Mixed Race Studies

The Forsaken: Portraits of Mixed-Race Orphans in Postwar Korea

TIME Magazine
2014-12-04

David Kim
Yale Law School

Joo Myung Duck (1940-)

Pictures made in the ’60s by a young photographer, Joo Myung Duck, depict the mixed-race children of foreign servicemen and Korean women

On July 27, 1953, a ceasefire ended open hostilities in the Korean War, and the United Nations, the People’s Republic of China, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) established a border and a demilitarized zone at the 38th parallel. After three years of fighting, the border between north and south was, in effect, exactly where it had been prior to the beginning of the war. The Republic of Korea (South Korea) refused to join the armistice; and, as a formal peace treaty was never signed, South and North Korea today remain technically at war, 60 years after the guns fell silent.

Nearly three million people died or went missing in the war, in which North Korean and Chinese troops fought an international force comprised largely of Americans. Of those three million, more than half were civilians, and most were Korean. Since the mid-1950s, meanwhile, the American military has maintained a heavy presence in South Korea; this footprint is the uneasy foundation that underlies relations between the two countries.

The photos in this gallery were made in the early 1960s by Joo Myung Duck, then a young photojournalist. They depict mixed-race orphans, the children of foreign servicemen and Korean women, at the Holt orphanage in Seoul. Most of these children were born after the war, and they were abandoned by nearly everyone: by their fathers, who rarely remained in Korea; by their mothers, who endured ostracism and social stigma; and by the Korean government, which endorsed a politics of racial purity and sought to expel mixed-race children from the country.

In exploring these realities, Joo’s photographs are at-once inquisitive, undaunted, and gentle, attending carefully to variations in racial appearance while suggesting the centrality of Christian faith at Holt. His highly formal compositions revel in visual detail. And, in large part, he avoids sentimentality…

Read the entire article and view the photographs here.

Mayor Bill De Blasio Speaks On Eric Garner, NYPD, And More On Ebro In The Morning [AUDIO]

HOT 97, WQHT 97.1 FM
New York, New York
2014-12-04

Ebro Darden, Co-Host

Peter Rosenberg, Co-Host

Laura Stylez, Co-Host

It’s an emotional time in NYC and across the nation after a grand jury decided to not indict NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo for the chokehold death of Eric Garner.

There were protests all over the city last night when the news was announced; calling for change and justice, especially since this decision only comes weeks after Ferguson [, Missouri] police officer Darren Wilson was given the same ruling.

New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio called into Ebro In The Morning this morning to discuss the Eric Garner decision, the changes he will enforce when it comes to the NYPD, and so much more:

Download the audio here.

On White Supremacy and Why Body Cameras Are Not Enough

One Drop of Love
2014-12-03

Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni

I am so hopeful about the young people making their voices heard and committing their time and efforts to making real change around racism and police brutality (if you’re on Twitter, search #BlackLivesMatter to get to know these amazing activists – one example is @deray). I’m also hopeful about the white people who refuse to stay silent and are acting as allies by showing up to protests while also stepping back and listening, and exposing the privileges they have long enjoyed that others (particularly poor Brown and Black people) don’t. Some great examples on Twitter are @LisaBloom and @VeryWhiteGuy.

I’m even somewhat hopeful about President Obama’s recent announcement that the Justice Department will be allotting money towards police training and body cameras. Even better is Attorney General Eric Holder’s announcement that the Justice Department will “institute rigorous new standards and robust safeguards to help end racial profiling once and for all.” GOOD. However…

Read the entire article here.

In discussing Garner, de Blasio invokes Dante

Capital New York
New York, New York
2014-12-03

Sally Goldenberg, City Hall/Politics Reporter

Mayor Bill de Blasio often invoked his bi-racial teenage son, Dante, during an emotional speech on Staten Island Wednesday night, hours after a grand jury there declined to indict an NYPD officer in the death of Eric Garner.

“I spent some time with Ben Garner, Eric’s father, who is in unspeakable pain, and it’s a very hard thing to spend time trying to comfort someone you know is beyond the reach of comfort because of what he’s been through,” de Blasio said. “I can only imagine. I couldn’t help but immediately think what it would mean to me to lose Dante. Life could never be the same thereafter and I could feel how it will never be whole again. Things will never be whole again for Mr. Garner.”

The mayor spoke for nearly 20 minutes inside Mt. Sinai United Christian Church on Staten Island, where he was surrounded by elected officials and members of the clergy. He carefully avoided weighing in on the grand jury decision not to indict officer Daniel Pantaleo and left without taking questions from reporters…

…De Blasio spoke somberly about his own experience discussing policing over the years with his now 17-year-old son.

“This is profoundly personal for me,” the mayor said. “I was at the White House the other day and the president of the United States turned to me, and he met Dante a few months ago, and he said that Dante reminded him of what he looked like as a teenager. He said, ‘I know you see this crisis through a very personal lens.’ I said to him I did, because Chirlane and I have had to talk to Dante for years about the dangers that he may face.”

He called his son a “good young man, [a] law-abiding young man who never would think to do anything wrong.

“Yet, because of a history still that hangs over us, the dangers he may face, we’ve had to literally train him as families have all over this city for decades in how to take special care in any encounter he has with the police officers who are there to protect him.”…

Read the entire article here.