Mixed Race Studies

The Black Prince of Florence: A Medici Mystery

University of York
Room K/133, King’s Manor
York, United Kingdom
Tuesday, 2016-10-18, 19:00 BST (Local Time)

Black History Month Lecture

Catherine Fletcher is a historian of Renaissance and early modern Europe. Her first book, The Divorce of Henry VIII, was published in 2012 and brought to life the world of the papal court at the time of the Tudors. She broadcasts frequently on Renaissance and broader history: She is a 2015 BBC New Generation Thinker and was an adviser to the set team on the TV adaptation of Wolf Hall. She is currently Associate Professor in History and Heritage at Swansea University, has held fellowships at the British School at Rome and the European University Institute, and has taught at Royal Holloway, Durham and Sheffield Universities. In her previous career she worked in politics and the media, including at the BBC Political Unit.

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This Historian Wants You To Know The Real Story Of Southern Food

The Salt: What’s On Your Plate
Weekend Edition Saturday
National Public Radio
2016-10-01

Erika Beras

Michael Twitty wants credit given to the enslaved African-Americans who were part of Southern cuisine’s creation. Here he is in period costume at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia estate. Erika Beras for NPR

Michael Twitty wants you to know where Southern food really comes from. And he wants the enslaved African-Americans who were part of its creation to get credit. That’s why Twitty goes to places like Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s grand estate in Charlottesville, Va. — to cook meals that slaves would have eaten and put their stories back into American history.

On a recent September morning, Twitty is standing behind a wooden table at Monticello’s Mulberry Row, which was once a sort of main street just below the plantation. It’s where hundreds of Jefferson’s slaves once lived and worked. Dozens of people watch as Twitty prepares to grill a rabbit over an open fire.

“Look – it’s better than chicken,” he tells the audience…

…Twitty is black, Jewish and gay. He writes about all those things on his blog Afroculinaria and increasingly, in mainstream media publications. His mission is to explain where American food traditions come from, and to shed light on African-Americans’ contributions to those traditions – which most historical accounts have long ignored. He says little is documented about what slaves ate. It’s just a line here and a line there.

“There was no sense of their personal stories, no sense of their familial ties, no sense of their personal likes or dislikes,” he says. “It was just straight up a very bland, neutral version of history.”…

Read the entire story here. Download the story here.

What is “White”?

#EmergingUS: Exploring race, immigration and the emerging American identity
2016-09-26

In an increasingly diverse country, White Americans are an emerging racial minority. #EmergingUS travelled to one of the Whitest states, Iowa, to ask Iowans what it means to be White in a changing America.

Hosted by Jose Antonio Vargas, the founder of #EmergingUS and the producer/director of the MTV special White People, this video is a first in a series that explores White identity in the #EmergingUS.

Read the transcript here.

What are you?

#EmergingUS: Exploring race, immigration and the emerging American identity
2016-09-26

How do you describe yourself if you’re mixed?

“What are you?” is a common question posed to mixed race people, usually preceded by, “Where are you from, from?” In other words: I can’t tell what you are. In this #EmergingUS video, we explore the different modes in which multiracial people, an increasing group across the country, define and classify themselves…

Read the transcript here.

White House wants to add new racial category for Middle Eastern people

USA Today
2016-10-01

Gregory Korte, White House Reporter

WASHINGTON — The White House is putting forward a proposal to add a new racial category for people from the Middle East and North Africa under what would be the biggest realignment of federal racial definitions in decades.

If approved, the new designation could appear on census forms in 2020 and could have far-reaching implications for racial identity, anti-discrimination laws and health research.

Under current law, people from the Middle East are considered white, the legacy of century-old court rulings in which Syrian Americans argued that they should not be considered Asian — because that designation would deny them citizenship under the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. But scholars and community leaders say more and more people with their roots in the Middle East find themselves caught between white, black and Asian classifications that don’t fully reflect their identities…

Read the entire article here.

Mixed Match documentary explores difficult search for multi-ethnic donors

CBC Radio-Canada
2016-10-01

Emotional documentary about mixed-race patients seeking bone marrow, stem cell donors, a call to action

It means a lot to film maker Jeff Chiba Stearns to have his new documentary Mixed Match showing at the Vancouver International Film Festival, a multi-cultural city he calls home.

Stearns ancestry includes people from a variety of European countries as well as Japan and while that ethnic diversity makes for a rich history, there is a medical downside — people of mixed ancestry have a much more difficult time finding matches if they need bone marrow or stem cells…

Read the entire article here.