Slavery graphic novel goes to schools to shed light on Scots history

Posted in Articles, History, Media Archive, Slavery, Teaching Resources, United Kingdom on 2018-08-21 03:05Z by Steven

Slavery graphic novel goes to schools to shed light on Scots history

The National
2018-08-09

Kirsteen Paterson

The work is an 'ambitious collaboration' between independent publisher BHP Comics and Glasgow University
The work is an ‘ambitious collaboration’ between independent publisher BHP Comics and Glasgow University

EVERY third year pupil in Scotland is to be schooled on Scotland’s slave past thanks to a new graphic novel.

As many as 12,000 copies of Freedom Bound, which draws from research into slavery in the 1700s, are to be distributed around the country within weeks.

The work is an “ambitious collaboration” between independent publisher BHP Comics and Glasgow University, with illustrations from veteran artist Warren Pleece, whose credits include DC Comics and 2000AD.

The result is 144 pages that tell the stories of three people brought to Scotland to serve white masters…

…Launching the online archive in June, Professor Simon Newman of Glasgow University, who worked on Freedom Bound, said the loss of slave stories from the national memory had been “accidental”, telling The National: “Because there weren’t huge numbers of these people, because they formed relationships with the white population, they just disappeared.

“I suspect there are a good number of us who have African DNA.”

Read the entire article here.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Tanya Katerí Hernández

Posted in Africa, Articles, Interviews, Law, Media Archive, South Africa, United States on 2018-08-21 02:40Z by Steven

Tanya Katerí Hernández

Writers Read
2018-08-09

Marshal Zeringue

Tanya Katerí Hernández is the Archibald R. Murray Professor of Law at Fordham University School of Law, where she co-directs the Center on Race, Law & Justice as its Head of Global and Comparative Law Programs and Initiatives.

Her new book is Multiracials and Civil Rights: Mixed-Race Stories of Discrimination.

Recently I asked Hernández about what she was reading. Her reply:

I have been re-reading Trevor Noah’s memoir Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood, in anticipation of the film version that Lupita Nyongo is slated to star in portraying Noah’s mother. The book has a special resonance for me as a comparative-race law scholar whose personal background as a black-identified mixed-race Afro-Latina traveling the globe informs her insights about the (in)significance of the growth of racial mixture to the pursuit of racial equality whether it be in the US, South Africa, or Latin America. Noah’s story of being mixed-race during and after apartheid ended in South Africa is both a poignant and humorous read (as you would expect from the host of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show)…

Read the entire interview here.

Tags: , , , , , ,

Multiracials and Civil Rights: Mixed-Race Stories of Discrimination

Posted in Books, Census/Demographics, Law, Media Archive, Monographs, Politics/Public Policy, Social Science, United States on 2018-08-21 02:19Z by Steven

Multiracials and Civil Rights: Mixed-Race Stories of Discrimination

New York University Press
2018-08-03
224 pages
Cloth ISBN: 9781479830329

Tanya Katerí Hernández, Archibald R. Murray Professor of Law
Fordham University School of Law, New York, New York

Narratives of mixed-race people bringing claims of racial discrimination in court, illuminating traditional understandings of civil rights law

As the mixed-race population in the United States grows, public fascination with multiracial identity has promoted the belief that racial mixture will destroy racism. However, multiracial people still face discrimination. Many legal scholars hold that this is distinct from the discrimination faced by people of other races, and traditional civil rights laws built on a strict black/white binary need to be reformed to account for cases of discrimination against those identifying as mixed-race.

In Multiracials and Civil Rights, Tanya Katerí Hernández debunks this idea, and draws on a plethora of court cases to demonstrate that multiracials face the same types of discrimination as other racial groups. Hernández argues that multiracial people are primarily targeted for discrimination due to their non-whiteness, and shows how the cases highlight the need to support the existing legal structures instead of a new understanding of civil rights law.

Coming at a time when explicit racism is resurfacing, Hernández’s look at multiracial discrimination cases is essential for fortifying the focus of civil rights law on racial privilege and the lingering legacy of bias against non-whites, and has much to teach us about how to move towards a more egalitarian society.

Tags: , , ,

Mulata Nation: Visualizing Race and Gender in Cuba

Posted in Books, Caribbean/Latin America, History, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, Monographs, Women on 2018-08-17 17:15Z by Steven

Mulata Nation: Visualizing Race and Gender in Cuba

University Press of Mississippi
2018-08-15
248 pages (approx.)
58 color illustrations
6 x 9 inches
Hardcover ISBN: 9781496814432

Alison Fraunhar, Associate Professor of Art and Design
Saint Xavier University, Chicago, Illinois

A vivid exploration of the key role played by multi-racial women in visualizing and performing Cuban identity

Repeatedly and powerfully throughout Cuban history, the mulata, a woman of mixed racial identity, features prominently in Cuban visual and performative culture. Tracing the figure, Alison Fraunhar looks at the representation and performance in both elite and popular culture. She also tracks how characteristics associated with these women have accrued across the Atlantic world. Widely understood to embody the bridge between European subject and African other, the mulata contains the sensuality attributed to Africans in a body more closely resembling the European ideal of beauty.

This symbol bears far-reaching implications, with shifting, contradictory cultural meanings in Cuba. Fraunhar explores these complex paradigms, how, why, and for whom the image was useful, and how it was both subverted and asserted from the colonial period to the present. From the early seventeenth century through Cuban independence in 1899 up to the late revolutionary era, Fraunhar illustrates the ambiguous figure’s role in nationhood, citizenship, and commercialism. She analyzes images including key examples of nineteenth-century graphic arts, avant-garde painting and magazine covers of the Republican era, cabaret and film performance, and contemporary iterations of gender.

Fraunhar’s study stands out for attending to the phenomenon of mulataje not only in elite production such as painting, but also in popular forms: popular theater, print culture, later films, and other media where stereotypes take hold. Indeed, in contemporary Cuba, mulataje remains a popular theme with Cubans as well as foreigners in drag shows, reflecting queerness in visual culture.

Tags: , ,

Black and biracial Americans wouldn’t need to code-switch if we lived in a post-racial society

Posted in Articles, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2018-08-17 17:15Z by Steven

Black and biracial Americans wouldn’t need to code-switch if we lived in a post-racial society

The Conversation
2018-08-17

Chandra D. L. Waring, ​Assistant Professor of Sociology and Race and Ethnic Studies
University of Wisconsin, Whitewater


For black and biracial Americans, the pressures to adapt to a dominant white culture – and surrender their unique sense of self – can be suffocating. Gumenyuk Dmitriy/Shutterstock.com

Boots Riley’s new film “Sorry to Bother You” does anything but apologize.

In telling the story of Cassius, a young black man who becomes an extraordinarily successful telemarketer after he starts using his “white voice,” it showcases the magnitude of racial and class oppression.

Colloquially, Cassius’ use of a “white voice” is known as code-switching, and the film highlights something that most African-Americans could probably tell you: The ability to code-switch is often a prerequisite to becoming a successful black person in America.

As a race scholar and sociologist, I’ve studied biracial Americans who engage in code-switching. I found that the ability to deftly code-switch has some real advantages. But it also has its fair share of pitfalls.

More broadly, it has led me to wonder what the persistence of code-switching tells us about race, opportunities and making connections in America today…

Read the entire article here.

Tags: , ,

Negotiating the (Non)Negotiable: Connecting ‘Mixed-Race’ Identities to ‘Mixed-Race’ Families

Posted in Articles, Family/Parenting, Media Archive, Social Science, United Kingdom on 2018-08-15 03:01Z by Steven

Negotiating the (Non)Negotiable: Connecting ‘Mixed-Race’ Identities to ‘Mixed-Race’ Families

Journal of Intercultural Studies
Volume 39, 2018 – Issue 4: Critical Mixed Race in Global Perspective
Published 2018-08-01
pages 414-428
DOI: 10.1080/07256868.2018.1486292

Mengxi Pang
Department of Sociology
University of Glasgow, Glasgow, United Kingdom

Whilst being a global phenomenon, ‘mixed-race’ means different things in different contexts. ‘Mixed-race’ individuals make sense of their mixed heritages by drawing on interactions with intimate others from their social networks. Based on an empirical study conducted in Scotland, this paper seeks to explore the linkage between mixed identities, society and families. Examining first-person accounts derived from interviews with self-identified mixed Scots, this paper delineates the dynamics involved in ‘mixed-race’ identifications and it contends that the ways in which mixed individuals make sense of their mixedness are profoundly influenced by their early experiences at home. This paper analyses qualitative data from in-depth interviews to examine the interrelationship between expressed identities and their experiences at home. The focus of analysis is placed upon the ways in which families are factored into the process of negotiating racialised differences by those who had grown up with limited knowledge about their non-Scottish heritage. This paper suggests that the role of families is two-folded: on one hand, it generates symbolic resources for children to negotiate racialised difference; on the other hand, it serves as a key site for the development of racial ideologies. The two roles of families shed light to understand the formation of mixed identities.

Read or purchase the article here.

Tags: , ,

Identity Denied: Comparing American or White Identity Denial and Psychological Health Outcomes Among Bicultural and Biracial People

Posted in Articles, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, United States on 2018-08-14 18:19Z by Steven

Identity Denied: Comparing American or White Identity Denial and Psychological Health Outcomes Among Bicultural and Biracial People

Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
First Published 2018-08-07
DOI: 10.1177/0146167218788553

Analia F. Albuja
Department of Psychology
Rutgers University, The State University of New Jersey

Diana T. Sanchez, Associate Professor of Psychology
Rutgers University, The State University of New Jersey

Sarah E. Gaither, Assistant Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience
Duke University, Durham, North Carolina

Because bicultural and biracial people have two identities within one social domain (culture or race), their identification is often challenged by others. Although it is established that identity denial is associated with poor psychological health, the processes through which this occurs are less understood. Across two high-powered studies, we tested identity autonomy, the perceived compatibility of identities, and social belonging as mediators of the relationship between identity denial and well-being among bicultural and biracial individuals. Bicultural and biracial participants who experienced challenges to their American or White identities felt less freedom in choosing an identity and perceived their identities as less compatible, which was ultimately associated with greater reports of depressive symptoms and stress. Study 2 replicated these results and measured social belonging, which also accounted for significant variance in well-being. The results suggest the processes were similar across populations, highlighting important implications for the generalizability to other dual-identity populations.

Read or purchase the article here.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Anita Florence Hemmings: Passing for White at Vassar

Posted in Articles, Biography, History, Media Archive, Women on 2018-08-14 18:04Z by Steven

Anita Florence Hemmings: Passing for White at Vassar

Owlcation
2018-08-02

Ronald E. Franklin

Anita Florence Hemmings

Anita Florence Hemmings graduated from Vassar in 1897. But though she was an excellent student, she came very close to not getting her degree at all. That was because just days before graduation, Anita’s roommate uncovered her deepest secret.

In a school that would never have considered admitting a black student, Anita Hemmings had for four years covered up the fact that she was of African American ancestry.

In other words, Anita Hemmings was a black woman who was passing for white, and it almost got her kicked out of Vassar on the very eve of her graduation.

Lebanon Daily News, September 11, 1897
Source: Lebanon Daily News, September 11, 1897

Anita’s Family: Up From Slavery

Anita Hemmings was born on June 8, 1872. Her parents were Robert Williamson Hemmings and Dora Logan Hemmings, both of whom had been born in Virginia, apparently to slave parents. Robert worked as a janitor, while Dora was listed in census records as a homemaker.

Robert and Dora both identified themselves as “mulattoes,” people of mixed black and white heritage.

The Hemmings family lived at 9 Sussex Street in Boston, which is in the historically black Roxbury section of the city. Though they might be living in humble circumstances, Robert and Dora were very ambitious for their four children. Not only would they send Anita to Vassar, but her brother would graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Frederick Hemmings made no effort to hide his race at MIT, where his student records identify him as “colored.”

But the option of openly identifying herself as black was not open to Anita; not if she wanted to fulfill her lifelong dream of going to Vassar…

Read the entire article here.

Tags: , , , , , ,

Out of the Binary and Beyond the Spectrum: Redefining and Reclaiming Native American Race

Posted in Articles, Media Archive, Native Americans/First Nation, Philosophy, United States on 2018-08-14 02:56Z by Steven

Out of the Binary and Beyond the Spectrum: Redefining and Reclaiming Native American Race

Critical Philosophy of Race
Volume 6, Issue 2, 2018
pages 216-238
DOI: 10.5325/critphilrace.6.2.0216

Alex R. Steers-Mccrum
Graduate Center, City University of New York

Race in the United States is most often talked about in terms of black and white, sometimes as a spectrum running from whiteness to blackness. Such a conception does not map onto actual racial structures in the United States and excludes Native Americans. This article will criticize this binary, detailing a theory of race in which colonialism and racism are prior to racial formation, following Patrick Wolfe and Michael Omi and Howard Winant. In assembling this theory, this article attempts to bridge philosophical critical race studies and Native American and Indigenous Peoples studies. It argues that to be a member of a race is to be in a relationship of dominance and resistance with settler colonialism. It discusses the implications of a political mode (following Tommie Shelby) of Native race in greater detail, including how it can be differentiated from ethnicity and tribal identity, and how it might be politically useful in anti-domination solidarity. Finally, the article examines the similarities and differences between Native race as construed here and concepts of being Indigenous, suggesting that what Indigenous is at the global level, Native race may be at the local.

Read or purchase the article here.

Tags: , ,

Black on the Outside, White on the Inside: Peter Abelard’s Use of Race

Posted in Articles, Europe, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, Philosophy, Religion on 2018-08-14 02:39Z by Steven

Black on the Outside, White on the Inside: Peter Abelard’s Use of Race

Critical Philosophy of Race
Volume 6, Issue 2, 2018
pages 135-163
DOI: 10.5325/critphilrace.6.2.0135

Colleen Mccluskey, Professor of Philosophy
Saint Louis University, St. Louis, Missouri

In his reply to Heloise’s complaints in the fourth of the so-called personal letters, Peter Abelard (a twelfth-century theologian) draws upon the figure of the Ethiopian queen from the biblical Song of Songs, who proclaims that she is black on the outside but beautiful on the inside. While some scholars have interpreted his discussion as a commentary on the persona of a nun, this article considers what Abelard’s remarks might mean for understanding the development of the concept of race in Western thought. In particular, it considers whether Abelard’s discussion, both in the letter and in his metaphysical writings, challenges the common (although not universal) position that Europeans did not develop a concept of race until at least the early modern period. It examines these texts to determine the extent to which his remarks reveal congruities or differences with later more explicit conceptions of race.

Read or purchase the article here.

Tags: , , , ,