Mixed Race Studies

Racial Democracy: The Sociological History of a Concept

Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies
Lemann Institute for Brazilian Studies
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
2013-02-15

Antonio Sergio Guimarães, Professor of Sociology
Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil

I will examine the coining, the uses, and meanings of the expression “racial democracy” from the 1930’s onwards including its transformation into an ideal for interracial cohabitation and of political inclusion of Blacks in postwar Brazilian modernity. It will also examine the refusal of the expression by the Black activists of the MNU (Movimento Negro Unificado) in the 1970s and their denunciation of its mythical character, as well as its current uses by anthropologists and sociologists engaged in the critique of identity politics.

Reading Series: Quantifying Bloodlines

Brooklyn Historical Society
Crossing Borders, Bridging Generations
Othmer Library
Saturdays, 2013-11-16, 2013-12-07 and 2014-01-25; 15:00-18:00 EST (Local Time)

Quantifying Bloodlines is a monthly reading group organized by anthropologist and oral historian Jennifer Scott.  Join others interested in exploring the relationship between biology and race, as we discuss three widely acclaimed books. Each work offers different examples of tracing family history—through a surname, through biological cells, through a specific geographic locale, through four generations of women’s lives. Through stories, we will discuss how we segment heritage and explain descent, paying close attention to past and existing ideas of purity, racial and economic privilege, and scientific thinking.

All sessions meet in the Othmer Library at the Brooklyn Historical Society. Light refreshments will be provided.

Sign up for individual sessions for $20, or join us for all three at a discounted price of $45! All sessions are available for a sliding scale fee, and no-one will be turned away for lack of funds.

What’s Biology Got to Do with It? The Social Life of Genetics
November 16th, 2013, 3:00 PM
Reading: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Guest Speaker: Sociologist Ann Morning, author of The Nature of Race: How Scientists Think and Teach about Human Difference

What’s Purity Got to Do with It? Searching Family History and Genealogy
December 7th, 2013, 3:00 PM
Reading: The Fiddler on Pantico Run: An African Warrior, His White Descendants, A Search for Family by Joe Mozingo

What’s History Got to Do with It? Evolving Classifications of Race
January 25th, 2014, 3:00 PM
Reading: Cane River by Lalita Tademy

Quantifying Bloodlines Reading and Discussion Series is co-sponsored by MixedRaceStudies.org

For more information, click here.

African-Americans and Latinos: Conflict or Collaboration?

Ebony Magazine
2012-09-25

Eugene Holley, Jr.

As Latinos now outnumber African-Americans as this country’s largest minority, could there be a political, social and economic union with our brown brothers and sisters?

In celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month – which runs through October 15th – EBONY interviewed African-Americans and Hispanics about the challenges, complexities and collaborations between these two groups. 

“The Census suggested a competition,” says Miriam Jiménez Román, Executive Director of the AfroLatin@forum: a research and resource center focusing on Black Latinos and Latinas in the United States. “And it ignored a history of, not only just collaboration, but inclusion within the rubric of Blackness. We are not in competition with the African-American community. They have been at the vanguard, in terms of assuring civil rights in this country. And for that reason, all of the privileges that we have as Latinos in this country owe so much to the African-American struggle.”

The New York-born Puerto Rican, who also co-edited the book, The Afro-Latin@ Reader, also points out that there are many Hispanics of visible African descent. “Many African-Americans don’t realize that the majority of Black people in the Americas are in Latin America and the Caribbean,” she states. “Ninety five percent of all the enslaved Africans landed in those places. There are 150 million people of African descent in Latin America.”…

Read the entire article here.

Black History’s Missing Chapters: ‘The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross,’ on PBS

The New York Times
2013-10-18
 
Felicia R. Lee

The television mini-series “Roots,” about the slave Kunta Kinte and his descendants, is a classic, inspired by real lives and real history. But it is a truism among historians that young people do not know enough about African-American contributions to history. Even a tiny slice of recent history — the civil rights movement — is not required teaching in most states, the Southern Poverty Law Center found in a recent assessment.

“It boils down to Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King and ‘I Have a Dream,’ ” Maureen Costello, director of the center’s Teaching Tolerance Project, said of the typical level of knowledge. Films and the occasional series on black history have helped fill in the gaps, creating a kind of “cultural accretion,” Ms. Costello added, but television in recent years has not consistently offered informative entertainment.

When “Roots” was broadcast in 1977, “the whole nation watched it because there were three networks vying for our attention,” Ms. Costello said. “As a culture, we’ve become so fragmented. I think more Americans can reasonably discuss the meth trade or the Mafia because of ‘Breaking Bad’ and ‘The Sopranos’ than they can African-American history.”

Into the breach has stepped Henry Louis Gates Jr., assisted by dozens of historians. His six-part series, “The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross,” beginning on Tuesday on PBS, aims to chronicle 500 years of black history. The program starts with Juan Garrido, a free black man whose 1513 expedition with Spanish explorers in Florida made him the first known African to arrive in what is now the United States, and ends with Barack Obama in the White House in 2013, a time of complexity and contradictions for black Americans. In between, Professor Gates, director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard, draws on the latest scholarship to put flesh on characters like the resilient South Carolina slave girl Priscilla as well as her descendants…

Read the entire article here.

Mixing Race, Risk, and Reward in the Digital Age

University of Southern California
Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Center for Japanese Religions and Culture
University Park Campus
Doheny Memorial Library (DML), East Asian Seminar Room: 110C
2013-11-05, 13:00-17:00 PST (Local Time)

USC Conference Convenors:

Duncan Williams, Associate Professor of Religion
University of Southern California

Brian C. Bernards, Assistant Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures
University of Southern California

Velina Hasu Houston, Associate Dean for Faculty Recognition and Development, Director of Dramatic Writing and Professor
University of Southern California

What are the outcomes of evolving racial ideologies in North America and how are they impacting 21st century American identities?  How do 21st century multiracial identities and representations reflect and challenge historical constructions of racial mixing?  How does racial mixing inform transhumanistic enterprises (i.e., wearable technology) and impact educational experiences dedicated to mixed-race studies in digital spaces?

PRESENTERS:

“Racial Passing and the Color of Cultural Identity”

Marcia Dawkins, Clinical Assistant Professor of Communication Studies
University of Southern California (Author of Clearly Invisible: Racial Passing and the Color of Cultural Identity (Baylor University Press, 2012) and Eminem: The Real Slim Shady (Praeger, 2013).)

“Frizzly Studies: Law, History, Narrative, and the Color Line”

Daniel J. Sharfstein, Professor of Law
Vanderbilt University (Author of The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White (Penguin Press, 2013) and “Crossing the Color Line: Racial Migration and the Emergence of the One-Drop Rule, 1600-1860,” Minnesota Law Review (2007).)

“Tweeting into the Future: Mixing Race and Technology in the 21st Century”

Ulli K. Ryder, Scholar in Residence, Office of the Chaplains and Religious Life
Brown University (Author of forthcoming book Mixed Race 3.0: Mixing Race, Risk & Reward in the Digital Age (Annenberg Press, 2014).)

For more information, click here.

Passing: When People Can’t Be Who They Are

PublicAffiars an imprint of Perseus Books Group
2004-11-30
288 pages
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-58648-287-9
5 1/2 x 8 1/4

Brooke Kroeger, Professor of Journalism
New York University

Through the provocative stories of six contemporary “passers,” and examples from history and literature, a renowned journalist illuminates passing as a strategy for bypassing prejudice and injustice

Despite the many social changes of the last half-century, many Americans still “pass”: black for white, gay for straight, and now in many new ways as well. We tend to think of passing in negative terms—as deceitful, cowardly, a betrayal of one’s self. But this compassionate book reveals that many passers today are people of good heart and purpose whose decision to pass is an attempt to bypass injustice, and to be more truly themselves.

Passing tells the poignant, complicated life stories of a black man who passed as a white Jew; a white woman who passed for black; a working class Puerto Rican who passes for privileged; a gay, Conservative Jewish seminarian and a lesbian naval officer who passed for straight; and a respected poet who radically shifts persona to write about rock’n’roll. The stories, interwoven with others from history, literature, and contemporary life, explore the many forms passing still takes in our culture; the social realities which make it an option; and its logistical, emotional, and moral consequences. We learn that there are still too many institutions, environments, and social situations that force honorable people to twist their lives into painful, deceit-ridden contortions for reasons that do not hold.

Passing is an intellectually absorbing exploration of a phenomenon that has long intrigued scholars, inspired novelists, and made hits of movies like The Crying Game and Boys Don’t Cry.

Who is Black?

The Final Call
2001-07-10

Rosa Clemente, Guest Columnist

Rosa Clemente

Yesterday, an interesting thing happened to me. I was told I am not Black.

The kicker for me was when my friend stated that the island of Puerto Rico was not a part of the African Diaspora. I wanted to go back to the old skool playground days and yell: “You said what about my momma?!” But after speaking to several friends, I found out that many Black Americans and Latinos agree with him. The miseducation of the Negro is still in effect!

I am so tired of having to prove to others that I am Black, that my peoples are from the Motherland, that Puerto Rico, along with Cuba, Panama and the Dominican Republic, are part of the African Diaspora. Do we forget that the slave ships dropped off our people all over the world, hence the word Diaspora?…

Read the entire article here.

Is It Time to Do Away With The ‘One-Drop’ Rule?

Clutch
2013-07-10

Britni Danielle
Los Angeles

Conversations about race in America can lead to never-ending discussions, hurt feelings, and sometimes even breakthroughs. Blame it on our complicated past of slavery, racism, and legalized prejudice, but even approaching a frank discussion about race in this country can seem nearly impossible.

And yet we keep trying.

Recently, I spotted an article over on The Root which stated that Johnny Depp is a direct descendant of Elizabeth Key, a former slave who worked to secure her freedom in 1656…

…While I doubt anyone will rush to claim Depp as black (at least I hope not), how blackness gets defined in America continues to be rooted in antiquated notions of the one-drop rule…

…When pondering whether or not we should do away with the one-drop rule, it’s important to remember it was not created by those of African ancestry looking forge a shared kinship or by local/federal governments hoping to properly categorize the populace for the purpose of collecting census data (the terms “Indian,” “mulatto,” and “negro” were well established), but rather the one-drop rule was created to keep the white race “pure.” In short, it was merely another tool aimed at protecting white supremacy in America…

Read the entire article here.

the road weeps, the well runs dry

Los Angeles Theater Center
514 South Spring Street
Los Angeles, California 90013
Telephone: 213.489.0994

2013-10-24 through 2013-11-17
Thursday-Saturday: 20:00 PT (Local Time)
Sunday: 15:00 PT (Local Time)

Written by Marcus Gardley
Directed by Shirley Jo Finney

Rolling World Premiere

Surviving centuries of slavery, revolts, and The Trail of Tears, a community of self-proclaimed Freedmen creates the first all-black U.S. town in Wewoka, Oklahoma. The Freedmen (Black Seminoles and people of mixed origins) are rocked when the new religion and the old way come head to head and their former enslavers arrive to return them to the chains of bondage.  Written in gorgeously cadenced language, utilizing elements of African American folklore and daring humor, the road weeps, the well runs dry merges the myth, legends and history of the Seminole people.

Previews: October 24 & 25

For more information, click here.

Indiana’s Miscegenation Laws: An Ineffective Racist Agenda

Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana
May 2013
57 pages

Megan M. Harris

An Undergraduate Honors Thesis (HONRS 499)

Miscegenation laws have played an influential and explanatory role in Indiana’s perception and attitudes about interracial relationships. Indiana had stringent regulations against such unions, which existed for a large portion of the Hoosier state’s history. Despite the unusually harsh legislations against these couples, interracial marriages continued to occur in Indiana. In fact, some multiracial communities, such as the Longtown Settlement, were created as safe havens for these couples. Although these laws were repealed in Indiana two years before the country abolished them nationwide in 1967, the state has had persistent attitudes against interracial marriage that couples must endure. In the face of the continual growth of such unions, local and national attitudes can be adjusted to greater social acceptance, especially with a clear understanding of the racism that underlies the previous miscegenation laws that outlawed interracial marriages.

Read the entire thesis here.