Mixed Race Studies

N.Y. mayor’s race front-runner cast as a ‘socialist redistributionist’

The Christian Science Monitor
2013-09-04

Harry Bruinius, Staff writer

Democrat Bill de Blasio, the most liberal major candidate in the New York City mayor’s race, is leading polls ahead of the Sept. 10 primary. Republicans sense an opportunity.

The surprising ascendancy of New York City Public Advocate Bill de Blasio may have energized the liberal wing of city Democrats, but the commanding mayoral front-runner has some Republicans cheering as well.

Despite the fact that the Republican line has won the mayor’s office five consecutive times in New York, conventional wisdom has long had the Democratic nominee easily winning the Nov. 5 general election this year.

It is still a city in which registered Democrats outnumber Republicans 6 to 1, after all, and which gave Obama 81 percent of its votes in 2012. Even the Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-Independent Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who won three terms on the Republican line, has deftly played down standard partisan divisions during his 12-year tenure.

But Mr. de Blasio has stunned the more moderate Democratic candidates the past few weeks with his relentless critique of the Bloomberg administration, as well as his dogged liberal message of income inequality in the shadow of Wall Street wealth. He also was very effective showcasing his interracial family – including his teenage son, Dante, whose Afro-style hair and descriptions of his father in campaign commercials have become some of the most memorable of the race…

…But even de Blasio’s multicultural and nontraditional family could cause some problems in the general election – even in a city like New York. His wife, Chirlane McCray, was a high-profile lesbian activist who wrote a groundbreaking article for Essence magazine in 1979, describing her coming out as a gay black woman.

According to GOP consultant Johnson, who says he is familiar with some of the internal polling of the Lhota campaign, there are a number of groups, including many Jewish voters, who remain uncomfortable with de Blasio.

“Despite all the popularity, despite everything we’ve heard about his son stealing the show, they’re also seeing, too, that there is still some backlash about the mixed marriage,” he says…

Read the entire article here.

Multiple Identities: Migrants, Ethnicity, and Membership

Indiana University Press
2013-03-22
344 pages
3 b&w illus
6 x 9
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-253-00804-6
Paper ISBN: 978-0-253-00807-7
eBook ISBN: 978-0-253-00811-4

Edited by:

Paul Spickard, Professor of History
University of California, Santa Barbara

In recent years, Europeans have engaged in sharp debates about migrants and minority groups as social problems. The discussions usually neglect who these people are, how they live their lives, and how they identify themselves. Multiple Identities describes how migrants and minorities of all age groups experience their lives and manage complex, often multiple, identities, which alter with time and changing circumstances. The contributors consider minorities who have received a lot of attention, such as Turkish Germans, and some who have received little, such as Kashubians and Tartars in Poland and Chinese in Switzerland. They also examine international adoption and cross-cultural relationships and discuss some models for multicultural success.

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgments
• Part 1. Orientations
  • 1. Many Multiplicities: Identity in an Age of Movement \ Paul Spickard, University of California, Santa Barbara
  • 2. Ethnic Identities and Transnational Subjectivities \ Anna Rastas, University of Tampere
• Part 2. The Complexities of Identities
  • 3. Between Difference and Assimilation: Young Women with South and Southeast Asian Family Background Living in Finland \ Saara Pellander, University of Helsinki
  • 4. Doing Belonging: Young Women of Middle Eastern Backgrounds in Sweden \ Serine Gunnarsson, Uppsala University
  • 5. To Be or Not to Be a Minority Group? Identity Dilemmas of Kashubians and Polish Tatars \ Katarzyna Warmińska, Cracow University of Economics
  • 6. “When You Look Chinese, You Have to Speak Chinese”: Highly Skilled Chinese Migrants in Switzerland and the Promotion of a Shared Language \ Marylène Lieber and Florence Lévy, Neuchatel University
• Part 3. Family Matters
  • 7. Intercountry Adoption: Color-b(l)inding the Issues \ Saija Westerlund-Cook
  • 8. The Children of Immigrants in Italy: A New Generation of Italians? \ Enzo Colombo and Paola Rebughini, University of Milan
  • 9. Possible Love: New Cross-cultural Couples in Italy \ Gaia Peruzzi, Sapienza University of Rome
• Part 4. Modes of Multicultural Success?
  • 10. Divided Identities: Listening to and Interpreting the Stories of Polish Immigrants in West Germany \ Mira Foster, University of California, Santa Barbara
  • 11. The Politics of Multiple Identities in Kazakhstan: Current Issues and New Challenges \ Karina Mukazhanova, Karaganda State University and University of Oregon
  • 12. Chinese Americans, Turkish Germans: Parallels in Two Racial Systems \ Paul Spickard, University of California, Santa Barbara
• Bibliography
• Contributors
• Index

Black Coral: A Daughter’s Apology To Her Asian Island Mother

Research at the National Archives and Beyond
BlogTalk Radio
Thursday, 2013-09-05, 21:00 EDT, (Friday, 2013-09-06, 01:00Z)

Bernice Bennett, Host

C. D. Holmes-Miller, Clergywoman, Theologian, Designer, Author

Mother with Clergywoman, Theologian, Communications Designer and author, The Rt. Reverend Dr. Cheryl D. Holmes-Miller aka Bishop Miller, M.S., MDiv.

She tells of her tumultuous, emotional teen agony of trying to accept her multiracial, multiethnic family as they struggle to fit in a “one box, one drop” racial category of being Negroes. Her coming of age story during the Civil Rights Movement leads to her back to the future 21st century revelations of her true heritage. Once taboo, her story is vogue and trending…her memoir is  a genuine catalyst for talking about race and culture, and those discussions start within the context of our families. She is the Senior Minister of The North Stamford Congregational Church in Stamford, Connecticut.

For more information, click here.