Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

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  • Michigan in Color: Authenticity

    Michigan in Color: Authenticity

    The Michigan Daily: The campus newspaper of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor
    2016-02-18

    Michael Chrzan


    Courtesy of Michael Chrzan

    In an article for the National Review late last year, senior editor Jonah Goldberg discussed the (now former) popularity of Ben Carson amongst the GOP. He said “ … most analysis of Carson’s popularity from pundits focuses on his likable personality and his sincere Christian faith. But it’s intriguingly rare to hear people talk about the fact that he’s black. One could argue that he’s even more authentically African-American than Barack Obama … ”

    Goldberg makes this statement and then goes on to make a number of claims as to why President Obama is not “authentically African-American” enough, at least when compared to Carson.

    “ … Obama’s mother was white and he was raised in part by his white grandparents. In his autobiography, Obama writes at length about how he grew up outside the traditional African-American experience — in Hawaii and Indonesia — and how he consciously chose to adopt a black identity when he was in college.”…

    This isn’t a new sentiment. Many people of many different races have often brought up Obama’s racial heritage as a way to discredit his Blackness. In fact, a 2014 article by the Washington Post shows most of America doesn’t consider the president as Black, but as “mixed race.” The problem with this line of thinking stems from how we conceptualize multi-racial identities in this country — one with a history of hypodescent ideologies, like the infamous one-drop rule. The problem with this line of thinking is that all Obama needs to be “authentically” Black is to be Black, and that he most definitely is…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Mixed Kids Aren’t Going to Save the World

    Mixed Kids Aren’t Going to Save the World

    Leah and Black History Month
    2016-02-16

    Leah Anneli

    I have a Black father and a white mother. I’m mixed. I’m not a unicorn.

    I think there are some misconceptions about who mixed race people are and what function we serve in society. Let’s unpack those.

    We’re not the default mediators between cultures.

    I feel like this misconception is tied to the fact that our society thinks of mixed race people as “half white, half something else.” Mixed race people who don’t have a “white parent” are largely erased when mixed race people are discussed or represented in media. Being mixed race isn’t limited to being “white and…,” but our society perceives mixed identity that way. My experience is shaped by the fact that I am “white and….,” but I need to stress that my experience, though over-represented, isn’t the experience…

    Read the entire article here.

  • The True Story of the ‘Free State of Jones’

    The True Story of the ‘Free State of Jones’

    The Smithsonian Magazine
    March 2016

    Richard Grant; Photographs by William Widmer

    A new Hollywood movie looks at the tale of the Mississippi farmer who led a revolt against the Confederacy

    With two rat terriers trotting at his heels, and a long wooden staff in his hand, J.R. Gavin leads me through the woods to one of the old swamp hide-outs. A tall white man with a deep Southern drawl, Gavin has a stern presence, gracious manners and intense brooding eyes. At first I mistook him for a preacher, but he’s a retired electronic engineer who writes self-published novels about the rapture and apocalypse. One of them is titled Sal Batree, after the place he wants to show me.


    On his property, Jones County’s J. R. Gavin points out a site that was a hide-out for Newt Knight. “The Confederates kept sending in troops to wipe out old Newt and his boys,” says Gavin, “but they’d just melt into the swamps.” (William Widmer)

    I’m here in Jones County, Mississippi, to breathe in the historical vapors left by Newton Knight, a poor white farmer who led an extraordinary rebellion during the Civil War. With a company of like-minded white men in southeast Mississippi, he did what many Southerners now regard as unthinkable. He waged guerrilla war against the Confederacy and declared loyalty to the Union.

    In the spring of 1864, the Knight Company overthrew the Confederate authorities in Jones County and raised the United States flag over the county courthouse in Ellisville. The county was known as the Free State of Jones, and some say it actually seceded from the Confederacy. This little-known, counterintuitive episode in American history has now been brought to the screen in Free State of Jones, directed by Gary Ross (Seabiscuit, The Hunger Games) and starring a grimy, scruffed-up Matthew McConaughey as Newton Knight.


    As great-granddaughters of Newt and Rachel, Dorothy Knight Marsh, left, and Florence Knight Blaylock revere their past: “It’s a very unusual, complex family,” says Blaylock. (William Widmer)

    …After the Civil War, Knight took up with his grandfather’s former slave Rachel; they had five children together. Knight also fathered nine children with his white wife, Serena, and the two families lived in different houses on the same 160-acre farm. After he and Serena separated—they never divorced—Newt Knight caused a scandal that still reverberates by entering a common-law marriage with Rachel and proudly claiming their mixed-race children.

    The Knight Negroes, as these children were known, were shunned by whites and blacks alike. Unable to find marriage partners in the community, they started marrying their white cousins instead, with Newt’s encouragement. (Newt’s son Mat, for instance, married one of Rachel’s daughters by another man, and Newt’s daughter Molly married one of Rachel’s sons by another man.) An interracial community began to form near the small town of Soso, and continued to marry within itself…

    Read the article here.

  • Visions of Obama in America’s Ghettos

    Visions of Obama in America’s Ghettos

    The Nation
    2016-02-12

    Camilo José Vergara


    “Obama es el Presidente, Obama es para todos.” Painting by Chuy Vasquez. Luis Meat Market, 42nd Place at South Vermont Avenue, Los Angeles, 2013. (Camilo Vergara)

    From churches to gas stations.

    Documenting the murals that decorate the walls of barbershops, restaurants, butcher shops, storefront churches and liquor stores in poor, minority communities has been a decades-long interest of mine. These examples of popular art employ a relatively small range of symbols, motifs, and iconic figures to remind people of their roots and aspirations. When Barack Obama was elected in 2008, I knew that his likeness would soon be featured in ghettos across the nation, and so I searched inner-city neighborhoods for his portraits and interviewed artists and neighborhood residents…

    In African-American neighborhoods, President Obama is frequently depicted as a powerful man of action. Folk portraits of him express pride that a black person was able to achieve the presidency, something few believed possible. He is often accompanied by such symbols of American power as the eagle and the American flag…

    Read the entire article here.

  • I Feel Guilty for Being Able to ‘Pass’ as a Person of Color

    I Feel Guilty for Being Able to ‘Pass’ as a Person of Color

    Kveller
    2016-02-18

    Elana Rabinowitz
    Brooklyn, New York

    He called me negra. Not mami or guapa, but what translates to “black woman.” I wasn’t offended. More confused. The thing is, I’m really just a white Jewish girl from Brooklyn. There, I said it.

    Junot Diaz came to give a book talk and I was awestruck by the man who stood in front of me, waxing poetically in a black hoodie sweatshirt. Would that have been the time to correct a genius? Oh, I am sorry, Junot, I’m actually just another Jewish girl from Brooklyn. I balked.

    My last name is Rabinowitz, and with a name like that, and a life like mine, I’ve had my share of jokes and stereotypes, but never anything I couldn’t handle. The more interesting paradox is that the hue of my skin and the positioning of my features has often made me appear more Hispanic than anything else. After a while you get used to it, and eventually, I even started to believe it. I lived and studied in Ecuador, Argentina, and Mexico. Each trip I returned home with more mannerisms and vocabulary inadvertently adding to my new identity…

    Read the entire article here.

  • The Struggles Of Being Biracial

    The Struggles Of Being Biracial

    Odyssey
    2016-02-08

    Tamera Hyatte

    “What are you?”

    I cannot tell you how many times I have been asked this question and the same response I like to give is “I’m human.” I know it strikes people’s curiosity that I am mixed with black and white, having a white father and black mother. I have struggled with my racial identity since I was a child, feeling like there was no in-between besides it being black and white…

    Read the entire article here.

  • #LookingForMezclas

    #LookingForMezclas

    Hugo Amsellem
    Cali, Colombia
    2016-02-11

    Exploring the challenges of mingling identities with photos & stories of cool people I meet around the streets of the cities that I visit during my year-long travel…

    For more information, click here.

  • Participants Needed for Study on the Concept of Bi-Racial Ethnic Belongingness

    Participants Needed for Study on the Concept of Bi-Racial Ethnic Belongingness

    Saint Mary’s University
    Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
    2016-02-23

    Jasmine Moreash

    The need to belong is a fundamental aspect of life. For bi-racial individuals, ethnic belongingness can be more complicated compared to a monoracial individual. Belongingness contributes to self-esteem and for bi-racial individuals their perceived lack of belonging can cause a problematic question; what am I?

    Due to the one-drop rule that categorized any individual with a black ancestor as black, many bi racial individuals adapt a black ethnic identity. This one-drop rule continues to be implemented because of the justification that multi-racial children will be defined by society as black. With a growing population and increased awareness of multi-racial individuals some adapt an ambiguous identity. The purpose of this study is to find out if bi-racial (black and white) individuals who self-identify as bi-racial will have a different sense of belongingness compared to bi-racial individuals who self-identify as black or self-identify as white.

    To participate in the study, click here.

  • DNA ancestry tests branded ‘meaningless’

    DNA ancestry tests branded ‘meaningless’

    The Telegraph
    2013-03-07

    Nick Collins, Science Correspondent

    Customers are being charged up to £300 to learn whether they have links to famous people or societies despite the fact many of the tests are not backed up by scientific evidence, experts said.

    The amount of DNA any individual inherits from relatives just a few steps up their family tree is negligible compared with the vast amount we all share from common ancestors.

    It means any ancestral “history” identified by a simple genetic test is just one of dozens of possible interpretations, and to try to trace our lineage directly through our genes is “absurd”, they claimed…

    … The warning was backed by a number of leading genetics experts. Steve Jones, Emeritus Professor of Human Genetics at UCL said: “On a long trudge through history – two parents, four great-grandparents, and so on – very soon everyone runs out of ancestors and has to share them.

    “As a result, almost every Briton is a descendant of Viking hordes, Roman legions, African migrants, Indian Brahmins, or anyone else they fancy.”…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Filmmakers Behind ‘Invisible Roots’ on Finding Afro-Mexicans Living in Southern California

    Filmmakers Behind ‘Invisible Roots’ on Finding Afro-Mexicans Living in Southern California

    Remezcla
    2016-02-16

    Walter Thompson-Hernández
    Los Angeles, California


    Photo: NOTIMEX/JAVIER LIRA OTERO

    Almost a year before the Mexican government officially acknowledged Afro-Mexicans as a distinct racial and ethnic group, directors Tiffany Walton and Lizz Mullis first began working on their film, Invisible Roots: Afro-Mexicans of Southern California, as a film project while attending the University of Southern California (USC). For Walton, whose grandfather was Afro-Panamanian, the project was deeply connected to her family’s Afro-Latino story, while Mullis was motivated by her interests in broader societal questions about race and identity. But during the early stages of the project both struggled to find subjects for their film. After a number of failed attempts at connecting with Afro-Mexican families in the Los Angeles area, attempts they both called “extensive,” Walton and Mullis were fortuitously connected to a few Afro-Mexican families through academic and professional contacts. The film premiered at the Los Angeles Pan African Film Festival with which the directing duo hopes to shed light on the experiences of a group that continues to garner recognition both in Mexico and in the U.S…

    Can you describe what inspired you to make this film?

    TW: I’ve always been really interested in African-American history as well as the African diaspora. I remember first learning that my dad’s grandfather had moved from Panama to Alabama to attend college. I felt excited about having a personal connection to another place, an ancestral place, a place outside of the United States, that I could reference and say, “Hey, I have roots there.” With that, I became really curious about Black people who lived in Central America and other Latin American countries. I wanted to know how they identified culturally and racially, I wanted to know what they ate, and what things we would have in common. I was curious about learning how they navigated the world.

    I first learned about Afro-Mexicans from a large poster my dad had hanging in his office. The poster was of a photograph called, “Tres Hermanas,” by Tony Gleaton. On this poster were the words, “Africa’s Legacy in Mexico.” That poster spoke volumes to me. So, the poster inspired me to make this film. It touched me in such an intangible, sublime way that made me want to take action. I wanted to know everything about those little girls. What would we have in common? Were they curious about Africa? Would they feel a connection to me? I really just wanted to know how they viewed the world and how the world viewed them and how they felt about what the world thought of them…

    Read the entire interview here.