Mixed Race Studies

This interracial couple got engaged in Obama’s America. Then Trump took office.

The Washington Post
2020-10-20

Sydney Trent, Local enterprise reporter

David and Jessica Figari with daughter Liliana at their home outside of Tampa. (Eve Edelheit for The Washington Post)

David and Jessica Figari are navigating racial and political divides in their country — and in their family — that they never anticipated when they fell in love

On the already muggy morning of Aug. 28, 2013, David Figari and Jessica Jones held hands in the billowing crowd near the steps of the Georgetown University Law Center. The young lovers had traveled from Florida to meet each other’s relatives and attend the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington.

The reminiscences from 1963 march veterans had ended and the trek to the Lincoln Memorial was about to begin when David saw an organizer standing near a microphone at the top of the stairs. He walked up to the man with the mic and introduced himself.

“Hey, I’d like to say something. Can I do it?” David said.

The man gave him the once-over and immediately said “No.”

“No, no, you don’t understand. I’d like to propose to my girlfriend.”

“No,” the man said again.

“I said, ‘No, you don’t understand,’” David said. “‘That’s my girlfriend.’”

He pointed to Jessica. Something clicked — this couple, this moment — and the man gasped.

“Everyone, everyone, really quick!” he announced. “David actually has something to say.”…

Read the entire article here.

Are We Home Yet?

Jacaranda Books
2020-09-10
Paperback ISBN13: 9781913090197

Katy Massey

One of Jacaranda’s #TwentyIn2020, Are We Home Yet? is a moving memoir of a mixed-race woman from a working class community in Leeds and her outspoken French-Canadian mother. Exploring issues of shame, immigration and class, the pair share their stories but struggle to understand each other’s choices in a fast-changing world.

Spanning the years from 1935 to 2010, Are We Home Yet? is the moving and funny story of a girl and her mother.

As a girl, Katy accidentally discovers her mother is earning money as a sex worker at the family home, rupturing their bond. As an adult, Katy contends with grief and mental health challenges before she and her mother attempt to heal their relationship. From Canada, to Leeds and Jamaica, and exploring shame, immigration and class, the pair share their stories but struggle to understand each other’s choices in a fast-changing world.

By revealing their truths, can these two strong women call a truce on their hostilities and overcome the oppressive ghosts of the past?

‘My mum calls me the N-word’ – the reality of growing up mixed race with a racist parent

gal-dem
2020-09-05

Emma

Being a person of colour with a white parent who holds racist views is more common than you might think. Emma explores the emotional trauma of being brought up in a racist home.

A few days after the tragic death of George Floyd, when Americans took to the streets in righteous anger, my dad condemned the protests, remarking that Black people should be less afraid of the police and more so of “blacks with guns in inner cities”. Unsurprisingly, this unsavoury conversation escalated. My dad, as you might guess, is white, but I am not. Not for the first time, I was left wondering how, as a mixed race Black woman with a socially conservative white father, I reconcile with the fact that my dad might be racist?

The current racial climate has led to many people having difficult conversations about race with their families, often for the first time. Social media has been awash with handy tips and tricks for instigating conversations with uninformed family members. Instagram swipe-through posts with titles like “How to tell someone you love that they’re being racist” and “Nine counter-arguments to use against your conservative parents” ad infinitum have proliferated.

This is all well and good for white people. But what happens when the white parent in question has a Black child? Mixed race families are sometimes heralded as the ultimate antidote to racism, and a signifier of racial progress – but the reality is often far more complex. Family setups like mine are often difficult to navigate and can produce emotionally challenging situations. While the sense of urgency and pressure to educate friends and family generated by the Black Lives Matter movement is incredibly important, it can put mixed race people in an uncomfortable position. How do you balance the obligation to educate a white parent who holds racist views while protecting your own mental health?…

Read the entire article here.

An RNC Speaker Said Cops Would Be ‘Smart’ to Racially Profile Her Own Son

VICE
2020-08-25

Carter Sherman

“Statistically, my brown son is more likely to commit a violent offense over my white sons,” anti-abortion activist Abby Johnson said in a YouTube video earlier this year.

One of the Republican National Convention’s top speakers said in a recent video that it would be “smart” for a police officer to racially profile her biracial son, because “statistically, my brown son is more likely to commit a violent offense over my white sons.”

“I recognize that I’m gonna have to have a different conversation with Jude than I do with my brown-haired little Irish, very, very pale-skinned, white sons, as they grow up,” Abby Johnson, a prominent anti-abortion activist, said in a 15-plus-minutes video posted to YouTube in late June, after weeks of nationwide protests against the police killing of George Floyd.

“Right now, Jude is an adorable, perpetually tan-looking little brown boy,” said Johnson, whose husband blogged, in 2015, about adopting their biracial son at his birth. Johnson is white. “But one day, he’s going to grow up and he’s going to be a tall, probably sort of large, intimidating-looking-maybe brown man. And my other boys are probably gonna look like nerdy white guys.”

Read the entire article here.

I’m a Teen of Mixed Race: Here’s What It’s Like to Grow Up Biracial in America Today

Parents
2020-03-03

Adiah Siler

ILLUSTRATION BY YEJI KIM

In this week’s ‘Teen Talk’ column, a teen explains her experience growing up mixed and how parents can help their children navigate the complexities of being biracial with single-race friends and family.

In my eighteen years growing up as mixed race, I’ve only had one biracial friend. She was a year younger than me and endlessly realistic—the one friend everyone needs who tells it like it is.

“Being mixed isn’t some great injustice,” she said to me one morning after I brought up some of the discomforts I had about feeling “othered” by our friends. Growing up, my school district was predominantly white, and my identity had developed around that of my peers. Now, being in an art school where it’s much more diverse, I’ve had to acclimate to the many ways blackness presents itself around me. “Talent scouts, modeling agencies, casting directors … they all love racial ambiguity—it sells better,” she added.

I’d never thought of my mixed skin tone like this before. My mom is white and my dad is black. Although I don’t pass for white at all, with an Afro and dark skin, I am definitely light-skinned compared to others, which has its advantages. But my mixed look has definitely been complicated for me. I was 4 years old the first time I realized that my mother’s hair was nothing like mine and never would be. At age 12 I was referred to by the N-word for the first time and felt such rage and confusion that I didn’t know how to react. My white friend later explained to me that it wasn’t a big deal, her friends said it all the time…

Now 18, I have predominantly white friends, and a white partner. I’m finally at the age where I can recognize not only my privilege in being mixed, but my luck in finding both black and white people that I love and identify with.

Colorism, or discrimination based on skin complexion, plays a huge role in the ways that modern society operates and picks the minorities it wants to show. There is also truth to the fact that being mixed can be incredibly difficult and confusing at times. There have always been a thousand little things that make me feel disconnected from my single-race family and friends. I want parents to understand the complexities that come with raising a mixed child, so they can help their children navigate the “in-betweeness” that I have felt and that never really leaves.

Read the entire article here.

What It’s Like To Be Biracial And Arguing With Your White Family Right Now

The Huffington Post
2020-07-13

Brittany Wong

KLAUS VEDFELT VIA GETTY IMAGES When you’ve been vulnerable with your white relatives and shared your experiences with racism and they still deny it exists, it’s exhausting.

For multiracial Americans, having conversations with white relatives about the Black Lives Matter movement and racial injustice is often an uphill battle.

Rachel Elizabeth Weissler, a Ph.D. student at the University of Michigan, has the kind of close-knit relationship with her dad most people would envy. He lives in Southern California, where Weissler spent most of her childhood, but the two talk frequently. She calls him her “biggest cheerleader.”

But there’s one topic they always seem to dance around: race.

Weissler is biracial: Her dad is white and her mom is Black. Though her dad loves Black culture (“Black TV especially,” Weissler said) and clearly, Black women, he tenses up when his daughter wants to talk about what it’s like to be Black in America.

“He avoids the subject, and when he does bring it up, it’s often in an extremely superficial way,” Weissler said…

Read the entire article here.

Robert De Niro gets candid about raising biracial children: It’s ‘scary’

Good Morning America
2020-06-12

Danielle Long

As people around the world continue to protest in support of black lives, parents are forced to have difficult discussions with their children about what’s happening — including Robert De Niro.

During an appearance on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” the 76-year-old actor, who has six biracial children, was asked, “Have you had the conversation about race with your kids?”

“My children are all half black and I don’t have … even me, I take certain things for granted,” he admitted.

The “Irishman” star said the topic is not one they discuss often but “they know” and shared how he can relate to other parents…

Read the story and watch the video here.

“My Kids Are Getting The Message Loud And Clear: Being Black Is A Burden”

Vogue UK
2020-07-05

Christabel Nsiah-Buadi

^©Misan Harriman

Unable to shield her children from the global conversation on anti-Black racism, Christabel Nsiah-Buadi is leaning in to celebrating her kids’ #BlackBoyJoy and #BlackGirlMagic. But, she writes, real change takes time.

A few weeks ago, my daughter handed me one of her final pieces of first-grade homework. It was a memory book. On the front page, she had coloured all of the kids with brown skin. Inside, she drew a picture of herself hugging her teacher, who is Asian American. She coloured both of them with pink skin.

I found that strange, because it was the first time my kid had done that in her nearly eight years. As a child with a white father and a black mother, she is used to seeing people of different skin colours in her life. Indeed, my husband and I have made a conscious effort to make sure she could see the power in being a brown-skinned girl, because we knew that by being a Black kid living in the US or the UK, it was only a matter of time before she’d be told – by someone in her life, or something she heard, saw or watched – that she was less valued than her white friends…

Read the entire article here.

White Fathers and Their Black–White Biracial Sons

Marriage & Family Review
Volume 54, Issue 4 (2018)
pages 374-392
DOI: 10.1080/01494929.2017.1403994

Lorna Durrant, M.S., Graduate Teaching Assistant
Department of Family Sciences
Texas Woman’s University, Denton, Texas

Nerissa LeBlanc Gillum, Ph.D., Associate Professor
Department of Family Sciences
Texas Woman’s University, Denton, Texas

The purpose of this literature review was to ascertain the concerns of White fathers raising their biological Black–White biracial sons, as well as the concerns of the sons themselves. Nine databases were selected for this review. The criteria for this review were (a) studies with a sample or subsample of White fathers, (b) studies with a subsample of Black–White biracial male participants (c) articles from scholarly peer reviewed journals, and (d) a date range between 2000 and 2016. A total of eight articles were found that matched the criteria. Of the eight studies, seven were qualitative with the number of participants ranging from 10 to 31, and the quantitative study had 317 participants. Three concerns were revealed for White fathers: dealing with racism, access to minority culture, and teachers’ expectations. Three challenges for the sons were self-identification, force-choice dilemma, and appearance. Implications and future research are discussed.

Read or purchase the article here.

My grandparents were racist. Here’s how I moved on with my head held high.

The Washington Post
2020-06-23

Carolyn Copeland

The author, Carolyn Copeland, circa 1998, when she was about 7, with her father, Brian Copeland, her mother, Mary Copeland, and her brothers Casey, left, and Adam. (Carolyn Copeland)

My grandparents loved to take photos, but there are no pictures of them holding me as a baby. They weren’t in attendance at my birth, my baptism or any of my birthdays. That’s because for the first few years of my life, my grandparents rejected me and my two brothers because we are black.

I’ve hesitated over the years to share my story publicly out of fear that I would embarrass or hurt the people in my extended family, but with the demonstrations taking place around the country after the police killing of George Floyd, I feel it has never been a more important time to reveal my personal experience with racism and explain the different ways it has shown its face within my family. The age of “going along to get along” is over.

From the moment my white mother started dating my black father in the late 1980s, her father disowned her. From that point forward, on my grandfather’s orders, my parents were disinvited from all family gatherings. My grandmother — who said from the beginning that she was against the idea — still complied. Neither attended my parents’ wedding…

Read the entire article here.