wearing a crown from when she was selected as “Miss Crown City” by her colleagues in City Hall in 1958 and was supposed to ride on the city-sponsored Rose Parade float. When city officials found out she was black, they took that honor away saying, the city couldn’t afford a float that year. Now nearly 60 years later, Williams will ride on the opening banner float during the 2015 Rose Parade. Walt Mancini/Staff Photographer

PASADENA >> Nearly 60 years after she was promised a seat on a Rose Parade float, only to have that honor taken away when city officials found out she was African-American, Joan Williams will be seated at the head of the Rose Parade on New Year’s Day as it cruises down Colorado Boulevard.

Williams, 82, was named “Miss Crown City” in 1957, an honor bestowed upon one City Hall employee who would ride on a city-sponsored float during the Rose Parade on Jan. 1, 1958. The honor was like the Rose Queen title — Miss Crown City would attend numerous events leading up to the parade, representing the city.

Williams, then 27 years old and a mother of two young children, was thrilled.

“I was young and it was exciting,” Williams said.

A couple of months later, however, she experienced a grave disappointment, according to Jet Magazine.


Source: Jet Magazine

“For when word spread that light-complexioned Mrs. Williams was a Negro, fellow employees in the municipal office where she works as an accountant-clerk suddenly stopped speaking to her,” the magazine reported in January 1959. “And Mrs. Williams did not ride on a float, because the City of Pasadena neglected to include one in its own parade. Too many others were already entered, explained an official,” the article continued.

Williams said she never bought that reasoning. If the city didn’t have enough money, it wouldn’t have named a Miss Crown City months before the parade, she said. The city had even paid for a portrait of Williams in a gown, corsage and tiara.

Williams attended a city employees picnic at Brookside Park where a photographer from Jet wanted to take her picture with the mayor at the time. The mayor refused, she said.

“It was one of the first times, as an adult, I began to grow up and realize what racism is,” she said…

Read the entire article here.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Ophelia DeVore-Mitchell, 92, Dies; Redefined Beauty

Posted in Articles, Arts, Biography, Media Archive, Passing, United States, Women on 2014-12-28 18:28Z by Steven

Ophelia DeVore-Mitchell, 92, Dies; Redefined Beauty

The New York Times
2014-03-13

Margalit Fox


Ophelia DeVore-Mitchell
Credit MARBL/Emory University, via Associated Press

Ophelia DeVore-Mitchell, a former model, agent, charm-school director and newspaper publisher who almost single-handedly opened the modeling profession to African-Americans, and in so doing expanded public understanding of what American beauty looks like, died on Feb. 28 in Manhattan. She was 92.

Her death was announced on March 6 on the floor of the House of Representatives by Sanford D. Bishop Jr., Democrat of Georgia. At her death, Mrs. DeVore-Mitchell was the publisher emeritus of The Columbus Times, a black newspaper in Columbus, Ga., which she ran from the 1970s until her retirement about five years ago.

Long before the phrase “Black is beautiful” gained currency in the 1960s, Mrs. DeVore-Mitchell was preaching that ethos by example.

In New York in the 1940s — an age when modeling schools, and modeling jobs, were overwhelmingly closed to blacks — she helped start the Grace del Marco Modeling Agency and later founded the Ophelia DeVore School of Self-Development and Modeling. The enterprises, which served minorities, endured for six decades…

…“Black has always been beautiful,” Mrs. DeVore-Mitchell once said. “But you had to hide it to be a model.”

In the late 1930s, when Mrs. DeVore-Mitchell began her career as one of the first black models in the United States, she found work partly by hiding her own heritage. But in her case, the hiding was done entirely through inadvertence.

Emma Ophelia DeVore was born on Aug. 12, 1921, in Edgefield, S.C., one of 10 children of John Walter DeVore, a building contractor, and the former Mary Emma Strother, a schoolteacher.

As a girl, Mrs. DeVore-Mitchell, whose family was of African, Cherokee, French and German descent, was educated in segregated Southern schools; she received additional instruction “in dancing, piano and all the other things in the arts that parents gave you to make you a lady,” as she told Ebony magazine in 2012

…A beauty with wide-set eyes, Ophelia DeVore had begun modeling casually as a teenager. A few years later, seeking professional training, she enrolled in the Vogue School of Modeling in New York.

It was only toward the end of her studies there, when the school refused admission to another black candidate, that she realized it had mistaken her, with her light skin, for white.

“I didn’t know that they didn’t know,” Mrs. DeVore-Mitchell said in the Ebony interview. “I thought they knew what I was.”…

Read the entire obituary here.

Tags: , , , ,

WATCH: Jesse Williams of ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ on Race

Posted in Articles, History, Law, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, United States, Videos on 2014-12-28 03:43Z by Steven

WATCH: Jesse Williams of ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ on Race

Heavy
2014-12-22

Paul Farrell, Breaking News Editor

Actor Jesse Williams appears in a viral video that was published on December 17. The Grey’s Anatomy star take aim at racism and double standards in America, including public housing discrimination, specifically in Chicago.

The star goes on to discuss the logic behind the argument that Michael Brown robbed a store and therefore deserved to be shot, versus the argument about whether corrupt Goldman Sachs bankers also deserve violence.

Williams is mixed-race, the son of an African-American father and a Swedish-American mother. In the video, he states, “Half of my family is white.” He also says, “I’m as white as you can get as a black person.”…

Read the entire article here.

Tags: , ,

Multiracial College Students and Institutions of Higher Education

Posted in Articles, Campus Life, Media Archive, United States on 2014-12-28 03:13Z by Steven

Multiracial College Students and Institutions of Higher Education

Engaged Learning Collection
2013-04-15
Paper 20
18 pages

Jacqueline V. Ross
Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas

The multiracial student population is one of the fastest growing populations in the United States. The growth in students of two or more racial backgrounds is grounds for recognizing and acceptance of campuses of higher education. The purpose of this study was to look at the experiences of multiracial students and what it means for institutions of higher education through an integrated communication framework (theorists, year; theorist, year; theorist, year). This study employed a phenomenological approach and used a semi-structured interview style with 10 self-identified multiracial students from Southern Methodist University (SMU). SMU is a middle sized, private, conservative, liberal arts, Greek life driven and predominately White institution in the South.

The primary research questions was: what does the increase of the multiracial student population mean for institutions of higher education in regards to student inclusion, exclusion, academic success, social life, retention and future alumni relations. In particular to students at a middle sized, private, conservative, liberal arts, Greek life driven and predominately White institution in the South.

Overall four key findings emerged: (1) Students felt like SMU had not recognized their multiracial backgrounds, (2) students flourished when they had a supportive group or community, (3) there is ignorance on SMU’s campus of racial diversity within single individuals, and (4) the climate of SMU’s campus contributed to being excluded from the general student population or from one of their own racial groups.

This study found that students had positive and negative experiences in relations to being multiracial. These experiences have shaped them an in turn have affected their academic success, social life, retention and future alumni relations. Because of these findings, institutions of higher education must proactively support multiracial students and help to change campus climates for more inclusion and acceptance of multiracial students.

Read the entire article here.

Tags: , , , ,

Outspoken about Ferguson, Jesse Williams may be this generation’s Harry Belafonte

Posted in Articles, Arts, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, United States on 2014-12-28 03:01Z by Steven

Outspoken about Ferguson, Jesse Williams may be this generation’s Harry Belafonte

The Washington Post
2014-08-20

Soraya Nadia McDonald


Harry Belafonte, left. (NBC via AP) Jesse Williams, right. (Christian Alminana/AP)

There are many ways to get celebrity activism wrong when it comes to a situation like the one that has emerged in Ferguson, Mo.

Appearing to be uninformed is a huge no-no, as is calling for a plan when you don’t have one — sorry Nelly. But if one can offer fiery rhetoric absent sanctimony and full of razor-sharp opinions, well, people take notice.

Enter Jesse Williams, the actor who plays the hunky Dr. Jackson Avery on ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy.” Williams appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday. Clad in a hoodie, he may have looked like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, but once he opened his mouth, he sounded like Harry Belafonte.

Yes, radical, Occupy Wall Street protester-supporting, Fidel Castro-befriending, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice-shunning Harry Belafonte.

“Police have been beating the hell out of black people for a very, very, very long time, before the advent of the video camera,” said Williams, who also spoke out after the deaths of Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis. “And despite the advent of the video camera, there’s still an incredible trend of police brutality and killing in the street.”

So far, Williams, 33, seems best suited to continue the legacy of black Hollywood activism associated with Belafonte. In his memoir, “My Song,” Belafonte wrote, “I wasn’t an artist who’d become an activist. I was an activist who’d become an artist.”…

Read the entire article here.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Who’s Passing for Who?

Posted in Articles, Media Archive, Passing, United States on 2014-12-27 01:50Z by Steven

Who’s Passing for Who?

Genius
2014-12-22 (Originally written in 1956)

Langston Hughes (1902-1967)

In this short story, written in 1956, Hughes plays with the idea of race as a social construct. Considering the American “one-drop rule,” which meant if you had at least 1/33 African ancestry you were black, the narrator is puzzled by whether a couple in Harlem that he meets is a white couple passing as a black couple passing for white or a black couple who can pass for white. The joke is on the narrator.

One of the great difficulties about being a member of a minority race is that so many kindhearted, well-meaning bores gather around to help. Usually, to tell the truth, they have nothing to help with, except their company–which is often appallingly dull.

Some members of the Negro race seem very well able to put up with it, though, in these uplifting years. Such was Caleb Johnson, colored social worker, who was always dragging around with him some nondescript white person or two, inviting them to dinner, showing them Harlem, ending up at the Savoy–much to the displeasure of whatever friends of his might be out that evening for fun, not sociology.

Friends are friends and, unfortunately, overearnest uplifters are uplifters–no matter what color they may be. If it were the white race that was ground down instead of Negroes, Caleb Johnson would be one of the first to offer Nordics the sympathy of his utterly inane society, under the impression that somehow he would be doing them a great deal of good.

You see, Caleb, and his white friends, too, were all bores. Or so we, who lived in Harlem’s literary bohemia during the “Negro Renaissance” thought. We literary ones considered ourselves too broad-minded to be bothered with questions of color. We liked people of any race who smoked incessantly, drank liberally, wore complexion and morality as loose garments, and made fun of anyone who didn’t do likewise. We snubbed and high-hatted any Negro or white luckless enough not to understand Gertrude Stein, Ulysses, Man Ray, the theremin, Jean Toomer, or George Anthell. By the end of the 1920’s Caleb was just catching up to Dos Passos. He thought H.G. Wells good….

Read the entire short story here.

Tags: ,

Meet Afro-Latina Trailblazer, Crystal Roman, Founder ofThe Black Latina Movement

Posted in Articles, Arts, Interviews, Latino Studies, Media Archive, United States, Wanted/Research Requests/Call for Papers on 2014-12-27 01:21Z by Steven

Meet Afro-Latina Trailblazer, Crystal Roman, Founder of The Black Latina Movement

Boriqua Chicks: A Fresh, Urban, Afro-Latina Perspective
2014-11-19

Crystal Shaniece Roman, CEO & Founder of The Black Latina Movement, LLC has used her personal experience with identity to fuel several creative projects that recognize and celebrate Black Latinas. From theatrical productions to a web series, blog, and speaking engagements, she uses her acting and production talents to challenge stereotypes and create a space for Black Latinas on stage and in film.

Check out our recent conversation below!

I read that your parents are Puerto Rican: your mom Black and your dad white. How was your experience growing up?

My dad is what can be considered a White Latino. Both his parents were born and raised in Puerto Rico. My mom is a Black Latina, 2 times over in the sense that her father is Jamaican and her mom (my grandma) is an Afro-Puerto Rican, hence me saying a Black Latina twice over. Growing up was a blend of both worlds. My mom and dad made sure I was fully emerged in both cultures. There were occasional incidents of internalized racism from both sides of the family concerning hair, skin tone, etc., here and there, but my mom was quick to “set anyone straight” about that kind of nonsense around me, if and when it did occur. Other outright experiences often came from the world, outsiders.

When did you first begin identifying as a Black Latina? What inspired you to embrace this identification?

I knew I was a Black Latina from youth, but I hadn’t articulated it, in that way or used the term until 2008. Once I started to use it I felt so empowered and proud to have a title/label that I approved for myself, instead of using ones that were given to me. I was always taught to embrace myself, but I realized often times—especially in my industry—that many people were not familiar or comfortable with a “mixed” person. Moreover, those in positions of power wanted what is to be considered a “typical” look of a Black woman or Latina for most roles. So I was pushed to educate (myself) more on my identity, howl embrace it and how others like myself do as well…

Read the entire interview here.

Tags: , , , ,