Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

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Category: Barack Obama

  • What’s Race Got to Do With It?

    What’s Race Got to Do With It? The New York Times 2012-01-14 Lee Seigel Mitt Romney may not have officially clinched the Republican nomination, but his victory has never really been in doubt. Nor has his viability in November: the most fanatical Tea Partiers are not about to withhold their votes and risk allowing President…

  • “Multiracial” Genes?

    Barack Obama can call himself black, white magenta, green, or whatever he wants, it really does not matter socially. However, genes are genes and his genes are multiracial. Barack Obama has a white mother and a black father, and to categorize him as only one race medically is just wrong, inaccurate, and likely to cost…

  • Color and Cultural Identity

    Color and Cultural Identity BlogTalkRadio Bruce Hurwitz Presents 2012-01-12, 18:00Z (13:00 EST, 10:00 PST) Bruce Hurwitz, Host Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Visiting Scholar Brown University Ph.D. Forum introduces listeners to doctoral and post-doctoral students and their cutting-edge research in the arts, sciences, or humanities. As part of our Ph.D. Forum, I will be joined by Marcia…

  • The New Racial Dialogue: Arriving at Whiteness in the Age of Obama

    The New Racial Dialogue: Arriving at Whiteness in the Age of Obama Journal of African American Studies Volume 13, Number 2 (June 2009) (“Joy Unspeakable: The First African American President”) pages 184-186 DOI: 10.1007/s12111-008-9077-y David H. Roane My essay issues a challenge for whites to see the blackness of President-Elect Obama as a reflection of…

  • Obama and the complexities of identity

    Obama and the complexities of identity The San Diego Union-Tribune 2008-06-19 Bey-Ling Sha, Professor of Journalism and Media Studies San Diego State University In a recent commentary titled “What He Overcame,” Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson described Barack Obama as a “young, black, first-term senator.” In her campaign-suspension speech, Hillary Clinton said, “Could an African-American…

  • A White Woman From Kansas

    A White Woman From Kansas The New York Times 2011-06-02 Roger Cohen LONDON—For a long time Barack Obama’s mother was little more than the “white woman from Wichita” mentioned in an early Los Angeles Times profile of the future president. She was the pale Kansan silhouette against whom Obama drew the vivid Kenyan figure of…

  • Obama’s story resonates in racially diverse Brazil

    Obama’s story resonates in racially diverse Brazil Washington Post 2011-03-18 Juan Forero, Staff Writer RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazil is a big gumbo of ethnicities, its people proud of their diversity and confident their country is among the most tolerant of nations. But this country—a leading center of black culture—has never had a black president.…

  • The Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency

    The Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency Random House, Inc. 2011-08-16 336 pages Hardback ISBN: 978-0-307-37789-0 Paperback ISBN: 978-0-307-45555-0 Randall Kennedy, Michael R. Klein Professor of Law Harvard Law School Timely—as the 2012 presidential election nears—and controversial, here is the first book by a major African-American public intellectual on racial…

  • When It Counts—More On Obama and the Census

    When It Counts—More On Obama and the Census InterfaithFamiliy.com 2010-05-03 Ruth Abrams Elizabeth Chang wrote in an op-ed in the Washington Post last week, “Why Obama should not have checked ‘black’ on his census form,” Although I knew Obama self-identifies as African American, I was disappointed when I read that that’s what he checked on…

  • A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mother

    A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mother Riverhead an Imprint of Penguin Press 2011-05-03 384 pages 9.25 x 6.25in Hardcover ISBN: 9781594487972 Paperback ISBN: 9781594485596 Janny Scott A major publishing event: an unprecedented look into the life of the woman who most singularly shaped Barack Obama—his mother. Barack Obama has written extensively…