Mixed Race Studies

The Films of Branwen Okpako: CfP for a GSA Panel Series

DEFA Film Library

January 2022

We invite contributions for a series of panels on Branwen Okpako’s films, for the 2022 GSA conference, September 15-18, 2022. Co-sponsored by the Black German Heritage & Research Association (BGHRA) and the DEFA Film Library, these panels seek to explore the range of stories and rich imagery in the films of this groundbreaking director.

The deadline for submission is 2022-02-28.

Relevant topics might include:

• Afro-Germanness and Afro-German creativity and artistic production;
• Form, filmmaking, and aesthetics;
• Postcolonial and feminist consciousness at the intersections of multiple cultural and familial
• traditions, norms, values;
• Regimes of the body; femininity and gender;
• Engagement with disciplinary regimes, e.g. the police, political regimes, or language;
• German reunification and its repercussion on discourses of racialization, positionality and representation in Europe and Germany;
• Family his- and herstories;
• Affiliation and belonging;
• Political activism and self-empowerment; and
• The reception of Branwen Okpako’s films.

For more information, click here.

Structural Influence on Biracial Identification

Lexington Books (an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield)
May 2021
166 pages
Trim: 6 x 9
Hardback ISBN: 978-1-7936-3051-3
eBook ISBN: 978-1-7936-3052-0

Rachel Butts is Vice President of Market Intelligence and Research at a major financial institution

Stemming from the 2000 Census when respondents could indicate more than one racial category for the first time in history, Structural Influence on Biracial Identification is the first study of its kind to explore how urban environmental dynamics influence biracial identification in the United States.

Several different biracial pairings are incorporated into the analysis. Rachel Butts uses relative model differences to quantify the standing of each racial group on a multi-tiered racial hierarchy. Notably, Butts uses non-White biracial groups to contrast “minority” defined numerically or oppressively.

The analysis successfully extends macrostructural theory from the context of interracial marriage to the context of interracial identification. Much like interracial marriage has been used as evidence of racial integration in the past, Structural Influence on Biracial Identification presents a compelling argument for using interracial identification for measuring interracial integration in contemporary times.

Table of Contents

• Chapter 1: Structural Influence
• Chapter 2: Structural Influence on Black-White Biracial Identification
• Chapter 3: Structural Influence on Asian-White Biracial Identification
• Chapter 4: Structural Influence on Biracial Identification Between Blacks and Asians
• Conclusion: Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner Now

Fading Out Black and White: Racial Ambiguity in American Culture

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
August 2018
224 pages
Trim: 6 x 9
Hardback ISBN: 978-1-78660-254-1
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-78660-255-8
eBook ISBN: 978-1-78660-256-5

Lisa Simone Kingstone, Visiting Scholar, New School for Social Research, New York, New York; Associate Professor at Montclair State University, Montclair, New Jersey.

What happens to a country that was built on race when the boundaries of black and white have started to fade? Not only is the literal face of America changing where white will no longer be the majority, but the belief in the firmness of these categories and the boundaries that have been drawn is also disintegrating.

In a nuanced reading of culture in a post Obama America, this book asks what will become of the racial categories of black and white in an increasingly multi-ethnic, racially ambiguous, and culturally fluid country. Through readings of sites of cultural friction such as the media frenzy around ‘transracial’ Rachel Dolezal, the new popularity of racially ambiguous dolls, and the confusion over Obama’s race, Fading Out Black and White explores the contemporary construction of race.

This insightful, provocative glimpse at identity formation in the US reviews the new frontier of race and looks back at the archaism of the one-drop rule that is unique to America.

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgments
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• Introduction
• Overview of the book
• Terminology
• Chapter 1: Tracing Race: A tour of the Racial Binary
• Chapter 2: The Trial of Rachel Dolezal: The First Transracial
• Chapter 3: Obama as Racial Rorschach: The First Blank President
• Chapter 4: Casting Color: Black Barbie and the Black Doll as Racial Barometer
• Chapter 5: Really Black: Black-ish and the Black Sitcom as Racial Barometer
• Chapter 6: Talking about Race: Black, White and Mixed Focus Groups
• Coda
• Appendix
• Bibliography

Mixed-Race Identity in the American South: Roots, Memory, and Family Secrets

Lexington Books (an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield)
May 2021
236 pages
6½ x 9
Hardback ISBN: 978-1-7936-2706-3
eBook ISBN: 978-1-7936-2707-0

Julia Sattler, Assistant Professor of American Studies
TU Dortmund University, Dortmund, Germany

This interdisciplinary investigation argues that since the 1990s, discourses about mixed-race heritage in the United States have taken the shape of a veritable literary genre, here termed “memoir of the search.”

The study uses four different texts to explore this non-fictional genre, including Edward Ball’s Slaves in the Family and Shirlee Taylor Haizlip’s The Sweeter the Juice. All feature a protagonist using methods from archival investigation to DNA-testing to explore an intergenerational family secret; photographs and family trees; and the trip to the American South, which is identified as the site of the secret’s origin and of the family’s past. As a genre, these texts negotiate the memory of slavery and segregation in the present.

In taking up central narratives of Americanness, such as the American Dream and the Immigrant story, as well as discourses generating the American family, the texts help inscribe themselves and the mixed-race heritage they address into the American mainstream.

In its outlook, this book highlights the importance of the memoirs’ negotiations of the past when finding ways to remember after the last witnesses have passed away. and contributes to the discussion over political justice and reparations for slavery.

Table of Contents

• Introduction: Memoir of the Search: The Emergence of a Mixed-Race Literary Genre
• Chapter 1: Writing Mixed Selves at the Turn of the Millennium
• Chapter 2: Family Secrets: Uncovering Mixed Race Heritage
• Chapter 3: Media of Memory: Generating the Family
• Chapter 4: Narrating the Mixed-Race Nation
• Chapter 5: The Past in the Present: Encounters with the South
• Conclusion: Making History at the Turn of the Millennium

All mixed up: Multiracial students at CVHS say they don’t fit in one box

The Upstream: The Student-Run News Site of Carnegie Vanguard High School
Houston, Texas

2022-02-02

Sofia Hegstrom, Contributing Writer

Noah Mohamed, Staff Writer

My eyebrows furrowed as I stared blankly at the question in front of me. My pencil hovered hesitantly over the scholarship form, which posed the question- What is your race?, followed by a bolded phrase: Please select one answer.

This is perhaps one of the most universal experiences for Multiracial Americans. After all, the official census only allowed checking more than one box in the year 2000. However, only recently has this become the norm. And while something like being forced to check the ‘other’ box on an occasional survey may seem trivial, it is indicative of the larger erasure and invalidation of Multiracial identity.

Junior Muna Jallad understood she was bi-racial when she was first asked to fill out school enrollment forms.

“In middle school when I was filling out forms and when they would say check only one race I’d be like, ‘What do I do here? Other? do I put White, do I put Asian?’ so I feel it kind of clicked then,” said Jallad.

Xen Villareal, who identifies as mixed-race indigenous and is one-quarter Black, also grew up confused about his race…

Read the entire article here.

Mitski Doesn’t Bother With Labels. She Prefers Excellence

Westworld
2017-07-14

Tom Murphy

Mitski Ebru Yildiz

Mitski Miyawaki, who performs with her band under her first name, grew up in a biracial, multicultural household. During her childhood, Mitski lived in Japan, Malaysia, China, Turkey and the Democratic Republic of Congo. But it wasn’t until she returned to the U.S. that she had a racial designation imposed on her.

“I discovered I was an Asian American when I arrived in the U.S.,” says Mitski. “I didn’t identify as that before I came here. People started calling me that, and I started being treated in a specific way.”

In the U.S., Mitski was regularly asked what most biracial people – her being half Japanese and half Caucasian American – are asked at least once in their lives: “What ARE you?” Mitski doesn’t particularly identify with American or Japanese culture, and her parents didn’t encourage her to choose or adopt either.

“I think growing up the way I did has made me a lot more objective, and that’s important in the process of writing and trying to look at subjective matter that way,” observes Mitski. “Being an outsider at the time nurtured my eye as a writer.”…

Read the entire article here.

My Heritage Is Mixed Race. Chances Are Decent That Yours Is, Too

The Daily Beast
2019-09-09

Sophia A. Nelson

Many African-Americans like me have some white blood in our veins. And of course it stands to reason that the opposite is true. We must tell these stories.

My great grandfathers were white men. Both of them loved and married black women at great peril to themselves and all they possessed. Miscegenation laws in America forbade interracial marriage until the landmark Loving vs. Virginia case of 1967 (the year I was born). So, if they wanted to marry the women they loved, they could not remain in the deep South. They had to flee to border states or free states in order to marry and survive.

My paternal great grandfather, Joseph Bardsley Nelson, was an Irishman from North Carolina. He met and fell in love with a mixed race (African American and Cherokee) woman named Ida from South Carolina. How they crossed paths is unknown, but “pop,” as we called him, was a soldier in World War I, and likely underwent basic training in South Carolina. Word of their forbidden relationship spread in the community, and family oral history says they had to flee in the night and make their way to Philadelphia and then to New Jersey, where they lived until they died.

Pop worked along with his brother Elliot as a bricklayer for the famous Kelly family in Philadelphia. Yes, that Kelly family (as in Grace Kelly). Great grandmother Ida was a seamstress and homemaker. She had two children, my paternal grandmother Dora and her brother, Bardsley. Nana, as we called her, could “pass” for white; her brother Joe looked more Indian and could not…

Read the entire article here.

Why Chinese Americans Are Talking About Eileen Gu

The New York Times
2022-02-18

Ashley Wong

The critical crossfire Ms. Gu has faced has implications that go far beyond the Olympic slopes, Chinese Americans say. And some see themselves in the duality she has embraced.

When it comes to Eileen Gu, the 18-year-old Olympic gold medalist freestyle skier who was born in San Francisco but competed for China, Chinese Americans have lots of opinions.

There are those who love her, moved by her ability to soar over treacherous slopes with ease. Others are inspired by her efforts to navigate the uneasy political tension between two countries and cultures. Some believe she chose to represent China simply to cash in on the lucrative opportunities it has afforded her.

But like her or not, many Chinese Americans interviewed in the New York region this week agreed on one thing: When Ms. Gu says, as she often does, “When I’m in the U.S., I’m American, but when I’m in China, I’m Chinese,” it resonates with them.

“I think what I’m seeing is somebody who isn’t afraid to love her identities and share that with people,” said Sarah Belle Lin, 28, a Harlem resident. “I think it’s so brave, actually, for her to speak about that on a public platform.”…

Read the entire article here.

The U.S. census sees Middle Eastern and North African people as white. Many don’t

National Public Radio
2022-02-17

Hansi Lo Wang, Correspondent, National Desk

There’s a reality about race in the U.S. that has confounded many people of Middle Eastern or North African descent.

The federal government officially categorizes people with origins in Lebanon, Iran, Egypt and other countries in the MENA region as white.

But that racial identity has not matched the discrimination in housing, at work and through other parts of daily life that many say they have faced.

Younger people of MENA descent have “had a plethora of different experiences that made them feel that some of their experiences were actually closer to communities of color in the U.S.,” says Neda Maghbouleh, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Toronto, who has conducted research on the topic.

The paradox has been hard to show through data…

Read the entire article here.

Which skin color emoji should you use? The answer can be more complex than you think

National Public Radio
2022-02-09

Alejandra Marquez Janse

Asma Khalid, White House Correspondent

Patrick Jarenwattananon, Host of NPR Music’s A Blog Supreme

Heath Racela identifies as three-quarters white and one-quarter Filipino. When texting, he chooses a yellow emoji instead of a skin tone option, because he feels it doesn’t represent any specific ethnicity or color.

He doesn’t want people to view his texts in a particular way. He wants to go with what he sees as the neutral option and focus on the message.

“I present as very pale, very light skinned. And if I use the white emoji, I feel like I’m betraying the part of myself that’s Filipino,” Racela, of Littleton, Mass., said. “But if I use a darker color emoji, which maybe more closely matches what I see when I look at my whole family, it’s not what the world sees, and people tend to judge that.”

In 2015, five skin tone options became available for hand gesture emojis, in addition to the default Simpsons-like yellow. Choosing one can be a simple texting shortcut for some, but for others it opens a complex conversation about race and identity…

Read the entire story here.