Mixed Race Studies

Becoming black, becoming president

Patterns of Prejudice
Volume 45, Issue 1-2, 2011
pages 62-85
DOI: 10.1080/0031322X.2011.563145

Richard H. King, Professor Emeritus of American and Canadian Studies
University of Nottingham

Speculation about the relationship between Barack Obama’s election to the presidency and race in the United States was rife prior to, during and after his successful campaign. King looks at three aspects of this issue. First, as a kind of outsider, Obama had to prove himself black enough for African Americans of the traditional sort and not too dangerous for Whites. How did he achieve this? Second, Obama’s election was made possible by changes in the voting behaviour of white Americans, particularly in the North, and the way that African Americans like Obama gained a foothold in, and at times control of, urban political machines, such as, in his case, Chicago. How have American historians treated this shift in white voting behaviour? Finally, the central question of how race still impinges on President Obama’s performance as president. King concludes with a look at issues such as colour blindness and whiteness, the nature of black political identity and solidarity, and the variety of political roles from which a black leader such Obama can choose.

Read or purchase the article here.

Betwixt And Between: Studying Multiracial Identity

National Public Radio
Talk of the Nation
2012-06-21

Neal Conan, Host

G. Reginald Daniel, Professor of Sociology
University of California, Santa Barbara

In 1989, Reginald Daniel began teaching a university course on multiracial identity called Betwixt and Between. It remains the longest-running college course addressing the multiracial experience. For his continuing studies and research on multiraciality, Daniel received the Loving Prize.

Note from Steven F. Riley: The “Loving Prize” is the awarded by the Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival co-founders Fanshen Cox and Heidi Durrow to artists and educators who have shown a dedication to celebrating and illuminating the Mixed experience. Past recipients include best-selling writer James McBride, NFL star Hines Ward, Hapa artist Kip Fulbeck, scholars Dr. Maria P. P. Root and Paul Spickard, writer and educator Maya Soetoro-Ng, and writer and TV producer Angela Nissel.

G. Reginald Daniel Accepts Loving Prize at Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival (2012-06-16) ©2012, Steven F. Riley

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I’m Neal Conan.

In the spring of 1989, Professor Reginald Daniel started teaching a university course on multiracial identity called Betwixt and Between. The class is one of the first of its kind. He’s continued to teach it ever since. Last week, he received the Loving Prize, named after the couple in the famous Loving v. Virginia case where the Supreme Court struck down laws that banned interracial marriage. The award recognized his contributions to the national dialogue about multiracial identity.

Well, we want to hear from multiracial listeners today. What’s changed in your experience over the last two decades and more? Give us a call: 800-989-8255. Email us: talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation at our website, that’s at npr.org. Reginald Daniel teaches at the University of California, Santa Barbara and joins us now from his home in Santa Barbara. Congratulations.

REGINALD DANIEL: Thank you very much. It is quite an honor and also quite—sort of something to get my head around. It was—having that kind of public recognition…

Read the transcript here.  Listen to the interview here. Download the interview here.

Embodying Belonging: Racializing Okinawan Diaspora in Bolivia and Japan

University Of Hawai‘i Press
May 2010
272 pages
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8248-3344-2

Taku Suzuki, Assistant Professor of International Studies
Denison University, Granville, Ohio

Embodying Belonging is the first full-length study of a Okinawan diasporic community in South America and Japan. Under extraordinary conditions throughout the twentieth century (Imperial Japanese rule, the brutal Battle of Okinawa at the end of World War II, U.S. military occupation), Okinawans left their homeland and created various diasporic communities around the world. Colonia Okinawa, a farming settlement in the tropical plains of eastern Bolivia, is one such community that was established in the 1950s under the guidance of the U.S. military administration. Although they have flourished as farm owners in Bolivia, thanks to generous support from the Japanese government since Okinawa’s reversion to Japan in 1972, hundreds of Bolivian-born ethnic Okinawans have left the Colonia in the last two decades and moved to Japanese cities, such as Yokohama, to become manual laborers in construction and manufacturing industries.

Based on the author’s multisited field research on the work, education, and community lives of Okinawans in the Colonia and Yokohama, this ethnography challenges the unidirectional model of assimilation and acculturation commonly found in immigration studies. In its vivid depiction of the transnational experiences of Okinawan-Bolivians, it argues that transnational Okinawan-Bolivians underwent the various racialization processes—in which they were portrayed by non-Okinawan Bolivians living in the Colonia and native-born Japanese mainlanders in Yokohama and self-represented by Okinawan-Bolivians themselves—as the physical embodiment of a generalized and naturalized “culture” of Japan, Okinawa, or Bolivia. Racializing narratives and performances ideologically serve as both a cause and result of Okinawan-Bolivians’ social and economic status as successful large-scale farm owners in rural Bolivia and struggling manual laborers in urban Japan.
 
As the most comprehensive work available on Okinawan immigrants in Latin America and ethnic Okinawan “return” migrants in Japan, Embodying Belongingis at once a critical examination of the contradictory class and cultural identity (trans)formations of transmigrants; a rich qualitative study of colonial and postcolonial subjects in diaspora, and a bold attempt to theorize racialization as a social process of belonging within local and global schemes.

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Racializing Culture and Class in a Transnational Field
• 1. Modern Okinawan Transnationality: Colonialism, Diaspora, and “Return”
• 2. The Making of Patrones Japonesas and Dekasegi Migrants
• 3. From Patrón to Nikkei-jin Rodosha: Class Transformations
• 4. Educating “Good” Nikkei and Okinawan Subjects
• 5. Gendering Transnationality: Marriage, Family, and Dekasegi
• Conclusion: Embodiment of Local Belonging
• Notes
• Glossary
• References
• Index

Olympic Swimmer Neal Built Her Dream in Brooklyn

The New York Times
2012-07-15

William C. Rhoden, Sports Columnist

Lia Neal (Al Bello/Getty Images)	Rome and Siu Neal with their grandson Rome Jin, their son Rome Kyn and his wife Ziggy (Victor J. Blue for The New York Times)

Rome Neal walked up to the microphone last week at the Paris Blues in Harlem and was just about to sing “I Worry About You” when he decided to share some great news with his audience. In his 12 years of performing a one-man show about Thelonious Monk, Neal had come to appreciate the importance of exquisite timing.

“My daughter’s name is Lia Neal and she just made it to become an Olympic swimmer, and she’ll be swimming in the Olympics in 2012 in London, England, the 4×100 relay,” Neal said.

The audience applauded and cheered enthusiastically. “Lia is 17 years old,” he said, “the second African-American female swimmer to make it to the Olympics.”

More applause, and for a story Rome Neal could finally tell.

Lia Neal qualified for the Olympics earlier this month by finishing fourth in the 100-meter freestyle, putting her on the relay team. In the weeks and months leading to the Olympic swimming trials, her mother, Siu Neal, had admonished her husband of 38 years not to put the cart before the horse, to rein in his flair for the dramatic and generally be cool.

Now Rome was free to spread the word and the joy: his baby girl was an Olympian…

…But the commitment is not just by the athlete.

“Any parent would do what I do,” Siu Neal said. “They all spend lots of time with their kids, take them to swimming practice, bringing them to competitions and meets. I don’t consider it giving up anything. I enjoy watching her swim; I even loved to watch her practice.”

Siu and Rome Neal are each 59, and their relationship reflects a deep-seated belief in possibility. They were brought together by poignant variations of the American dream. Their journeys to New York — and each other — underline the complexities and contradictions of a nation conceived in liberty. Their daughter symbolizes the powerful, positive force of that union.

When he was a year old, in 1953, Rome (his given name, Jerome, was shortened by his mother) moved to New York City from Sumter, S.C., as his family sought relief from the suffocating racial oppression in the South.

Siu and her family immigrated to the United States from Hong Kong when she was 18 to join her grandfather. “We were looking for a better life,” she said.

Rome’s family settled in Harlem before moving to Brooklyn. Siu’s family initially moved to the Bronx before also heading to Brooklyn. They met at New York City Community College, married and had three sons: Rome Kyn, Smile and Treasure.

On Feb. 13, 1995, the Neals had the daughter they had long hoped for. Rome wanted to name her Kujichagulia in honor of the second principle of Kwanzaa, self-determination. He was voted down. They settled on Lia. She speaks fluent Cantonese and Mandarin…

Read the entire article here.

Black-Yellow Fences: Multicultural Boundaries and Whiteness in the Rush Hour Franchise

Critical Studies in Media Communication
Published Online: 2012-07-06
DOI: 10.1080/15295036.2012.697634

David C. Oh, Visiting Professor of Communications
Villanova University

The Rush Hour films disrupt the interracial buddy cop formula largely by erasing whites from the films. Despite the unconventional casting, the franchise has achieved “mainstream” popularity, which I argue is at least partly because the films construct Carter and Lee in an oppositional binary as a multiracial “odd couple,” converting Carter and Lee, the two lead detectives played by Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan, into physical embodiments of blackness and yellowness, fencing in the perimeters of whiteness. Thus, whiteness is able to remain protected and undetected in the normative center. Like a physical fence, however, the boundaries are semi-permeable, creating narrative openings to challenge whiteness. Therefore, the Rush Hour franchise protects white normality but leaves it somewhat vulnerable at the margins.

Nearly 15 years have passed since the release of the film Rush Hour, and, to date, there have been no major Hollywood blockbusters outside the franchise with African American and Asian American leads in a buddy film or in any other genre. This is despite the fact that Rush Hour was an enormous box office success the film series has been one of the most successful franchises in the action-buddy cop genre (Box office mojo, n.d.). Although the box office is only one key indicator of impact, it is, nevertheless, noteworthy because the films financial success points at least in part to its broad cultural appeal. But, why is the film appealing? Is it that the racially progressive casting is indicative of racial progressiveness? If so, what makes its replicability so elusive in a media system that historically gobbles up commodifiable bodies? I argue that the film’s appeal may have something to do with its semblance of progressive casting that referentially constructs whiteness between the binary poles of blackness and yellowness. Through the metaphor of racial fences, I will point to the…

Read or purchase the article here.

HIST 1133-Mongrel America: Miscegenation, Passing, and the Myth of Racial Purity

Cornell University
Fall 2012

Racial divisions have served as potent tools for consolidating power, upholding unjust practices, and shaping the American historical imagination. Whether in the form of slavery, segregation, extralegal violence, or the one-drop rule, the insistence on preserving racial distinctions reflects a desire among some Americans to cling to a myth of racial purity. Despite persistent efforts to enforce these boundaries, other Americans have consistently blurred, transgressed, and undermined these seemingly rigid racial categories. Drawing on texts by Thomas Jefferson, Nella Larsen, James Baldwin, and others, this class will explore the quixotic desire for white racial purity, the reality of ‘amalgamation,’ and the relationship between the two. Ultimately, students will analyze the impact of ‘Mongrel America’ on the ways in which Americans understand citizenship and their history.

Two Classes, Divided by ‘I Do’

The New York Times
2012-07-15

Jason Deparle

Also see the video, “Single and Unequal” by Shayla Harris here.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Jessica Schairer has so much in common with her boss, Chris Faulkner, that a visitor to the day care center they run might get them confused.

They are both friendly white women from modest Midwestern backgrounds who left for college with conventional hopes of marriage, motherhood and career. They both have children in elementary school. They pass their days in similar ways: juggling toddlers, coaching teachers and swapping small secrets that mark them as friends. They even got tattoos together. Though Ms. Faulkner, as the boss, earns more money, the difference is a gap, not a chasm.

But a friendship that evokes parity by day becomes a study of inequality at night and a testament to the way family structure deepens class divides. Ms. Faulkner is married and living on two paychecks, while Ms. Schairer is raising her children by herself. That gives the Faulkner family a profound advantage in income and nurturing time, and makes their children statistically more likely to finish college, find good jobs and form stable marriages…

Read the entire article here. Watch the video by Shayla Harris  here.

Destiny’s Child: Obama and Election ’08

boundary 2: an international journal of literature and culture
Volume 39, Number 2 (Summer 2012)
pages 3-32
DOI: 10.1215/01903659-1597871

Hortense Spillers, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of English
Vanderbilt University

“Destiny’s Child: Obama and Election ’08” interrogates the election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States as a historically ordained event. This essay not only addresses the question of whether we might plausibly read it as the fulfillment of telos but also examines the implications of our having already done so.

Read or purchase the article here.

The Miracle and the Defects [Chapter]

Chapter in:

The Constantinos Kararnanlis Institute for Democracy Yearbook 2009
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-00621-0

pages 73-77
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-00621-0_11

Edited by:

Constantine Arvanitopoulos, Professor of European and International Studies
Panteion University, Athens, Greece

Konstantina E. Botsiou, Associate Professor of Political Science
University of Peloponnisos, Korinthos, Greece

Chapter Author:

George Th. Mavrogordatos, Professor of Political Science
University of Athens

In most of the world, the election of the 44th President of the United States was justly celebrated as an event of historic significance. It proved the irrepressible vitality of the American Dream, precisely at a time when American capitalism appeared to be crumbling. It also confirmed the unique adaptability of an admirable political system, which never ceases to evolve, even though it is based on the oldest written Constitution.

Fear of repetition or banality must not hinder the exploration and evaluation of the manifold significance that the Obama victory has on several different levels, beyond race as such. He is indeed the first African-American president, and his election was regarded as finally laying to rest a painful legacy of slavery, civil war, and discrimination. But he is also a person of mixed blood, who belongs more to the present and the future than to the past, thanks to his multiracial and multicultural background. He had to persuade not only whites, but also many blacks who understandably did not recognise him immediately as one of their own.

Moreover, he is an intellectual educated at the most elite institutions, yet capable of rousing and mobilising the poor and uneducated, without concessions at the expense of his cultured rhetorical style or his cool rationalism. Change is just as impressive in this respect, after many years of Republican disdain of the intellect and intellectuals.

How did such an unusual person, in such a short time, become President of the United States? The easy answer would be to classify him immediately as a ‘charismatic leader’ in the Weberian (not the journalistic) sense. Although it is a scientific term that should be used sparingly, many Obama supporters clearly do believe (as required by Max Weber’s definition) that he is endowed with ‘specifically exceptional powers or qualities, not accessible to the ordinary person’ or, more precisely, the ordinary politician. There were even references to ‘magic’ and to a ‘miracle.’…

Fostering Mixed-Race Children in Ukraine: ‘Family Portrait in Black and White’

The New York Times
2012-07-13

Neil Genzlinger, Television Critic

“Family Portrait in Black and White,” a documentary by Julia Ivanova, leaves a lot of questions unanswered, which is frustrating, but it gets high marks for honesty.

It would have been easy for this film, which is about a woman in Ukraine and the more than 20 adopted and foster children she has taken in, to be a hagiography, but instead it’s a portrait of an imperfect solution in a country that seems to have a lot that needs solving.

The woman’s name is Olga Nenya, and she has made it her particular mission to provide a home for mixed-race children who have been abandoned by their parents. That is a brave thing for her to do because such children are shunned by many in Ukraine, which has a virulent skinhead movement. We don’t learn much about Ms. Nenya, like why she got into this work or what financial resources she is drawing on to put food in all those hungry mouths…

Read the entire review here.