Mixed Race Studies

The Mixed-Race in-betweeners

The Columbia Spectator
New York, New York
2015-11-12

Keenan Smith

I am Mixed-Race. I am both Black and white. I am also American and have therefore been raised in a culture that seems to be constantly divided along racial boundaries, whether they are in campus diversity and inclusion programs or identity-based organizations, with little regard for those of us who fall among the shades of gray.

Regardless of how those of us on the grayscale identify, we are often forced by society to pick a side, whether it be on college applications or social circles. We are encouraged to choose only one lineage, to look at our racial background and choose which identity we will bear.

Because I am biracial, choosing a background has meant recognizing the fact that one of my racial identities is responsible for the oppression of the other. This internal struggle has been illustrated by current events like the #BlackLivesMatter movement, the church shooting in Charleston that killed nine Black brothers and sisters, the countless murders of Black women, men (both cis and trans), and gender-nonconforming individuals at the hands of our police force, and the protests organized by brave students at Mizzou and Yale. This tension has also impacted my personal life. For example, I’ve had to explain to my mother why racial “color-blindness” is harmful and that she shouldn’t take it personally when I complain about white people…

Read the entire article here.

What Happened in Missouri Puts the Nation on Notice

Time
2015-11-10

Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., William S. Tod Professor of Religion and African-American Studies
Princeton University

Imagine what could happen at Ohio State or UCLA or any other major university. The activists already have.

What happened at the University of Missouri has sent shockwaves throughout this country: A startling coalition of students and faculty just forced the top leadership of the University to resign. The students had had enough. A swastika drawn with human feces on a residential dorm was the latest incident in a long list of ugly incidents, which made it clear that some people believed that black students did not belong at the University of Missouri. The image and the medium spoke volumes about those who composed it.

President Wolfe’s tepid response sealed his fate, but as with every other issue involving race in America, change is never given; it must always be won. And the student protests, Jonathan Butler’s hunger strike, the faculty’s threat of a walk out, and the strike among black football students announced that a new wave of campus activism has arrived, armed with the power to bring real change. The nation has been put on notice.

We have seen something like this before. In 1968 and 1969, black students organized protests across some two hundred campuses in the United States. These were among the first significant wave of black students on predominantly white campuses, and they brought with them the energy and expectation of the black freedom movement—particularly the militancy of Black Power. They pushed for the hiring of black faculty, argued for an increase in financial aid for African American students, and pressed administrators to support black living spaces. In short, they challenge the whiteness of American universities and colleges…

…What we saw in Columbia, Missouri, was something different. There was nothing nostalgic about it. The protests were decidedly of this moment. These students are shaped by the startling contrast of the nation’s first black president and the black lives matter movement. They have seen the viral videos of police brutality, and many have watched family and friends struggle to recover from the economic devastation that has left their lives in shambles. They have witnessed, some even participated in, the convulsions of Ferguson and Baltimore…

Read the entire article here.

I’m white in Barcelona but in Los Angeles I’m Hispanic?

Public Radio International
2015-10-27

Jaime Gonzalez, BBC World Service Journalist
Los Angeles, California

“You’re not white, where are you from?”

This is how I was greeted a few months ago by a young Black man I interviewed in Los Angeles for a story I was working on.

Having lived in the United States for more than six years, the question did not surprise me, as it was not the first time I had to answer it.

I was born and raised in Barcelona, ​​in northeast Spain, and although I had never given much thought to this matter, I always thought I was white. With dark Mediterranean features, but white.

How else could I define myself if someone asked me about my race?

In 2009, I moved to Miami and soon I became aware of the deep racial divide that still exists in this country.

In America, the definition of what being white means is much more limited than in Spain…

Read the entire article here. Listen to the story here. Download the story here.

Taye Diggs wants son to embrace being mixed, not choose black or white

The Grio
2015-11-13

Chris Witherspoon, Entertainment Editor

Last month, Taye Diggs released his second children’s book, Mixed Me, inspired by his biracial 6-year-old son, Walker. His mother is actress and singer Indina Menzel.

In a society in which it is sometimes hard to talk about race, Diggs decided to tackle the subject head-on through the eyes of the book’s fictional character, Mike.

“The first book I wrote, Chocolate Me, was based on my experiences growing up a little chocolate boy in a predominately white neighborhood, and how I would get made fun of, and how through my mother and father and my own recognition, I was able to develop the power of self love,” Diggs says…

Read the entire article here.

UPDATE: Mike Middleton is named interim UM System president

The Columbia Missourian
Columiba, Missouri
2015-11-12

Emma VanDelinder and Alexa Ahern

Interim UM System President Michael Middleton speaks at his introductory news conference Thursday at University Hall. Middleton was the first black professor in the MU School of Law. More recently, he served as deputy chancellor until his retirement on Aug. 31. (Justin L. Stewart)

COLUMBIA — One of Michael Middleton’s first goals as interim president of the University of Missouri System is to address the demands made by Concerned Student 1950.

“It is imperative that we hear all of our students and do everything we can to make them comfortable and safe in our community,” he said at a news conference Thursday announcing his appointment.

Middleton said he has met for weeks with members of Concerned Student 1950, who have been protesting for the past month, asking MU to increase diversity and inclusion. He said he met with some members before the group formally existed to talk about campus diversity and inclusion…

Read the entire article here.

A course originally called ‘The Problem of Whiteness’ returns to Arizona State

The Washington Post
2015-11-12

Yanan Wang

Freedom of speech. Racial inequality. Student activism. Safe spaces.

These are the phrases that have been lobbied about over the past week, in tones both fervent and contemptuous, as University of Missouri students successfully campaigned for the resignation of their system president.

Mizzou is, of course, just the most prominent example. As The Washington Post’s Michael Miller pointed out Tuesday, similar debates are being had and protests held across the country, for instance at Yale University and Ithaca College.

At the center of all these debates is another word: whiteness.

At some universities, there are classes dedicated to understanding the notions of whiteness, white supremacy and what the field’s proponents see as the quiet racism of white people. The professor of one such “whiteness studies” course, Lee Bebout of Arizona State University, announced recently that he would be teaching for the second time a course originally called U.S. Race Theory & the Problem of Whiteness.

The syllabus described Critical Whiteness Studies as a field “concerned with dismantling white supremacy in part by understanding how whiteness is socially constructed and experienced.” Readings included works by Toni Morrison, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (“Racism without Racists”) and Jane H. Hill (“The Everyday Language of White Racism”)…

Read the entire article here.

People talked of a ‘post-racial’ US when I arrived in 2008. That seems ludicrous now

The Guardian
2015-11-13

Hari Kunzru

I arrived in New York in 2008, in the midst of a bitterly fought election campaign. When Barack Obama declared victory, I was standing at the corner of 125th Street and Adam Clayton Powell Jr Boulevard, the historic heart of Harlem, as part of an emotional crowd watching the speech on a big screen. People around me were in tears. I have never been hugged by so many strangers. Even for someone sceptical about the new president’s ability to deliver on his promise of “hope and change”, the symbolism of a black family in the White House was deeply moving.

Everyone tends to see the world through the prism of their own experience, and I had been lucky enough, in Britain, to live through a period of real racial hope and change, from the frank terror I had felt as a “Paki” kid in the early 80s, to feeling part of a confident “second generation” of British Asians who were suddenly visible in many areas of public life in the late 90s and early 2000s. That period of progress was brought to a grinding halt by 9/11, of course, but those years left me with a streak of Whiggish optimism that now seems naive…

Read the entire article here.

“It’s difficult in Brazil to point out racism,” says Alexandre Ciconello, a human rights expert and adviser to Amnesty in Rio de Janeiro. “It’s a taboo for the elite of the country and for politicians and authorities. They always say ‘Brazil is a mixed country, we are not the US, we are not South Africa,’ and if you raise racial questions, you’re seen as trying to separate that.”

Will Carless, “Brazil’s ‘Black Lives Matter’ struggle — even deadlier,” Public Radio International, November 3, 2015. http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-11-03/brazils-black-lives-matter-struggle-even-more-dire.

The answer seems to be that mixed race people urgently need to be more represented in UK social policy and mental health experts need to do the groundwork of converting academic texts on mixed race identity into their practice. We are in a quandary though as for this to happen more academic research on mixed race identity is needed in the UK in the first place. The future for the mixed race population is currently not looking very bright in my opinion where academia is concerned.

Nicola Codner, “Academia and the Identity of Mixed-Race Women,” Ain’t I A Woman Collective, November 10, 2015. http://www.aintiawomancollective.com/academia-and-the-identity-of-mixed-race-women.

Brazil’s ‘Black Lives Matter’ struggle — even deadlier

GlobalPost
Public Radio International
2015-11-03

Will Carless

The police committed more than 1 in every 6 of Rio de Janeiro’s homicides between 2010 and 2013.

And 4 out of 5 of those who are slain overall were under 29 years old — and of African descent.

These startling figures come from an analysis of official homicide data by Amnesty International. The problem spans far beyond Rio, and more recent incidents have raised concern that it’s not going away.

Earlier this month, five police officers in Rio de Janeiro were arrested after a cellphone video showed them altering a crime scene by placing a gun in the hands of a black teen they had just shot dead.

Echoing United States movements like #BlackLivesMatter and #RiseUpOctober, activists in Brazil are fighting to draw attention to the problem of killings of young black Brazilian men, frequently by police. One of the leading local movements is Amnesty International’s “Jovem Negro Vivo,” meaning “Young Black Alive.”

It’s one of several awareness campaigns that are also aiming to dismantle a stricture that’s long existed in the country: a reluctance to talk about important social issues in terms of race.

“It’s difficult in Brazil to point out racism,” says Alexandre Ciconello, a human rights expert and adviser to Amnesty in Rio de Janeiro. “It’s a taboo for the elite of the country and for politicians and authorities. They always say ‘Brazil is a mixed country, we are not the US, we are not South Africa,’ and if you raise racial questions, you’re seen as trying to separate that.”…

Read the entire article and listen to the story here.