Mixed Race Studies

Let’s talk about sex (and race, and gender, and intersectionality)

Open City
2015-03-23

Esther Wang

N’jaila Rhee is many things — a writer; a phone sex operator, web cam girl, and former exotic dancer; a nerd; and a self-described “Blasian bitch.”

A native of New Jersey and a Rutgers University alumna, she’s carved out a niche for herself as a vocal critic and commentator on issues ranging from sex workers’ rights to favorite toys to racism in the porn industry. She uses her blog, social media, and “After Dark,” the popular podcast she co-hosts on the “This Week in Blackness” network, as platforms to voice her provocative positions.

N’jaila’s mission, it seems, is to get us all to bring our private desires out from the bedroom and into the open. Do this, and “we’re all going to be a little more healthy,” she explained on a recent evening in a Brooklyn coffee shop.

We chatted about the need for more Asian American porn, her thoughts on 50 Shades of Grey, and what it’s like to, as she put it, be constantly “dancing at the intersections of race, sex, and identity.”,,,

You became a stripper in college. Why did you decide to become a dancer?

Sex is the most natural way that I can relate to other people. And it’s always something that just felt innately right. So because it was so easy for me to express myself sexually, it was something that I felt very comfortable with…

…Did being Blasian impact the kind of work you got?

Certain promoters would want to highlight that I was mixed race, and they’d want me to say that I was like, Southeast Asian, or not Black. Or one guy wanted me to not speak English. I was uncomfortable with a lot, obviously.

I was told I couldn’t have my hair natural. It’s not like I have the curliest of ‘fros. But they didn’t want me to have natural hair, so I would wear a hair weave because you couldn’t be a mixed Blasian if you didn’t have silky straight hair.

I had to buy my identity for $220 a pop…

Read the entire interview here.

The debate over who counts as ‘American’ is nothing new

The Washington Post
2015-05-04

Alex Laughlin

(Illustration by Chris Kindred for The Washington Post))

Virginia Matsuoka was 10 years old when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

She was playing tag football with her older brothers when her mother came outside and told them what had happened.

“And I remember my father came up behind me there,” Matsuoka said. “He put his arm around me and he said, ‘This is so bad, Ginger. This is bad.’”

Matsuoka’s mother was American and white, but her father was Japanese. By April 1942, her family was torn apart. Her father was working in Colorado, spared a stint in the internment camps because he had helpful law enforcement connections. He taught martial arts to police officers there. Two of her brothers were serving in the U.S. Army. And Matsuoka and two of her other brothers were in the Tanforan Assembly Center, an internment camp built around a racetrack near San Francisco.

Despite being displaced and separated, Matsuoka and her family remained patriotic. She recalls asking her father what it was like for her: “He said, ‘You know, Ginger, this was my country. I came here, they gave me the opportunity to make a name for myself, and then the war came along so you do things that you’ve got to do.’”

Hear Matsuoka recall her experiences in Tanforan and talk about what it was like returning to school after being separated from her friends and family…

Listen to the podcast (00:15:59) here.

Enrico Dungca’s The Amerasian Photography Project: The Forgotten Americans

Resource
2015-08-05

Marky Ramone Go

As one of the free world’s oldest allies, the United States and the Philippines have shared a storied past together. From fighting alongside each other to delay the Japanese’ war plans in World War II, to forming an armed presence in the Pacific by virtue of the United States two military bases; Clark Air Base and US Naval Base in Northern Luzon. However, hidden from these historical bonds lies a complex weave of direct blood descendants, of abandoned children sired by some members of the US Military during their service at the US bases in the Philippines, a large legion of fatherless men and women who possess multi-ethnicity looks born to single mothers, remains in search of half their roots. Often bullied in school for growing up in a broken household, these individuals harbors a secret wish of knowing their real fathers. For photographer Enrico Dungca, photographing them in order to send their message across the globe became a personal mission “The story begins with a young man I met during a trip in my birthplace, Angeles City. I was born and raised there and lived near the former Clark Air Base. I knew about the Amerasians and in fact witnessed many of them bullied and discriminated. I didn’t think much of it then for I was young and naive,” Dungca tells Resource Magazine.  More than 20 years after the last US Military Base closed down, an undeniable footprint of our Superpower ally still remains – and for some, something that needs to find closure soon…

Read the entire article here.

The Philosophy Of Multiracial Identity Vs. The Cult Of Antiracism

The Daily Caller
2017-05-03

Charles Michael Byrd, Freelance Writer
Queens, New York

Born the illegitimate, white-looking son of a dark-skinned woman in a small Virginia town in the 1950s, I squandered countless years wandering in the darkest mental ignorance before ultimately discovering that my atma-dharma (the natural devotional inclination of the soul or atma) or purpose on this planet was not to be a loyal servant to racial identity politics. Our eternal atma-dharma has nothing to do with the dharma of body, dynasty, caste or race. Those falsely identifying the body as the real self cannot fathom this.

That racial inheritance made me keenly aware, however, of the struggles multiracials endure regarding personal identification in a society that has only grudgingly begun publicly accepting the notion of hybridity. Even Barack Obama spent eight years on the global stage identifying exclusively as black, although the entire world knew of his white mother.

Against that backdrop, critics deride as naive post-racialism the notion that multiracial self-identification on the part of an ever increasing number of people may be, as the late mixed-race poet, novelist and philosopher Jean Toomer opined, “the turning point for the return of mankind, now divided into hostile races, to one unified race, namely, to the human race.”…

Read the entire article here.

What Does Identifying as Afro-Latina Really Mean?

Hip Latina
2017-05-04

Johanna Ferreira
Brooklyn, New York

Pic of author. Photo Credit: Karina Munoz

Racial identity for a lot of U.S. born Latinos, is a very complex, multi-dimensional, and multi-faceted thing. As a Dominican-American woman born and raised in Queens, New York, I can attest to that. All I have to do is take a good look in the mirror to know that aside from being a Latina, I am also mixed race. I see it in my tan complexion, my light hazel eyes, my dark curly hair (that’s neither tight nor loose), my plump lips, my small nose, and my bottom-heavy figure I inherited from my Dominican mother. I am a beautiful blend of European and African ancestry and yet there still seems to be so much confusion around me identifying as Afro-Latina. Why is that?

The term Afro-Latino is a term some Latinos use as a way to identify their racial background but it’s one that still triggers a lot of confusion, pain, and shame for many. This is due in large to the complex and varied nature of racial identity in the Latino community.

According to a 2016 Pew Research study, one quarter of all U.S. Latinos self-identify as Afro-Latino, Afro-Caribbean or of African descent with roots in Latin America. Mind you, this is only taking into consideration the amount of Afro-Latinos who actually identify that way. The study shows that a lot of Afro-Latinos in the states don’t identify as Afro-Latino.

So much of our Latin American culture and history involves strong African influence. We see it in our varied skin tones, facial features, and hair textures and we experience it in our food and music. According to Pew Research, in Brazil, half of the population is of African descent (Black or mixed-race Black). In Cuba, Blacks and mixed-race Blacks make up more than a third of the country’s population. And according to the Central Intelligence Agency, 11 percent of the population in the Dominican Republic is Black while 73 percent of the population is mixed-race Black. That’s huge!

So why are there still so many Latinos out there hesitant to call themselves Afro-Latinos? Well for starters, not everyone understands the actual definition of Afro-Latino…

Read the entire article here.

Playing in the Light: A Novel

The New Press
November 2007
224 pages
5 1/2 x 8 1/4
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-59558-221-8

Zoë Wicomb, Emeritus Professor
University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, United Kingdom

Set in a beautifully rendered 1990s Cape Town, Zoë Wicomb’s celebrated novel revolves around Marion Campbell, who runs a travel agency but hates traveling, and who, in post-apartheid society, must negotiate the complexities of a knotty relationship with Brenda, her first black employee. As Alison McCulloch noted in the New York Times, “Wicomb deftly explores the ghastly soup of racism in all its unglory—denial, tradition, habit, stupidity, fear—and manages to do so without moralizing or becoming formulaic.”

Caught in the narrow world of private interests and self-advancement, Marion eschews national politics until the Truth and Reconciliation Commission throws up information that brings into question not only her family’s past but her identity and her rightful place in contemporary South African society. “Stylistically nuanced and psychologically astute” (Kirkus), Playing in the Light is as powerful in its depiction of Marion’s personal journey as it is in its depiction of South Africa’s bizarre, brutal history.

I speak, therefore I am: Meus idiomas

Varsity
Cambridge, England
2017-02-10

Eduardo Baptista

“But who am I to patronise them? I seem to have developed a tendency to shout mata (literally ‘kill’ in Portuguese) whenever I or my teammates execute a play under high pressure.” Bianca Bueno

Eduardo Baptista talks about identity at the crossroads of swearing in Portuguese, struggling with Korean fluency, and sounding like a History student in English

It’s no news that we use language everyday to convey knowledge, ideas, and emotions of the most diverse kind. But it’s more intriguing how language directs us as much as we direct language, kind of like a stubborn GPS that doesn’t adjust to the driver’s every whim. It is often difficult to be self-aware of just how much language affects our personality and how we express it.

In my case, this self-awareness came about naturally, a consequence of being a mixed-race international student in Cambridge, spending holidays in Portugal, skipping Korean school as a kid, and experiencing some other fantastic cultures along the way…

Read the entire article here.

Rachel Dolezal: why ignoring the painful past of “passing” is indefensible

The Conversation
2017-05-04

Londiwe H. Gamedze, Tutor, MA student
University of Cape Town

Civil rights advocate Rachel Dolezal has been accused of falsely claiming she is African-American. Stephanie Keith/Reuters

In 2015, American Rachel Dolezal captured the public imagination when the media discovered that she was white and had been passing as black for nearly a decade.

Dolezal, who has had white ancestors for over three centuries, checked boxes like “black” and “African-American” on application forms, darkened her skin, and began to wear her hair in African-American styles. She lied about her past and family, and attempted to sue her alma mater, historically black Howard University for reverse racism.

“Black” Dolezal was a lecturer in Africana studies and president of her local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People NAACP.

She recently visited South Africa to discuss non-racialism, but received resistance against her self-identification as “trans-black” and her claim to an authentic, internal black identity. This isn’t surprising given the brutality of the country’s racial past.

Read the entire article here.

The long history and legacy of passing in America

The Washington Post
2017-05-03

Alex Laughlin

(Illustration by Chris Kindred for The Washington Post)

Anita Hemmings was Vassar College’s first African American graduate. But no one was supposed to know that she was black.

A light-skinned mixed-race woman, Hemmings passed as white for most of her time at Vassar — until her roommate hired a private investigator to find out the truth.

Hemmings graduated college in 1897 and continued passing as white for the rest of her life. Her story fits in with a broader history of African Americans passing in this country for personal safety, economic and social reasons.

In this episode of “Other: Mixed Race in America,” we learn the story of Hemmings, and we also learn about the legacy of passing that is inherited through generations of mixed-race Americans…

Listen to the podcast (00:19:12) here.

The Death of Race: Building a New Christianity in a Racial World

Fortress Press
2016-11-01
182 pages
Paperback ISBN: 9781506408880
Ebook ISBN: 9781506408897
5.50 x 8.50

Brian Bantum, Neil F. and Ila A. Professor of Theology
Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, Evanston, Illinois

Brian Bantum says that race is not merely an intellectual category or a biological fact. Much like the incarnation, it is a “word made flesh,” the confluence of various powers that allow some to organize and dominate the lives of others. In this way, racism is a deeply theological problem, one that is central to the Christian story and one that plays out daily in the United States and throughout the world.

In The Death of Race, Bantum argues that our attempts to heal racism will not succeed until we address what gives rise to racism in the first place: a fallen understanding of our bodies that sees difference as something to resist, defeat, or subdue. Therefore, he examines the question of race, but through the lens of our bodies and what our bodies mean in the midst of a complicated, racialized world, one that perpetually dehumanizes dark bodies, thereby rendering all of us less than God’s intention.

Table of Contents

• 1. Race Is a Story Written on My Body
• 2. Bodies Matter
• 3. Naked and Ashamed
• 4. This Is My Body, Born for You
• 5. Jesus Walks
• 6. Jesus Makes Us Free to Become Like Mary
• 7. Race Must Die
• 8. There Is Life in the Tomb
• Epilogue