Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

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Category: Barack Obama

  • When a Boy Found a Familiar Feel in a Pat of the Head of State

    A copy of the photo hangs in the Philadelphia family’s living room with several others taken that day. Mr. Philadelphia, now in Afghanistan for the State Department, said: “It’s important for black children to see a black man as president. You can believe that any position is possible to achieve if you see a black…

  • Black Mormons and the Politics of Identity

    Black Mormons and the Politics of Identity The New York Times 2012-05-22 Susan Saulny SALT LAKE CITY — When Marguerite Driessen, a professor here, entered Brigham Young University in the early 1980s, she was the first black person many Mormon students had ever met, and she spent a good bit of her college time debunking…

  • Out writer Andrew Jolivétte on Obama and race

    Out writer Andrew Jolivétte on Obama and race Windy City Times Chicago, Illinois 2012-02-21 David-Elijah Nahmod History was made a few short years ago, when Barack Obama became the first African American president in U.S. history. Though it’s been mentioned, the fact that the president is actually half white hasn’t gotten nearly as much attention.…

  • A Medical Humanities Perspective On Racial Borderlands

    A Medical Humanities Perspective On Racial Borderlands Literature, Arts and Medicine Blog 2008-06-30 Felice Aull, Ph.D., M.A., Associate Professor of Physiology and Neuroscience; Editor in Chief, Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database New York University School of Medicine I have long been interested in the metaphor of borderlands as a tool for exploring areas of ambiguity…

  • Obama election stokes debate over what is biracial

    Heather Curry believes President Barack Obama is denying his white heritage by identifying himself as African-American.

  • How the Movies Made a President

    How the Movies Made a President The New York Times 2009-01-16 Manohla Dargis A. O. Scott Barack Obama’s victory in November demonstrated, to the surprise of many Americans and much of the world, that we were ready to see a black man as president. Of course, we had seen several black presidents already, not in…

  • 4 Years Later, Race Is Still Issue for Some Voters

    4 Years Later, Race Is Still Issue for Some Voters The New York Times 2012-05-03 Sabrina Tavernise STEUBENVILLE, Ohio — This is the land of die-hard Democrats — mill workers, coal miners and union members. They have voted party line for generations, forming a reliable constituency for just about any Democrat who decides to run…

  • Cultural Inversion and the One-Drop Rule: An Essay on Biology, Racial Classification, and the Rhetoric of Racial Transcendence

    In this article, my thesis is simple. If racial caste has been upended by changes in legal rules that created a hierarchical racial structure, its demise also has been hastened by the use of symbols, a strategy of cultural inversion with respect to the meaning of race.

  • More children identify as ‘biracial’: just a choice or a good thing?

    More children identify as ‘biracial’: just a choice or a good thing? The Washington Post 2012-04-26 Mary C. Curtis It’s been happening for a while — census data show it. The number of mixed-race babies has quickly grown in the last decade, a trend that’s no surprise in an increasingly diverse country. Men and women…

  • As Racist as We Wish to Be: Project RACE, “The Talk”, Obama and the Fear of Blackness

    As Racist as We Wish to Be: Project RACE, “The Talk”, Obama and the Fear of Blackness MixedRaceStudies.org 2012-04-10 Steven F. Riley Late last year, I opined about the inability of some activists in the multiracial identity movement to combat racism.  It is difficult to combat racism if you are not anti-racist and quite impossible…