Mixed Race Studies

I’m white in Barcelona but in Los Angeles I’m Hispanic?

Public Radio International
2015-10-27

Jaime Gonzalez, BBC World Service Journalist
Los Angeles, California

“You’re not white, where are you from?”

This is how I was greeted a few months ago by a young Black man I interviewed in Los Angeles for a story I was working on.

Having lived in the United States for more than six years, the question did not surprise me, as it was not the first time I had to answer it.

I was born and raised in Barcelona, ​​in northeast Spain, and although I had never given much thought to this matter, I always thought I was white. With dark Mediterranean features, but white.

How else could I define myself if someone asked me about my race?

In 2009, I moved to Miami and soon I became aware of the deep racial divide that still exists in this country.

In America, the definition of what being white means is much more limited than in Spain…

Read the entire article here. Listen to the story here. Download the story here.

Brazil’s ‘Black Lives Matter’ struggle — even deadlier

GlobalPost
Public Radio International
2015-11-03

Will Carless

The police committed more than 1 in every 6 of Rio de Janeiro’s homicides between 2010 and 2013.

And 4 out of 5 of those who are slain overall were under 29 years old — and of African descent.

These startling figures come from an analysis of official homicide data by Amnesty International. The problem spans far beyond Rio, and more recent incidents have raised concern that it’s not going away.

Earlier this month, five police officers in Rio de Janeiro were arrested after a cellphone video showed them altering a crime scene by placing a gun in the hands of a black teen they had just shot dead.

Echoing United States movements like #BlackLivesMatter and #RiseUpOctober, activists in Brazil are fighting to draw attention to the problem of killings of young black Brazilian men, frequently by police. One of the leading local movements is Amnesty International’s “Jovem Negro Vivo,” meaning “Young Black Alive.”

It’s one of several awareness campaigns that are also aiming to dismantle a stricture that’s long existed in the country: a reluctance to talk about important social issues in terms of race.

“It’s difficult in Brazil to point out racism,” says Alexandre Ciconello, a human rights expert and adviser to Amnesty in Rio de Janeiro. “It’s a taboo for the elite of the country and for politicians and authorities. They always say ‘Brazil is a mixed country, we are not the US, we are not South Africa,’ and if you raise racial questions, you’re seen as trying to separate that.”…

Read the entire article and listen to the story here.

Halloween Costume Emails Stokes Debate At Yale

All Things Considered
National Public Radio
2015-11-09

Audie Cornish, Host

Yale University is in turmoil after a series of emails about culturally insensitive Halloween costumes. Some students there are protesting what they say is a hostile environment for students of color. Sebi Median-Tayac [Aaron Z. Lewis], one of the leaders of the protest, speaks with NPR’s Audie Cornish.

Listen to the story (00:03:58) here. Download the story here. Read the transcript here.

Sense of Place with Guest Sharon H. Chang

Sense of Place
Roundhouse Radio 98.3 FM
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
November 2015

Minelle Mahtani, Host

Minelle Mahtani and Sharon H. Chang (Source: Facebook)

Author, scholar, sociologist, and activist Sharon H. Chang discusses her new book Raising Mixed Race: Multiracial Asian Children in a Post-Racial World.

Listen to the interview (00:36:17) here.

Mixed, Passing For White

Youth Radio
2015-10-12

Maya Cueva

What’s it like to be a mixed race person who passes as white? Complicated, according to Youth Radio’s Maya Cueva. She often finds herself struggling to represent the part of her racial identity that people can’t see.

My whole life, I’ve always been the girl who’s white face didn’t quite match my last name — “Cueva”.

In my family we always celebrated our identity: My mom’s Jewish and my dad’s Peruvian.

Sometimes my dad tries to say things in Yiddish. Words like schmatta, except for with his Spanish accent. My mom calls that meshugganismo — combining the Yiddish word meshugganah, meaning crazy, with the Spanish ismo…meaning ism. Quirks like this always come up in my family all the time.

Ever since I can remember, my mom has always searched for things that connect our Jewish and Latino identities. But out in the world, I often face identity policing. Because I pass as white, people ask if I’m actually a person of color or not. So I’m constantly having to prove my Peruvian heritage. Like having to tell my dad’s immigration story soon after I meet people. I call it “coming out as mixed.”…

Read the entire story here. Listen to the story here. Download the story here.

A Chosen Exile

Think
KERA-FM
Dallas, Texas
2015-10-28

Krys Boyd, Host and Managing editor

Dr. Albert Johnston passed in order to practice medicine. After living as leading citizens in Keene, N.H., the Johnstons revealed their true racial identity, and became national news. (Source: Historical Society of Cheshire County)

From the founding of our nation to the Civil Rights era, many African Americans who could pass as white did so in order to improve their lot in life. And while this new identity offered increased opportunity, it also meant that cultural and familial connections were often severed. This hour, we’ll talk about picking between identity and survival with Stanford assistant history professor Allyson Hobbs, author of “A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life” (Harvard University Press).

Listen to the story (00:48:15) here. Download the story here.

Multiethnic Adults Grapple With Questions of Identity

KQED News
San Francisco, California
2015-10-14

Adizah Eghan

In his 1964 Nobel Prize lecture, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. described humanity as a “world house,” filled with family of all backgrounds who must somehow learn to live with each other.

Within the borders of our countries, cities and states, our own homes are increasingly becoming multi-ethnic, multiracial microcosms of the greater world house to which King refers.

Today, nearly one in six newlyweds marries across racial or ethnic lines. If we continue in this direction, the U.S. Census Bureau projects that the multiracial population will triple by 2060…

On the most recent episode of So Well Spoken, we dove into the complex world of multiethnic families, interracial marriages and cross-cultural adoptions. How do families handle racial issues and celebrate who they are?

Read the entire article here. Listen to the episode (00:51:26) here.

[PODCAST] In Konversation: Unpacking the myth of the “racial democracy” in Brazil – Part 1

briankamanzi
2015-10-04

Brian Kamanzi, Host
Cape Town, South Africa

Marcelo Rosa, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of Brasília, Brasília, Brazil

In Konversation: Unpacking the myth of the “racial democracy” in Brazil – Part 1 by Inkonversation on Mixcloud

Konversation meets with Marcelo Rosa, from the University of Brasilia.

We went on to engage on his perspectives on “race” in Brazilian society.

Listen to the interview (00:34:21) here.

How the Hawaiian word ‘hapa’ came to be used by people of mixed heritage

Public Radio International (PRI)
2015-09-15

Nina Porzucki, Producer

Recently, an old friend of mine, Julie Jimenez had a language question she wanted me to investigate: Where does the word “hapa” come from?

Julie considers herself hapa. Her father is from Chile, her mom is Japanese American. And she calls herself “hapa,” that is, half Asian, half something else. Julie had never questioned this definition before until one day she was at the market and she met a women who she thought was hapa like herself.

“She looked half Chinese and half white and I said, ‘Oh, you’re hapa!’ and she said ‘that’s a Hawaiian word, you’re not supposed to use it.’ And I had never heard anyone say that before. I was kind of shocked because I had never thought it was offensive,” she said…

Listen to the story (00:38:09) here. Download the story here.

Something Old, Something New

BBC Radio 4
2015-10-06

Johny Pitts, Host

Peter Meanwell, Producer

Recorded & mixed! Finished @BBCRadio4 (Engineer Steve Hellier with Johny Pitts) Source: Peter Meanwell

From Sheffield to South Carolina, Johny Pitts explores alternative Black British identity.

What happens when your Dad’s an African-American soul star [Richie Pitts] and your Mum’s a music-loving girl from working class Sheffield? Are your roots on the terraces at a Sheffield United match, or in the stylings of a Spike Lee film? For writer and photographer Johny Pitts, whose parents met in the heyday of Northern Soul, on the dance floor of the legendary King Mojo club, how he navigates his black roots has always been an issue. Not being directly connected to the Caribbean or West African diaspora culture, all he was told at school was that his ancestors were slaves, so for BBC Radio 4, he heads off to the USA, to trace his father’s musical migration, and tell an alternative story of Black British identity.

From Pitsmore in Sheffield, to Bedford Stuyvesant in New York, and all the way down to South Carolina, where his grandmother picked cotton, Johny Pitts heads off on a journey of self-discovery. On the way he meets author Caryl Phillips, Kadija, a half sister he never knew, and historian Bernard Powers. He visits the Concorde Baptist Church in Brooklyn, New York, and the Bush River Missionary Baptist Church, in Newberry, South Carolina. He tracks down a whole host of long-lost cousins, and talks to Pulitzer winning writer Isabel Wilkerson. On the way he shines a light on the shadows of his ancestry, and finds stories and culture that deliver him to a new understanding of his own mixed race identity and history.

Listen to the story here.