Mixed Race Studies

Interview: ‘White people are so fragile, bless ’em’ … meet Rhiannon Giddens, banjo warrior

The Guardian
2018-07-23

Emma John

‘I’m not here to be famous’ … Rhiannon Giddens, who is curating the Cambridge folk festival. Photograph: Tanya Rosen-Jones

She pours fire and fury into powerful songs that target everything from police shootings to slavery. The musician reveals all about her mission to put the black back into bluegrass – and Shakespeare

‘We’re all racist to some degree,” says Rhiannon Giddens. “Just like we’re all privileged to some degree. I have privilege in my system because I’m light-skinned. I hear people say, ‘I didn’t have it easy growing up either.’ But when did it become a competition?”

As someone on a mission to bridge such divides, Giddens thinks about this stuff a lot. The Grammy-winning singer and songwriter was born to a white father and a black mother in Greensboro, North Carolina, in the late 1970s. Her parents married only three years after the landmark Loving v Virginia decision, which reversed the anti-miscegenation laws that had made interracial marriage illegal. Their union was still shocking enough that her father was disinherited.

While much has changed in the 40 years that Giddens has been alive, her latest album, Freedom Highway, is a powerful testament to the inequality and injustice that remain. It opens with At the Purchaser’s Option, a devastating track inspired by an 1830s advert for a female slave whose nine-month-old baby could also be included in the sale. “It was kind of a statement to put that one first,” says Giddens. “If you can get past that, you’ll probably survive the rest.”…

Read the entire interview here.

Works Progress Austin: Casta by Adrienne Dawes

Salvage Vanguard Theater
110 Barton Springs Road
Austin, Texas 78704
2018-07-21

Photo by Bonica Ayala. Pictured Jesus valles, Tarik Daniels, Linzy Beltran

Salvage Vanguard Theater invites you to attend a staged reading of Casta by Adrienne Dawes, presented as part of Works Progress Austin. Launched in 2006, Works Progress Austin (WPA) provides playwrights with the resources they need to bring their work to life. Works Progress Austin has featured new works by Caridad Svich, Dan Dietz, and Sibyl Kempson.

WPA: Casta by Adrienne Dawes
Aug 24 @ 7:30pm | Aug 25 @ 4 and 7:30pm
ARTIST TALK after the 4pm performance August 25th.

Casta is inspired by a series of casta paintings by Miguel Cabrera, a mixed-race painter from Oaxaca. Casta paintings were a unique form of portraiture that grew in popularity over the 18th century in Nueva España/colonial Mexico. The paintings depicted different racial mixtures arranged according to a hierarchy defined by Spanish elites…

Read the entire article here.

The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta: The Celebrated California Bandit

Penguin Classics
2017-07-10
208 pages
5-1/16 x 7-3/4
Paperback ISBN: 9780143132653
Ebook ISBN: 9780525504580

John Rollin Ridge (1827-1867)

Foreword by Diana Gabaldon
Introduction by Hsuan L. Hsu
Notes by Hsuan L. Hsu

The first novel to feature a Mexican American hero: an adventure tale about Mexicans rising up against U.S. rule in California, based on the real-life bandit who inspired the creation of Zorro, the Lone Ranger, and Batman

With a new foreword by Diana Gabaldon, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Outlander series

An action-packed blend of folk tale, romance, epic, and myth, The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta tells the story of the Gold Rush-era Mexican immigrant Joaquín Murieta, whose efforts to find fortune and happiness are thwarted by white settlers who murder his family and drive him off his land. In retaliation, Murieta organizes a band of more than 2,000 outlaws–including the sadistic “Three-Fingered Jack”–who take revenge by murdering, stealing horses, and robbing miners, all with the ultimate goal of reconquering California.

The first novel written by a Native American and the first novel published in California, The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta speaks to the ways in which ethical questions of national security and racialized police violence have long been a part of U.S. history. This edition features excerpts from popular rewritings of the novel, including Johnston McCulley’s first novel about Zorro, The Curse of Capistrano (also known as The Mark of Zorro).

They Come in All Colors, A Novel

Atria Books (an imprint of Simon and Schuster)
2018-05-29
336 pages
Hardcover ISBN: 9781501172328
eBook ISBN: 9781501172342
Paperback ISBN: 9781501172335 (April 2019)

Malcolm Hansen

Malcolm Hansen arrives on the scene as a bold new literary voice with his stunning debut novel. Alternating between the Deep South and New York City during the 1960s and early ’70s, They Come in All Colors follows a biracial teenage boy who finds his new life in the big city disrupted by childhood memories of the summer when racial tensions in his hometown reached a tipping point.

It’s 1968 when fourteen-year-old Huey Fairchild begins high school at Claremont Prep, one of New York City’s most prestigious boys’ schools. His mother had uprooted her family from their small hometown of Akersburg, Georgia, a few years earlier, leaving behind Huey’s white father and the racial unrest that ran deeper than the Chattahoochee River.

But for our sharp-tongued protagonist, forgetting the past is easier said than done. At Claremont, where the only other nonwhite person is the janitor, Huey quickly realizes that racism can lurk beneath even the nicest school uniform. After a momentary slip of his temper, Huey finds himself on academic probation and facing legal charges. With his promising school career in limbo, he begins examining his current predicament at Claremont through the lens of his childhood memories of growing up in Akersburg during the Civil Rights Movement—and the chilling moments leading up to his and his mother’s flight north.

With Huey’s head-shaking antics fueling this coming-of-age narrative, the story triumphs as a tender and honest exploration of race, identity, family, and homeland.

Announcing the appointment of Dr. Minelle Mahtani as Senior Advisor to the Provost on Racialized Faculty

The University of British Columbia
Office of the Provost & Vice-President Academic
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
2018-07-17

The Provost is pleased to announce that Dr. Minelle Mahtani has been appointed to the role of Senior Advisor to the Provost on Racialized Faculty, a new position that will support the university’s institutional commitment to advancing equity and inclusion in the scholarly and leadership environment for faculty members at UBC. This 40% position is initially for a two-year term, commencing September 1, 2018. Dr. Mahtani holds her professorial appointment in the Institute of Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice in the Faculty of Arts.

Since 2009, Dr. Mahtani has been an Associate Professor in Human Geography and Journalism at the University of Toronto Scarborough, serving as the Associate Chair of the Department of Human Geography from 2014-2015. She received her PhD in Geography from University College London in 2000. Dr. Mahtani is the Past President of the Association for Canadian Studies, and former Chair of Metropolis-Ontario (CERIS – Centre for Excellence on Immigration and Settlement). She is the 2012 Winner of the Glenda Laws Award from the Association of American Geographers for outstanding contributions to geography and social policy, and a Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal Award winner. Dr. Mahtani is a former television news journalist with the CBC and has consulted with a variety of organizations on diversity and journalism, including Citizenship Immigration Canada and the Ministry of Multiculturalism and Integration, among other groups. She is the former strategic counsel for the not-for-profit IMPACS (Institute for Media, Policy and Civil Society).

Professor Mahtani’s research interests are in the areas of diversity initiatives; anti-colonial approaches in critical geography; global mixed-race theory and critical race theory; and structural and systemic racism as experienced among academics of colour…

Read the entire press release here.

Caribbean Masala: Indian Identity in Guyana and Trinidad

University Press of Mississippi
2018-07-16
144 pages (approx.)
9 b&w illustrations
6 x 9 inches
Hardcover ISBN: 9781496818041

Dave Ramsaran, Professor of Sociology
Susquehanna University, Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania

Linden F. Lewis, Presidential Professor of Sociology; Associate Dean of Social Sciences
Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania

How Indian descendants maintained their culture and grew their influence in the Caribbean

In 1833, the abolition of slavery in the British Empire led to the import of exploited South Asian indentured workers in the Caribbean under extreme oppression. Dave Ramsaran and Linden F. Lewis concentrate on the Indian descendants’ processes of mixing, assimilating, and adapting while trying desperately to hold on to that which marks a group of people as distinct. In some ways, the lived experience of the Indian community in Guyana and Trinidad represents a cultural contradiction of belonging and non-belonging. In other parts of the Caribbean, people of Indian descent seem so absorbed by the more dominant African culture and through intermarriage that Indo-Caribbean heritage seems less central.

In this collaboration based on focus groups, in-depth interviews, and observation, sociologists Ramsaran and Lewis lay out a context within which to develop a broader view of Indians in Guyana and Trinidad, a numerical majority in both countries. They address issues of race and ethnicity but move beyond these familiar aspects to track such factors as ritual, gender, family, and daily life. Ramsaran and Lewis gauge not only an unrelenting process of assimilative creolization on these descendants of India, but also the resilience of this culture in the face of modernization and globalization.

Examining whites’ anti-black attitudes after Obama’s presidency

Politics, Groups, and Identities
Published online: 2018-03-05
DOI: 10.1080/21565503.2018.1438953

Nicole Yadon, Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Political Science
University of Michigan

Spencer Piston, Assistant Professor of Political Science
Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts

We develop and test competing theoretical expectations about the level and effects of white prejudice against blacks in the aftermath of America’s first black presidency. Using both cross-sectional and panel survey datasets of nationally representative samples of Americans, we find little evidence that any of the following declined during Obama’s presidency: white opposition to black leaders, white opposition to policies intended to benefit blacks, white prejudice against blacks, or the impact of prejudice on white vote choice. Furthermore, the impact of prejudice on policy opinion appears to have increased over this time period, even beyond existing findings indicating a spillover of racialization. These findings suggest that Obama’s rise to power increased whites’ perception that blacks threaten their dominant position in the United States.

Read or purchase the article here.

Do We Still Need Constitutional “Equal Protection” in a Growing Multiracial World?

Medium
2018-07-09

Tanya Hernández, Archibald R. Murray Professor of Law; Associate Director Center on Race, Law & Justice
Fordham University School of Law

Tanya Hernández is the author of the forthcoming book, Multiracials and Civil Rights: Mixed-Race Stories of Discrimination from New York University Press.

Reflections on the the 150th Anniversary of the 14th Amendment

July 9th, marks the 150th anniversary of the ratification of the 14th Amendment’s equality principle of the U.S. Constitution. Does the pursuit of racial equality look different 150 years after the ratification of the 14th Amendment’s equality principle in today’s growing multiracial world? In 2010, 9 million people constituting 2.9 percent of the population selected two or more races on the census. The Census Bureau projects that the self-identified multiracial population will triple by 2060. Yet, in my own exhaustive review of discrimination cases in a variety of contexts like the workplace, educational settings, housing rentals, access to public accommodations, jury service, and the criminal justices system, the cases demonstrate that racially-mixed persons continue to experience discrimination today…

Read the entire article here.

Voice Business presents Wirework

Tristan Bates Theatre
1A Tower St, Covent Garden
London, United Kingdom WC2H 9NP
Tuesday, 2018-07-03 through Saturday, 2018-07-07, 19:30 (Thurs & Sat Matinees 14:30)

A play about the unexpected relationship between Koos Malgas, a Cape Coloured shepherd and Helen Martins, a one-time actor and teacher, in the creation of the Owl House – an extraordinary environmental piece full of animated sculptures and pulsating light montages.

Set in the isolated landscape of the South African Karoo and inspired by images from pictures and postcards, their world becomes dominated by form and colour. In her struggle to find the ‘light’, Helen looks towards Mecca as Koos faces the reality of apartheid prejudice and survival.

BRITISH PREMIERE, first performed in South Africa, 2009

Supported by Arts Council England

CAST
Helen Elaine Wallace
Koos Kurt Kansley

CREATIVE
Director Jessica Higgs
Scenographer Declan Randall

How the Use by Eugenicists of Family Trees and Other Genealogical Technologies Informed and Reflected Discourses on Race and Race Crossing during the Era of Moral Condemnation: Mixed-Race in 1920s and 1930s Britain

Genealogy
Volume 2, Issue 3 (September 2018)
Special Issue “Genealogy and Multiracial Family Histories”
2018-07-05
15 pages
DOI: 10.3390/genealogy2030021

Peter J. Aspinall, Emeritus Reader
Centre for Health Services Studies, University of Kent, Canterbury

In the 1920s and 30s, significant empirical studies were undertaken on mixed-race (‘hybrid’) populations in Britain’s seaport communities. The physical anthropologists Rachel Fleming and Kenneth Little drew on the methods of anthropometry, while social scientist Muriel Fletcher’s morally condemnatory tract belongs to the genre of racial hygiene. Whether through professional relationships, the conduct of their work, or means of disseminating their findings, they all aligned themselves with the eugenics movement and all made use of pedigree charts or other genealogical tools for tracing ancestry and investigating the inheritance of traits. These variously depicted family members’ races, sometimes fractionated, biological events, and social circumstances which were not part of genealogy’s traditional family tree lexicon. These design features informed and reflected prevailing conceptualisations of race as genetic and biological difference, skin colour as a visible marker, and cultural characteristics as immutable and hereditable. It is clear, however, that Fleming and Little did not subscribe to contemporary views that population mixing produced adverse biological consequences. Indeed, Fleming actively defended such marriages, and both avoided simplistic, ill-informed judgements about human heredity. Following the devastating consequences of Nazi racial doctrines, anthropologists and biologists largely supported the 1951 UNESCO view that there was no evidence of disadvantageous effects produced by ‘race crossing’.

Contents

• Abstract
• Introduction
• Genealogical Technologies
• Case Studies of the Eugenic Use of Genealogical Technologies in Studies of Mixed-Race
• Intersections between Eugenicists’ Use of Genealogical Technologies, Discourses on Race, and the Biological Consequences of ‘Race Crossing’
• Conclusions
• Funding
• Conflicts of Interest
• References

Read the entire article in HTML or PDF format.