Mixed Race Studies

[Barack] Obama even has animal species named after him, like placida barackobamai, a sea slug.

Chris Woodyard, “More cities add Barack Obama’s name to landmarks, highways,” USA TODAY, January 13, 2019. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/01/13/barack-obama-former-president-african-american-black-naming-renaming-freeway-highway/2539917002/.

This edition: Moiya McTier, Mekita Rivas and Tanya Hernandez

Shades of U.S.
CUNY TV
The City University of New York
Original tape date: 2018-10-19
First aired: 2019-01-17

From a cabin in the woods without running water to astronomy Ph.D. candidate, Moiya McTier uses her platform to advocate for women of color in the sciences. Then, growing up Filipina and Mexican in Nebraska could be confusing, but Mekita Rivas finds her style as a fashion journalist. And last, Hell’s Kitchen-bred Tanya Hernández knows discrimination first hand, so she builds a legal career fighting it.

Guest List

• Tanya Hernández Professor of Law, Fordham University [and author of Multiracials and Civil Rights: Mixed-Race Stories of Discrimination]
• Moiya McTier PhD Candidate, Columbia University
• Mekita Rivas Freelance Writer

Watch the entire episode (00:26:46) here.

More cities add Barack Obama’s name to landmarks, highways

USA TODAY
2019-01-13

Chris Woodyard, Los Angeles Bureau Chief

LOS ANGELES – Barack Obama hasn’t been the president for nearly two years, but his fame is still spreading – at least when it comes to naming things after him.

The nation’s first African-American president need not go far around the country these days to find something that carries his name. There’s Barack Obama Way in New Albany Township, Indiana, and Barack Obama Boulevard in Pahokee, Florida. There’s a long list of schools now named for him, like Barack Obama Academy for Academic & Civic Development in Plainfield, New Jersey, and Barack Obama Elementary School in Richmond, Virginia.

Obama even has animal species named after him, like placida barackobamai, a sea slug…

Read the entire article here.

Why do so many others want to claim Blackness if it means oppression?

The Black Youth Project
2018-12-27

Inigo Laguda

Anthony Lennon via Facebook | Rachel Dolezal via Wikimedia Commons

It is the most enthralling and excruciating time to be Black. Recently, it seems, some have managed access to glide through avenues that were previously concealed from us—to break down walls that were once erected to ostracize us. We are in the belly of a Black artistic renaissance and some of these shifting tides are joyous to watch. We are flooding onto magazine covers. The silver screen has a vivid range of our stories being told. The littler screen is forming and fleshing out more of our narratives than ever before. Slowly, we are being more and more seen.

But just as the draping trees and tranquil swamp-waters of the southern Bayou once served as an eerily mesmerizing backdrop for the unrelenting violence that enslaved peoples faced as they toiled tirelessly nearby—the painful reality of being Black is one of a dual existence. Victory is juxtaposed with defeat, and joy is never further than a stones throw from pain…

Read the entire article here.

Cookeville Vietnam veteran meets Vietnamese-American son after 50 years, hosts family reunion

The Nashville Tennessean
2019-01-14

Yihyun Jeong, Veterans and Military Affairs Reporter

Hugh Nguyen as a boy in Vietnam, teased for being “Amerasian,” a child born during wartime from an Asian mother and an American solider. (Photo: Family handout)

His life was hell because he looked different than the other boys that played in the streets of Saigon.

His light skin, light hair and light eyes.The father he never knew.

These were all reasons that made Hugh Nguyen the target of bullies who mocked him for being an “Amerasian,” — though they used more deragatory terms — a child conceived in wartime by a Vietnamese mother and an American military father fighting abroad.

Not fully belonging to America or Vietnam, these kids were commonly dismissed as “children of the dust,” leftovers of an unpopular war. They were left discarded by both governments and left to be taunted by schoolmates who teased them for their features that resembled the face of the enemy.

Most never knew their fathers.

Roy Patterson, as an 18-year-old American soldier stationed at the base in Nha Trang during the Vietnam War. (Photo: Family handout)

“They disliked us tremendously,” Nguyen said in an interview with USA TODAY NETWORK – Tennessee. “We were treated like garbage. We were talked down to and looked down on.”…

Read the entire article here.

E is for Evelyn

Adulting Whilst…
2019-01-05

Fiona Timba

E is for Evelyn, Evelyn Dove.

Evelyn Dove was born in London on 11 January 1902 and was the first black woman to sing on BBC radio. Although often referred to as the British Josephine Baker, Evelyn Dove replaced Josephine Baker in 1932 as the star attraction at the Casino de Paris and in a career that spanned over five decades she was a star of jazz and cabaret, embraced by the world.

Evelyn had West African and English heritage, her father being a barrister originally from Sierra Leone. It is reported that she had a privileged upbringing, attending private school before going on to study at the Royal Academy of Music and in 1925 she became the first black woman to sing on BBC radio in 1925 at the age of just 24! Evelyn toured Europe performing with many of the great American jazz performers of the time before replacing Josephine Baker at the Casino de Paris. Coming from a privileged middle-class family, and with a parent of African heritage, you can only imagine the reaction her parents had to Evelyn donning Josephine’s revealing costume…

Read the entire article here.

What it’s like to be Black and Argentine

BBC News
2018-12-31

Reporter: Celestina Olulode
Produced by Hannah Green and Hannah Gelbart for the BBC News at Ten.

Black people have had a huge influence on Argentina’s history, but now they make up only one percent of the population of Buenos Aires.

Afro-Argentines, whose families descended from the slave trade, often feel like they’ve been written out of history and are mistaken for foreigners in their own country.

Watch the story here.

Allure

Medium
2019-01-07

Fanny Elisabeth Garvey

For A., C., C., J., and S., who see the beauty in me.

II. ALLURE

2018. Ireland.

I wanted so badly to ask her how she does it that I sat there feeling stupidly desperate.

This beautiful woman sitting next to me at the table.

The kind of woman of whom people say: There’s simply something just so alluring about her.

How, I wondered, could she be so cool, so calm, so black, so beautiful, in her halter top evening gown, with her braided hair falling elegantly down around her shoulders and her skin glowing smooth, dark brown and silky as a mink?

She and I were the only black folk in the place.

No one noticed this except me.

Well.

Maybe she did….

Read the entire article here.

Mixed Race, Half Enough?

Medium
2019-01-15

Kristen Simmons

Photo by Thomas Hafeneth on Unsplash

Hi.

I’m Kristen. I’m a mixed-race author who writes books with mixed-race characters. Yes, I know my last name is Simmons and doesn’t sound very Japanese. Yes, I know Kristen doesn’t either. Yes, I even know that while many people have called me everything from “tan” to “exotic,” I don’t look “very Japanese.”

But guess what? I am.

All my life, this has been something I’ve encountered. People would ask my father when I was alone with him in public if I was really his daughter because we didn’t look alike. (For the record, he’s Caucasian.) Then, when I first started telling people I was Japanese, the questions turned to, “But not completely Japanese, right?” Because to them, I wasn’t…

Read the entire article here.