Mixed Race Studies

How to update census’ race question

The Chicago Tribune
2013-05-05

Clarence Page

Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Clarence Page prefers an America where diversity and unique ethnicities are celebrated, not homogenized.

A notable example of how Americans fall through the cracks in census data-gathering caught my eye recently. It appeared on the black-oriented TheRoot.com website under this intriguing headline: “I found one drop; can I be black now?”

The “one drop” is a reference to the old oddly American racial rule that one drop of “black blood” in your veins makes you black. As a full-fledged black American, I wondered who is so eager to join the club?

The answer turned out to be a white woman who had written to The Root’s “Race Manners” advice column. Through genealogical records she uncovered an African-American ancestor who long ago had passed for white. Now faced with census forms, among other documents that ask us Americans for our race, she was wondering which box to check.

“Do I check both, and come across as a liar to those who don’t know my history?” she asked. “Or do I check just white, and feel like a self-loathing racist?”

I sympathize with the woman’s confusion. In changing times, government forms are often the last to catch up.

It has only been since 2000, for example, that mixed-race people are allowed to check more than one racial box on the U.S. census. And that’s just one area of government forms not keeping up with America’s changing demographics…

…More extensive questions of ethnicity and ancestry have been asked since 2000 by another set of longer forms, the American Community Survey. Unlike the 10-year census, the survey is conducted among a sample of 250,000 people every month.

That’s a good model, some experts, say, for how the 10-year census could give a more complete and realistic picture of America’s changing demographic landscape.

“We shouldn’t be governing in the 21st century by a race classification given us by a German doctor in 1776,” former Census Director Kenneth Prewitt wrote to me in an email…

Read the entire article here.

Mixed Relations: Asian-Aboriginal Contact in North Australia

University of Western Australia Publishing
March 2006
384 pages
250 x 170 mm
Hardcover ISBN: 9781920694418

Regina Ganter, Professor, School of Humanities
Griffith University, Queensland, Australia

Awards

• Won – 2007 NSW Premier’s Awards (Community and Regional History Prize)
• Won – 2007 Ernest Scott History Prize

Australian histories too often imply that the nation’s history began in Botany Bay in 1788. But Australia was not an isolated continent, and long before white settlement, Macassan trepangers had made contact with Aboriginal people along the Northern Coastline, weaving trading networks that extended from China to the Kimberley and Torres Strait. It was this Asian–Aboriginal link that gave rise to the northern pearling industry, a subsequent driver of regional economic development.

Mixed Relations explores successive waves of contact in northern Australia and the impact of circumstances—political, legal and economic—on members of the polyethnic communities. Based on extensive fieldwork, including hundreds of interviews, it provides a fresh insight into the national narrative and poses challenging questions about the Australian identity in the twenty-first century.

Solo Show at UCSB’s MultiCultural Center Examines Notions of Racial Identity

Public Affairs & Communications
University of California, Santa Barbara
News Release
2013-05-01

Contact: Andrea Estrada: 805-893-4620; George Foulsham: 805-893-3071

Multimedia performance is produced by Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and Chay Carter

(Santa Barbara, Calif.)—When actress and playwright Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni married the love of her life in 2006, her father did not walk her down the aisle. In fact, he declined to attend the wedding altogether.

Seeking to understand why he chose not to participate, DiGiovanni began a trek through family history—and time and space—that ultimately led to her M.F.A. thesis project: the multimedia one-woman play, “One Drop of Love: A Daughter’s Search for Her Father’s Racial Approval.”

DiGiovanni will perform the hour-long show at UC Santa Barbara’s MultiCultural Center Theater on Tuesday, May 7. The performance begins at 6 p.m. and will be followed by a question-and-answer session with G. Reginald Daniel, professor of sociology at UCSB. Daniels is a leading expert in the field of critical mixed race studies…

…A leading activist on issues related to mixed race, DiGiovanni is an actor, comedian, producer, and educator. She developed “One Drop of Love” as the thesis project for her Master of Fine Arts degree in film, television, and theater from California State University Los Angeles. She will use footage from her performances—the most recent was at the University of Maryland—to produce a documentary film…

Read the entire news release here.

One Drop of Love: A Daughter’s Search for Her Father’s Racial Approval (at University of California, Santa Barbara)

University of California, Santa Barbara
MultiCultural Center Theater [Directions] [Map]
University Center, Room 1504
Tuesday, 2013-05-07, 18:00-20:00 PDT (Local Time)

Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni, Playwright, Producer, Actress, Educator

Jillian Pagan, Director

Produced by: Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and Chay Carter

Q&A afterwards hosted by:

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

Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni returns to the West Coast after a phenomenally successful performance at the University of Maryland.

Incorporating filmed images, photographs and animation, this one-woman show tells the story of how the notion of ‘race’ came to be in the U.S., and its effects on the narrator’s relationship with her father—a journey that will take audiences from the 1600s to the present, to cities all over the U.S. and to West and East Africa, where both father and daughter spent time in search of their ‘racial’ roots.

Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni. ^©2103, Evan Tamayo

Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni is a leading activist concerning mixed race, and is an actor, comedian, producer and educator. One Drop of Love is her MFA thesis, and she will be using footage from her performances to make a documentary.

Fanshen and her father after University of Maryland performance. (2013-03-29). ^©2013, Marvin T. Jones

Ms. Cox DiGiovanni appeared in the 2013 Academy Award and Golden Globe winning film Argo (2012); co-created, co-produced and co-hosted the award-winning weekly podcast Mixed Chicks Chat (2007-2012); and co-founded and produced the annual Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival^® (2008-20012). For more on Ms. Cox DiGiovanni and One Drop of Love, visit: http://www.onedropoflove.org.

G. Reginald Daniel is a professor of sociology at the University of California at Santa Barbara and a leading expert in field of critical mixed race studies. He received the 2012 Loving Prize from the Mixed Roots Film and Literary Festival in Los Angeles for his lifelong work as a scholar and participant within the multiracial community. He is the author of More Than Black? Multiracial Identity and the New Racial Order (Temple University Press, 2001) and Race and Multiraciality in Brazil and the United States: Converging Paths? (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006). He is also the author of over 40 chapters and articles dealing with the topic of multiraciality. His latest book is Machado de Assis: Multiracial Identity and the Brazilian Novelist (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012).

Fanshen and her parents after University of Maryland performance (2013-03-29). ^©2013, Michael J. Hardy

Admission is free.

For more information, click here.

So, why are we so loyal to a president who is not loyal to us?

The Guardian
2013-05-05

Gary Younge, Feature Writer and Columnist

Kevin Johnson was pilloried for suggesting Obama has not been good for African Americans. But his question was a good one

Back when affirmative action was white, educational institutions were created for African Americans who were barred from admission elsewhere. Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) became the breeding grounds for the “talented tenth” – the elite class groomed to lead black America. Towards the end of the last century HBCUs had produced 75% of black PhDs, 85% of black doctors and 80% of black federal judges. Among the most prestigious was Morehouse, in Atlanta, which counts Martin Luther King, Samuel Jackson and Spike Lee among its alumni.

Later this month, Barack Obama will deliver the keynote address at Morehouse’s graduation ceremony. Another invited speaker was Morehouse alumnus Kevin Johnson, a prominent Philadelphia pastor. Then Johnson, an ardent Obama supporter during both presidential runs, wrote an article criticising the president for failing to appoint enough black cabinet members and to address the needs of African Americans in general. “Obama has not moved African-American leadership forward but backwards,” he wrote. “We are not in the driver’s seat – or even in the car … Why are we so loyal to a president who is not loyal to us?”

Shortly afterwards his speaker’s slot was removed. Instead of addressing the students alone, the day before Obama, he will now be one of a three-person panel curated “to reflect a broader and more inclusive range of viewpoints”…

Read the entire article here.