Mixed Race Studies

Feminism 101: What is White Passing Privilege?

FEM Magazine
University of California, Los Angeles
2017-12-16

Catherine Pham

Design by Jennifer Dodge

Racial passing is when someone’s features cause them to be mistaken for another racial or ethnic group. Depend on what race or ethnicity people pass as, they can experience different treatment which can be advantageous or detrimental. White passing privilege is the additional privilege some people of color (POC) are afforded when their features, such as skin color or hair texture, cause them to be mistaken as white. For instance, white passing Latinx people will most likely avoid being racially profiled, questioned about their citizenship or lack thereof, or doubted for their English-speaking skills or education status. Prominent actors of color like Rashida Jones, and Keanu Reeves tend to be white passing — because their white appearances allow them to get larger, more multidimensional roles rather than being typecast…

Read the entire article here.

Hispanic Identity Fades Across Generations as Immigrant Connections Fall Away

Pew Research Center
Washington, D.C.
2017-12-20
34 pages

Mark Hugo Lopez, Director of Hispanic Research

Ana Gonzalez-Barrera, Senior Researcher

Gustavo López, Research Analyst

11% of American adults with Hispanic ancestry do not identify as Hispanic

More than 18% of Americans identify as Hispanic or Latino, the nation’s second largest racial or ethnic group. But two trends – a long-standing high intermarriage rate and a decade of declining Latin American immigration – are distancing some Americans with Hispanic ancestry from the life experiences of earlier generations, reducing the likelihood they call themselves Hispanic or Latino.

Among the estimated 42.7 million U.S. adults with Hispanic ancestry in 2015, nine-in-ten (89%), or about 37.8 million, self-identify as Hispanic or Latino. But another 5 million (11%) do not consider themselves Hispanic or Latino, according to Pew Research Center estimates. The closer they are to their immigrant roots, the more likely Americans with Hispanic ancestry are to identify as Hispanic. Nearly all immigrant adults from Latin America or Spain (97%) say they are Hispanic. Similarly, second-generation adults with Hispanic ancestry (the U.S.-born children of at least one immigrant parent) have nearly as high a Hispanic self-identification rate (92%), according to Pew Research Center estimates…

Read the entire report here.

The Marriage Battle: A Family Tradition, A Memoir by Susan C. Green and Robin J. Phillips

Mill City Press
2017-12-05
222 pages
5.25″ x 8″
Softcover ISBN 13: 9781545613429
ePub ISBN 13: 9781545616307
MOBI ISBN 13: 9781545616307

Susan C. Green and Robin J. Phillips

Golddigger, nigger lover… Those are some of the insults hurled at Iris in 1961 by the military brass when they grilled her about the relationship with Sue’s father. And when her dad Ray, a Black GI stationed in England, asked his superiors for permission to marry Sue’s mum, a white single mom from Liverpool, they asked him why he wanted to marry a whore with a bastard child. But they remained steadfast and married even though their interracial union wouldn’t be fully recognized until 1967 when Richard and Mildred Loving would prevail and anti-miscegenation laws were abolished. Like the Lovings, her parents, Iris and Ray Green fought the courts and culture to stay together and raise a family.

Their story of love and perseverance became Sue’s story and provided the inspiration for this book. She is an out and proud lesbian and it is her parent’s battle to marry and have their interracial union recognized by the law that has led Sue to her own moment to take a stand for love. She too fought for the right to marry her wife Robin. And almost 50 years to the day of the Loving decision, the Defense of Marriage Act was repealed and same sex marriages were legal.

This book is a memoir and a love and a life story about Sue’s life with Robin and her parents’ life. It spans decades from the late 1950s when our country was rocked by civil unrest, to the present nearly 60 years later. It is a story of growing up biracial and dealing with racism and living as an outsider both at home and during her family’s military postings abroad. It reveals the parallel lives of Sue and her parents who experienced traumatic events that impacted their early days and and later years, yet fought for the same shared goal. Despite the hurdles, they held on to the belief that they deserved to find someone to love, and marry that person no matter what their color or gender.

And ultimately it’s about four people falling in love with someone society said you shouldn’t love, breaking the marriage laws at the time, and being willing to deal with the consequences of those decisions. It is a love story – and is as simple, yet complicated as that.

In an increasingly mixed-race America, who decides what we call ourselves?

The Philadelphia Inquirer
2017-12-18

Valerie Russ, Staff Writer

(Andy Stenning/Pool Photo via AP) Prince Harry and his fiancee Meghan Markle speak with teachers at the Nottingham Academy Dec. 1.

Last week, the Meghan Markle controversy was her anticipated visit with Prince Harry to Queen Elizabeth’s estate at Sandringham for Christmas, an unprecedented invitation for an unmarried couple.

Before that, the debate was about Markle’s mixed-race identity: Do her African American mother and white father make her white, black, or biracial? After her engagement to Harry, some women celebrated the notion of a “black princess” — although she’ll actually be a duchess — while others argued she should be described as biracial, not black.

How to define, describe, and label mixed-race identity has been a brewing controversy in recent decades as the country becomes more racially diverse. Since the 2000 census, when Americans were first able to choose more than one race, the Census Bureau reported that people of color will be the majority in the nation by the 2040s and that more than half of American children will be part of a minority race or ethnic group by 2020. In fact, as of last year, the census said minority or ethnic-group children under the age of 1 are already in the majority.

The sociologist Herbert Gans blamed Census Bureau data for the increase in white nationalism and alt-right fear “that they are being threatened and overwhelmed by a growing tide of darker-skinned people.” He predicted that mixed-race Latinos and Asians will eventually identify themselves as white.

Camille Z. Charles, the director of the Center for Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, is the daughter of an African American mother and a white father. Charles identifies as black. She is working on a book exploring the intra-racial diversity among black Americans who identify either as African American, mixed-race/biracial, or black immigrant, tentatively titled The New Black: Race-Conscious or Post-Racial?…

Read the entire article here.

The Mutating Immutable: Black, Mixed, Bi-Racial

iMiXWHATiLiKE!: Emancipatory Journalism and Broadcasting
2017-12-14

Jared Ball, Host and Associate Professor of Communication Studies
Morgan State University, Baltimore, Maryland

Panama Jackson of Very Smart Brothas joined us to discuss the shifting dynamics and politics around being “mixed” and “Black.”

mxd kd mixtape

Glass Poetry Press
2017
Chapbook ISBN: 978-0-9975805-6-3

Malcolm Friend, Poet, Performer, Educator

Cover by Raychelle Duazo

In his debut chapbook mxd kd mix tape, Malcolm Friend offers us a speaker on the fringe of becoming. If he were a superhero this would be his origin story. The musicality & rhythm that is promised in the title more than delivers, but what Friend also delivers on are poems forged within the many rooms of his identity. & these rooms are decorated with poetic craft & a keen knowledge of the songs that have shaped him. This collection, & Friend are a valuable addition to America’s poetic landscape. I look forward to many more work from this fresh new voice.

— Yesenia Montilla, author of The Pink Box

In mxd kd mixtape, Malcolm Friend gracefully blends personal and public history, crafting a dynamic archive in verse. As Friend sets voices of remembrance against the forces of oppression, violence, and neglect, we hear how the richest points of identification — in poetry, in music, in life — occur as intersections: musicality and masculinity, Puerto Rican and Jamaican heritage, safety and threat, question and answer. The result is a chapbook filled with necessary poems that “echo of insistent survival.” I’m so grateful for this talented and convicted poet, who has risked reminding us, because we need reminding, especially when staring down the many faces of erasure, “this is why we turn to song.”

— Geffrey Davis, author of Revising the Storm

mxd kd mixtape hits all the right young poet notes: identity, awareness, inquiry, a politically charged imagination with the right doses of social value. Friend alludes to our heroes, our irony, our singers, as he sifts through the nuances of diaspora, untold stories, and lyrical re-interpretations of Black Caribbean complexes. This debut asks us to confront our biases, our mask-wearing tendencies, our ability to stay silent; it resists the violence of definitions until we have no choice but to sing. Friends’ poetry does what all good albums of their time seek to do: set the record straight.

— Willie Perdomo, The Essential Hits of Shorty Bon Bon

My Mother Is White. I Am Not: On Being Biracial Without Identity Issues

Very Smart Brothas
The Root
2017-12-05

Panama Jackson

Panama Jackson, 1 year old, with his dad (Panama Jackson)

Editor’s note: This piece speaks from the perspective of being biracial with black and white parents. I realize that other biracial ethnic mixes may or may not share any of these experiences.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece called “Black Folks Who, Though Invited, Probably Wouldn’t Come to the Cookout.” On this list I included the following people: Mariah Carey, Meghan Markle, Rashida Jones and Lenny Kravitz. Would they come? We many never know, but sure as shootin’ an early comment on Facebook pointed out, solely, that “Mariah Carey is biracial. I believe Megan Merkel [sic] is biracial as well …”

While I can’t speak for the commenter, my assumption is that their biracialness excludes them from the list with the lead of “Black Folks,” though I’m surprised he didn’t realize that Rashida and Lenny are also biracial in the way that Sean Fury can appreciate. Put a pin in this…

…Self-identity is defined as the recognition of one’s potential and qualities as an individual, especially in relation to social context.

Self-identity.

Here is where I point out some facts about myself. I am mixed. I’m the product of a Caucasian woman from France and a black man from Alabama. I will tell you, without hesitation, that I am biracial.

What I will also tell you, without hesitation and with pride, is that I’m black. I identify as black. I was raised that way. I was raised in a household by my black father and black stepmother and my black sisters. My upbringing was full of blackness, not even intentionally but by virtue of who my parents are. My white mother obviously had a hand in raising me—we spent summers with her in Michigan—but largely, my foundation, self-esteem, pride and identity were crafted by my black parents….

Read the entire article here.

A Way of Sharing

UMKC Today
University of Missouri, Kansas City
2015-06-08

Photo credit: Janet Rogers, Division of Strategic Marketing and Communications

Knowledge, Expertise and Experience

Women from Africa, Asia, Europe, South America and nearby states in North America attended the 2015 Women of Color Leadership Conference.

MC Mia Ramsey strolled across the stage in her black sweater, black skirt, white T and pink sneakers. An energetic lady, Ramsey was ready to inspire and encourage women through song, jokes, personal stories and rousing introductions of presenters.

The 10th annual conference, “Together We Rise: 10 Years of Paving the Way,” at the University of Missouri-Kansas City focused on improving the lives of all women of color. More women of diverse backgrounds attend each year to share their expertise and to learn from facilitators and speakers.

Shortly after keynote speaker Lacey Schwartz took to the podium, she made an emphatic statement: “Tell the truth about things that are hard to tell the truth about.” If that had been the case, her life would have been less complicated, and she would have known far sooner exactly who she was.

In the documentary “Little White Lie,” Schwartz tells her story of growing up in New York with her parents and a strong sense of her Jewish identity, only to discover she was not white, but biracial. She created the documentary to start a conversation about difficult conversations…

Read the entire article here.

Does Race Matter in America’s Most Diverse ZIP Codes?

The New York Times
2017-11-24

John Eligon

Darryl Johnson, center, and his wife, Marissa Johnson, with their daughter Sienna at their restaurant in Vallejo, Calif. The city is one of the most racially balanced in the United States. Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times

VALLEJO, Calif. — Beyond the burgers and fries coming from the kitchen and the oldies blaring from the radio, the scene playing out daily at the Original Red Onion might appear unfamiliar to much of the country.

The restaurant’s married owners — Marissa Johnson, a Filipino-American, and Darryl Johnson, an African-American — work alongside Jahira Fragozo, who is of Miskito and Yaqui Indian descent. Ms. Johnson bonds with a customer, Hillory Robinson, who is black, over the challenges of motivating their children in the winter. “They need something to do,” Ms. Robinson says.

Ms. Johnson gushes a short time later when a regular, Dylan Habegger, who is white, decides to tackle the restaurant’s new, spicy creation with a name that describes its effect. “Uh oh,” Ms. Johnson tells him, “you’re trying the Burner today.”

The Original Red Onion sits in one of the country’s most racially diverse ZIP codes: 94591, in Vallejo, Calif. About 30 miles north of Oakland, it is the rare place in the United States where black, white, Asian and Hispanic people not only coexist in nearly equal numbers, but actually connect…

Read the entire article here.

The Concept of “Passing”…

Another View Radio Show
WHRV 89.5 FM
Norfolk, Virginia
2017-10-07

Barbara Hamm Lee, Executive Producer and Host

It’s a phenomenon unique to communities of color – those with very light skin “passing” for white, particularly for African Americans, during the Jim Crow era. On the next Another View we’ll talk with Donna Drew Sawyer, author of Provenance: A Novel, about what happens in the life of a fictional character who passes for white; and historian Dr. Cassandra Newby-Alexander who shares the history of this practice.

Download the interview (01:00:00) here.