Mixed Race Studies

Hang Tough, Martina

Frear Ensemble Theatre
Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania
2004-02-27 through 2004-02-29
Saturday at 20:00, Sunday at 14:00

Composed and Performed By: Audrey Pernell
In Collaboration with: Vernice Miller and Jessica Nakamura
Directed by: Vernice Miller
Music: Ralph Denzer

The Department of Theater presents an honors thesis project by Audrey Pernell, directed by Vernice Miller as Artist-in-Residence. Hang Tough, Martina is a work in progress composed and performed by Audrey Pernell ’04 in collaboration with Vernice Miller and Jessica Nakamura ’03. It is an exploration of light-skinned black/biracial black-white identity using a fusion of European and African performance elements, made most evident through the characterization of a contemporary griot-opera-diva.

The Impact of the Media on Biracial Identity Formation

University of North Texas
December 2007
93 pages
OCLC: 227035319 | 
ARK: ark:/67531/metadc5185

Alicia Edison

Thesis Prepared for the Degree of Master of Science

Biracial individuals undergo a developmental process that is different than monoracial individuals. Not only do they have to develop a strong and cohesive self-esteem, but also develop a strong and cohesive racial identity to have a healthy self-concept. The media is a social structure that has infiltrated into many aspects of American lives, including their racial identity. The media perpetuates current beliefs concerning race and racial identity. This research investigates how biracial identity has been portrayed in the media. Historically, biracial individuals have been portrayed as the tragic “mulatto” because of their confused racial background. In addition, mulatto women have been stereotyped as exotic and sexual objects. A content analysis was used to investigate how the media presents biracial identity. Only movies with black/white biracial individuals were watched. The categories under study included perceived race, character’s race, skin color, likeability, sex appeal, ability to contribute, ability to be violent, mental health, overall positive portrayal social, and negative portrayal score. This study may suggest that the media is making attempts to rectify old stereotypes. Overall, this study does demonstrate that the media portrays biracial and black characters differently in film. One overarching theme from these results implies that the perception of race is more salient than one’s actual race.

Table of Contents

• LIST OF TABLES
• INTRODUCTION
• LITERATURE REVIEW
  • Race
  • History of Race Relations
  • One-Drop Rule
  • Importance of Racial Identity
  • Census
  • Choosing a Race
  • Identity Models
  • Factors in Biracial Identity Construction
  • Family
  • Other Factors
  • Identity Issues Facing Biracial Individuals
  • Well-Being
  • Media
• THEORY
• HYPOTHESES
• PROCEDURE
  • Interrater Reliability Score
  • Data Analysis
  • Results and Discussion
• LIMITATIONS
• CONCLUSIONS
• Appendices
  • A. EVALUATION FORM
  • B. INTERRATOR RELIABILITY SCORES
  • C. LIST OF ACTOR/ACTRESSES AND MOVIES
• REFERENCES

List of Tables

1. Percentage Distribution of Roles Played by Skin Color and Gender
2. Means, Standard Deviations, and One-Way Analyses of Variance (ANOVAs) for Effects of Overall Positive Portrayal Score on Character’s Race
3. Means, Standard Deviations, and One-Way Analyses of Variance (ANOVAs) for Effects of Overall Positive Portrayal Score on Perceived Race
4. Means, Standard Deviations, and One-Way Analyses of Variance (ANOVAs) for Effects of Overall Negative Portrayal Score on Character’s Race
5. Means, Standard Deviations, and One-Way Analyses of Variance (ANOVAs) for Effects of Overall Negative Portrayal Score on Perceived Race
6. Percentage Distribution of Roles Played by Women and Skin Color
7. Means, Standard Deviations, and One-Way Analyses of Variance (ANOVAs) for Effects of Attractiveness by Character’s Race
8. Means, Standard Deviations, and One-Way Analyses of Variance (ANOVAs) for Effects of Attractiveness by Perceived Race
9. Means, Standard Deviations, and One-Way Analyses of Variance (ANOVAs) for Effects of Ability to Contribute by Character’s Race
10. Means, Standard Deviations, and One-Way Analyses of Variance (ANOVAs) for Effects of Ability to Contribute by Perceived Race
11. Means, Standard Deviation, and One-Way Analyses of Variance (ANOVAs) for Effect of Likeability by Character’s Race
12. Means, Standard Deviation, and t-Test for Equality for Means for Effect of Likeability by Perceived Race
13. Means, Standard Deviation, and One-Way Analyses of Variance (ANOVAs) for Effect of Ability to be Violent by Character’s Race
14. Means, Standard Deviation, and t-Test for Equality of Means for Effect of Ability to be Violent by Perceived Race
15. Means, Standard Deviation, and t-Test for Equality of Means for Effect of Skin Color by Character’s Race
16. Means, Standard Deviation, and t-Test for Equality of Means for Effect of Skin Color by Perceived Race

Read the entire thesis here.

Africa’s Legacy in Mexico: The Photographs of Tony Gleaton

Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles
Laband Art Gallery
2007-09-09 through 2007-11-18

Africa’s Legacy in Mexico features forty-five black and white photographs from a series of portraits of African Mexicans by Tony Gleaton. Taken in the late 1980s and early 1990s, primarily in three villages along the southwestern coast of Mexico, Gleaton’s photographs offer insight into a little-known aspect of Mexican culture. These poignant images focus on the present-day descendants of African slaves who were brought to Mexico by the Spanish colonialists beginning in the 1500s. Though Africans have been part of the cultural fabric of Mexico for five centuries, the official policy of the Mexican government has been to only highlight the country’s mestizo [mixed race] heritage that has resulted from the mixing of indigenous and European peoples. Miriam Jimenez Roman writes that Gleaton’s photographs “force us to rethink many of our preconceptions not only about our southern neighbor but more generally about issues such as race, ethnicity, culture, and national identity.”

View some of the photographs here.

Mixed Race/Mixed Space in Media Culture & Militarized Zones

Thursday Afternoon Forum Series
University of California, Berkeley
691 Barrows Hall
2010-10-07, 16:00 to 17:30 PDT (Local Time)

A Critical Race Theory Approach to Understanding Cinematic Representations of the Mixed Race Experience
Kevin Escudero, Ethnic Studies

This presentation focuses on the developmental trajectory of the portrayal of mixed race people in mainstream media.  Primarily looking at film, but also analyzing other media texts such as photography, stand-up comedy and particular sub-genres of film (Disney, television series, etc.) this presentation seeks to understand the ways in which different forms of media have portrayed mixed race people pre and post-Loving.  While much work has been done on the depiction of mixed race people in media post-Loving, there is a need for such work to be contextualized within the pre-Loving depictions of mixed race.  Furthermore, very little attention has been given to the ways in which pre-1967 depictions of mixed race characters (e.g. the tragic mulatto) oftentimes reflect as well as perpetuated racist stereotypes of mixed race people.  These depictions of mixed race people during the anti-miscegenation era are what I argue, has given rise to the utilization by mixed race people of multiple forms of self-expression available through various media in the post-Loving era. 

Using a framework of “neutralizing the Other” in combination with a Critical Race Theory analysis I will also examine the ways in which post-1967 depictions of mixed race people in media have resulted in a neutralizing of the pre-1967 “threat” of miscegenation and the resulting mixed race offspring of these marriages.  Using pre-1967 depictions as a backdrop for post-Loving discourse, this paper also comments as to the self-perception and self-representation of mixed race youth today in film.  In this analysis, other forms of marginalization and subordination are prevalent, specifically gender.  Not to be overlooked in mixed race and miscegenation discourse, women of color are more often than not depicted as hypersexualized, super-fertile beings while mixed race men depending on their racial mixture are depicted as either hyper-masculine beings (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Vin Deisel) or associated with a more effeminate masculinity (e.g. Keanu Reeves who is half Asian and half Caucassian).  Tiger Woods, on the other hand, and the media portrayal of his marriage scandal at the end of 2009, has been cast as the ultimate playboy among men.

Historical Development and Expression of Black-Okinawa: Mixed-Socio-Cultural Race/Space in Militarized Zone
Ariko Ikehara, Ethnic Studies

This paper examines the historicity of the Cold War and the Post-Cold War era and the narrativity of its aftermath in which the legacy and memories of the U.S.-Asia border (militarized Asia space) are apprehended, narrated and remembered from a transpacific gaze: mixed-space/race zone in the U.S. militarized Asia.   Thus, this project seeks to map out a genealogy of mixed-space/race in the U.S. militarized Asia zone in the historical context of the Cold War and Post-Cold War era.  Re-examining the “natural” phases of social-geographical expansion/spatial development brought on by the militarization of Asia during the Cold war and Post-Cold war era in Asia, my main focus is couched in the base cultural space (mixed-space) in Okinawa.  Some of the research questions are: what is the structure that maintains and fuels the military complex in Asia, what forms did the militarized place become mixed-space, and what are the different circumstances in which the mixed-race people (Amerasians) with or without mixed families traverse and move in and out and around (circulation) of the militarized Asia zone.  Centering the black-Amerasian history and narrativity as the loci of inquiry, I am particularly interested in exploring how the notion of “blackness” is apprehended, circulated, and performed in the mixed-space/race, and is reiterated over and again within the larger spatiality of transnational sites in between US and Asia.

For more information, click here.

Cinderella Story: A Scholarly Sketchbook about Race, Identity, Barack Obama, the Human Spirit, and Other Stuff that Matter

AltaMira Press
February 2010
228 pages
Cloth ISBN: 0-7591-1176-6 / 978-0-7591-1176-9  

James Haywood Rolling, Jr., Associate Professor of Art Education
Syracuse University

Cinderella Story is an experimental autoethnography that explores critical racial issues in America through the media of language and images. Rolling asks, How do words and images-involving stories and paradigms, past and future, perceptions of beauty and ugliness-become flesh? How are they done and undone? In this supple and complex narrative, the author peers deeply into his own life and attitudes, and into the racial images and ideas made explicit by American history as a whole, to sort out fact from fiction in new and ingenious ways.

Table of Contents

Prologue: An Old Story
Episode One: Borderlines
Episode Two: Homelessness
Episode Three: Origins
Episode Four: Breech Births and Cinderella Endings
Episode Five: Monsters Deconstructed
Episode Six: Figuring Myself Out
Episode Seven: Messing around with Identity Constructs
Episode Eight: Disruptions
Episode Nine: Secular Blasphemy
Episode Ten: Propaganda
Episode Eleven: Invisibility and In/di/visuality
Episode Twelve: The Meeting
Episode Thirteen: Self-Portrait, with Stern Resistance
Episode Fourteen: (Re)Appearances
Episode Fifteen: Self Portrait, with Backlighting
Episode Sixteen: The One-Drop Rule
Episode Seventeen: Self-Portrait, with Possibilities
Episode Eighteen: Epilogue, with New Story Values

A Visual and Sociological Study of the Hafus

2010-08-07 Through 2010-08-29
Tue-Thu & Sun 12:00-19:00
Fri&Sat 12:00-20:00
(Closed on Mondays and 14, 15, and 16 August )
3331 Arts Chiyoda 6-11-14 Sotokanda, Chiyoda-Ku,Tokyo, 101-0021

Natalie Maya Willer, Photographer

Marcia Yumie Lise, Researcher

The Hafu Project is a visual and sociological study & representation of the so-called “Hafu”s. This is the first public exhibition in Japan. The work provides an unfolding journey of discovery into the intricacies of what it is to be a hafu in modern day Japan as well as on a global scale in a time where culture, nationhood and identity are increasingly fluid.

View the flyer here.

Black, White and Other… Worldwide

The Huffington Post
2010-07-27

Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Visiting Scholar
Brown University

Even though the 21st century is seeing an exponential increase in reports of multiracial ancestry worldwide, exactly what makes a person multiracial remains a puzzling concept. According to the Association of Multiethnic Americans and Project RACE, the definition of a multiracial/interracial person is either someone whose parents were of more than one race or racial background, or someone who had parents that were of different racial groups. But what about those who identify with more than one racial background, irrespective of their parents’ identities? Or, those who identify with a racial background completely different from those of their parents?

Case in point: Nmachi Ihegboro, a blond haired and blue-eyed white baby born earlier this month to proud black Nigerian parents Ben and Angela Ihegboro in London UK. Nmachi’s parents are somewhat mystified about how they could create a white child and they are not the only ones. According to the New York Post, genetics experts are also baffled. So far they have offered three theories: (1) Nmachi “is the result of a gene mutation unique to her. If that is the case, Nmachi would pass the gene to her children — and they, too, would likely be white. (2) She’s the product of long-dormant white genes… that might have been carried by” her ancestors “for generations without surfacing until now.” Genetics professor Sykes of Oxford University thinks that some form of mixed race ancestry would seem to be necessary, and notes that sometimes multiracial women can carry some genetic material for white children and some genetic material for black children. It is also conceivable that the same holds true for multiracial men. (3) “While doctors have said Nmachi is not an outright albino, or lacking in all pigment, they added that the child may have some kind of mutated version of the genetic condition — and that her skin could darken over time.”…

Read the entire article here.

Hybrid Navigator

Small Axe
Number 32 (Volume 14, Number 2), June 2010
pages 150-159
E-ISSN: 1534-6714
Print ISSN: 0799-0537

Satch Hoyt, Artist/Sculptor

I was born in London to an Afro-Jamaican father and a white English mother in the late 1950s. It was, to say the least, a lonely terra nova, a traumatic neocolonial, cross-cultural terrain, that I was extremely ill equipped to traverse. My unwed mother was ostracized at my birth by her working-class parents. My sister and I never met our grandparents—at their request. So from the outset my stage was lit in a racist hue. As the other’s other, I struggled with my identity, floating in a void of black, white, Jamaican, and Inglanisms. I never felt English—and never will. No one lives a raceless reality. The body and corporeal schema are in effect from birth. Hypo descent, light skinned, half-caste, mulatto, biracial, mixed race—call us what you will. As a hybrid one learns to navigate the marginal seas of difference, to remain intact while floating between the two poles. The biracial paradigm is always looming on a cryptic horizon. Growing up in West London’s Ladbrook Grove, the Jamaican and Trinidadian communities are where I found solace, listening to the narratives and the stories about back-ah-yard…

Read or purchase the article here.

Blackberries and Redbones: Critical Articulations of Black Hair/ Body Politics in Africana Communities

Hampton Press
July 2010
484 pages
Paper ISBN: 978-1-57273-881-2
Cloth ISBN: 978-1-57273-880-5

Edited by

Regina E. Spellers, President and CEO
Eagles Soar Consulting, LLC

Kimberly R. Moffitt, Assistant Professor of American Studies
University of Maryland, Baltimore County

This book features engaging scholarly essays, poems and creative writings that all examine the meanings of the Black anatomy in our changing global world. The body, including its hair, is said to be read like a text where readers draw center interpretations based on signs, symbols, and culture. Each chapter in the volume interrogates that notion by addressing the question, “As a text, how are Black bodies and Black hair read and understood in life, art, popular culture, mass media, or cross-cultural interactions?” Utilizing a critical perspective, each contributor articulates how relationships between physical appearance, genetic structure, and political ideologies impact the creativity, expression, and everyday lived experiences of Blackness. In this interdisciplinary volume, discussions are made more complex and move beyond the “straight versus kinky hair” and “light skin versus dark skin” paradigm. Instead efforts are made to emphasize the material consequences associated with the ways in which the Black body is read and (mis)understood. The aptness of this work lies in its ability to provide a meaningful and creative space to analyze body politics—highlighting the complexities surrounding these issues within, between, and outside Africana communities. The book provides a unique opportunity to both celebrate and scrutinize the presentation of Blackness in everyday life, while also encouraging readers to forge ahead with a deeper understanding of these ever-important issues.

Table of Contents

• Foreword, Haki R. Madhubuti
• Introduction, Regina E. Spellers and Kimberly R. Moffitt
• SECTION ONE: Hair/Body Politics as Expression of the Life Cycle
  • The Big Girl’s Chair: A Rhetorical Analysis of How Motions for Kids Markets Relaxers to African American Girls, Shauntae Brown White
  • Pretty Color ’n Good Hair: Creole Women of New Orleans and the Politics of Identity, Yaba Amgborale Blay
  • Invisible Dread: From Twisted: The Dreadlocks Chronicles, Bert Ashe
  • Social Constructions of a Black Woman’s Hair: Critical Reflections of a Graying Sistah, Brenda J. Allen
  • What it Feels Like for a (Black Gay HIV+) Boy, Chris Bell
• SECTION TWO: Hair/Body as Power
  • Dominican Dance Floor, Kiini Ibura Salaam
  • Covering Up Fat Upper Arms, Mary L. O’Neal
  • Cimmarronas, Ciguapas, and Senoras: Hair, Beauty, and National Identity in the Dominican Republic, Ana-Maurine Lara
  • Of Wigs and Weaves, Locks and Fades: A Personal Political Hair Story, Neal A. Lester
  • “Scatter the Pigeons”: Baldness and the Performance of Hyper-Black Masculinity, E. Patrick Johnson
• SECTION THREE: Hair/Body in Art and Popular Culture
  • From Air Jordan to Jumpman: The Black Male Body as Commodity, Ingrid Banks
  • Cool Pose on Wheels: An Exploration of the Disabled Black Male in Film, Kimberly R. Moffitt
  • Decoding the Meaning of Tattoos: Cluster Criticism and the Case of Tupac Shakur’s Body Art, Carlos D. Morrison, Josette R. Hutton, and Ulysses Williams, Jr.
  • Blacks in White Marble: Interracial Female Subjects in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Neoclassicism, Charmaine Nelson
  • Changing Hair/Changing Race: Black Authenticity, Colorblindness, and Hairy Post-ethnic Costumes in “Mixing Nia”, Ralina L. Joseph
  • “I’m Real” (Black) When I Wanna Be: Examining J. Lo’s Racial ASSets, Sika Alaine Dagbovie and Zine Magubane
• SECTION FOUR: Celebrations, Innovations, and Applications of Hair/Body Politics
  • Diaspora in My Hair: A Poetic Narrative of My Experience in Europe, Nadège Tanite Clitandre
  • Broken Mirrors and Reflections of One’s Self: Blackness, Indianness, and Hybridity, Hershini Bhana Young
  • Sun Kissed or Sun Cursed?: Exploring Color Consciousness and Black Women’s Tanning Experiences, Regina E. Spellers
  • African Men in the United States: Stories of Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Power, Hameed S. (Herukhuti) Williams
  • Weaving Messages of Self-Esteem: Empowering Mothers and Daughters through Hair Braiding, Tracey Y. Lewis-Elligan
• SECTION FIVE: Contradictions, Complications, and Complexities of Hair/Body Politics
  • Divas to the Dance Floor Please!: A Neo-Black Feminist Readin(g) of Cool Pose, D. Nebi Hilliard
  • Coming Out Natural: Dreaded Desire, Sex Roles, and Cornrows, L. H. Stallings
  • “I am More than a Victim”: The Slave Woman Stereotype in Antebellum Narratives by Black Men, Ellesia A. Blaque
  • Two Warring Ideals, One Dark Body: Hegemony, Duality, and Temporality of the Black Body in African-American Religion, Stephen C. Finley
  • The Snake that Bit Medusa: One (Phenotypically) White Woman’s Dreads, Kabira Z. Cadogan
• Author Index
• Subject Index

Arts and Mixedness [eConference]

Runnymede Trust
2010-07-09

Runnymede is currently hosting an online debate on mixed-race identity and the arts.

There is a comment from columnist and broadcaster Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: Mixed-Race Britain: Where Next?

Playwright and poet Sabrina Mahfouz also writes about her thoughts on mixed-race identity: A Reflection on Mixedness. 

There are also contributions from noted arts practitioners Patricia Cumper – director of the Talawa theatre company, Jane Earl – Director of the Rich Mix Arts Centre, and Jennifer Williams – Founding Director of the British American Arts Association in our live discussion thread.

They discussed issues of cultural representation in art, the role of funding bodies and policy, the need for specific ‘mixed’ representation and the benefits / dangers of defining mixedness, race or art. Read and contribute to the discussion thread live now.

Discussion thread started by Nina Kelly on 2010-07-09 at 09:43Z.

Read the entire thread here.