Mixed Race Studies

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.

BECOME AN EXHIBITOR
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.

Introducing… Monique Roffey

FMcM Associates
London, United Kingdom
2020-10-15

Robert Greer

‘Introducing…’ is our online interview series to introduce you to some of the amazing authors we’re working with and their brilliant books!

Monique Roffey is an award-winning Trinidadian-born British writer of novels, essays, a memoir and literary journalism. Her novels have been translated into five languages and shortlisted for several major awards and, in 2013, Archipelago won the OCM BOCAS Award for Caribbean Literature. With the Kisses of His Mouth and The Tryst are works which examine female sexuality and desire. Her essays have appeared in The New York Review of Books, Boundless magazine, The Independent, Wasafiri, and Caribbean Quarterly. She is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Welcome! To start with, could you tell us a little bit about yourself…

I’m a bi-national writer based in East London. My identity is mixed and fluid in that I was born in Port of Spain, (a city I frequently return to), but I’m also half English. Via my mother, I have Italian, Maltese and Middle Eastern blood. My consciousness, though, has been shaped by my knowledge and understanding of the Caribbean region. Four of my seven books have been set in the Caribbean region. Two of my books have dealt directly with female sexuality and desire. I’d call myself a magical realist as a writer and a practicing Buddhist in my everyday life; everything else is for others to decide. I teach creative writing on the MA/MFA at Manchester Metropolitan University and for the National Writers Centre. I’ve always enjoyed teaching and know, for sure, that the craft of writing can be taught to anyone with a feel for language and an active imagination…

Read the entire interview here.

Belle de Costa Greene: Library Director, Advocate, and Rare Books Expert.

Headlines & Heroes: Newspapers, Comics, & More Fine Print
Library of Congress
Washington, D.C.
2022-02-08

Joanna Colclough, Reference Librarian
Serial and Government Publications Division

In 1999, biographer Jean Strouse published her work on J. P. Morgan, railroad magnate, financier, and New York millionaire of the late 1800s. Of course, Belle de Costa Greene is featured in the book – she worked closely with Morgan for the last 8 years of his life as his personal librarian, managing his private art and rare book collection. Greene’s name was not unknown to history. The first half of the 20th century saw Greene rise as a top expert in the rare book world as librarian and first director of the Morgan Library and Museum. But Strouse discovered something new about Greene that presented Greene in whole new light. In an article for The New Yorker (March 29, 1999, p. 66-79), Strouse tells how she located Greene’s birth certificate in Washington, D.C. which was marked with a C for “colored.”

Greene passed as white for her entire professional life. This is a fact both surprising and not – surprising that such a secret could be so well-kept and not surprising considering the prejudice of society…

Read the entire article here.

Preparing for Higher Education’s Mixed Race Future: Why Multiraciality Matters

Palgrave Macmillan
2022-02-09
237 pages
5.83(w) x 8.27(h) x (d)
Hardcover ISBN: 9783030888206
eBook ISBN: ISBN: 978-3-030-88821-3

Edited by:

Marc P. Johnston-Guerrero, Associate Chair of the Department of Educational Studies; Associate Professor in the Higher Education and Student Affairs
Ohio State University

Lisa Delacruz Combs, Ph.D. Candidate
The Ohio State University

Victoria K. Malaney-Brown, Director of Academic Integrity
Columbia University

• Traces a multiracial trajectory to and through higher education – from pre-college adolescents to post-tenure faculty
• Complicates common constructs within higher education by examining them through a mixed race lens
• Critically advances multiraciality in alignment with larger anti-racist and social justice efforts

Increasing attention and representation of multiraciality in both the scholarly literature and popular culture warrants further nuancing of what is understood about multiracial people, particularly in the changing contexts of higher education. This book offers a way of Preparing Higher Education for its Mixed Race Future by examining Why Multiraciality Matters. In preparation, the book highlights recent contributions in scholarship – both empirical studies and scholarly syntheses – on multiracial students, staff, and faculty/scholars across three separate yet interrelated parts, which will help spur the continued evolution of multiraciality into the future.

Table of Contents

• Section I: Foundations of Multiracial Difference
  • Chapter 1. Coming of Age: Why Multiracial Adolescence Matters for Higher Education
  • Chapter 2. College Enrollment and Multiracial Backgrounds: An Exploration of Access and Choice
  • Chapter 3. Operationalizing Multiracial Consciousness: Disrupting Monoracism at a Historically White Institution
• Section II: Complex Identities Nuancing Multiraciality
  • Chapter 4. The “Hot Ho” and the Unwanted, Colored Male: Gendered Multiracial Subjectivities Hailed through Contemporary Racial Discourse
  • Chapter 5. In Pursuit of a Leadership Identity: Exploring the Role of Involvement in Cultivating a Multiracial Identity at a Hispanic Serving Institution
  • Chapter 6. The Complexity of Black Biracial Identity within the Contexts of Peer and Student Service Interactions at a Predominately White Institution
  • Chapter 7. I am Black and …: Complexities of Being a Marginalized Multiracial Higher Education Professional in Times of Heightened Racial Tensions
  • Chapter 8. Are We Enough? Exploring Multiracial Staff Identities through the Narratives of Mixed Filipinx Americans
• Section III: Nuancing Multiracial Engagement and Outcomes
  • Chapter 9. Sense of Belonging for Multiracial and Multiethnic College Students
  • Chapter 10. “Campus Feels Different to Me”: Comparing Climate Experiences of White vs. Non-White Multiracial College Students
  • Chapter 11. Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t: The Trials and Tribulations of Multiracial Student Activism
  • Chapter 12. Pedestaled or Pigeonholed? Multiracial Scholars Traversing Monoracial Academia
  • Chapter 13. Conclusion: What Difference Does Multiraciality Make? Reflections and Future Directions