Mixed Race Studies

Black Indians: An American Story

Rich-Heape Films
2001
60 Minutes
Close Captioned
NTSC All Regions

Steven R. Heape – Executive Producer/Producer
Chip Richie – Director/Producer
James Earl Jones – Narrator
Neville Brothers – Soundtrack
Daniel Blake Smith – Screenwriter
Howard Tyler – Editor

“Black Indians: An American Story”— (as seen on ABC) brings to light a forgotten part of Americans past—the cultural and racial fusion of Native and African Americans. Narrated by James Earl Jones, “Black Indians: An American Story” explores what brought the two groups together, what drove them apart and the challenges they face today.

Distinguished Awards:

• Award of Distinction, Indian Summer Festival 2005
• Cine Golden Eagle 2002
• Crystal Award of Excellence, Communicator Awards 2002
• Best Documentary, Native American Music Awards 2002
• Aurora Gold Award 2001

A society that wants to build the future must know its past, its real past, as it was.” But what if that past had been lost, forgotten, hidden, or denied?

“Black Indians: An American Story,” explores the issue of racial identity among Native and African Americans. This in-depth documentary examines the coalescence of these two groups in American history. Discounted, and often ignored by mainstream America, these minority peoples have often shared a common past. However, with their heritage ignored and their contributions denied they are all but invisible at the dawn of the new millennium.

It was a black and white world in the early days of the Republic and little or no thought was given to people of mixed race, especially if they looked “black.” “We were told ‘if you could pass for white, that’s who you’d be; if not, it was usually better to be identified as black than Indian,’” recalls Executive Producer Steven Heape. “It was this kind of thinking that later led to ‘pencil genocide’–changing one’s race on a birth certificate to fit the skin color of the child.”…

For more information, click here.

Race Based Medication BiDil and African Americans

New York University
2009-10-16

Ann Morning, Associate Professor of Sociology
New York University

Ann Morning, Assistant Professor of Sociology, discusses race-based medications.

The Nature of Race: How Scientists Think and Teach About Being Different

James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy
Rice University
2011-09-15, 18:00-19:30 CDT

Jenifer L. Bratter, Host & Associate Professor of Sociology
Rice University

New York University sociology professor Ann Morning, Ph.D., analyzes how scientists influence ideas about race through teachings and textbooks.

Ann Morning, Ph.D., is an associate professor of sociology at New York University. She studies race and ethnicity, especially racial classification; multiracial populations; demography; and the sociology of knowledge and science. In her book “The Nature of Race: How Scientists Think and Teach about Human Difference,” Morning explores the ways scientists are influencing ideas about race through teaching and textbooks — even as the scientific community debates the issue. She also examines how corporations and the government use scientific research in ways that often reinforce the idea that race is biologically determined. Morning holds her Ph.D. in sociology from Princeton University.
 
This event is co-sponsored by the Baker Institute Science and Technology Policy Program, the Race Scholars at the Kinder Institute for Urban Research and the Department of Sociology at Rice University.

Video Duration: 01:25:44

Mixed-Race People Fastest Growing Group, Census Data Shows

KPIX 5 (CBS)
San Francisco, California
2013-06-14

Elizabeth Cook, Co-Anchor

Ryan Takeo, Reporter

The face of the nation is changing rapidly, as Census data shows mixed-race people are the fastest-growing ethnic group. Ryan Takeo reports.

Note from Steven F. Riley:

• Features San Francisco State University Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies and American Indian Studies, Andrew Jolivétte.
• Reporter Elizabeth Cook incorrectly states that 15% of all marriages are mixed. According to a 2012 Pew Research Center report, 15% of all new marriages in 2010 were mixed.  Pew reports that in 2010, 8.4% of all married couples were mixed regardless of when they married.

Not Quite White: Arabs, Slavs, and the Contours of Contested Whiteness

Typecast Releasing
2012
USA
English
24 minutes

Jamil Khoury, Director and Writer

Stephen Combs, Director

Inspired by Jamil Khoury’s short play WASP: White Arab Slovak Pole, Not Quite White: Arabs, Slavs, and the Contours of Contested Whiteness is a thought-provoking documentary that explores the complicated relationship of Arab and Slavic immigrants to American notions of whiteness.

The film integrates scenes from WASP alongside interviews with Arab American and Polish American academics who reflect upon contested and probationary categories of whiteness and the use of anti-Black racism as a “whitening” dye.

In Not Quite White, Jamil Khoury (Artistic Director of Chicago’s Silk Road Rising) draws upon his own Arab (Syrian) and Slavic (Polish and Slovak) heritage as the lens through which to investigate the broader issue of immigrants achieving whiteness and hence qualifying as “fully American.” The film advances society’s on-going conversations about the meaning of whiteness and efforts at redefining whiteness.

Not just for white people, and not just for Arabs and Slavs, Not Quite White proceeds from the assumption that whiteness affects all our lives and that we all need to critically engage whiteness. “Whiteness has everything to do with melanin and pigmentation and it has nothing to do with melanin and pigmentation,” Khoury observes. “Whiteness is about power and borders and authorship. And whiteness can, and does, change.”

The academics featured in Not Quite White include: Roxane Assaf, Adjunct Faculty, School of the Art Institute of Chicago; Ann Hetzel Gunkel, Director of Cultural Studies, Columbia College Chicago; John Tofik Karam, Assistant Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies, De Paul University; Dominic A. Pacyga, Professor of History, Columbia College Chicago.

DVD copies also include On Whiteness, a 16-minute video essay in which writer and co-director Jamil Khoury discusses the themes and ideas presented in his film. Khoury’s short film both/and is also available from Typecast here.

Are Mixed Race Couples and Families Still Fighting for Acceptance in Alberta?

Alberta Primetime
Edmonton, Alberta
2013-06-12

Jennifer Martin, Host

Monica Das, Registered Psychologist

Yvonne Breckenridge
University of Alberta

Alberta Primetime is a daily current affairs show airing weeknights from 7pm MST to 8pm MST. Airing across Alberta on CTV Two Alberta, Alberta Primetime drills through the surface of current issues to explore the ideas and concerns of Alberta’s real energy sector – its people.

The face of Alberta families is changing, but are Albertans still struggling to catch up?

We talk to Monica Das, registered psychologist and Yvonne Breckenridge, from the University of Alberta.

Watch the video here.

Standing on Both Feet: Voices of Older Mixed-Race Americans [Interview]

KING-TV 5, Seattle Washington
2013-06-11

Margaret Larsen, Host
New Day Northwest

June 12 marks the 46th Anniversary of a landmark ruling by the United States Supreme Court which overturned a ban on interracial marriage that had been place on many states. But even before the ruling, couples of different races were getting married, some going great lengths to hide their differences to do so.

Sociologist Cathy Tashiro interviewed a number of people who either broke the law or found some other way to be with the ones they love.

The result is a new book, Standing on Both Feet: Voices of Older Mixed-Race Americans.

Cathy joined Margaret to talk about the inspiration behind the book and her own upbringing as the child of a mixed race couple. She also shared some of the experiences shared by the men and women she interviewed for the book…

Read the entire article and watch the video here.

Panel Discussion: “Mixed Race Asian American Art and Identity”

DePaul University Art Museum
935 W. Fullerton
Chicago, Illinois 60614
Phone: 773-325-7506
Wednesday, 2013-05-29, 18:00 CDT (Local Time)

War Baby / Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art

Debra Yepa-Pappan, “Live Long and Prosper (Spock was a Half-Breed),” digital print.

Laura Kina, Vincent DePaul Associate Professor of Art, Media and Design
DePaul University

Camilla Fojas, Vincent DePaul Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies
DePaul University

Debra Yepa-Pappan, Jemez Pueblo and Korean Artist
Chicago, Illinois

This event is cosponsored by the Japanese American Service Committee, DePaul’s Office of Institutional Diversity and Equity President’s Diversity Series, and Latin American and Latino Studies.

For more information, click here.  Watch the video of the presentation here.

This Is The Mixed-Race Cheerios Ad All The Idiots Are Complaining About

Business Insider
Advertising
2013-05-30

Judith Grey

A new commercial for Cheerios featuring a mixed-race family has become a target for idiots on the internet.

The anodyne spot features a Caucasian mother, an African-American father and their biracial daughter, but contains no overt messaging, politically correct or otherwise (except that Cheerios are good for you).

Nonetheless, Adweek noted the spot had been propelled onto the front page of Reddit, where it received a plethora of racists remarks. Concreteloop.com noted a YouTube commentator who allegedly called the spot an “abomination.”…

Read the entire article here.

US Census: Rationalizing Race in US History

Crossing Borders, Bridging Generations
Brooklyn Historical Society, Othmer Library
Brooklyn, New York
2013-04-18, 19:00-21:00 EDT (Local Time)
View the full video of the event here.

What boxes do you mark on the U.S. Census to describe your heritage?

Prior to the year 2000, multiracial people could only check one box in the Race category of the U.S. Census. Now, according to the 2010 U.S. Census, multiracial Americans are the fastest growing demographic group.

Speakers

• Nicholas A. Jones, chief of the U.S. Census Bureau’s Racial Statistics Branch in the Population Division
• Ann Morning, Associate Professor of Sociology, New York University, author of The Nature of Race and “Toward a Sociology of Racial Conceptualization for the 21st Century”
• Josh Begley, creator of Racebox.org, an online archive of U.S. Census forms from 1790 to the present
• Jonathan Soma, creator of A Handsome Atlas, a new digital way to explore US Statistical Atlases of the 19th Century

Moderated by Eric Hamako, doctoral candidate in Social Justice Education at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

This event is part of Crossing Borders, Bridging Generations, an oral history project and public programming series, which examines the history and experiences of mixed-heritage people and families, cultural hybridity, race, ethnicity, and identity.

View the full video of the event here. View photographs from the event here.