Mixed Race Studies

Feature: Five Qs with Sharon H. Chang

Writing like an Asian: Thoughts on writing, composition, and issues of identity
2016-02-26

Jee Yoon Lee, Lecturer in English/Adjust Professor
Georgetown University/George Washington University, Washington, D.C.

Sharon H. Chang worked with young children and families for over a decade as a teacher, administrator, advocate and parent educator. She is currently an award-winning author, scholar and activist who focuses on racism, social justice and the Asian American diaspora with a feminist lens. Her inaugural book Raising Mixed Race: Multiracial Asian Children In a Post-Racial World was released in 2015/2016 to rave reviews. Her pieces have additionally appeared in BuzzFeed, ThinkProgress, Hyphen Magazine, ParentMap Magazine, The Seattle Globalist, AAPI Voices and International Examiner. She also serves as a consultant for Families of Color Seattle and is on the planning committee for the Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference.

(Q1) How did the project for writing the book Raising Mixed Race begin? How did you decide which stories to include?

Well the process of coming to my mixed race consciousness and passion for social justice writing is hard to milestone because it’s a human one that extends, and will continue to extend, across my lifetime. That said there have been catalyzing events and one of the most important ones was having my son in 2009. You know up until that point I always had a sense of the racialized world we live in (and most of us do) but I didn’t have a deep understanding or language to articulate anything. When you have a child however everything changes because suddenly there’s the responsibility of communicating crucial ideas, values, and concepts to a young person you love with all your heart…

…(Q4) What can you tell us about the work you have been doing as a teacher, activist, and parent educator? Are there particular works that you have found useful in facilitating discussion about what it means to be part of mixed raced community?…

…Unfortunately there aren’t a lot of useful resources for facilitating discussion about what it means to be part of mixed race communities. There is a growing body of academic work, art, think pieces, buzzy stuff, and such, a lot of which you can access on the Mixed Race Studies site curated by Steven F. Riley. But frankly, where is the mixed race community anyway? Is there one? When I get asked to do community work I’m usually asked to tailor generally to race and away from mixed race. And even in the classroom, whether primary/secondary school or higher ed, multiracial conversations are often relegated to units within a curriculum rather than being a whole focus. You can’t major (or minor?) in mixed race studies in college. This, again, despite the fact multiracial is the fastest growing identification among youth. We still have a long ways to go…

Read the entire interview here.

Don’t Call Me the ‘Black Seth Rogen’

The New York Times
2016-02-27

Colton Dunn

Richie Pope

Los Angeles — YEARS ago, I was in a cast in what’s called a “network showcase.” Hollywood does tons of these types of showcase shows. The networks bring in young actors to create material and perform for agents, managers and casting directors. The goal is to get actors signed or brought in for auditions for pilots and eventually to create a star.

The theme of this particular showcase was “diversity” — “diversity” being an umbrella term to describe “not white” and, more recently, “not white and/or not straight.” Blacks, Asians, lesbians, Pacific Islanders, Latinos, Indians are all welcome. I have a black dad, a white mom and I’m straight, so thanks to Dad, I was in, too — being mixed race, or, as I call it, “presidential.”

The showcase was directed by a wonderful woman who has worked in casting for years. Her showcases have featured many talented people whom you see on TV today, and I’m grateful for the opportunity she gave me. I really am…

Read the entire article here.

That moment you look in the mirror and realize you’re black

Fusion
2016-02-28

Tim Rogers, Senior Editor

Brazil’s Black Awakening

SAO PAULO, Brazil— Jessica Moreira was 21 years old when she realized she’s black. Natalia Paiva had turned 20 before she made the discovery. And Cleyton Vilarino dos Santos is sneaking up on his 26th birthday and says he’s still not sure if he’s black, white or what.

Welcome to Brazil, one of the most racially intermixed countries in the world. Racial identity is a complex issue anywhere, but perhaps nowhere more so than here, where the difference between black and white is not so black-and-white.

Generations of interracial marriages have led to a rich tapestry of phenotypes and skin tones in every conceivable hue. But it can make racial identity an evolving or fluid situation that can change as a person gets older, learns more about the world, and their relationship to it.

As a result, it’s not uncommon for young people to spend the first 20 years of their lives looking in the mirror without fully understanding the race of the person staring back at them…

Read the entire article here.

Speaker: Allyson Hobbs

Colgate University
27 Persson Hall
13 Oak Drive
Hamilton, New York 13346
Monday, 2016-03-21, 16:15-18:15 EDT (Local Time)

Contact: Diane English 315-228-7511

Guest speaker Allyson Hobbs, Assistant Professor in the Department of History, Stanford University will give a lecture entitled: “A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life”, Monday, March 21, 4:15-5:45 pm, in 27 Persson Hall. Her revelatory work of history explores the possibilities and challenges that racial indeterminacy presented to men and women living in a country obsessed with racial distinctions and it also tells a tale of loss. Hobbs teaches at Stanford University and writes for the New Yorker. Her book was selected as a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice, a “Best Book of 2014” by the San Francisco Chronicle, and a “Book of the Week” by the Times Higher Education in London. The Root name A Chosen Exile as one of the “Best 15 Nonfiction Books by Black Authors in 2014.”

For more information, click here.

A Conversation With Latinos on Race

The New York Times
2016-02-29

Joe Brewster

Blair Foster

Michèle Stephenson

Last year we set out to make a series of short documentaries that we hoped would foster a discussion about race relations in the United States. To date the series has focused on the personal nuances of systemic racism as reflected in the relationship between blacks and whites. And while that dynamic is a significant part of the American story of race, it does not fully reflect the country’s varied history and rapidly changing demographics. So for our next installment of our “Conversation on Race” series, we decided to go broader, and hear from Latinos on their experiences here.

Fifty-five million Latinos live in this country, representing 17 percent of the population. After Mexico, the United States is home to the world’s largest population of Spanish speakers. Latinos are projected to make up a record 11.9 percent of eligible voters in 2016, just shy of blacks, who are 12.4 percent. We were curious about how race shapes opportunity in a community that draws from such a hugely diverse group of racial backgrounds and ethnicities. How does one identity get forged from such an assortment of experience?…

Read the entire article here.

Thank You, Melissa Harris-Perry

The Nation
2016-02-29

Dave Zirin

Melissa Harris-Perry (You Tube)

The most diverse, intellectually bracing show on network news was treated as expendable, and its host would not have it. She and her show will be sorely missed.

This weekend, a show that mattered to its audience as few programs on the vanilla ice-milk buffet that passes for news do, The Melissa Harris-Perry Show on MSNBC, was canceled, and it’s a tragic as well as angering turn of events. “Ties were severed,” as an MSNBC executive put it, after Melissa, who I am proud to count as a colleague, sent an email to her staff explaining why she would not be hosting her show this past weekend after several weeks of having the program pre-empted for election coverage. The “scorching” email, now public, is being cherry-picked in articles, particularly the part where Melissa wrote, “I will not be used as a tool for their purposes. I am not a token, mammy, or little brown bobble head.”…

Read the entire article here.

On Creoles, Colorism and Confronting our Triggers

Black and Blewish
2016-02-13

TaRessa Stovall

By now everyone with media access knows of (and likely has an opinion about) Beyoncé’s new “Formation” video and Super Bowl halftime performance. She dropped the video on an otherwise slow news Saturday, February 6, and on the very next day, she symbolically won the Super Bowl by eclipsing headline halftime performers Coldplay and adjunct Bruno Mars, generating more headlines and conversation than the actual game.

The first wave of responses was a fairly unanimous rave by Black women for the I Love My Black Self, Family and Culture symbolism that season “Formation.” The second, post-Super Bowl, was dissecting Bey & Company’s performance nods to the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, which shares a 50th anniversary year with the Super Bowl and took root in the Bay Area, near the Super Bowl’s stadium in Santa Clara, California on the day when Trayvon Martin would have turned 21 and the weekend when Sandra Bland would have turned 29 had they not been victims of brutally racist murders…

…Beyond all the pro-vs.-anti Bey brouhaha, what got my attention was when Dr. Yaba Blay, a well-known expert on Black racial identity and colorism, shared her own responses to “Formation,” in Colorlines, and outed a truth with which many of us wrestle: how to balance our awareness of blatant Black-on-Black colorism when it’s embodied in otherwise enjoyable African American and (at least somewhat) affirming popular culture.

While we all know intellectually that colorism is global and in no way specific to African Americans, it doesn’t lessen the pain felt by those on the receiving end. My own admitted obsession with colorism moves me to call it out and confront it more often than is popular. I feel a strong kinship with Dr. Yaba, a respected leader in this realm, and others who believe the only way we can move past this internalized oppression and dimension of racism is to confront, wrestle with and move through it…

Read the entire article here.