Whiteness IS inherently oppressive and racist because the history of the concept has been intrinsically bound up with creating and maintaining a racial hierarchy.

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2021-07-14 18:08Z by Steven

Whiteness is inherently oppressive and racist because the history of the concept has been intrinsically bound up with creating and maintaining a racial hierarchy. It has no history separate and apart from oppression. But the people called white are not the problem. In fact, the anti-racist position is that whiteness was something done to so-called white people, which those of us so-called should reject.

Tim Wise, “The Problem Isn’t White People — It’s Whiteness, People,“ Tim Wise, July 12, 2021. https://timjwise.medium.com/the-problem-isnt-white-people-it-s-whiteness-people-5581698ea02e.

Tags:

“Latinos in the U.S. grew up with this idea that Latinos are mixed-race and so are incapable of racism. And that allows them to sort of marginalize and ignore Afro-Latinos who are often the victims of overt or subtle discrimination.”

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2021-06-22 22:30Z by Steven

The homogenous representation of Latinos on the big screen stems from a larger issue, says Ed Morales, a lecturer at Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race. He describes a longstanding ideology in Latin America that emphasizes pride in building a mixed-race society. “It’s attached to this idea of what’s called mestizo, which is, as the word describes, the phenomenon of racial mixture in Latin America and how it’s different from the United States,” Morales says. Black Latinos’ ancestors were brought to South America and the Caribbean by the same transatlantic slave trade that delivered enslaved people to the U.S., but after emancipation, U.S. law forbade interracial marriages, whereas Latin-America did not. “Latinos in the U.S. grew up with this idea that Latinos are mixed-race and so are incapable of racism. And that allows them to sort of marginalize and ignore Afro-Latinos who are often the victims of overt or subtle discrimination.”

Andrea Marks, “How ‘In the Heights’ Casting Focused a Wider Problem of Afro-Latino Representation,” Rolling Stone, https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/in-the-heights-casting-colorism-afro-latino-1184945/.

Tags: , , ,

When those of mixed ancestry—and the majority of blacks are of mixed ancestry—disappear into the white majority, they are traditionally accused of running from their “blackness.” Yet why isn’t the alternative a matter of running from their “whiteness”?

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2021-06-22 22:07Z by Steven

To pass is to sin against authenticity, and “authenticity” is among the founding lies of the modern age. The philosopher Charles Taylor summarizes its ideology thus: “There is a certain way of being human that is my way. I am called upon to live my life in this way, and not in imitation of anyone else’s life. But this notion gives a new importance to being true to myself. If I am not, I miss the point of my life; I miss what being human is for me.” And the Romantic fallacy of authenticity is only compounded when it is collectivized: when the putative real me gives way to the real us. You can say that Anatole Broyard was (by any juridical reckoning) “really” a Negro, without conceding that a Negro is a thing you can really be. The vagaries of racial identity were increased by what anthropologists call the rule of “hypodescent”—the one-drop rule. When those of mixed ancestry—and the majority of blacks are of mixed ancestry—disappear into the white majority, they are traditionally accused of running from their “blackness.” Yet why isn’t the alternative a matter of running from their “whiteness”? To emphasize these perversities, however, is a distraction from a larger perversity. You can’t get race “right” by refining the boundary conditions.

Henry Louis Gates Jr., “White Like Me,” The New Yorker, June 10, 1996. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1996/06/17/white-like-me.

Tags: , , ,

The accusation of colorism in the light-skinned casting choices illuminates a problem regarding whom Hollywood presents as “Latino,” and whom it excludes, according to Tanya K. Hernández, author of Multiracials and Civil Rights: Mixed-Race Stories of Discrimination.

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2021-06-21 02:19Z by Steven

The accusation of colorism in the light-skinned casting choices illuminates a problem regarding whom Hollywood presents as “Latino,” and whom it excludes, according to Tanya K. Hernández, author of Multiracials and Civil Rights: Mixed-Race Stories of Discrimination. “There is often a complete erasure of Afro-Latinos, and a frozen, overly romanticized picture of indigenous peoples as only historical figures from a Mayan past,” she says. Any viewer of American TV or movies can observe that mainstream media typically highlights light-skinned Latinos, even though a 2014 Pew Research Center survey showed nearly one in four Latinos identifies as Afro-Latino.

Andrea Marks, “How ‘In the Heights’ Casting Focused a Wider Problem of Afro-Latino Representation,” Rolling Stone, June 16, 2021. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/in-the-heights-casting-colorism-afro-latino-1184945/.

Tags: , , , , ,

“Perceptions of mixedness are still so frustratingly binary and often centred around whiteness.”

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2021-05-24 18:01Z by Steven

“I wrote Mixed/Other to add some much-needed nuance to a conversation that is so frequently stilted and oversimplified in mainstream spaces. Perceptions of mixedness are still so frustratingly binary and often centred around whiteness – I wanted to challenge those narratives and open a more inclusive conversation. I wanted to tell stories or joy, hope and belonging as well as the more painful and sometimes complicated parts of being mixed. It’s the book I wanted to read in my teens and early twenties.” —Natalie Morris

Isabella Silvers, “Natalie Morris: “Ideas of mixedness are binary and centred around whiteness”,” Mixed Messages, April 19, 2021. https://mixedmessages.substack.com/p/natalie-morris-ideas-of-mixedness.

Tags: , ,

What did make Louisiana, and especially its port city, New Orleans, different from the English colonies or the eastern seaboard was the way it understood race mixture.

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2021-02-15 02:55Z by Steven

None of this, of course, should encourage the reader to think of Louisiana as any sort of racial haven. Louisiana began as a white idea and remained one: Choctaw kindnesses were repaid with genocide, most Africans were shipped in as chattel slaves, and Europeans walked the land as rulers, just as they did everywhere else. What did make Louisiana, and especially its port city, New Orleans, different from the English colonies or the eastern seaboard was the way it understood race mixture. Though white Americans also had sex with Africans and Indians, they usually denied its result. Anyone with “one drop” of African blood was by the American schema defined as black, and everyone else was effectively white.

Joe Wood, “Fade to Black: Once Upon a Time in Multi-Racial America,” The Village Voice, 12/08/1994. 25-34. https://www.villagevoice.com/2019/12/04/escape-from-blackness-once-upon-a-time-in-creole-america/.

Tags: , , ,

“We tend to believe that people can have only one ethno-racial background and that this identity is fixed when in fact it can be quite fluid.”

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2021-02-09 20:26Z by Steven

“We’ve allowed ideas about race to loom very large,” says Mr. [Richard] Alba. “We tend to believe that people can have only one ethno-racial background and that this identity is fixed when in fact it can be quite fluid.” This in turn has corrupted political thinking, especially among Democrats who accept the demography-is-destiny theory—the notion that they need only bide their time and minority voters will put them into a position of unassailable political power.

John J. Miller, “‘Majority Minority’ America? Don’t Bet on It,” The Wall Street Journal, February 7, 2021. https://www.wsj.com/articles/majority-minority-america-dont-bet-on-it-11612549609.

Tags: , , ,

Some fans wrote and said that they did not understand the fact of me being interviewed by a publication directed toward blacks. I repeat: I’m black.

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2021-02-09 18:29Z by Steven

It may be strange, but sometimes I’m embarrassed for not having remarkable stories of racism in my life. As much as I insist on reaffirming my black roots, people always think the opposite. It’s very uncomfortable and it is as terrible as the most pure prejudice. From the moment I became known to the general public, the situation became even more evident. I’m used to being stopped in the streets by people who find it strange the fact that my skin is light, my features are aquiline and my hair straight. They ask why I insist on saying that I am black being “so cute”. It’s absurd. It’s as violent as if I was barred from a restaurant or a hotel because of my color. I am very like my mother, the former model Vera Lúcia Manhães, who has my color. My father, Antônio Pitanga, is black. There were times when I was very saddened by this attitude, but today I face this more naturally. I don’t care, for example, the comments that I heard after being on cover of Raça Brasil (magazine). Some fans wrote and said that they did not understand the fact of me being interviewed by a publication directed toward blacks. I repeat: I’m black.

Marques Travae, “Camila Pitanga on people questioning her blackness: “It’s as violent as if I was barred from a restaurant or a hotel because of my color.”,” Black Brazil Today, February 11, 2012. https://blackbraziltoday.com/camila-pitanga-on-people-questioning-her-blackness/.

Tags: , , , ,

“One day after this election is over I am going to write a piece about how Latino is a contrived ethnic category that artificially lumps white Cubans with Black Puerto Ricans and Indigenous Guatemalans.”

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2020-11-04 16:47Z by Steven

The news media, in general, has not done a good job of covering the Latino vote. “One day after this election is over I am going to write a piece about how Latino is a contrived ethnic category that artificially lumps white Cubans with Black Puerto Ricans and Indigenous Guatemalans . . .” tweeted Nikole Hannah-Jones of the New York Times.

Margaret Sullivan, “We still don’t know much about this election — except that the media and pollsters blew it again,” The Washington Post, November 4, 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/we-still-dont-know-much-about-this-election–except-that-the-media-and-pollsters-blew-it-again/2020/11/04/40c0d416-1e4a-11eb-b532-05c751cd5dc2_story.html.

Tags: , , ,

If Cornell truly believes in its motto, “Any Person, Any Study,” this new area of study and research into mixed-race individuals would fit like a glove into the ideals of this institution, and be a good step in developing future curricula as the United States’ demographic evolves.

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2020-09-19 20:44Z by Steven

The future is mixed. Since its founding, Cornell [University] has served as a shining beacon in the fight for the inclusivity of women, POC, the LGBT+ community and people with disabilities in higher education. If Cornell truly believes in its motto, “Any Person, Any Study,” this new area of study and research into mixed-race individuals would fit like a glove into the ideals of this institution, and be a good step in developing future curricula as the United States’ demographic evolves.

Katherine Luong, “GUEST ROOM | Create a Mixed-Race Studies Department at Cornell,” The Cornell Daily Sun, September 18, 2020. https://cornellsun.com/2020/09/18/guest-room-create-a-mixed-race-studies-department-at-cornell/.

Tags: , , ,