Mixed Race Studies

Latin American Policy Series (3): Racism and Responses to Racism in Latin America

the bulletin: A Willy Brandt School Blog
2017-03-07

Arivaldo Santos de Souza

This article is a continuation of the Latin American Public Policy Series and briefly introducing the topic “Racism and Responses to Racism in Latin America”, building upon Tanya Hernández´s thoughts, whose book: “Racial Subordination in Latin America – The Role of the State, Customary Law, and the New Civil Rights Response” (Cambridge Press, 2012) which I just translated into Portuguese. This analysis seeks to intrigue Latin Americans to think more deeply about the way people of African descent in their respective countries were (and still are) mistreated based on the arguments presented by Tanya Hernandez.

Approximately 150 million people of African descent, members of one of the largest African Diasporas over time, live in Latin America. Even though, we people of African descent make up around 1/3 of total population in Latin American, members of the African diaspora make up more than 40 percent of the poor in Latin America and have been marginalized as undesirable to society since the abolition of slavery across the Americas.

The idea that “racism does not exist” is hegemonic in Latin America, despite the increasing number of black social movements across the region. The “myth of racial democracy”, which supports that the racial mixture (mestizaje in Castellano and mestiçagem in Portuguese) in a population is a symptom of racial harmony and absence of inequalities based in race is still influential even among scholars and well-educated citizens…

Read the entire article here.

Making inclusion “moments” happen

Civil Service Blog
Government of the United Kingdom
2017-03-31

Hayley Trezel, Head of Transformation
Parole Board for England and Wales

Hayley Trezel compares her experience of working in the Civil Service with that of BAME colleagues.

To quote a phrase from a team of colleagues I respect and admire: “Moments don’t just happen.” I appreciate the truth of this when considering my own journey and ‘moment’ of clarity on the race agenda.

I am a 32-year-old working mum, having worked at the Parole Board for the past 8 years. I am a woman of colour, though I still shy away from referring to myself as black. I was brought up to be very proud of my mixed-race heritage. I have been asked on numerous occasions, “where are you from?”,  and I take pleasure in explaining my heritage and seeing the surprise on people’s faces…

Read the entire article here.

Trevor Noah: What’s the “Middle” Between White Supremacy and Equality for All?

Son of Baldwin 
2016-12-07

Son of Baldwin (Robert Jones, Jr)

[IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Trevor Noah dressed in a suit, seen from the chest up, smiling.]

I respect Trevor Noah.

I respect the position he finds himself in and his attempts at trying to find common ground. It’s hard when your loyalties are split and so you have a particular, if peculiar, idea of where the “middle” is.

What I’ll need Noah to explain to me is this: What is the middle between white supremacy and equality for all? And does whatever that middle is benefit white supremacy or equality?

One of the things I dislike about Noah’s perspective is how it misrepresents false equivalence as balance.

I know that when it comes to racial matters, some people feel that they can “see it from both sides” and, therefore, “know the answer is in the middle.” If black people in the United States were in power equal to that of white people; if the laws and institutions and education and media dipped in favor of black people as much as it does white people, then there might be an actually middle to arrive at.

But you cannot start from a place where the scales are tipped in favor of one group and treat it as though the scale is level. Your answer will always be incorrect when your starting equation has one of the variables wrong…

Read the entire article here.

Race, Place and Community

Duke University
Trent Semans Center
Great Hall
Duke University Medical Center Greenspace
Durham, North Carolina 27710
Thursday, 2017-03-30, 08:00-10:00 EDT (Local Time)

Emily Raboteau, Professor of English
City College of New York

Mark Anthony Neal, Host and Professor of African and African American Studies
Duke University

A conversation with award-winning author Emily Raboteau. A Q&A and book (Searching for Zion) signing will follow.

The event, “Race, Place and Community,” is free and open to the public. Light breakfast will be served. Those unable to attend can watch a live webcast of the event at bit.ly/EmilyRaboteau.

Organized by the Duke Clinical Research Institute, the event co-sponsors include the Duke School of Medicine, the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, the Center on Arts, Digital Culture and Entrepreneurship, and Left of Black.

When saying you’re black and being black are two different things

The Washington Post
2017-03-24

Baz Dreisinger, Associate Professor of English
John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York

Rachel Dolezal faced a backlash when it was revealed in 2015 that the NAACP and Black Lives Matter activist was not black, as she presented herself to be, but in fact white. (Colin Mulvany/Associated Press)

Baz Dreisinger, a professor of English at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, is the author of “Near Black: White-to-Black Passing in American Culture” and “Incarceration Nations: A Journey to Justice in Prisons Around the World.”

Back in 2015, I was fascinated by the scandal that swirled around Rachel Dolezal, the NAACP and Black Lives Matter activist who turned out to be a once-blonde white woman from Montana passing herself off as black. Dolezal went further than that: She said she wasn’t posing as black but actually was black — because she feels black. I made the rounds on the talk shows at the time, having published a book about the cultural history of such reverse racial passing, and avidly tried to explain notions of transraciality.

Now Dolezal has published a memoir, “In Full Color: Finding My Place in a Black and White World.” I hesitated to review it. Expending intellectual energy on one woman’s racial hoax seems a luxury of the pre-Trump era. And Dolezal’s increasingly bizarre story seems more tabloid fodder than a subject for serious analysis. But then I read her book, and the educator in me felt compelled to speak out. Dolezal has written an important book, one that belongs on syllabi as a case study in the mechanisms of white liberal racism. She has provided a teachable moment to expose the dodgy ideologies she may not even realize she’s espousing…

Read the entire article here.

The NFL has effectively blackballed Colin Kaepernick

The Washington Post
2017-03-23

Kevin B. Blackistone, Visiting Professor
Philip Merrill College of Journalism
University of Maryland

A week before Christmas 1996, Craig Hodges, who twice during his 10 NBA seasons was the league’s best three-point shooter, filed a federal lawsuit against the NBA. He charged that the league colluded to end his career four seasons earlier.

Hodges contended the league was upset that he showed up at the White House with Michael Jordan and his other teammates from the 1991 NBA champion Bulls draped in a dashiki — a traditional West African tunic popularized here during the Black Power movement — and exercised utter audacity by presenting their host, President George H.W. Bush, with a two-page letter calling for the plight of people of color and the poor in this country to be prioritized in Bush’s domestic agenda.

A week into 1998, the court dismissed Hodges’s complaint. His career effectively died when the Bulls waived him following their second championship in 1992.

But Hodges’s story was revived with the advent of this NFL offseason’s free agency period. He’s been reincarnated in Colin Kaepernick. To be sure, Kaepernick managed the 17th-best quarterback rating last season among starters while coming back from injury. His touchdown percentage was 13th best, better than Washington’s Kirk Cousins, who wound up in the Pro Bowl and with a new franchise-tag contract worth $24 million next season. His interception percentage was sixth, just behind Aaron Rodgers and just ahead of MVP Matt Ryan…

Read the entire article here.

Blackness Behind White Skin

Mixed Roots Stories
2017-03-22

Kenneth Miks

Professor: Now everyone stand up

Class: [shuffling around to stand up]

Professor: Take a look around at all the Black men standing around you.

Class:[Everyone begins looking around awkwardly]

Professor: Now, everyone sit down, but all the black men remain standing…

It is in this very moment I begin to panic. My mind starts to race at a 100mph and I begin to nervously look around as I see everyone sitting down, but all the black men standing tall. “Do I keep standing?…

Read the entire article here.

The Horror of Smug Liberals

The New York Times
2017-03-18

Frank Bruni

Ben Wiseman

Oh, those smooth-talking, self-congratulating white liberals. Listen to them moon over Barack Obama. Look at how widely they open their arms to a black visitor. Don’t be duped. They’re wolves in L. L. Bean clothing. There’s danger under the fleece.

That’s a principal theme in the most surprising movie hit of the year so far, “Get Out,” whose box office haul in America crossed the $100 million mark last weekend. Heck, that’s the premise.

The black protagonist heads with his white girlfriend from an apartment in the city to a house in the woods, where he’s gushingly welcomed by her parents. But their retreat is no colorblind Walden, not if you peek into the basement. I won’t say what’s down there. I don’t want to spoil the fun or sully the chill.

Besides, I’m less fascinated by the movie’s horrors than by its reception. The most ardent fans of “Get Out,” many of them millennials, don’t just recommend it. They urge it, framing it as a “woke” tribe’s message to the slumbering masses, a parable of the hypocrisy that white America harbors and the fear with which black Americans move through it…

…But the movie’s African-American writer and director, Jordan Peele, conceived and began developing it well before the possibility of a Donald Trump presidency came into focus. He wasn’t responding to stark examples of racism like that infamous tweet last week in which Representative Steve King, the Iowa Republican, warned against trying to “restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.” …

…“Get Out” is being categorized as a horror movie, though Peele prefers the neologism “social thriller,” and it’s more eerie than violent, with superb pacing that critics are rightly praising. It’s also a reminder that the best horror movies are intensely topical, putting a fantastical, grotesque spin on the tensions of their times…

Read the entire article here.

What You Need To Know About Colorism, As Told By A Light Skinned Black Woman

Elite Daily
2017-03-07

Jenna Graham, Staff Writer

Boris Jovanovic

“What are you mixed with?” is something I’m asked regularly. It’s the most common question I receive from a stranger, and it still manages to get deep under my skin.I raise my eyebrow and respond with a blunt, “I’m black,” only to be challenged with “black and what?”

Sometimes I respond “just black,” and when I can’t resist being slick I’ll answer, “black and proud.”

Being black, despite all the ugly we’ve endured, is the most remarkable experience I’ll ever know…

Read the entire article here.

Mixed Race Privilege?

KQED Radio
San Francisco, California
2017-03-09

Sierra Fang-Horvath
Oakland, California

My mom is Chinese, with black hair and tan skin. My dad is white, with light eyes and skin the color of office paper. I, on the other hand, am an awkward midway point: dark skin, but not super dark; black hair, but not super black.

It used to be that I never thought about my mixed race. But as I’ve gotten older, and now that I attend a predominantly white suburban school, race is constantly on my mind.

Recently, my classmates and I participated in a survey calculating our privilege…

Read the story here. Listen to the story (00:02:20) here.