Mixed Race Studies

Two worlds… One reflection

IDEATE: The Undergraduate Journal of Sociology
University of Essex, Colchester, England
Volume 10, Summer 2013
19 pages

Yasmin Currid

Introduction

I went through most of my childhood believing that my family was just the same as everybody else’s. I did not realise that there was something slightly different about the dynamics and the structure of my family as opposed to, I suppose, what people would call a “normal” family. Even now, I still consider my family to be just like anyone else’s… Why should the colour of our skin matter? Let me start from the beginning: my mum and my biological father, Jimmy, broke up before I was born. Then when I was a few months old she met Jason, the man I call my dad. They eventually got married and had my two brothers, Kyshon and Kofi. The only thing that happens to be slightly different about this situation is that I have a multiracial family. Both my mum and I are white, my dad is black, and my two brothers are mixed race, so half of my extended family is white and half is black. I do not consider the dynamics of my family to be weird, if anything, I believe I am lucky to be brought up in a multiracial family- I get to experience the best of both… Although I am sure not everyone sees it that way.

I do not remember exactly how old I was when I started questioning the difference in our skin colours, all I know is that I was a lot older than you would expect. I assume it just never occurred to me as it was not as big a deal as some people would make out. We were still a family. My dad was still my dad, and my brothers were still my brothers, no matter what we looked like from the outside and how much we differed in skin colour. However, what I do remember, down to the very last minute detail, is where we were and exactly how I phrased it. I know we were in the car, my dad was driving and I was in the back, between my two brothers and before I knew what I was saying, I just blurted it out “Why is dad black and I’m white?” The answer, however, I do not remember…

…It is quite difficult because there is no one else I know or have even heard of who has the same type of family dynamic as I have. When I type “inter-racial families” into Google, thousands of websites come up advertising a black and white couple who have mixed race kids… But never families where a white child has a white mum, a black dad and mixed race brothers. The lack of sociological research in this particular field has challenged me in finding different sociologist’s ideas I can use to analyse my own experience of belonging to an inter-racial family. Due to this lack of research I have had to look at specific sociologists, such as Mills, Goffman and Cooley, and try to adapt and apply their theories and perspectives to my particular situation regardless of whether they intended it in the same way which I have interpreted it. Throughout my journal, I am going to attempt to take my family biography and link it to the larger social structures within society…

Read the entire article here.

CERS hosts Critical Mixed Race Studies postgraduate symposium

School of Sociology and Social Policy
Centre for Ethnicity and Racism Studies
University of Leeds
2013-08-08

Peter Edwards, Faculty Web Development Officer

Mixing Matters: Critical Intersectionalities

The Centre for Ethnicity and Racism Studies (CERS) held its first interdisciplinary, international postgraduate symposium on the 18th May 2013 entitled ‘Mixing Matters: Critical Intersectionalities.’ This symposium aimed at engaging with ideas from the field of Critical Mixed Race Studies (CMRS) was the first of its kind in the UK and enabled national, international and Leeds based postgraduate students to present their research in this dynamic field. The debates within CMRS have been circulating for some time within various disciplines but which simultaneously have remained marginal within broader studies on ethnicity and ‘race’. Furthermore, the debates have largely been centred on the United States context and not taking into account the globality of mixed-race identity which varies across time and space, an idea which the keynote speaker (Rebecca King O’Riain) discusses in her book Global Mixed Race. This symposium was developed in response to this marginalisation focusing on describing and analysing mixed-race identities in both the UK and international contexts.

It was well attended and received by staff and students from within the faculty and beyond. There were a significant number of non-academic participants who travelled from far afield to engage with the day’s presentations and debates. Dr Rebecca King O’Riain (National University of Ireland, Maynooth) gave a keynote addressing the importance of expanding mixed-race studies beyond US borders and explored the dynamics of mixing in Zambia, Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico, Brazil, Germany and Japan, among other locations. Dr. Shirley Tate (University of Leeds) who conceived of the idea of the symposium gave a second keynote on the mixed race question in regards to Black beauty.

The symposium was also comprised of two panels with papers on a variety of topics which reflect the diversity of research interests in the field:

• Theory, experience and activism in CMRS
• Mixed race male experiences in UK education
• Chicano epistemology
• Mixed-heritage in fostering and adoption policy
• Bio-power and the politicisation of mixed-race in East Africa
• Dougla identities in Trinidad
• The influence of hip hop on mixed-race identity…

…Speakers: Emma Dabiri, Remi Salisbury, Veronica Cano, Julia Koniuch-Enneoka, Angelica Pesarini, Kav Raghunandan, and Jenn Sims

Read the entire report here.

What Do I Tell My Blond Son About Being Black?

Gawker
2013-08-17

Anita DeRouen, Assistant Professor of English and Director of Writing and Teaching
Millsaps College, Jackson, Mississippi

“I think we should teach him to use his privilege to his advantage.”

It’s Sunday morning, July 14, 2013. My husband and I are talking, have been talking, will always be talking about race in our world and how it shapes our understanding of race in our home. Melissa Harris-Perry’s show is on, and she’s wearing black, and she and her guests are subdued-yet-passionate as they do a post-postmortem on that dead black boy in Florida, on so many dead black boys, on what black parents should say to their sons and daughters about dead black boys. Our son is sitting next to me playing with his alphabet game while his father and I talk about him like he isn’t there.

I am not sure where to take my husband’s statement, but the horse is out of the barn, so someone’s gotta ride it.

“Why? He’s never going to be profiled the way Trayvon was.”

And he won’t. My just-about-white-passing child is unlikely to ever have a person cross to the opposite side of the street when they see him coming, is unlikely to be followed through stores as he browses, is unlikely to wonder if a cop’s behavior on a traffic stop is shaped by the color of his skin.

I know these things as sure as I know that a day will come when that sweet dirty-blond headed, blue eyed boy will have to decide whether he will see his half-blackness (and, therefore, me) as a blessing or a curse. My husband disagrees, though, and I find myself having a conversation about skin tones and shades of blackness that leaves me questioning the facts I’ve long just known about race in America…

Read the entire article here.

About Biracials Learning About African-American Culture or B.L.A.A.C.

Biracials Learning About African-American Culture or B.L.A.A.C.
2013-06-18

Zebulon Miletsky, Assistant Professor of Africana Studies
Stony Brook University, State University of New York

The idea for this blog came from several discussions with students and young people who come from mixed-race backgrounds, especially so-called “white and black” biracials who, for whatever reason, grew up without learning very much about African-American life, history or culture. Whether they be trans-racially adopted, grew up in a home without the biological black parent or were perhaps raised in an area without many black people, the probability for people of mixed race descent to grow up without a solid, positive grounding in the black experience is much higher for reasons that will become fairly obvious. Not so obvious at times, however, is the more complicated truth of racism in America, a past deeply rooted in the ugly practice of white supremacy and centuries of stigmatization of African-American culture, heritage and contributions. This phenomenon, known to some scholars as “Anti-blackness”, has done more to confuse and ultimately divide than perhaps any other factor…

Read the entire article here.

A Realidade da Ficção: Ambiguidades Literárias e Sociais em ‘O Mulato’ de Aluísio Azevedo (The Reality of Fiction: Literary and social ambiguities in “The Mulatto” by Aluísio Azevedo)

Alameda Casa Editorial
2013-03-15
201 pages
ISBN: 978-85-7939-169-9
Format: 21.0 x 14.0 cm
In Portuguese

Rodrigo Estramanho de Almeida, Professor of Sociology
Fundação Escola de Sociologia e Política de São Paulo (FESPSP)

Neste livro fica provado que ainda é possível produzir dissertações nos padrões de outros tempos, quando o trabalho acadêmico exigia o domínio da língua, ampla leitura, revisão inteligente do conjunto da obra do autor, enquadramento histórico-social.

Ressalta-se: nem a Literatura, nem a Sociologia foram ofendidas – o texto literário foi trabalhado como texto literário, a Sociologia de acordo com a sua própria especificidade. Mais ainda, o entrelaçamento da Sociologia com o sociopolítico, com a abordagem compreensiva das Ciências Sociais e com as Ciências Humanas (Literatura e Sociedade). Nesse ponto e vista cada vez mais abrangente, ocorre a relação entre pensamento social e a estrutura da sociedade brasileira do século XIX, quando analisa os seus “ismos” (naturalismo, positivismo, republicanismo, anticlericalismo, abolicionismo).

A esta síntese do trabalho de Rodrigo Estramanho de Almeida deve-se agregar a feliz escolha (como convém) de epígrafe retirada da obra de Dercy Ribeiro: “Posto entre os dois mundos conflitantes – o do negro, que ele rechaça, e o do branco, que o rejeita – o mulato se humaniza no drama de ser dois, que é o ser ninguém”.

Trata-se, enfim, de uma bem feita e oportuna contribuição para o estudo da literatura e sociedade no Brasil.

In this book it is proved that it is still possible to produce dissertations standards of other times, when the academic work required mastery of the language, wide reading, smart revision of the whole work of the author, historical and social framework.

We emphasize: neither literature nor sociology were offended – the literary text was worked as a literary text, Sociology according to its own specificity. Moreover, the intertwining of Sociology with the sociopolitical, with the comprehensive approach of the Social Sciences and the Humanities (Literature and Society). At this point and looking increasingly comprehensive, is the relationship between thought and social structure of the Brazilian society of the nineteenth century, when considering their “isms” (naturalism, positivism, republicanism, anticlericalism, abolitionism).

The synthesis of this work Estramanho Rodrigo de Almeida should be added the happy choice (as it should be) an epigraph taken from the work of Dercy Ribeiro: “Tour between the two conflicting worlds – that of the black, which he rejects, and white, the rejects – the mulatto humanizes the drama to be two, which is to be one.”

It is, in short, a well made and timely contribution to the study of literature and society in Brazil.

Masculinity and whiteness in the construction of the Brazilian Republic

Agência FAPESP: News Agency of the São Paulo Research Foundation
2013-06-12

José Tadeu Arantes

Sexual discipline and whitening of the population were the guidelines of the conservative modernization promoted by the elite, affirms study

Agência FAPESP – Masculinity and whiteness were the ideals of the Brazilian elite at the end of the 19th century — ideals that represented rejection of Brazil’s colonial and monarchical past and the mixed-race heritage of its people and defining a model of sexual discipline and whitening on which to build the Brazil of the future.

From the perspective of this elite, which was at once conservative and modern, the past and the people were associated with nature, instincts and backwardness. The model that inspired the elite was the idealized portrait of more developed countries in Europe and the United States. That idea is the main thread of the book “The Desire of a Nation” by Richard Miskolci, professor in the Department of Sociology at the Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCar) and coordinator of the study group “Bodies, Identities and Subjectivations,” which brings together several Brazilian universities.

The book, which was the result of post-doctoral studies at the University of Michigan in 2008 and a FAPESP Research Grant, also received funding from FAPESP for publication. The book explores how the desires and fears of this elite promoted the transition from a monarchy to a republic and the conservative modernization of the country.

“It investigated the national ideas running against the grain through analysis of the specters that haunted our elite: from fear of Negros, which after abolition became a fear of common people, to sexual anxieties and gender, which threatened the project of building a nation based on the idealized image of Europe,” commented Miskolci, who is currently a visiting professor at the Department of Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz…

Read the entire article here.

Still policing the crisis? Black and black and white mixed ‘race’ Seeking Interviewees]

University of Leeds
Leeds, West Yorkshire, England
2013-08-12

Lisa J. Long, Doctoral Researcher
School of Sociology and Social Policy

I am a Ph.D. Researcher at the University of Leeds. I am interested in understanding the experiences that black or black and white mixed ‘race’ people have had when they have found themselves in contact with the police, either as a victim of crime, when reporting a crime, as a crime suspect or in the course of routine policing enquiries e.g. stop and search. As part of my research I would like to interview black and black and white mixed ‘race’ people across all age groups (16+), both men and women with an opinion or view about policing based on personal experience.

In order to be able to take part you will need to live in the West Yorkshire area and have had experience of policing within this area.

If you would like more information about participating in the research please contact Lisa Long at ssljl@leeds.ac.uk.

After the Nazi Racial State: Difference and Democracy in Germany and Europe

University of Michigan Press
2009
272 pages
6 x 9
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-472-03344-7
Ebook ISBN: 978-0-472-02578-7

Rita Chin, Associate Professor of History
University of Michigan

Heide Fehrenbach, Presidential Research Professor
Northern Illinois University

Geoff Eley, Karl Pohrt Distinguished University Professor of Contemporary History
University of Michigan

Atina Grossmann, Professor of History
Cooper Union, New York

An investigation of the concept of “race” in post-Nazi Germany

What happened to “race,” race thinking, and racial distinctions in Germany, and Europe more broadly, after the demise of the Nazi racial state? This book investigates the afterlife of “race” since 1945 and challenges the long-dominant assumption among historians that it disappeared from public discourse and policy-making with the defeat of the Third Reich and its genocidal European empire. Drawing on case studies of Afro-Germans, Jews, and Turks—arguably the three most important minority communities in postwar Germany—the authors detail continuities and change across the 1945 divide and offer the beginnings of a history of race and racialization after Hitler. A final chapter moves beyond the German context to consider the postwar engagement with “race” in France, Britain, Sweden, and the Netherlands, where waves of postwar, postcolonial, and labor migration troubled nativist notions of national and European identity.

After the Nazi Racial State poses interpretative questions for the historical understanding of postwar societies and democratic transformation, both in Germany and throughout Europe. It elucidates key analytical categories, historicizes current discourse, and demonstrates how contemporary debates about immigration and integration—and about just how much “difference” a democracy can accommodate—are implicated in a longer history of “race.” This book explores why the concept of “race” became taboo as a tool for understanding German society after 1945. Most crucially, it suggests the social and epistemic consequences of this determined retreat from “race” for Germany and Europe as a whole.

Contents

• Preface
• Introduction: What’s Race Got to Do With It? Postwar German History in Context / Rita Chin and Heide Fehrenhach
• CHAPTER 1: Black Occupation Children and the Devolution of the Nazi Racial State / Heide Fehrenhach
• CHAPTER 2: From Victims to “Homeless Foreigners”: Jewish Survivors in Postwar Germany / Atina Grossmann
• CHAPTER 3: Guest Worker Migration and the Unexpected Return of Race / Rita Chin
• CHAPTER 4: German Democracy and the Question of Difference, 1945 1995 / Rita Chin and Heide Fehrenhach
• CHAPTER 5: The Trouble with “Race”: Migrancy, Cultural Difference, and the Remaking of Europe / Geoff Eley
• Notes
• Select Bibliography
• Index

Blurring the “Color-Line”?: Reflections on Interracial and Multiracial America

49th Parallel: An Interdisciplinary Journal of North American Studies
Issue 6: Special Issue – Race and Ethnicity (Fall 2000)
ISSN: 1753-5794

Yasuhiro Katagiri, Ph.D., Associate Professor of American History and Government,
Tokai University, Kanagawa, Japan

“[N]o matter how we articulate this [case] [and] no matter which theory of the due process clause . . . we attach to it, no one can articulate it better than Richard Loving, when he said to me: ‘Mr. Cohen, tell the Court I love my wife, and it is just unfair that I can’t live with her in Virginia.’” —Bernard S. Cohen, Counsel for Appellants, Oral Argument, Loving v. Virginia, United States Supreme Court, April 10, 1967

“We basically accept that there are three races–Caucasians, Negroes and Orientals.  Caucasians can’t date Orientals, Orientals can’t date Caucasians, and neither of them can date Negroes.” —Bob Jones III, President, Bob Jones University

On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr., eloquently delivered his “dream” to the American people on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.  “I have a dream,” King’s voice reverberated to “let freedom ring” from the nation’s capital, “that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”  However, in the years since one of America’s foremost civil rights crusaders spoke these noble words during the March on Washington, divisions between races have refused to go away, and the American society, as if to punctuate the words “E Pluribus” rather than the word “Unum,” still splinters into “disparate factions” divided by race and ethnicity.

Almost four decades after his father challenged the conscience of America, Martin Luther King III stood before the Lincoln Memorial on a hot and steamy day in August 2000.  Speaking before several thousand people at a rally billed as  “Redeem the Dream,” which was organized to protest police brutality and its racial profiling, King—one of those “four little children”—told the gathered crowd: “I dare you to fulfill the dream.”  Though race of course has something to do with “biological makeup,” as Jon M. Spencer argues in his book on what he terms America’s “mixed-race movement,” it also is “a sociopolitical construct,”  which “was created and has been maintained and modified by the powerful” to perpetuate themselves as a privileged group.  And the United States, in this regard, has been no stranger.

But on the verge of a new millennium, while the underpinnings of the nation’s affirmative action seem to be somewhat crumbling, an accelerating social trend—the increase of interracial marriages and the growing number of multiracial citizens—is beginning to engulf American society, which might well contribute to bringing about a long-hoped-for “color-blind” society.  And this  important, but heretofore imperceptible, social and demographic trend has been in evidence during the 2000 presidential election year, which is also a decennial census-taking year in the United States.  As an illustration, the embracement of, or at least the recognition of, the nation’s multiracial citizens could be manifestly observed during the national convention of the Republican Party, which has been recognized for some time as the party of, by, and for “the powerful.”  One of the keynote speakers on the final day of the Philadelphia convention was Republican Nominee George W. Bush’s nephew—George P. Bush.  He is not only the son of Florida Governor Jeb Bush and a descendant of a new political dynasty, but also the son of Columba, his Mexican-born mother.  “I am an American, but like many, I come from a diverse background,”  the youth chairman of the Republican National Convention proudly proclaimed, “[a]nd I respect leaders who respect my [multiracial and multicultural] heritage.”…

Read the entire article here.

‘Koreans are not racist’

The Korea Times
2013-08-02

Jonathan Breen

Koreans can be close-minded to issues of race and culture, but they know it and they want to learn, says the head of a foundation that helps multiethnic children here.

Yang Chan-wook, chairman of the Movement for the Advancement of the Cultural Diversity of Koreans (MACK) — told The Korea Times that Korea is not a racist or prejudiced country, but a country going through change.

“Racism is usually based on hate — Korea is nothing like that,” he said…

…“We focus on the diversity of Koreans — anyone with a mixed heritage. And we help Koreans accept them,” he said.

Like many MACK members, Yang is mixed-race — part Korean from his mother and part African-American from his father. He prefers to go by his Korean name rather than his Western name, Gregory Diggs…

…The segregation of school children in Korea is what first led the recently appointed MACK president Frank Brannen to work with multiethnic Koreans.

“I thought all multicultural children attended Korean schools, but then I learnt that wasn’t the case, so that is when I got involved,” said the 32-year-old, adding, “In some aspects for student’s futures, I don’t think going to multicultural schools is the way forward.”…

Read the entire article here.