Mixed Race Studies

Professor G. Reginald Daniel to be Featured Guest on Mixed Chicks Chat

Mixed Chicks Chat (The only live weekly show about being racially and culturally mixed. Also, founders of the Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival) Hosted by Fanshen Cox and Heidi W. Durrow
Website: TalkShoe™ (Keywords: Mixed Chicks)
Episode: #146 – Professor G. Reginald Daniel
When: Wednesday, 2010-03-24 22:00Z (17:00 EDT, 14:00 PDT)

G. Reginald Daniel, Professor of Sociology
University of California, Santa Barbara

Key Publications: Race and Multiraciality in Brazil and the United States: Converging Paths? (2006); “Multiracial Identity in Global Perspective: The United States, Brazil, and South Africa,” New Faces in a Changing America: Multiracial Identity in the 21st Century (2002); More Than Black? Multiracial Identity and the New Racial Order (2001); “Black and White Identity in the New Millennium: Unsevering the Ties That Bind,” The Multiracial Experience: Racial Borders as the New Frontier (1996); “Passers and Pluralists: Subverting the Racial Divide,” Racially Mixed People in America (1992).

Most Recent Publications:

• “Race, Multiraciality, and Barack Obama: Toward a More Perfect Union?” Ed. Laura Chrisman, Habiba Ibrahim and Ralina L Joseph.  The Black Scholar: Journal of Black Studies and Research. Volume 39, No. 3/4 (Fall 2009).
• “Race, Class, and Power: The Politcs of Multiraciality in Brazil” Ed. Julius O. Adekunle and Hettie V. Williams.  Color Struck: Essays on Race and Ethnicity in Global Perspective. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 2010.

From February 2003: G. Reginald Daniel discusses his book, More Than Black? Multiracial Identity and the New Racial Order.

Marcia Dawkins to be Featured Guest on Mixed Chicks Chat

Mixed Chicks Chat (The only live weekly show about being racially and culturally mixed. Also, founders of the Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival) Hosted by Fanshen Cox and Heidi W. Durrow
Website: TalkShoe™ (Keywords: Mixed Chicks)
Episode: #153 – Marcia Dawkins
When: Wednesday, 2010-05-19 22:00Z (18:00 EDT, 15:00 PDT)

Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Assistant Professor of Human Communication
California State University, Fullerton

Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Ph.D., is a blogger, professor and communication researcher in Los Angeles. Her interests are mixed race identification, politics, popular culture and new media. Her new book, Clearly Invisible:  Racial Passing and the Color of Cultural Identity, looks at racial passing as a viable form of communication. She lectures and consults on these issues at conferences worldwide.

Race representation in this year’s Common Book

University of Washington News Laboratory
Department of Communication
December 2009

Kaetlyn Cordingley
UW News Lab

Each year, First Year Programs chooses a book as a means to bind the incoming freshman class together. This year’s book was Barack Obama’s “Dreams from My Father.”

Coincidentally, on the same evening that President Obama addressed a sea of gray-clad cadets at Westpoint, three members of the UW faculty discussed Obama’s candor and his struggles with multiraciality in his autobiography with hundreds of UW freshmen who had read the book.

The book demands introspection from its readers and frames the “freshman experience” in a whole new way, said University of Washington faculty member Ralina Joseph Dec. 1.

Panelists were Communication Professor Dr. Joseph and Drs. Luis Fraga and Christopher Parker, of the Political Science Department.

The professors spoke candidly about their own experiences with multiculturalism and minority identification…

Read the entire article here.

Reimagining The ‘Tragic Mulatto’ [Interview with Author Heidi W. Durrow]

All Things Considered
National Public Radio
2010-03-02

Michele Norris, Host
All Things Considered

Like so many children of mixed marriages, the author Heidi Durrow has often felt like she’s had to straddle two worlds.

She is the daughter of a black serviceman and a white Danish mother.

Her own personal search for identity inspired her debut novel, The Girl Who Fell From The Sky. The story revolves around a girl who moves across the country to live with her grandmother after surviving a family tragedy.

The book has received breathless critical acclaim, and it was awarded the Bellwether Prize for fiction that addresses issues of social justice…

Read the entire story and an excerpt from the book here.  Listen to the interview here.

NPR’s All Things Considered Interview with Heidi W. Durrow

All Things Considered
National Public Radio
2010-03-02, 21:00 to 23:00Z

Heidi W. Durrow

Heidi W. Durrow, author of the new Bellwether Prize winning novel, The Girl Who Fell from the Sky, is scheduled to be interviewed on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered today (Tuesday, March 2, 2010 between 16:00 and 18:00 EST).  Please check your local NPR affiliate for actual broadcast times.

The Voices Project Screening and Discussion: Multi-Racial Identities, Part 1

Oregon State University
Wednesday, 2010-03-03 12:00-13:00 PST (Local Time)
Memorial Union
Room: Journey Room
Contact: Diane Davis

OSU students, staff and faculty share their experiences and challenges of being multiracial at OSU and in life. They address issues such as their identity and when they realized it; their cultural attachments; how others perceive them; their family interactions; the pros and cons of being multiracial; whether there is anything they would change about their identity, advice for others and why this issue is important.

For more information, click here.

“Remarkable” Mixed-Race Family in 20th Century Is Subject of Book Discussion [with Book Signing by the Author]

James Madison Building
Dining Room A, Sixth Floor, J
101 Independence Aveune, SE
Washington, DC
2010-03-03, 12:30 EST (Local Time)
Webcast Time: 00:59:24

Adele Logan Alexander, Professor of History
George Washington University

“Parallel Worlds” Focuses on “the Enduring (In)significance of Melanin”

When William Henry Hunt married Ida Alexander Gibbs in the spring of 1904, their wedding was a glittering Washington social event that joined an Oberlin-educated diplomat’s daughter and a Wall Street veteran who could trace his lineage to Jamestown. Their union took place in a world of refinement and privilege, but both William and Ida had mixed-race backgrounds, and their country therefore placed severe restrictions on their lives because, at that time, “one drop of colored blood” classified anyone as a Negro…

…Adele Logan Alexander has written a fascinating account of this couple in “Parallel Worlds: The Remarkable Gibbs-Hunts and the Enduring (In)significance of Melanin” (University of Virginia Press, 2010). Alexander will discuss and sign her book on Wednesday, March 3, at 12:30 p.m. in Dining Room A, sixth floor, James Madison Building, 101 Independence Ave. S.E. The event, part of the Books and Beyond author series of the Center for the Book, is free and open to the public; no tickets are required…

..The Center for the Book was established by Congress in 1977 “to use the resources and prestige of the Library of Congress to promote books, reading, literacy and libraries.” With its many educational programs that reach readers of all ages, through its support of the National Book Festival and through its dynamic state centers in the 50 states, the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Center for the Book has developed a nationwide network of organizational partners dedicated to promoting the wonders and benefits of reading. The Center also oversees the new Read.gov website, with its exclusive “Exquisite Corpse Adventure” serialized story.

View the entire webcast here.

Listen to National Public Radio‘s Michel Martin interview Adele Logan Alexander about the book on Tell Me More (on  2010-02-10) here.

Husband And Wife Duo Paved The Way For Blacks In Diplomacy [Interview with Adele Logan Alexander]

Tell Me More
National Public Radio
2010-02-10

Michel Martin, Host of Tell Me More

with

Adele Logan Alexander, Professor of History
George Washington University

Tell Me More continues its Black History Month series with a conversation with Adele Logan Alexander. Alexander is professor of history at George Washington University and a member of the National Council on the Humanities. She’s also author of “Parallel Worlds,” a new book that details the lives of married couple William Henry Hunt and Ida Gibbs Hunt. William Henry Hunt was the first African-American to have a complete career in U.S. diplomacy; Ida Gibbs Hunt was an intellectual on world issues.

…MARTIN: And I have to ask you a question, which might be a delicate one for some people, which is these were both very light-skinned people.

Prof. ALEXANDER: Yes.

MARTIN: And, you know, this is an issue which has kind of newly surfaced because of, you know, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s comments about Senator Obama, or rather President Obama’s complexion. But I do want to ask whether these two people moved in the world as African-Americans, or were they seen as white? Were they passing?

Prof. ALEXANDER: I am convinced, and many other sources that I quote in this book are convinced that one of the reasons he lasted so long with the State Department was that they really weren’t quite 100 percent sure. But one of the tricky points with this comes when what do you do when people simply assume in a world where you don’t think in the middle of France, where certainly the local people didn’t run into African-Americans all of that time – here is this sophisticated man, here is this consul who likes to do sporting things and ride horses and eat fine food and wine. He is not part of their image of what a black man is supposed to be. And, of course, in France a lot of the things that black people were pictured as had to do with their colonial visions, and they didn’t fit this picture…

 Listen to the interview and/or read the transcript here.

Black History Month play explores interracial issues

Orlando Sentinal
2010-02-20

Rosalind Jennings, Special To The Orlando Sentinel

Leesburg, [Florida] – Dolores Sandoval’s paternal grandmother was an African slave on a plantation, and that ancestor’s father was the white plantation owner.

So she was mixed racially – an “octoroon,” which is one-eighth African.

“Her father owned the plantation,” Sandoval said. “She was freed by the Civil War.”

In celebration of Black History Month, Sandoval will perform a play that traces her ancestry on both sides as they struggle with issues of race and especially the mixing of races and ethnicities. It will take place at 6 p.m. Monday at the Leesburg Public Library. The play is part of a series of lectures on global awareness sponsored by Beacon College in Leesburg.

“My family is interracial, bi-racial, tri-racial, quad-racial…right through to today,” said Sandoval, a Canadian resident.

The one-hour play, “Coloured Pictures in Family Frames,” will include Sandoval’s ancestors as characters in short episodes that will fit together to tell her family’s story. It will have 20 characters, with Sandoval’s narration being the strongest element as she explains her ancestors’ predicaments and struggles…

Read the entire article here.

The African Presence in Mexico

A Symposium Presented by
Callaloo – A Journal of African Diapora Arts and Letters and
The Center for Africana Studies, Johns Hopkins University
2008-10-22 through 2008-10-23
Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas

Sessions

• The Road to Blackness: A Search for Identity Within the Afro-Mexican Community (audio, photographs)
• Slavery and Freedom in Colonial Mexico (audio, photographs)
• “Where did the Blacks Go?” Post-Slavery Mexico (audio, photographs)
• Contemporary Afro-Mexicans (audio, photographs)
• “Blacks in the State of Veracrus, Mexico” (A Photographic Exhibition by Marcus D. Jones) (photographs)

For more details, click here.