Mixed Race Studies

But Ms. [Rachel A.] Dolezal’s view of herself — however confused, or incongruent with society’s — reveals an essential truth about race: It is a fiction, a social construct based in culture and not biology. It must be “made” from what people believe and do. Race is performative. It is the memories that bind us, the stories passed down to us, the experiences that we share, the social forces that surround us.

Allyson Hobbs, “Rachel Dolezal’s Unintended Gift to America,” The New York Times, June 17, 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/17/opinion/rachel-dolezals-unintended-gift-to-america.html.

Episode 613 – President Barack Obama

WTF with Marc Maron
Monday, 2015-06-22

Marc Maron, Host

Barack Obama, President of the United States

Marc and President Obama in the garage (Photo: Pete Souza)

Marc welcomes the 44th President of the United States of America, Barack Obama, to the garage for conversation about college, fitting in, race relations, gun violence, changing the status quo, disappointing your fans, comedians, fatherhood and overcoming fear. And yes, this really happened. This episode is presented without commercial interruption courtesy of Squarespace. Go to MarcMeetsObama.com to see behind-the-scenes photos and captions.

Listen to the episode here. Download the episode here.

What the 1920s Tell Us About Dolezal and Racial Illogic

The Chronicle of Higher Education
2015-06-19

Carla Kaplan, Stanton W. and Elisabeth K. Davis Distinguished Professor of American Literature
Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts

Carla Kaplan is author of Miss Anne in Harlem: The White Women of the Black Renaissance (Harper, 2013).

What does it mean to identify across race lines and to claim a racial identity disconnected from background or biology? Why does so-called reverse passing (white to black) generate such extraordinary attention and controversy? The Rachel Dolezal case reveals a conundrum in race debates that remains unresolved.

Dolezal, who evidently has been passing for black for years as an activist and Africana-studies instructor, maintains that she is black because she feels black. She says that she “certainly can’t be seen as white” and be the mother of a black son. She asserts that her choices are “misunderstood” because “race as a construct has a fluid understanding.” Her defense of what some dub deception is consistent with social constructionism, which maintains that there is no biological or essential basis to race and that all notions of racial difference are rooted in culture. And this makes her case especially troubling.

While the bulk of commentary on Dolezal has been condemnatory, some observers have described her as a “Voluntary Negro” to indicate that they “admire,” as the black female journalist Camille Gear Rich put it, Dolezal’s “choice to live her life as a black person.”

The category “Voluntary Negro,” however, was never intended for whites. The term was coined in the 1920s to describe — and honor — light-skinned blacks, like the NAACP official Walter White, who looked white but insisted on being identified as black (and had the black ancestry to back that up). Blacks who might have passed for white, but didn’t, were lionized by their community. Voluntary Negroes were those who expressed loyalty to their “own” race, not those who cross-identified. They became exemplars of what was seen as a proper ethical relation to race, an embodiment of the “race pride” that was the heart of “New Negro” sensibilities. They were celebrated as part of a broader cultural argument for affirming blackness in the face of white prejudice, and as part of the larger energies of black self-determination and self-definition that fueled cultural renaissances in Harlem, Chicago, and elsewhere. Voluntary Negroes became icons of what Alain Locke, often considered the “midwife” of the Harlem Renaissance, called “the admirable principle of loyalty.”…

Read the entire article here.

U.S. ‘Not Cured’ of Racism, Obama Says, Citing Slavery’s Legacy

The New York Times
2015-06-22

Michael D. Shear, White House Correspondent

Christine Hauser, Reporter

WASHINGTON — Just days after nine black parishioners were killed in a South Carolina church, President Obama said the legacy of slavery still “casts a long shadow” on American life, and he said that choosing not to say the word “nigger” in public does not eliminate racism from society.

In a wide-ranging conversation about race, including his own upbringing as a man born to a black father and a white woman, Mr. Obama insisted that there was no question that race relations have improved in his lifetime. But he also said that racism was still deeply embedded in the United States.

“The legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination in almost every institution of our lives, you know, that casts a long shadow, and that’s still part of our DNA that’s passed on,” the president said during an interview for Marc Maron’s “WTF” podcast that was released on Monday. “We’re not cured of it. And it’s not just a matter of it not being polite to say nigger in public. That’s not the measure of whether racism still exists or not.”

He added, “Societies don’t overnight completely erase everything that happened two to 300 years prior.”

Mr. Obama has been more open about the issue of race during his second term, in part because of racially charged episodes in the last several years. The killing of Trayvon Martin, a black teenager in Florida, and the protests that followed several police shootings have prompted the president to be more reflective about his own racial identity and the nation’s.

In the hourlong interview, Mr. Obama talked about being a rebel during his youth and “trying on” different kinds of personas as he struggled to understand what kind of African-American man he wanted to be.

“I’m trying on a whole bunch of outfits,” Mr. Obama said. “Here’s how I should act. Here’s what it means to be cool. Here’s what it means to be a man.”

He said that a lot of his issues when he was young “revolved around race” but that his attitude changed around the time he turned 20. That is when he began to understand how to honor both sides of his racial identity, the president said.

“I don’t have to be one way to be both an African-American and also someone who affirms the white side of my family,” he said. “I don’t have to push back from the love and values that my mom instilled in me.”…

Read the entire article here.

Misty Copeland: meet the ballerina who rewrote the rules of colour, class and curves

The Telegraph
2015-06-21

Jane Mulkerrins

Facing opposition about her race, shape, even her hair, the ballet dancer Misty Copeland battled the establishment – and her own mother – to make it to the top

Misty Copeland can pinpoint the precise moment when she realised her success in ballet held a broader significance. “It was the night I danced The Firebird at the Metropolitan Opera House in June 2012. I had never seen an audience that was 50 per cent African-American. It was overwhelming to know that so many of them were there to support what I stood for.”

As only the third black soloist (one rung down from a principal dancer, or prima ballerina) in the history of New York’s prestigious American Ballet Theatre (ABT) – and the first in two decades – Copeland, 32, is elegantly dismantling the barriers of race and class that have long surrounded the art form. “When I talk to [black] families, they tell me, ‘We never went to the ballet before. Why would we bring our children when they can’t see themselves reflected on the stage?’ ” she says.

Her profile reaches beyond the rarefied realms of ballet: she has performed with Prince on stage, her recent advert for the sportswear brand Under Armour has had eight million views, and she has been namechecked as an inspiration by both Barack Obama and Beyoncé.

In April, she was named as one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world and was one of the five cover stars for the issue, along with Bradley Cooper, Kanye West, the US news anchor Jorge Ramos and the supreme court justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. That month, she sparked huge media coverage – and a frenzied rush on the box office – when she and Brooklyn Mack became the first black duo to dance the leading roles of Odil/Odette and Prince Siegfried in Swan Lake for a major ballet company.

But Copeland’s prominence and influence is all the more incredible given her wholly untraditional path to the top. As she recounts in her bestselling autobiography, Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina, which is now being developed into a Hollywood film, she did not begin lessons until the age of 13 – positively geriatric in the dance world…

Read the entire article here.

The problems with Rachel Dolezal and the social construction of race

Nerding Out with Dorian Warren
MSNBC
2015-06-17

Dorian Warren, Host and Associate Professor of Political Science and International and Public Affairs
Columbia University, New York, New York

Christina Greer, Assistant Professor of Political Science
Fordham University, The Jesuit University of New York

Allyson Hobbs, Assistant Professor of History
Stanford University

Joseph Lowndes, Associate Professor of Political Sciences
University of Oregon

Dorian Warren talks with professors Allyson Hobbs, Christina Greer, and Joseph Lowndes about what the social construction of race does and does not mean in the case of Rachel Dolezal. Plus, writer and advocate Parker Molloy speaks on what the media gets wrong when it compares the experiences of the transgender community to those of Rachel Dolezal.

Watch the interview (00:50:52) here.