Mixed Race Studies

Black hair is finally fashionable. But on whose terms? – video

The Guardian
2016-03-09

Emma Dabiri

Growing up with afro hair can be traumatic, especially when white ideals of beauty are everywhere. But, says Emma Dabiri, black women are increasingly letting their natural hair out, and the ‘fro is becoming fashionable. But, she argues, they are still too often measuring their beauty by the yardstick of whiteness.

Why Zoe Saldana was the wrong black woman to play Nina Simone

The Telegraph
2016-03-04

Emma Dabiri

With her long silky hair and brown tan skin, Zoe Saldana may well be black. But is she “black enough” to play Nina Simone?

Some people seem to think not. Ms Simone’s surviving family have asked Saldana, who darkened her skin with make-up to star in the upcoming biopic Nina, to “take [her] name out of your mouth for the rest of your life.” Many Americans agree.

.@zoesaldana Cool story but please take Nina's name out your mouth. For the rest of your life.

— Nina Simone (@NinaSimoneMusic) March 3, 2016

To some it may seem strange that a woman with parents from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic – where 85 per cent of people have African ancestry – should be regarded as not being “black”. But to understand this, we need to consider the way race has been constructed by our society.

As a mixed women with a white mother and black father, I should logically be regarded as “half-white” as often as I am “half-black”. Yet this doesn’t happen, because race is not logical. Instead, whiteness is a social construct which depends on a myth of racial purity and exclusivity, with no room for anyone with visibly African ancestry, no matter how light our skin. In the USA, this was typified by the “one drop rule” – a legal principle which decreed that anyone with a single African ancestor was “black” for the purposes of segregation. For many people, black is simply black.

This can be a powerful concept: I identify as black, not mixed-race, precisely because it is an inclusive category which allows unity between a very wide range of people. But that plurality can also obscure things. I am always sensitive to the advantages I might have in comparison with darker skinned black women, because the truth is that there is a huge difference in how society treats us…

Read the entire article here.

​black girls rule: celebrating brazilian women of colour

i-D
2016-03-08

Hattie Collins

Weudson Ribeiro’s new photobook Black Girl Power is shining a light on black female identity and LGBT women of colour in brazil.

Brasilia based photographer, journalist and political scientist Weudson Ribeiro is known for his images celebrating Brazilian queer culture. In his latest series, Superafro: BLACK GIRL POWER, Ribero documents Brazilian LGBT women who proudly express their sexuality and their blackness as a political statement…

Tell us about Black Girl Power and what you wanted to document, not only regarding black female identity, but that of LGBT women of colour.

With Superafro: BLACK GIRL POWER, I intend to document the huge diversity within the Afro-Brazilian spectrum, celebrate the beauty of women of colour and, hopefully, make a positive difference in the fight for freedom and equality by raising awareness of issues that affect the reality of black people in Brazil, since we live in a society moulded by racism, pigmentocracy, disenfranchisement and sexism. With the phenomenal rise of feminism amongst young women and a greater access to information provided by digital inclusion, I notice females feel more encouraged to wear their hair natural, or as they will, express their sexuality and reject euphemisms employed to address Afro features as though Negroid was a burden…

…What do the women of your pictures represent?

Those women represent the stand against the odds of a judgemental society. Personally, meeting such beautiful and smart black women was a watershed. Being the only son of mixed-race parents, I had a hard time understanding and accepting my own blackness. It’s a problem that affects the vast majority of Brazilians as a result of our highly mixed ethnic backgrounds. So, as in the womb, this series marks to me a rebirth as a proud black LGBT man, after 24 years struggling with my racial identity…

Read the entire interview here.

Gender, Race, and Ethnicity in the Workplace: Emerging Issues and Enduring Challenges

Praeger
March 2016
415 pages
6.125 x 9.25
Hardcover ISBN: 9978-1-4408-3369-4
eBook ISBN: 978-1-4408-3370-0

Edited by:

Margaret Foegen Karsten, Professor of Human Resource Management; Internship Coordinator
School of Business
University of Wisconsin, Platteville

For America to prosper, organizations need to address disparate treatment of women and people of color in the workplace.

Insights from professionals in the fields of organizational development and diversity provide practical tools to help employees and managers—regardless of race or gender—collaborate in reaching their workplace potential.

The contributions of more than 30 experts reframe the discussion on gender, race, and ethnicity in the U.S. workforce, examining the complex identity concerns facing workers who fall within minority groups and recommending practical solutions for dealing with workplace inequities. Through focused essays, experts explore new perspectives to persistent challenges and discuss progress made in addressing unequal treatment based on race and gender in the past eight years. This detailed reference explores every aspect of the issue, including mentoring, family leaves, pay inequity, multiracial and transgender identities, community involvement, and illegal harassment.

The first part of the book identifies employment discrimination based on multiracial identity, appearance, and transgender status. The second section unveils the psychology behind harassment on the job; the third section provides strategies for overcoming traditional obstacles for the disenfranchised. The final section discusses updates on laws dealing with the Family and Medical Leave Act. The book closes with success stories of women of color in U.S. leadership roles as well as others achieving success in their professions outside of the country. Accompanying tables, charts, and graphs illustrate the field’s most poignant research, such as the relationship between organizational effectiveness and diversity and the characteristics of those taking family and medical leave.

Features

• Presents new research on the many forms of employment discrimination based on multiracial identity, appearance, and transgender status
• Includes contributions from professionals in the fields of social psychology, law, gender studies, and ethics, among others
• Reveals effective ways for promoting inclusion of women and people of color in today’s global workforce
• Covers the workforce in the public sector, private sector, and military
• Considers the role of social media in helping break through workplace barriers

Beyoncé, Creoles, and Modern Blackness

University of California Press Blog
2016-01-29

Tyina Steptoe, Assistant Professor of History
University of Arizona

Tyina Steptoe is the author of Houston Bound: Culture and Color in a Jim Crow City (2015).

Beyoncé is a black woman. This isn’t exactly earth-shattering news; after all, the 34-year-old, Houston-born entertainer has one of the most recognizable faces in the world. Yet, since the release of the video for her song “Formation” on February 6, an avalanche of tweets and think pieces have heralded the arrival of an unapologetically black Beyoncé.

Set in New Orleans, the “Formation” video features a platinum braid wearing, hot sauce-loving black woman who adores afros and her “Negro nose.” Helmed by award-winning director Melina Masoukas, the clip also prominently features images associated with the Black Live Matter movement. In one scene, a group of militarized police officers stand in front of a dancing, unarmed black boy. Another shot shows a wall tagged with the words “Stop shooting us.” These are not words or images typically associated with Queen Bey.

One day later, Beyoncé’s Super Bowl halftime performance featured a bevy of black female back-up dancers dressed like Black Panthers in berets and afros. Some of the women later posed with a sign that read “Justice 4 Mario Woods.” Woods was a young African American man slain by police officers in San Francisco on December 2, so the display indelibly links Beyoncé to recent protests against police killings. Some white fans reacted angrily. By Monday morning, the hashtag #BoycottBeyonce circulated on social media, and one group of detractors planned a boycott (though that didn’t quite pan out in the way they’d hoped.) “Saturday Night Live” spoofed negative white reaction with a video called “The Day Beyoncé Turned Black.” To her fans and critics, it was clear that Beyoncé has made her racial identity and modern racial politics central to her public image in 2016…

Read the entire article here.

Photo Series Celebrates The ‘Black Girl Power’ Of Brazilian Women

The Huffington Post
2016-03-02

Zeba Blay, Voices Culture Writer

It highlights women who are Afro-Brazilian and proud.

For the past two years, Brazilian journalist Weudson Ribeiro has been documenting the beauty of Afro-Brazilian women by photographing spontaneous portraits of them in an ongoing project. The result was released this month in a photo essay called “Superafro: O poder da mulher negra” or “Superafro: BLACK GIRL POWER.”

The project, which features candid portraits of black women from Brazil, seeks to highlight women who proudly stand in their own blackness as a political statement.

Ribeiro, a 24-year-old journalist and political scientist based in Brasília, has been taking photos for nearly a decade. He is the only son of mixed-race parents, and says that for a long time he struggled with “understanding and accepting my own blackness.”

“It’s a problem that affects the vast majority of Brazilians as a result of our highly mixed ethnic backgrounds,” Ribeiro told The Huffington Post…

Read the entire article here.

EMERGING FEMINISMS, (F)Act of Blackness: The Politics of Mixed Race Identity

The Feminist Wire
2016-02-25

Jazlyn Andrews, Guest Contributor
Colorado College, Colorado Springs, Colorado

Jazlyn Andrews

That girl doesn’t have an ass.” The words hurled through the thick, humid air as if lobbed by a knife-thrower and struck me for reasons I couldn’t quite place at the time, reasons deeply rooted in my struggle to navigate my identity and subjectivity. My journey of self-definition has been a long and painful one that is nowhere near finished, fraught with fear of not belonging and comments made by peers negating my existence, dissecting me by claiming that I “don’t count,” their focus on my parts rather than my whole.

I was never “Black enough” to sing, “Asian enough” to get As in math classes, or “White enough” to be shielded from accusations of acceptance based on affirmative action. Hence, I find myself challenging controlling images but relying on them to validate my identity. My story is not unique considering the many mixed race women who have asked themselves time and time again: “Am I __________ enough?” or who have been on the receiving end of “What are you?” too many times to count. In fact, these experiences are so common—yet so under-analyzed—that Justin Simien created the Twitter hashtag #DearWhitePeople in order to examine the intricacies of being Black in predominantly White spaces.

Through an examination of the 2014 film Dear White People based loosely on Simien’s experiences at Chapman University, I examine how the Tragic Mulatta construction makes it acceptable for mixed race women to become sites for White men to explore their fears of, and fascinations with, an eroticized Other. Such a practice perpetuates an investment in a black-white binary that essentializes mixed race people to “either/or” rather than “both/and,” which maintains the property value of, and investment in, Whiteness. Importantly, the construction of, and reliance upon, a black-white binary erases mixed-race identities and functions to mitigate the threat we pose to blending the color line…

Read the entire article here.

Thank You, Melissa Harris-Perry

The Nation
2016-02-29

Dave Zirin

Melissa Harris-Perry (You Tube)

The most diverse, intellectually bracing show on network news was treated as expendable, and its host would not have it. She and her show will be sorely missed.

This weekend, a show that mattered to its audience as few programs on the vanilla ice-milk buffet that passes for news do, The Melissa Harris-Perry Show on MSNBC, was canceled, and it’s a tragic as well as angering turn of events. “Ties were severed,” as an MSNBC executive put it, after Melissa, who I am proud to count as a colleague, sent an email to her staff explaining why she would not be hosting her show this past weekend after several weeks of having the program pre-empted for election coverage. The “scorching” email, now public, is being cherry-picked in articles, particularly the part where Melissa wrote, “I will not be used as a tool for their purposes. I am not a token, mammy, or little brown bobble head.”…

Read the entire article here.

1-on-1 with Gopher basketball star Rachel Banham

FOX 9, KMSP-TV
Eden Prairie, Minnesota
2016-02-27

Hobie Artigue, Reporter

MINNEAPOLIS (KMSP) – University of Minnesota senior Rachel Banham has been the best player to watch in the Twin Cities on the basketball court and is the toast of the Big Ten.

Watch Fox 9’s Hobie Artigue hit the court with Banham in a good, old fashioned game of HORSE.

Adebe DeRango-Adem explores her identity in art and poetry

The Toronto Star
2016-02-26

Debra Black, Immigration Reporter

Adebe DeRango-Adem was recently hailed as a young Canadian author to watch by Canada’s poet laureate, George Elliott Clarke. She is a poet and doctoral student in English literature at University of Pennsylvania.

Adebe DeRango-Adem was recently hailed as a young Canadian author to watch by Canada’s poet laureate, George Elliott Clarke. She is a poet and doctoral student in English literature at University of Pennsylvania.

Adebe DeRango-Adem was recently hailed as a young Canadian author to watch by Canada’s poet laureate, George Elliott Clarke. DeRango-Adem is a poet and doctoral student in English literature at University of Pennsylvania. Her latest work, Terra Incognita, a collection of poetry published last year, examines racial identity. The winner of the Toronto Poetry Competition in 2005, she served as Toronto’s first junior poet laureate. She spoke to the Star about Black History Month and what it means to her, as well as the importance of exploring identity in art.

I’m wondering what your feelings are about the designation of Black History Month and what that means for you as a writer. Is it important?

A colleague of mine, Andrea Thompson, who is pretty well known in the poetry world, described my book as an excellent and complete mapping of racial topography in Canada. We’re still struggling with the notion of post-race world and post-racial identities. My book and how it speaks to Black History Month is about pushing for malleable borders of identity and identification, in terms of blackness. I happen to be of mixed race — black identified mixed race — and so my book kind of inhabits the same questions that I think are important for everyone to consider. Questions such as: What’s our fixation on the attempts to envision a post-racial world all about? Who is to say, for example, that this idea of mixed races — what makes that radical? That term blackness itself is being opened in good ways. So those are the questions that I think my book is asking. It’s referring to the inter-racial experience as a grounding, but it also wants to ask about immigration. I, myself, am a child of immigrant parents. From Italy and Ethiopia. I came to the U.S. to study, also making me an immigrant. My book is also about asking how blackness in Canada relates to roots, movement and differentiation…

Read the entire interview here.