Mixed Race Studies

My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me: A Black Woman Discovers Her Family’s Nazi Past

The Experiment
2016-04-05
240 pages
Hardcover ISBN: 9781615192533
Paperback ISBN: 9781615193080

Jennifer Teege and Nikola Sellmair
Translated by Carolin Sommer

At age 38, Jennifer Teege happened to pluck a library book from the shelf—and discovered a horrifying fact: Her grandfather was Amon Goeth, the vicious Nazi commandant depicted in Schindler’s List. Reviled as the “butcher of Płaszów,” Goeth was executed in 1946. The more Teege learned about him, the more certain she became: If her grandfather had met her—a black woman—he would have killed her.

Teege’s discovery sends her into a severe depression—and fills her with questions: Why did her birth mother withhold this chilling secret? How could her grandmother have loved a mass murderer? Can evil be inherited?

Teege’s story is cowritten by Nikola Sellmair, who also adds historical context and insight from Teege’s family and friends, in an interwoven narrative. Ultimately, Teege’s search for the truth leads her, step by step, to the possibility of her own liberation.

Latin American Policy Series (3): Racism and Responses to Racism in Latin America

the bulletin: A Willy Brandt School Blog
2017-03-07

Arivaldo Santos de Souza

This article is a continuation of the Latin American Public Policy Series and briefly introducing the topic “Racism and Responses to Racism in Latin America”, building upon Tanya Hernández´s thoughts, whose book: “Racial Subordination in Latin America – The Role of the State, Customary Law, and the New Civil Rights Response” (Cambridge Press, 2012) which I just translated into Portuguese. This analysis seeks to intrigue Latin Americans to think more deeply about the way people of African descent in their respective countries were (and still are) mistreated based on the arguments presented by Tanya Hernandez.

Approximately 150 million people of African descent, members of one of the largest African Diasporas over time, live in Latin America. Even though, we people of African descent make up around 1/3 of total population in Latin American, members of the African diaspora make up more than 40 percent of the poor in Latin America and have been marginalized as undesirable to society since the abolition of slavery across the Americas.

The idea that “racism does not exist” is hegemonic in Latin America, despite the increasing number of black social movements across the region. The “myth of racial democracy”, which supports that the racial mixture (mestizaje in Castellano and mestiçagem in Portuguese) in a population is a symptom of racial harmony and absence of inequalities based in race is still influential even among scholars and well-educated citizens…

Read the entire article here.

Making inclusion “moments” happen

Civil Service Blog
Government of the United Kingdom
2017-03-31

Hayley Trezel, Head of Transformation
Parole Board for England and Wales

Hayley Trezel compares her experience of working in the Civil Service with that of BAME colleagues.

To quote a phrase from a team of colleagues I respect and admire: “Moments don’t just happen.” I appreciate the truth of this when considering my own journey and ‘moment’ of clarity on the race agenda.

I am a 32-year-old working mum, having worked at the Parole Board for the past 8 years. I am a woman of colour, though I still shy away from referring to myself as black. I was brought up to be very proud of my mixed-race heritage. I have been asked on numerous occasions, “where are you from?”,  and I take pleasure in explaining my heritage and seeing the surprise on people’s faces…

Read the entire article here.

We got diversity all wrong!!!

Dirty Movies: Your platform for thought-provoking cinema
2017-03-30

Victor Fraga, Writer and Publisher
London, United Kingdom

Brigitte Mira and El Hedi ben Salem in Fear Eats the Soul (1974)

Liberals like myself like to embrace and demand diversity, but we often come up with flawed arguments; Fassbinder has taught me that this can backfire with catastrophic consequences – Victor Fraga reflects on the 1974 classic ‘Fear Eats the Soul‘, as the film reaches UK cinemas

Diversity is not as straight-forward as it seems. We liberals like to think that it is a mandatory requirement for a multicultural, modern and sophisticated society. Yet we often come up with arguments that only serve to perpetuate the most reactionary and short-sighted rhetoric. For example, during the Brexit debate, the discussion around immigrants was almost inevitably linked to their financial and social contribution, something along the lines: “EU citizens have been paying taxes for years, they don’t claim benefits, and so on”. This is a dangerous fallacy.

It’s as if our tolerance of foreigners was entirely contingent on money and, to a lesser extent, social functionality (“they are our nurses, our train drivers, etc”). We have thereby stripped tolerance of its fundamentally altruistic nature. It’s as if we suddenly decided that tolerance has nothing to do with kindness, hospitality or high-mindedness. I have learnt from Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1974 classic Fear Eats the Soul (which is out in cinemas this weekend) that this is a very serious mistake with very pernicious ramifications. Tolerance founded upon economic/ vested interests will develop into an ulcer and kill…

Read the entire article here.

Piya on race, identity and ticking boxes

Out in the Open with Piya Chattopadhyay
CBC Radio
2017-03-27

Piya Chattopadhyay, Host

Piya and her daughter

A month after Rachel Dolezal was propelled into the public spotlight in 2015, the American writer Ta-Nehisi Coates’ book Between the World and Me came out.

It’s essentially a letter to his son about the bleak realities of being black in America today.

And like one of those memories that seem so present, so real you can almost touch them, I clearly recall my white husband coming home, after he finished reading Ta-Nehisi’s book.

He was standing on our back porch, and he asked me how I — a woman of Indian heritage, a woman who is undeniably brown — felt about our biological kids, who are biracial, but look outwardly white…

Read the story here. Listen to the story (00:03:42) here.