Mixed Race Studies

Because of Our Success: The Changing Racial and Ethnic Ancestry of Blacks on Affirmative Action

Carolina Academic Press
December 2014
404 pages
Paper ISBN: 978-1-61163-444-0

Kevin Brown, Richard S. Melvin Professor of Law
Maurer School of Law
Indiana University

When selective colleges, universities, and graduate programs instituted affirmative action policies in the 1960s, 99.4 percent of Americans were either black or white. Not only were interracial marriages between blacks and whites illegal in over twenty states, but very few blacks were involved in interracial sexual relationships. A person’s race was determined by the application of the one-drop rule. Thus, mixed-race blacks were not allowed to self-identify their race. Rather, they were socially ascribed as black and, therefore, the concept of Black Multiracials did not exist. Also, less than one percent of blacks were foreign-born.

As a result, one of the core assumptions upon which affirmative action was based was that the predominant ancestries of the beneficiaries would be children of two American-born black parents (“Ascendant Blacks”). However, Black Multiracials and foreign-born blacks and their children (“Black Immigrants”) now constitute a growing majority of the black students at many selective higher education programs. Further, the percentages of Black Multiracials and Black Immigrants among those blacks approaching college age are rapidly increasing. Thus, in an ironic twist of fate, America is ethnically cleansing from the campuses of its selective higher education institutions Ascendant Blacks. Not only were they the primary group that affirmative action policies were intended to benefit, but their ascendency out of slavery and segregation made possible the increases in mixed-race sexual relationships, Black Multiracials, foreign-born blacks, and Black Immigrants. This book discusses this ethnic cleansing of Ascendant Blacks and its implications for American society, and suggests possible ways to address the problem.

Multiracial Community Organizations Response to #Ferguson

2014-11-26

As members of the multiracial community, we want to express our concern and compassion for the family of Michael Brown Jr. We are connected to these events and stand in solidarity with the many individuals and communities that have been harmed by the legacies of white supremacy, privilege, and racism. As community organizers, scholars, activists, writers, and artists, we remain resolute in dismantling racism through our work and actions.

#BlackLivesMatter

Critical Mixed Race Studies
Loving Day
MAVIN
Mixed Roots Stories
Mixed Race Studies
Multiracial Americans of Southern California (MASC)
Multiracial Asian Families
National Association of Mixed Student Organizations (NAMSO)
Kaily Heitz

Roundtable: Global Mixed Race

University of California, Santa Barbara
Department of Political Science
The Lane Room (Ellison 3824)
Monday, 2015-03-02, 16:00 PST (Local Time)

The authors of the new book Global Mixed Race (New York University Press) will participate in a Roundtable on the subject. The authors are:

• G. Reginald Daniel, UCSB Sociology
• Adrienne Edgar, UCSB History
• Paul Spickard, UCSB History
• Lily Anne Y. Welty Tamai, Japanese American National Museum

Discussant: Ingrid Dineen Wimberly, University of La Verne

For more information, click here.

Waking from Mixed Dreams

Mixed Dreams: towards a radical multiracial/ethnic movement
2015-02-26

Nicole Asong Nfonoyim-Hara

Let me begin, if I may, by introducing this rather belated post with the powerful words of some scholars, poets, writers, and activists to set our scene:

“American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it–and that it belongs to him [the black child]. I would teach him that he doesn’t have to be bound by the expediencies of any given administration, any given policy, any given morality; that he has the right and the necessity to examine everything.” (James Baldwin)

“It is in this space that we will find those words with which we can speak of Ourselves and Others. And by exploring this hybridity, this ‘Third Space’, we may elude the politics of polarity and emerge as the others of our selves.” (Homi Bhabha)

“The effect of mass migrations has been the creation of radically new types of human being… people
who have been obliged to define themselves–because they are so defined by others– by their otherness; people in whose deepest selves strange fusions occur, unprecedented unions between what they were and where they find themselves… To see things plainly you have to cross a frontier.” (Salman Rushdie “Imaginary Homelands”)

To survive the Borderlands
you must live sin fronteras
be a crossroads. (Gloria Anzaldua- full poem at the end of the post)

I’ve been feeling a lot like an oyster these past couple of years, working out, mulling over, rubbing painfully up against a little grain– an irritant– that made its way suddenly into my pristine little shell (although, perhaps, it had always been there). Now bear with me, I promise this image will (hopefully) make sense by the end of this.

I began this blog back in 2009 as a response to a very particular moment in our ever-shifting, ever-challenging social terrain in the U.S. That moment was what I liked to call the time “We-Drank-That-Postracial-KoolAid-And-Almost-Died”. It was a time of short-lived, but heady hope for a new America in the wake of President Obama’s historic 2008 win. To that point, there are actually some really interesting reflections out there on how the visceral reaction against the post-racial moment (of which I was very much a part) in its fervor actually obscured the possibility that a particularly important and valid desire was being articulated. A desire, that perhaps, prematurely and albeit naively, declared itself into a celebratory daze despite all obvious evidence to the contrary…

Read the entire article here.

Giuliani: Obama Had a White Mother, So I’m Not a Racist

The New York Times
2015-02-19

Maggie Haberman, Political Reporter

Nicholas Confessore, Political Reporter

Former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York on Thursday defended his assertion that President Obama did not love America, and said that his criticism of Mr. Obama’s upbringing should not be considered racist because the president was raised by “a white mother.”

Mr. Giuliani’s remarks — made at a New York fund-raising event for Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin on Wednesday night and first reported by Politico — set off an uproar.

“I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president loves America,” Mr. Giuliani said at the event. “He doesn’t love you. And he doesn’t love me. He wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up, through love of this country.”

Critics suggested that Mr. Giuliani’s description of Mr. Obama’s upbringing reflected a prejudiced view that Mr. Obama was different from other Americans…

Read the entire article here.

Soledad O’Brien Returns to SBU with Her Black in America Tour

Stony Brook University Happenings: The online newsletter for Stony Brook University
Stony Brook, New York
2015-02-06

Award-winning journalist and former CNN news anchor Soledad O’Brien brings her Black in America tour to Stony Brook University in an interactive event that includes a panel discussion of the key issues facing minority communities today. She will be on campus Monday, February 16, at 6 pm on the Main Stage at Staller Center, joined by panelists author Joan Morgan, former NBA basketball player Etan Thomas and New York City community member Luis Paulino.

“I’m excited to be back on the Stony Brook campus,” said O’Brien. “My dad was a founding professor, and I literally grew up on that campus. It’s been a thrill to go back over the years be meet with journalism students. Can’t wait to be back!”

Her father, Edward E. O’Brien was a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Stony Brook University, where he taught fluid mechanics.

O’Brien was the originator of the highly successful Black in America and Latino in America documentary series for CNN. In 2013, she launched Starfish Media Group, dedicated to uncovering and producing empowering stories about issues of race, class, wealth, poverty and opportunity. Her honors include two Emmy Awards for 2012 election coverage and the special report “Kids on Race.”

To learn more about the tour, visit iamtheconversation.com.

This event is free and open to the public. For more information, contact Conferences & Special Events at (631) 632-6320 or conferences.events@stonybrook.edu…

For more information, click here.

Obama meets with 10 unsuspecting students for hourlong roundtable

The Stanford Daily
Stanford University, Palo Alto, California
2015-02-13

Victor Xu, Desk Editor

Vicki Niu ’18 (right) was one of 10 students who participated in an hourlong roundtable with President Barack Obama on Friday afternoon. (SAM GIRVIN/The Stanford Daily)

Rio LaVigne ’15 signed up to meet several White House officials after the morning session of today’s cybersecurity summit. She did not, however, expect to meet President Barack Obama.

Earlier this week, a group of 10 students with interests in cybersecurity was chosen by various Stanford professors and academics to potentially attend a roundtable meeting with “senior White House officials.” It was not until yesterday afternoon that the meeting was confirmed. And it was not until after Obama’s speech, in a back room of Memorial Auditorium, that the students figured out that they might be meeting the president.

“We walked into the room and pretty quickly noticed there was a nametag in front of every seat except one,” LaVigne said. “The table’s a horseshoe shape, and the one seat that was missing was the one in the very back in the center. It was like, ‘Hmm, okay. That’s interesting. I wonder who’s going to sit there. Someone who doesn’t need a nametag?’”…

Read the entire article here.

Mixed Race 3.0: Risk and Reward in the Digital Age

USC Annenberg Press
2015-01-30
113 pages
ISBN: 9781625175564

Edited by:

Ulli K. Ryder
Department of Gender and Women’s Studies
University of Rhode Island

Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Clinical Assistant Professor
Annenberg School for Communication and Jounalism
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California

Have you been asked, “what nationality are you” or “what country are you from”?
Have you been puzzled when forms tell you to “select only one ethnicity”?
Have you been disturbed to hear that you’re the “face of a colorblind future”?

If you answered ‘yes’ to any of these questions, this book is for you.

Mixed Race 3.0: Risk and Reward in the Digital Age is an e-book that contains 17 contributions (many with exclusive photos) from award-winning writers, researchers and artists who embody a “mixed mindset.” Audacious and razor-sharp, Mixed Race 3.0 exposes the many monochromatic portrayals of multiracial people’s richness, variety and struggles in history, politics, mass-media and technology. Fans of Loving Day, Race Remixed, Mixed Chicks Chat, The Mixed Experience Podcast, Mixed Girl Problems and Critical Mixed Race Studies will be captivated, incensed and inspired by the powerful discussions of risks and rewards of being multiracial today.

Beyond memoir or case study, this book offers three versions of what it means to be mixed from a variety of voices. Version 1 is “Mixed Race 1.0: A Monologue.” Or, how did multiracial identities emerge in the U.S. and what challenges did they face? Version 2 is “Mixed Race 2.0: A Dialogue.” Or, what are some core differences between how multiracials think and talk about themselves and how U.S. and global cultures think and talk about them? Version 3 is “Mixed Race 3.0: A Megalogue.” Or, where in the world is this entire thing going as technology plays more of a role?

With honest storytelling and up-to-date critical inquiry, Mixed Race 3.0 plots a path not just to being mixed in the 21st century, but one open to anyone interested in simply “how to be.” The result is a poignant, intelligent, and daring journey that dissects the controversial label—multiracial—and challenges any politician, pundit or provocateur that purports to speak for or about all multiracial people.

Table of Contents

• Foreword
  • Herman S. Gray
• Introduction
• Section 1 Mixed Race 1.0: A Monologue
  • Gary B. Nash
  • Peggy Pascoe
  • Jordan Clarke
• Section 2 Mixed Race 2.0: A Dialouge
  • Ken Tanabe
  • Lori L. Tharps
  • Andrew K. Jolivette
  • Ulli K. Ryder
  • Marcia Alesan Dawkins
  • Stephanie Sparling
• Section 3 Mixed Race 3.0: A Megalogue
  • Rainier Spencer
  • Velina Hasu Houston
  • Lindsay A. Dawkins
  • Amanda Mardon
  • Shoshana Sarah
  • Mary Beltrán
  • Lisa Rueckert
• The Authors and Artists

Katanga’s forgotten people

FRANCE 24
2010-03-16

Marlène Rabaud

Arnaud Zajtman

Like many mixed-race children in Congo, they were born of a Japanese father who came to work in the mines of Katanga in south-east of the country. Today, they accuse their fathers of wanting to kill them so as not to leave behind any traces when they returned to Japan. FRANCE 24 met these men and women seeking the recognition that has always been denied them.

Watch the video (00:10:51) here.

Scripts of Blackness: Race, Cultural Nationalism, and U.S. Colonialism in Puerto Rico

University of Illinois Press
February 2015
320 pages
6.125 x 9.25 in.
38 black & white photographs, 3 maps, 1 chart, 3 tables
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-252-03890-7
Paper ISBN: 978-0-252-08045-6

Isar P. Godreau, Researcher and Former Director
Institute for Interdisciplinary Research
University of Puerto Rico, Cayey

Ideas of blackness, whiteness, and racial mixture in a Puerto Rican barrio

The geopolitical influence of the United States informs the processes of racialization in Puerto Rico, including the construction of black places. In Scripts of Blackness, Isar P. Godreau explores how Puerto Rican national discourses about race—created to overcome U.S. colonial power—simultaneously privilege whiteness, typecast blackness, and silence charges of racism.

Based on an ethnographic study of the barrio of San Antón in the city of Ponce, Scripts of Blackness examines institutional and local representations of blackness as developing from a power-laden process that is inherently selective and political, not neutral or natural. Godreau traces the presumed benevolence or triviality of slavery in Puerto Rico, the favoring of a Spanish colonial whiteness (under a hispanophile discourse), and the insistence on a harmonious race mixture as discourses that thrive on a presumed contrast with the United States that also characterize Puerto Rico as morally superior. In so doing, she outlines the debates, social hierarchies, and colonial discourses that inform the racialization of San Antón and its residents as black.

Mining ethnographic materials and anthropological and historical research, Scripts of Blackness provides powerful insights into the critical political, economic, and historical context behind the strategic deployment of blackness, whiteness, and racial mixture.