Mixed Race Studies

My baby will be mixed race. So why did I automatically think of him as ‘black’?

The Guardian
2014-10-14

Victoria Bond

I picked a black baby to represent my unborn child on a cake because of my own adherence to the ‘one-drop rule’

My 87-year-old grandmother has a very specific way of saying the word black: she drags out the a and makes the k extra hard for an effect that drowns the c. “Blaaaak” out of my grandmother’s mouth is an admonishment, not a color. “Blaaaak” out of my grandmother’s mouth travels a step beyond being a pejorative to having the hair-raising resonance of a word that damns as well as describes damnation itself.

“Blaaaak” out of my grandmother’s mouth is a curse…

Read the entire article here.

Does Anybody Else Look Like Me?: A Parent’s Guide to Raising Multiracial Children

Da Capo Press
2003
224 pages
Hardcover ISBN: 9780756793401
Paperback ISBN: 9780738209500

Donna Jackson Nakazawa

“Am I black or white or am I American?” “Why don’t my eyes look like yours?” “Why do people always call attention to my ‘different’ hair?” Helping a child understand his mixed racial background can be daunting, especially when, whether out of honest appreciation or mean-spiritedness, peers and strangers alike perceive their features to be “other.” Drawing on psychological research and input from over fifty multiracial families, Does Anybody Else Look Like Me? addresses the special questions and concerns facing these families, explaining how we can best prepare multiracial children of all ages to make their way confidently in our color-conscious world. From the books and toys to use in play with young children, to advice on guiding older children toward an unflappable sense of self, Does Anybody Else Look Like Me? is the first book to outline for parents how, exactly, to deflect the objectifying attention multiracial children receive. Full of powerful stories and counsel, it is sure to become the book adoptive and birth parents of different races alike will look to for understanding as they strive to raise their children in a changing world.

Read an excerpt here.

Now casting nationwide for a dynamic and charismatic, blended, interracial family!

Kinetic Content (part of Red Arrow Entertainment Group)
Los Angeles, California
2015-08-12

Angelo Ierace, Development Producer

Kinetic Content, a television production company in Los Angeles, California, is currently developing docu-series that will feature the day-to-day life of one blended, interracial family. If you and your significant other come from two different racial backgrounds and you are blending your kids and your significant other’s kids from a previous relationship into one blended family, then we want to speak to you!

For more information, please contact Angelo Ierace, Producer of Development via telephone at 310.752.0843 or e-mail at aierace@kineticcontent.com.

Exhibition: Zun Lee, Father Figure: Exploring Alternate Notions of Black Fatherhood

The Jefferson School African American Heritage Center
Contemporary Gallery
233 4th Street, NW
Charlottesville, Virginia 22903
2015-06-09 through 2015-08-29

Gallery Hours: Tuesday–Friday, 12:00-18:00; Saturday, 10:00-15:00

Through intimate black-and-white frames, the viewer gains access to often-overlooked moments in the lives of African American men whom Lee has worked with since 2011. Lee brings into focus what pervasive father absence stereotypes have distorted – black men who define parental presence on their own terms and whose masculinity is humanized, not viewed with suspicion. Using his struggle with father absence as inspiration, Lee examines a complex subject matter with profound vulnerability, resulting in a richly woven narrative that is deceptively simple yet multidimensional.

For Father Figure, Zun Lee used his personal journey of discovery and identity formation to examine manifestations of black fatherhood largely ignored by mainstream media. The book has been shortlisted for the Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards and named a winner in the Photo Books category of the 2015 PDN Photo Annual competition.

Zun Lee is an award-winning photographer from Toronto, Canada who was named onto PDN’s 30 List in 2014. His visual storytelling has been widely featured in The New York Times and other publications..

Zun Lee, Father Figure: Exploring Alternate Notions of Black Fatherhood is presented in partnership with the LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph and is made possible through the generous support of the Blue Moon Fund, and Hampton Inn and Suites.

For more information, click here.

Is It Possible to Balance Two Cultures Perfectly?

Mixed Roots Stories
2015-08-06

Brittany Muddamalle, Guest Blogger

I met my husband in California during a program with our church. We were just two young kids falling in love. We were lost in our own world. The scope of our differences didn’t really come out until we were engaged. We decided to have a half Indian and half American wedding. We had this grand idea of a perfectly blended wedding, which would lead to a perfectly blended life.

We did pretty well bringing both cultures in, but the more we strived for perfection, the further away it got. I finally got to the point during all of my wedding planning where I decided to just let the pieces fall where they may. It ended up being just what we needed.

Our wedding was beautiful. I married my best friend. Afterwards, I sat there, during the reception, holding my husband’s hand. We were watching two cultures collide beautifully. Americans and Indians were dancing together to Bollywood and American music, wedding traditions from both sides were coming together smoothly, and everyone was having a great time celebrating.

Then I realized that perfection didn’t matter. All that mattered was my husband and I were bringing two cultures together into one family…

Read the entire article here.

My interracial family needs its own action figures

The Washington Post
2015-08-06

Nevin Martell

(Courtesy of the author)

Growing up, I can recall owning only two black action figures in a massive collection that spanned movies, television and comic book characters. There was Lando Calrissian – the smooth talking, caped czar of Cloud City in The Empire Strikes Back – and Roadblock, G.I. Joe’s muscle-bound machine gunner. All of the others were white, aliens or costume clad villains of indeterminate race.

At the time, the absence of racial diversity didn’t register. I was more concerned with having an equitable mix of good guys and bad guys for the elaborate imaginary battles I orchestrated on my bedroom floor and in the backyard.

Now that I have an interracial son, my perspective has changed. I’d love for him to have toys that serve as a jumping off point for his imagination. When I played with a Luke Skywalker action figure, I wasn’t a 5-year-old boy sitting in the sandbox. I was a future hero of the Rebel Alliance, staring across the dunes at Tatooine’s twin sunset. Back then I had blonde hair. So in my mind’s eye, I looked exactly like Skywalker…

Read the entire article here.

The Spirit of London

Matador (an imprint of Troubador)
2015-09-28
198×127 mm
Paperback ISBN: 9781784624057

Rob Keeley

The spirits were at work here, somehow. But why?

On returning to London, Ellie investigates the mystery surrounding 47 Foster Square. Who is the sender of ghostly messages asking her for help? What is the secret of the Meadowes family? And what does Edward know about all this?

With her parents about to divorce, and her Mum acting very strangely, Ellie quickly discovers that a sinister force lies between her and the truth…

The Spirit of London is the second instalment in the thrilling and suspenseful ‘Spirits’ series and follows the success of The People’s Book Prize-nominated Childish Spirits. It focuses on slavery and a mixed-race family in Georgian times. Ellie finds herself facing a very dangerous foe and will need all her courage and humanity to get her through. The Spirit of London also sets up a story arc that will continue into future books in the series. The book will appeal to girls and boys of upper primary and lower secondary age – and to parents and teachers reading the book aloud!

The colour black, Mixed-race people

Thinking Allowed
BBC Radio 4
2015-07-22

Laurie Taylor, Host

Black: the cultural and historical meaning of the darkest colour. From the ‘little black dress’ which epitomises chic, to its links to death, depression and evil, ‘black’ embodies many contrasting values. White Europeans exploited the negative associations of ‘black’ in enslaving millions of Africans whilst artists & designers have endlessly deployed the colour in their creative work. Laurie Taylor talks to John Harvey, Life Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, about his new book which explores how ‘black’ came to have such ambiguous and varied meanings. They’re joined by Bidisha, the writer and broadcaster.

Also, the last 20 years has seen a major growth in the number of people of mixed racial heritage. Miri Song, Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent, talks about her research into the ways that multiracial parents with white partners talk to their their children about race and identity.

Producer: Jayne Egerton.

Listen to the episode (00:27:58) here. Download the episode here.

As A White Mom, Helping My Multiracial Kids Feel At Home In Their Skin

Code Switch: Frontiers of Race, Culture and Ethnicity
National Public Radio
2015-07-24

Kristen Green

Last year, after months of watching — and re-watching — the movie Frozen, my daughter Selma, who is 6, announced she didn’t want to be brown. “I wish my skin was white,” she told me one day in our living room, where we were hanging out after school.

I knew she idolized the film’s alabaster-skinned heroines, and it made my heart ache. Our daughters started picking up on the differences in our family’s skin color at a very young age — I’m a white-skinned woman raised in the South, my husband, Jason, is part-white, part-American Indian, with medium-brown skin, and, depending on the season, both of our girls look more brown than white. There’s research showing that children can recognize differences in race as early as infancy, and can develop racial biases as early as 3.

Knowing all this, we’ve tried to raise our daughters to be comfortable in their skin, making sure they’re in schools with other black and brown children, searching out books and movies with black and brown main characters. I had even tried, unsuccessfully, to steer her away from the snowy princesses.

But our attempts clearly weren’t foolproof. “You’re beautiful the way you are,” I told Selma, stroking her long hair and trying to mask my sadness. “I love your brown skin.” She wasn’t convinced. “I wish it was like yours,” she told me…

Read the entire article here.

Not Your Post-Racial Future: Why Interracial Families Need to Talk About Race

ARMED
2015-05-17

Sophie Steains

I have this memory that’s been troubling me for a while.

I was 18 and out in Kings Cross for the night. As I was waiting to order at the bar, a man came up and offered to buy me a drink. He was in his early 30s or so, white, built. He told me it was his birthday and that he wanted to celebrate. I knew he was coming on to me, but I was young and naïve, so I let him do it. Anyway, the lady at the bar made up this special blue birthday cocktail for him. She set it on fire, everyone around us cheered. I couldn’t help but join in on the celebration too. But then, as the man motioned to pay, I noticed a photograph tucked into the front pocket of his wallet. It was a young, beautiful Asian woman holding a Eurasian baby. My blood ran cold…

…Growing up half-Okinawan and half-white Australian has left me with a lot of these unanswered questions. It’s led me to the belief that our society just isn’t equipped to discuss mixed-race, despite the fact that I’m seeing mixed-race faces everywhere I look today. Despite the fact that mixed-race people existed on this land well before white people were even a blip on the radar. Watching Japanese-Canadian Jeff Chiba Stearns’ documentary “One Big Hapa Family,” I was struck by how much his own reflections mirrored my own:

“After thinking back on some bizarre identity related experiences that I had growing up mixed, I started to wonder if interracial couples ever considered how their marriages might affect their children? I got the sense that my relatives never discussed multiracial identity with their kids. I mean, not once growing up did I tell my parents that I experienced cultural confusion.”

Often when mixed-race identities are discussed today, they are conflated with this idea of our “post-racial future.” A future where race is no longer an issue and everyone looks like Halle Berry. The kinds of people who seem to be the most vocal about mixed-race are the people who claim that, “Everyone is a bit mixed-race” or “I don’t see race, we are beyond it” etc. There is this belief that Love and its mixed-race children will help break down the barriers that have been so doggedly safe-guarded for the past several hundred years. Parents of mixed-race children often believe this too, I’ve heard it coming from their mouths many times…

Read the entire article here.