Mixed Race Studies

Bodies Under Re/view? Mediating Racial Blackness

InVisible Culture: An Electronic Journal for Visual Culture
2013-08-20

Tiffany E. Barber, Adjunct Instructor African and African American Studies
University of Oklahoma

“In our allegedly postracial moment, where simply talking about racism openly is considered an impolitic, if not racist, thing to do, we constantly learn and re-learn racial codes. [. . .] In short, it was Trayvon Martin, not George Zimmerman, who was put on trial. He was tried for the crimes he may have committed and the ones he would have committed had he lived past 17.” – Robin D.G. Kelley, “The U.S. v. Trayvon Martin: How the System Worked”

In a 1995 keynote address titled “On Identity Politics,” critical race theorist Mari J. Matsuda cautions against assumptions “that racial identity is the cause of racial division rather than a product of it.” For Matsuda, critical race theory emerges “[o]ut of the struggle to understand the ways in which mainstream legal consciousness is white, male, Christian, able-bodied, economically privileged, and heterosexual.” That is, how legal consciousness itself signifies a type of whiteness that excludes and marginalizes difference, difference that is seen in opposition to this constructed whiteness – i.e. black and other non-white subjects, queer subjects, women subjects, and so on. Matsuda’s assertions bring into relation a politics of law, race, and gender that persist today, and demand a consideration of what these mediated relationships tell us about histories of identity formation particular to race, gender and sexuality in the U.S….

…To address these questions, I turn to two cases of precedence that establish relations between the U.S. justice system, racial blackness, and visuality. In 1921, Leonard ‘Kip’ Rhinelander, an affluent white male from a wealthy New York family met and courted Alice Beatrice Jones, a working-class woman of mixed-race ancestry. Jones’s fair skin color permitted her to pass for white and it is unclear whether or not she self-identified as white. Over the next few years, Rhinelander and Jones grew closer and shared a number of intimate encounters, at least two of which were known to be sexual. The couple eloped in October 1924 and enjoyed secluded bliss – Rhinelander’s parents did not approve of Jones – until scandal ripped through the relationship. Soon after, Rhinelander filed for an annulment. The charge? Racial fraud; Rhinelander claimed Jones had misrepresented her blackness…

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Signifying without Specifying: Racial Discourse in the Age of Obama

Rutgers University Press
2011-11-01
218 Pages
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8135-5143-2
Paper ISBN: 978-0-8135-5144-9
eBook ISBN: 978-0-8135-5210-1

Stephanie Li, Professor of English
Indiana University, Bloomington

On the campaign trail, Barack Obama faced a difficult task—rallying African American voters while resisting his opponents’ attempts to frame him as “too black” to govern the nation as a whole. Obama’s solution was to employ what Toni Morrison calls “race-specific, race-free language,” avoiding open discussions of racial issues while using terms and references that carried a specific cultural resonance for African American voters.

Stephanie Li argues that American politicians and writers are using a new kind of language to speak about race. Challenging the notion that we have moved into a “post-racial” era, she suggests that we are in an uneasy moment where American public discourse demands that race be seen, but not heard. Analyzing contemporary political speech with nuanced readings of works by such authors as Toni Morrison, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Colson Whitehead, Li investigates how Americans of color have negotiated these tensions, inventing new ways to signal racial affiliations without violating taboos against open discussions of race.

Table Of Contents

• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Violence and Toni Morrison’s Racist House
• 2. Hiding the Invisble Hurt of Race
• 3. The Unspeakable Language of Race and Fantasy in the Stories of Jhumpa Lahiri
• 4. Performing Intimacy: “Race-Specific, Race-Free Language” in Political Discourse
• Conclusion: The Demands of Precious
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index

First Look at Matthew McConaughey in The Free State of Jones

ComingSoon.net
2015-03-09

Max Evry

Motion picture and television studio STX Entertainment has begun principal photography on the theatrical feature The Free State of Jones in and around New Orleans, Louisiana, it was announced by Adam Fogelson, Chairman of STX Entertainment’s Motion Picture Group.

The epic action-drama is written and directed by four-time Oscar nominee Gary Ross (The Hunger Games, Seabiscuit, Pleasantville), and stars Oscar-winner Matthew McConaughey (Interstellar, Dallas Buyers Club), Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Beyond the Lights), Keri Russell (Dawn of the Planet of the Apes) and Mahershala Ali (The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1, “House of Cards”)…

…Set during the Civil War, The Free State of Jones tells the story of defiant Southern farmer Newt Knight, and his extraordinary armed rebellion against the Confederacy. Banding together with other small farmers, and with the assistance of local slaves, Knight launched an uprising that led Jones County, Mississippi to secede from the Confederacy, creating a Free State of Jones.

His marriage to a former slave, Rachel, and his subsequent establishment of a mixed race community was unique in the post-war South. Knight continued his struggle into Reconstruction, which distinguished him as a compelling, if controversial, figure of defiance long beyond the War.

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Madison Police Shooting: Not Just About Race Because Victim Was Biracial, Family Says

ABC News
2015-03-09

Meghan Keneally, Digital Reporter

The uncle of the 19-year-old who was fatally shot by a police officer in Madison, Wisconsin, over the weekend said that his nephew “just wanted to be loved.”

Tony Robinson Jr., who was known to his family as Tyrell, was fatally shot by a police officer on Friday and the incident is now the subject of a state Department of Justice investigation.

Robinson’s mother is white and his father is African American, and at a news conference this afternoon, Robinson’s uncle, Turin Carter, spoke out on behalf of the family about how this is a universal issue that should be understood by people of all races…

Read the entire article here.

Wisconsin chief treading carefully after fatal shooting

The Washington Post
2015-03-08

The Associated Press

MADISON, Wis. — Within hours of a white officer shooting an unarmed black man, the police chief of Wisconsin’s capital city was praying with the man’s grandmother, hoping to strike a conciliatory tone and avoid the riots that last year rocked Ferguson, Missouri.

Chief Mike Koval said he knows Madison is being watched across the nation since 19-year-old Tony Robinson’s death Friday evening, and he has gone out of his way to avoid what he once called Ferguson’s “missteps.”

“Folks are angry, resentful, mistrustful, disappointed, shocked, chagrined. I get that,” Koval said Saturday. “People need to tell me squarely how upset they are with the Madison Police Department.”

The contrasts with Ferguson are many…

Read the entire article here.