Mixed Race Studies

Matthew McConaughey & Gary Ross Mount Civil War Saga; Bob Simonds’ STX In Talks To Finance

Deadline Hollywood
2014-11-05

Mike Fleming Jr., Film Editor

Anita Busch, Film Editor

EXCLUSIVE: Matthew McConaughey and writer-director Gary Ross are the catalysts for a project called Free State Of Jones, which is getting some serious attention from STX Entertainment, the new mini-studio founded by investors TPG Growth, Gigi Pritzker, Hony and Robert Simonds. We hear that company reps, financial partner IM Global (who is handling foreign), and the filmmakers are heading to AFM this afternoon to discuss pre-sales. This is one of many projects STX is considering pushing through as part of its first slate. They are looking to go before the cameras in the first quarter of 2015.

Free State Of Jones is based on the untold and extraordinary story of Newton Knight, the leader of one of the greatest rebellions in Civil War history, and we hear that STX may finance (up to $20M) for the $65M-budgeted story of one of the most controversial men from the that era. McConaughey is in talks to play the Mississippian, who defected from the Confederate Army, banded together with a group of like-minded soldiers, and set out to form their own State known as the Free State Of Jones.

Knight would later have a common-law marriage to a former slave, one of the first outwardly mixed racial unions in the South — unheard of at the time. The rebellious Knight actually fought against the Confederates from within the state and after the war freed children still enslaved after a daring raid…

Note from Steven F. Riley: For more about the Knight family, please read Victoria E. Bynum’s superb monograph, The Free State of Jones: Mississippi’s Longest Civil War.

Read the entire article here.

‘One Drop of Love’ star Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni talks race, family and more

The Tampa Bay Times
St. Petersburg, Florida
2014-11-05

Robbyn Mitchell, Times Staff Writer

Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni: “Race is like a religion to us.”

It’s been an interesting year in race relations for America. In just over 10 months, there have been communities violently protesting loss of due process, NBA owners losing their teams over racist remarks and anti-immigration zealots blockading school buses full of brown children because they were presumed to be foreign.

It’s a climate — not of change, as was promised by the election of President Barack Obama, but of an overwhelming dedication to fight change.

“People believe in race so strongly they’re faithful to it. Race is like a religion to us,” said Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni, writer and performer of One Drop of Love, a one-woman multimedia show coming to the Straz Center for the Performing Arts Saturday night.

As a woman with parents who identify themselves as different races — her father is black and her mother is white — Cox DiGiovanni says she has the had the privilege to move between two different spheres of American society and decide for herself how she would be defined.

“The way I identify myself is as a culturally mixed woman searching for racial answers,” she said. “I care about justice and that’s more important than racial identity.”…

Read the entire article here.

St Martin de Porres

Victoria and Albert Museum: The world’s greatest museum of art and design
London, United Kingdom
2014-11-03

William Newton, Assistant Curator

Today on Sanctus Ignotum we have a case study in race relations, and our first South American saint. Born in Lima, Peru in 1579, the illegitimate son of a Spanish knight and a liberated black slave, Martin was initially apprenticed to a barber-surgeon. He initially joined the Dominican Order as a lay-helper, though his dedication to the poor and hallowed nature meant that he was soon invited to join the order as a full-time lay-brother.

He frequently experienced bouts of religious ecstasy, having spent nights in prayer. He kept himself very busy as monastic gardener and barber (two related skills), and as a counselor (some barbers may also believe this is a native skill), as well as attending to the sick and the poor. It was said that most of his cures came from a simple glass of water (presumably not part his barber’s training). Being of mixed race parentage himself, he was not as discerning as some of his colleagues in offering spiritual and physical comfort. The other Brothers did, however, dub him the ‘Father of Charity’ although he, being humble and saintly, preferred to call himself ‘Mulatto Dog’. Martin’s commitment to everyone’s wellbeing, no matter their colour or creed, does not appear to have been complemented by a reforming attitude to social conditions. Once, when his monastery encountered financial difficulties, he suggested that they sell him into slavery in order to make ends meet. Happily, they declined to do so…

Read the entire article here.

Shows: One Drop of Love

Mesa Arts Center
Nesbitt/Elliott Playhouse
One East Main Street
Mesa, Arizona 85201
Box Office: (480) 644.6500

Performing Live Series
Saturday, 2014-11-01, 15:00 & 19:30 MT (Local Time)

Produced by Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and the show’s writer/performer Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni, One Drop of Love is a multimedia one woman show. It incorporates film, photographs, and animation to examine how ‘race’ has been constructed in the United States and how it can influence our most intimate relationships.

For more information, click here.

ArtsBlast: One resonating drop of Fanshen

Examiner.com
2014-10-29

Jennifer Haaland

One conversation with Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni was all it took. After her Examiner interview yesterday, filled with embracing words and vibrant kindness, it was clear that a whole lot more than One Drop of Love is coming to the Phoenix Valley and gracing the Mesa Arts Center stage this weekend.

“The crowd can’t just sit back and watch. Everyone is involved in this story,” said Cox DiGiovanni of the inclusive environment the show exudes. “I’ll be playing lots of characters, sometimes coming out into the house, talking to and asking questions of the audience.”

Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are notable among the show’s past participants. As producers of Cox DiGiovanni’s One Drop of Love, a dynamic multimedia live, solo performance that explores how race has been constructed in the United States, they too were deeply affected by the message conveyed…

Read the entire article here.

M.I.X.E.D: Multidisciplinary.Intersectional.Xchanging.Empowering.Dialogues Art Show Call for Entries

2014-08-29

M.I.X.E.D. is a 100% volunteer run event & art show created in order to make space for progressive discussion around mixed-race identity and our many other intersecting identities. To learn more about “intersectionality”, please visit: http://mixed-me.ca/intersectionality

This year’s event will take place on Saturday May 2nd, 2015. The accompanying art show will take place May 1, 2015 -May 8th, 2015. The opening reception will take place May 1st, 2015.

• Visual art due date: November 3rd, 2014
• Facilitator due date: November 3rd, 2014
• Performance art due date: January 16th, 2015

Submission guidelines can be found here.

Today’s Irish Dancers Step Away From Stereotype

Code Switch: Frontiers of Race, Culture and Ethnicity
National Public Radio
2014-10-27

S. J. Velasquez

Julia O’Rourke (center) wins the 2014 World Irish Dancing Championships. Here, she poses with the top five performers in her age group. Jimmy McNulty/FeisPix

When Riverdance debuted 20 years ago, Irish step dancers — whether citizens of Ireland or any other country — looked, well, stereotypically Irish. The red-haired, freckle-faced lass doing a jumpy jig still comes to mind for many. But the All Ireland Dancing Championships, currently underway in Dublin, will show how that image no longer reflects the reality.

Take the current Irish dance “it” girl, Julia O’Rourke. She was born in New York, and has Filipino and Irish ancestry. At age 15, she is a two-time world champion and star of the Irish dance documentary Jig. That film follows dancers from around the world who are training for and traveling to the 2010 World Irish Dancing Championships.

“I really hope that I helped change that stereotype,” O’Rourke says. “[Ethnicity] really doesn’t matter anymore. It’s how you dance.” She points to the success of her friend and dance classmate Melanie Valdes, whose father is Cuban-American. “There have been so many dancers to join the community who are only part Irish or not Irish at all,” O’Rourke says, “and they’ve really made an impact.”

“I don’t think the judges even react to it anymore,” says Valdes, who has also swept titles at major competitions, capturing gold at the world championships twice. “It’s all about the dancing.”

For the most part, O’Rourke agrees, insisting that she has never been treated badly because of what she looks like. If anything, it has helped. “Because my look is different, my face doesn’t look like a typical Irish girl, it might pop out a little more to the judges,” she explains.

But diversity wasn’t always so welcome…

…Brown Skin, Spray Tans And Hot Pink Shorts

Now, some members of the Irish dance community see a distinctive look as an advantage. Drew Lovejoy, a now retired two-time world champion, is biracial and identifies as African-American. Nineteen-year-old Lovejoy, known for sporting hot pink shirts in competition, says his unique appearance gave him confidence on stage because it set him apart. He jokes that his skin tone allows him to pull off a different color palette completely…

Read the entire article here.

Portlander Damaris Webb explores racial gray areas in ‘The Box Marked Black’

The Oregonian
Portland, Oregon
2013-02-16

Marty Hughley

When it came time for Damaris Webb to apply for college, her father encouraged her to check the box on application forms indicating “black” as her racial origin. For long enough in his family’s history, being black had made life difficult. But maybe in this circumstance, by the 1980s, it would be an advantage instead.

But she thought differently.

“I argued that I should mark ‘other,’ because that’s what I was,” Webb says in her solo theater piece “The Box Marked Black,” which opened last weekend at Ethos/IFCC. “Not that I was ashamed to be black. But I thought if I got into college for being black, when I showed up they’d be disappointed.”

Depending on what you believe about race and classifications thereof, Webb is black. Or white. Or both. Or either. Or other…

Read the entire article here.

One Drop: Drexel professor’s new book explores what determines blackness

The Philadelphia Inquirer
2013-11-26

UNLESS YOU want an earful, don’t get Drexel University professor Yaba Blay talking about colorism. She sees examples of discrimination based on skin color everywhere – from drug stores that stock skin-bleaching creams to the online chatter that erupts when photos surface of Beyonce and Jay Z’s daughter, Blue Ivy.

“[People say], why doesn’t Beyonce comb that baby’s hair?” Blay said. “You would rather put an entire pack of barrettes on that baby’s hair?”

“I hate that,” I murmured.

“I hate it more,” she shot back. “[People] expect her to look like her mama. . . . She’s 2.”

And don’t bring up the subject of Kanye West, who once famously referred to biracial women as “mutts.”

“Kanye’s choosing Kim [Kardashian] is not about Kim. It’s about Kanye,” said Blay, author of a new book called (1)ne Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race. “He’s obsessed with her. It has to do with what her being on his arm says about him.”

Yeah, Blay went there.

And, let me tell you, the codirector of the Africana Studies program doesn’t hold back in that new book of hers, either. It deals with America’s biggest third-rail issue: race. That subject hasn’t gotten any less explosive since America elected its first black president.

The book is provocative right from its title, taken from the slavery-era notion that if you had one drop of black blood, you were considered black.

Plus, here’s a darker-hued woman writing about the racial experiences of lighter-skinned people, many of whom identify as black or mixed race. That’s an incredibly touchy topic among some black folk because of historical social stratification based on skin color that grants higher status to lighter-hued blacks.

The subject was explored in depth in a documentary called “Dark Girls” that aired recently on the Oprah Winfrey Network.

(1)ne Drop is sort of the reverse…

Read the entire article here.

“The Box Marked Black” is coming to Willamette University Oct. 24-25

Willamette University News
Salem, Oregon
2014-10-02

What does it mean to be black? Is it the shade of your skin or the kink in your hair? Is it learned?

These questions are explored in “The Box Marked Black: Tales from a Halfrican American growing up Mulatto. With sock puppets!” Written and performed by Damaris Webb and directed by Debra Disbrow, the play is debuting at Willamette University Oct. 24-25.

“In exploring the story of my blackness and unpacking my personal relationship to identity, race and culture, it quickly became clear that the best form for this exploration was as a solo piece,” Webb says. “Hopefully, telling my story will create space for others to unpack and breathe around their own varied identities.”

With only Jenny Willis from “The Jeffersons” as a guide, Webb’s narrative uses direct storytelling, modern dance, song and puppetry to share the perspectives of both sides of her interracial family…

For more information, click here.