Mixed Race Studies

Britain’s first black female High Court judge opens up about racism at the bar

Legal Cheek
London, United Kingdom
2016-03-30

Katie King, Reporter

Clerks would Tippex out her name on briefs and write in the name of male pupil they wanted to be the tenant

Dame Linda Dobbs has exposed shameful incidents of racism and sexism at the bar, particularly from her own clerks, in a revealing interview for the First 100 Years project — an ambitious video history which aims to highlight and celebrate the achievements of female lawyers in a profession long dominated by men. The extent of that domination is starkly revealed by the project’s timeline:…

…In the video the Sierra Leone born judge, and University of Surrey grad, recalls that attitudes to women in the profession were very different when she was called to the bar in 1981. One major hurdle for the now 65 year-old was the attitude of the many solicitors who did not want to instruct a woman, either because they, or, more likely, their client, considered them to be inferior…

Read the entire article here.

Tribeca 2016 Preview: Nelsan Ellis, Armani Jackson, Melanie Lynskey in ‘Little Boxes’

Shadow and Act: On Cinema Of The African Diaspora
2016-03-31

Tambay A. Obenson

Nelsan Ellis, Armani Jackson, Melanie Lynskey in “Little Boxes“

The 2016 Tribeca Film Festival kicks off in a couple of weeks, running from April 13-24 in New York City.

Leading up to the event, I’ll highlight a few films or note, given this blog’s specific interests, starting with this one…

Directed by Rob Meyer, written by Annie J Howell, and executive produced by Cary Fukunaga, the drama feature “Little Boxes” stars Nelsan Ellis, Armani Jackson, Melanie Lynskey, Oona Laurence, Janeane Garofalo, and Christine Taylor.

Synopsis: It’s the summer before 6th grade, and Clark (Armani Jackson) is the new-in-town biracial kid in a sea of white. Discovering that to be cool he needs to act “more black,” he fumbles to meet expectations, while his urban intellectual parents Mack and Gina (Nelsan Ellis and Melanie Lynskey) also strive to adjust to small-town living. Equipped for the many inherent challenges of New York, the tight-knit family are ill prepared for the drastically different set of obstacles that their new community presents, and soon find themselves struggling to understand themselves and each other in this new suburban context…

Read the entire article here.

6 Afro-Latinos Open Up About What It Means To Be Black And Latino

Latino Voices
The Huffington Post
2016-03-23

Carolina Moreno, Editor

Watch them explain why they’re both and they’re proud!

Too black to be Latino and too Latino to be black is a feeling many Afro-Latinos know too well — but the reality is that these two identities are far from mutually exclusive.

Not only is it possible to be both black and Latino, it’s also fairly common within the Latino community. In the United States 24 percent of Latinos self-identify as Afro-Latino, according to survey results the Pew Research Center released in March.

HuffPost Latino Voices asked six Afro-Latinos to share what it really means to grow-up black and Latino. Because as writer Janel Martinez explains, it can be quite complicated at first…

Read the entire article and watch the video here.

What Does my Body Mean?

Mixed Roots Stories
2016-03-30

Carly Bates

Carly Bates (Photo by: Bethany Brown)

As a student of jazz at my university, I often occupy white male dominated spaces. I am the only woman of color (a black/white biracial woman) in a jazz history class, “Jazz Musicians as Composers,” a course that explores the gray areas of jazz as a concert music. Sometimes, I wonder if I can give myself permission to be a woman of color in this space. In a discussion surrounding the “Freedom Now Suite,” Max Roach’s response to the Greensboro sit ins, I have 75 minutes to say something—anything— so that my professor doesn’t think that I’m “just a shy student.” Rather, I negotiate with myself for 75 minutes what I am allowed to say, how what I say is a reflection of the body I occupy. Pressure mounts as someone questions the rigidity of jazz as a “black” art form. Pressure mounts as students discuss the auto-exoticism of African-American jazz musicians. Pressure mounts as the professor asks if anyone has ever felt that they had to represent a group of people, to act as a monolith. I scream silently: “Yes, every time I enter your class. Every time, for 75 minutes, I measure the amount of voice and the amount of blackness that I allow myself to have.”

What does my body mean here?…

Read the entire article here.

The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde

W. W. Norton & Company
February 2000
512 pages
6.2 × 9.3 in
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-393-31972-9

Audre Lorde (1934-1992)

A complete collection—over 300 poems—from one of this country’s most influential poets.

Trevor Noah: ‘It’s easier to be an angry white man than an angry black man’

The Guardian
2016-04-02

Lanre Bakare, Deputy Arts Editor

Trevor Noah photographed at the Daily Show offices.
Photograph: Christopher Lane

Six months ago the South African comic took on the trickiest task in comedy; replacing Jon Stewart as host of the Daily Show. What’s he learned so far? Always keep your cool

Trevor Noah is perched on top of a bank of chairs in the Daily Show conference room. It’s a Friday, which means there’s no live show, and Noah has time to clown around, undergoing half-a-dozen tie changes while being photographed by the Guide. This room is usually the hallowed space where the writers share their ideas and hone jokes for America’s best-known political satire, but right now Noah has his arms outspread and is tottering around as if he’s about to fall over. “That’s good,” says the Guide’s photographer. “Keep doing that airplane thing,” he adds as Noah regains his balance. “Airplane?” asks Noah with faux-incredulity. “That’s what you thought that was? Interesting. This is like a Rorschach test: you see whatever you want.”…

…“For me growing up as a mixed-race person, you’re forced to see both sides,” he explains. “I grew up in a house where my mother was Xhosa, my dad was Swiss, my stepdad was Shangaan, my friends were Zulu. I lived in such a melting pot that I never grew up with a preconceived notion of ‘people’. Because of that it helped my comedy because I could play within the nuance of that world.”…

Read the entire article here.