Mixed Race Studies

5 Years After Muslim Ban, Middle Eastern and North African Americans Remain Hidden | Opinion

Newsweek
2022-02-08

Neda Maghbouleh, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of Toronto

René D. Flores, Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Sociology
University of Chicago

Ariela Schachter, Assistant Professor of Sociology​; Faculty Affiliate in Asian American Studies
Washington University in St. Louis, Saint Louis, Missouri

JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES

Five years ago, President Donald Trump was sued over the Muslim ban, which prohibited immigration and travel to the United States from seven majority Muslim countries. Although it is impossible to know how many lives were thrown into disarray by the flick of President Donald Trump’s pen, at least 41,000 people were denied visas based solely on their nationality. An overwhelming majority—94 percent—were people from Iran, Syria and Yemen.

President Joe Biden, like other critics of the ban, proclaimed that those affected “were the first to feel Donald Trump’s assault on Black and brown people.” But since a 1944 lawsuit in which a Arab Muslim man successfully argued that he was white in order to become a naturalized citizen, people from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA, which includes Iran, Syria and Yemen) have been counted as white in the U.S. As a result, and unlike other minorities, an estimated 3 million MENA Americans do not have a box to mark their identities on the Census or most surveys. And when MENA Americans are masked under the white category, the everyday group- and individual-level inequalities they face are made invisible, making clear that adding a MENA box to the U.S. Census is long overdue…

Read the entire article here.

Martha Wheeler, Eye-Witness to the “Free State of Jones”

Renegade South: Histories of Unconventional Southerners
2017-07-02

Vikki Bynum, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History
Texas State University, San Marcos

I’ll never forget the excitement I felt when, in the midst of researching The Free State of Jones, I came upon the WPA’s 1936 interview with Martha Wheeler, a former slave of Laurel, Mississippi. Today, I realize more than ever that Martha just may be the best source for verifiable remarks about Newt, Rachel, and Serena Knight, and the interracial community they built in Soso, Mississippi, in the aftermath of the Civil War.¹

Unfortunately, no Hollywood movie could have provided an in-depth treatment of both a Civil War insurrection and the remarkable mixed-race community that followed. Only a fraction of Rachel’s factual personal life was told amid the larger story of slavery, Civil War, and class resistance to Confederate authority.

Nevertheless, judging from the traffic on this blog since release of The Free State of Jones, the movie’s abbreviated portrait of the interracial Knight community piqued tremendous interest among movie audiences. Tantalizing glimpses of the 1948 miscegenation trial of Newt and Rachel’s great-grandson, Davis Knight, as well as images of Newt’s two “wives,”—one white (Serena), the other a woman of color (Rachel)—in scenes of domestic contentment in post-Civil War Mississippi sparked that interest even more…

Read the entire article here.

Netflix’s ‘Passing’ could have been me

My Imperfect Life
2022-02-08

Asha Swann
Toronto, Canada

Anchored by Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga, ‘Passing‘ on Netflix tells the story of racial passing back in 1920s New York. But it’s more relevant, and personal, than ever

In the film Passing on Netflix, two mixed-race women in 1920s America struggle to find their place when society can’t put them in the right box. It’s not an uncommon pain—talk to any mixed-race person and odds are they’ll be able to tell you at least a dozen horror stories about their identity being misunderstood, fetishized, or stereotyped.

In the Netflix film, the women, Irene (played by Tessa Thompson) and Clare (Ruth Negga), are two sides of the same coin. Both light-skinned, Irene “passes” as white accidentally, whereas Clare “passes” on purpose to gain social status. What follows is an incredibly complex story about what it means to be somebody when the world sees you as something else.

When my dad would pick me up from third grade, kids would always ask if I’m adopted. There’s no way that Black man could be my dad, not when I’m so pale. After my parents split up and I went to live with my white mother and her parents in the suburbs, kids were ready to call me a liar when I would talk about being mixed. Though I never chose to pass—ask any mixed person and they’ll show you that genetics are messy and don’t give you much of a choice…

Read the entire article here.

The best way to get ahead is now to lie

The UnHerd
2022-01-18

Blake Smith, Harper-Schmidt Fellow
University of Chicago

We can’t blame students for fabricating stories of hardship

University education was once sold to adolescents as a place where they might ‘find themselves’ through the liberal arts. In this fantasy, students could discover a more ‘authentic’ self as they learned, through the fearless and broad-ranging inquiry of impassioned conversations in and outside of seminars, to question received ideas. Academia today is certainly a place where people can themselves anew, if not more authentically.

Scholars like Jessica Krug or Carrie Bourassa, both white women, reimagined themselves as women of colour. Rhodes scholar Mackenzie Fierceton, also a white woman, was recently revealed to have constructed an elaborate persona as a ‘first-generation’ college student who had been passed through the foster system and suffered horrific physical abuse. She had in fact been privately educated and raised by her radiologist mother.

Such cases are only the most visible portion of the constant, ubiquitous deceit that is now built into the application process, which rewards candidates who can most convincingly tell stories — that is, who can lie…

Read the entire article here.

New Miami Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel: ‘Extremely proud’ to be biracial

ESPN
2022-02-11

Marcel Louis-Jacques, Miami Dolphins Reporter

MIAMI — Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel, clarifying comments this week in which he said he identified “as a human being,” affirmed that his racial background is not something he simply identifies as — it’s what he is.

“First and foremost, I’m biracial. My mom’s white, my dad’s Black. I’ve been extremely proud of that my whole life,” McDaniel told ESPN on Friday. “It is a unique experience, being a race and then fully acknowledging that most outside observers, when they perceive you, they identify you as something other than the race you are. When you’re younger and that is happening, it’s very, very confusing.”

The Dolphins introduced McDaniel as their 14th head coach this week. During a news conference Thursday in Miami, McDaniel was asked what his experience was growing up and whether his success can serve as an example for people with similar backgrounds…

Read the entire article here.

[Kelly] Curtis is biracial. “My skin tone challenges the notion of being Black in America and what that carries,” she added.

She knows when the world sees her, people may not view her as someone who fits their preconceived notion of a skeleton athlete, an Olympian or a Black woman.

“I’m either not Black enough (an actual thing a teammate has said), or I need to speak on behalf of all Black Americans,” she said.

All of that debate is “exhausting,” Curtis added. So she has decided to just focus on what lies ahead for herself, and for anyone else who wants to see what this “crazy” sport is all about.

Jaclyn Diaz, “Meet the first Black skeleton athlete to compete for the U.S. at the Olympics,” National Public Radio, February 10, 2022. https://www.npr.org/2022/02/10/1079798400/kelly-curtis-first-black-skeleton-olympian.

2022 CMRS Conference Is Two Weeks Away!

Critical Mixed Race Studies Association
2022-01-24

*** View the program schedule here! ***

REGISTER NOW!
It is not too late to register for the 6th biennial Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference titled Ancestral Futurisms: Embodying Multiracialities Past, Present, and Future to be held virtually February 24-26, 2022. To register, click here.

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For a small $10 fee you can advertise your business and/or sell your wares during the CMRS Conference in our virtual exhibitor space. Register here.

BECOME A CONFERENCE SPONSOR
It’s not too late to become a 2022 CMRS conference sponsor. Sponsors receive advertisement on the conference website, free registration for students or community members, and conference merchandise featuring the brilliant art image “Transition” by artivist Favianna Rodriguez.

To become a sponsor please go to our Eventbrite page here.

NEW! View the program guide here.

Meet the first Black skeleton athlete to compete for the U.S. at the Olympics

National Public Radio
2022-02-10

Jaclyn Diaz, Reporter

BEIJING — Skeleton is a heart-racing, adrenaline-fueled event where a single racer flies face-first down a frozen track, sometimes going more than 80 mph, belly-down on a sled.

Kelly Curtis is quick to acknowledge this sport is “crazy.” That doesn’t make her love it any less.

The event has been a mainstay at the Winter Games since 2002. At the Beijing Winter Olympics, just three Americans will compete for a medal — and Curtis is one of them.

As soon as Curtis shot herself down a topsy-turvy track in Beijing on Friday, she made history.

Curtis is the first Black athlete, man or woman, to represent the U.S. at the Olympics in skeleton. The 33-year-old is also the only member of the U.S. Air Force at this year’s Winter Games.

Curtis joins a small group of Black athletes competing for the U.S. at the Beijing Olympics…

Read the entire article here.

On Being Other: Primadonna 2021

Primadonna Festival
2022-02-11

Join writer and journalist Bee Rowlatt as she introduces this year’s Costa winner Monique Roffey, author of the remarkable novel The Mermaid of Black Conch, and Natalie Morris, whose debut title Mixed/Other came out in 2021. Together they explore shared themes of otherness, outsider

The double life of the title [White Lies: The Double Life of Walter F. White and America’s Darkest Secret] plays out several ways. Born in Atlanta in 1893, [Walter] White was defined as Black by Southern laws and customs. Yet his enslaved forebears were raped by white owners, making him, according to family history, a great-grandson of William Henry Harrison. With fair skin, blue eyes and blond hair, he could easily have passed as white and ensured himself a better life.

Instead, White worked doggedly to force change. [A. J.] Baime depicts him as a superhero with a secret identity. In the 1920s he lived in Harlem as a Black man, taking on a crucial role in the fledgling NAACP while also fostering the Harlem Renaissance by nurturing Black artists like Langston Hughes, Claude McKay and Zora Neale Hurston. He invited them to his high-profile parties, introduced them to white publishers like Mark Van Doren and Alfred Knopf. (His own books were also well received.)

Stuart Miller, “He risked his life to become a founding father of civil rights. Why was he forgotten?” The Los Angeles Times, February 9, 2022. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2022-02-09/walter-f-white-a-founder-of-civil-rights-white-lies-biography.