Mixed Race Studies

Black Czech writer Zmeškal won EU Prize for Literature in 2011

Afro-Europe
2012-04-08

Czech writer Tomáš Zmeškal, who was born as the son of a Congolese father and a Czech mother in Prague, won the European Union Prize for Literature in 2011 for his debut novel “Love Letter in Cuneiform Script” (Milostný Dopis Klínovým Písmem) set in post-war Czechoslovakia through the collapse of communism.

He was one of 12 winners of the prize, which recognizes the best new or emerging authors in the European Union.

Zmeškal’s novel “Životopis černobílého jehněte”  (“The Biography of the Black and White Lamb”) of 2009, written long before his debut was published, is the first novel in Czech language dealing with the experience of Africans in the communist countries in Eastern Europe. It is the childhood and youth story of twins, who do not know their ethnically mixed parents and grow in their grandmother’s house. In spite of her attempts to protect them, they suffer from the racism and hostility that surrounds them. Which is all the more absurd since the society, in which they live, officially encourages internationalist attitudes and an understanding among nations…

Read the entire article here.

Defining Mixed Race on Television: an Analysis of Barack Obama and Saturday Night Live

California State University, Sacramento
Fall 2011
109 pages

Amanda Joy Davis

THESIS Submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS in COMMUNICATION STUDIES

This study uses a semiotic approach to textual analysis to examine social constructions of Barack Obama’s race in televised sketch comedy to discover how this construction contributes to the process of hegemony regarding society’s treatment of mixed race. Polysemy will be explored as a key contributing factor. The television program chosen for this study is Saturday Night Live (SNL); the program will be examined for visual and linguistic references to Obama and mixed race. The absence of mixed race references will also be analyzed for their contribution to the show’s overall message. This study argues that while SNL mentions mixed race, it ultimately adds to the hegemonic treatment of mixed race individuals. That is, it identifies Obama as monoracial, ignoring his mixed race heritage in favor of a neat, pre-existing category. While SNL had the opportunity to step outside of the typical dismissal of mixed race and defend their choice of actor to portray Obama, and refer to him as mixed race on a consistent basis, they opted instead to categorize him as monoracial. In doing so, SNL upholds the silent treatment given to the mixed race community, forcing a monoracial identification based on appearance, a hegemonic course of action.

Read the entire thesis here.

Mixed race hegemony, I argue, is the assertion by neoliberals, ethnocentric nationalists, and by some mixed race people themselves that biracial and multiracial individuals and families will lead to the end of a race-conscious and racially-discriminatory society in the United States.  In other words ethnic nationalists believe that multiracial people dilute the resources of people of color and strides that have been made as a result of civil rights while neoliberals articulate an ideology of multiraciality as the next logical stage in a “colorblind” or “post-racial” society. On both sides hegemonic ideologies are used to control the way that people of color and whites understand and respond to the growing population that identifies with being of multiple ethnic backgrounds.

Andrew J. Jolivétte, “Obama and the Biracial Factor: an Introduction,” in Obama and the Biracial Factor: The Battle for a New American Majority, edited by Andrew J. Jolivétte (Bristol: The Policy Press, 2012), 4.

Eurasian Women as Tawa’if Singers and Recording Artists: Entertainment and Identity-making in Colonial India

African and Asian Studies
Volume 8, Issue 3 (2009)
pages 268-287
DOI: 10.1163/156921009X458118

Shweta Sachdeva Jha, Assistant Professor of English
Miranda House, University College for Women, University of Delhi

Scholarship on Eurasians has often addressed issues of migration, collective identity and debates around home. Women performers however do not find themselves discussed in these histories of Eurasian peoples in India. This paper aims to account for individual agency in shaping one’s identity within the meta-narratives of collective identity of migrant peoples. I focus on two Eurasian women entertainers in the colonial cities of Benares and Calcutta who chose to forget their mixed-race past to fashion successful careers using new identities as tawa’if singers and actors in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This, I shall argue, was possible within the wider context of emergent colonial modernities in colonial India. By choosing micro-level case histories of these celebrity entertainers, I want to argue for including popular culture as an arena of identity-making within histories of migration and gender. To engage with popular culture, I shall extend our perception of historical ‘archive’ to include a varied set of materials such as biographical anecdotes, discographies, songbooks, and address the fields of poetry, music and history. Through this project I hope to rethink ideas of gender, culture and agency within wider debates of migration and identity-making.

Racial/Ethnic Variation in Parenting Styles: The Experience of Multiracial Adolescents

Bowling Green State University
December 2011
57 pages

Amanda N. House

According to the 2009 American Community Survey, 2.4% of the U.S. population consists of individuals who identify as two or more races, or multiracial. Nearly half of this estimate captures children under the age of 18, and the multiracial population continues to grow. There is previous literature on racial identification and friendship networks among multiracials, though little attention has been paid to the family experiences of multiracial children and adolescents. Adolescence is often a difficult life stage, and multiracial adolescents may face more adversity than monoracial adolescents with added identity concerns. Parents may react to these unique challenges by adjusting their parenting behaviors. Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (n = 13,395), the present study examines parenting behaviors and parenting styles among monoracial and multiracial adolescents and extends this research by further dissecting the multiracial group. Results show that among levels of parental warmth, there are no significant differences between monoracial and multiracial adolescents. However, on average, Black adolescents report higher levels of parental control than multiracial adolescents. Among multiracial adolescents, no significant differences were found between multiracial White and multiracial non-White adolescents, or between multiracial Black and multiracial non-Black adolescents, with respect to levels of parental warmth or parental control. Results also show that Asian adolescents are more likely than multiracial adolescents to experience authoritarian parenting than to experience authoritative parenting. Among the multiracial group, multiracial White adolescents are more likely than multiracial non-White adolescents to experience neglectful parenting than to experience authoritative parenting. No significant racial differences were found between multiracial Black and multiracial non-Black adolescents with respect to parenting styles.

Read the entire dissertation here.