Mixed Race Studies

(1)ne Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race

BLACKprint Press
2013-11-29
284 pages
75 full-page photographs
Hardback ISBN: 978-0-9896645-0-9

Yaba Blay, Ph.D., The Daniel T. Blue Endowed Chair of Political Science
North Carolina State University

Noelle Théard, Director of Photography

• Independent Publisher’s 2014 “Multicultural Non-Fiction Adult” Gold Medal Winner

What exactly is Blackness?
What does it mean to be Black?
Is Blackness a matter of biology or consciousness?
Who determines who is Black and who is not?
Who’s Black, who’s not, and who cares?

In the United States, a Black person has come to be defined as any person with any known Black ancestry. Statutorily referred to as “the rule of hypodescent,” this definition of Blackness is more popularly known as the “one-drop rule,” meaning that one solitary drop of Black blood is enough to render a person Black. Said differently, the one-drop rule holds that a person with any trace of Black ancestry, however small or (in)visible, cannot be considered White. A method of social order that began almost immediately after the arrival of enslaved Africans in America, by 1910 it was the law of the land in almost all southern U.S. states. At a time when the one-drop rule functioned to protect and preserve White racial purity, Blackness was both a matter of biology and the law. One was either Black or White. Period. One hundred years later, however, the social and political landscape has changed. Or has it?

(1)ne Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race sets out to explore the extent to which historical definitions of race continue to shape contemporary racial identities and lived experiences of racial difference, particularly among those for whom the legacy of the one-drop rule perceptibly lingers. Featuring the perspectives of 60 contributors representing 25 countries and combining candid narratives with simple yet striking portraiture, this book provides living testimony to the diversity of Blackness. Although contributors use varying terms to self-identify, they all see themselves as part of the larger racial, cultural, and social group generally referred to as Black. They all have experienced having their identity called into question simply because they do not fit neatly into the stereotypical “Black box”—dark skin, “kinky” hair, broad nose, full lips, etc. Most have been asked “What are you?” or the more politically correct “Where are you from?” numerous times throughout their lives. It is through contributors’ lived experiences with and lived imaginings of Black identity that we are able to visualize multiple possibilities for Blackness above and beyond the one-drop rule.

The inspiration behind CNN’s Black in America: “Who is Black in America?” and featured on CNN Newsroom, (1)ne Drop continues to spark much-needed dialogue about the intricacies and nuances of racial identity and the influence of skin color politics on questions of who is Black and who is not.

(1)ne Drop takes the very literal position that in order for us to see Blackness differently, we have to see Blackness differently.

Contents

• Author’s Note
• Intro
• Introspection
• Mixed Black
• American Black
• Diaspora Black
• Outro
• Notes
• Acknowledgements
• About

Being Black: It’s not the skin color

Philadelphia Weekly
2013-11-13

Kennedy Allen et al.

Drexel prof Yaba Blay’s striking new photo book “One Drop” explores how a wide range of different skin tones affects Americans’ personal identities. In  this PW excerpt, eight Philadelphia-area residents of mixed heritage concur: However light they may be, they’re still most certainly Black. Our own Kennedy Allen agrees…

Growing up in Mt. Airy, an ethnic and economically diverse neighborhood, instilled within me a level of acceptance and tolerance regarding my fellow man that, confoundingly, many didn’t seem to share. I was one of seven Black kids in a class of 42. Because I spoke English properly and preferred rock to rap, I was deemed “White girl” by my racial peers—a label that haunted me for what felt like eons. I knew I wasn’t White, nor did I ever have the urge to be, outside of wishing my hair would blow in the wind like some of the girls in my class. Flash-forward to my final years of high school, in a black school where I was the “light-bright girl who talks White.” Dark-skinned people still sneer at me, somehow assuming that I believe myself to be “better” than they are because of my buttered-toffee skin tone.

When all is said and done, racial or ethnic identity rests upon the individual and their experiences. I identify myself as a black woman who happens to have Irish and Cherokee lineage. What of all the others who identify as black, but appear otherwise? Scholar and activist Arturo Schomburg, whose extensive collection of books and historical records of African people’s achievements eventually became the famed Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, N.Y., identified as an Afro-Puerto Rican. (In fact, his passion for gathering all those documents was born after a grade-school teacher told him that black people had no history, heroes or accomplishments.) Would Schomburg’s experience be less valid because it fails to meet some homogenous notion of Blackness? Who has the right to determine these standards in the first place? And in an age of global interconnectedness and the instant, worldwide exchange of information and ideals, why does it still even matter?

Dr. Yaba Blay wondered some of the same things. A first-generation Ghanian-American and the co-director of Drexel’s Africana studies program, Blay has spent the past two years gathering vibrant portraits and intimate stories from nearly 60 individuals across the country in an attempt to shine some light upon questions of racial ambiguity and legitimacy. Those portraits now comprise a new book that she’s edited and published, (1)ne Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race—as well as an exhibit of the same name, currently on display at the Painted Bride Art Center…

Read the entire article and eight subject profiles from the book here.

New Book on Racial Identity by Dr. Yaba Blay to be Released on Black Friday with Launch Party at the Painted Bride

Drexel Now
Drexel University
2013-11-04

News Media Contact: Alex McKechnie, News Officer, University Communications
Phone: 215-895-2705; Mobile: 401-651-7550

On Black Friday, Nov. 29, a new book on racial identity by Drexel University’s Dr. Yaba Blay, one of today’s leading voices on colorism and global skin color politics, will be released from Blay’s recently launched independent press, Black Print Press.

To celebrate the release, a launch party will take place at The Painted Bride Art Center (230 Vine St.) on Nov. 29 from 6 p.m. – 9 p.m. A concurrent photography exhibition is currently on display at The Painted Bride through Dec. 21.

The book, entitled (1)ne Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race, seeks to challenge narrow perceptions of what Blackness is and what it looks like. By combining candid narratives and photos from 60 contributors hailing from 25 different countries, the book provides a living testimony to the diversity of Blackness. It is intended to spark dialogue about the intricacies and nuances of racial identity and the influence of skin color politics…

Read the entire press release here.

(1)ne Drop Project Live

Painted Bride Art Center
230 Vine Street
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19106
Telephone: 215.925.9914
Sunday, November 10, 2013, 17:00-18:00 EST (Local Time)

Do you know Blackness when you see it? This provocative question informs the work of Dr. Yaba Blay, whose (1)ne Drop Project depicts the stories and images of over 60 individuals from around the world, all of whom identify as Black, but none of whom fit the stereotypical “Black box.” Their candid memoirs challenge our understanding of race and identity.

The storytelling event, (1)ne Drop Project Live, interweaves history with candid stories from participants in the Project and gives a microphone to living testimonies of diversity. The event will include readings from project participants.

For more information, click here.

Visualizing Race, Identity, and Change

Proof
National Geographic
2013-09-17

Michele Norris, Guest Contributor

Proof is National Geographic’s new online photography experience. It was launched to engage ongoing conversations about photography, art, and journalism. In addition to featuring selections from the magazine and other publications, books, and galleries, this site will offer new avenues for our audience to get a behind-the-scenes look at the National Geographic storytelling process. We view this as a work in progress and welcome feedback as the site evolves. We can be reached at proof@ngs.org.

A feature in National Geographic‘s October 125th anniversary issue looks at the changing face of America in an article by Lise Funderburg, with portraits of multiracial families by Martin Schoeller, that celebrates the beauty of multiracial diversity and shows the limitations around our current categories when talking about race.

In many ways race is about difference and how those differences are codified through language, categories, boxes, segmentation, and even the implicit sorting that goes on in our heads in terms of the way we label others and even ourselves.

Appearance and identity are most certainly linked when it comes to racial categories, but there is another important ingredient in that stew: Experience. There is no room for that on those official census forms, but when a person picks up a writing instrument to choose which box they check, experience most certainly helps guide their hand…

Read the article and view the photographs here.

Image Matters: Archive, Photography, and the African Diaspora in Europe

Duke University Press
2012
256 pages
118 photographs, 10 illustrations
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8223-5074-3
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8223-5056-9

Tina M. Campt, Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Director of the Africana Studies Program
Barnard College

In Image Matters, Tina M. Campt traces the emergence of a black European subject by examining how specific black European communities used family photography to create forms of identification and community. At the heart of Campt’s study are two photographic archives, one composed primarily of snapshots of black German families taken between 1900 and 1945, and the other assembled from studio portraits of West Indian migrants to Birmingham, England, taken between 1948 and 1960. Campt shows how these photographs conveyed profound aspirations to forms of national and cultural belonging. In the process, she engages a host of contemporary issues, including the recoverability of non-stereotypical life stories of black people, especially in Europe, and their impact on our understanding of difference within diaspora; the relevance and theoretical approachability of domestic, vernacular photography; and the relationship between affect and photography. Campt places special emphasis on the tactile and sonic registers of family photographs, and she uses them to read the complexity of “race” in visual signs and to highlight the inseparability of gender and sexuality from any analysis of race and class. Image Matters is an extraordinary reflection on what vernacular photography enabled black Europeans to say about themselves and their communities.

Exploring African-American Fatherhood

The New York Times
Lens: Photography, Video and Visual Journalism
2012-06-15

David Gonzalez, Co-editor of Lens

What compels you to shoot? That was the question David Alan Harvey asked his students during a workshop last year in Brooklyn. We all have our reasons — if not our obsessions — flashes of realization that come through the viewfinder and into our hearts. For Zun Lee, one of the students, the answer was uneasily evident.

As a street photographer, he had always been attracted to fleeting scenes of fathers and children. He was drawn to those moments, even if he wasn’t quite sure why.

Well, maybe he was.

“In 2004, I discovered my biological dad was African-American,” said Mr. Lee, who had been raised in a Korean family in Germany. “It had basically been a one-night stand. He ran away when he learned she was pregnant. She doesn’t even remember his name anymore.”

That revelation would inform his latest work — “Father Figure,” an exploration into the lives of black fathers.  Working over the last year in New York, Chicago and Toronto, where he now lives and works as a health consultant, he has delved into the lives of men who have made the choice to stay near their children as best they can…

…“Learning about my biological father wasn’t just a traumatic experience,” Mr. Lee said. “Learning the news was in a weird sense a homecoming.”…

Read the entire article here.

Lola Flash: [sur]passing

Jefferson School African American Heritage Center
420 Commerce Street
Charlottesville, Virginia
Contemporary Gallery
Exhibition Dates: 2013-06-07 through 2013-08-30

For more than 20 years Lola Flash has been committed to deconstructing racism, sexism and homophobia through challenging photographic imagery. [sur]passing is a work in progress that confronts the phenomenon known as pigmentocracy. The term, coined by cultural critic Kobena Mercer in 1994, describes a hierarchy wherein a slave’s socio-economic position could be determined by their skin color. In [sur]passing, Flash analyzes the impact of this condition on contemporary society.

Posed in front of the varied yet undefined skylines of London, New York, and South Africa, Flash’s models, both male and female, represent an array of skin-color. Their youthful energy suggests they have transcended the pecking order that has historically been the source of contention throughout the African Diaspora.

According to Flash, these portraits represent a “new generation”—one that is above and beyond “passing.” They represent a fresh pride and strength; where ambiguity and blurred borders create individuality that elevates consciousness, and advances a plethora of complex and positive imagery of [black] people all over the world…

For more information, click here. View the [sur]passing gallery here.

Photographer Interview: Albert Chong

Dodge & Burn: diversity in photography history
2011-02-08

Qiana Mestrich, Visual Artist + Writer

Dodge & Burn: Where are you from?

Albert Chong: I am originally from Kingston, Jamaica by way of Brooklyn, NY, San Diego, CA and presently Boulder, CO.

D&B: What kind of photography do you shoot and how did you get started – any “formal” training?

AC: My photography has been primarily focused on the use of the medium as a means of artistic and personal expression. My work has been a contributor to the discourses surrounding the contemporary visual arts of people of African and Asian descent. Inherent in these discourses are issues of race, identity, ethnicity, multiculturalism and postcolonial visual expression of methods of cultural retrieval.

My work has also investigated the role of family and ancestry in the constructed identity that is the artist. One of my better known body of work are the still life photographs that I construct sometimes using old family photographs, that in the context of the arrangement creates a shrine like tableaux that renders these Ancestors into Icons…

…D&B: Have you experienced any setbacks or different treatment along your photography career that you would attribute to being a woman and/or photographer of color? (this question is optional)

AC: Yes, I have had my share of racist discrimination, and I am fully aware that there are subtle methods and layers of exclusion that are designed to strain and filter out people whose difference was being from some demographic other than white, mainstream America. There were many instances in which I did not fit the prevailing notion among whites of what an artist looks like and that was generally white and male.

There was one incident that sticks out for me even after almost 30 years. I dropped off a portfolio of my photographs at a then very prestigious photography gallery called Light Gallery when I returned to retrieve it a few days later the gallerist was super enthusiastic about the work and mentioned that they were interested in giving the artist a show, she then asked me if I was the messenger and if I was would I relay this message to the artist. I then revealed that I was the artist and with her mouth agape in shock and surprise, the offer instantly evaporated.

There were many others including Aperture magazine in a meeting in 1992 the white man I met with I won’t mention his name told me they could not publish a book of my work because I was black and I was not famous and that their audience was primarily white. Well the irony there was that he was to become complicit in my fame when a traveling exhibition of photography my work was in hit New York and he was asked by the New York Times to review it and my photograph was used to advertise the show. At around the same time I was in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art and my photograph was being used in the New York Times as well to advertise that one.

Read the entire interview here.

Self Portraits of an African-Canadian Dressed as Her White Ancestors Explores Her Mixed Heritage

feature shoot
2013-07-01

Keren Moscovitch

Brooklyn-based photographer Stacey Tyrell’s series Backra Bluid is a dramatic investigation of the artist’s own mixed heritage and the colonialized experiences of non-whites. As an African-Canadian, whose family most recently hails from the Caribbean, she is brutally aware of the English/Scottish/Irish blood in her veins—the ubiquitous reality lived by people who are labeled as “black” in the West.

Tyrell poses herself as women and girls of various ages, dressed in the outfits of her white ancestors. She displays ambiguous racial features achieved through an elegant combination of lighting, costuming, make-up and digital retouching. The images are inspired by formal Western painting, a nod to the imperialism to which the project refers.

Drawing from the self-portraiture tradition of Cindy Sherman and Niki S. Lee, she combs public records for historical data to add dimension to her characters, such as names carefully curated from Scottish baby registries and the US Social Security Administration. The series is tinged with discomfort, anger and shame, sentiments that are repeatedly mirrored in the cold stares and tense facial expressions of her characters…

Read the entire article here.