Mixed Race Studies

Thinking While Black: Translating the Politics and Popular Culture of a Rebel Generation

Rutgers University Press
2022-12-09
218 pages
7 b-w illustrations
6 x 9
Paperback ISBN: 9781978830875
Cloth ISBN: 9781978830882
EPUB ISBN: 9781978830899
PDF ISBN: 9781978830905

Daniel McNeil, Department of Gender Studies
Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario

Thinking While Black brings together the work and ideas of the most notorious film critic in America, one of the most influential intellectuals in the United Kingdom, and a political and cultural generation that consumed images of rebellion and revolution around the world as young Black teenagers in the late 1960s. Drawing on hidden and little known archives of resistance and resilience, it sheds new light on the politics and poetics of young people who came together, often outside of conventional politics, to rock against racism in the 1970s and early ‘80s. It re-examines debates in the 1980s and ‘90s about artists who “spread out” to mount aggressive challenges to a straight, white, middle-class world, and entertainers who “sold out” to build their global brands with performances that attacked the Black poor, rejected public displays of introspection, and expressed unambiguous misogyny and homophobia. Finally, it thinks with and through the work of writers who have been celebrated and condemned as eminent intellectuals and curmudgeonly contrarians in the twenty-first century. In doing so, it delivers the smartest and most nuanced investigation into thinkers such as Paul Gilroy and Armond White as they have evolved from “young soul rebels” to “middle-aged mavericks” and “grumpy old men,” lamented the debasement and deskilling of Black film and music in a digital age, railed against the discourteous discourse and groupthink of screenies and Internet Hordes, and sought to stimulate some deeper and fresher thinking about racism, nationalism, multiculturalism, political correctness and social media.

Table of Contents

• Preface
• Chapter 1: Theories in Motion
• Chapter 2: Black and British
• Chapter 3: A Movie-Struck Kid from Detroit
• Chapter 4: Slave-Descendants, Diaspora Subjects, and World Citizens
• Chapter 5: Enlarging the American Cinema
• Chapter 6: Middle-Aged, Gifted, and Black
• Coda
• Notes
• Acknowledgments
• Index

Transatlantic Liverpool: Shades of the Black Atlantic

Lexington Books (an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield)
October 2022
342 pages
Trim: 6 x 9
Hardback ISBN: 978-1-7936-5263-8
eBook ISBN: 978-1-7936-5264-5

Mark Christian, Professor of Africana Studies
City University of New York, New York, New York

In Transatlantic Liverpool: Shades of the Black Atlantic, Mark Christian presents a Black British study within the context of the transatlantic and Liverpool, England. Taking a semi-autoethnographic approach based on the author’s Black Liverpool heritage, Christian interacts with Paul Gilroy’s notion of the Black Atlantic. Yet, provides a fresh perspective that takes into account a famous British slave port’s history that has been overlooked or under-utilized. The longevity of Black presence in the city involves a history of discrimination, stigma, and a population group known colloquially as Liverpool Born Blacks (LBBs). Crucially, this book provides the reader with a deeper insight of the transatlantic in regard to the movement of Black souls and their struggle for acceptance in a hostile environment. This book is an evocative, passionate, and revealing read.

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
  1. Theorizing Transatlantic Liverpool and the Black Atlantic Paradigm
  2. Life and Times in a Liverpool Black Family – The Christians
  3. Schooling, L8 Community Football, Grassroots Education, and Mainstream Miseducation
  4. Anti-Black Riots, Resistance & Black Organization Demise: 1919-2000s
  5. A Tale of Two Freedoms: Contemporary Self-Reflexivity and the Memory of Frederick Douglass
• Appendices
  1. Liverpool City Council Slave Apology Minutes – from December 9, 1999
  2. The Age of Slave Apologies: The Case of Liverpool, England – transcript of public lecture presented by Dr. Mark Christian, November 14, 2007
  3. Front cover: CWCN Reports on Historic Slave Apology (Issue 26: December 1999)
  4. Consortium of Black Organisations – Liverpool- Response to LCC Slave Apology
  5. Front cover: CWCN Celebration of College Status (Issue 12: December 1992)
  6. CWCN Editorial denounces drastic cuts to funding by LCC (Issue 21: June 1997)
  7. Liverpool Echo (August 27, 1997) – Report praised CWC teaching
  8. Front cover: CWCN (Issue 1: June 1987) – Evidence of LCC fight to close CWC in 1987
  9. Front cover: CWCN (Issue 25: June 1999) – Reports on Lawrence Inquiry and Racism
  10. CWCN (Issue 12: December 1992, p.13) – Proof of Jacqueline N. Brown visiting CWC.
  11. Front cover: CWCN (Issue 8: December 1990) – Dr. William E. Nelson Jr at CWC
  12. Dr Mark Christian Community Education Award from The Voice 1999
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author

Oachkatzlschwoaf: The word that’s ‘impossible’ to say

BBC Reel
2022-11-24

Words are loaded with meaning. Certain ones conjure joyful memories and others remind us of less happy times.

For Nenda Neururer, the word ‘oachkatzlschwoaf‘ invokes a range of emotions. The German word is very hard to pronounce and is synonymous with the Austrian state of Tyrol where locals tease outsiders by asking them to pronounce it.

Despite growing up in Tyrol, Nenda Neururer often felt like an outsider when confronted with this word. But when she moved to London she grew nostalgic for it and it became her little secret.

Found in Translation is a series made as part of the In The Mix project, in partnership with BBC Studios TalentWorks, Black Creators Matter and the Barbican.

Video by Nenda Neururer
Executive Producer: Paul I. Harris

In Search of Mary Seacole: The Making of a Black Cultural Icon and Humanitarian

Pegasus Books
2022-09-06
416 Pages
6 x 9 in
Hardcover ISBN: 9781639362745

Helen Rappaport

From New York Times bestselling author Helen Rappaport comes a superb and revealing biography of Mary Seacole that is testament to her remarkable achievements and corrective to the myths that have grown around her.

Raised in Jamaica, Mary Seacole first came to England in the 1850s after working in Panama. She wanted to volunteer as a nurse and aide during the Crimean War. When her services were rejected, she financed her own expedition to Balaclava, where her reputation for her nursing—and for her compassion—became almost legendary. Popularly known as ‘Mother Seacole’, she was the most famous Black celebrity of her generation—an extraordinary achievement in Victorian Britain.

She regularly mixed with illustrious royal and military patrons and they, along with grateful war veterans, helped her recover financially when she faced bankruptcy. However, after her death in 1881, she was largely forgotten.

More recently, her profile has been revived and her reputation lionized, with a statue of her standing outside St Thomas’s Hospital in London and her portrait—rediscovered by the author—now on display in the National Portrait Gallery. In Search of Mary Seacole is the fruit of almost twenty years of research and reveals the truth about Seacole’s personal life, her “rivalry” with Florence Nightingale, and other misconceptions.

Vivid and moving, In Search of Mary Seacole shows that reality is often more remarkable and more dramatic than the legend.

Meghan Markle, colorism and the archetype of the ‘tragic mulatto’

The Washington Post
2022-09-04

Karen Attiah, Columnist

Aug. 31 marked the 25th anniversary of the death of Princess Diana in a car crash in Paris in 1997. Also killed were her Egyptian lover, Dodi Al Fayed, and their driver, who was trying to evade a horde of photo-seeking paparazzi chasing them.

Diana was White female innocence personified — “Shy Di,” who had the sympathy of many women who faced unhappy marriages inflamed by adultery and unwelcoming in-laws. As the years went on, Diana’s story became about her attempts to use both her glamour and relatability to break out of the confining box of the British royal family.

It’s probably not a coincidence, then, that Meghan Markle chose last month to launch “Archetypes,” a podcast that aims to explore the stereotypes and boxes that societies put women in.

Which led me to think about the meaning of Markle’s saga with the royal family.

In a conversation on “Archetypes” with biracial singer Mariah Carey, Markle discussed how she was made more aware of the shifting goal posts of race. “I think for us, it’s so different because we’re light-skinned,” she said. “You’re not treated as a Black woman. You’re not treated as a White woman. You sort of fit in between.”…

Read the entire article here.

Without Warning and Only Sometimes: Scenes from an Unpredictable Childhood

Tinder Press (an imprint of Headline Publishing Group)
2022-08-18
304 pages
222 x 138 mm
Hardback ISBN: 9781472284839

Kit de Waal

From the award-winning author of My Name is Leon, The Trick to Time and Supporting Cast comes a childhood memoir set to become a classic: stinging, warm-hearted, and true.

Kit de Waal grew up in a household of opposites and extremes. Her haphazard mother rarely cooked, forbade Christmas and birthdays, worked as a cleaner, nurse and childminder sometimes all at once and believed the world would end in 1975. Meanwhile, her father stuffed barrels full of goodies for his relatives in the Caribbean, cooked elaborate meals on a whim and splurged money they didn’t have on cars, suits and shoes fit for a prince. Both of her parents were waiting for paradise. It never came.

Caught between three worlds, Irish, Caribbean and British in 1960s Birmingham, Kit and her brothers and sisters knew all the words to the best songs, caught sticklebacks in jam jars and braved hunger and hellfire until they could all escape.

Without Warning and Only Sometimes is a story of an extraordinary childhood and how a girl who grew up in house where the Bible was the only book on offer went on to discover a love of reading that inspires her to this day.

By The Cut of Their Cloth

The Mixed Museum
London, United Kingdom
2022-03-21

BTCOTC’s creative director, Warren Reilly, and the Director of The Mixed Museum, Dr Chamion Caballero, discuss the inspiration behind their exploration into Brent’s mixed race and multicultural history as well as the project’s activities.

BTCOTC is part of the Being Brent Heritage 2021 Well Being fund. To learn more about the project, visit: https://mixedmuseum.org.uk/btcotcproject.

Film directed and edited by Justine Nassef Magdy.

The archival photographs featured in the video are from the Petersen Collection at Glamorgan Archives, and Butetown History and Arts Centre (material now hosted at The Heritage & Cultural Exchange Archive).

For more information, click here.

Do Conceptualisations of ‘Mixed Race’, ‘Interracial Unions’, and Race’s ‘Centrality to Understandings of Racism’ Challenge the UK’s Official Categorisation by Ethnic Group?

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

Genealogy
Volume 6, Issue 2 (2022-06-13)
pages 52-74
DOI: 10.3390/genealogy6020052

A focus on ‘mixed race’ and mixedness in Britain has revived a debate around the central question of whether the decennial census and other official data collections should be capturing ‘race’ rather than ethnic group and producing ‘racial’ outputs. The British practice may seem out of step by some commentators, given that ‘mixed race’ is the term of choice amongst those it describes, and given scholarly interest in interracial unions. Moreover, the resurgence of interest in ‘race’ and racisms in the context of the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement and concern over the down-playing in a UK Government-commissioned report of the role of structural racism has enlivened the debate. However, this paper argues against a shift to ‘race’ in official data collection and for continued use of the conceptually preferable ‘ethnic group’ in the census question title, the section label ‘mixed/multiple ethnic groups’, and the ongoing provision of data on unions at the pan-ethnic and granular levels. A measure of socially constructed ‘race’ is already available in all but name in the pan-ethnic section labels (White, Asian, Black, Mixed, and Other) and the tick boxes under the ‘mixed/multiple’ heading. Ethnic group has been the conceptual basis of the question since the field trials for the 1991 Census, and its position has been strengthened by the increasing granularity of the categorisation (19 categories in the 2021 England and Wales Census) and by substantial distributed free-text provision that underpins the question’s context of self-identification. The wider understanding of ‘race’ identifications invokes ascription, imposition, and social categorisation rather than self-identification and subscription. There is also evidence of the unacceptability of ‘race’ in the context of the census amongst the wider society.

Read the entire article in PDF or HTML format.

Looking for Participants: Understanding Mixed-Race, Ethnic Minority Young People’s Conceptualization of Belonging

Institute of Education
University College London, London, United Kingdom
2022-06-20

Corrina Salas

I am looking to interview mixed-race, ethnic minority young British people about their conceptualisation of belonging both now and in childhood. Interviews will last about one hour!

Eligibility Requirements:

• Ages 17-26
• Living in the United Kingdom
• Identifies as mixed- race and non-white (e.g. Black Caribbean and Asian, Black African and Latinx, etc.)
• Willing to be interviewed

For more information, or to sign up, please contact Corrina Salas at corrina.salas.21@ucl.ac.uk or stnvc97@ucl.ac.uk.

Tao Leigh Goffe Is On A Mission To Uncover ‘Afro-Asian Intimacies’

Sweet July
2022-05-09

Nylah Burton

“I am the sedimented sum of four islands. The Caribbean, Hong Kong, the British Isles, New York City; all of them seas and stretches of water containing many islands.”

“My parents named me Tao,” Dr. Tao Leigh Goffe narrates as she approaches an intricately carved, dark wood chest in season two, episode seven of the Hulu series Your Attention Please: Initiative 29.

Directed by Carmen LoBue, the short film is focused on Goffe—who was born in London and lives in New York City—and her Afro-Asian heritage. Opening the chest, Goffe’s hand grazes family photos and mementos: Black Caribbean men in smart suits, her Jamaican Chinese mother, and red envelopes gilded with gold, containing one word: Legacy…

Read the entire article here.