Mixed Race Studies

A Man Called White and Exploring America’s Darkest Secret in “White Lies”

Chicago Review of Books
2022-02-07

Steve Nathans-Kelly

An interview with A.J. Baime about his new book, “White Lies: The Double Life of Walter F. White and America’s Darkest Secret.”

When we speak of the peak years of the Civil Rights Movement, typically we refer to the period beginning with Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 and the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-56—which thrusted Martin Luther King, Jr. onto the national stage. This canonical era concludes with the passage of the Voting Rights Act in August 1965 following the pivotal showdown in Selma. Those eleven years formed the Movement’s dominant narrative, which blurred and obscured most of what came before and after (and oversimplified much that’s in between).

Jacquelyn Dowd Hall’s landmark 2005 essay, “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Uses of the Past,” ushered in a critical reassessment of these artificial historical boundaries. Hall argued that anointing this era not only limited the movement’s lifespan to a “halcyon decade,” but also narrowed its goals to the pursuit of a vaguely defined “color-blind” society, a notion later used to recast King and others as proponents of neoliberal social and fiscal policy.

Focusing exclusively on this period also meant overlooking many of the foundational figures who preceded it and laid the groundwork for nearly everything that followed.

One such figure is Walter F. White—known in his lifetime as “Mr. NAACP”—who led America’s most powerful civil rights organization from 1929 until his death in 1955. White featured prominently in nearly every important battle against segregation and white supremacy during those years. White’s extraordinary life demonstrates how blinding white Americans’ appalling lack of color-blindness could be.

By all appearances, the blond-haired and blue-eyed Walter White was white. But like his multiracial parents, both born to formerly enslaved people, White identified as Black throughout his life. In his early years with the NAACP, he used his appearance to infiltrate Southern white communities as an undercover white man, gathering critical information on brutal lynchings from killers keen to brag about their crimes…

Read the entire interview here.

Mirror Girls

Little, Brown Young Readers
2022-02-08
304 pages
Hardcover ISBN-13: 9780759553859
eBook ISBN-13: 9780759553859
Audiobook ISBN-13: 9781549165962

Kelly McWilliams

A thrilling gothic horror novel about biracial twin sisters separated at birth, perfect for fans of Lovecraft Country and The Vanishing Half

As infants, twin sisters Charlie Yates and Magnolia Heathwood were secretly separated after the brutal lynching of their parents, who died for loving across the color line. Now, at the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement, Charlie is a young Black organizer in Harlem, while white-passing Magnolia is the heiress to a cotton plantation in rural Georgia.

Magnolia knows nothing of her racial heritage, but secrets are hard to keep in a town haunted by the ghosts of its slave-holding past. When Magnolia finally learns the truth, her reflection mysteriously disappears from mirrors—the sign of a terrible curse. Meanwhile, in Harlem, Charlie’s beloved grandmother falls ill. Her final wish is to be buried back home in Georgia—and, unbeknownst to Charlie, to see her long-lost granddaughter, Magnolia Heathwood, one last time. So Charlie travels into the Deep South, confronting the land of her worst nightmares—and Jim Crow segregation.

The sisters reunite as teenagers in the deeply haunted town of Eureka, Georgia, where ghosts linger centuries after their time and dangers lurk behind every mirror. They couldn’t be more different, but they will need each other to put the hauntings of the past to rest, to break the mirrors’ deadly curse—and to discover the meaning of sisterhood in a racially divided land.

White Lies: The Double Life of Walter F. White and America’s Darkest Secret

Mariner Books
2022-02-08
400 pages
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0358447757
Paperback ISBN: 978-0358581772
eBook ISBN: 9780358439660
Audiobook ISBN: 9780358581932

A. J. Baime

A riveting biography of Walter F. White, a little-known Black civil rights leader who passed for white in order to investigate racist murders, help put the NAACP on the map, and change the racial identity of America forever

Walter F. White led two lives: one as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance and the NAACP in the early twentieth century; the other as a white newspaperman who covered lynching crimes in the Deep South at the blazing height of racial violence. Born mixed race and with very fair skin and straight hair, White was able to “pass” for white. He leveraged this ambiguity as a reporter, bringing to light the darkest crimes in America and helping to plant the seeds of the civil rights movement. White’s risky career led him to lead a double life. He was simultaneously a second-class citizen subject to Jim Crow laws at home and a widely respected professional with full access to the white world at work. His life was fraught with internal and external conflict—much like the story of race in America. Starting out as an obscure activist, White ultimately became Black America’s most prominent leader. A character study of White’s life and career with all these complexities has never been rendered, until now.

By the award-winning, best-selling author of The Accidental President, Dewey Defeats Truman, and The Arsenal of Democracy, White Lies uncovers the life of a civil rights leader unlike any other.

Debate is growing over use of ‘Latinx’ for ethnic identity

The Houston Chronicle
2021-01-24

Olivia P. Tallet, Staff Writer

Latinx is a buzzword for individuals of Latin American origin in the United States, yet the use of “Latinx” as a noun to identify people of Latino and Hispanic heritage is not universally welcomed.

“Ooooo, you’ve entered the dangerous territory of ‘identity politics,’” said Rice University professor Luis Duno-Gottberg on a social media post where a journalist asked for opinions about the use of Latinx.

The word “Latinx” and its plural “Latinxs” spark passionate discussions, with supporters asserting it is more inclusive than the predominant “Latinos” or “Hispanic” to group the multifaceted identities of people who trace their origins to Latin America and Spanish-speaking countries.

Some analysts trace the original use of Latinx to the mid-2000s when it began to appear in web searches. The word started a slow trend upward in June 2016, according to Google Trends data. Some observers associated it with the mass shooting that month at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando where 49 people were killed and 53 injured…

Read the entire article here.

The Nazi Holocaust in Europe and slavery and Jim Crow in the United States are outgrowths of the same ideology—the belief that human beings can be delineated into categories that share immutable biological traits distinguishing them from one another and determining their potential and behavior. In Europe, with its history of anti-Jewish persecution and violent religious divisions, the conception of Jews as a biological “race” with particular characteristics was used by the Nazis to justify the Holocaust. In the United States, the invention of race was used to justify the institution of chattel slavery, on the basis that Black people were biologically suited to permanent servitude and unfit for the rights the nation’s Founders had proclaimed as universal. The American color line was therefore much more forgiving to European Jews than the divisions of the old country were. But they are branches of the same tree, the biological fiction of race.

Adam Serwer, “Whoopi Goldberg’s American Idea of Race,” The Atlantic, February 3, 2022. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/02/whoopi-goldbergs-american-idea-race/621470/.

How a Vietnamese Ethiopian Designer Built Her Fashion ‘Dynasty’

Saigoneer
2020-10-23

Written by Diệu Linh. Photos by Lê Việt Dũng.

“I’m young so I still have big dreams,” Kim Berhanu begins our chat on an early September day. At the tender age of 23, Berhanu is already the CEO and creative director of the fashion brand Dynasty the Label. And that’s just the beginning for the half-Vietnamese designer.

Born in Australia into a family of a Vietnamese mother and an Ethiopian father, she understands more than anyone what it means to feel different. That sense of not fitting in nurtured Berhanu’s aspiration to travel the world to experience cultural diversity. “After saving enough money from part-time gigs in high school, I decided on France because I love the arts and culture scene there,” she reminisces. “When I returned, I resolved to explore more destinations because Australia has become my ‘comfort zone.’”

Filled with hope and determination, she moved to Vietnam in 2018. To her, Vietnam is a promised land where many of her personal plans could become a reality. Berhanu said of the opportunities she’s gotten since her return: “As long as you have a big idea, you’ll quickly be able to find kindred minds to actualize it.”…

Read the entire article here.

Taffy Abel medaled in the 1924 Olympics. Few knew of his Indigenous heritage

National Public Radio
2022-02-07

Troy Oppie, Host/Reporter
Boise State Public Radio, Boise, Idaho

At the 1924 Winter Olympics in Chamonix, France, about two dozen American dignitaries and athletes trudged through snowy streets in the opening parade. The American flag – then with just 48 stars – was carried by hockey player Clarence “Taffy” Abel.

What few outside his family and close friends knew at that time: Taffy Abel was Native American – the first Indigenous athlete to carry the flag at the Olympics. Within days he’d become the first Native American to win a medal in winter games history.

“A Native American, carrying our stars and stripes, nearly 100 years ago,” reflects George Jones, Abel’s 73-year-old nephew by marriage. His voice quivered with pride as he spoke of that moment.

Family stories passed down tell how Abel, his sister Gertrude, and his mother Charlotte – a Canadian Chippewa (now called Ojibwe) – all passed themselves off as white, mostly by not talking about it.

“The main thing that they were fearful of,” says Jones, “[was] that Taffy and his sister would be taken away to an Indian residential school.”…

Read the entire story here.

A New Orleans Company Shines A Light On Opera’s Diverse History

Weekend Edition Sunday
National Public Radio
2017-05-28

Malika Gumpangkum and Lulu Garcia-Navarro

For many people, New Orleans is practically synonymous with jazz; it’s the birthplace of both the music and many of its leading lights, from Louis Armstrong to Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah. But now, one organization is working to draw attention to the city’s history of opera music.

OperaCréole, an opera company founded in New Orleans, is resurrecting music written by local composers of color and others who’ve been left out of the overwhelmingly white, male canon. The company’s latest production, La Flamenca, is by the Creole composer Lucien-Léon Guillaume Lambert, whose father was born in New Orleans.

OperaCréole founder and mezzo-soprano Givonna Joseph joined NPR’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro to discuss La Flamenca and her company’s work in general. Hear their full conversation at the audio link…

Listen the entire story here.

The Forgotten Story of Lucien-Leon Guillaume Lambert

Bacchus Tales & Co.
August 2017

J. C. Phillips, Co-Founder, Publisher, Writer

Charles Lucien Lambert ​Sr.

The story of this brilliant, sometime forgotten, underrated composer can date back to the ugly history of racial discrimination in the United States. His family’s sojourner led this brilliant man to work and strive in his chosen profession. It was that sacrifice of his father that made that opportunity possible…

Read the entire article here.

Eric Stinton: It’s Time To Recognize That Black History Is Part Of Hawaii’s History

Honolulu Civic Beat
Honolulu, Hawaii
2022-02-07

Eric Stinton

Nitasha Tamar Sharma attempts to clarify misconceptions and challenges common assumptions about race in Hawaii in her book “Hawaiʻi Is My Haven.”

On the cover of Nitasha Tamar Sharma’s recent book, “Hawaiʻi Is My Haven,” is a striking image of Kamakakēhau Fernandez wearing a pink bombax flower lei. The Na Hoku Hanohano award-winning falsetto singer and ukulele player was adopted from Arkansas by a Maui family when he was six weeks old, and was enrolled in Hawaiian language classes starting in kindergarten. He grew up in Hawaii and with Hawaii in him.

Fernandez is one of countless examples of Black locals who have contributed to Hawaiian culture and life for over 200 years, yet whose stories have largely gone unrecognized.

“Black people have been evacuated out of the narrative of who is in Hawaii,” Sharma says. “Historically we don’t think Black people were in Hawaii when they actually were.”…

Read the entire article here.