Mixed Race Studies

For Some Adopted Kids, There’s a Danger in Erasing Racial Lines

The Takeaway
WNYC Radio
New York, New York
2017-07-10

Todd Zwillich, Host

Rebecca Carroll (upper left) with her siblings, circa 1974. (Courtesy of Guest)

The Takeaway has been presenting conversations about race and identity through our original series, “Uncomfortable Truths: Confronting Racism in America.”

Last week, we featured a conversation with Takeaway listener Rechelle Schimke and her brother, Gerritt. Rechelle is white; Gerritt, who was adopted, is black.

Rebecca Carroll, editor of special projects at WNYC Radio, heard echoes of her own story in that conversation. Rebecca, like Gerritt, is black, and was also adopted by a white family.

But while Gerritt’s experience resulted in a seeming erasure of racial lines, Rebecca insists on the importance of recognizing the different identities that have shaped the history of race in America.

Listen to the interview (00:08:00) here.

Black Religious Movements and Religio-Racial Identities during the Great Migration

The Religious Studies Program
2017-06-26

In this podcast, Judith Weisenfeld talks to Brad Stoddard about her new book, New World A-Coming: Black Religion and Racial Identity during the Great Depression. In this book, Weisenfeld explores several social groups in the early 1900s who combined religious and racial rhetoric to fashion new identities. These groups include the Nation of Islam, the Moorish Science Temple, and Father Divine’s Peace Mission Movement, and various Ethiopian Hebrews. These groups are not new to scholars of American religious history; however, Weisenfeld’s original analysis combined with her use of previously overlooked sources combine to tell a new and compelling story about these familiar groups.

Listen to the podcast (00:33:25) here. Download the podcast here. Read the transcript here.

Tanya Hernández Appears on Howard Jordan Radio Show

Fordham Law News: From New York City To You
2017-06-12

Tanya K. Hernández

Professor Tanya Hernández appeared on the Howard Jordan radio show where she discusses the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in Loving v. Virginia, which invalidated laws prohibiting interracial marriage.

“…Pew research center report that came out in May 18th … one data point in particular pointed out was that since this 1967 decision that intermarriage rates amongst newlyweds had increased five times…and the driving force behind the increase [five times]are Latinos…Latinos marrying whites, it represents 42% of intermarriage in United States…The data point doesn’t tell us about what kind of Latinos?…We have racial identity as well… To tell me Latinos are marrying whites does’t tell me anything about racial progress…”

The ‘Father of Black History’ Was Afro-Puerto Rican

Latino USA
National Public Radio
2017-06-30

Janice Llamoca, Digital Media Editor
Futuro Media Group

There’s a building in Harlem that houses, some say, the largest collection of Black history in the world. At the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, you can see and touch original documents like the Malcolm X papers and the Nate King Cole papers. The center also holds specialized exhibits, film screenings, and panel discussions.

The center is named after Arturo Schomburg, also known as the “Father of Black History,” who sold his personal collection of books, pamphlets, manuscripts, and data to the New York Public Library in 1926…

Listen to the story (00:09:28) here.

ENCORE | Trevor Noah on growing up mixed race in South Africa, ‘a product of my parents’ crime’

The Current
CBC Radio
2017-07-05

Anna Maria Tremonti, Host

‘Fundamentally, myself, my mother and my dad were considered different types of citizens under the law,’ says The Daily [Show] Host Trevor Host on living in a mixed race family in South Africa. (Brad Barket/Getty Images for Comedy Central)

Trevor Noah began his career as a successful stand-up comedian in South Africa. The Daily Show host has travelled a long way since then, but his humour is as biting as ever.

He brings that humour — along with candour — in Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood, a new book about growing up mixed race in South Africa, facing prejudice and learning about survival and a mother’s love.

Noah was born in 1984 to a white father and a black mother during apartheid, which meant his family initially had to hide the truth from the outside world. He was largely kept indoors during the early years of his life, and when he did venture into public with his mother they had to pretend she was his caretaker. His father could never be seen with them in public…

Listen to the conversation (00:24:18) here. Read the transcript here.

‘I’m not half of anything’

It’s Not A Race
Radio National
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
2017-06-29

Beverley Wang, Presenter

So how about this idea that biracial and multiracial children are the key to a post-racial future utopia?

And how does it measure up to the lived experience of biracial Australians?

It’s Not A Race explores what it’s really like to grow up as a biracial Australian with Faustina Agolley, Lucie Cutting, Nkechi Anele, and the Hameed sisters, Leona and Monique.

Listen to the podcast (00:24:57) here.

A Family Comes Out of the (Racial) Closet

The Takeaway
WNYC
2017-06-13

Alison Fornés with her daughter Amiya Fornés-Sicam (left) and mother Julia Fornés (right). (Alison Fornes)

Alison Fornés, an education consultant based in Salem, Massachusetts, wrote to us wanting to speak with her mother, Julia, as part our “Uncomfortable Truths” series.

Talking to your mom about identity may not seem like a conversation most people would classify as “uncomfortable,” but Julia largely kept the story of her upbringing from her daughter. In 1956, at just six years old, Julia was sent from Puerto Rico to an orphanage in Connecticut. Because of racial tensions in the area in 1956, Julia was discouraged from carrying on her traditions from back home in order to be viewed as a more desirable adoptee for a family. She spent much of her life trying to pass as anything but Puerto Rican.

As Alison got older, she started to wonder why she didn’t know more about her mother’s childhood traditions back in the Caribbean. So she sat down to ask Julia about why she felt compelled to hide her Puerto Rican identity, and how she eventually came to embrace it.

Listen to the story here.

Episode 32: How Race Was Made (Seeing White, Part 2)

Scene on Radio
2017-03-01

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

Chenjerai Kumanyika, Assistant Professor of Popular Culture
Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina

Photo: The Monument to the Discoveries, Lisbon, Portugal. The highlighted figure in the center is an effigy of Gomes Eanes de Zurara. The figure at the top right is Prince Henry the Navigator. Photo by Harvey Barrison.

For much of human history, people viewed themselves as members of tribes or nations but had no notion of “race.” Today, science deems race biologically meaningless. Who invented race as we know it, and why? By John Biewen, with guest Chenjerai Kumanyika.

Listen to the podcast (00:28:50) here. Download the podcast here.

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.