Mixed Race Studies

Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama and the Limitations of Liberal Criticism

iMiXWHATiLiKE!
2017-06-07

Jared A. Ball, Host and Professor of Communication Studies
Morgan State University, Baltimore, Maryland

Authors Dr. Todd Steven Burroughs and Paul Street discuss their reviews of David Garrow‘s Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama.  We also discussed the liberal limitations of Garrow’s criticism and the omission of Left critiques by “alternative” and “Left” media outlets.

Does Growing Population of Multiracial Kids Portend a Future with Less Racism?

WVTF Public Radio
Roanoke, Virginia
2017-06-13

Sandy Hausman, WVTF/RADIO IQ Charlottesville Bureau Chief

A growing number of families in this country include people of different races. Credit NPR

Fifty years ago today, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down laws that prevented people of different races from marrying in Virginia.  Now, one of every six newlyweds choose partners of a different race or ethnicity.  So does this mean America is on the road to ending racism?  And how do mixed race kids think of themselves.  Those questions puzzled a UVA alum whose new book offers intriguing answers.  Sandy Hausman has that story.

Hephzibah Strmic-Pawl grew up in rural Virginia where race consciousness was strong.  Back then, the U.S. census bureau recorded only a handful of possible races for residents of the state.  Now, however, that has changed.

“Now we have 63 possible racial categories,”  Strmic-Pawl says.

And looking at the younger members of our population, the assistant professor of sociology was startled by the number of kids who don’t fit neatly into a single racial category…

[Hephzibah Strmic-Pawl is the author of Multiracialism and Its Discontents: A Comparative Analysis of Asian-White and Black-White Multiracials.]

Read the entire story here. Listen to the story (00:02:14) here.

Episode 38: Skulls and Skin (Seeing White, Part 8)

Scene on Radio
2017-05-17

John Biewen, Host and Audio Program Director/Instructor
Center for Documentary Studies
Duke University, Durham, North Carolina

Skulls in the Samuel Morton Collection, University of Pennsylvania Museum. Photo by John Biewen

Scientists weren’t the first to divide humanity along racial – and racist – lines. But for hundreds of years, racial scientists claimed to provide proof for those racist hierarchies – and some still do.

Resources for this episode:

• Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century, by Dorothy Roberts
• The History of White People, by Nell Irvin Painter

Listen to the podcast (00:45:56) here. Download the podcast here.

The “Other” Box: A Conversation on Mixed America

Stella Adler Studio of Acting and Radical Evolution
Studio G
31 West 27th Street, Floor 2
New York, New York 10001
Monday, 2017-06-05, 19:00-20:30 EDT (Local Time)

With Lawrence-Mihn Bùi Davis and Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni. Jami Floyd, legal analyst, local host of WNYC’s “All Things Considered,” and a New York City native who is herself multiracial, will serve as moderator for the discussion.

For more information, click here.

ROR CHASING COLOR: EP 07 | “Multiracial/Mulatto 2.0”

Revolution of Race
Chasing Color
2017-04-11

Dr. Blair Proctor, Expert Host and Ph.D. Doctorate in Sociology

Pamela Lawrence, Moderator, Founder & Creative Director

The 5th Episode for Chasing Color features a ‘taboo’ discussion about the term ‘mulatto’ versus multi-racial & bi-racial.

Dr. Blair Proctor discusses the term ‘mulatto’ the definition and how this term became a racial slur. In addition, Dr. Blair Proctor breaks-down the social issues that lies with the term multi-racial and how this term doesn’t eliminate systemic racism.

Many topics are discussed to flesh out this particular episode such as Taye Diggs, Meghan Markle currently dating Prince Harry including the One-Drop Rule, trans-racial Rachel Dolezal etc.

Nothing is off limits with this hefty controversial discussion that sought to define this term bi-racial and how it stack up against racism and the system of racism in America.

Listen to the episode (01:13:52) here.

ROR CHASING COLOR: EP 07 | Blacks Passing as White

Revolution of Race
Chasing Color
2017-05-02

Dr. Blair Proctor, Expert Host and Ph.D. Doctorate in Sociology

Pamela Lawrence, Moderator, Founder & Creative Director

The 7th Episode explores the hidden history with Blacks ‘passing’ as White. From ‘Free People of Color’ to ‘Creoles’ to Lawrence Dennis the so-called founder of American Facism that passed as a white man when all along he was a Black Man.

Dr Proctor breaks-down the entire landscape about Passing by exploring a host of issues like white-tonics and trans-racial and how the system of white supremacy among whites and respectability politics among blacks continues advance the narrative to poison the hearts & minds of human society.

This is longer episode than but worth every minute of discussion with Dr. Proctor which also includes the names of ‘blacks’ passing as white in present day.

Are you unapologetically Black?

ARTICLES OF INTEREST

• Lawrence Dennis
• Science States Hidden Identity
• Who Is Black
• Chosen Exile
• Rachel Dolezal South Africa

Listen to the episode (01:49:27) here.

Longtime professor Martha Jones reflects on her time at the University

The Michigan Daily
2017-05-22

Riyah Basha, Daily News Editor

Courtesy of Martha Jones

In her 15 years at the University of Michigan, History Prof. Martha Jones has invested much of herself into the campus community — and the return has not disappointed. As a co-director of the Law School’s program in Race, Law and History, former associate chair of the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies and, most recently this winter, her work as a Presidential Bicentennial professor with the landmark Stumbling Blocks exhibit — Jones has become somewhat of a stalwart in convening campus around issues of race and social justice.

Jones arrived in Ann Arbor the day before 9/11, and — from the battle over affirmative action and Proposal 2 to Obama to Trump to the University’s contentious celebration of its 200th year — took part in molding the University in the years thereafter. This summer, though, Jones will relocate to Baltimore to join the history department at Johns Hopkins University. She joined the Daily for an exit interview of sorts, to reflect on her career at the University and the lessons she’s taken from this year, and decade, of powerful turbulence…

Read the entire interview here.

The Future Is Mixed Race

Inside Higher Ed
Academic Minute
2017-05-16

Lynn Pasquerella, Host and President
Association of American Colleges & Universities

Today on the Academic Minute, Scott Solomon, professor of biosciences at Rice University, delves into gene flow and how globalization and mixed-race children could hold a key to our future.

Are human beings a finished product? In today’s Academic Minute, Rice University’s Scott Solomon delves into gene flow and how globalization and mixed-race children could hold a key to our future. Solomon is a professor of biosciences at Rice. A transcript of this podcast can be found here.

Download the episode (00:02:29) here.

Let’s talk about sex (and race, and gender, and intersectionality)

Open City
2015-03-23

Esther Wang

N’jaila Rhee is many things — a writer; a phone sex operator, web cam girl, and former exotic dancer; a nerd; and a self-described “Blasian bitch.”

A native of New Jersey and a Rutgers University alumna, she’s carved out a niche for herself as a vocal critic and commentator on issues ranging from sex workers’ rights to favorite toys to racism in the porn industry. She uses her blog, social media, and “After Dark,” the popular podcast she co-hosts on the “This Week in Blackness” network, as platforms to voice her provocative positions.

N’jaila’s mission, it seems, is to get us all to bring our private desires out from the bedroom and into the open. Do this, and “we’re all going to be a little more healthy,” she explained on a recent evening in a Brooklyn coffee shop.

We chatted about the need for more Asian American porn, her thoughts on 50 Shades of Grey, and what it’s like to, as she put it, be constantly “dancing at the intersections of race, sex, and identity.”,,,

You became a stripper in college. Why did you decide to become a dancer?

Sex is the most natural way that I can relate to other people. And it’s always something that just felt innately right. So because it was so easy for me to express myself sexually, it was something that I felt very comfortable with…

…Did being Blasian impact the kind of work you got?

Certain promoters would want to highlight that I was mixed race, and they’d want me to say that I was like, Southeast Asian, or not Black. Or one guy wanted me to not speak English. I was uncomfortable with a lot, obviously.

I was told I couldn’t have my hair natural. It’s not like I have the curliest of ‘fros. But they didn’t want me to have natural hair, so I would wear a hair weave because you couldn’t be a mixed Blasian if you didn’t have silky straight hair.

I had to buy my identity for $220 a pop…

Read the entire interview here.

Interview with Shirley Tate

Times Higher Education
2017-04-27

John Elmes, Reporter

Source: Kiran Mehta

We discuss realising what it means to be black in the UK, dealing with insomnia, and institutional racism in the academy, with the renowned race and black identity scholar

Shirley Tate is a cultural sociologist and researcher in the areas of institutional racism and black identity. Previously an associate professor in race and culture at the University of Leeds, she took up a new role as professor of race and education – the first of its kind in the UK – at Leeds Beckett University in April.

Where and when were you born?
In Spanish Town, Saint Catherine, Jamaica, in March 1956.

How has this shaped you?
I was brought up in Sligoville, which was the first free village in Jamaica set up after the enslaved population were granted full freedom in 1838. Being a black African-descent Jamaican is still pivotal to me in terms of how I identify as a person. I was very fortunate to be brought up there at a time of independence, Black Power, a resurgence of Rastafarianism and, with it, Garveyism. It was during this time that my cousin gave me a copy of Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks. I always look back at this as a really important moment in my coming to awareness as black and Caribbean because it helped me to understand how colonialism continued to work in the Western hemisphere for black people, people of colour and white people. Jamaica became independent from the British Empire in 1962, so I was British for five and a half years, then became Jamaican and then became a naturalised British citizen in the 1980s. I left Jamaica in 1975 for the UK, which was a very difficult transition. For the first time, I really realised what it meant to be a black person in a white country. I was really taken aback the first time that I was asked, by a seven-year-old mixed-race girl, whether I was “half or full”, meaning was I mixed race or not. For her, that was an important way to judge whether she had a connection with me. I was also asked by my boss, in the first job I had in the UK, where I had learned to speak and write such good English and was “complimented” by being told that I didn’t sound at all Jamaican. I cling to my Jamaican accent with a vengeance, so I didn’t feel the compliment…

Read the entire interview here.