Mixed Race Studies

White people don’t always know I’m Black. That’s when their racism is revealed.

The Lily
2021-12-10

Sarah Doneghy

(María Alconada Brooks/The Washington Post)

The jokes, comments and stereotypes always flow so freely. I speak up every time.

When I see mostly White people in a social gathering, whether it’s a class, party or presentation, I do a scan. It’s thorough but quick. Are there any Black people? Are there any people of color at all? When the answer is no, I prepare. How am I going to let them know that I’m Black? Am I going to wait until someone says something and then “surprise” them? Or will I be confrontational? Will I say, “Hey, guess what?” as if I’m kidding — but not really?

Most of the time, White people think I’m one of them. My skin is light, often as light as theirs. My lips are plump and my nose is broad, but my features aren’t a tip-off. My hair is black, big and curly. If anything, that’s the tell. But even then, it’s usually: “I thought you were Italian, Greek or Middle Eastern.” In other words, not quite White, but definitely not Black.

That’s when the racism rears. Someone says something because they feel safe. They can speak freely. And they have support…

Read the entire article here.

Netflix’s Passing Made Me Rethink How I Carry My Racial Ambiguity

Popsugar
2021-12-13

Adele Stewart

As a white-passing biracial woman, I really resonated with Rebecca Hall’s film adaptation of Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel, Passing. The story centers on two biracial Black women, Irene Redfield (Tessa Thompson) and Clare Kendry (Ruth Negga), who are light-skinned enough to pass as white in 1920s New York. When Irene bumps into her old friend Clare, she almost doesn’t recognize her. Unlike Irene — who is living her life openly as a Black woman despite being able to pass for white if she wanted to — Clare has accentuated her already-light features with blond hair to help her pass as white in everyday society. Taking her deception even further, she’s married a wealthy white man (Alexander Skarsgard), who not only doesn’t know she’s Black but also holds an extreme, violent hatred toward Black people.

In some ways, I identify with Clare, particularly when it comes to how easy it is for me to blend in and reap the benefits of white privilege without facing the inequities of being Black in the US. While it was never intentional like it was with Clare, I have always gone through the world passing as white and seeing things through a “white” lens because that’s simply what most people assume I am. It wasn’t until my late teenage years that I started to see how my Black family, friends, or boyfriends were treated differently than I was. I seemed to have been floating through life unknowingly reaping the benefits of my racial ambiguity for a very long time. Often, it feels like I have a secret Black identity that doesn’t quite know where she fits and when (or if) she should reveal herself. Truth is, I want to belong everywhere — with my white family and friends, but also with my Black family and friends — so I tend to blend in and code-switch depending on who I’m with. As a result, I never feel like I entirely belong in either community…

Read then entire article here.

Oral history interview with Lawrence Dennis, 1967

Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections
Columbia Center for Oral History
Columbia University, New York, New York
Digitized 2010 (Originally recorded in 1967)
DOI: 10.7916/d8-cpb1-1692

Lawrence Dennis (1893-1977) interviewed by William R. Keylor (1944-).

Listen to the interview here.

A Point of View: Mixed Race Experience is Hard to Categorize. Stop Trying.

The Inclusion Solution
2021-05-27

Rochelle Younan-Montgomery, Founder & Facilitator at Holistic Workplace Inclusion LLC

I am mixed Egyptian and white, and I love being biracial. I can navigate differing cultural contexts with relative ease, I enjoy connecting with a wide variety of folx in a multitude of settings, and I take pleasure in deepening my non-Western cultural background. My racial identity has also been the source of an immense amount of pain. My white mother struggled with how to care for my unruly curly hair and would aggressively brush through it when it was dry (a major no-no for tight, thick curls), to the point of bringing me to tears. She now jokes that when I was 5 years old, she had my hair cut short for her birthday, to make things easier on herself. As a mother, I understand how hard parenting can be. However, the choice to “eliminate the hair problem” felt as though my natural hair was a burden for her, rather than something to be curious about, to celebrate, to work with, rather than work against. I am not alone in this; so many mixed children experience the pain of othering by their own families…

Read the entire article here.

One and Half of You

Talon Books
2021-03-15
88 pages
6 W × 9 H × .237 D inches
Paperback ISBN: 9781772012866

Leanne Dunic

From the talented multidisciplinary artist, musician, and writer Leanne Dunic comes the lyric memoir One and Half of You. In sinuous language, with candour, openness, and surprising humour, Dunic explores sibling and romantic love and the complexities of being a biracial person looking for completion in another.

Including links to three songs written and performed for the book by tidepools.

On Passing and Not Trying to Pass

My Jewish Learning
2015-07-22

Tema Smith

I am black, and I am Jewish.

I’ve always found comfort in the and of my identity — that simple part of speech that joins together two disparate things: two families, two histories, two cultures, two heritages, two skin colors, two lineages of trauma, two pathways to North America. As the offspring of both, I am equally neither.

Lately, I spend a lot of time within the proverbial “walls” of the organized Jewish community. As a Jewish professional, my day-to-day life is dedicated to synagogue operations — specifically, membership and communications. While in many ways I am “at home” in the Jewish community, to this day I still feel out of place within the communal mainstream. And, contradictory as it may seem, it is the fact that I can easily pass for the Ashkenazi majority that leaves me feeling this way.

I should say: I never asked to pass. The fact that I can walk into Jewish settings and instantly fit in leaves me with a bad taste. At the same time, I remember recognizing my own thoughts when I read Katya Gibel Azoulay quote her son in her seminal book, Black, Jewish, and Interracial: It’s Not the Color of Your Skin, but the Race of Your Kin, and Other Myths of Identity: “I’m not going to put up a sign that says I’m black just to be accepted,” she relays, writing, “as far as he was concerned, the idea of ‘learning how to act Black’ was the theater of the absurd.”…

Read the entire article here.

I’m Black But Look White. Here Are The Horrible Things White People Feel Safe Telling Me.

The Huffington Post
2021-12-09

Miriam Zinter

“Many of these people are educated, and hold jobs or positions that give them some form of power or influence over Black people.”

I was outside my house gardening a few weekends ago when a neighbor, whom I had known for almost 30 years, stopped by so I could pet his large, fluffy dogs. I took my gloves off, squatted down to give the dogs a really good scratching around their ears and felt the sun on my back. What could be better? And then my neighbor said: “Why do you have a ‘Black Lives Matter’ sign on your front lawn when all those people do is kill each other?”

My lovely day screeched to a halt.

“You know I’m Black, right?” I said, standing up as tall as my 5’4” frame would allow, the sun shining on my blond hair. I continued to pet his dogs, because I needed the comfort of petting dogs at that moment, and because I needed to keep my hands busy so they didn’t slap that man’s face…

Read the entire article here.

Racial ‘passing’ is still a reality. Here’s why I embraced my complex identity

The Boston Globe Magazine
2021-11-30

Steve Majors

For years, I passed as white. Only later did I realize the advantages I was getting made me complicit in a system that oppressed others.

I peered around the movie theater as soon as we sat down. Slowly, I began to pick out individuals who looked like my daughter and me — light complexioned Black and mixed-race people. They too, I reckoned, had come to see a movie that reflected our shared reality.

Passing, which recently moved from the big screen to Netflix and is based on Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel, tells the story of two light-skinned Black women in 1920s New York who, upon reconnecting, each grapple with the other’s relationship with race. One flouts societal and racial boundaries by “passing” as white. The other quietly wrestles with the limits imposed on her as a married Black woman.

The origins of passing stretch back to our country’s founding. For some Black people, crossing the color line meant a chance to improve their social status, economic opportunity, and marital prospects. Some scholars claim passing is no longer a phenomenon because of greater economic opportunity and stronger legal protections for Black Americans. But passing has never gone away. For many, it is a reality — but one that can be transformed into a powerful way to embrace our true identities.

For much of my life, I’ve passed as white. My “high yella” skin, as my grandmother called it, along with gray-green eyes and straight hair, hid the fact that I am mixed race. So did my family. In 1967, a year after I was born, the Supreme Court ruled in Loving v. Virginia that laws banning interracial marriage were unconstitutional. Still, mixed-race relationships remained socially unacceptable in some parts of the country. For me, growing up in a small town in western New York, my very existence as a mixed-race person was a personal affront to some…

Read the entire article here.

Rebecca Hall Says ‘Passing’ Liberated Her Family – Contenders New York

Deadline Hollywood
2021-12-04

Fred Topel

Rebecca Hall said Saturday that her mother [Maria Ewing] told her Hall’s directorial debut, Passing, liberated her family, as Hall’s grandfather was a Black man who decided to pass for White in Detroit.

Hall and stars Ruth Negga and André Holland spoke during the panel for the Netflix drama at Deadline’s Contenders Film: New York awards-season showcase.

“She called me up in tears when she first saw it and she just said, ‘You’ve liberated us,’” Hall said. “I grew up observing my mother and thinking about the psychological impact of being brought up in an environment where you weren’t allowed to talk about something. To me, she always looked like a Black woman. I was saying to her, ‘Tell me about this. What are we? Tell me the story.’ She didn’t know. It’s not that she wouldn’t. She couldn’t. She was respecting her father’s wishes.”…

Read the entire article and watch the video discussion here.

‘Passing’ filmmaker Rebecca Hall shares the personal story behind her movie

Fresh Air
National Public Radio
2021-11-30

Terri Gross, Host

Actor/filmmaker Rebecca Hall had what she describes as a “real gasp” moment when she first read Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel Passing.

The book centers on two light-skinned African American women who run into each other after not having seen each other for many years. One of the women is an active member of Harlem’s Black community. The other is married to a white man and is passing as white.

Reading the story of these fictional women, Hall realized that her maternal grandfather had also passed as white.

“Suddenly, aspects of my family life that were tinged with so much mystery and obfuscation, there was a reason for that,” Hall says.

Hall’s mother, acclaimed opera singer Maria Ewing, also passed as white, though not necessarily by her own volition. Instead, Hall says, Ewing tended to “be whatever people chose to see” — which sometimes meant being described as “exotic” by members of the opera community.

Hall was so moved by Larsen’s novel that she drafted a script for a film adaptation — and then she put it away until she felt ready to do something with it. Now, 13 years later, her adaptation of Passing is available on Netflix…

Read the entire interview here.