Mixed Race Studies

Post-Racial? Americans and Race in the Age of Obama

The Greenlining Institute
Berkeley, California
November 2011
26 pages

Dr. Daniel Byrd, Research Director

Bruce Mirken, Media Relations Coordinator

Since the election of Barack Obama as the United States’ first African American president, there has been much discussion of whether this means the U.S. has become a “post-racial” society. Does race still matter in America? This question is particularly significant in light of the fact that within about three decades, people of color are projected to become the majority. Policy based on mistaken assumptions could cripple efforts to revive the U.S. economy. Using the most definitive survey data available, we investigated perceptions of race in America among different racial and ethnic groups and how those perceptions compare to measurable realities of U.S. society.

Table of Contents

• Executive Summary
• Recommendations
• Introduction
  • Methodology
  • America’s Changing Demographics
  • Race Relations in America
  • Perceptions of Discrimination and Inequality in America
  • Race and Health
  • Race and Income
  • Race and Treatment of Groups by the Federal Government
  • Results
  • Discussion
  • Summary
  • A Call to Action
• References
• Appendix I
• Appendix II

Read the entire report here.

MFNW 2010: We are all MOsley WOtta

Oregon Music News
2010-09-09

Aaron Brandt

Jason Graham is MOsley WOtta. So are you, and so am I. That core message of commonality is one good reason why MOWO is quickly gaining such a vast following–that, and tracks full of realistic humor, a bit of brain, and some rump-shakin’ beats.
 
Fresh from achieving local greatness by winning Last Band Standing and being voted the Best Local Band in Bend, MOsley WOtta will join an all-star lineup of Pacific Northwest acts–Shabazz Palaces, Champagne Champagne, Cloudy October, and THEESatisfaction–at MFNW on September 11th at Jimmy Mak’s. As if that pace weren’t hectic enough, he’s somehow found time to release Wake, a compilation that features the song “Boom For Real”–if you haven’t heard this one yet, check out the video below.

Let’s dive into the world of Wake and MOWO with a little Q & A, shall we?

Wake is chock-full of diverse material. We hear everything from party beats to nasal solos to interlude comedy skits–if you were given only two choices, which two “popular” artists does your music sound like a mix of?

MOWO: Somewhere between Saul Williams and Weird Al, or maybe Spearhead and Aesop Rock…

Read the entire interview here.

MOsley WOtta

Arts Beat Oregon
Oregon Public Broadcasting TV
2011

Meet hip-hop artist Jason Graham and find out why “I am MOsley WOtta and so are you!”

MOsley WOtta is a sly play-on-words meant to remind us that we are all “mostly water.” This inclusive, hip-hop reminder helps Bend-based man-behind-the-artist Jason Graham find family wherever he goes and to share his danceable message of peace and mutual support.
 
First Broadcast: 2011
Producer: Jule Gilfillan
Videographer/Editor: Tom Shrider
Audio: Randy Layton

View the video here (00:08:21)

Loving Prize Presentation Honors: Scholar G. Reginald Daniel, Actor/Writers Kevin Knotts and Kim Wayans

Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival
2012-02-02

(Los Angeles, CA) The Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival will present the 5th Annual Loving Prizes to community leaders on June 16, 2012 at 7pm at the Japanese American National Museum in downtown Los Angeles (369 East First Street). The Festival, which takes place June 16-17, celebrates stories of the Mixed experience and stories of multiracial Americans, the fastest growing demographic in the U.S. A free two-day public event, the Festival brings together film and book lovers, innovative and emerging artists, and multiracial families and individuals for workshops, readings, and film screenings.

The Loving Prizes are awarded each year to artists who have shown a dedication to celebrating and illuminating the Mixed experience. Past recipients include best-selling writer James McBride, NFL star Hines Ward, Hapa artist Kip Fulbeck, scholar Dr. Maria P. P. Root, writer and educator Maya Soetoro-Ng, and writer and TV producer Angela Nissel.

The 2012 Loving Prize recipients are:

Dr. G. Reginald Daniel is a leading scholar on issues of multiracial identity and teaches at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Since 1989, he has taught “Betwixt and Between,” which is one of the first and the longest-standing university courses to deal specifically with the question of multiracial identity comparing the U.S. with various parts of the world…

Read the entire press release here.

“I now harbor more pride in my race”: The Educational Benefits of Inter- and Intraracial Dialogues on the Experiences of Students of Color and Multiracial Students

Equity & Excellence in Education
Volume 45, Issue 1 (2012)
pages 14-35
DOI: 10.1080/10665684.2012.643180

Kristie A. Ford, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York

Victoria K. Malaney
Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York

How do students of color and multiracial students learn to make sense of and navigate race within historically white institutions (HWIs)? And, what pedagogies and inter-/intragroup dynamics facilitate increased understanding of issues of race, racial identity development, and racism in the U.S.? This project examines students’ of color (SOC) and multiracial students’ learning in the Intergroup People of Color–White People Dialogues and Intragroup Multiracial Identity Dialogues at a small private liberal arts college in the Northeast. Through qualitative, inductively-derived analyses of student papers, this study advances understanding of how SOC/multiracial students make sense of their own racial group membership and how they navigate raced interactions in college. It also continues and extends national efforts to conduct and disseminate research on both the substantive nature and process of the Inter-/Intragroup Dialogues and their impact on students.

Read or purchase the article here.

‘Town Secret’: Race of Famous Carthaginian Embraced

The Pilot
Southern Pines, North Carolina
2012-02-11

John Chappell

Every year with its Buggy Festival, Carthage celebrates the achievements of a former slave, though until recently few knew it.

William T. Jones — born a slave, and the son of a slave and her owner — ran the famed Tyson & Jones Buggy Co., the biggest business around.

Though he was an African-American described in census records as “a mulatto gentleman” and a former slave, Jones nevertheless became a leading businessman and industrialist, recognized and honored, his color the best kept secret in Carthage history.

His elaborate 1880s Queen Anne Victorian mansion stands at the entrance to the town’s historic district. Now a bed-and-breakfast inn lovingly restored with wraparound porch and fanciful gingerbread trimmed in elegant Painted Lady fashion, the Jones house evokes the lavishness of a bygone era.

Few in Carthage today realize its builder and former owner was a black man of mixed race who lived openly with his white wife, operated one of the biggest factories in the South, taught Sunday School in the Methodist Church, served on national and local boards, and was admired and loved without any mention of race.

Today, the fact that Jones was an African-American is something the town history committee’s present Chairwoman Carol Steed thinks the town can take pride in — though for years nobody spoke of it…

Read the entire article here.

Virginia’s Caroline County, ‘Symbolic of Main Street USA’

The Washington Post
2012-02-10

Carol Morello

Bowling Green, Va. — Only a few easily overlooked markers note the importance of Mildred and Richard Loving in Caroline County, where five decades ago the sheriff rousted the white man and his black bride from their bed and carted them off to jail.

A small brass plaque in the county courthouse credits their landmark 1967 U.S. Supreme Court case, Loving v. Virginia, with overturning laws prohibiting interracial marriage. Their names are engraved on a granite obelisk, at the end of a list of prominent local African Americans. The county Web site devotes a page to their case.

Yet their legacy is everywhere in the small Tidewater towns and family farms that make up Caroline County, where a soaring number of people identify themselves as multiracial.

In the 2010 Census, 3 percent of Caroline County’s 28,500 residents were counted as of two or more races. Most are younger than 20. The phenomenon is both old and new.

Historical records show multiracial children in the county going back to slave-holding Colonial times. Today, their increasing ranks are part of a national trend that is changing the way people think and talk about race.

…Even in 1958, Caroline County was an unlikely place for an interracial couple to be arrested. An area known as Central Point had so many multiracial residents of white, black and Native American heritage that during segregation, their children all attended the county’s all-black high school. A major feature of Central Point is Passing Road — a name attributed in local lore to the many residents who could “pass” as white. Elderly residents of Central Point say they recall other interracial couples who had married out of state and lived quietly in the area….

…It’s not known how Mildred Loving, with her black and Native American heritage, identified herself in the 2000 Census. She died in 2008, 33 years after her husband died in a car crash. But in the 2010 Census, their daughter decided to check only one box when faced, like so many millions of other Americans, with boiling down a complex ancestry on a bureaucratic form.

“Native American,” said Peggy Loving Fortune, who is 52. “Just Native American.”…

Read the entire article here.

Impostors: EUST-235

Amherst College
Spring 2012

Ilan Stavans, Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture

Deborah R. Dizard, Visiting Lecturer in European Studies

An interdisciplinary exploration of the causes behind the social, racial, artistic, and political act—and art—of posing, passing, or pretending to be someone else. Blacks passing for whites, Jews passing for gentiles, and women passing for men, and vice versa, are a central motif. Attention is given to biological and scientific patterns such as memory loss, mental illness, and plastic surgery, and to literary strategies like irony. As a supernatural occurrence, the discussion includes mystical experiences, ghost stories, and séance sessions. The course also covers instances pertaining to institutional religion, from prophesy from the Hebrew and Christian Bibles to the Koran and Mormonism. In technology and communications, analysis concentrates on the invention of the telegraph, the telephone, and the Internet. Entertainment, ventriloquism, puppet shows, voice-overs, children’s cartoon shows, subtitles, and dubbing in movies and TV are topics of analysis. Posers in Greek mythology, the Arabian Nights, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll, Mark Twain, Sigmund Freud, Jorge Luis Borges, Philip Roth, Oliver Sacks, and Nella Larsen are examined. Conducted in English.

José Vasconcelos: The Prophet of Race

Rutgers University Press
2011-05-07
142 pages
5.5 x 8.5
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8135-5063-3
Paper ISBN: 978-0-8135-5064
Web PDF ISBN: 978-0-8135-5104-3

Ilan Stavans, Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture
Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts

Mexican educator and thinker José Vasconcelos is to Latinos what W.E.B. Du Bois is to African Americans—a controversial scholar who fostered an alternative view of the future. In José Vasconcelos: The Prophet of Race, his influential 1925 essay, “Mestizaje”—key to understanding the role he played in the shaping of multiethnic America—is for the first time showcased and properly analyzed. Freshly translated here by John H. R. Polt, “Mestizaje” suggested that the Brown Race from Latin America was called to dominate the world, a thesis embraced by activists and scholars north and south of the Rio Grande. Ilan Stavans insightfully and comprehensively examines the essay in biographical and historical context, and considers how many in the United States, especially Chicanos during the civil rights era, used it as a platform for their political agenda. The volume also includes Vasconcelos’s long-forgotten 1926 Harris Foundation Lecture at the University of Chicago, “The Race Problem in Latin America,” where he cautioned the United States that rejecting mestizaje in our own midst will ultimately bankrupt the nation.

Table of Contents

• Preface
• Ilan Stavans
  • The Prophet of Race
• Jose Vasconcelos
  • Mestizaje
  • The Race Problem in Latin America
• Chronology
• Acknowledgments

Panel to discuss racism and medical issues

The Daily Bruin
University of California, Los Angeles
2012-02-10

Ariana Ricarte

The topic of racism in health care, genetics and other medical issues will be the central point of discussion at a panel in De Neve Auditorium on Saturday [13:00-15:00 PST].

The panel, called “Race in Medicine: A Dangerous Prescription,” will discuss disparities between people of different races in the health care system and the ways a patient’s ethnicity can affect decisions made by doctors and insurance companies. The event is hosted by UCLA’s Mixed Student Union, a student group founded in 2010 that aims to provide a safe and open environment for people of multiracial and multiethnic heritage, said chairwoman Camila Lacques.

The panel will go over topics such as the role of ethnicity in prescription medicine and bone marrow and stem cell transplants. When it comes to transplants, multiracial people have a more difficult time finding matches because of their unique genetic composition, said panelist Athena Asklipiadis…

[Note by Steven F. Riley: Everyone—except their identical twin—has an “unique genetic composition.”  Race is a social, not biological construction and as such, is not linked to genetics. Please read Dorothy Roberts excellent (and sobering) monograph on race and medicine titled, Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century for more information.]

…G. Reginald Daniel, a panelist at Saturday’s event and a sociology professor at UC Santa Barbara, said he plans to focus on the positive and negative images applied to multiracial people, as well as talk about the issue in terms of genetic variety.

“I think people need to step out of mono-racial thinking,” Daniel said. “We need to see the connections we have with each other, whether we like it or not.”…

Read the entire article here.