Mixed Race Studies

I’m not the only mixed race person who longs for a space where I can work through my complicated relationship with race free from fear of hurting the cause for racial justice rather than helping.

Elise Chen, “The quest for racial validity,” The Berkeley Beacon, November 2, 2017. http://www.berkeleybeacon.com/opinion/2017/11/2/the-quest-for-racial-validity.

For the first time, the 2000 Census offered an option for mixed race that gave the respondent the chance to self-declare the components of his or her own identity. Dozens of racial and ethnic categories were listed for those who wished to check all the boxes of their multicultural, multi-racial, selves, including a box for white, allowing people like me to acknowledge, legally and honorably, both sides of their heritage. After more than 200 years, the census had stopped dictating who people had to be and asked me to define myself.

E. Dolores Johnson, “The Census Always Boxed Us Out,” Narratively, October 30, 2017. http://narrative.ly/census-always-boxed-us/.

The quest for racial validity

The Berkeley Beacon
Boston, Massachusetts
2017-11-02

Elise Chen, Beacon Correspondent

I identify as a person of color, but in the fight for racial justice I often feel more like an ally than a member of the POC community.

I’m biracial—Chinese on my dad’s side, European descent on my mom’s. As I navigate through the world, I usually pass as white, which provides me with privileges most of my POC peers don’t have. I understand I have a responsibility to use this privilege as a tool to amplify the voices of people who continue to be silenced.

In many POC communities, members are encouraged to prioritize the voices of those within the group who are most marginalized. They often discourage centering whiteness in conversations, because it’s exhausting for members to hear about white people again when so much of life already revolves around the systemic inequality created and upheld by white people.

But when you’re a POC whose existence does, in fact, center on whiteness, it can feel isolating…

Read the entire article here.

The Census Always Boxed Us Out

Narratively: Human Stories, Boldly Told
2017-10-30

E. Dolores Johnson

Illustration by Xia Gordon

For most of our history, the U.S. government treated biracial Americans as if we didn’t even exist, but my family has stories to tell.

In June, 1967, I walked across the quad of Howard University, a light-skinned, 19-year-old sophomore. It was Black Power days, when I was on fire to learn the black history America had largely ignored. On that wide walkway, I ran into a boy from class who broke into a toothy smile, stuck out his much darker hand and shook mine vigorously, laughing like he had no sense.

“Congratulations,” he said.

“Congratulations for what?”

“For not being a bastard anymore.”

“What are you talking about?” I said, snatching my hand away. “I was born legit.”

“No you weren’t,” he said. The day before, the Supreme Court’s decision in Loving v. Virginia had overturned laws in 16 states outlawing interracial marriage, and he assumed that this meant my parents’ marriage was finally legal. In fact, my parents were married in New York, where their union was officially sanctioned, but the Loving decision was still a watershed — the start of a long journey to learn the truth about my mixed family’s place in America’s racial landscape…

Read the entire article here.