Mixed Race Studies

Hybrid Identity: Family, Photography and History in Colonial Indonesia

Undergraduate Journal of Gender and Women’s Studies
Volume 1, Issue 1 (2012)
15 pages

Sani Montclair
Department of Gender and Women’s Studies
University of California, Berkeley

As members of my family lose memories and pass away, I desire to take an even tighter grip on their narrative and the recollection of their story; their distant past has become my present exploration. I travel daily to the Indies, searching through black and white photographic albums, tracing the history of my great-grandparents and grandparents. What are these photographs conveying? Whose eyes were they for and most importantly, what story are they telling?

My Grandmother, Catherine Noordraven (or Omi) was born in Chimahi, Java in 1916. Her mother (Hubertina Samson) was an Indonesian nurse and her father (Otto Noordraven), who was born in Holland, was a Dutch soldier in the military. Omi had a middle/upper class childhood upbringing and had a brother who, like his father, served in the Dutch military. The photographic albums tell the story of their travels throughout many different places in Sumatra and Indonesia, due to Otto’s military post. The photographs of the women in the albums depict a life of leisure, showing bicycle riding, swimming and posed portraits in the yard. The photographs of the men usually illustrate militarization; the men are customarily in uniform or standing in front of government buildings. These photographs represent a highly gendered, racialized and performative colonial history.

My grandfather, Bob Jan vanderSpek (or Opi) was a Dutchman born in Bondowoso, Java in 1924. His father, Johannes Antonius Maria vanderSpek was an electrical engineer and mother, Cornelia Ann Maria vanLeuween was a stay at home mother. All of the photographs I have from his life are from the 1920s-30s and were sent to Holland before World War Two. The War left Opi with nothing; both his parents were killed and he was left with no belongings.

History depends on memory (as orally recounted or documented) as the only way through which actual experience can be retrieved. On the other hand, memory is constantly subject to change, influenced by later experiences (Cote 12).

The lines in this paper will move between history and memory, recalling a time in the Dutch East Indies when European identities and performances signified relations of power. The Dutch colonized the Indonesian islands and for two hundred years took Javanese and Indonesian women as their servants, sexual partners and wives. By the 1940s, there were numerous families of mixed racial backgrounds living in Java who were performing within the structures of a European identity. Uncovering the intersectional politics of hybrid identity is the primary focus of this paper. These mixed identities are revealed through a history of photographs in my family photo albums from the 1920s to the 1930s. The photographic albums in my possession document my family’s story during colonial rule. They narrate pieces of history and concurrently situate their racial and gendered position in the Dutch East Indies. The albums and interviews tell stories of my grandparents’ childhoods and simultaneously explore the complexities of state and homeland. Marrying a white European man was common for indigenous women, in high colonial times, and along with my great-grandmother and grandmother, my mother also married a European white man. The ruling class globally and specifically in Indonesia was white, and the whitening of my relatives’ bloodlines gave the women of color in my family higher class and racialized status. The family photo albums in my possession, along with interviews, allow me to expose these identities from the colonial model to the post-colonial. Structured through the complexities and intersectionality of performance, race, class and gender, these albums and interviews will be used as my primary source in crafting a story about citizenship and belonging…

Read the entire article here.

The ironic consequences of Obama’s election: Decreased support for social justice

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
Volume 45, Issue 3 (May 2009)
pages 556–559
DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2009.01.006

Cheryl R. Kaiser, Associate Professor of Psychology
University of Washington

Benjamin J. Drury
Department of Psychology
University of Washington

Kerry E. Spalding
Department of Psychology
University of Washington

Sapna Cheryan, Assistant Professor of Psychology
University of Washington

Laurie T. O’Brien, Associate Professor of Psychology
Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana

Do Americans think that, because of Barack Obama’s election, affirmative action and other policies that address racial injustice are no longer necessary? In this study, we examined this question by assessing participants’ perceptions of racial progress and support for remedying racial injustice both prior to and after Barack Obama’s presidential victory. Following the election, participants increased their perception that racism is less of a problem in the US today than in times past. They also expressed less support for policies designed to address racial inequality. Given the continued prevalence of racial disparities in virtually all aspects of American society, these results raise important implications for the status of policies aimed at eliminating racial injustice.

Read the entire article here.

What should Multiracial people learn? Learning goals for anti-(mono)racist education

Paper presented at the Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference
DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois
2012-11-01
6 pages

Eric Hamako
University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Political education has played important roles in many social movements. Philosopher Ronald Sundstrom has argued that Multiracial activists and community organizers have a responsibility to set an expressly anti-racist agenda for Multiracial social movements. However, a coherent anti-racist agenda—and the political education curricula needed to support it—has yet to solidly materialize in Multiracial movements. So, I asked Multiracial activists who teach about racism, “What learning goals would you set for Multiracial participants in anti-racist education?” In this paper, based on my dissertation research, I present some of the key learning goals proposed by my participants. Then, I offer my thoughts about those learning goals and suggest new directions for teaching Multiracial people about racism and anti-racism.

Read the entire paper here.

“I Got Indian in my Family”~A Discussion on Indian Identity

Mixed Race Radio
2013-01-23, 17:00Z (12:00 EST)

Tiffany Rae Reid, Host

Dwanna L. Robertson
University of Massachusetts, Amherst

On today’s episode of Mixed Race Radio we will speak with Dwanna L. Robertson and discuss issues of Identity: What does it mean to be Indian in today’s society?

Dwanna is a citizen of the Muscogee Creek Nation of Oklahoma, a public sociologist, an Indigenous rights advocate, and a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst having earned with two prior master’s degrees—an MBA and a Master of Science in Sociology.

Currently, she represents over 2600+ graduate students of color as the appointed ALANA (African-, Latin-, Asian-, and Native-American) – graduate student representative for the Faculty Senate Council Committee on the Status of Diversity for UMass-Amherst.

Dwanna writes for Indian Country Today Media Network and speaks (by invitation) at universities and other organizations and forums about the complexities of Indigenous identity in the United States.

Dwanna has authored or co-authored pieces in American Indian Culture and Research Journal, European Sociological Review, Research in the Sociology of Work, and Oxford Encyclopedia of American Business, Labor, and Economic History. Her research focuses on the reproduction of social inequality, particularly for American Indians. Her current project examines the problematic processes around American Indian identity within the structures of public policy and the media.

Dwanna will share her expertise with us while educating our listeners on the federal government’s approach to many issues, old and new.

For more information, click here.