“The Day Beyoncé Turned Black” – SNL
Saturday Night Live (NBC)
2016-02-13
Mixed Race Studies
Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.
recent posts
- The Routledge International Handbook of Interracial and Intercultural Relationships and Mental Health
- Loving Across Racial and Cultural Boundaries: Interracial and Intercultural Relationships and Mental Health Conference
- Call for Proposals: 2026 Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference at UCLA
- Participants Needed for a Paid Research Study: Up to $100
- You were either Black or white. To claim whiteness as a mixed child was to deny and hide Blackness. Our families understood that the world we were growing into would seek to denigrate this part of us and we would need a community that was made up, always and already, of all shades of Blackness.
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Puerto Rican schoolchildren are taught that regardless of physical appearance they all individually derive from the same aforementioned roots. Regardless of whether this is true or not hasn’t eradicated in Puerto Rico structural or personal racism. Belief in mestizaje silences conversations about white supremacy and doesn’t force those with privilege to take responsibility for it. This allows white Puerto Ricans to appropriate, steal, and taint Afro-Puerto Rican traditions and exploit afro-descendant communities with no repercussions or consequences because “we are all Puerto Rican so all parts of Puerto Rican culture belong to all of us.” Not acknowledging the fact that a racial construct exists in Puerto Rico allows white privilege, white saviourism, and finally racism to flourish.
Dorothy Bell Ferrer, “How “Mestizaje” in Puerto Rico Makes Room for Racism to Flourish,” La Respuesta: A magazine to (Re)Imagine the Boricua Diaspora, February 8, 2016. http://larespuestamedia.com/mestizaje-racism/.
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Dorothy Roberts: The problem with race-based medicine
TEDMED 2015
November 2015Dorothy Roberts, George A. Weiss University Professor of Law and Sociology and the Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights
University of PennsylvaniaSocial justice advocate and law scholar Dorothy Roberts has a precise and powerful message: Race-based medicine is bad medicine. Even today, many doctors still use race as a medical shortcut; they make important decisions about things like pain tolerance based on a patient’s skin color instead of medical observation and measurement. In this searing talk, Roberts lays out the lingering traces of race-based medicine — and invites us to be a part of ending it. “It is more urgent than ever to finally abandon this backward legacy,” she says, “and to affirm our common humanity by ending the social inequalities that truly divide us.”
Watch the video presentation (00:14:41) here. Download the video presentation here.
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Identifying as Mixed Race vs Identifying as Black: I Choose Both
Mixed Race Feminist Blog
2016-02-10Nicola Codner
Leeds, Yorkshire, United KingdomI recently watched an interview with the UK rapper, writer and academic Akala. I usually really enjoy hearing him speak and generally find him to be quite faultless in his views on racial issues. For those who don’t know of Akala he is of mixed race and identifies as both mixed and black. In the interview I am referencing he covers many topics including veganism, internalized racism and Obama’s presidency. He also briefly mentions his thoughts on people with some black heritage who identify solely as mixed race. I’d long been wondering about where he stood in terms of his thoughts on mixed race issues. Please note that for the purposes of this article when I mention ‘mixed race’ I am referring to people with both black and white heritage…
…I have to admit I was actually quite upset about Akala’s comments in the interview on those who choose to identify as mixed race. He gave the usual spiel that is frequently heard in the US, about how many of those who describe themselves as mixed are problematic and are disassociating themselves from blackness. It’s quite common, particularly in the US, for people to view identifying as mixed race when you have black heritage, as anti-black and evidence of self-loathing/ internalized racism. I was shocked in some ways to hear Akala endorsing such simplistic views given that he obviously has such a good intellect…
Read the entire article here.
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A call for end of the “Globeleza Mulata”: A Manifesto
Black Women of Brazil: The site dedicated to Brazilian women of African descent
2016-02-08Stephanie Ribeiro and Djamila Ribeiro
Originally, “A Mulata Globeleza: Um Manifesto” from Agora é que são elas (2016-01-29).
The Globeleza Mulata is not a natural cultural event, but a performance that invades the imaginary and the Brazilian televisions during Carnival. A spectacular created by art director Hans Donner to be the symbol of the popular party, which exhibited for 13 years his companion Valéria Valenssa in the super-expositional function of “mulata”. We’re talking about a character that appeared in the nineties and still strictly follows the same script: it is always a black woman that dances the samba as a passista (Carnaval dancer), naked with her body painted with glitter, to the sound of the vignette displayed throughout the daily programming of Rede Globo (TV).
To start the debate on this character, we need to identify the problem contained in the term “mulata”. Besides being a word naturalized by Brazilian society, it is a captive presence in the vocabulary of the hosts, journalists and reporters from the Globo broadcasting. The word of is of Spanish origin comes from “mula” or “mulo” (the masculine and feminine of ‘mule’): that that is a hybrid originating from a cross between species. Mules are animals born crossing donkeys with mares or horses with donkeys. In another sense, they are the result of the mating of the animal considered noble (equus caballus) with the animal deemed second class (donkey). Therefore, it is a derogatory word indicating mestiçagem (racial mixture or crossbreeding), impurity; an improper mixing that should not exist.
Employed since the colonial period, the term was used to designate lighter skinned blacks, fruits of the rape of slaves by masters. Such a nomenclature has sexist and racist nature and was transferred to the Globeleza character, naturalized. The adjective “mulata” is a sad memory of the 354 years (1534-1888) of escravidão negra (black slavery) in Brazil…
Read the entire article here.
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University Press of New England
2016-02-09
256 pages
5 1/2 x 8 1/2″
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-61168-536-7
Ebook IBSN: 978-1-61168-967-9
A personal and cultural exploration of Barack Obama as black president, black icon, and black folk hero
In his nearly two terms as president, Barack Obama has solidified his status as something black people haven’t had for fifty years: a folk hero. The 1960s delivered Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, forever twinned as larger-than-life outsiders and truth tellers who took on racism and died in the process. Obama is different: Not an outsider but president, head of the most powerful state in the world; a centrist Democrat, not the face of a movement. Yet he is every bit a folk hero, doing battle with the beast of a system created to keep people like him on the margins. He is unique among presidents and entirely unique among black people, who never expected to have a president so soon.
In I Heart Obama, journalist Erin Aubry Kaplan offers an unapologetic appreciation of our highest-ranking “First” and what he means to black Americans. In the process, she explores the critiques of those in the black community who charge that he has not done enough, been present enough, been black enough to motivate real change in America. Racial antipathy cloaked as political antipathy has been the major conflict in Obama’s presidency. His impossible task as an individual and as a president is nothing less than this: to reform the entire racist culture of the country he leads. Black people know he can’t do it, but will support his effort anyway, as they have supported the efforts of many others. Obama’s is a noble and singular story we will tell for generations. I Heart Obama looks at the story so far.
Contents
- Introduction
- Obama the Folk Hero: What He Means to Us
- Obama Represents
- Obama Leads
- Who Is This Guy?
- Is Obama Bad for Us?
- Epilogue: I Heart Obama
- Bibliography