Mixed Race Studies

Rheinland

2013
Mokoari Street Productions
Berlin, Germany
Written and directed by Lemohang J. Mosese
Produced by Hannah Stockmann, Julius B. Franklin & Christian Wagner

During the first World War the French government forced African men—many coming from Senegal or Cameroon —from their colonies to fight for the French army in the Rheinland. ​In 1919, there were between 25,000 and 40,000 African soldiers from the colonies based in the Rhineland. After Germany’s defeat, some of the soldiers stayed and founded families.

Their lives, which were already scarred by discrimination and racism were threatened existentially when Hitler and the Nazi-Party seized power. In 1937 the so called Commission Number 3 was instated which had the secret order to sterilise all so called “Rheinlandbastards“, a derogatory term used for the offsprings of white German women and African men. Local officials reported the “Rheinlandbastards” living under their jurisdiction and with their help a vast number of children was forcefully sterilised or disappeared forever. In “Mein Kampf” Hitler referred to them as contaminators of the white race “by Negro blood on the Rhine in the heart of Europe.”

Rheinland tells the story of the so called “Rheinlandbastards” through the eyes of 12-year-old Joachim, the son of the Senegalese Awa and the German Annemarie. Joachim is forced to deal with his identity when the village his family lives in becomes more and more hostile.

For more information, click here.

A Lot Like You

DePaul University
Center for Intercultural Programs
LPC-Cortelyou Commons
2324 N Fremont St.
2013-10-15, 18:00-19:00 CDT (Local Time)

Join documentary filmmaker Eliaichi Kimaro for a screening and discussion of scenes from A Lot Like Me, her own original autobiographical journey of self-discovery. Her film follows her experience as a mixed-race, first-generation American reconciling the culture she’s inherited with how she defines herself today.

For more information, click here.

Lecture by Nayland Blake

California College of the Arts
Timken Lecture Hall, San Francisco Campus
Graduate Studies Lectue Series
2012-11-27, 19:00 PST

Nayland Blake’s mixed-media work in sculpture and installation has been variously described as disturbing, provocative, elusive, tormented, sinister, hysterical, brutal, and tender. Often incorporating themes of masochism, it also manifests two other major threads: his biracial heritage and what he calls his pansexuality.

Blake was included in the 1991 Whitney Biennial and the controversial Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1994. His work is in the collections of SFMOMA, the Whitney Museum, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. He chairs the International Photography Center —Bard MFA program, and he lives and works in Brooklyn.

Belle [World Premiere]

Toronto International Film Festival 2013
TIFF Bell Lightbox
Reitman Square
350 King Street West
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
2013-09-05 through 2013-09-15

Film Information:

Directed by Amma Asante
2013
105 minutes

Gugu Mbatha-Raw takes the title role alongside Tom Wilkinson, Miranda Richardson, Emily Watson and Canada’s Sarah Gadon in the true story of Dido Elizabeth Belle, the illegitimate, bi-racial daughter of a Royal Navy admiral in 18th-century Britain.

Fans of English period drama are accustomed to its gorgeous settings, social graces, and sophisticated language. But what’s often missing from those adaptations of Jane Austen or the Brontës is the institution at the foundation of that refined life: slavery. Austen wrote about how the slave trade made British gentry wealthy, but until now no film has brought both the glory and the contradictions of that life to the screen in such a powerful fashion.

In late eighteenth century England, Dido Elizabeth Belle is born to a white British admiral and a black Caribbean slave. The admiral’s well-bred family is appalled, but when he returns to sea, custom dictates that they raise his child as an aristocrat. Britain’s imposing Lord Mansfield (Tom Wilkinson) is both Dido’s uncle and the family patriarch, and instructs this biracial young woman (Gugu Mbatha Raw) to respect both the law and the social codes of her station. She is a lady, but an embarrassment. How is she ever to marry?…

For more information, click here.

The Debate: Multiracial Identity

The Agenda with Steve Paikin
TVO (TV Ontario)
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
2011-07-22, 20:00 EDT (Local Time)
Also at: 2011-07-25, 05:00 EDT (Local Time)

Piya Chattopadhyay, Host

Guests (in order of appearance)

Rainier Spencer, Director of the Afro-American Studies Program
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
(Author of three books on multiracialism including, Reproducing Race: The Paradox of Generation Mix, 2011)

Minelle Mahtani, Professor of Geography and Journalism
University of Toronto

Ravi Jain,  Immigration Lawyer
Green and Spiegel, Toronto

Sarah Grzincic, Graduate Student
Ontario Institue for Studies in Education
University of Toronto

Jean Teillet, Partner (and the great grand niece of Louis Riel)
Pape Salter Teillet

Producers

Stavros Rougas, Associate Producer

Walk down the street in any Canadian city. The face of Canada is changing, no longer predominantly white and of European descent. How does being multiracial shape your identity? What policy changes are needed to best reflect the changing face of our society?

For more information, click here.

Brown Babies: The Mischlingskinder Story

Regina Griffin Films, Inc.
2011
102 minutes
color
United States

Regina Griffin, Director

Brown Babies: The Mischlingskinder Story reveals the tragic lives of biracial, bicultural children, unwanted, ignored and forgotten by enemy nations. Imagine being born in a place and time where racism and hatred run rampant, and your mother is white and German and your father is a black American serviceman. Brown Babies: The Mischlingskinder Story tells the painful and personal story of a forgotten piece of world history through eyes of the people who suffered most.

• ŸBest Documentary, American Black Film Festival 2011
• Best Film, Audience Award, African-American Women in Cinema 2011
• HBO Finalist, Martha’s Vineyard Black Film Festival, 2011
• Best Documentary Nominee, Black Reel Awards, 2012

White Privilege: A Multimedia Analysis

The Sociological Cinema: teaching & learning sociology through video
2013-07-08

Paul Dean, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Anthropology
Ohio Wesleyan University

White privilege refers to the unearned advantages that whites receive because of their skin color. It includes a vast array of concrete advantages varying from institutional settings (systemic discrimination in housing markets) to everyday encounters (e.g. being able to shop in a store without getting followed). They provide a variety of social and economic benefits, and can be cashed in, to confer greater power, authority, and status upon whites. But as Peggy McIntosh argues in “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” these privileges are usually invisible to people who benefit from.

Largely because these advantages are invisible, it is no surprise that many people deny the existence of white privilege. For example, we have seen this denial throughout our Facebook page, and comments on previous posts. Some of the critics makes claims such as “White privilege is a myth” and “What we really have in America today is black privilege.” If you venture over to the entry on white privilege at Urban Dictionary, you see definitions like this: White privilege is “the racist idea that simply being white benefits people in some unexplainable way, and that discriminating against white people is not only okay, but enlightened and necessary” and “A term used as a blanket condemnation of any success a white person may have.” Throughout these discussions and comments, you see that not only do some people deny any existence of white privilege, but they do so with such anger and emotion that is very striking. For many people, they feel wronged to be told that they may have unearned advantages from their skin color, and they are more comfortable believing that their accomplishments in life are based solely on their own hard work and merit.

So is white privilege real? Yes. And contrary to the definition above at Urban Dictionary, it is clearly explainable. By drawing upon many of our previous posts here, I will curate a multimedia look at white privilege, how it works, and how we might be able to talk about it with people who deny its existence…

Read the entire article here.

Remarks by the President on Trayvon Martin

The White House
Office of the Press Secretary
James S. Brady Press Briefing Room
2013-07-19, 17:33Z (13:33 EDT)

Barack H. Obama, President of the United States

I wanted to come out here, first of all, to tell you that Jay is prepared for all your questions and is very much looking forward to the session.  The second thing is I want to let you know that over the next couple of weeks, there’s going to obviously be a whole range of issues—immigration, economics, et cetera−we’ll try to arrange a fuller press conference to address your questions.

The reason I actually wanted to come out today is not to take questions, but to speak to an issue that obviously has gotten a lot of attention over the course of the last week—the issue of the Trayvon Martin ruling.  I gave a preliminary statement right after the ruling on Sunday.  But watching the debate over the course of the last week, I thought it might be useful for me to expand on my thoughts a little bit.

First of all, I want to make sure that, once again, I send my thoughts and prayers, as well as Michelle’s, to the family of Trayvon Martin, and to remark on the incredible grace and dignity with which they’ve dealt with the entire situation.  I can only imagine what they’re going through, and it’s remarkable how they’ve handled it…

..You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot I said that this could have been my son.  Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.  And when you think about why, in the African American community at least, there’s a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it’s important to recognize that the African American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that doesn’t go away.

There are very few African American men in this country who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store.  That includes me.  There are very few African American men who haven’t had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars.  That happens to me—at least before I was a senator.  There are very few African Americans who haven’t had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off.  That happens often…

…And for those who resist that idea that we should think about something like these “stand your ground” laws, I just ask people to consider if Trayvon Martin was of age and armed, could he have stood his ground on that sidewalk? And do we actually think that he would have been justified in shooting Mr. Zimmerman, who had followed him in a car, because he felt threatened?

And if the answer to that question is at least ambiguous, it seems to me that we might want to examine those kinds of laws…

Read the entire transcript here.

In Wake of Zimmerman Verdict, Obama Makes Extensive Statement on Race in America [with video]

The New York Times
2013-07-19

Mark Landler, White House Correspondent

Michael D. Shear, White House Correspondent

WASHINGTON — President Obama, making a surprise appearance on Friday in the White House briefing room to address the verdict in the Trayvon Martin killing, spoke in personal terms about the experience of being a black man in the United States, trying to put the case in the perspective of African-Americans. They were Mr. Obama’s most extensive comments on race since 2008, and his most extensive as president.

“I think it’s important to recognize that the African-American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that — that doesn’t go away,” Mr. Obama said in the briefing room. “There are very few African-American men in this country who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store. That includes me.”…

…Mr. Obama issued a statement shortly after the verdict. But on Friday, he talked more broadly about his own feelings about the verdict and the impact it has had among African-Americans. “You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot, I said that this could have been my son,” he said. “Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.”…

…Mr. Obama had been under pressure from some African-Americans to weigh in more forcefully after the verdict. For several days, his spokesman deflected questions about Mr. Obama reaction.

But on Friday, after several days of silence, the president appeared eager to offer his thoughts. He declined to take questions, but talked at length about his personal experience as a black man and about the historical context that shapes African-American responses to cases like the one involving Mr. Martin.

“That all contributes, I think, to a sense that if a white male teen was involved in the same kind of scenario, that, from top to bottom, both the outcome and the aftermath might have been different,” Mr. Obama said.

When Mr. Martin was shot in 2012, the president offered an emotional response, saying that “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon” and adding that “When I think about this boy, I think about my own kids.”…

Read the entire article here.

Brazilians of African descent demand equality

Al Jazeera English
2013-07-02

Rachel Levin

“Brazil is one of the most socially unequal countries in the world, we’re selling the image that everything is good and we’ll host the World Cup but it’s a country that denies opportunity to its own people.” —Lais Nascimento, student

Eighty percent of Brazilians are originally from Africa and they say they suffer discrimination

Tens of thousands of Brazilians are renewing the decades-old struggle for racial equality, and are staging protests to draw attention to their grievances.

Eighty percent of Brazilians are of African descent and they say they suffer discrimination.

Al Jazeera’s Rachel Levin has this report from Salvador.