Mixed Race Studies

CUNY DSI Monograph Documents Dominican Heritage of First Settler

The City University of New York
City College
2012-10-04

Juan Rodríguez, native of Santo Domingo, comes to New York in 1613 and stays when his ship sails to Holland

The first non-native to live in what is now New York City was a black or mixed race Dominican, a new monograph produced by researchers at the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute (CUNY DSI) documents. Juan Rodríguez, who was born on the colony of La Española, now the Dominican Republic, came to the Big Apple in 1613 aboard a Dutch trading vessel en route from the Caribbean. He decided to stay and live among the natives when the ship returned to Holland.
 
“This is the kind of research that produces new academic knowledge and engages in a conversation with a scholarly community who studies New York City’s early history,” said Dr. Ramona Hernández, director of CUNY DSI. “This research also serves people from a practical point of view: A very early predecessor of the large Dominican population that thrives in New York City today, Juan Rodriguez’s story belongs to the history of all New Yorkers.
 
“As residents of a port city with a uniquely multiethnic population since its very beginnings next to the mighty Hudson River, New York has always been a community of interactions and intermingling amongst races and ethnicities.”
 
The monograph was commissioned by the American Chamber of Commerce of the Dominican Republic, which will receive the first copy at a luncheon meeting at City College Thursday, October 4. The following day, a two-hour colloquium with experts in translations and transcription will examine the challenges, excitement and insights of translating the documentation for the Juan Rodríguez story.
 
Earlier this week, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg named a stretch of Broadway between W. 159th Street and W. 218th Street for Mr. Rodríguez. The section of the famed roadway runs through Washington Heights, home of one of the largest concentrations of Dominicans living outside their homeland.
 
According to archival records reviewed by DSI researchers, Mr. Rodríguez, a black or mulatto free sailor born on La Española, arrived in an estuary of the Hudson River in the spring of 1613, aboard the “Jonge Tobias,” a Dutch ship captained by Thijs Mossel. After two months presumably spent trading with Native Americans, Captain Mossel decided to return to Holland, but Mr. Rodríguez refused to make the journey and was allowed to stay on shore…

Read the entire article here.

Tufts Hapa reaches out to mixed-race students

The Tufts Daily: The Independent student newspaper of Tufts University
Medford, Massachusetts
2012-10-03

Alexandria Chu

Among the more than 300 student organizations at Tufts, there are many geared toward specific ethnicities and cultures. Tufts Hapa, a new group on campus, is working to become the only one intended to represent mixed race students.

In 2000, the United States Census was changed to allow citizens to check multiple boxes of racial identification, and the 2010 Census showed a 28 percent increase in interracial households. Tufts Hapa hopes to reflect these changes on campus.

Tufts Hapa aims to create a community of mixed race peoples of part Asian descent, according to President Joseph Wat, a senior. The club is currently in the process of receiving recognition by the Tufts Community Union (TCU) and has the support of the Asian American Center.

Tufts Hapa executive board member and senior Stephanie Howell explained that the start of her involvement in Tufts Hapa stemmed from the instability of past multiracial organizations on campus…

…Tufts Hapa’s faculty support, Assistant Professor of Economics Arthur Chiang, commented on the difficulty of achieving the balance between maintaining pride in ethnicity and solely defining oneself by it, which is particularly tricky for people of a mixed-race heritage.

“I think the basis of [your] social life shouldn’t be based on your race … It’s certainly a concern, everyone just fracturing into their own little [ethnic] groups. Of course, at the same time, no matter what background you have, you should feel some pride in your culture,” Chiang said. “It’s a little bit harder if you’re mixed, so I think a good thing for this club is the celebration of Hapa culture. It’s not an exclusionary thing, but more about learning about our experiences.”…

…Professor of History Gary Leupp notes a feeling of alienation throughout the history of people of mixed-race descent. He gives an example of an epitaph written in 1680 by Pieter Hartsinck, the son of a Dutch merchant and a Japanese woman.

According to Leupp, the epitaph is in St. Jakob’s Church in Osterode, Lower Saxony, Germany, detailing that Hartsinck and his mother were born in the East and his father in Europe.

Leupp quoted Hartsinck, “My destiny varied from the beginning … I left my homeland early in life to find my father’s country. But I could not find my true home.” Leupp explained that Hartsinck accomplished much in his life, even translating Descartes’ work into Latin from French, but his identity struggles are evident in his epitaph…

Read the entire article here.

The Hafu Project: October Newsletter

The Hafu Project Newsletter
The Hafu Project
October 2012

The Hafu Project talking at a multicultural family workshop organized by TIPP in Meguro

We hope this email finds you well. This year the summer was harsh in Japan. We do hope you got to enjoy summer wherever you are in the world!

This volume of the newsletter features an interview with hafu writer, Sandra Häfelin, who recently published a book titled “Hafu ga bijin nante mousou desukara!!” (Translation: “It’s only a myth that hafus are beautiful!!”). Sandra was one of the many supporters who kindly participated in The Hafu Project in 2009 in Tokyo. Her website “Hafu wo kangaeyou” explores the topic of hafus through everyday experiences and stories. It is such a joy to read with plenty of real episodes, we highly reccommend her website!

If you happen to live in Japan, you may have noticed a surge of media exposure of hafus. To start with, Nippon Television interviewed a dozen young hafu girls in Harajuku to discuss some of the unexpected cons of being a hafu in Japan (Zoom In Saturday, aired on Sep 15). Weekly magazine SPA also had a dedicated feature on hafus, which included the ins and outs of why hafus are often considered to be a “gaikokujin” (foreigner). In addition, Nagoya Television covered three hafu individuals with varying stories (UP!, aired on Sep 27). Each of these three media exposures had different approaches but certainly added to the current dialogue of being a hafu in Japan…

Read the entire newsletter here.

The L.A. Scene: Teaching Race and Popular Music in the 1950s

Organization of American Historians Magazine of History
Volume 26, Issue 4
pages 17-20
DOI: 10.1093/oahmag/oas030

Luis Alvarez, Associate Professor of History
University of California, San Diego

In 1956, Little Julian Herrera had one of the biggest rhythm and blues hits of the year in Los Angeles. His soulful, doo-wop style ballad, “Lonely Lonely Nights,” turned Herrera into an overnight sensation. He was soon known across the city for spectacular live performances that later drew comparisons to a young James Brown. He became a teen idol and heartthrob among Mexican American girls on the Eastside. What many of his fans may not have known, however, was that Herrera was neither Mexican American nor from L.A. He was an East Hungarian Jew who had run away from his Massachusetts home at age eleven. His given name was Ezekiel, though his probation officer knew him as Ron Gregory. After hitchhiking to Southern California, he was taken in by a Mexican American family in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of East L.A. and eventually took their surname as his own.

“Lonely Lonely Nights” was produced by the legendary Johnny Otis. Born the son of Greek immigrants in Vallejo, California, Otis came of musical age as a drummer and bandleader playing African American jazz and blues joints along Central Avenue in L.A. By the mid-1950s when he helped launch Little Julian Herrera into local stardom, Otis already was a formidable figure in the L.A. music scene who soon became known as the “Godfather of Rhythm and Blues.” He produced records, hosted radio and television programs, and organized dances and concerts. He was also regularly harassed by local authorities for creating and promoting music whose performers and audiences often crossed racial lines. Otis, in fact, considered himself “black by persuasion.” He once remarked, “Genetically, I’m pure Greek. Psychologically, environmentally, culturally, by choice, I’m a member of the black community”. In a scenario emblematic of the racial diversity of L.A.’s 1950s…

Read or purchase the article here.

Race and a Political Race

Everyday Sociology Blog
2012-09-28

Jonathan R. Wynn, Assistant Professor of Sociology
University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Dwanna L. Robertson
University of Massachusetts, Amherst

The Massachusetts Senate race between incumbent Scott Brown and Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren took an unexpected sharp turn this week. Shades of racialized language (reminiscent of the 2008 Presidential campaign) seeped in. This actually started in April, when Brown’s staffers uncovered that Warren claimed she was a minority, implicating her as committing ethnic fraud because she lacked proof of a Native American ancestry.
 
During their first political debate, Brown went straight at this issue in a prepared remark, saying, “Professor Warren claimed she was a Native American, a person of color—And as you can see, she’s not.” With this statement, Brown contends he can identify Native Americans—and other people of color—just by looking at them.

It would be humorous—Did she accidentally forget to braid her hair and wear her moccasins?—if it didn’t have serious undertones cutting at the heart of race and politics in the U.S.. Brown suggests Warren received special consideration for claiming she was part Cherokee. “When you are a U.S. Senator,” he stated, “you have to pass a test and that’s one of character and honesty and truthfulness. I believe and others believe she’s failed that test.” But did Warren fail the test?…

..Back to Brown’s assertion idea that our eyes can tell us a person’s race. Sociologist Mary Campbell has been working on misclassification of race based upon skin tone, finding not only that American Indians experience a high level of misidentification, but that in the process they also experience higher levels of psychological distress…

There is, however, a real challenge when it comes to speaking of how indigenous folk look. It is not just that it’s a bad idea to think facial features are satisfactory markers of race. It is that the emphasis on perception also indicates a complete misunderstanding of U.S. History: People who claim First Nation Heritage are of a mixed ethnic background due to generations of attempted racial extermination, cultural oppression, and a breaking of tribal links to land and community…

Read the entire article here.

2010 Census Shows Multiple-Race Population Grew Faster Than Single-Race Population

United States Census Bureau
New Releases
News Release: CB12-182
2012-09-27

The 2010 Census showed that people who reported multiple races grew by a larger percentage than those reporting a single race. According to the 2010 Census brief The Two or More Races Population: 2010, the population reporting multiple races (9.0 million) grew by 32.0 percent from 2000 to 2010, compared with those who reported a single race, which grew by 9.2 percent.

Overall, the total U.S. population increased by 9.7 percent since 2000, however, many multiple-race groups increased by 50 percent or more.

The first time in U.S. history that people were presented with the option to self-identify with more than one race came on the 2000 Census questionnaire. Therefore, the examination of data from the 2000 and 2010 censuses provides the first comparisons on multiple-race combinations in the United States. An effective way to compare the multiple-race data is to examine changes in specific combinations, such as white and black, white and Asian, or black and Asian.

“These comparisons show substantial growth in the multiple-race population, providing detailed insights to how this population has grown and diversified over the past decade,” said Nicholas Jones, chief of the U.S. Census Bureau’s Racial Statistics Branch…

Read the entire news release here.

The colour of money in multiracial Jamaica

The Jamaica Gleaner
Jamaica, West Indies
2012-09-23

Carolyn Cooper, Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies
University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica

On a flight from Miami several years ago, I sat next to a little girl who seemed to be about 10 or so years of age. She was looking through a magazine and came across a picture of three little girls – black, white and brown. I mischievously asked her, “Which one of them looks like you?” She picked the black child.

I then asked her, “Which one do you look like?” And, believe it or not, she chose the brown child. ‘Mi nearly dead.’ I wondered if she had misunderstood. After all, it was a kind of trick question I was asking her about racial identity. But no, she did understand. As far as she was concerned, the black girl looked like her but she did not look like the black girl. And, in a funny way, it made perfectly good sense. It’s OK for the black girl to look like her; but not for her to look like the black girl.

So who is responsible for this crazy conundrum? Was this just an exceptional case of a little child confused by the ‘fool-fool’ questions of a nosy adult? Or were the little girl’s curious answers a sign of our collective paranoia about race in Jamaica? How does our national motto complexify the problem, as the Americans say? Oh, yes! If you can simplify, it’s perfectly logical to complexify…

Read the entire essay here.

Mixed-race teen in the middle: who will she choose?

Tampa Bay Times
St. Petersburg, Florida
2012-09-23

Leonora LaPeter Anton, Times Staff Writer

Her dark eyes scanned the fluorescent-lit lunchroom, locking onto her friends in the center of the chaos. Her thoughts sprayed in many directions: the upcoming eighth-grade formal, a surprisingly bad grade she recently got on an English paper, her role in the school play.

She passed a table full of white girls and one of them high-fived her. She passed a table full of white boys and one of them called her name. She arrived at a table full of black girls — the table where she sits almost every day. As she set her notebook down, one of her best girlfriends ignored her and moved to another table.

Asianna Williams, 14, wanted to ignore the drama. She is a light-skinned mixed-race girl trying to discover who she is in a society that still carves up territory by race. Nowhere was this more evident than in the lunchroom at Thurgood Marshall Fundamental Middle School. Table after table, as far as the eye could see, white faces congregated around one table, black faces around another.

Asianna’s father is black and her mother is white. Years ago, this might have relegated her to a no-man’s land, not fully welcomed by either blacks or whites. Now, thanks in part to sheer numbers (last year, there were 42 other mixed-race students at Thurgood Marshall), Asianna doesn’t feel ostracism. But she does feel pressure.

Pressure to choose black kids. Pressure to choose white kids. Like the tables in the lunchroom, nearly everything Asianna does — and she does a lot of things — comes with an overlay of race.

But what if you were someone who didn’t want to choose?…

…There have always been people of mixed race in American society. Cultural taboos and prejudice often meant they simply identified themselves as black, or if their skin was sufficiently light-colored, tried to pass as white…

Read the entire article here.

Standing Up at an Early Age

The New York Times
2012-09-14

Adam Himmelsbach

Views on Gay Rights of Ravens’ Ayanbadejo Are Rooted in Upbringing

In recent weeks, Baltimore Ravens linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo has been praised in many quarters for supporting the legalization of same-sex marriage. His stance is not new, but it reached a wider audience after a Maryland legislator urged the Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti to silence him.

For Ayanbadejo, 36, it was a comforting shift from 2009, when he became one of the first athletes from a major American professional sports team to speak out in support of same-sex marriage. That year, he found gay slurs directed at him on Internet message boards. In the Ravens’ locker room, players made crude remarks and asked him when he would reveal his homosexuality, he said.

“If I was walking by, and they wanted to be immature and make comments, I’d keep walking,” said Ayanbadejo, who has a 1-year-old son and a 6-year-old daughter with his longtime girlfriend. “If they wanted to be real men and have conversations, I would have, but no one did.”

If those players had heard Ayanbadejo’s story, they would have learned how his views were shaped. His father is Nigerian, and his mother is Irish-American, and he was given the first name Oladele, which translates to “wealth follows me home.” But for much of his childhood, that did not ring true…

…Ayanbadejo began going by his middle name, Brendon, to fit in. He starred for Santa Cruz High School’s football team, but he was also active in theater, rode a skateboard and befriended many openly gay students. He had been accepted as a biracial boy from a Chicago housing project, so he accepted everyone else’s differences, too, he said…

Read the entire article here.

Mosley Wotta releases new album

The Bulletin
Bend, Oregon
2012-09-14

Ben Salmon

Bend hip-hop artist performs in Bend tonight

Anyone who knows local artist, musician and educator Jason Graham—aka MOsley WOtta, leader of the hip-hop band of the same name—knows that his relocation to Bend at age 9 from Chicago’s north side has had a profound and longstanding effect on his worldview, and thus, his art.

Get Graham, 29, talking (not a difficult task at all), and you’re likely to eventually hear about his experience as a mixed-race kid moving from an ultra-urban environment to the lily-white Bend of a decade ago. And he won’t hesitate to point out that his own stereotypes about “the country” were as deeply entrenched as those he encountered in others.

The collision of race and culture is a subject Graham has always touched on in his music, going back to his time in the local rap collective Person People, up through his first solo album, 2010’s “Wake.”

But tonight, Graham will celebrate the release of the second Mosley Wotta album, “KinKonK,” at the old PoetHouse Art space in Bend (see “If you go”), and at the same time, he’ll unveil a more direct, more forceful and more thoughtful set of songs on the subject than he ever has before. It’s also material that may surprise some of the folks who’ve come to love the Mosley Wotta band that, since winning Bend’s inaugural Last Band Standing competition two years ago, has dominated local festival stages with its upbeat funk-hop and positive message of unity through music…

Read the entire article here.