Mixed Race Studies

Obama Urges Morehouse Graduates to ‘Keep Setting an Example’

The New York Times
2013-05-19

Mark Landler

ATLANTA — President Obama came to Morehouse College, the alma mater of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., on Sunday to tell graduates, 50 years after Dr. King’s landmark “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, that “laws and hearts and minds have been changed to the point where someone who looks just like you can somehow come to serve as president of these United States.” [Read the transcript here.]

The president tied Dr. King’s journey to his own, speaking in forthright and strikingly personal terms about his struggles as a young man with an absent father, a “heroic single mom,” and the psychological burdens of being black in America.

He also issued a challenge to the graduating class, imploring the young men of Morehouse, the nation’s only historically black, all-male college, to be responsible family men, to set an example, and to extend a hand to those less privileged than them.

While Mr. Obama has struck these themes before, he has rarely done so in such unsparing terms. After a week in which his presidency seemed adrift on a sea of controversies, the speech served as both a reminder of his historic role and an emphatic change of subject.

“We know that too many young men in our community continue to make bad choices,” Mr. Obama said. “And I have to say, growing up I made quite a few myself. Sometimes I wrote off my own failings as just another example of the world trying to keep a black man down.”…

Read the entire article here.

What Obama must say to African-American grads

CNN Opinion
Cable News Network
2013-05-18

Paul Butler, Professor of Law
Georgetown University

—”My brothers.”

That is how President Obama should begin one of the most significant speeches of his presidency: the commencement address at Morehouse College this Sunday. Addressing the historically black all male institution gives Obama an opportunity to rectify his strategic neglect of African-Americans. In this high-profile talk to his own demographic, the president has some explaining to do.

Obama’s identity as a black man is usually communicated subliminally, with the swag in his walk, the basketball court on the East Lawn, the sexy glances at the first lady, his overall cool. Now, however, comes the time to be explicit: to speak out loud his affiliation, his fraternal pride and concern. That’s the good work that calling us “brothers” would do…

Read the entire opinion piece here.

The Political Psychology of Personal Narrative: The Case of Barack Obama

Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy
Volume 10, Issue 1, December 2010
pages 182–206
DOI: 10.1111/j.1530-2415.2010.01207.x

Phillip L. Hammack, Associate Professor of Psychology
University of California, Santa Cruz

Guided by theories of narrative identity, racial identity development, and Freire’s (1970) notion of conscientização, this paper presents an interpretive analysis of Barack Obama’s personal narrative. Obama’s narrative represents a progressive story of self-discovery in which he seeks to develop a configuration of identity (Erikson, 1959; Schachter, 2004) that reconciles his disparate contexts of development and the inherited legacy of racism and colonialism. A major theme of his story centers on his quest to discover an anchor for his identity in some community of shared practice. Ultimately, he settles on a distinctly cosmopolitan identity in which he can foster conversation across axes of difference both within himself and among diverse communities. I discuss the extent to which election of a candidate with this personal narrative of cosmopolitan identity reflects a shifting master narrative of identity politics within the United States, as well as implications for Obama’s policy platform and governance style.

Read or purchase the article here.

Cornel West: ‘They say I’m un-American’

The Guardian
2013-05-12

Hugh Muir, Diary Editor

The American academic and firebrand campaigner talks about Britain’s deep trouble, fighting white supremacy and where Obama is going wrong

Cornel West, the firebrand of American academia for almost 30 years, is causing his hosts some problems. They are on a schedule but such things barely move him, for as he saunters down the high street there are people to talk to, and no one can leave shortchanged. Everyone, “brother” or “sister”, is indeed treated like a long lost family member. And then there is the hug; a bear-like pincer movement. There’s no escape. It happens in New York, where the professor/philosopher usually holds court. And now it’s the same in Cambridge.

The best students accord their visitors a healthy respect, but West’s week laying bare the conflicts and fissures of race and culture and activism and literature in the US and Britain yielded more than that during his short residency at King’s College. There are academics who draw a crowd, but the West phenomenon at King’s had rock star quality: the buzz, the poster beaming his image from doors and noticeboards; the back story – Harvard, Princeton, Yale, his seminal work Race Matters, his falling-in and falling-out with Barack Obama.

Others can teach, and at Cambridge the teaching is some of the best in the world, but standing-room-only crowds came to see West perform. He performed. Approaching 60 now, he is slow of gait. But he always performs…

Read the entire article here.

Community Profiles – Melissa Nobles

MIT School of Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences
Great Ideas Change the World
2013-04-21

Leda Zimmerman

“All societies periodically have to do soul-searching,” says Melissa Nobles, the Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science. With research that illuminates historic episodes of racial and ethnic injustice, Nobles has developed a deep understanding of how different nations go about the process of self-examination and attempt to right the wrongs of the past. Such efforts, believes Nobles, require rigorous honesty and “making sure all voices are heard.”

Budding Political Aspirations

A self-described “political person,” Nobles learned early on about speaking up in the public arena. She was class president during most of her high school years in New Rochelle, NY and remembers attending forums in city hall to protest the school board “taking our school’s money away.” The daughter of parents born and raised in the American South, Nobles grew up during a racially fraught era, and was riveted by news accounts of the civil rights movement, as well as profoundly interested in the political struggles and history of black Americans.
 
Politics and Race
 
This passion to understand politics and its relation to race found an outlet during Nobles’ undergraduate years at Brown University in the early 1980s. Through courses on Latin America, she became fascinated with Brazil, a slave-holding country like the U.S. well into the 19th century. The prevailing academic wisdom was that post-slavery, Brazil evolved into a racial democracy with “no sharp lines of racial demarcation,” while the U.S. saw reconstruction, Jim Crow, racial violence and socioeconomic inequities.
 
But as scholars scrutinized the lives of contemporary Brazilians of color, the disparity (between U.S. and Brazilian national stories) began to crumble. According to Nobles, who eagerly absorbed the new findings, “all socioeconomic indicators that make democracy meaningful didn’t look so good for them, and in a further irony, things looked better for black Americans.” She recalls thinking, “If I’d been born in Brazil, looking the way I do, I wonder what my life outcomes would have been.”…

Read the entire article here.

So, why are we so loyal to a president who is not loyal to us?

The Guardian
2013-05-05

Gary Younge, Feature Writer and Columnist

Kevin Johnson was pilloried for suggesting Obama has not been good for African Americans. But his question was a good one

Back when affirmative action was white, educational institutions were created for African Americans who were barred from admission elsewhere. Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) became the breeding grounds for the “talented tenth” – the elite class groomed to lead black America. Towards the end of the last century HBCUs had produced 75% of black PhDs, 85% of black doctors and 80% of black federal judges. Among the most prestigious was Morehouse, in Atlanta, which counts Martin Luther King, Samuel Jackson and Spike Lee among its alumni.

Later this month, Barack Obama will deliver the keynote address at Morehouse’s graduation ceremony. Another invited speaker was Morehouse alumnus Kevin Johnson, a prominent Philadelphia pastor. Then Johnson, an ardent Obama supporter during both presidential runs, wrote an article criticising the president for failing to appoint enough black cabinet members and to address the needs of African Americans in general. “Obama has not moved African-American leadership forward but backwards,” he wrote. “We are not in the driver’s seat – or even in the car … Why are we so loyal to a president who is not loyal to us?”

Shortly afterwards his speaker’s slot was removed. Instead of addressing the students alone, the day before Obama, he will now be one of a three-person panel curated “to reflect a broader and more inclusive range of viewpoints”…

Read the entire article here.

The Race of Birth: Systemic Racism Again?

Racism Review
2013-05-05

Sharon Chang, Guest blogger
Multiracial Asian Families

The other day I was reading and came across this:

Prior to 1989, the race on a newborn’s birth certificate was determined by the race of the parents. An infant with one White parent was assigned the race of the non-White parent. If neither parent was White, the child was assigned the race of the father. Since 1989, the race of the mother has been indicated as the child’s race on the birth certificate.[Note 1 below]

Of course being the mother of a multiracial Asian child, my curiosity was massively peaked. I didn’t remember identifying my son’s race/ethnicity after he was born. Did nurses mark it for us? What did they put considering both my husband and I are multiracial Asian too? I rushed to find my son’s birth certificate. No race listed. End of story? Of course not…

…Ultimately this all gets pretty sticky when we consider birth certificate data has played a long-standing role in public health planning, action and funding. Leaving me, as always, with more questions than answers. How does the inaccuracy of recording mixed race impact the lives and representation of multiracial people? And how do us parents experience this inaccuracy as we are asked again and again to identify our multiracial children?

Read the entire essay here.

“Colorblindness” Overlooks Structural Inequality

Jesus For Revolutionaries: A Blog About Race, Social Justice, and Christianity
2013-04-30

Robert Chao Romero, Associate Professor of Chicana/o Studies and Asian American Studies
University of California, Los Angeles

Good morning.  Thanks to all who have been tracking with our multi-part series on Critical Race Theory and Christianity.  It seems like we’ve struck a nerve with this one, so I’m excited to keep sharing ideas—back and forth—between us.

Some very thoughtful comments came in last week from Paul, a teacher, pastor, and doctoral student at my old stomping grounds—U.C. Berkeley.   He raised the important point that the colorblind approach to race ignores not only the cultural diversity which God Himself created, but also the stubborn racism which continues to pervade U.S. socio-economic and political institutions.   It is to this important point that we turn to this week.

Supporters of “colorblindness” say that racism is behind us.  Sure, racism rears its ugly head once in a while in individual encounters between people, but, as a whole, it’s a thing of the past.  As evidence they say, “see, we elected a black, Kenyan president…”

Read the entire article here.

The Color of Fascism: Lawrence Dennis, Racial Passing, and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism in the United States

New York University Press
2006-11-20
256 pages
4 illustrations
ISBN: 9780814736869

Gerald Horne, John and Rebecca Moores Professor of History
University of Houston

What does it mean that Lawrence Dennis—arguably the “brains” behind U.S. fascism—was born black but spent his entire adult life passing for white? Born in Atlanta in 1893, Dennis began life as a highly touted African American child preacher, touring nationally and arousing audiences with his dark-skinned mother as his escort. However, at some point between leaving prep school and entering Harvard University, he chose to abandon his family and his former life as an African American in order to pass for white. Dennis went on to work for the State Department and on Wall Street, and ultimately became the public face of U.S. fascism, meeting with Mussolini and other fascist leaders in Europe. He underwent trial for sedition during World War II, almost landing in prison, and ultimately became a Cold War critic before dying in obscurity in 1977.

Based on extensive archival research, The Color of Fascism blends biography, social history, and critical race theory to illuminate the fascinating life of this complex and enigmatic man. Gerald Horne links passing and fascism, the two main poles of Dennis’s life, suggesting that Dennis’s anger with the U.S. as a result of his upbringing in Jim Crow Georgia led him to alliances with the antagonists of the U.S. and that his personal isolation which resulted in his decision to pass dovetailed with his ultimate isolationism.

Dennis’s life is a lasting testament to the resilience of right-wing thought in the U.S. The first full-scale biographical portrait of this intriguing figure, The Color of Fascism also links the strange career of a prominent American who chose to pass.

Read the preface here.

Table of Contents

• Preface
• Introduction: More Than Passing Strange
• 1. Passing Fancy?
• 2. Passing Through
• 3. Fascism
• 4. The Face—of Fascism
• 5. Fascism and Betrayal
• 6. Approaching Disaster
• 7. Framing a Guilty Man?
• 8. Fascism on Trial
• 9. A Trial on Trial
• 10. After the Fall
• 11. An Isolationist Isolated?
• 12. Passing On
• Notes
• Index
• About the Author

The Atlantic Wins Two National Magazine Awards

The Atlantic
Press Releases
2013-05-02

For media inquiries, please contact: Natalie Raabe at  (202) 266-7533.

Washington, D.C. and New York, N.Y. (May 2, 2013)—The Atlantic won two National Magazine Awards, it was announced tonight by the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME). Atlantic senior editor Ta-Nehisi Coates won in the Essays and Criticism category and TheAtlantic.com was selected best Web site.

“I’m so happy for Ta-Nehisi and the entire team at The Atlantic. It’s wonderful to be recognized by our peers for excellence in one of our oldest journalistic forms, the essay, and one of our newest–the work we do every day on TheAtlantic.com,” said M. Scott Havens, president of The Atlantic.

Coates was honored in the Essays and Criticism category for “Fear of a Black President,” published in the September 2012 issue. Marshaling history, original reporting, memoir, and a fierce but understated moral passion in advance of the 2012 election, Coates outlines the predicament constraining President Obama: wary of coming across as a politically untenable Angry Black Man, he must always strive—as many professional African Americans must—to appear “twice as good.”…

Read the entire press release here.