Mixed Race Studies

A Tie That Binds Across Cultures

The New York Times
2014-01-10

Booming’s “Making It Last” column profiles baby boomer couples who have been together 25 years or more.

Bob and Chiyoko Bermant met in 1973 as graduate students at the University of Kansas. Bob was majoring in psychology, and Chiyoko, who is Japanese, was studying linguistics. They married in 1974 before moving to Waukesha, Wis., where Bob is a professor at the local University of Wisconsin campus. Chiyoko works as a docent at the Ten Chimneys Estate and does Japanese-English translations for a local martial arts master. The couple has one adult son.

How did you meet?

Bob: She was looking for help with English grammar for her papers. One of my roommates was Japanese and told her I would help.

Chiyoko: Bob asked me to come to their apartment. I thought he was going to write in red ink where I had missed an “s” or the first person and it turned out he very thoroughly and patiently went over the paper with me…

Did you face prejudice as a mixed-race couple in the Midwest?

Bob: The only thing I remember was in Lawrence right after we were engaged we went into a Denny’s and they wouldn’t serve us. We just walked out.

How about Chiyoko’s parents?

Chiyoko: From the beginning my mother said that it would not work and nothing I could say or do changed her determination until the end of her life. That does not mean she didn’t like Bob. She saw me as a kind of war bride or mail-order bride.

My parents were divorced and my father was more open-minded. Once we were married, he just wanted to know when he was going to have a grandchild…

Read the entire interview here.

The Mixed Marriage

The New York Times
2014-01-11

Interview by Lise Funderburg

Lise Funderburg, a journalist, interviewed Yael Ben-Zion, a photographer raised in Israel, about her new book, “Intermarried,” published by Kehrer, which features families from the Washington Heights neighborhood where she lives with her French husband and 5-year-old twins.

Q. What inspired this project?

A. I saw an Israeli television campaign that showed faces on trees and bus stops, like missing children ads. A voice-over said, “Have you seen these people? Fifty percent of young Jewish people outside of Israel marry non-Jews. We are losing them.” I happen to be married to a person who is not Jewish. And, so for me it was, “Aah, they’re losing me.” I’m not religious, but this campaign made me wonder more generally why people choose to live with someone who is not from their immediate social group, and what challenges they face.

Q. How did you establish your taxonomy for what qualified as mixed?

A. I wasn’t going to go in the street and ask couples if they were mixed. I didn’t grow up here; I didn’t even know what terminology to use. But I live in a very diverse Manhattan community that has an online parent list with more than 2,000 families on it. I put up an ad saying I was looking for couples that define themselves as mixed. I said it could be different religion, ethnicity or social background. I didn’t use the word race, because I wasn’t sure how politically correct that was. All the couples who responded are either interfaith or interracial or both, but my goal from the beginning wasn’t to create some statistical visual document. For example, I have hardly any Asian people, and I don’t think there are any Muslims, and the reason is that they didn’t approach me…

Read the entire interview and view the slide shows here.

MOsley WOtta

Oregon Art Beat
Oregon Public Broadcasting
Aired: 2013-05-30
Length: 00:08:24

MOsley WOtta is a sly play-on-words meant to remind us that we are all “mostly water.” This inclusive, hip-hop reminder helps Bend-based man-behind-the-artist Jason Graham find family wherever he goes and to share his danceable message of peace and mutual support.

Q&A with Tim Okamura: A Painter with a Purpose

SCA Close Up: News and Events From the School of Visual Arts
School of Visual Arts, New York, New York
2013-08-29

An eclectic heritage, a penchant for hip-hop, and life as an artist in New York City set Tim Okamura (MFA 1993 Illustration as Visual Essay) on a path toward social consciousness. Collected by celebrity clients (including Uma Thurman, Questlove and John Mellencamp) and exhibited in the National Portrait Gallery in London, his portraits are meant to “contribute a positive voice to the conversations going on today.” Okamura’s paintings in “The Pond, the Mirror, the Kaleidoscope” depict a trio of female boxers, suggesting women’s plight for equality and justice.

SCA: You’re known for your paintings of African American women.  You’re half-Japanese, half-Caucasian and you grew up in Canada. Many of your paintings celebrate the New York street scene. How did this juxtaposition come about?

Tim Okamura: It’s a question that comes up often—and it’s really not a short answer for me—and it’s very intriguing to me that there are people who tend to find the juxtaposition of the work, and who I am, quite “conceptual.” It’s something I hadn’t fully considered when I began making the work. The idea that there would be an intertwining assessment of both model and artist when looking at the work was vaguely in the back of my mind, but it never influenced my choices. As someone who has focused primarily on portraiture up to this point in my career, I think the biggest factor in choosing my subjects has always just been a deep interest in the “stories” of the people I paint. I consider portraiture a form of story-telling as it relates to the subject, and I really wanted to discover or reveal to my audience stories that I felt were compelling, and perhaps had not been told previously…

…I think there is an additional layer of psychological interest for me in that my vision is filtered through the lens of my personal experience as someone of mixed race growing up in Canada. I was often identified as being “different” and even persecuted for this perception. As a result, I tended to form friendships with minority kids and anyone who might have felt excluded from the “mainstream.” This has had a significant impact on my view of the world, my desire for social justice and equality, and my long-standing motivations as an artist who is interested primarily in people…

Read the entire interview here.

Jolene Ivey on The Rock Newman Show

The Rock Newman Show
Busboys and Poets
Washington, D.C.
2013-10-19

Rock Newman, Host

Jolene Ivey, Representative, 47th District, Maryland House of Delegates
Also candidate for Maryland Lieutenant Governor

Maryland’s House of Delegates member and 2014 Maryland gubernatorial Running Mate, Jolene Ivey visits The Rock Newman Show. Delegate Jolene Ivey talks about growing up in Maryland, her family, issues in the state of Maryland and her political career. Including the campaign that could make her the first female African American lieutenant governor in Maryland’s history.

Partial transcription by Steven F. Riley

00:09:48 Rock Newman:  In the spirit of my audience, understanding who you are. Let’s go back. Let’s go all the way back. I’d like to know where you where born, where you grew up, where you went to elementary school. Let’s start with those three things. Let’s go all the way back.

Jolene Ivey: Oh boy. My dad was in the military, actually he was a Buffalo Soldier.

RN: Okay.

JI: So he was in World War II and the Korean War, so 20 years. Then he became a public school teacher in Prince George’s County public schools for the next 20 years.

RN: Oh wow. Where did he teach?

JI: He taught at Douglas in south county and then he taught at High Point, which was my alma mater in Beltsville.

RN: Okay.

JI: So he taught at Douglas when we had segregation, of course all the black kids, all the black teachers were there.

RN: Sure.

JI: And then when they desegregated, they sent a few black teachers to other schools. That’s when he got moved to High Point.

RN: Okay.

JI: Yeah. But in any event, he and my mom were married in the fifties. Now, my mom is white..

RN: Uh uh.

JI: …and my dad’s black.

RN: Right.

JI: And it was illegal at that time for them to be married in Maryland… or Virginia. So in this area, they had to live in D.C. [Be]cause D.C. was the one place they could be legally wed. So we lived in Northeast D.C., lived on…

RN: Let me just stop you there. [Be]cause you know, I try to take those moments for my audience. You know, that stuff doesn’t just float by. It’s like, wow, wait a minute. There’re certain posts we can latch on to. Did you hear what she said? In the fifties, as early back as the fifties!

JI: In fact it was the sixties and it was still illegal.

RN: Still illegal..

JI: I think it was… [19]66 before the law changed.

RN: Maryland and Virginia, so they actually,… for them to be married and to reside in Maryland and Virginia your mom and dad. Dad who’s black and the mother’s who’s white, they had to live in the District of Columbia.

JI: They didn’t have any choice. Because you know, the Lovings, the couple that changed the law the whole country, they were in Virginia…

RN: Right.

JI: …when they got married. And they got in a whole heap of trouble.

RN: Right.

JI: And it ended up being a Supreme Court case.

RN: Yes.

JI: Fortunately we won the case. The right side won.

RN: Right.

JI: But, my parents and us, lived in Northeast D.C. in Riggs Park.

RN: Okay.

JI: My mom left when I was three. And my dad raised us. He told her you can do whatever you want, but the kids stay with me. So dad was just an outstanding father. And he raised me and my brother. Um, my stepmother joined us when I was about seven. And you know.

RN: Where did you go to elementary school?

JI: I went to LaSalle Elementary right there in Riggs Park and it was kind of tough on me then boy… middle school, Bertie Backus Middle School. I loved the school, but I had some bad memories from part of it.

RN: And what are the bad memories?

JI: Well, you know what it’s like Rock. You grow up in an all-black neighborhood and especially back then as light I am. I was getting my butt whipped! I mean, and I was real skinny too.

RN: A little tiny thing.

JI: A little tiny thing! Getting picked on. But anyway, it made me tough. And by the time I went to high school, I ended going to high school the same school my dad taught at. So year—which is High Point High School—the first year we still lived in D.C., so we had to pay for me to go the first year, [be]cause it was out of the region. But after that we moved to Prince George’s county and I was able to just continue to go to High Point…

…00:21:36

Rock Newman: Jolene, before we went to break, we got a little biographical information about you. And we left off where obviously there was the incredible strong influence of your father, your grandmother you said was an influence also and you said she brought some joy in your life.

What I was wondering, did you have a particular idol outside of your father and grandmother, a teacher, a public figure, whatever, that might have been… who had an impact on your life early on?

Jolene Ivey: You know, it’s gonna sound corny, okay, but it was Martin Luther King. And…

RN: That doesn’t sound corny at all… [Be]cause we all have a dream.

JI: Right, Right. And you know, he was such a point of discussion in my family. And when he was killed, there was a television, a local television [that] came to our school to interview kids about how they felt..

RN: This was now maybe when you were in Junior High?

JI: No, No.

RN: Elementary.

JI: At the time it happened, I was just a little kid and I remember this local television came out to interview kids about what was his impact on our lives. And I know that when they saw me sitting in that class, they were like, “what the heck is this little ‘white-looking’ girl doing in this class,” but they interviewed me and I came home and I told my parents, told my family, “I’m going to be on television tonight.” And they were like, “Yeah, you don’t know what you’re talking about!” And so, when it was time for it to come on, I went and turned on the TV and they were like “What’s she watching?” And they came, and sure enough, there I was. And they asked me what his impact had been on me and I said, “he got us a seat on the bus.”

RN: Go on now!…

Is Race a Fiction?

Ideas with Paul Kennedy
CBC Radio-Canada
2013-12-04

Paul Kennedy, Host

Blood ties you to family, country and race. Should it? Watch a live panel discussion with Lawrence Hill, Priscila Uppal, Hayden King and Karina Vernon moderated by Ideas host Paul Kennedy.

What happens to personal identity when race is removed as a marker of who you are? What happens when we use the term “culture” to replace the idea of race?” The panelists explore these questions and more.

Panelists:

• Lawrence Hill: Blood: The Stuff of Life is Lawrence Hill’s ninth book. His earlier works include the novels Some Great Thing and, and the memoir Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada.
• Hayden King is an Anishinaabe writer, student, teacher, researcher at Ryerson University, McMaster University and Beausoleil First Nation.
• Priscila Uppal is a poet, novelist, playwright and York University Professor in the Department of English.
• Karina Vernon is an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto and co-founder and editor of Commodore Books, the first black literary press in western Canada.

Imagining Ourselves: What Does it Mean to be Part of the African Diaspora?

Think Africa Press
2013-11-21

Jean-Philippe Dedieu, Research Fellow
IRIS of the École des Hautes études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS)

Tina Campt talks to Think Africa Press about black European subjectivities, the US’ dominance in diaspora studies, and how photographs tell us more than we might realise.

Tina Campt, Director of the Africana Studies Program at Barnard College, Columbia University, has been examining gender, race and diasporic formation in black communities in Germany and Europe more broadly for the last decade.

Her earliest works were insightful contributions to the growing scholarship on the overlooked history of African communities in imperial and post-colonial Europe. Her first book, Other Germans: Black Germans and the Politics of Race, Gender and Memory in the Third Reich, was an oral history acknowledging the participation of African minorities to the German history, from the Weimar Republic to the postwar period.

More recently, Campt has deepened her intellectual reflection by exploring the crucial issue of visual representation. In Image Matters: Archive, Photography and the African Diaspora in Europe, published last year by Duke University Press, she traces the emergence of a black (European) subject by analysing a rich photographic documentation that intertwines her own family albums with snapshots of black German families and studio portraits of West Indian migrants in England.

In an interview with Think Africa Press, Campt talked to the French scholar Jean-Philippe Dedieu about the intellectual discourses on diasporas across the Atlantic as well as the significance of photography for allowing black people to imagine themselves, freed from racial prejudice…

…How did you end working on Afro-Germans?

Serendipity. The first time I went to Germany, I went to Berlin to pass my language exams in graduate school. I was in Berlin before the wall fell, in ‘87, and it was an extraordinary experience because I had never been outside the United States and I had never experienced the particularly bizarre form of racism I encountered there. It was a concatenation of exoticism and ignorance that just did not fit with any of the forms of racism that I was familiar with as an African-American who grew up in Washington DC. When I went back a second time, I was studying in Bremen in a context with other African-Americans and Africans. That was incredibly revealing, and taught me more about how to understand some of the responses I was getting.

Toward the end of my stay I happened, literally happened, to meet an Afro-German man on the street and had a conversation with him about being black and German, and there was something that distinguished his experience from mine because, as he described it, he had no point of reference. I remember him saying, “I am only German. I don’t have a history of slavery. I don’t have a history of a community that has fought racism or that has battled discrimination. I’m at the point where I am trying to gather that, to martial that as a set of resources that I can draw on to create this thing that I call Blackness in Germany, or Afro-German. I’m doing that in the absence of what you have – your history as an African-American.”…

Read the entire interview here.

Professor Mark Christian 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, Heidi W. Durrow and Jennifer Frappier
Episode: #233 – Professor Mark Christian
Wednesday, 2011-11-16, 22:00Z (17:00 EST, 14:00 PST)

Mark Christian, Professor & Chair of African & African American Studies
Lehman College, City University of New York

Note from Steven F. Riley: In my opinion, this was the most engaging episode of Mixed Chicks Chat.

Dr. Christian received his B.A. in Sociology and American Studies from Liverpool Hope University, his M.A. in Black Studies from The Ohio State University, and his Ph.D. in Sociology from The University of Sheffield in 1997. He is the author of Multiracial Identity: An International Perspective (Palgrave, 2000) and two other edited volumes, and has been the guest editor of three special issue journals. Currently, he is the book review editor for the Journal of African American Studies.

Selected Bibliography:

• “Mixing Up the Game: Social and Historical Contours of Black Mixed Heritage Players in British Football in Race,” in Ethnicity and Football: Persisting Debates and Emergent Issues, Daniel Burdsey, ed. (London: Routledge, 2011). 131-144.
• Multiracial Identity: An International Perspective, New York: Palgrave, 2000. 186 pp. Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-312-23219-1.
• “The Fletcher Report 1930: A Historical Case Study of Contested Black Mixed Heritage Britishness,” Journal of Historical Sociology, Volume 32, Number 2 (November 2001): 213-241.

Listen to the episode here. Download the episode here.

MXRS Podcast Episode 1: Lawrence-Minh Búi Davis and the Mixed Race Initiative

Mixed Roots Stories
2013-12-10

Chandra Crudup, Host

Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni, Host

Mark R. Edwards, Host

Lawrence-Minh Búi Davis, co-Editor-in-Chief
Asian American Literary Review

We are thrilled to launch Episode 1 of the MXRS Podcast – bringing you the story behind the stories. Our first several episodes are in partnership with the Asian American Literary Review and its Mixed Race Initiative. Editor-in-Chief Lawrence-Minh Búi Davis is our first guest. Join us as our conversation winds its way through language, how we identify ourselves, the origins of the Mixed Race Initiative and its components, making our work more accessible, and much more.

Listen to the interview here (00:30:17). Download the interview here. Read the transcript here.

Lenny Kravitz’s Halfway Mark

The New York Times
2013-12-06

Amy Chozick, National Political Reporter

You grew up between the Upper East Side and Bed-Stuy. Which neighborhood did you feel more comfortable in?

Well, after I was in first grade, Monday through Friday was Upper East Side going to P.S. 6, and Friday night through Sunday night was Bed-Stuy. But I didn’t like one more than the other. I had two different lives, and in fact two different names. My name in Bed-Stuy was Eddie.

Why?

These people that lived next door to my grandmother’s were from down South, and they had very thick Southern accents — they were extremely country. I remember being about 6 years old, and they said, “What’s your name, boy?” I said, “Lenny.” They said, “Eddie?” I said, “No, Lenny.” They said, “Eddie?” I said, “Lenny,” and they said, “Oh, Eddie.” So that was it, I was Eddie…

…Do you think things have changed in terms of being biracial? 

Kids now and young adults, they don’t even know about this. Say you were 10 years old when Obama first took office; your thing is: What are you talking about? All my friends are mixed, and the music I listen to is mixed…

…I read that when you started out in the ’80s, producers were telling you your music wasn’t black enough or white enough.

They would always say, “Look, we’ll sign you, we’d love to give you a deal, but you cannot do this, you have to make this kind of music.” I always told them back off — and believe me, I needed the money. I was living in a car. I still don’t know to this day what stopped me…

Read the entire interview here.