Mixed Race Studies

What You Didn’t Know About Loving v. Virginia

TIME
2016-06-10

Arica L. Coleman

The landmark civil rights Supreme Court case—which made it illegal to ban interracial marriage—was about more than black and white

When the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case Loving v. the Commonwealth of Virginia, defendants Richard and Mildred Loving chose not to appear in person. In 1958, they had been convicted for the felony of miscegenation. As lawyers presented their arguments, 17 states remained steadfast in their refusal to repeal such laws banning interracial marriages. But, though he did not attend the arguments, Richard sent a message to the justices: “Tell the Court I love my wife and it is just not fair that I cannot live with her in Virginia.”

The justices unanimously agreed. On June 12, 1967, proscriptions against interracial marriage were declared unconstitutional.

In the years since, the couple’s victory has often been seen as a touchstone in the fight for black civil rights. The Lovings’ lawyer’s assertion before the court that anti-miscegenation statutes were “ the most odious of the segregation laws and the slavery laws” reinforced this assumption. As historian Peter Wallenstein aptly stated in his book Tell the Court I Love My Wife, “There was no doubt in anybody’s mind as to the racial identities, white and black, of the people who claimed to be Mr. and Mrs. Loving.”

But the Lovings’ public persona was more myth than reality. While researching my book That the Blood Stay Pure: African Americans, Native Americans and the Predicament of Race and Identity in Virginia, I spoke to Mildred Loving, who died in 2008. “I am not black,” she told me during a 2004 interview. “I have no black ancestry. I am Indian-Rappahannock. I told the people so when they came to arrest me.”…

Read the entire article here.

Race in Post-War German Cinema in Drama ‘Toxi’ (Video)

IndiWire
April 2016

Sergio

For anyone interested in foreign films, one of the most interesting periods of German filmmaking was the post war period between 1946 to the mid 1960’s.

In effect, only two types of films were being made: pure escapist film such as musicals and comedies that were designed to make the audience completely forget the ugly events of the recent past. And then there were films like “The Lost One,” “Germany Year Zero,” and “Murderers Among Us” which explicitly dealt with the aftermath of the horrors of World War II and Germany’s guilt and repercussions.

But of all the films, one of the most fascinating, and worthy of rediscovery, is the 1952 film “Toxi,” co-written and directed by Robert Stemmie, who was a major and very successful director of the period. It was one of the very few German films made then, and even now, which seriously tried to deal with race. No doubt a very touchy and controversial subject considering Germany’s Nazi “racial purity” agenda.

For years the film was very difficult to see. I first saw it a few years ago during a film series of post-war German films. However, the film was eventually remastered and released on DVD and is available from the DEFA Film Library DVD series at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

The film centers around an abandoned German “occupation baby,” which was the term for children of U.S. soldiers (stationed in Germany after the war) and German women, who were abandoned by their parents. It was estimated that there were some 3000-5000 of these children, many of whom were biracial…

Read the entire article here.

The Face: Cartography of the Void

Restless Books
March 2016
96 pages
4.5 x 0.3 x 6 inches
ISBN-13: 978-1632060433

Chris Abani

In The Face: Cartography of the Void, acclaimed poet, novelist, and screenwriter Chris Abani has given us a brief memoir that is, in the best tradition of the genre, also an exploration of the very nature of identity. Abani meditates on his own face, beginning with his early childhood that was immersed in the Igbo culture of West Africa. The Face is a lush work of art that teems with original and profound insights into the role of race, culture, and language in fashioning our sense of self. Abani’s writing is poetic, filled with stories, jokes, and reflections that draw readers into his fold; he invites them to explore their own “faces” and the experiences that have shaped them.

As Abani so lovingly puts it, this extended essay contemplates “all the people who have touched my face, slapped it, punched it, kissed it, washed it, shaved it. All of that human contact must leave some trace, some of the need and anger that motivated that touch. This face is softened by it all. Made supple by all the wonder it has beheld, all the kindness, all the generosity of life. The Face is a gift to be read, re-read, shared, and treasured, from an author at the height of his artistic powers. Abani directs his gaze both inward and out toward the world around him, creating a self-portrait in which readers will also see their own faces reflected.

Sexual Relations Between Elite White Women and Enslaved Men in the Antebellum South: A Socio-Historical Analysis

Inquiries: Social Sciences, Arts & Humanities
2013, Volume 5, Number 8
pages 1-3

J. M. Allain

There is ample evidence of sexual relations, from rapes to what appear to be relatively symbiotic romantic partnerships, between white slave masters and black women in the Antebellum South. Much rarer were sexual relations between white women and black slave men, yet they too occurred. Using an intersectional socio-historical analysis, this paper explores the factors that contributed or may have contributed to the incidence of sexual encounters between elite white women and slave men, the power dynamics embedded in them, and their implications in terms of sexual consent. The paper demonstrates how upper-class white women who engaged in these relationships used sex as an instrument of power, simultaneously perpetuating both white supremacy and patriarchy.

Read the entire article here.

Texas slave passes as Mexican millionaire

San Antonio Express-News
San Antonio, Texas
2016-06-11

Joe O’Connell

Former slave passes as Mexican millionaire

Historian Karl Jacoby was driving near the Texas-Mexico border when he was stopped by the U.S. Border Patrol, the agency charged with keeping Mexicans out of the United States.

He explained, to their dismay, that he was writing a book about a Texan who had tried desperately to cross into Mexico.

In the completed book, “The Strange Career of William Ellis,” Jacoby has pieced together of the life a former slave who transformed himself into a wealthy Mexican.

Ellis was born to a mixed-race mother on a cotton plantation in Victoria one year before slavery ended, but found transformation in San Antonio, then the hub of commerce between the United States and Mexico.

“He was born ‘in between’ in multiple ways,” Jacoby said. “There was this fault line between slavery and freedom and what that might mean. There was also a fault line between the United States and Mexico.”

Both nations were courting immigrants as business boomed in the Gilded Age at the end of the 19th century…

Read the entire article here.

The Agonies Of “Passing” – Considering the Murder Mystery ‘Sapphire’

IndieWire
July 2014

Sergio

The Agonies Of “Passing” – Considering the Murder Mystery ‘Sapphire‘

Starting in the late 1940’s, and continuing through to the end of the ‘50’s, Hollywood seemed to be obsessed with the concept of “passing” –light skinned black people passing for white. Though it wasn’t new, of course, somehow it caught Tinseltown’s attention and a slew of films were made, almost all them dealing with women in particular, who passed for white and the tragedies and sorrow that they encountered.

Elia Kazan’s “Pinky,” “Lost Boundaries,” “Imitation Of Life,” “Band of Angels,” “The Night of the Quarter Moon,” “I Passed for White,” and the would-be “Gone with the Wind” rip-off, “Raintree County,” with Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift, which, technically may not be a “passing” movie, though it deals with a pre-Civil war, antebellum Southern belle (Taylor), who goes slowly insane because she believes her real mother was a slave, who was her father’s lover (turns out that she wasn’t, but Taylor dies anyway for all her grief).

But, for my money, the real doozy of the passing-for-white films wasn’t from Hollywood, but came instead from the U.K.

I’m referring to the 1959 British mystery detective film “Sapphire,” directed by Basil Dearden, who specialized, during the late 50′s and 60′s, in films with controversial subject matter, such as his 1961 film “Victim,” which dealt with a successful and closeted gay barrister who is being blackmailed, and fights back against his tormentors. It is credited for being the first movie in which the word “homosexual” was actually used in a film.

But “Sapphire” is in another realm altogether…

Read the entire review here. Watch the entire film, Sapphire here.

One man’s quest for Loving Day, a holiday for multiracial Americans

The Los Angeles Times
2016-06-10

Jaweed Kaleem

Ken Tanabe founded Loving Day in 2004, and leads celebrations and workshops across the U.S. on being multiracial. (Pearl Shavzin-Dremeaux)

Forty-nine years ago on June 12, the Supreme Court struck down laws in 16 states that banned mixed-race marriages. The decision in Loving vs. Virginia overturned the conviction of Richard and Mildred Loving, an interracial couple from Caroline County, Va., who had been arrested, jailed and banned from their home state for violating its Racial Integrity Act.

It also ushered in a new era in the American family.

Today, the Pew Research Center counts 22 million multiracial Americans, about 6.9% of the U.S. population. Nearly 10% of married couple households — more than 5 million — are interracial or inter-ethnic, according to the U.S. census.

For 12 years, Ken Tanabe, a Japanese-Belgian freelance graphic designer living in New York, has been working to educate Americans about what he sees as one of the most significant civil rights cases through Loving Day, the unofficial holiday that cities across the country are slowly adapting to celebrate the lives of the fast-growing multiracial population.

Now Tanabe, whose organization has tracked and sponsored many of the dozens of dance and music festivals, film screenings, picnics and forums taking place across the country in June to commemorate Loving vs. Virginia, has launched a campaign to get the holiday recognized by the federal government…

Read the entire article here.

Soledad O’Brien: Seek Out the Curious and the Fastidious

Corner Office
The New York Times
2016-06-10

Adam Bryant

This interview with Soledad O’Brien, chief executive of the Starfish Media Group, a production company, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant.

Q. What were your early years like?

A. I grew up on Long Island, in a small town that was somewhat rural back then. I have five brothers and sisters, and I’m No. 5, and my parents were both immigrants. My dad’s Australian and my mom is Cuban, and my mom’s black and my dad’s white. That framed a lot of my thinking about the work that I would do in my career, and also how I think about big American issues.

I did a lot of after-school activities: student council, Rotary Club, track, the badminton team. We didn’t have a lot that you could do otherwise, so if you didn’t push yourself to go do something, you just couldn’t do it. There was no sitter who schlepped you to ballet classes and then made sure that your interest in art was being nurtured.

Because we were middle class, there was not a ton of money. So if there was something I wanted, then I’d have to be able to pay for it. When I was about 13, I wanted to ride horses, and I got a job mucking stalls so I could pay for riding lessons…

Read the entire interview here.

Mugabe raps Chinese men over mixed race babies

Bulawayo24
2016-06-11

Thobekile Zhou

Chinese men who are working on various projects in Zimbabwe have come under attack for not bringing along their wives.

President Robert Mugabe claimed that this could lead them to prey on local girls…

…He said the Chinese men end up leaving a mixed race communities after bedding local women. He said such a practice should stop…

Read the entire article here.

Juxtaposed, “Mexican Chef” and “Black Stars” speak volumes about the ongoing evolution of [Xenia] Rubios’ identity. While she identifies as Afro-Latina, she tells Colorlines that she does not identify as Black. “My family history is complicated, and I still don’t fully know the extent of it,” she says after describing her Black maternal great grandmother, her Puerto Rican family’s Taino heritage and her paternal grandfather’s emigration from Spain. “I started reading on the Afro-Latina diaspora two years ago, and I’m still ignorant to a lot of that, but I started seeing myself in that term. I explore the ‘Afro’ part of my cultural identity, and how I do or don’t fit into that, on ‘Black Terry Cat.’” She says that’s a big part of why hip-hop permeates this album.

Sameer Rao, “‘Breaking’ Presents: Xenia Rubinos, a Powerhose Singer/Songwriter Unafraid to Learn Out Loud,” Colorlines, June 10, 2016. http://www.colorlines.com/articles/breaking-presents-xenia-rubinos-powerhose-singersongwriter-unafraid-learn-out-loud.