Mixed Race Studies

Marvin Rees Becomes UK’s First Elected Black Mayor

The Voice
2016-05-14

Marc Wadsworth

‘I’m the descendant of Jamaican slaves. Now I’m mayor of Bristol,’ Rees tells The Voice

BRISTOL’S NEW mayor has not only changed the face of the city after winning a huge victory but is also promising a new and inclusive way of doing politics.

Marvin Rees, 44, told The Voice in an exclusive interview: “I’m really honoured and feel the weight of the challenge I’m taking on. It’s also very exciting. I’m pleased so many good people are coming forward, wanting to work collectively, which I think this job requires. It’s not messianic leadership. It’s about fostering collective leadership around shared priorities such as poverty eradication, building homes for people and tackling inequality.”

Rees, who grew up poor in the St Paul’s area of the city, has pledged to appoint an all-party cabinet that reflects how people voted and the city’s diversity.

In 2012 Rees unsuccessfully ran for mayor when the post was first created. He amassed a whopping 31,259 votes, losing to independent George Ferguson, a wealthy architect, by less than seven per cent.

This time Rees notched up just under 70,000 votes, almost 30,000 more than Ferguson…

Read the entire article here.

Stop Turning Mixed Race Girls Into a Fetish

Consented
2016-03-04

Antonia King
History graduate turned job hunter, currently living between Devon and London, spoken word artist and lover of Nicki Minaj.

I was in Sainsbury’s and a white woman who helped me reach something on the top shelf decided to ask me my ethnic background. She was well meaning and seemed kind so no immediate alarm bells rang, but she then informed me she wants mixed race kids. She laughed and stated “I’m single right now, but definitely only looking at black guys, mixed race kids are just so beautiful”.

I smiled, left and then began to despair and worry about her future children. This is nothing I haven’t heard many times before, a quick Twitter search for “mixed race kids” will reveal many people detailing how they want mixed race children to dress up and parade around like a handbag.

The major issue being that mixed race children are not handbags. Mixed race children, especially girls, are fetishized and even sexualised before they’re born. Comments about how beautiful they’re going to be, or how they’ll be just the right amount of black start disgustingly early, the media commentary on North West is a prime example of this…

Read the entire article here.

Marvin Rees’s triumph as mayor defies Bristol’s racist past

The Guardian
2016-05-08

Simon Woolley

Source: Marvin Rees

The descendant of enslaved Africans is now running a former slave city. His symbolic victory gives hope – and should not be forgotten

While much has been said, rightly so, about a Muslim now leading London, we must not lose sight of the symbolism and enormous significance of Marvin Rees being elected mayor of Bristol this weekend.

Rees, the working-class son of an English mother and Jamaican father, makes history as the first directly elected city mayor in Europe of African or Caribbean heritage.

And that’s important, because the city of Bristol and its governance cannot effectively be understood without seeing it, in part, through the prism of race…

Read the entire article here.

Malia Bouattia’s tactics will define her leadership of NUS

Wonkhe: Higher education: policy, people and politics.
London, England, United Kingdom
2016-04-26

Debbie McVitty, Director of Policy
University of Bedfordshire

Last week’s election of Malia Bouattia as the next President of the National Union of Students (NUS) has split the commentariat, with some celebrating the fact that she is both the first Muslim and the first Black female President of NUS, and others pointing to her record of expressing political views that some have interpreted as anti-Semitism. Over the weekend, Bouattia has sought to offer explanations and context for her comments, but in the meantime, several students’ unions have expressed their intention to disaffiliate from NUS as a consequence of her presidency. What is the higher education sector to make of all this?…

Read the entire article here.

‘Our schools are failing mixed raced children’

The Voice
London, England, United Kingdom
2016-04-02

Dinah Moreley

Stereotypical expectations that this group have ‘confused identities’ often mean they experience racism from teachers and fellow pupils

A REPORT by People in Harmony, (PIH) the national charity for mixed race people and families has highlighted the experience of mixed race children in the education system. Stereotypical expectations that this group have ‘confused identities’ often mean they experience racism from teachers and fellow pupils. Here, PIH’s Dinah Morley tells how the report and the seminars it was based on were put together.

IT IS over a decade since People in Harmony (PIH) published Mixed Race and Education: creating an ethos of respect and understanding, a conference report on mixed race children and young people in the education system.

PIH has now revisited the subject of mixed race young people in education in a new report called Mixed Race and Education: 2015 in order to consider ways in which a better dialogue with schools could be achieved to help improve outcomes and to add some substance to a patchy body of research…

…AWARENESS

The debate in April 2015 facilitated by Martin and Asher Hoyles, educators and authors of books on race and culture, was constructed to address four specific topics that had arisen from the earlier seminar.

Racism and discrimination in school was also discussed by the young people and parents. They identified:

• The curriculum content does not acknowledge the mixed race presence.
• A failure to stimulate an awareness of mixed race students and families.
• Schools lack resources needed about mixed race achievers and role models
• Appearance often incorrectly determines how mixed race students are related to.
• Teacher stereotyping leads to incorrect assumptions about students’ backgrounds and needs.
• The default position applied to mixed race people is usually black.
• Others are deciding the terminology used in schools for mixed race people.

It is important for teachers and others to understand the experiences of mixed race people and the fact that lazy racist stereotypes are not helpful in helping children from these backgrounds to settle and to achieve…

Read the entire article here.

Color Lines: Sex, Race, and Body Politics in Pre/Colonial Ghana

Indiana University, Bloomington
Center for Research on Race and Ethnicity in Society
Schuessler Institute for Social Research
1022 E. 3rd Street
Maple Room, IMU
Bloomington, Indiana 47405
Thursday, 2016-04-28, 16:00-17:30 EDT (Local Time)

Carina Ray, Associate Professor of African and Afro- American Studies
Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts

CRRES Speaker Series, Spring 2016

Drawing on her recently published book about interracial sexual relationships in colonial Ghana and her new research on how indigenous historical actors in this region of West Africa have thought about and constructed blackness as a symbolic, somatic, and political signifier, Ray’s talk explores how race catalyzed social and political change even in areas of Africa without large settler colonial populations. Centering Ghana in her talk Ray argues that race, rather than ethnicity alone, has powerfully shaped the historical landscape of a continent that has for centuries been at the heart of the West’s racializing discourses.

Carina Ray is an associate professor of African and Afro-American Studies at Brandeis University. A scholar of race and sexuality; comparative colonialisms and nationalisms; migration and maritime history; and the relationship between race, ethnicity, and political power, Carina’s research is primarily focused on Ghana and its diasporas. She is the author of Crossing the Color Line: Race, Sex, and the Contested Politics of Colonialism in Ghana (Ohio University Press, 2015) and co-editor of Navigating African Maritime History (with Jeremy Rich) and Darfur and the Crisis of Governance in Sudan: A Critical Reader (with Salah Hassan). Her articles have appeared in The American Historical Review, Gender and History, and Historical Reflections/Reflexions Historiques. Carina is currently working on her new book project, Somatic Blackness: A History of the Body and Race-Making in Ghana.

For more information, click here.

Why Ethnic Minority Forms Suck for Mixed-Race People

The Huffington Post United Kingdom
2016-04-22

Deborah Chatterjee, Co-founder
SharedCity, London, United Kingdom

There has been a bit of an uproar in Brighton & Hove because children as young as four, are being given the option to leave the gender section on their Primary School application blank if they don’t identify with being strictly male or female.

This has reminded me of how I have often wanted to leave Ethnic Minority Forms blank because I don’t identify with any of the options laid out. Ticking ‘Other’ like I’m something indescribable is the only box that works for me.

My heritage is Indian/Italian so why not tick the ‘White/Asian’ box? Well, it doesn’t feel correct, as the term ‘White’ is so vague in terms of describing my Italian side. And Asian could be Japanese or Korean which are both completely different from being Indian.

It gets even more confusing with my daughters. In order of percentage they are: English, Indian, Italian, Swedish and Irish. Again, ‘White/Asian’ isn’t appropriate and choosing ‘Other’ just seems like an insult. However, unlike young children in Brighton & Hove, my children along with millions of other Mixed-Race kids don’t get the option of leaving the form blank…

Read the entire article here.

I’m the new NUS president – and no, I’m not an antisemitic Isis sympathiser

The Guardian
2016-04-24

Malia Bouattia

‘Some may not agree with my politics and ideologies, but I do believe the student movement has a shared goal.’ Photograph: Vicky Design/NUS website

The accusations being directed at me this week are deeply troubling and false. I want to focus on liberating education and opportunity for all

This week I became the first black woman to be elected president of the National Union of Students, and the first Muslim who will hold this position too. But instead of celebrating and publicising this incredible landmark, the media coverage has been cluttered with stories calling me a racist, an antisemite, an Islamic State sympathiser and more.

The truth is, as those who know me well understand, I’ve always been a strong campaigner against racism and fascism in all its forms. And I’d like to set a few things straight…

Read the entire article here.

Malia Bouattia’s election as NUS president proves deeply divisive

The Guardian
2016-04-22

Jessica Elgot

At the NUS conference, Bouattia won on the first round. Photograph: NUS/PA

Jewish student groups alarmed by her election, but the first black Muslim woman in the role has nerves of steel, and young activists love her for that

It is rare that the election of a student union president merits the flurry of headlines that greeted Malia Bouattia. But her election, as the first black Muslim woman to hold the office, has been one of the most divisive moments in the National Union of Students’ recent history…

Read the entire article here.

Boris Johnson’s Essay on Obama and Churchill Touches Nerve Online

The New York Times
2016-04-22

Sewell Chan, International News Editor

LONDON — Hours after President Obama landed in London to urge Britons to vote to remain in the European Union, Mayor Boris Johnson, arguably the most visible leader of the campaign for Britain to leave the bloc, hit back with an opinion essay that criticized the president but immediately raised hackles online.

The essay, published in the right-leaning tabloid The Sun on Friday morning, recycled a story about a bust of Winston Churchill that was removed from the Oval Office shortly after Mr. Obama took office in 2009. It also mentioned a theory, prominent among some right-wing Americans, that Mr. Obama is motivated by a radical anti-imperialist agenda and that “the part-Kenyan president’s ancestral dislike of the British Empire” motivated the removal of the bust…

Read the entire article here.