Mixed Race Studies

Colorism: The War at Home

Ebony Magazine
News & Views
2013-02-20

Chris Williams

Dr. Yaba Blay discusses the history of ‘the color complex’ and how we can work to destroy it

The “color complex” has remains a source of great controversy and pain in the African American community and across much of the African Diaspora. As one of the leading voices and scholars on Black racial identity, Drexel University assistant teaching professor of Africana Studies Yaba Blay continues her arduous, groundbreaking work on the topic. Her (1)ne Drop Project has been featured on CNN’s Black in America series and expanded the discussion around how Blackness is defined in today’s society.

EBONY recently sat down with Dr. Blay to delve into the history behind colorism and how it has helped to shape Black racial identity in the United States.

EBONY: In the Black community, we seem to continue the tradition of lighter skin and straighter hair being ‘better.’ Why is the train of thought still prevalent in our collective mindset?

Yaba Blay: I definitely think it’s something we’ve internalized. Historically, just through observation we’ve seen that people with more European aesthetics and phenotypes were getting more privileges in this society. And again, for me, it’s really about us thinking about the framework from which we’re operating, like where are these ideas coming from and being able to acknowledge that they operate from outside of our community. These are conceptualizations that have been projected onto us and we see those things being affirmed in our society. It’s been called “the White ideal.” So—it constructs a spectrum of sorts where if I look at you and I can see that you potentially have European blood, I can assume that in comparison to someone who has darker skin, kinkier hair, and a more African phenotype that you’re better than them. It’s the idea that European genetics are your saving grace…

Read the entire interview here.

Brazilian Telenovelas and the Myth of Racial Democracy

Lexington Books
March 2012
136 pages
Size: 6 1/2 x 9 1/2
Hardback ISBN: 978-0-7391-6964-3
eBook ISBN: 978-0-7391-6965-0

Samantha Nogueira Joyce, Assistant Professor in Communication Studies
Indiana University, South Bend

Brazilian Telenovelas and the Myth of Racial Democracy, by Samantha Nogueira Joyce, examines what happens when a telenovela directly addresses matters of race and racism in contemporary Brazil. This investigation provides a traditional textual analysis of Duas Caras (2007-2008), a watershed telenovela for two main reasons: It was the first of its kind to present audiences with an Afro-Brazilian as the main hero, openly addressing race matters through plot and dialogue. Additionally, for the first time in the history of Brazilian television, the author of Duas Caras kept a web blog where he discussed the public’s reactions to the storylines, media discussions pertaining to the characters and plot, and directly engaged with fans and critics of the program.

Joyce combines her investigation of Duas Caras with a study of related media in order to demonstrate how the program introduced novel ideas about race and also offered a forum where varying perspectives on race, class, and racial relations in Brazil could be discussed. Brazilian Telenovelas is not a reception study in the traditional sense, it is not a story of entertainment-education in the strict sense, and it is not solely a textual analysis. Instead, Joyce’s text is a study of the social milieu that the telenovela (and especially Duas Caras) navigates, one that is a component of a contemporary progressive social movement in Brazil, and one that views the text as being located in social interactions. As such, this book reveals how telenovelas contribute to social change in a way that has not been fully explored in previous scholarship.

Table of Contents

• Chapter I – Episode 1: And Let There be White
• Chapter II – Black Flows: Duas Caras / The Legacy of Whitening and Racial Democracy
• Chapter III – “My Little Whitey” / “My Big, Delicious Negro:” Telenovelas, Duas Caras, and the Representation of Race
• Chapter IV – Deu no Blogão! (“It was in the Big Blog!”): Writing a Telenovela, a Blog, and a Metadiscourse
• Chapter V – Duas Caras as a New Approach to Social Merchandising
• Chapter VI – Conclusions
• References
• About the Author
• Index

Critical Mixed Race Studies Website is Launched

Critical Mixed Race Studies Website
2013-02-20

Laura Kina, Associate Professor Art, Media and Design
DePaul University

The new Critical Mixed Race Studies website has been launched!

Critical Mixed Race Studies is the transracial, transdisciplinary, and transnational critical analysis of the institutionalization of social, cultural, and political orders based on dominant conceptions of race. CMRS emphasizes the mutability of race and the porosity of racial boundaries in order to critique processes of racialization and social stratification based on race. CMRS addresses local and global systemic injustices rooted in systems of racialization.

Visit the site here.

Interview with PhD Student Karla Lucht: Children’s Literature about Mixed-Race Asian Americans/Canadians

The Center for Children’s Books
Graduate School of Library and Information Science
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
February 2013

Tad Andracki, CCB Outreach Coordinator

“Everyone deserves to see themselves represented in a book. And a good book at that.”

GSLIS doctoral student Karla Lucht visited the School of Library, Archival, and Information Studies at the University of British Columbia as part of the iSchool Doctoral Student Exchange Program in November 2012. The CCB decided to meet with Karla to discuss her trip and her research. Lucht describes her research as looking at the representations of mixed-race Asian Americans and Canadians in youth literature with a critical race theory lens.

Why do you see your research as important to the field of youth services and children’s literature? Why is it important?

To start with, there’s a gap in this research with lots of underrepresented groups, but with mixed-race people especially. Everyone deserves to see themselves represented in a book… and a good book at that. In the past, we’ve seen some books about mixed-race people, but a lot of them weren’t good. I’m trying to fill in those gaps.

What are some challenges you see in your particular field of research? What are some opportunities?

One primary challenge is just finding titles, especially using subject headings. The Library of Congress Subject Heading that’s closest to my work is Racially Mixed People–Fiction, which isn’t very descriptive. I’ve been sifting through books with that heading. I’m also trying other keywords—adoption, immigration, multiracial, multiethnic, multicultural–and then looking at the books to see if they have the content I’m interested in.

Another problem is that, especially in the late 1980s and the 90s, a lot of the YA books on this topic are a bit problematic and poorly written. You find books that really invest in Othering a character’s Asian side and putting whiteness on a pedestal. In those books, the character vists the Asian side of the family, and it’s always a big problem–the Asianness is “too weird” or something…

Read the entire interview here.

Mixed feelings

NOW.
2012-06-30

NOW is the online source for news, features, analysis and much more, covering Lebanon, the Lebanese diaspora and the Middle East.

“The people photographed are so beautiful they make you feel like having mixed race babies,” said Kevork Baboyan, one of many attendees at Wednesday’s opening of the photography exhibition, Mixed Feelings.

Over the years, racism has slowly but steadily started to raise eyebrows in Lebanon, a country that is infamous for abusing migrant domestic workers and discriminating against refugees and other groups of society. Rarely, however, has anyone addressed racism between Lebanese until Lebanese-Nigerian activist Nisreen Kaj sought – in collaboration with Beirut-based Polish photographer Marta Bogdanska — to explore the concepts of race and identity.

“Living in Beirut as a black Lebanese has [clearly highlighted] the hierarchy of skin color and ethnicity in the country,” Kaj told NOW Extra. “This reality has gotten under my skin, which is only a figure of speech, for it is in fact about the surface, about the skin, about the way we perceive identity, race, and ethnicity.”

Opening at Hamra’s Dar al-Musawwir, the launch combined images and interviews of some 30 Lebanese from African and Asian descent and was produced in cooperation with the Heinrich Böll Foundation, Middle East Office…

…When asked whether racism was more prevalent in Lebanon as compared to other Arab nations, Khoury said it was “particularly [widespread] here, but this is exhibit is a start.”

“They see my car keys and can’t believe I own a car… so [people at the supermarket] follow me to see whether or not it’s actually possible,” said Khoury’s mother laughingly, recounting the incident with equal humor and frustration…

Read the entire article here.

Possibilities Abound in a Nation That Is Diverse, CNN Journalist Says

Yale News
2009-11-20

Susan Gonzalez

When CNN anchor Soledad O’Brien was growing up, her mother in­structed her never to let anyone tell her that she wasn’t black or Hispanic because of her mixed ethnic and racial heritage.

So, when she was asked to identify her race on official forms, O’Brien — the daughter of a black Cuban mother and an Irish-Australian father — refused to check just one box, even when making a single selection was required, she told a packed auditorium in the Law School’s Levinson Auditorium during her Poynter Fellowship Lecture on Nov. 10.

America’s value lies in its diversity, O’Brien said, and that mixture of races and ethnicities should never be viewed as a “problem.”…

…Likewise, when O’Brien — also a Harvard graduate — was first applying for jobs as a journalist, one news director told her that there was only one spot open for a black person but that she wasn’t dark enough to qualify. Another news director asked if she would consider changing her name because it was too difficult to pronounce. On both occasions, her mother pointed out that these were jobs her daughter wouldn’t want anyway.

O’Brien said that her parents served as examples of perseverance who encouraged their children to look beyond challenges and focus on possibilities, instilling in them this message: “Dream and do what you want; push and achieve what you want; go and get what you want.”

Her own children, the journalist said, have become so used to diversity in their lives that they were shocked to discover that Barack Obama is America’s first black president.

“Diversity to me is an opportunity to think differently and to see differently,” she told her audience…

Read the entire article here.