Mixed Race Studies

Standing Up at an Early Age

The New York Times
2012-09-14

Adam Himmelsbach

Views on Gay Rights of Ravens’ Ayanbadejo Are Rooted in Upbringing

In recent weeks, Baltimore Ravens linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo has been praised in many quarters for supporting the legalization of same-sex marriage. His stance is not new, but it reached a wider audience after a Maryland legislator urged the Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti to silence him.

For Ayanbadejo, 36, it was a comforting shift from 2009, when he became one of the first athletes from a major American professional sports team to speak out in support of same-sex marriage. That year, he found gay slurs directed at him on Internet message boards. In the Ravens’ locker room, players made crude remarks and asked him when he would reveal his homosexuality, he said.

“If I was walking by, and they wanted to be immature and make comments, I’d keep walking,” said Ayanbadejo, who has a 1-year-old son and a 6-year-old daughter with his longtime girlfriend. “If they wanted to be real men and have conversations, I would have, but no one did.”

If those players had heard Ayanbadejo’s story, they would have learned how his views were shaped. His father is Nigerian, and his mother is Irish-American, and he was given the first name Oladele, which translates to “wealth follows me home.” But for much of his childhood, that did not ring true…

…Ayanbadejo began going by his middle name, Brendon, to fit in. He starred for Santa Cruz High School’s football team, but he was also active in theater, rode a skateboard and befriended many openly gay students. He had been accepted as a biracial boy from a Chicago housing project, so he accepted everyone else’s differences, too, he said…

Read the entire article here.

Lawsuit Challenging Obama’s Qualifications Is Tossed Out In Federal Court

AlaskaPublic.org
2012-09-12

Matt Miller, KTOO – Juneau

An Alaska-based federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit challenging President Barack Obama’s qualifications to appear as a candidate on the November general election ballot.

Gordon Warren Epperly of Juneau claims that Obama does not have the political right to hold federal office because he’s of mixed race. Epperly filed an objection with the state Division of Elections in April and sued in state Superior Court in July…

…The case was moved to U.S. District Court where Judge Timothy Burgess on August 24th dismissed the lawsuit ‘with prejudice.’ That means it can never be brought up again…

Read the entire article here.

Elections division turns aside Obama nomination challenge

KTOO News: Public Radio at 104.3
Juneau, Alaska
2012-03-06

Matt Miller

The state Division of Elections has turned down a challenge of President Barack Obama’s qualifications to be on the election ballot in Alaska. The challenge was filed by a Juneau resident who says the Democratic candidate is not qualified to run for re-election because he’s of mixed race.

It’s not a lawsuit filed in any court. Actually, it’s what’s called a nomination petition objection that was filed directly with the Division of Elections.

Division director Gail Fenumiai referred the objection to election attorneys within the Department of Law for further review.

“This is first time that we’ve received something like this,” says Fenumiai.

Gordon Warren Epperly is a retired bus driver in Juneau. He challenges Barack Obama’s qualifications to be on the ballot during Alaska’s presidential primary and general election. He says that Orly Taitz and others who’ve challenged Obama’s qualifications of being a ‘natural born citizen’ because of an alleged birth outside of the country went at it all wrong. He says there is no real requirement for a candidate to produce a birth certificate.

Epperly declined to talk on tape for this story. But in his filing he references the infamous Dred Scott decision which he says has never been overturned by the Supreme Court. He says Negros or Mulattos (he pronounces it mull-EYE-ttos) were not eligible to be citizens until the Fourteen Amendment was ratified in 1868. Even then, what Epperly calls ‘purported’ ratification of the amendment only allowed for civil rights, not political rights that allowed them and their descendants to hold federal office…

Read the entire article here.

Obama Talks Race, Calls Himself a ‘Mixed Kid From Hawaii’

ColorLines: News for Action
2012-09-13

Jorge Rivas, Multimedia Editor / Pop Culture Blogger
Los Angeles, California

Lately it’s been a rare occurrence when President Obama talks race but at a campaign stop in Colorado Wednesday he mentioned it and even identified himself as mixed-raced.

“Education was a gateway for opportunity for me, let’s face it, as a mixed kid from Hawaii born to a single-mom, it’s not likely to become President of the United States,” Obama told supporters at a campaign stop Golden, CO…

Read the entire article here.

Claims of Anti-Obama Racism Create Anger, Frustration

The Associated Press
2012-09-09

Jesse Washington, National Writer, Race and Ethnicity

Is it because he’s black?

The question of whether race fuels opposition to President Barack Obama has become one of the most divisive topics of the election. It is sowing anger and frustration among conservatives who are labeled racist simply for opposing Obama’s policies and liberals who see no other explanation for such deep dislike of the president.

It is an accusation almost impossible to prove, yet it remains inseparable from the African-American experience. The idea, which seemed to die in 2008 when Obama became the first black president, is now rearing its head from college campuses to cable TV as the Democratic incumbent faces Mitt Romney, the white Republican challenger.

Four years after an election that inspired hopes of a post-racial future, there are signs that political passions are dragging us backward…

Read the entire article here.

Cameron reshuffle brings critic of legal aid cuts into ministry of justice

The Guardian
2012-09-05

Owen Bowcott, Legal Affairs Correspondent

New Conservative minister Helen Grant criticised coalition policy on Guardian website last year

One of the new ministerial appointees to the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has previously been highly critical of the government’s key policy decision to axe £350m from the civil legal aid budget.

Helen Grant, Conservative MP for Maidstone and The Weald, practised as a legal aid solicitor for 20 years and established her own firm in Croydon helping clients through family and social welfare cases. On Tuesday, she was made a justice minister.

Writing for the Guardian’s law website last year, as the green paper on legal aid began its passage through the Commons, Grant declared: “Our country’s financial health is a priority, but not at the cost of basic social justice.

“It cannot be right that those most in need of support are left without it … We must ensure we protect those most vulnerable here at home and treat this debate with the care it deserves.” She eventually voted for the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act after it was altered through successive amendments.

Grant, 50, who has a Nigerian father and English mother, should be able to defend herself ably in political infighting: she was under-16 judo champion for the north of England and Scotland. She was briefly a member of the Labour party before becoming the Conservative party’s first black female MP. She has worked with Iain Duncan Smith’s Centre for Social Justice…

Read the entire article here.

Helen Grant first black female minister in the UK

Afro-Europe International Blog
2012-09-09

Helen Grant MP has been made a Minister in David Cameron’s Ministerial reshuffle this September. She is now the first female black cabinet Minister in the UK.

Grant, 50, was born in London to an English mother and Nigerian father, but grew up in a single parent family after her parents separated and her father emigrated to the United States…

Read the entire article here.

Obama’s race still has bearing on media coverage

The Louisiana Weekly
2012-09-04

Nadra Kareem Nittle, Contributing Writer

(Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Maynard Institute) – Long before a little-known Illinois politician ran for president, the mainstream media focused on his race. When he flourished as a presidential candidate four years ago, everyone in America knew that Barack Obama was Black.
 
Have his blackness and extensive coverage of that fact boosted his political career or made it more difficult for him to win re-election? Perhaps surprisingly, some of the nation’s best political minds are divided on this question.
 
Obama’s race dominated media coverage about him before he became president. In 2004, he made headlines for becoming only the third African-American elected to the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction. In the 2008 presidential campaign, news stories questioned whether he could connect with African-American voters because he was born to a white Kansan mother and a Black Kenyan father, neither connected to Blacks in America.
 
When Obama became the first Black president, mainstream media portrayed his historic accomplishment as a symbol of a post-racial, colorblind America. That framing is contrary to the experience of millions of African-Americans and other people of color beset by conscious and unconscious bias daily in this country.
 
As Obama’s first term nears its end, the impact of his race in mainstream media coverage remains unclear…

Read the entire article here.

PARADE Exclusive: A Conversation With the Obamas

Parade Magazine
2012-09-12

Lynn Sherr, Contributor

Maggie Murphy, Editor in Chief

President and Mrs. Obama photographed in the White House Map Room on Aug. 10. [Photo: Ben Baker]

You hear him before you see him. After a hearty hello to the men and women working on the ground floor of the White House, President Barack Obama bounds into the Map Room with a warm smile and an open hand. Soon the president’s eyes fall on a shimmering but empty silver tea set that has been placed on the coffee table by photographer Ben Baker. “Tea? What about chips and salsa?” With the tea service sent to the sidelines, the president settles down next to his wife, Michelle, whose gift for easy elegance is reinforced by her Tracey Reese top and J. Crew skirt. On this day before Gov. Mitt Romney would announce Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate, the first couple ­alternately kid and cuddle for pictures. But befitting a room where decisions about World War II were once made, they quickly strike a more serious pose ­during an interview conducted by PARADE editor in chief Maggie Murphy and contributor Lynn Sherr. As they address questions from our readers about the economy, the political stalemate in D.C., and their family life, the couple hold hands, nod in support of each other’s answers, and make a case for their first four years in office and what they hope to accomplish next….

…PARADE: If you were female, we would ask, “How has being female affected your ability to govern?” So, how has being black affected your ability to govern?

President Obama: I’m sure it makes me more determined in assuring that everybody’s getting a fair shot—in the same way that being a father of two daughters makes me want to make sure that every woman is getting equal pay for equal work, ’cause I don’t want my daughters treated differently than somebody else’s sons. By virtue of being African-American, I’m attuned to how throughout this country’s ­history there have been times when folks have been locked out of opportunity, and because of the hard work of people of all races, slowly those doors opened to more and more people. Equal opportunity doesn’t just happen on its own; it happens because we’re vigilant about it. But part of this is not just because we’re African-American—it’s also because Michelle and I were born into pretty modest means. And so I think about my single mom and what it was like to go to school and work at the same time. And I think about Michelle’s dad, who had a disability and was working every day and didn’t have a lot of money to spare. But somehow our parents or grand­parents were able to give us these opportunities partly because they lived in a society that said that was important. And as president, I want to ­affirm that that’s important and reject the idea that if we just reward those at the top, that somehow that’s going to work for everybody—’cause that hasn’t been how America got built.

Read the entire interview here.

Is Obama still black?

Aljazeera
2012-09-06

Harvey Young, Associate Professor of Theatre, Performance Studies; African American Studies; Radio/Television/Film Studies
Northwestern University
(also Fellow at the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University)

Barack Obama, to many, is not “as noticeably” or, perhaps, “meaningfully black as he once was”, writes Young.

Race is an attribute that generally proves less and less noticeable as a person becomes more and more familiar to us. When we first encounter strangers, we pay attention to appearance. You can learn a lot by looking at a person. Or, so we presume. My mother used to tell my sister that the truth of a man could be gleaned from a glimpse at his shoes. An ex-girlfriend once confessed to me that my having clean, trimmed fingernails when we first met was sufficient evidence that I was good boyfriend material…

…Interestingly, as we spend more time with people, we become so well acquainted with them that we begin to overlook those visibly dramatic features that we could not help but notice during an initial encounter. Over time, and depending upon the social situations in which we locate ourselves, we can forget a person’s race as easily as husbands (or wives) can misremember their partners’ eye colour or fail to recognise a new hairstyle. Proximity and familiarity results in an overlooking of detail and, arguably, forgetting.

Shift in perspective

Thanks to the ubiquitous presence of the President of the United States, regardless of the person who actually holds the office, there are few international figures more familiar to global audiences. The US President is omnipresent, with his image appearing in major newspapers and magazines among other media outlets almost every day across the globe.

Four years ago, when Barack Obama was a stranger who travelled the US and Europe in an attempt to introduce himself to the world, he was clearly, noticeably, identifiably and undeniably black. He was the black candidate for the US presidency. As the black candidate, he felt compelled to give a major talk on race and the dangers of racist vitriol. Voters, who didn’t want to vote for him, faced accusations of being a racist. Voters, who did vote for him, often cited race as an influential factor (and sometimes the only factor) in their vote. When Obama won the election, newspapers across the country resurrected the image and voice of Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. to proudly proclaim “Dream Fulfilled”…

Read the entire article here.