Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

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  • Chats: Is Obama Black, Bi-racial, or Post-racial?

    As the son of a black Kenyan and a white American, President Obama is biracial. As a symbol of our times, he’s also called post-racial. On his census form, he classifies himself as black. Whatever he is, the categories obsess many Americans. So in advance of Randall Kennedy’s visit to Zócalo, we put the question…

  • Asked to Declare His Race, Obama Checks ‘Black’

    Asked to Declare His Race, Obama Checks ‘Black’ The New York Times 2010-04-02 Sam Roberts Peter Baker It is official: Barack Obama is the nation’s first black president. A White House spokesman confirmed that Mr. Obama, the son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas, checked African-American on the 2010…

  • Mixed-Race Chic

    Mixed-Race Chic The Chronicle Review The Chronicle of Higher Education 2009-05-19 Rainier Spencer, Associate Vice Provost for Academic Affairs University of Nevada, Las Vegas Popular wisdom suggests that we are in the midst of a transformation in the way race is constructed in the United States. Indeed, so strong and so inevitable is this shift…

  • At school I was called a half-caste. Today I’m proud: As census reveals over a million Britons were born to inter-racial relationships, one woman’s moving story

    At school I was called a half-caste. Today I’m proud: As census reveals over a million Britons were born to inter-racial relationships, one woman’s moving story The Daily Mail 2012-12-11 Tanith Carey Whenever the moment comes when I have to choose the box on the Census that asks me to describe my national identity, my…

  • In Brazil, a mix of racial openness and exclusion

    In Brazil, a mix of racial openness and exclusion Nordonia Hills News-Leader Kent, Ohio 2013-03-14 Jenny Barchfield Associated Press RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Many Brazilians cast their country as racial democracy where people of different groups long have intermarried, resulting in a large mixed-race population. But you need only turn on the TV, open…

  • “Interracial” Sex and Racial Democracy in Brazil: Twin Concepts?

    “Interracial” Sex and Racial Democracy in Brazil: Twin Concepts? American Anthropologist Volume 101, Issue 3 (September 1999) pages 563–578 DOI: 10.1525/aa.1999.101.3.563 Donna Goldstein, Associate Professor of Anthropology University of Colorado, Boulder Racial democracy is maintained in Brazil through both scholarly and popular discourses that consider “interracial” sex as proof of Brazil’s lack of a racial…

  • Love in black and white

    Love in black and white Princeton Alumni Weekly 2009-04-22 Lawrence Otis Graham ’83 Martha Sandweiss examines racial passing in America Clarence King, a celebrated explorer, geologist, and surveyor in 19th-century America, chose to set that identity aside — and live as a working-class black man during a time of harsh racial segregation in the United…

  • Woman finds out famous relative was black

    Woman finds out famous relative was black The Toronto Star 2011-02-23 Megan Ogilvie, Health Reporter Growing up in Georgetown, Catherine Slaney knew her great-grandfather had an important and interesting past. She knew he was a respected doctor and a surgeon in the American Civil War. She knew he was a friend of Abraham Lincoln and…

  • Mixed Race in Britain

    Mixed Race in Britain Kneeshaw Consulting 2013-03-11 In the 2011 census over a million people in the UK classed themselves as ‘mixed race’ – but for some, the label is unhelpful. The identity politics of the ‘Jessica Ennis generation’ was the subject of a workshop at the Women of the World Festival yesterday at London’s…

  • Letter documenting the struggle of two children’s attempt to attend school

    Letter documenting the struggle of two children’s attempt to attend school Special Collections University of Southern Mississippi Libraries Item of the Month March 2010 Jennifer Brannock, Special Collections Librarian The Mississippi Department of Archives and History: Sovereignty Commission Online [Note from Steven F. Riley: For more on Newton Knight, Rachel Knight, and the “Free State…