Mixed Race Studies

In the racial politics of the United States, racial passing refers to a person classified by society as a member of one racial group (most commonly Caucasian / Afro-American heritage) choosing to identify with a different group (usually white) by appearance. The term was used especially in the US to describe a person of mixed-race heritage assimilating to the white majority…

Wikipedia contributors, “Passing (racial identity),” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Passing_(racial_identity)&oldid=348052376 (accessed March 9, 2010).

Commentary: Living in a Mixed-Race America

Essence.com
Essence Magazine
2009-10-20

June Cross, Assistant Professor of Journalism
Columbia University

As if being married had anything to do with Blacks and Whites producing mixed-race children.

That was my first thought upon reading that an elected official in Louisiana had refused to marry a Black man and a White woman out of concern for what might happen to the children.

Ever since African-Americans landed on these shores in chains, Black women carried the offspring of their White masters. And indentured women servants, often of Irish descent, bore the children of Black men back in the seventeenth century before Virginia became the first state in the union to make interracial marriage illegal in 1691…

…Where did a quarter million mixed race people go? Geneologists think they decided to pass as White and mixed themselves right into the great American melting pot. Of course, in Louisiana, where race-mixing has been going on since before the birth of the nation, all you had to do was cross the county lines to disappear…

Read the entire article here.

2010-03-09

Steven F. Riley

Like most Americans, we received a letter in the mail yesterday from the US Census Bureau notifying us of the forthcoming census…

Most relevant to this website is the option on the form for individuals to select one or more racial designations the potential consequences for public policy.  As a result in the heightened interest in the upcoming 2010 US Census and census demographic data in general, I have created a new category titled Census/Demographics to accommodate the multitude of articles, papers, and books that are now available.

The Girl Who Fell from the Sky: A Novel

Algonquin Books
2010
256 pages
ISBN-13: 9781565126800

Heidi W. Durrow

This debut novel tells the story of Rachel, the daughter of a Danish mother and a black G.I. who becomes the sole survivor of a family tragedy.

With her strict African American grandmother as her new guardian, Rachel moves to a mostly black community, where her light brown skin, blue eyes, and beauty bring mixed attention her way. Growing up in the 1980s, she learns to swallow her overwhelming grief and confronts her identity as a biracial young woman in a world that wants to see her as either black or white.

Meanwhile, a mystery unfolds, revealing the terrible truth about Rachel’s last morning on a Chicago rooftop. Interwoven are the voices of Jamie, a neighborhood boy who witnessed the events, and Laronne, a friend of Rachel’s mother.  Inspired by a true story of a mother’s twisted love, The Girl Who Fell from the Sky reveals an unfathomable past and explores issues of identity at a time when many people are asking “Must race confine us and define us?”

In the tradition of Jamaica Kincaid‘s Annie John and Toni Morrison‘s The Bluest Eye, here is a portrait of a young girl—and society’s ideas of race, class, and beauty.

It is a winner of the Bellwether Prize for best fiction manuscript addressing issues of social justice.