Mixed Race Studies

MIXED MESSAGES Episode 4. Vanessa.

MIXED MESSAGES with Sarah Doneghy
2021-10-23

Sarah Doneghy, Host

Vanessa discusses how being Mixed Race has affected her relationships with colleagues, impacted her work with the prison population, and how she’s been viewed when traveling to different countries.

Watch the entire episode (00:32:47) here.

Ruth Negga on her latest role – as a black woman passing as white

BBC News
2021-10-27

Ruth Negga stars in Passing, a film which follows two black women living in 1920s New York.

One of them, Clare Kendry played by Negga, “passes” for white and has a white husband who doesn’t know she’s black.

Based on the 1929 book by Nella Larsen, the film received rave reviews at the Sundance Film Festival.

The film’s director Rebecca Hall and star Ruth Negga, tell BBC News why their film feels so relevant for today’s audiences.

Playing the White Card

The Racial Imaginary
The Whiteness Issue (September 2017)

Martha S. Jones, Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor, Professor of History
Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland

Through prose and performance, Martha S. Jones examines the cruel, curious, and comical dimensions of the mixed-race experience. With the pathos of the tragic mulatto in mind, she gets beyond simple renderings of the one-drop rule by exploring family history, her ambiguous appearance, and shifting ideas about racial categories. If race is a social construction it is also a lie, one that Jones exposes through reflections on everyday scenes of race-making. Her work is for those for who checking boxes elicits a shudder, while also speaking to anyone who finds themselves in-between and misunderstood by the sociological categories that organize our world.

MASC presents The U.S. Census Data [Online Event]

Multiracial Americans of Southern California
2021-10-06 18:00-19:30 EDT, (22:00-23:30Z)

Let’s talk 2020 U.S. Census results and how they illuminate the U.S. population as more multiracial (from 9 million in 2010 to 33.8 million in 2020)

The U.S. population is much more multiracial and more diverse than recorded in the 2010 U.S. Census. Research and data from “2020 Census Illuminates Racial and Ethnic Composition of the Country” by Nicholas Jones, Rachel Marks, Roberto Ramirez, Merarys Ríos-Vargas showed the improvements and changes on the U.S. Census questionnaire enabled a more thorough and accurate depiction of how people self-identify, yielding a more accurate portrait of how people report their Hispanic origin and race within the context of a two-question format.

On October 6, 2021 at 3pm PDT (6pm EDT), join MASC as we present a virtual event that will bring experts from the U.S. Census, Nielsen and MASC to discuss these changes and what the results revealed.

Expert Panelists:

• Nicholas A. Jones, Director & Senior Advisor of Race and Ethnic Research & Outreach in the Census Bureau’s Population Division, U.S. Census Bureau
• Rachel Marks, Chief of the Racial Statistics Branch, U.S. Census Bureau
• Stacie M. de Armas, Senior Vice President Inclusive Insights & Initiatives, Nielsen
• Thomas Lopez, Treasurer, MASC
• Moderator: Sonia Smith Kang, President, MASC

Watch the discussion (01:28:30) here.

Book Talk-Once We Were Slaves: The Extraordinary Journey of a Multi-Racial Jewish Family

American Jewish Historical Society
2021-08-04

Author Laura Arnold Leibman discusses her new book with Gender and Jewish Studies Professor, Samira K. Mehta. Hear how family heirlooms were used to unlock the mystery of the Moses’s Family ancestors in, Once We Were Slaves: The Extraordinary Journey of a Multiracial Jewish Family.

Tracing an extraordinary journey throughout the Atlantic World, Leibman examines artifacts left behind in Barbados, Suriname, London, Philadelphia, and New York, to show how Sarah and Isaac Moses were able to transform themselves and their lives, becoming free, wealthy, Jewish, and—at times—white. While their affluence made them unusual, their story mirrors that of the largely forgotten population of mixed African and Jewish ancestry that constituted as much as ten percent of the Jewish communities in which the siblings lived.

Watch the video (00:56:47) here.

Adele Logan Alexander

Charlie Rose
1999-10-26

Charlie Rose, Host

Adele Logan Alexander discusses the history of identity, race, and class in the United States through her own family story, as she does in her book “Homelands and Waterways: The American Journey of the Bond Family, 1846-1926.”

Watch the entire interview (00:17:52) here.

WTF!? A Few Stories I Don’t Know What To Do With

Black Power Media
2021-09-28

Jared A. Ball, Ph.D., Professor of Africana and Communications
Morgan State University, Baltimore, MD

From 00:21:44 through 00:34:01 in the video, Dr. Ball discusses his views on multiraciality within popular culture and how it connects with blackness in the United States.

Watch the clip here.

‘Passing’ Trailer: Tessa Thompson & Ruth Negga Star In Netflix Movie It Landed At Sundance

Deadline Hollywood
2021-09-21

Patrick Hipes, Executive Managing Editor

Netflix made a splash at this year’s Sundance Film Festival when it acquired Rebecca Hall’s Passing, the drama starring Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga. Hall, making her directorial debut, adapted the film from the 1929 novel by Nella Larson. Now the streamer is prepping for the film’s New York Film Festival slot October 3, after which it will get a theatrical release followed by a debut on the service November 10.

The pic, shot it black and white, tells the story of two Black women, Irene Redfield (Thompson) and Clare Kendry (Negga), who can “pass” as white but choose to live on opposite sides of the color line during the height of the Harlem Renaissance in late 1920s New York. After a chance encounter, Irene reluctantly allows Clare into her home, where she ingratiates herself to Irene’s husband (André Holland) and family, and soon her larger social circle as well. Irene soon finds her once-steady existence upended by Clare, and the the story becomes one about obsession, repression and the lies people tell themselves and others to protect their carefully constructed realities…

Read the entire article here.

Charting a course beyond racism | Carlos Hoyt | TEDxWaltham

TEDx Talks
2021-08-12

Carlos Hoyt, Ph.D., LICSW

In this talk, Carlos Hoyt, Ph.D., LICSW, points out how our misunderstandings about race and our well-meaning but misguided efforts to achieve “racial equality” only end up keeping us trapped in a vicious cycle of trying to get beyond racism while reproducing and re-enforcing its false basis, race. Carlos provides directions that can finally and truly enable us to get past racism. References and notes related to this talk can be found here. Carlos Hoyt, Ph.D., LICSW, is the Director of Equity and Inclusion, Belmont Day School, a Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Consultant, and a Psychotherapist. Through his research, writing, teaching, Carlos interrogates master narratives and the dominant discourse on race with the goal of illuminating and virtuously disrupting the racial worldview and reductive identity constructs in general.

His approach consists of preparing participants to interact fully, empathically, courageously, and candidly; grounding all content in facts and critical thinking; and, facilitating experiential opportunities for participants to be active synthesizers who can translate cognitive growth into positive personal action.

Watch the video here.

Lemuel Haynes

Vermont History
Vermont Historical Society
Barre, VT
2019-10-03

Steve Perkins, Executive Director

Lemuel Haynes of Rutland, Vermont was an incredible Vermonter. Haynes, an African-American man, was a great writer, thinker, and minister. In 1785, he was one of the first, if not the first, African-Americans to be ordained into the Congregational Church in the whole United States and led a mostly white congregation for over 30 years.

Watch the video here.