Mixed Race Studies

Dr. Eliot Favors Racial Dead Line

The New York Times
1909-03-15
page 3

Declares the South’s Future Depends On the Whites Preserving Their Integrity

MISQUOTED IN INTERVIEW

Did Not Say That Irish and Italians Furnished Race Problem for North Like Negroes In South

ATLANTA, Ga., March 14.—Sharply denying that he had been taken to task by a Massachusetts committee for his recently expressed views on the negro question, ex-President C. W. Eliot of Harvard, who is staying In Atlanta, to-day reiterated his belief that the South is handling the racial problem in the right way, and that the best interests of both whites and blacks require that a racial dead line be established. Racial Intermingling, Dr. Eliot declared, would be fatal to both white and black.

The future of the South depends, according to Dr. Eliot, on the preservation by the whites of their racial integrity, and, therefore, he thinks they are handling the negro problem in the proper way.

“Why you believe,” said Dr. Eliot, “that your race problem is a new one, but it has been experienced before, only it is intensified here. The negro cannot be expected to be ready for all phases of civilization, when he is a few decades removed from the time when he first began to enjoy civilization as a free man. After 500 or 1,000 years we may expect more substantial growth.”

It was Dr. Eliot’s opinion that the negro will need all the professions to enable him to maintain his racial integrity, especially physicians and nurses. Negro women, when properly trained, make good nurses, he said.

Dr. Eliot mentioned the amalgamation of the Germans and Chinese as an admixture of races that had been suggested as being practical, but he said that he did not believe that such an intermingling would stand.

Dr. Eliot said he had been misquoted in the interview sent out from Montgomery, in which he was credited with saying that the Irish and Italians furnished a race problem for the North similar to that created for the South by the negroes. He said that he did not suggest the examples of racial intermingling that were mentioned in the interview, but he repeated the statement that to maintain racial integrity an individuality was a good thing. For that reason he opposed the intermingling of racial stocks, even of the Aryan branch. The fact that a number of races are associated in a country should not prevent them from dwelling together in harmonious relations.

When the English people were cited as an example of intermingling of’ Jutes, Angles, Saxons, and Normans, that was successful, Dr. Eliot replied:

“But notice how long it required for them to unite. Races that dwell together, of course, tend to become similar.”

Gov’t to overhaul services for multicultural families

Yonhap News Agency
Seoul, South Korea
2014-01-15

Shim Sun-ah

SEOUL, Jan. 15 (Yonhap) — The government plans to streamline its support system for multicultural families to help them integrate into society, officials said Wednesday.

The move comes as some existing services, including Korean-language education, have been redundant or failed to reach those in need who are in distant rural areas.

Under the plan, immigrants can learn the Korean language at local government-designated locations in their respective neighborhoods and earn incentives that would later be helpful when they apply for citizenship, according to the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family.

Currently, only those who successfully finish a Korean-language course offered by the justice ministry are eligible for incentives such as exemption from a written test or an interview when they apply for naturalization.

The nation’s two call immigration centers — one for marriage immigrants and the other for foreign residents in general — will be integrated, so they can more effectively serve the foreign population, the ministry said…

…The envisioned new organization will offer various support for children raised by single parents, grandparents or North Korean defectors, as well as in multiracial families, the government said…

Read the entire article here.

De Blasio Sworn In as New York Mayor

The New York Times
2014-01-01

Michael M. Grynbaum

Bill de Blasio was sworn in as the 109th mayor of New York City early Wednesday, at two minutes past the stroke of midnight.

The oath of office was administered by Eric T. Schneiderman, the attorney general of New York, in a brief ceremony inside the front yard of the mayor’s rowhouse in Park Slope, Brooklyn, where Mr. de Blasio stood with his family behind a chain-link fence and beside a bare-limbed tree.

“I want to say to all of you how grateful we are,” Mr. de Blasio, who wore a black topcoat and cobalt blue tie, told a crowd of journalists and well-wishers, including the actor Steve Buscemi and Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont.

“From the beginning,” the mayor continued, “this has been our family together, reaching out to the people of this city to make a change that we all needed.” He added: “This is a beginning of a road we will travel together.”

The ceremony, which precedes a formal inauguration to take place at noon on the City Hall steps, was the culmination of a campaign in which Mr. de Blasio carefully calibrated his image as a fiery populist, intent on easing the disparities of a gilded city, and a proud husband and father, whose biracial family seemed a paragon of multi-cultural New York…

Read the entire article here.

Am I supposed to be more Brazilian than black?

Africa is a Country
2013-12-20

Daniel Barbosa

We’re always told (by our media, politicians, commentators, etcetera) that Brazil is the most multicultural and multiracial country in the world. That Brazilian miscegenation gave birth to a unique kind of beauty and that the Brazilian mixture of races and cultures provided us with a complex of interracial relations that has, in some way, harmonized racism, in the name of some greater interracial identity. Now, “there are no races, but the Brazilian beautiful race,” the Brazilian beauty of the “Brazilian race.”

The documentary film, “Raça,” explores whether nationality should be considered a race (the “Brazilian race”) and whether black Brazilians should abandon once and for all their racial identity for the sake of some Brazilian unity. The filmmakers also ask whether this question itself isn’t already a consequence of institutional racism. Am I supposed to be more Brazilian than black?…

Raça Trailer HD English from Principe Productions on Vimeo.

Read the entire article here.

Jolene Ivey on The Rock Newman Show

The Rock Newman Show
Busboys and Poets
Washington, D.C.
2013-10-19

Rock Newman, Host

Jolene Ivey, Representative, 47th District, Maryland House of Delegates
Also candidate for Maryland Lieutenant Governor

Maryland’s House of Delegates member and 2014 Maryland gubernatorial Running Mate, Jolene Ivey visits The Rock Newman Show. Delegate Jolene Ivey talks about growing up in Maryland, her family, issues in the state of Maryland and her political career. Including the campaign that could make her the first female African American lieutenant governor in Maryland’s history.

Partial transcription by Steven F. Riley

00:09:48 Rock Newman:  In the spirit of my audience, understanding who you are. Let’s go back. Let’s go all the way back. I’d like to know where you where born, where you grew up, where you went to elementary school. Let’s start with those three things. Let’s go all the way back.

Jolene Ivey: Oh boy. My dad was in the military, actually he was a Buffalo Soldier.

RN: Okay.

JI: So he was in World War II and the Korean War, so 20 years. Then he became a public school teacher in Prince George’s County public schools for the next 20 years.

RN: Oh wow. Where did he teach?

JI: He taught at Douglas in south county and then he taught at High Point, which was my alma mater in Beltsville.

RN: Okay.

JI: So he taught at Douglas when we had segregation, of course all the black kids, all the black teachers were there.

RN: Sure.

JI: And then when they desegregated, they sent a few black teachers to other schools. That’s when he got moved to High Point.

RN: Okay.

JI: Yeah. But in any event, he and my mom were married in the fifties. Now, my mom is white..

RN: Uh uh.

JI: …and my dad’s black.

RN: Right.

JI: And it was illegal at that time for them to be married in Maryland… or Virginia. So in this area, they had to live in D.C. [Be]cause D.C. was the one place they could be legally wed. So we lived in Northeast D.C., lived on…

RN: Let me just stop you there. [Be]cause you know, I try to take those moments for my audience. You know, that stuff doesn’t just float by. It’s like, wow, wait a minute. There’re certain posts we can latch on to. Did you hear what she said? In the fifties, as early back as the fifties!

JI: In fact it was the sixties and it was still illegal.

RN: Still illegal..

JI: I think it was… [19]66 before the law changed.

RN: Maryland and Virginia, so they actually,… for them to be married and to reside in Maryland and Virginia your mom and dad. Dad who’s black and the mother’s who’s white, they had to live in the District of Columbia.

JI: They didn’t have any choice. Because you know, the Lovings, the couple that changed the law the whole country, they were in Virginia…

RN: Right.

JI: …when they got married. And they got in a whole heap of trouble.

RN: Right.

JI: And it ended up being a Supreme Court case.

RN: Yes.

JI: Fortunately we won the case. The right side won.

RN: Right.

JI: But, my parents and us, lived in Northeast D.C. in Riggs Park.

RN: Okay.

JI: My mom left when I was three. And my dad raised us. He told her you can do whatever you want, but the kids stay with me. So dad was just an outstanding father. And he raised me and my brother. Um, my stepmother joined us when I was about seven. And you know.

RN: Where did you go to elementary school?

JI: I went to LaSalle Elementary right there in Riggs Park and it was kind of tough on me then boy… middle school, Bertie Backus Middle School. I loved the school, but I had some bad memories from part of it.

RN: And what are the bad memories?

JI: Well, you know what it’s like Rock. You grow up in an all-black neighborhood and especially back then as light I am. I was getting my butt whipped! I mean, and I was real skinny too.

RN: A little tiny thing.

JI: A little tiny thing! Getting picked on. But anyway, it made me tough. And by the time I went to high school, I ended going to high school the same school my dad taught at. So year—which is High Point High School—the first year we still lived in D.C., so we had to pay for me to go the first year, [be]cause it was out of the region. But after that we moved to Prince George’s county and I was able to just continue to go to High Point…

…00:21:36

Rock Newman: Jolene, before we went to break, we got a little biographical information about you. And we left off where obviously there was the incredible strong influence of your father, your grandmother you said was an influence also and you said she brought some joy in your life.

What I was wondering, did you have a particular idol outside of your father and grandmother, a teacher, a public figure, whatever, that might have been… who had an impact on your life early on?

Jolene Ivey: You know, it’s gonna sound corny, okay, but it was Martin Luther King. And…

RN: That doesn’t sound corny at all… [Be]cause we all have a dream.

JI: Right, Right. And you know, he was such a point of discussion in my family. And when he was killed, there was a television, a local television [that] came to our school to interview kids about how they felt..

RN: This was now maybe when you were in Junior High?

JI: No, No.

RN: Elementary.

JI: At the time it happened, I was just a little kid and I remember this local television came out to interview kids about what was his impact on our lives. And I know that when they saw me sitting in that class, they were like, “what the heck is this little ‘white-looking’ girl doing in this class,” but they interviewed me and I came home and I told my parents, told my family, “I’m going to be on television tonight.” And they were like, “Yeah, you don’t know what you’re talking about!” And so, when it was time for it to come on, I went and turned on the TV and they were like “What’s she watching?” And they came, and sure enough, there I was. And they asked me what his impact had been on me and I said, “he got us a seat on the bus.”

RN: Go on now!…

Marylander of the Year: Benjamin Todd Jealous [Editorial]

The Baltimore Sun
2013-12-28

Our view: Jealous leaves the NAACP a revitalized and relevant institution that is at the forefront of the social justice struggles of our time

In the spring of 2008, as the prospect that America would elect its first black president became more and more likely, the organization that did as much as any to make that watershed possible had fallen on hard times. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, America’s oldest and best known civil rights group, was in disarray. It’s last president and CEO had abruptly quit, and it had laid off half of its staff to balance the books. Its membership and relevance in what many were heralding as a post-racial America seemed destined to wane, and one of the defining institutions of the 20th century had no sure place in the 21st.

The answer to that challenge was an unlikely one: Benjamin Todd Jealous, a 35-year-old, bi-racial foundation president from California who was born a decade after the civil rights movement’s greatest triumphs. To call his selection controversial would be an understatement. Some saw it not just as risky but as a repudiation of a century of sacrifice by the NAACP’s members.

Five years later, he is leaving the NAACP a changed institution. Its finances are stabilized, its membership is up, its social media presence is robust and its role in American public life is clear and forceful. Mr. Jealous brought energy, vision and focus to an organization in need of all three and showed a new generation that the pursuit of social justice remains a vital cause in these and any times. And if we may be parochial for a moment, he kept its headquarters in Baltimore. We are proud to name him The Baltimore Sun’s 2013 Marylander of the Year…

Read the entire editorial here.

De Blasio’s Daughter Reveals Substance Abuse

The New York Times
2013-12-24

Javier C. Hernandez and Michael M. Grynbaum

Chiara de Blasio, right, with her parents in September. Michael Appleton for The New York Times

Days before her father’s inauguration, the 19-year-old daughter of Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio disclosed a history of drug and alcohol abuse that his campaign had taken pains to shield throughout a candidacy that relied heavily on the image of a happy and tight-knit family from Brooklyn.

In a carefully crafted video distributed on Tuesday by her father’s staff, Chiara de Blasio spoke in candid terms about a battle with depression throughout her adolescence that led to drinking and drug use, habits that worsened when she was attending college in California last year.

“It didn’t start out as like a huge thing for me, but then it became a really huge thing for me,” Ms. de Blasio said in the five-minute video, in which she sat alone on screen, accompanied by soft piano music…

…Such is the celebrity of Mr. de Blasio’s children that Ms. de Blasio’s announcement on Tuesday was met with a statement from the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy at the White House, who praised her “tremendous bravery in speaking out about her recovery.”…

…Hank Sheinkopf, a political consultant, said the city had elected a family when it chose Mr. de Blasio in November, and that New Yorkers should expect his wife and children to continue to play a prominent role…

Read the entire article here.

The Rhetoric of Heroic Expectations: Establishing the Obama Presidency

Texas A&M University Press
2014-01-15
266 pages
6 x 9
7 b&w photos. 4 figs. 4 tables. Bib. Index.
Unjacketed Cloth ISBN: 978-1-62349-042-3
Paper ISBN: 978-1-62349-043-0

Edited by:

Justin S. Vaughn, Assistant Professor of Political Science
Boise State University

Jennifer R. Mercieca, Associate Professor
Department of Communication
Texas A&M University

Campaign rhetoric helps candidates to get elected, but its effects last well beyond the counting of the ballots; this was perhaps never truer than in Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign. Did Obama create such high expectations that they actually hindered his ability to enact his agenda? Should we judge his performance by the scale of the expectations his rhetoric generated, or against some other standard? The Rhetoric of Heroic Expectations: Establishing the Obama Presidency grapples with these and other important questions.

Barack Obama’s election seemed to many to fulfill Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision of the “long arc of the moral universe . . . bending toward justice.” And after the terrorism, war, and economic downturn of the previous decade, candidate Obama’s rhetoric cast broad visions of a change in the direction of American life. In these and other ways, the election of 2008 presented an especially strong example of creating expectations that would shape the public’s views of the incoming administration.  The public’s high expectations, in turn, become a part of any president’s burden upon assuming office.

The interdisciplinary scholars who have contributed to this volume focus their analysis upon three kinds of presidential burdens: institutional burdens (specific to the office of the presidency); contextual burdens (specific to the historical moment within which the president assumes office); and personal burdens (specific to the individual who becomes president).

Obama: I’m Not Interested in Talking About Race in the Abstract

The New York Observer
New York, New York
2007-11-26

Jason Horowitz

During a question-and-answer session in Berlin, New Hampshire last night, Barack Obama received a multi-part question about how he identified himself racially, race relations and his commitment to civil rights from an elderly liberal in a green ball cap…

…As for how he identified himself, Obama was clear.

“I’m an African American,” he said. “But I am somebody, like many African Americans, who has all kinds of stuff in him.”…

Read the entire article here.

Poll Finds Hope Is Running High for Next Mayor of New York City

The New York Times
2013-12-13

Kate Taylor and Dalia Sussman

With Bill de Blasio’s inauguration less than a month away, New Yorkers are highly optimistic about his mayoralty — but they remain skeptical that he can achieve major changes on some of the core issues that defined his candidacy, like the widening gap between the rich and poor and the scarcity of affordable housing, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll.

Despite his four years as the city’s public advocate, Mr. de Blasio — who surged from behind late in the primary season to capture the Democratic nomination, and then coasted to a landslide victory in November — remains unfamiliar to many New Yorkers. More than half of city residents said they did not yet know enough about the mayor-elect, who takes office on Jan. 1, to form an opinion of him.

Still, 73 percent of city residents said they were generally optimistic about the next four years. About two-thirds said Mr. de Blasio would bring about real change in the way things are done. And while most said the Bloomberg administration favored the wealthy, a plurality said they expect Mr. de Blasio to treat rich, poor and middle-class New Yorkers equally. A majority said they believe he would have a positive effect on schools…

…Mr. de Blasio, whose wife, Chirlane McCray, is black, featured her and their two children prominently in his mayoral campaign, and captured 96 percent of the black vote in the general election, according to an exit poll by Edison Research. More than half of black New Yorkers polled said they believed that having the first biracial couple as mayor and first lady would help transform race relations in the city.

Mr. de Blasio has made clear that his wife will play an active role in his administration. Half of city residents, including a majority of women and six in 10 blacks, said they supported this, though 85 percent said they did not know enough about Ms. McCray to have an opinion of her…

Read the entire article here.