Mixed Race Studies

Genetics against race: Science, politics and affirmative action in Brazil

Social Studies of Science
Volume 45, Number 6 (December 2015)
pages 816-838
DOI: 10.1177/0306312715610217

Peter Wade, Professor of Social Anthropology
University of Manchester

Michael Kent, Honorary Research Fellow in Social Anthropology
School of Social Sciences
University of Manchester

This article analyses interrelations between genetic ancestry research, political conflict and social identity. It focuses on the debate on race-based affirmative action policies, which have been implemented in Brazil since the turn of the century. Genetic evidence of high levels of admixture in the Brazilian population has become a key element of arguments that question the validity of the category of race for the development of public policies. In response, members of Brazil’s black movement have dismissed the relevance of genetics by arguing, first, that in Brazil race functions as a social – rather than a biological – category, and, second, that racial classification and discrimination in this country are based on appearance, rather than on genotype. This article highlights the importance of power relations and political interests in shaping public engagements with genetic research and their social consequences.

Read the entire article here.

NBA Star Amar’e Stoudemire Is Moving to Israel — Because He’s a Hebrew Israelite

Forward
2016-08-01

Sam Kestenbaum, Staff Writer

This week, basketball star Amar’e Stoudemire ended a celebrated 14-year career with the NBA. The six-time All-Star spent most of his career with the Phoenix Suns and the New York Knicks, before finishing with the Dallas Mavericks and the Miami Heat.

Now he’s moving on and up — to Jerusalem. Jews who move to Israel commonly refer to the move as “ascending” to the Holy Land. And like many of them, Stoudemire’s move is at least partly a spiritual journey.

“The Scripture speaks about Jerusalem as a holy place, and I can feel that whenever I’m in the city,” Stoudemire wrote in a farewell note. “My whole journey with reuniting with the Holy Land has always been important,” he added at a press conference.

That “journey” has fascinated, and at times bewildered, some American Jews and Israelis. Stoudemire visited Israel in 2010 to “explore his Hebrew roots” and has visited many times since, even applying for Israeli citizenship. His affinity for Israel prompted a flurry of media attention — was he Jewish? Some mainstream outlets reported then — and some continue to erroneously report — that Stoudemire converted or had a Jewish mother.

But Stoudemire is no Jew, convert or otherwise…

Read the entire article here.

Escaping Whiteness

The Huffington Post
2015-07-12

Jennifer Delton, Professor of History
Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York

The exposure of Rachel Dolezal, a white woman passing for black, was just a blip in a year of more urgent stories about race in the United States. Indeed, many expressed annoyance that the story was given so much play, in light of more serious injustices. But the interest in Dolezal’s story was not just crass sensationalism. The issues it raises should concern anyone who has tried to understand what exactly constitutes “race” in the United States and, more specifically, whether one can escape or overcome the race one was born into.

The question asked over and over about Dolezal’s deception was: Why would anyone want to be black??? Why would someone give up the privileges of being white in America and willingly embrace the disadvantages that come with being black? People asked this as if it were truly perplexing, but why on earth would anyone want to be identified with a race that practiced a brutal form of slavery for over two hundred years, then set up a system of segregation and discrimination bolstered by white terrorism and an ideology of white supremacy, the effects of which still linger today despite legislative attempts to overcome them? Who wants that as their “racial heritage?” Who wouldn’t give up their privilege if they could escape that burden?…

Read the entire article here.

Passing: A Bi-Racial Perspective On Racial Inequality In America

Cappuccino Queen
2014-12-03

Hera McLeod

In the past few years, it seems like topic of race has gotten to a boiling point many times. Particularly, it seems, as it relates to the American Justice System. When Trayvon Martin was gunned down in February of 2012, I sat in horror as his killer walked free under the baffling and absurd “stand your ground” law in Florida. While this case seemed outrageous to me, what seemed more troubling was how public opinion on this case seemed to split down racial lines. In many cases, all reason flew out the window as people tried to justify George Zimmerman’s actions by agreeing that a black man wearing a hooded sweatshirt was “intimidating”.

Now, we fast forward a little over two years and another young black man is gunned down – Michael Brown. This time, however, it wasn’t a hot headed neighborhood watch (police officer wannabe), it was an actual police officer. This time, however, the case never even made it to trial, witnesses were never cross examined, and violent protests broke out all across the country as a result. Similar to the Martin case, though, I see logic fly out the window as people join opinion camps based largely on their racial affiliation.

These tragic cases force us to face painful realities about our country. While we can all wear the badge of honor of having a black President, we must also come to terms with the fact that we have yet to reach the Utopia of racial equality that some of our countrymen like to claim we have. For those of you who don’t know, I am multi-racial. From a young age, however, I realized that it didn’t matter as much what I defined myself as because America had my label picked out before I was born. Any bi-racial people in America (who is at all black) would likely agree that the “one drop rule” still exists. Without getting into the history of the one drop rule, let me just give you this example:

Say a police officer pulls over a car full of people. In that car, there are a few black people, a white person, and a bi-racial people. If the officer says, “All the black folks need to get out of the car”…the bi-racial person will be getting out of the car. I would say nine times out of ten, no matter how pale that bi-racial person is, he/she will get out.

So, at this point you might be wondering why I am boring you with these strange distinctions about race. I say this to offer my perspective, as a multi-racial American on all the race drama that has occurred over the past few years. When these news events arise, it is never simple for us. We never get to just jump on a race side, and we are always reminded of both how we define ourselves and how society defines us…

Read the entire article here.

Black Lotus: A Woman’s Search for Racial Identity

Gallery Books (an Imprint of Simon & Schuster)
August 2016
368 pages
Hardcover ISBN: 9781451688467
eBook ISBN: 9781451688481

Sil Lai Abrams

The unique and beautifully written story of one multiracial woman’s journey of acceptance and identity that tackles the fraught topic of race in America.

Sil Lai Abrams always knew she was different, with darker skin and curlier hair than her siblings. But when the man who she thought was her dad told her the truth—that her father was actually black—her whole world was turned upside down.

Raised primarily in the Caucasian community of Winter Park, Florida, Abrams was forced to re-examine who she really was and struggle with her Caucasian, African American, and Chinese identities. In her remarkable memoir, she shares this journey and how it speaks to a larger question: Why does race matter?

Black Lotus is a story of acceptance and identity but it is also a dialogue on the complex topic of race in this country by an award-winning writer and inspirational speaker.

Justine Jane M. Bolin (First Negro woman judge in the U.S.A.)

The Crisis
Volume 49, Number 9 (September 1939)

THE COVER

Miss Jane M. Bolin became on July 22 the first colored woman Judge in the United States when Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia appointed her and swore her in as a justice of the Court of Domestic Relations of the City of New York. The appointment is for ten years and the salary is $12,000 a year.

Miss Bolin, who in private life is the wife of Ralph E. Mizelle, Washington, D.C., attorney, is a graduate of Wellesley College and Yale law school. She was born in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., the daughter of Gaius C. Bolin, an attorney who for many years was president of the Poughkeepsie branch of the N.A.A.C.P. Following her graduation from Yale law school, Miss Bolin was admitted to practice in New York in 1932. In 1937 she was named an assistant corporate counsel and assigned to the Court of Domestic Relations. The retirement of another justice who had reached the age limit created an opening which Mayor LaGuardia filled by appointing Miss Bolin.

A Biography Of E. Azalia Smith Hackley (1867-1922), African-american Singer And Social Activist

Edwin Mellen Press
2001
436 pages
ISBN: 978-0-7734-7575-5

Lisa Pertillar Brevard, Core Faculty and Academic Coordinator of Humanities
Walden University

Madame E. Azalia Hackley was an African American classical singer, social worker, writer, philanthropist, and activist who championed the use of African-American spirituals among the African-American people as a tool for social change. Her efforts laid the groundwork for the use of spirituals as freedom songs during the Civil Rights Movement. This work used newspaper accounts and archive studies documenting Madame Hackley’s tours cross-country and abroad to raise funds for African-American classical musicians. It show Hackley’s intense devotion to her African-American roots, as she easily could have passed for white. Nevertheless, she traveled throughout the South in ‘Jim Crow’ railway cars by choice. This work also recovers several of her influential published works, including A Guide to Voice Culture (1909); The Colored Girl Beautiful (1916), an etiquette book for African-American women desiring professional jobs; and “Hints to Young Colored Artists”, a series of articles designed to help young African-American classical musicians succeed. Includes illustrations.

Table of Contents

• Foreword by Richard A. Long
• Introduction
• Part I: Madame Emma Azalia Smith Hackley: The Lady and Her Legacy
  • 1. Azalia’s Early Years (1867-1894)
  • 2. Denver (1894-1900)
  • 3. Philadelphia and The Washington Conservatory of Music (1900-1915)
  • 4. Jim Crow Cars and Beyond – Paris, London, Tokyo (1916-1920)
  • 5. Madame Hackley’s Last Days (1920-1922)
• Part II: The Soul and Grit of a Colored Prima Donna: Madame E. Azalia Hackley as Journalist
  • “Hints to Young Colored Artists” (1914-15) by E. Azalia Hackley
• Part III: Lessons Before Dying: Madame Hackley’s The Colored Girl Beautiful
• Part IV: A Scrapbook of Madame E. Azalia Hackley
  • Photographs
  • “Report on Scholarship for 1908” by E. Azalia Hackley
  • Correspondence Between E. Azalia Hackley and James Weldon Johnson
  • Advertisements
  • The New York Age Salutes Madame Hackley (Obituary by Lucien H. White, 1922)
• Chronology
• Appendix: A Guide in Voice Culture (1909) by E. Azalia Hackley
• Sheet Music: “Carola, A Serenade” (1918) by E. Azalia Hackley
• Bibliography
• Index

Photograph by Julius Taylor

Born a Slave: Rediscovering Arthur Jackson’s African American Heritage

The Orderly Pack Rat
2015-04-25
328 pages
6 x 0.7 x 9 inches
Paperback ISBN: 978-0970430816

David W. Jackson

By the close of the Civil War in 1865 all American slaves became free citizens. Suddenly a new life dawned for them and their descendants.

Arthur Jackson, a slave born in 1856 in Kanawha County, Virginia, was nine-years-old when he and his family were emancipated in Franklin County, Misouri. He took the surname of his master, Richard Ludlow Jackson, Sr., within whose household he was born and lived intermittently until adulthood.

Eventually Arthur met Ida May Anderson, a white woman, and they raised a family together. Their six children passed for white and Arthur’s African American heritage became a family secret and was eventually forgotten. During the following century, five generations of Arthur and Ida’s descendants lived as white Americans.

Thirty years of genealogical research by one of their great-great-grandsons, the author, revealed the secret that Arthur was born a slave, that he and Ida were a biracial couple, and that their children were of mixed racial heritage.

Born a Slave: Rediscovering Arthur Jackson’s African American Heritage explores this man’s birth, childhood, life as a freedman, his ancestry, and his master’s family. It also calls all Americans—regardless of apparent race or ethnicity—to abandon preconceptions and explore their every ancestor objectively and with an open mind… especially if they may have been a slaveholder, or if they were born a slave.

Putting The Past Behind Them: Slave Descendant Unites With Plantation Owner

Growing Wisconsin
2016-07-13

Lynne Hayes

The dinner was historic on many levels. On one side of the table sat Nkrumah Steward, 44, the ancestor of a slave. On the other side of the table sat Robert Adams, the ancestor of the man who owned that slave.

This was a meeting of two men who shared a complicated past, one that forever ties them together by blood and circumstance.

If it weren’t for Steward’s fascination with genealogy and his desire to complete a family tree, the two men might never have met.

Digging Into His Past

Over the last 20 years, Nkrumah Steward, of Canton, Michigan, an IT Technician for Coca-Cola, has questioned relatives, plowed through archival papers, and hunted down details through online genealogy sites to piece together his family tree.

He was fortunate to have known his great-grandfather, James Henry, who he knew was the first to be born a free man on his mother, Linda’s, side. Steward had always been curious as to why James Henry looked so “white.”

Through his research, Steward came to learn why. Not only was he descended from slaves, but the line began with a union between his 4th great grandmother, Sarah, a house slave, and, Joel Robert Adams, the slave owner of a South Carolina plantation known as Wavering Place.

Steward’s maternal family tree branched out like this: Sarah and her master, Joel Robert Adams, had Louisa in 1835; Louisa had Octavia. Octavia’s son, James Henry, was the first to be born free. James Henry later fathered Steward’s grandfather, J.D.; and J.D. fathered Steward’s mother, Linda.

Though he was born free, James Henry’s mixed blood made life complicated. He was allowed only to attend a black college; but when he moved from South Carolina to Detroit, Michigan, he “passed” for white and was able to get jobs he would never have had as a black man…

Read the entire article here.

Half-Asian Tattooers Use Art To Confront Mixed Race Stereotypes

Konbini
2016-08-04

Morgan English

Five Asian-Canadian artists (some female, some genderqueer) have joined forces for a new exhibit that explores what it means to be half-Asian in the west.

Of the crew, four are also tattooers: Nomi Chi, Mandy Tsung, Shannon Elliott and Katie So. Their fifth, Lauren Ys, has made a name for herself in street art, among other things. Their tattoo work often serves as an outlet to push back on stereotypes, express individualism, and even heal the wounds of other people of colour…

Read the entire article here.