Mixed Race Studies

Hardships for Filipino mixed-race children

Al Jazeera
2013-02-26

Jamela Alindogan

Thousands of mixed-race children grow up without their fathers in the Philippines. Most of them are of Korean or American descent.

Many often end up living on the streets without any support.

Al Jazeera’s Jamela Alindogan reports from Manila.

AfroPoP – A Lot Like You

AfroPoP
PBS Video
Duration: (00:56:59)
Premiere Date: 2013-01-22
Episode Expires: 2013-02-22

Eliaichi Kimaro, Director

A bi-racial filmmaker returns to her father’s home tribe on Mount Kilomanjaro.

Premieres January 22nd on the WORLD Channel. In this award-winning and very personal documentary a young woman probes her interracial roots to find some difficult truths about her own past and her father’s male-dominated East African culture.

For more information, click here.

Hafu: The Film

Hafu: The Film
2013-01-30

Megumi Nishikura, Director, Producer and Cinematographer

Lara Perez Takagi, Director, Producer and Cinematographer

Marcia Yumi Lise, Thematic Advisor

Jilann Spitzmiller, Executive Producer

Aika Miyake, Editor

Winton White, Music

Dear Friends,

A belated happy new years to you! We have been quietly busy these past few months but have many great announcements to share with you.

Our first screening date has been set! On April 5th we will be screening at the Japan American National Museum in Los Angeles. Filmmakers Lara and Megumi will be present at the post-screening discussion afterwards. Seats are limited so RSVP your spot today.

The screening is part of the 5-day Hapa Japan Festival, which celebrates the stories of the growing number of mixed-Japanese in the US. For those in Los Angeles area this event is not to be missed!…

For more information, click here.

A Lot Like You: A Film by Eliaichi Kimaro

USA/Tanzania
2012
55 minutes/82 minutes

Eliachi Kimaro, Director

• (2012) WINNER, Audience Choice Award for Best Documentary: 35th Annual Asian American International Film Festival (New York)
• (2012) WINNER, Best Documentary: Female Eye Film Festival (Toronto)
• (2012) WINNER, Jury Prize for Best Documentary: 30th Annual San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival
• (2011) WINNER, Public Award for the Best Film Directed By a Woman of Color: African Diaspora International Film Festival (New York)
• (2011) WINNER, Jury Award for Best Documentary Feature: Montreal International Black Film Festival

Eliaichi Kimaro is a mixed-race, first-generation American with a Tanzanian father and Korean mother. When her retired father moves back to Tanzania, Eliaichi begins a project that evocatively examines the intricate fabric of multiracial identity, and grapples with the complex ties that children have to the cultures of their parents.
 
Kimaro decides to document her father’s path back to his family and Chagga culture. In the process, she struggles with her own relationship to Tanzania, and learns more about the heritage that she took for granted as a child. Yet as she talks to more family members, especially her aunts, she uncovers a cycle of violence that resonates with her work and life in the United States. When Kimaro speaks with her parents about the oppression her aunts face, she faces a jarring disconnect between immigrant generations on questions of patriarchy and violence.
 
“One reason this film works,” notes Tikkun Magazine, “is that Kimaro situates her own personal family history within a social, historical, and political context of African decolonization, transnational relations, race, class, and gender politics.” With poignant personal reflection and an engaging visual style, A Lot Like You draws the viewer into a journey that is filled with rich, multifaceted stories and history.

The Moment of Theory: Race as Myth and Medium

W. E. B. Du Bois Lecture Series
W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research
Harvard University
2010-04-20

W. J. T. Mitchell, Gaylord Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor of English and Art History
University of Chicago

Watch the lecture here.

When no one else looks like you

Cable News Network (CNN)
In America: You define America. What defines you?
2012-12-15

(CNN) – “Who is Black in America?” explores how color affects identity. In this video, Danielle Ayers, a biracial woman, discusses her search for identity and the challenges of being color blind after growing up in a primarily white Mennonite community where race was not discussed.

Jackie Kay @ 5×15

5×15
2012-10-16

Jackie Kay, Professor of Creative Writing
Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom

Five speakers, fifteen minutes each. True stories of passion, obsession and adventure recounted live with just two rules: no scripts and only fifteen minutes each.

The Red Dust Road

Jackie Kay was born in Edinburgh in 1961 to a Scottish mother and Nigerian father. She was adopted by a white couple at birth and was brought up in Glasgow, studying at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and Stirling University. Her experiences of growing up inspired her first collection of poetry, The Adoption Papers (1991), which won a Scottish Arts Council Book Award and the Saltire Society Scottish First Book of the Year Award. Her other collections include Other Lovers (1993), Off Colour (1998), Darling: New and Selected Poems (2007) and The Lamplighter (2008). Her collection of poetry for children, Red, Cherry Red (2007) won the 2008 CLPE Poetry Award. Her first novel, Trumpet, published in 1998, was awarded the Guardian Fiction Prize and short-listed for the International IMPAC Dublin Award. She has also published three collections of short stories: Why Don’t You Stop Talking (2002), Wish I Was Here (2006) and her latest book, Reality, Reality (2012). Her memoir Red Dust Road (2010), a memoir about meeting her Nigerian birth father, which was short-listed for the 2011 PEN/Ackerley Prize. Jackie Kay was awarded an MBE for services to literature in 2006.

An Eagle Eye in Harlem

narratively: Local. Original. Organic. In-Depth.
2012-12-10

Jenni Monet

From Malcolm X Boulevard to pow-wow road trips, a black man from Georgia adopts a Cherokee persona despite questionable ties to any Native American roots.

Robert Banks’ one-bedroom flat is lavishly decorated with Native American artwork—sculptures and dreamcatchers that the 71-year-old Georgia native created himself. On his kitchen cupboards are hand-painted feathers with tips of burnt-orange. A grand self-portrait hangs above Banks’ dark green velvet couch, where he often sifts through pictures of his past—a family he says descends from Cherokee Indians…

Produced, shot and edited by Jenni Monet, a multimedia journalist telling stories about NYC, Native Americans and the Indigenous.

Obaloba, The Whale Island

Innovative Transmedia Productions
2012

Matteo Stanzani, Creative Director

‘OBALOBA, the whale island’, is an original project whose purpose is to educate and entertain children aged 4-8 through an innovative transmedia ecosystem made of: online and mobile community and videogames, web and tv cartoon animation series, interactive eBooks, live events, toys and a wide range of sustainable merchandising products.

Main Content

Obaloba, the Whale Island, is a community of super-cute creatures who live in a lush, Hawaii-inspired, uncontaminated island on the back of a whale.

The creatures are created by mixing – in a magic blender – human DNA with animal and vegetal elements from Nature. They’re hundreds and counting, and each one has a unique personality and attitude, like you and me.

The stories of Obaloba, the whale island, unfold through the adventures of the one-of-a-kind characters who live in peace and joy, foster love for diversity and embrace the value of individuality. But, to maintain their community, they are forced to outsmart a super villain who wants to seize the magic-blender to turn them into all-identical – and therefore controllable – creatures…

For more information, click here.

Dr. Yaba Blay Explores ‘One-Drop’ Rule [VIDEO]

NewsOne: For Black America
2012-12-14

Jeff Mays

Remember when President Barack Obama won in 2008 and pundits started asking if the United States was post-racial because we had a Black man in the White House?
 
Well, people like Dr. Yaba Blay (pictured) knew better.
 
Blay, an assistant teaching professor of Africana Studies at Drexel University, explores Black racial identity and the politics of skin color with her creative and thought-provoking (1)ne Drop project.
 
The one-drop rule refers to the centuries-old rule that deemed anyone with any sort of African heritage to be Black, even if you are of mixed heritage. It’s the idea that one drop of Black blood makes you Black. The rule is still alive and well today, which has been discussed by people of mixed heritage like Obama and Halle Berry.
 
And it’s an issue we play out with one another. Four hundred years after Blacks were first brought to this country as slaves, it wasn’t uncommon for African Americans to discriminate against one another based on the color of their complexions. Just look at the complexions of women considered to be attractive in the media productions of African Americans. How many of our politicians are dark-skinned?
 
“Many of us would like to believe that we have a Black President and it’s how many years since enslavement and that we’ve come a long way and these things don’t matter,” said Blay…

Read the entire article here.