Mixed Race Studies

Imagining Obama: Reading Overtly and Inferentially Racist Images of our 44th President, 2007–2008

Communication Studies
Volume 62, Issue 4, 2011
Special Issue:“Race Matters” in the Obama Era
pages 389-405
DOI: 10.1080/10510974.2011.588074

Ralina L. Joseph, Assistant Professor of Communications
University of Washington

In this article I analyze eight Internet images of President Barack Obama from the election campaign period of 2007–2008. These images were largely user-generated and disseminated and fall into two camps that each represent a form of anti-Black racism: overtly racist images and inferentially racist images. While representations of Obama as an ape, thug, or terrorist were generally recognized as clear forms of anti-Black racism, images I identify as inferentially racist operate within a postracial ideology in which Obama is figured as a messiah, whites’ “Black best friend,” or a mythical creature. For some viewers, these inferentially racist images did not incite the controversy of those read as overtly racist because the former were read as positive portrayals of uplift and progress. Yet, these inferentially racist images are reliant upon the same stereotypes of Blackness as the explicitly racist pictures, as Obama becomes a positive figure only when he can metaphorically transcend his Blackness.

Within a week of moving to an area of South Seattle designated by the 2010 U.S. Census as the most diverse in the country, I was cautioned by a well-intentioned, liberal White neighbor about the frequent incidence of car burglaries in the neighborhood. In our shared parking lot the neighbor told me, gesturing to her Obama/Biden bumper sticker, that her car was burgled “even though we have an Obama sticker!” I was so baffled by this comment that I mumbled a goodbye, got into my car and drove away, my mind exploding with questions. Did my neighbor think that car burglars were united in their proclivity to be Obama fans? Was she really assuming that all car vandals in South Seattle were Black? Did she mean that since she was ‘‘down with the cause’’ by publicly endorsing Obama, her car should have been immune from what she imagined to be Black-perpetrated crime? Was her bizarre performance of Obama-fandom intended to make her appear antiracist for us, the new family of color next door?

Since Obama’s presidential election campaign I have come to intimately understand that signifiers of our first African American president are deployed by some people to express anxiety, desire, guilt, discomfort, and, oftentimes, fear of Blackness. Such fear, which I read in the case of my neighbor as an assumption of Black criminality, must be seen as part-and-parcel of a more coded, more polite, but still virulent and destructive racism against African Americans that occurs, confusingly, through a celebration of Barack Obama. This complicated performance of support, when accompanied by controlling ideas of Blackness, reveals a barely sublimated anti-Black racism that flourishes in popular discourse because, in the words of Henry Giroux, ‘‘since it is assumed that formal institutions of segregation no longer exist,’’ racism against Black Americans also no longer exists (Giroux, 2003, p. 193). I use the phrase “anti-Black racism” as opposed to “racism” or ‘‘prejudice’’ not just to signal discriminatory feelings of Whites towards people of color but instead to signify the institutional, structural, and cultural forces that foment the inequality of people of African descent in our society.1 The featuring of Obama images, whether on a bumper sticker, t-shirt, poster, mug, or Facebook profile picture, is not a simple matter of one’s displaying political affiliation. As Obama is the first African American U.S. president, the production, consumption, and circulation of his image denotes conflicting emotions of race, identity, Blackness, belonging, and, yes, sometimes entrenched-yet-coded anti-Black racism…

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Multiracialism cuts its teeth on the denial of this fundamental social truth: not simply that antiblackness is longstanding and ongoing but also that it is unlike other forms of racial oppression in qualitative ways—differences of kind, rather than degree, a structural singularity rather than an empirical anomaly.

Jared Sexton, Amalgamation Schemes: Antiblackness and the Critique of Multiracialism, (University of Minnesota Press, 2008), 245.

Multiracialism on The Real World and the Reconfiguration of Politics in MTV’s Brand During the 2000s

Popular Communication
Volume 8, Issue 2, 2010
pages 132-146
DOI: 10.1080/15405701003676105

Jon Kraszewski, Assistant Professor of Communication
Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersery

The Real World’s focus on multiracial identity is part of the MTV’s efforts to rebrand itself as being more tolerant of all political opinions in the 2000s. Post-2000 seasons of The Real World contain two different portraits of multiracialism that appeal to viewers across the political spectrum. The liberalism in these seasons comes from multiracialism functioning as a liberal utopia free of racism, one where fluidity, not hostility, defines race relations. At the same time, these seasons appeal to conservative sensibilities by making multiracial cast members models of neoliberal self-management that conservatives recently have used to justify dismantling the welfare state and civil rights initiatives. While neither the liberal nor the conservative portraits of multiracialism on post-2000 seasons of The Real World appear to be overtly racist, I unearth subtext where The Real World articulates multiracialism to white supremacy and anti-blackness.

The Real World is one of the longest running series in American television history. Premiering in 1992. the series has already completed 22 seasons, and MTV recently contracted for four more. Scholars have interrogated the racial politics of the series, but they have equated race with either blackness, specifically the series’ stereotypical portraits of black masculinity, or tensions between urban blacks and rural whites (Bell-Jordan, 2008; Kraszewski, 2009; Orbe, 1998; Park, 2008). This focus has excluded scholarly engagement with other racial identities on the series. This essay unsettles the scholarly equation of race with blackness in The Real World by exploring the politics of multiracialism on the series in the 2000s. A list of multiracial characters on recent seasons includes Aneesa from The Real World, Chicago; Irulon and Arissa from The Real World, Las Vegas; Adam from The Real World, Paris, and Brianna from The Real World, Hollywood. These cast members has one parent who is black and one who is white. The erasure of these characters from discussions about race relates to a larger omission of mixed-race people from media studies scholarship. In Mixed Race Hollywood, Beltrán and Fojas (2008) write that despite “the veritable explosion of multiracial imagery in Hollywood film and media culture today, there has been little published scholarship to dale on the history or current representation of mixed-race individuals, romances, families, or stars on screen” (p. 2).

Analyzing a long-running series such as The Real World presents methodological and historical problems: a channel undergoes branding changes over the course of 18 years, which…

Read or purchase the article here.

Doctor’s quest to engineer a “master race” in the early 1900s still hurting Virginia’s Indian tribes

WTVR-CBS 6 TV
Richmond, Virginia
2011-07-12

Mark Holmberg, Staff reporter

RICHMOND— Richmond’s famous Hollywood Cemetery serves as the final resting place of presidents, statesmen and generals.

Few have had the impact of Dr. Walter Plecker. His stormy legacy continues today, 150 years after his birth.

“My parents always made sure we knew the story of what Walter Plecker had done and how it had affected our people,” said Wayne Adkins, president of the Virginia Indian Tribal Alliance For Life.

“Plecker was a menace to Virginia Indians over many years,” said Stephen R. Adkins, chief of the Chickahominy Tribe. “My mom and dad, for instance, had to go to Washington DC in 1935 to get married as Indians. It was illegal to do so in Virginia under penalty of up to a year in jail.”

“Dr. Plecker was convinced that there was a need to purify the white race,” said Paul Lombardo, a law professor at Georgia State University and formerly a eugenics expert at the University of Virginia. “He thought that he was preserving the Commonwealth of Virginia, that he was maintaining the United States of America and, most importantly to him, that he was protecting the white race.”

For 34 years, starting in 1912, Dr. Plecker served as the director of Virginia’s Bureau of Vital Statistics, carefully compiling birth, death and marriage records.

For Plecker, a native of Augusta County, there were only two races: white and non-white. Anyone who had what he thought was one drop of other than white blood was listed as “colored.” They were mongrels, in his view.

Plecker was a complex man who saved the lives of countless babies, including those of blacks and Indians, with updated birthing and midwife techniques, along with simple, homemade incubators for premature babies, according to historic profiles.

He was relentless. With great energy he compiled lists and wrote letters chastising whites who applied for marriage licenses with those Plecker thought were impure. Those letters are part of the extensive correspondence that are part of the vast Plecker record.

“There’s no question that Plecker was incredibly aggressive using the few prerogatives the law gave him to register people,” Lombardo said. “He used those prerogatives really to threaten people, to coerce them… Dr. Plecker once boasted that he had a list of people, by race, that rivaled the list that was kept by Hitler of the Jews.”

If he even just suspected someone had any African-American blood, they would go on his mongrel list.

Virginia’s Native Americans particularly felt his wrath. He was certain the tribes had interbred with blacks. “Like rats, when you’re not watching, they’ve been sneaking in their birth certificates though their own midwives,” Plecker wrote.

“We couldn’t claim we were Indian, it was against the law to say we were Indian,” said Kenneth Branham, chief of the Monacan Tribe. “What do we claim? We’re not black. And we’re not white.”

“That whole idea that you’re not what you believe yourself to be,” said Sharon Bryant, the newly elected Monacan chief. “That an entire community would tell you that, it becomes very oppressive to the people.”

“Whole groups of people who formerly were recognized among the tribes of Virginia simply disappeared from the records,” Lombardo said. “They were no longer considered to be Native Americans or Indians as they were called. Their children were not recognized as members of the tribes, and they’re living with that legacy right now.”

Plecker and his many supporters believed not only that the races should never intermarry, they shouldn’t even mingle. Strict segregation would last for generations.

Blacks had to have their own schools and neighborhoods. So did Indians…

…In 1924, at Plecker’s urging and with the support of many Virginians, the General Assembly passed the Racial Integrity Act, which narrowly defined race and made it illegal to for whites to marry anyone of any other race. Plecker wrote to the governors of the rest of the states, urging them to pass similar laws to save the white race.

Also, that year, Lombardo said, “there’s a sterilization law that’s passed in Virginia, upheld later in the United States Supreme Court, allowing some 60,000-plus people to be sterilized in institutions in 32 states all over the country.”

There was also a strict immigration law passed then.

The Racial Integrity Act stood until 1967, when the Loving case about an interracial couple led to a Supreme Court reversal.

But the damage to Virginia’s Indian tribes continues. There are more than 560 federally recognized Indian tribes in the country. But none of Virginia’s tribes, the ones that helped the settlers survive, have that crucial recognition that gives them, in essence, sovereign status and entitles them to nation-building assistance.

The U.S. Department of the Interior requires that tribes be able to show an unbroken bloodline. And Walter Plecker carved a hole – decades long – in their heritage…

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Multiracial Identity Development

Arlington Public Schools
Clarendon Education Center
2801 Clarendon Boulevard, Suite 308
Arlington, Virginia
2011-11-30, 10:00-12:00 EST (Local Time)

Have you ever wondered about how children from multiracial backgrounds develop their racial identity?  Please join us in welcoming Dr. Ricia Weiner, Ms. Eleanor Lewis, and Ms. Veronica Sanjines, School Psychologists, who will share valuable information with families and school staff about the stages and factors that impact the development of identity in multiracial children.
 
In this exciting session, Dr. Weiner, Ms. Lewis and Ms. Sanjines will review current theories, explain and dispel myths and inaccuracies, and help participants understand external influences in multiracial identity development.  They will also explore the impact of adoption and exposure to multiple languages on this population.  Participants will learn specific factors that support successful and adaptive multiracial identity development.

For more information, click here.

Not as simple as black or white

The Voice
2011-11-21

Elizabeth Pears

How mixed-race Brits are tackling issues surrounding dual heritage

LAST MONTH, the UK’s fastest growing ethnic minority, as part of the BBC’s Mixed Britannia series, reignited the debate of what it means to be ‘mixed-race’.

Demographers have predicted that Britain’s mixed-race population will reach 1.3 million by 2020 – almost double the number recorded in 2001. Of this figure, 45 percent are mixed white and black.

But despite increasing acceptance of inter-racial relationships and more visible mixed-race people such as Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton, actress Thandie Newton and Olympian Kelly Holmes, the concept of being mixed-race remains quite literally a grey area – a type of no man’s land where nothing is as simple as black or white.

Some critics find the need for mixed-race people to identify as such divisive, and argue that biologically there can be no such thing. Others argue that by merit of having a collective experience, mixed-race people should be free to align themselves in this way, and subsequently, get their voice heard when it comes to policy and decision-making.

Self-defining

Then there are those who are comfortable self-defining as black in the political sense as a means of navigating British society.

Bradley Lincoln, founder of social enterprise Mix-D, whose aim is to provide a year-round national platform for mixed-race debate, said: “When we talk about being mixed-race there is a danger of either over-celebrating or sounding like a victim.

“Mixed-race people are not foot soldiers for a new racism. It is not a homogenous group. It is not a separate ethnic grouping – but it is time to move the conversation forward, particularly within the education and the social care system where many mixed children are considered just black.”…

Read the entire article here.

Because of Intersex: Intersexuality, Title VII, and the Reality of Discrimination “Because of… [Perceived] Sex”

New York University Law Review of Law & Social Change
Volume 34, Issue 1 (2010)
pages 55-121

Ilana Gelfman, Skadden Fellow
Greater Boston Legal Services

The federal doctrine of sex discrimination in employment depends on the underlying yet unstated assumption that sex is binary: one is either a man or a woman, and there is no other possibility. The existence of intersex individuals challenges this assumption. This article asks how Title VII doctrine can be applied to intersex employees. In answering, the Article considers (1) the ramifications of the ever-developing definition of “because of . . . sex” in Title VII jurisprudence as applied to sexual minorities and (2) the implications of Title VII doctrine regarding mixedrace individuals for our understanding of how the law treats (and should treat) individuals “in between” the categories. The article moves beyond previous work, which suggests that intersex individuals be protected as a third sex category under Title VII, because that work only reinforces the exact sex categorizations that should be undermined by any serious examination of intersexuality. Instead, the article proposes a new model for protection against sex discrimination in employment—that of discrimination “because of perceived sex.”

Table of Contents

• ABSTRACT
• INTRODUCTION
• I. TITLE VII AND INTERSEX INDIVIDUALS: THE CONFLICT BETWEEN DOCTRINE AND REALITY
  • A. Title VII’s Binary Conception of Sex
  • B. Intersexuality Challenges the Binary
  • C. A Conflict Between Doctrine and Reality
• II. IN SEARCH OF A DEFINITION: “BECAUSE OF…SEX” AND SEXUAL MINORITIES
  • A. The First Generation: The “Plain Meaning” of Sex
  • B. The Second Generation: Sex Stereotyping
  • C. The Third Generation: Discrimination Against Transgender Individuals
  • D. Moving Forward: Implications for Intersex Individuals
• III. TROUBLE WITH CATEGORIES: ANTI-DISCRIMINATION LAW AND MULTIRACIAL PLAINTIFFS
  • A. A Brief History: Law and the Multiracial Individual
  • B. Federal Anti-discrimination Law and the Multiracial Plaintiff
  • C. “In Between” the Categories: Multiracial and Intersex Plaintiffs Compared
• IV. DOCTRINAL POSSIBILITIES: CATEGORIZING INTERSEX INDIVIDUALS FOR THEIR OWN PROTECTION
  • A. Why Protect Intersex Individuals at All?
  • B. Maintaining the Traditional Categories of Male and Female
  • C. Adding a Third Category: Acknowledging Intersexuality
• V. RECONCEPTUALIZING SEX DISCRIMINATION: PERCEIVED SEX
  • A. What Is Perceived Sex?
  • B. Application of the Doctrine
• CONCLUSION

Read the entire essay here.

Ethnicities: Plays from the New West

NeWest Press
Spring 1999
208 pages
paperback ISBN 13: 978-1-896300-03-0

Edited by:

Anne Nothof, Professor Emeritus of English
Athabasca University, Alberta, Canada

Edited by Anne Nothof, the three plays included this anthology all deal with intercultural issues in Canada with humour, wit and at times, heartbreak. They range from a village idiot in a French Canadian hamlet to arranged marriages to a multiracial relationship that is unhinged once he tells his parents that he is ‘living with a white girl.’

The anthology features biographic details of the contributing playwrights and their work:

• House of Sacred Cows—Padma Viswanathan
• Mom, Dad, I’m Living with a White Girl—Marty Chan
• Elephant Wake—Jonathan Christenson and Joey Tremblay

Faking It: Poetics & Hybridity: Critical Writing 1984-1999

NeWest Press
Spring 2000
288 pages
Paperback ISBN 13: 978-1-896300-07-8

Fred Wah

According to Fred Wah, the act of thinking critically is one of exploration and discovery. In Faking It, Wah demonstrates how writing poetry is writing critically. This scrapbook of Wah’s work—collected from fifteen years of his writing—contains essays, reviews, journals, notes and, most importantly, poetic improvisations on contemporary poetry and identity. Faking It was written between 1984 and 1999—during major shifts in critical thinking and cultural production—and the hybrid style of the book is an apt reflection of these changing times, as well as a reflection and study of Wah’s own hybrid identity.

Diamond Grill (10th Anniversary Edition)

NeWest Press
Fall 2006
208 pages
paperback ISBN 13: 978-1-897126-11-0

Fred Wah

This story of family and identity, migration and integration, culture and self-discovery is told through family history, memory, and the occasional recipe.

Diamond Grill is a rich banquet where Salisbury steak shares a menu with chicken fried rice, and bird’s nest soup sets the stage for Christmas plum pudding; where racism simmers behind the shiny clean surface of the action in the cafe.

An exciting new edition of Fred Wah’s best-selling bio-fiction, on the 10th anniversary of its original publication, with an all new afterword by the author and the same pagination as the original publication.