Mixed Race Studies

Mixed Race Privilege?

KQED Radio
San Francisco, California
2017-03-09

Sierra Fang-Horvath
Oakland, California

My mom is Chinese, with black hair and tan skin. My dad is white, with light eyes and skin the color of office paper. I, on the other hand, am an awkward midway point: dark skin, but not super dark; black hair, but not super black.

It used to be that I never thought about my mixed race. But as I’ve gotten older, and now that I attend a predominantly white suburban school, race is constantly on my mind.

Recently, my classmates and I participated in a survey calculating our privilege…

Read the story here. Listen to the story (00:02:20) here.

News from our Graduate Students: PhD candidate Kristina Pilz

University of Washington
Department of Germanics
2017-03-08

Kristina Pilz

Kristina Pilz

BlackWhite — Experiences and Writing Practices in Contemporary Afro-German Literature

I am excited to continue working on my dissertation that describes innovative writing practices in contemporary Afro-German literature. My project focuses on rhetorical, intertextual and aesthetic strategies as creative devices for a diasporic literary history. My analysis includes fictional/non-fictional texts comprised of Afro-German poetry and autobiographies…

Read the entire article here.

Let’s Stop This Offensive Term From Making A Comeback

Refinery 29
2017-03-09

Anna Jay & Rebecca Gonsalves

The other night I was out with a friend, and her friends, and their friends. You know, one of those evenings where you walk into the pub and realise you don’t know anyone. But seeing as this isn’t the first day of primary school and you can’t wail and cling to your mum’s leg, you have to suck it up, get a drink and start mingling.

The evening progressed and it seemed to be going well: small talk was made, jokes (and shots) were shared. On the dance floor, a new acquaintance leaned in all conspiratorial to tell me something about having slept with a guy at the bar. “Over there,” she said. “The half-caste guy.” The music was loud but there was no mistaking that ugly, old-fashioned phrase. I felt physically jarred, the blood rushing to my face. I usually hate confrontation – who doesn’t – but get a drink or two in me and I become altogether more argumentative…

Read the entire article here.

Biracial composer seeks her ‘true name’ through piece for North Corner Chamber Orchestra

The Seattle Times
2017-02-16

Jason Victor Serinus, Special to The Seattle Times

Composer Hanna Benn

NOCCO’s Feb. 18-19 concerts will feature a work by local composer Hanna Benn; works by Davida Ingram, Alex Guy and Rick Benjamin, rooted in Scott Joplin’s opera, “Treemonisha”; and works by Alvin Singleton and George Walker.

It is the very subject of “Resonance,” North Corner Chamber Orchestra’s concert “Celebrating Black American Composers,” that left Seattle-based composer Hanna Benn, 29, in a bit of quandary. As much as she was delighted to work with one of the world’s few conductorless chamber orchestras, her commission to honor black American composers left her pondering the fact that she is biracial, and does not see herself as either black or white.

“For the last couple of years, I’ve been trying to understand where I come from, and my responsibility as a biracial person,” she explained by phone and email. “I want to completely embrace my blackness / my whiteness.”…

Read the entire article here.

Critical Mixed Race Studies w Steven F. Riley

iMiXWHATiLiKE!
2017-03-05

Jared A. Ball, Host and Associate Professor of Communication Studies
Morgan State University, Baltimore, Maryland

Steven F. Riley, curator of MixedRaceStudies.org, joined us for this discussion of mixed race studies, popular culture and the shifting terrain of race and identity.

Watch the entire interview (00:21:02) here.

‘Krazy: George Herriman, a Life in Black and White’: A life as unorthodox as his comic strip

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
2017-02-19

Wayne Wise

“Krazy: George Herriman, A Life in Black and White” by Michael Tisserand.

Ignatz Mouse: “Hey, this isn’t black coffee!!!”

Krazy Kat: “Sure it is. Look unda the milk.”

“Krazy Kat,” created by George Herriman, is one of the most influential comic strips of all time. Centered around the iconic love triangle of Krazy, Ignatz Mouse and Offisa Pupp, the feature ran as a syndicated newspaper strip from 1913 to 1944. To a modern audience the strip can be difficult to understand, if not impenetrable. The pacing and sense of humor of 100 years ago feel foreign to current trends. There are references that were common at the time that are lost to us now. The language used is an idiosyncratic patois of nonsense poetry.

The backgrounds, while beautifully rendered, are a constantly changing surreal backdrop. Characters frequently broke the fourth wall, commenting directly on their status as cartoons. The title character, Krazy Kat, was of indeterminate gender, referred to with shifting pronouns, sometimes within the same sentence. As a whole, Krazy Kat was an ongoing challenge to the reader’s perception of definitions and boundaries.

Creator George Herriman was born in New Orleans in 1880. In the latter part of the 19th century his family moved to Los Angeles where his father worked as a tailor and George began his art career, eventually becoming one of the most famous and celebrated cartoonists in history. This is a distinction that would not have been possible if the truth of his life had been known at the time.

In 1971, while researching Mr. Herriman for an entry in the Dictionary of American Biography, professor Arthur Berger discovered a previously unknown fact. On his birth certificate Mr. Herriman was listed as “colored.” It had always been assumed that he was a white man. Mr. Herriman, to use the terminology of the time, “passed for white” his entire life, at a time when his color would have prevented him from many, if not all, of the achievements he is known for…

Read the entire article here.

The Strange Career of William Ellis: Texas Slave to Mexican Millionaire

Columbia News: Office of Communications and Public Affairs
Columbia University, New York, New York
2016-06-28

Karl Jacoby

The odds were certainly against William Henry Ellis, who was born into slavery on a Texas cotton plantation near the Mexico border.

But a combination of sheer moxie, an ability to speak Spanish and an olive skin allowed Ellis to reinvent himself. By the turn of the 20th century, he was Guillermo Enrique Eliseo, a successful Mexican entrepreneur with an office on Wall Street, an apartment on Central Park West and business dealings with companies and corporations halfway around the world.

His unusual life story is told in a new book titled The Strange Career of William Ellis: The Texas Slave Who Became a Mexican Millionaire by Karl Jacoby, a professor in the history department and the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race. Ellis “learned how to be what people wanted him to be, and how to be sure that people would see what they want to see,” Jacoby said…

Read the entire article here.