Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.
“The offspring of the two races is a hybrid—the offspring whose progression, though not limited like that of some of the lower animals to the first generation, is nevertheless so arrested by lunacy, idiocy, blindness, deafness and dumbness, and other the most crushing infirmities ‘that flesh is heir to,’ that it can never become the sound parental stock of self-maintaining population.” —Virginia Governor James McDowell (1795-1851)
T Magazine The New York Times 2021-03-10, 00:00Z (2021-03-09, 19:00 EST; 2021-03-09, 16:00 PST) This event begins at 2021-03-09, 19:00 Eastern Standard Time for viewers in North America.
Join T’s book club, which focuses on classic works of American literature, for a conversation on Nella Larsen’s “Passing” led by the novelist Brit Bennett.
The third title selected for T Magazine’s book club, Nella Larsen’s “Passing” (1929) tells the story of two old friends, both Black women, who reunite in 1920s Harlem, despite the fact that one of them is living as a white person. Critically acclaimed at the time of its publication, the novel captures the social anxieties that plagued America during the Great Migration and remains a resonant portrait of a fractured nation.
On March 9, watch a virtual discussion of the book, featuring the novelist Brit Bennett in conversation with T features director Thessaly La Force, that will address questions from readers. And, in the weeks leading up to the event, look for articles on “Passing” at tmagazine.com. We hope you’ll read along — and R.S.V.P. above.
Warren Eugene Milteer, Jr. is an assistant professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He received his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2014. His publications include two academic books, Beyond Slavery’s Shadow: Free People of Color in the South (forthcoming with UNC Press, 2021) and North Carolina’s Free People of Color, 1715-1885 (LSU Press, 2020), the independently published Hertford County, North Carolina’s Free People of Color (2016), as well as articles in the Journal of Social History and the North Carolina Historical Review. Milteer was the recipient of the Historical Society of North Carolina’s R. D. W. Connor Award in 2014 and 2016 for the best journal article in the North Carolina Historical Review…
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In Part 2 of this conversation about raising multiracial kids, our guests – Drs. Victoria Malaney Brown, Marcella Runell Hall and Kelly Faye Jackson – return to discuss anti-Blackness and how anti-Black messaging shows up in multiracial families (including non-Black families). Referencing recent examples from social media, our guests breakdown three common myths that perpetuate anti-Blackness within multiracial families, and describe how these myths negatively impact the identity development of multiracial Black children specifically. We also talk about concrete steps that parents and caregivers can take now to actively reject White supremacy and anti-Blackness and build resilience as a multiracial family.
Roughly one in seven U.S. infants (14%) are multiracial or multiethnic (Pew, 2017), but what does it mean to be multiracial? It’s complicated!
In Part 1 in this conversation about raising multiracial kids we speak with our guests – Drs. Victoria Malaney Brown, Marcella Runell Hall and Kelly Faye Jackson – about some of the complexities of identifying with more than one race, and about the pivotal role families play in shaping how multiracial children come to understand themselves and the world around them. This dynamic is especially complex in this historical moment as the United States comes to terms with its own White supremacist roots.
Our guests describe the challenges and strengths of identifying with more than one racial group, highlighting examples from recent research, and draw from their own personal experiences as multiracial individuals and parents of multiracial children. As always we end with your questions and comments.
Dr. Zebulon Miletsky, Associate Professor of Professor of Africana Studies and History State University of New York, Stony Brook
‘Interracialism: Biracials Learning About African American Culture (B.L.A.A.C.)’ with Dr. Zebulon Miletsky. February 19th 4:00PM-5:30PM Melville Library, Central Reading Room, Stony Brook University.
A discussion of #interracialism and #interracialmarriage, and the phenomenon of “#antiblackness”—identity and #mixedrace in the 21st century, and the possible stakes for those who identify as multiracial and biracial—in these politically divided times.
“Clothes allow me to choose how people see me,
Clothes can speak louder than my skin…”
Through the eyes of a 17-year-old mixed race girl, Blue Beneath My Skin explores the nuances of identity and ethnicity, and how self-perception and the perceptions put upon us can push us onto a destructive path.
Blue beneath my skin was fist performed at The Bunker Theatre in 2019 as part of the ‘This is Black’ festival. In 2020 it was revived as part of East 15’s Debut Festival and won the King’s Head Theatre’s Stella Wilkie Award and was chosen for Pulse Festival.
Before Her Time: The Heroic Schooling of a Mulatto Girl
White women who for love crossed the 19th century Jim Crow color line for a new life in a Black family were highly unusual and often ostracized. But one such woman was Alice Donlan. Her interracial family braved further complication when her husband died in 1912, and Alice put their three children in an orphanage. Why was the one-hundred year old mystery unraveled by a two decades of research by Alice’s great granddaughter, Dedria Humphries Barker. Mother of Orphans is the resulting family biography. In this presentation, Humphries Barker argues that Alice’s act was heroic and helped propel future generations, including the author, to lives of opportunity.
Richly illustrated with historical and contemporary photographs, Mother of Orphans tells the story of Humphries Barker’s great grandmother, Alice Donlan, an Irish American woman from Indiana, who found love in Cincinnati, Ohio, at the end of the Gilded Age when the Ohio River city was known as the London and Paris of America. It was also the age of Jim Crow and lynching. This family biography explains how navigating interracial family life and different cultural values led to Alice’s unspeakable act. An intricate social history, Mother of Orphans links the stories of four generations of related White and Black women directly affected by Alice’s unspeakable act. And, in the final analysis, the author was amazed at how the social condition of 21st century women remains very similar to the daunting challenges Alice faced, especially when it comes to child care.
Dedria Humphries Barker is a African American woman writer who lives in Lansing, Michigan where she is a working mother of three adult children. Her work has included being a journalist at The Michigan Chronicle, Detroit’s African American newspaper, a staff writer for two Gannett, Co., Inc. daily newspapers, The Commercial News in Danville, Illinois, and The Lansing State Journal in Michigan’s capitol city; an editor at Michigan State University, and a freelance writer whose work on parenting has appeared on Salon.com, Your Teen, and Literary Mama, and in the Redbook and Good Housekeeping magazines, and The Detroit News, among other periodicals. Her work has been published by the historical societies of Ohio and Michigan. She is a former professor of English at Lansing Community College in Michigan.
As people around the world continue to protest in support of black lives, parents are forced to have difficult discussions with their children about what’s happening — including Robert De Niro.
During an appearance on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” the 76-year-old actor, who has six biracial children, was asked, “Have you had the conversation about race with your kids?”
“My children are all half black and I don’t have … even me, I take certain things for granted,” he admitted.
The “Irishman” star said the topic is not one they discuss often but “they know” and shared how he can relate to other parents…
