Mixed Race Studies

Do 2 Halves Really Make a Whole?

Center for Asian American Media
1993
30 minutes
VHS

Martha Chono-Helsley, Producer/Director

This video features the diverse viewpoints of people with multiracial Asian heritages. African and Japanese American poet and playwright Velina Hasu Houston lives an “amalgamated existence” and encourages others to take pride in all that they are. Performance artist Dan Kwong constantly struggles with two strong and often conflicting Asian heritages – Japanese and Chinese American. Chinese-Japanese-Chicana-Scots storyteller, actress and performance artist Brenda Wong Aoki uses her unique ethnic mix to intersect social circles.

CNN’s Soledad O’Brien keeps own story under wraps while exploring colorism in “Who is Black in America?

Tampa Bay Times
The Feed
2012-12-07

Eric Deggans, TV/Media Critic

More than any other, one moment crystallizes the confusing, sometimes comically absurd contortions built up around racial identity unveiled in CNN’s latest documentary Who Is Black in America?
 
It’s not the 7-year-old, dark-skinned black girl who turns to her mother and insists light skin is pretty. It’s not the professor [William A. Darity, Jr.] who cites studies showing dark-skinned black men suffer a 10 to 12 percent income inequality compared to white men.
 
It’s when Becca Khalil, a Philadelphia-based high schooler who is the light-skinned child of Egyptian parents, feels compelled to identify herself as white on a college scholarship application.
 
Declaring to CNN’s cameras that she identifies as black personally, Khalil is nevertheless challenged by a friend born of African-American parents, who says she hasn’t had a “black experience.”…

…When most of the youths in CNN’s documentary talk about being black, they mean African American. But [Soledad] O’Brien, who also self-identifies as black, has her non-white roots in Cuba, a Hispanic-centered culture that’s different than the environment for black folks raised in Atlanta or Detroit.
 
And unlike some of the kids she profiles, O’Brien doesn’t believe anyone gets to choose their racial identity.
 
“This idea that someone gets to choose seems odd,” added the anchor. “I’m lighter-skinned than the president of the United States, but my mom is black, my brothers and sisters are black, my mom has a short afro. I never thought I had a choice about how I identified … My identity was given to me very early by my parents.”…

…O’Brien’s documentary also doesn’t mention the most famous person navigating issues of race and identity in modern times: President Barack Obama. And the reason Obama isn’t featured is the same reason O’Brien doesn’t tell her story, even though the details — she was raised as an Afro-Cuban/Irish child in an all-white neighborhood where she felt “people like me weren’t attractive” — seems the embodiment of the documentary’s spirit…

Read the entire article here.

The best evidence suggests there has yet to be a sea change in the proportion of Americans selecting a multiracial identity. Furthermore, practices of racial self-classification are much less likely to have any significant implications for the direction of social policies than practices of social classification—how people are perceived and categorized racially and ethnically by others. A person’s life chances are far more greatly influenced by how others see and situate them than by the individual’s personal selection of a racial classification. Indeed, an individual’s physical attributes and their interpretation by others often are the critical factors dictating how he or she is treated by others.

William Darity, Jr., “How might social policies change as more Americans identify themselves as ‘multiracial’?,” Good Question: An Exploration in Ethics series, The Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University, July 9, 2011. http://kenan.ethics.duke.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/GQ-Darity.pdf

How might social policies change as more Americans identify themselves as “multiracial”?

The Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University
Good Question: An Exploration in Ethics series
2011-07-09

William Darity, Jr., Arts & Sciences Professor of Public Policy, African and African American Studies, and Economics
Duke University

QUESTION: How might social policies change as more Americans identify themselves as “multiracial”?

ANSWER: Are more Americans, in fact, identifying themselves as “multiracial”? Census 2000 provided respondents with the first opportunity to select more than one racial category. At the time, 2.4 percent of all respondents—or about 6.8 million people—actually selected two categories or more for their racial self-classification. While preliminary reports from Census 2010 indicate that the number of persons checking “two or more” racial categories has risen 35% since Census 2000, the overall proportion remains at less than 3% of all Census respondents.

The best evidence suggests there has yet to be a sea change in the proportion of Americans selecting a multiracial identity. Furthermore, practices of racial self-classification are much less likely to have any significant implications for the direction of social policies than practices of social classification—how people are perceived and categorized racially and ethnically by others. A person’s life chances are far more greatly influenced by how others see and situate them than by the individual’s personal selection of a racial classification. Indeed, an individual’s physical attributes and their interpretation by others often are the critical factors dictating how he or she is treated by others….

…With regard to the connection between racial classification and social policies, there has been substantial political pressure to move away from race-targeted policies that were designed to address economic disparities in the U.S. But that pressure is not attributable to the rise in persons choosing a multiracial identity. It is due, instead, to what I believe are strong anti-black sentiments. Black Americans continuously are portrayed as undeserving of social policy initiatives uniquely designed to address their condition, particularly via popular narratives that frame blacks’ subordinate economic condition as due to their own personal irresponsibility and bad behavior…

Read the entire article here.

A Beautiful Blend

Center for Asian American Media
2004
27 minutes
DVD

David Hosley, Producer
KVIE-TV

In the decades following the Supreme Court’s 1967 decision to end laws making interracial marriage illegal, the United States has witnessed a remarkable increase in the number of mixed-race couples and of the multi-ethnic children born to them. As these segments of the population continue to expand and gain presence, more efforts have been made to understand the quality of their daily lives and their psychological development. Through interviews with interracial couples and their children, A Beautiful Blend provides a forum for them to express their unique concerns regarding their multicultural backgrounds and their growing visibility in America.

A Beautiful Blend also includes Hapa (26 minutes) by Midori Sperandeo.

Hapa: One Step at a Time

Center for Asian American Media
2001
26 minutes
DVD

Midori Sperandeo, Producer
KVIE-TV

According to 2000 Census statistics, nearly 7 million Americans identify themselves as multi-racial, or ‘hapa.’ This engaging first-person documentary is about marathon runner and TV producer Midori Sperandeo’s struggles to come to terms with her hapa identity. Comparing her personal path toward self-awareness as a hapa to the challenges she faces training for long-distance running, Hapa touches upon a national history of anti-miscegenation laws, increasing rates of interracial marriages and additional census data to provide a context with which to better understand this rapidly growing demographic group. Interviews with individuals from diverse backgrounds call attention to the pressure many feel to “choose” between cultural heritages; their anxieties of feeling like outsiders in their parents’ communities; and the unique ways in which the hapa community is enriching the cultural fabric of our society.

Mixed-race Brits rising fast as prejudice wanes

The Sunday Times
2012-12-09

Dipesh Gadher, Deputy News Editor

MIXED-RACE Britons, epitomised by Jessica Ennis, the Olympic heptathlon champion, are among the nation’s fastest-growing ethnic-minority groups, according to official figures.

New data from the 2011 census to be published on Tuesday is expected to show that at least 1m people were born to parents from different ethnicities.

Academics believe the true number of people from a mixed-race background could be twice this amount, because many of them identified themselves in other categories, such as black or white, on census forms.

The findings coincide with new polling that reveals only 15% of people feel uncomfortable about interracial marriages.

Twenty years ago, 40% of Britons expressed concerns about such relationships…

Login to read the article here.

Under the Skin

Finch Publishing
August 2012
210 pages
Paperback ISBN: 9781921462801

Marion van Dyk

This beautifully written and evocative memoir is a fascinating insight into the lives of her family, living under apartheid, who struggled to create a sense of identity and personal worth. It’s a book of historical relevance in its revelations about resistance to Apartheid by South Africans of mixed race; and it is also a book of social relevance to the debate on racism today, in Australia, South Africa, and elsewhere in the world.
 
Marion van Dyk’s absorbing memoir submerges the reader in the world of South Africa in the 1950s through to the 1980s. Classified as a ‘coloured’ (being neither black nor white) by an apartheid government, she and her family are forced to live as second-class citizens, caught between two worlds. Marion and her family struggle to make ends meet after they are forced to leave their family home when their area is redesignated for whites only.
 
After relocating to a small ‘coloured’ township, Marion attends a school where, despite severe restrictions, her teachers fight tooth and nail to give her an education. She becomes head of a computer programming department, breaking through racial and gender barriers in the process, before emigrating to Australia with her husband and son.
 
Marion van Dyk was a finalist in the 2012 Finch Memoir Prize for this, her first book, the memoir Under the Skin.

Jackie Kay and Sebastian Barry: Identity and struggle

The Guardian
2011-08-15

Sarah Crown

In our inaugural podcast from the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Sebastian Barry and Jackie Kay talk to us about the themes that power their work

In our first podcast from the 2011 Edinburgh International Book Festival, we explore questions of identity and struggle as played out in the 20th-century…

…The poet and novelist Jackie Kay turned memoirist last year with her book Red Dust Road, an account of her search for her birth parents: a white Scottish woman, and a Nigerian man. Her writing reflects her grappling with the thorny issue of her own identity, and she reveals how this podcast has reconnected her with her family…

[Jackie Kay reads “Burying My African Father.”]

Read the entire article here.  Listen to the audio here. Download the audio here.

Who Is Black In America? Soledad O’Brien, CNN Find Out In ‘BIA 5’

NewsOne: For Black America
2012-12-07

Navarrow Wright

This Sunday at 8 p.m., CNN airs its fifth installment of the “Black In America” series, which is hosted by Soledad O’Brien. In this episode, O’Brien asks the question, “Who is Black in America?” as they tackle the issues of colorism and racial identity. The documentary centers around young women who are part of a poetry program in Philly who are dealing with these issues. I had the opportunity to sit down with Soledad to get her take on what may be one of the most talked about “Black in America” episodes yet.

[Note from Steven F. Riley: Ms. O’Brien also mentions what topics are not discussed in the hour-long documentary.]