Mixed Race Studies

AMST 3407 – Racial Borders and American Cinema

University of Virginia
Department of American Studies
Fall 2021

This class explores how re-occurring images of racial and ethnic minorities such as African Americans, Jews, Asians, Native Americans and Latino/as are represented in film and shows visual images of racial interactions and boundaries of human relations that tackle topics such as immigration, inter-racial relationships and racial passing.

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Glen Ford, Black Journalist Who Lashed the Mainstream, Dies at 71

The New York Times
2021-08-18

Clay Risen, Reporter and Editor

Glen Ford in the 1970s. As a journalist, he took aim at the intersection of corporate interests and what he called the Black “misleadership” class. via Tonya Rutherford

Fiercely progressive and independent, he was a persistent critic of the liberal establishment, especially Black leaders like Barack Obama.

Glen Ford, who over a 50-year career was a leading voice among progressive Black journalists and a constant scourge of the liberal establishment, especially Black politicians like Barack Obama, died on July 28 in Manhattan. He was 71.

His daughter, Tonya Rutherford, said the cause was cancer.

Originally as a radio news reporter in Augusta, Ga., and later as a television and online correspondent, Mr. Ford offered his audience a progressive perspective across a wide array of issues, including welfare rights, foreign policy and police misconduct.

Read the entire obituary here.

Black in Ballet: Coming Together After Trying to ‘Blend Into the Corps’

The New York Times
2021-08-17

Brian Seibert

The cast of “Stare Decisis,” from left: Kouadio Davis, India Bradley, Rachel Hutsell, Robert Garland, Misty Copeland, Erica Lall, Kennard Henson and Alexandra Hutchinson. Malin Fezehai for The New York Times

A rare gathering of Black dancers from different companies meet to discuss a new production on Little Island, curated by Misty Copeland and Robert Garland.

Last year, in the wake of the killing of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and the protests that followed, American ballet companies started talking a lot more about race. About the issues of diversity, equity and inclusion that organizations of all kinds were addressing, but also aesthetic assumptions, implicit biases and longstanding practices particular to ballet and its history.

“There were innumerable panel discussions,” said Robert Garland, the resident choreographer of Dance Theater of Harlem. “But I felt that for the younger Black dancers, it was a heavy burden to be responsible for all of that.”

Garland wanted to help them, and in the way that he knows best: by making a dance for them. That work, “Stare Decisis (To Stand by Things Decided),” has its debut on Wednesday as part of “NYC Free,” a monthlong festival at Little Island, the new public park on the Hudson River.

The most significant feature of “Stare Decisis” is its eight-member cast: an extraordinarily rare gathering of Black dancers from New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theater and Dance Theater of Harlem. Misty Copeland — Ballet Theater’s first Black female principal dancer and one of the most famous ballerinas in the United States — is among them. (Little Island asked her to present a program.)…

Read the entire article here.

Thomas Collins, Lost Melungeon Roots

Alicia M. Prater, Ph.D.
2020-09-03

The Goins’, a Melungeon family in Graysville, Tennessee, in the 1920s. Source

Thomas Collins was born about 1785, presumably in Ashe, North Carolina. He was a Melungeon and noted as “Free Colored Person” (FCP) on the 1820 and 1830 U.S. censuses. Thomas married Nancy Williams, who was also denoted as a FCP, around 1800. They moved with their grown children to Perry Co., Kentucky, from Ashe, North Carolina, about 1835. Thomas was then denoted as “Free White Person” on the 1840 census, and the family has been White ever since.

Melungeons: The “free colored people” of Appalachia

The word “Melungeon” started as a racial slur but came to denote the insular communities of darker skinned Baptists, Portuguese, African, Native American, and possibly Romani or Jewish settlers in the Appalachian Mountains of Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina before the Revolutionary War. Today, it is considered to refer to a tri-racial isolate from the Southeastern United States…

Read the entire article here.

What The New Census Data Shows About Race Depends On How You Look At It

National Public Radio
2021-08-13

Connie Hanzhang Jin

Ruth Talbot

Hansi Lo Wang, Correspondent, National Desk

Over the past decade, the United States continued to grow more racially and ethnically diverse, according to the results of last year’s national head count that the U.S. Census Bureau released this week.

There are many ways to slice the data and change how the demographic snapshot looks.

Since the 2000 count, participants have been able to check off more than one box when answering the race question on census forms. But breakdowns of the country’s racial and ethnic makeup often don’t reflect a multiracial population that has increased by 276% since the 2010 census. They focus instead on racial groups that are made up of people who marked only one box, with multiracial people sometimes lumped together in a catchall group.

Using the new 2020 census results, here’s what a breakdown with a catchall group for multiracial people looks like:

…

Read the entire article here.