Mixed Race Studies

“The best thing about it is you’re showing kids that no matter where you grow up, what race you are, that you can achieve your dream,” [Patrick] Mahomes said during the lead-up to the Super Bowl. “For me, being a black quarterback — having a black dad and a white mom — it just shows that it doesn’t matter where you come from.”

Jason Reid, “Patrick Mahomes ushers in Era of the Black Quarterback,” The Undefeated, February 2, 2020. https://theundefeated.com/features/patrick-mahomes-ushers-in-era-of-the-black-quarterback/.

Fateful Triangles in Brazil: A Forum on Stuart Hall’s The Fateful Triangle: Race, Ethnicity, Nation, Part II

Contexto International
Volume 41, Number 2, Rio de Janeiro (May/Aug. 2019)
pages 449-470
DOI: 10.1590/s0102-8529.2019410200012

Sharon A. Stanley, Professor of Political Science
University of Memphis, Memphis, Tennessee

João Nackle Urt, Assistant Professor
Federal University of Grande Dourados (UFGD), Dourados-MS, Brazil

Thiago Braz, Ph.D. Candidate
Institute of International Relations
Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), Rio de Janeiro-RJ, Brazil

Stuart Hall, a founding scholar in the Birmingham School of cultural studies and eminent theorist of ethnicity, identity and difference in the African diaspora, as well as a leading analyst of the cultural politics of the Thatcher and post-Thatcher years, delivered the W. E. B. Du Bois Lectures at Harvard University in 1994. In the lectures, published after a nearly quarter-century delay as The Fateful Triangle: Race, Ethnicity, Nation (2017), Hall advances the argument that race, at least in North Atlantic contexts, operates as a ‘sliding signifier,’ such that, even after the notion of a biological essence to race has been widely discredited, race-thinking nonetheless renews itself by essentializing other characteristics such as cultural difference. Substituting Michel Foucault’s famous power-knowledge dyad with power-knowledge-difference, Hall argues that thinking through the fateful triangle of race, ethnicity and nation shows us how discursive systems attempt to deal with human difference.

In ‘Fateful Triangles in Brazil,’ Part II of Contexto Internacional’s forum on The Fateful Triangle, three scholars work with and against Hall’s arguments from the standpoint of racial politics in Brazil. Sharon Stanley argues that Hall’s account of hybrid identity may encounter difficulties in the Brazilian context, where discourses of racial mixture have, in the name of racial democracy, supported anti-black racism. João Nackle Urt investigates the vexed histories of ‘race,’ ‘ethnicity’ and ‘nation’ in reference to indigenous peoples, particularly Brazilian Indians. Finally, Thiago Braz shows, from a perspective that draws on Afro-Brazilian thinkers, that emphasizing the contingency of becoming in the concept of diaspora may ignore the myriad ways by which Afro-diasporic Brazilians are marked as being black, and thus subject to violence and inequality.

Part I of the forum – with contributions by Donna Jones, Kevin Bruyneel and William Garcia – critically examines the promise and potential problems of Hall’s work from the context of North America and western Europe in the wake of #BlackLivesMatter and Brexit.

Read the entire article here.

When we’re young, it’s already incredibly difficult to figure out where we belong. It’s human nature to want to be liked, and sometimes we’ll do anything for approval. We’ll change the way we dress and what we listen to; we’ll code-switch our dialect depending on the people we’re with; whatever it takes to feel a part of something. Bobby had to do that as a child, as do a great number of mixed-race people who have been asked at far too young an age, “What are you, anyway?” Heard often enough, you begin to ask that question of yourself subconsciously, and seek to find the answers in others. Bobby had only his mother and his grandfather in his life, and Isabel could hardly take care of herself. That left his grandfather a hateful bigot. It didn’t take much to steer Bobby down the path he eventually took, and even embraced, because when he emulated his grandfather, he received love and approval, which is all he was every looking for. —John Vercher

Alex Segura, “Throwing Rocks: An Interview with John Vercher,” Los Angeles Review of Books, January 29, 2020. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/throwing-rocks-an-interview-with-john-vercher.

Patrick Mahomes ushers in Era of the Black Quarterback

The Year of the Black Quarterback
The Undefeated
2020-02-02

Jason Reid

With dramatic Super Bowl win, the Chiefs star punctuates spectacular year

MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. – The Year of the Black Quarterback has evolved into the Era of the Black Quarterback, because Patrick Mahomes and his contemporaries are just that good.

On sports’ biggest stage here Sunday night, Mahomes emphatically punctuated the NFL’s 100th season – the one in which African American passers shined brighter than at any time previously in NFL history – leading the Kansas City Chiefs to a 31-20 victory over the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl LIV at Hard Rock Stadium. In only his third season and second as a starter, Mahomes added the Super Bowl most valuable player award to the long list of accomplishments in his nascent career. And for a fitting capper to it all, here’s his biggest feat to date: At only 24, Mahomes is the youngest player ever to have both a Super Bowl title and a league MVP award, having been selected the 2018 winner by the Associated Press.

Any scout, coach or player-personnel official worth their salt will tell you there’s no doubt as to who is currently the game’s top player. Mahomes is the face of the NFL and is expected to shatter the mark for the game’s biggest contract soon. Not only does Mahomes, the seventh black signal-caller to direct a team to the Super Bowl and third to win the championship, throw the game’s best deep ball and possess second-to-none improvisational skills, he’s also smart as a whip, tough and a leader beyond his years.

Any scout, coach or player-personnel official worth their salt will tell you there’s no doubt as to who is currently the game’s top player. Mahomes is the face of the NFL and is expected to shatter the mark for the game’s biggest contract soon. Not only does Mahomes, the seventh black signal-caller to direct a team to the Super Bowl and third to win the championship, throw the game’s best deep ball and possess second-to-none improvisational skills, he’s also smart as a whip, tough and a leader beyond his years.

“The best thing about it is you’re showing kids that no matter where you grow up, what race you are, that you can achieve your dream,” Mahomes said during the lead-up to the Super Bowl. “For me, being a black quarterback — having a black dad and a white mom — it just shows that it doesn’t matter where you come from.”…

Read the entire article here.

Is the Black Quarterback Revolution Going to Last?

The New York Times
2020-02-02

Elena Bergeron

Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs is part of a vanguard redefining the position. But it is a watershed only if it is widespread and persistent.

MIAMI — The N.F.L.’s longtime leading men, the ones with the pizza commercials and the Super Bowl rings, whose names adorn the league’s most-sold jerseys, showed their mortality this season in ways that were uncomfortable to watch.

Tom Brady and Drew Brees didn’t make it through the first round of the playoffs. Aaron Rodgers missed the Super Bowl, too, by losing in a later round. Eli Manning retired, usurped as the Giants’ leader after 16 years. Ben Roethlisberger played like he should be considering it, too.

Together they helmed 12 of the last 18 Super Bowl-winning teams. And all are pushing 40 years old or past it.

Yet their aging out of the game leaves no void, as these playoffs have highlighted the rise of quarterbacks whose savvy and daring have stolen our attention. Russell Wilson’s third-down scramble to survive the Philadelphia Eagles, Patrick Mahomes’s bionic touchdown run for the Chiefs against the Tennessee Titans, Deshaun Watson of the Texans’ magical escape from a sack to beat the Buffalo Bills. Everything that Lamar Jackson did…

Read the entire article here.

Am I Black Enough?

KQED.org
KQED Perspectives
San Francisco, California
2020-01-23

Valencia White
El Cerrito, California

Picking a college isn’t easy. For teens weighing their options there are a lot of factors to consider. YR Media’s Valencia White says her racial identity played a big role.

As a senior, the question I get asked the most is: Where do you want to go to college? My answer is always the same. I want to go to Howard University or Spelman College, both of which are historically Black colleges. But sometimes I ask myself, “Am I Black enough to go to an HBCU?”

I’m biracial — my mom is mixed with Black and Filipino and my dad is white. In seventh grade, my parents switched me from a majority-white Catholic school to a more diverse school. I quickly realized how little diversity I had been exposed to at my old school. I was happy for once not to be the only Black kid in the class.

But adjusting to a new school didn’t come easily.

Kids would ask me, “Why do you act so white?” I felt like I had to change my personality just to be accepted. I know I’m Black and that’s something I’ve never doubted. But when my peers constantly doubted my blackness, I started to question my identity…

Read the entire story here. Listen to the story (00:02:08) here.