Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

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  • The overlapping concepts of race and colour in Latin America

    The overlapping concepts of race and colour in Latin America

    Ethnic and Racial Studies
    Volume 35, Issue 7, (July 2012)
    pages 1163-1168
    DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2012.657209

    Edward Telles, Professor of Sociology
    Princeton University

    I thank Ethnic and Racial Studies for the opportunity to participate in this symposium and I am honoured to be in conversation with Michael Banton. an esteemed contributor to the Sociology of Race (and Colour), with whom I respectfully differ.

    Banton argues that ‘U.S. scholars followed the ordinary language trend of using race instead of color’, as W. E. B. DuBois originally had, and that my use of the term ‘race’ erringly uses the experience of North American ‘black white relations as a paradigm case to offer a conceptual framework for the analysis of relations in Brazil.’ Banton objects to my use of race and colour as rough equivalents. For him, colour refers to a ‘first order abstraction’, which describes physical differences that are used in society as markers of social distinction, while race is a ‘second order abstraction’ that is neither visible nor measurable and that varies from place to place, ‘making it more difficult to identify what has to be explained’ (p. 4). Banton (p. 6) seems to find it odd that my book. Race in Another America, should bear the subtitle ”The Significance of Skin Color in Brazil’. But the title of my book simply reflects one of its central findings: that, in Brazil, conceptions of ‘race’ and conceptions of ‘color’ overlap.

    Banton is right to separate folk and analytical concepts, but I think he goes about it in the wrong way. Race is clearly a folk concept, and it lacks analytical validity, but his race/colour distinction begs more questions than it resolves. Race and colour are both folk concepts but race and many references to colour are based on the social process of racialization, which classifies people according to race, privileging some while excluding others. Racial and colour inequality and discrimination in Brazil and the USA are rooted in a common western racial ideology, although one that has been interpreted in different ways in both countries. Whereas colour might be seen as merely descriptive, it also elicits a racial ideology where Brazilians are keenly aware of human colour variation, which they often place on a naturalized hierarchy of worth…

    Read or purchase the article here.

  • Complexity of Race In America

    Complexity of Race In America

    C-SPAN Video Library
    Program ID: 305676-1
    First Aired: 2012-06-03
    New York Historical Society
    New York, New York
    2012-04-12

    Brent Staples, Host
    New York Times

    Daniel J. Sharfstein, Professor of Law
    Vanderbilt University

    Daniel Sharfstein, author of The Invisible Line [:Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White], discusses the complexity of race in America and one family’s perceived transformation from black to white. The New York Historical Society hosted this event.

    Watch the video (00:53:19) here.

  • Using Brazil’s Racial Continuum to Examine the Short-Term Effects of Affirmative Action in Higher Education

    Using Brazil’s Racial Continuum to Examine the Short-Term Effects of Affirmative Action in Higher Education

    The Journal of Human Resources
    Volume 47, Number 3 (Summer 2012)
    pages 754-784

    Andrew M. Francis, Assistant Professor of Economics
    Emory University

    Maria Tannuri-Pianto, Professor of Economics
    University of Brasilia

    In 2004, the University of Brasilia established racial quotas. We find that quotas raised the proportion of black students, and that displacing applicants were from lower socioeconomic status families than displaced applicants. The evidence suggests that racial quotas did not reduce the preuniversity effort of applicants or students. Additionally, there may have been modest racial disparities in college academic performance among students in selective departments, though the policy did not impact these. The findings also suggest that racial quotas induced some individuals to misrepresent their racial identity but inspired other individuals, especially the darkest-skinned, to consider themselves black.

    …Theoretical research explores the relationship between preferences in admissions and preuniversity investments (Fryer and Loury 2005a; Fryer, Loury, and Yuret 2008; Holzer and Neumark 2000). Changes in admissions standards might relocate some individuals who otherwise would have had little chance of selection to the margin of selection, thereby inspiring effort. Alternatively, changes in admissions standards might relocate some individuals who otherwise would have been at the margin of selection to an intra-marginal position, thus reducing effort. Essentially, these studies maintain that affirmative action has a theoretically ambiguous effect on effort. This is largely an open question empirically. Ferman and Assunção (2005) use data from Brazil to study the issue. They find that black secondary school students who resided in states with a university with racial quotas had lower scores on a proficiency exam, which they argue indicates that racial quotas lowered effort. Nevertheless, Ferman and Assunção (2005) are unable to identify which students applied to college and which did not. The estimates are rather large given that the average black secondary school student would have had only a small chance of admission. Moreover, self-reported racial identity may be correlated with the adoption of quotas making the results challenging to interpret. This paper aims to build on this work by focusing on applicants and students, employing multiple measures of effort, and using both selfreported and non-self-reported race/skin tone.

    Second, this paper contributes to the literature on race and skin shade. A number of papers demonstrate the significance of skin tone—beyond the influence of race—in education, employment, and family (Bodenhorn 2006; Goldsmith, Hamilton, and Darity 2006, 2007; Hersch 2006; Rangel 2007). For example, using survey data from the US, Goldsmith, Hamilton, and Darity (2007) find evidence consistent with the notion that the interracial and intraracial wage gap increases as the skin tone of the black worker darkens. Analogously, Hersch (2006) finds evidence that black Americans with lighter skin tone tend to have higher educational attainment than those with darker skin tone. Allowing the possibility that the policy might impact applicants and students of different skin tone in different ways, this paper estimates separate effects by selfreported race/skin tone (branco, pardo, preto) and by skin tone quintile derived from photo ratings.

    Lastly, this paper contributes to the literature on identity. A growing body of literature analyzes the construction of identity and the role of identity in behavior (Akerlof and Kranton 2000, 2002; Austen-Smith and Fryer 2005; Darity, Dietrich, and Hamilton 2005; Darity, Mason, and Stewart 2006; Francis 2008; Fryer et al. 2008; Golash-Boza and Darity 2008; Ruebeck, Averett, and Bodenhorn 2009). To explain a wide range of behaviors and outcomes, Akerlof and Kranton (2000) propose a model where utility is a function of identity, the actions taken by the individual, and the actions taken by others. Darity, Mason, and Stewart (2006) develop a game theoretic model to study the relationship between racial identity formation and interracial disparities in outcomes. Exploring the construction of identity empirically, Darity, Dietrich, and Hamilton (2005) report that despite high African-descended population shares in some Latin American countries, Latinos living in the US largely demonstrate a preference for selfidentifying as white and an aversion to self-identifying as black. They emphasize that racial selfidentification involves choice and suggest that future research on race and social outcomes treat race as an endogenous variable. Theories of identity are complex and challenging to test. This paper is one of the few to study the construction of racial identity in the context of a relatively simple policy change. Isolating one dimension of the dynamic forces that shape identity, this paper offers evidence that racial identity may respond to the incentives created by an affirmative action policy…

    Read or purchase the article here.

  • The Lost Country of Sight

    The Lost Country of Sight

    Anhinga Press
    2008
    90 pages
    Paper ISBN 978-1-934695-06-7

    Neil Aitken

    Winner: 2007 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry

    It’s difficult to believe that Neil Aitken’s The Lost Country of Sight is a first book, since there is mastery throughout the collection. His ear is finely tuned, and his capacity for lyricism seems almost boundless. What stands out everywhere in the poems is his imagery, which is not only visually precise but is also possessed of a pure depth. The poems never veer off into the sensational; they are built from pensiveness and quietude and an affection for the world. “Traveling Through the Prairies, I Think of My Father’s Voice” strikes me as a perfectly made poem, but poems of similar grace and power are to be found throughout the book. This is a debut to celebrate. — C.G. Hanzlicek, Judge, 2007 Philip Levine Prize Prize for Poetry

    Fueled by motion and emotion, Neil Aitken’s The Lost Country of Sight is literally and figuratively a moving collection. His winding roads and “ghost cars” move us over the landscapes of identity and personal history with stirring meditative grace. “There is a song at the beginning of every journey,” Aitken tells us in one poem even as he says in another, “these are journeys we never take.” This poet is both our wise, wide-eyed tour guide and our dazed, day-dreaming companion in this rich, mature debut. — Terrance Hayes

    The voice in these poems is that of a sighted, awake heart discovering its home in language and its homelessness in the world. Steeped in longing, the imagination here is concrete, vivid, sensuous, and ultimately erotic, even as it perceives that meaning and beauty are evanescent. This book is a full helping from the world’s infinite fund of tears. — Li-Young Lee

  • MixedRaceStudies.org Book Give-Away a Huge Success

    MixedRaceStudies.org Book Give-Away a Huge Success

    MixedRaceStudies.org
    2012-06-19

    Steven F. Riley


    Photograph by Laura Kina

    Thanks to the help of Fanshen Cox, Heidi Durrow, Jennifer Frappier, Sonia Kang and the rest of the Mixed Roots Film and Litterary Festival crew, my book give-away was a huge success!  I hope all of the winners will read and enjoy their books.

    I purchased just over two-dozen books for the give-away and was lucky enough to also receive three more from Glenn Robinson of Mixed American Life. Also, University of California (Santa Barbara) Sociology Professor and (2012 Loving Prize recipient) G. Reginald Daniel graciously donated his latest monograph, Machado de Assis: Multiracial Identity and the Brazilian Novelist.

    I also want to thank Phil Wilkes Fixico for traveling to the festival to give me a copy of William Loren Katz’s Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage and Rudy Guevarra for signing and giving me a copy of his new work, Becoming Mexipino: Multiethnic Identities and Communities in San Diego.

    Lastly, I want to thank Gino Pellegrini for the engaging and supportive conversation on Saturday and Duncan Ryuken Williams for the same on Sunday afternoon.

    The books given away were:

    1. The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the United States, Edited by Miriam Jiménez Román and Juan Flores, (Duke University Press, 2010)
    2. Becoming Mexipino: Multiethnic Identities and Communities in San Diego, Rudy P. Guevarra, Jr., (Rutgers University Press, 2012) (Thanks to Rudy Guevarra for signing a copy of his book.)
    3. Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage, William Loren Katz, (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2012)
    4. Blended Nation: Portraits and Interviews of Mixed-Race America, Mike Tauber and Pamela Singh, (Channel Photographics, 2009) (A generous gift from Glenn Robinson.)
    5. Carolina Genesis: Beyond the Color Line, Edited by Scott Withrow, (Backintyme Publishing 2010). (Thanks to Marvin T. Jones of The Chowan Discovery Group and author of the chapter “The Leading Edge of Edges: The Tri-racial People of the Winton Triangle” for signing.)
    6. Children of Perdition: Melungeons and the Struggle of Mixed America, Tim Hashaw, (Mercer University Press, 2006)
    7. Fade to Black and White: Interracial Images in Popular Culture, Erica Chito Childs, (Rowman & Littlefield, 2009)
    8. Faking It: Poetics & Hybridity: Critical Writing 1984-1999, Fred Wah, (NeWest Press, 2000)
    9. Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century, Dorothy Roberts, (The New Press, 2011)
    10. The Girl Who Fell from the Sky, Heidi W. Durrow, (Algonquin Books, 2010)
    11. How Did You Get to Be Mexican? A White/Brown Man’s Search for Identity, Kevin R. Johnson, (Temple University Press, 1999)
    12. The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White, Daniel J. Sharfstein, (The Penguin Press, 2011)
    13. Love on Trial: An American Scandal in Black and White, Earl Lewis and Heidi Ardizzone, (W. W. Norton & Company, 2002)
    14. Machado de Assis: Multiracial Identity and the Brazilian Novelist, G. Reginald Daniel, (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012) (A generous gift from G. Reginald Daniel)
    15. Mixed: Portraits of Multiracial Kids, Kip Fulbeck, (Chronicle Books, 2010) (A generous gift from Glenn Robinson. Also thanks to Kip Fulbeck for signing.)
    16. Memories of My Ghost Brother, Heinz Insu Fenkl, (Bo-Leaf Books, 1997)
    17. Mixed Race Hollywood, Mary C. Beltrán and Camilla Fojas, (New York University Press, 2008). (Thanks to Camilla Fojas for signing the book.)
    18. More Than Black? Multiracial Identity and the New Racial Order, G. Reginald Daniel, (Temple University Press, 2001)
    19. Multiracial Americans and Social Class: The Influence of Social Class on Racial Identity, Edited by Kathleen Odell Korgen, (Routledge, 2010)
    20. The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee: Observations on Not Fitting In, Paisley Rekdal, (Vintage Press, 2000)
    21. Obama and the Biracial Factor: The Battle for a New American Majority, Edited by Andrew J. Jolivétte, (Policy Press, 2012).
    22. Part Asian, 100% Hapa: Portraits by Kip Fulbeck, Kip Fulbek, (Chronicle Books, 2006) (A second copy of this books was a generous gift from Glenn Robinson.)
    23. Redeeming Mulatto: A Theology of Race and Christian Hybridity, Brian Bantum, (Baylor University Press, 2010)
    24. Reproducing Race: The Paradox of Generation Mix, Rainier Spencer, (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2010)
    25. The Souls of Mixed Folk: Race, Politics, and Aesthetics in the New Millennium, Michele Elam, (Stanford University Press, 2011)
    26. What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America, Peggy Pascoe, (Oxford University Press, 2008)

  • Terrance Hayes and Natasha Trethewey: Contemporary Black Chroniclers of the Imagined South

    Terrance Hayes and Natasha Trethewey: Contemporary Black Chroniclers of the Imagined South

    The Southern Literary Journal
    Volume 44, Number 2, Spring 2012
    pages 122-135
    DOI: 10.1353/slj.2012.0009

    William M. Ramsey    , Professor of English
    Francis Marion University, Florence, South Carolina

    “I Don’t Hate the South.”
    — book title by Houston Baker, Jr.

    “The past is never dead. It’s not even past,” William Faulkner famously wrote in Requiem for a Nun (73). His assumption—that the southern writer is a chronicler accessing the essence of a wholly objective place, transparently “explaining” a history to outsiders who misunderstand it—has been undermined by the theorizing in New Southern Studies. To chronicle the historical South as a special space enacts a social construction positing an ideologically reductive, essentialist regional myth. As Richard Gray argues, the invented South is an “imagined community” as well as a real and given space (xix). Diane Roberts terms it “the South of the mind” (371). Faulkner, conflicted and ghost-haunted by memories of the past, saw himself in the grip of a concrete reality so palpable that it could not be wiped away with time. But multiple communities, genders, and races lived in that past, and they stimulate divergent takes on it. Thus Houston Baker, Jr., borrowing from Faulkner’s Quentin Compson in Absalom, Absalom!, ambivalently titled a recent book I Don’t Hate the South.

    Black writers ghost-haunted by the southern past are highly wary of being possessed by the grip of a mythical mystique that marginalized black experience into historical invisibility. They know, as Martyn Bone argues, that the idealized southern geography rested economically on a social geography of slavery and it sequel segregation—realities that were suppressed in definitions of southern. As Bone notes, “this strategic exclusion is a structural and ideological necessity” for Agrarian-derived myth-making (3). For black writers, then, to perform southern chronicling one must enter history as a self-aware, reconfiguring maker of history. Resourcefully imaginative excavations are required to recover materials deeply buried and long suppressed. The result is an ongoing birthing of a multi-vocal history that presupposes the chronicler engages not in neutral reception but in a constructive act. The past is never past, and yet it must be newly conceived.

    Two contemporary black chroniclers, Terrance Hayes and Natasha Trethewey, interrogate the nature of the South with highly revealing metaphors of southern space and soil. They diverge from the familiar anxiety that the region is losing distinctiveness and that its culture is coming to an end. Against that fear of dispossession—of being uprooted from one’s communal memory by time and new cultural infusions—they express the need to take possession of the soil, to put roots into it so as to occupy new space instead of a tenuous space apart. Their poetry thus reflects the literary sensibility of black writers born after the civil rights gains of the mid-1960s. Growing up during profound cultural transitions—a social order of change and adaptive adjustments—they came to perceive historical inquiry not as monumentalizing the past into granite fixity but as excavation of pliable materials for revised narratives. Their poems are keen moments of individual consciousness in which the poet feels free to find and reshape the clay sediments of dug-up history.

    In this respect they crack a barrier that confronted earlier black writers, namely the problem of occupying what I term “a space apart,” on the margin, where black life was kept out of history. In the post-bellum era, Charles W. Chesnutt’s dialect conjure tales ironically undermined the white nostalgic plantation tradition while tapping into oral black folk traditions. Yet, in adopting the plantation tale convention of a white frame narrator (his publisher Houghton Mifflin not indicating his racial identity due to his request that the work be judged on its merits rather than the author’s social status), Chesnutt subtly marginalized himself. Unfortunately this approach, a tactic of an era of accommodation, enfolded black materials inside the dominant white discourse domain, subtly distancing folk life to a quaint space apart. Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God reflects a new advance born of…

  • Slavery, Race, and Reunion: The NY Times White Washes the Rape of Michelle Obama’s Ancestors (Again)

    Slavery, Race, and Reunion: The NY Times White Washes the Rape of Michelle Obama’s Ancestors (Again)

    We Are Respectable Negroes
    2012-06-18

    Chauncey DeVega

    Why would any person honor rapist’s blood?

    In an effort to write the Obamas, who are de facto American royalty, back into a larger post-racial narrative that ostensibly makes some white folks feel more comfortable about having a black President, such a move seems par for the course.

    In 2009, the NY Times featured a very problematic story about how genealogical researchers had reconstructed Michelle Obama’s family tree. There, the NY Times offered up a story about one of the First Lady’s ancestors who was a child slave and in all likelihood repeatedly raped by her white master. Just as was done in Saturday’s Meet Your Cousin, the First Lady: A Family Story, Long Hidden by Rachel Swarns, the realities of power and exploitation under the chattel regime were conveniently overlooked and (quite literally) white washed away.

    Family tree DNA research is in vogue: networks such as PBS and ABC have found it a compelling means to craft a narrative about a shared “American experience.” Given the country’s demographic shifts, and the election of its first black President, there is a coincidence of interests who are deeply invested in furthering a narrative of multicultural America, one where it is imagined that we are all in one way or another related.

    In this racial project, the color line is broken in some deeply dishonest ways which do nothing to challenge power, illuminate deeper truths about racial inequality in the United States, overturn white privilege, or challenge the Racial State. For example, Henry Louis Gates Jr. can discover his Irish roots. Tina Turner can find out she is not significantly related to the Cherokees. Latino stars and starlets can find out about their “exciting” Anglo-African-Indigenous roots. Asian Americans can find out about their long history of respect for education, family, and the arts…

    ..Because the President and First Lady are the symbolic leaders of a country in which black people were historically considered anti-citizens, less than human, property, and not fit for inclusion in the polity, the DNA citizenship project’s goals are robust. The discovery of Michelle Obama’s white ancestors—while no surprise to her family—is a way for white folks to find kinship with her…to “own” her. Ironically, this will do nothing to soothe the anxieties of Michelle Obama’s among reactionary white conservatives—to them she is a black woman who has no business being in the White House except as a chambermaid.

    Likewise, President Obama may be “half-white.” Nevertheless, he is the blackest man alive (despite all efforts to distance himself from policies that would uniquely assist African-Americans) for the Tea Party GOP and the racially resentful, reactionary white public. Race is a double bind for the President. Obama’s whiteness is a means to excuse-make for their racism; Obama’s blackness is a means for white bigots to overtly disrespect and diminish him…

    In response to the Times’ first foray into these ugly, ahistorical waters, I offered a commentary and rewrite. I would like to pivot off of that intervention again.

    Let’s work through a few particularly rich passages in Meet Your Cousin, the First Lady: A Family Story, Long Hidden and offer some correctives and commentary…

    …The politics of language are rich here as they advance a multicultural, conservative, colorblind racial agenda that imposes contemporary standards onto the past in an effort to remove the grounds of historical grievance in the present. Melvinia did not give birth to a “biracial” child. She was raped and had a black child who would be considered human property unless freed by his “father.”

    The Slaveocracy and America’s racial order was based on the “one-drop rule” where a child’s racial status and freedom was determined by that of the mother. Thus, a white man (and slave owner) could rape, exploit, and do as he wished with black women (and men). The children would be born slaves. The logic of hypodescent was also operative as well. Race is not about the reality of genetic makeup and admixture. Racial identity is about perceptions by the in-group regarding who belongs and who does not.

    Despite all of the efforts by the multiracial movement in contemporary America to create a “mixed race” census category—what is really a desire to access white privilege through the creation of a buffer race or colored class—being perceived as “black” or as having “African” ancestry, marks a person as having a connection to that group.

    The NY Times is working to frame the story of Michelle’s ancestors, and the child rapist, slave owning white Tribble family, as a human story and drama, one about “ordinary” people…

    …The racial project of reading America as a multiracial project historically, in the service of a post-racial fiction about the Age of Obama in the present, is operative throughout the above passage. Rachel Swarns’ allusion to a “multiracial” stew ignores the role of law, practice, social norms, and the State in carefully policing the colorline.

    These Americans of “mixed ancestry” were not celebrated. White authorities saw them as a problem to be corrected, “cured,” eliminated, and as a threat to American society. For example, white race scientists labored over what to do about the Whind tribe who were of mixed black, native American, and white ancestry. Strict laws about miscegenation, segregation, schooling, and other areas of racialized civil society, were enforced through violence in order to protect the purity of America’s “white racial stock.”

    These racially ambiguous people knew that to “pass” into whiteness was to move up the class and racial hierarchy. This was a common story in the black community, but also extended to Melungeons, the Mississippi Chinese, and others who in acts of racial realpolitik ran away from blackness in order to secure some share of whiteness as a type of property.

    Meet Your Cousin, the First Lady: A Family Story, Long Hidden‘s last paragraph is a potpourri of historical flattening and misrepresentation.

    Black Americans are a “multiracial” people. This is a byproduct of mass rape and exploitation. White blood has purchased little if any social currency in white society for those blacks able to leverage it. The Irish are an object less in how white ethnics transitioned from some type of racial Other into full whiteness. They were a group that were once considered “black,” but who “earned” whiteness through racial violence against people of color. While a common misunderstanding that yearns for alliances across racial lines among oppressed peoples, the Cherokees, like many other Native American tribes, owned blacks as human property and participated in the slave trade…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Understanding the Racial Identity Development of Multiracial Young Adults through their Family, Social and Environmental Experiences

    Understanding the Racial Identity Development of Multiracial Young Adults through their Family, Social and Environmental Experiences

    Catholic University of America
    2012
    184 pages

    Lisa Sechrest-Ehrhardt

    A DISSERTATION Submitted to the faculty of the National Catholic School of Social Service of The Catholic University of America
    In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree Doctor of Philosophy

    This study explored the development of healthy racial identity in multiracial young adults.  The design of the study was qualitative with a constructivist epistemology, and data were analyzed via the grounded theory methods of constant comparative analysis.  The conceptual frameworks grounding the study were Symbolic Interaction theory, identity theory, and racial identity theory.  The sample of 15 participants was drawn from a larger non-random purposive sample by their scoring in the “ethnic identity achieved” range on the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure (MEIM). The researcher engaged the participants in one to two hour face-to-face semi structured interviews in which she explored their lived experiences to understand their perspectives of the process of developing a healthy multiracial identity and to understand their ability to border cross. Border crossings are strategies used by individuals in their daily interactions with others and within the environment of multiple groups.  They include having the ability to carry multiple racial and or ethnic perspectives simultaneously, and being able to shift one’s racial identity with regards to the situational context or the environment (Miville et al., 2005; Root, 1996). From the analysis of the interview data 119 categories emerged that were collapsed into eight subcategories and ultimately three core categories.  From the core categories, three themes emerged: (1) an early supportive environment provided a stable foundation that allowed participants the opportunity to figure out who they are; (2) a strong multiracial identity was facilitated through the frequent challenge in growing up of the ubiquitous question from others, “What are you?”; and, (3) Those with a healthy multiracial identity have developed the capacity to  travel with ease across the borders of different racial, ethnic, and cultural groups of people. Participants appreciated and integrated their racial heritages. They embraced the uniqueness of being multiracial, continued to explore their racial identity, and as a result developed a whole and integrated healthy multiracial identity.

    Read the entire dissertation here.

  • How Obama became black

    How Obama became black

    The Washington Post
    2011-06-14

    David Maraniss

    He was too dark in Indonesia. A hapa child — half and half — in Hawaii. Multicultural in Los Angeles. An “Invisible Man” in New York. And finally, Barack Obama was black on the South Side of Chicago. This journey of racial self-discovery and reinvention is chronicled in David Maraniss’s biography, “Barack Obama: The Story,” to be published June 19. These excerpts trace the young Obama’s arc toward black identity, through his words and experiences, and through the eyes of those who knew him best.

    “How come his mother’s skin is bright while her son’s is way darker?”

    Everything about Barry seemed different to his classmates and first-grade teacher, Israela Pareira, at S.D. Katolik Santo Fransiskus in Jakarta, Indonesia. He came in wearing shoes and socks, with long pants, a black belt and a white shirt neatly tucked in. The other boys wore short pants above the knee, and they often left their flip-flops or sandals outside the classroom and studied in bare feet. Barry was the only one who could not speak Bahasa Indonesia that first year. Ms. Pareira was the only one who understood his English. He was a fast learner, but in the meantime some boys communicated with him in a sign language they jokingly called “Bahasa tarzan.”…

    Read the entire article here.

  • American Tapestry: The Story of the Black, White, and Multiracial Ancestors of Michelle Obama

    American Tapestry: The Story of the Black, White, and Multiracial Ancestors of Michelle Obama

    HarperCollins
    2012-06-19
    400 pages
    Trimsize: 6 x 9
    Hardback ISBN: 9780061999864; ISBN10: 0061999865

    Rachel L. Swarns, Correspondent
    New York Times

    A remarkable history of First Lady Michelle Obama’s mixed ancestry, American Tapestry by Rachel L. Swarns is nothing less than a breathtaking and expansive portrait of America itself. In this extraordinary feat of genealogical research—in the tradition of “The Hemmingses of Monticello and Slaves in the Family”—author Swarns, a respected Washington-based reporter for the New York Times, tells the fascinating and hitherto untold story of Ms. Obama’s black, white, and multiracial ancestors; a history that the First Lady herself did not know. At once epic, provocative, and inspiring, American Tapestry is more than a true family saga; it is an illuminating mirror in which we may all see ourselves.

    Michelle Obama’s family saga is a remarkable, quintessentially American story—a journey from slavery to the White House in five generations. Yet, until now, little has been reported on the First Lady’s roots. Prodigiously researched, American Tapestry traces the complex and fascinating tale of Michelle Obama’s ancestors, a history that the First Lady did not even know herself. Rachel L. Swarns, a correspondent for the New York Times, brings into focus the First Lady’s black, white, and multiracial forebears, and reveals for the first time the identity of Mrs. Obama’s white great-great-great-grandfather—a man who remained hidden in her lineage for more than a century.

    American Tapestry illuminates the lives of the ordinary people in Mrs. Obama’s family tree who fought for freedom in the Revolutionary and Civil Wars; who endured the agonies of slavery, the disappointment of Reconstruction, the displacement of the Great Migration, and the horrors of Jim Crow to build a better future for their children. Swarns even found a possible link to the Jewish Reform movement.

    Though it is an intimate family history, American Tapestry is also the collective chronicle of our changing nation, a nation in which racial intermingling lingers in the bloodlines of countless citizens and slavery was the crucible through which many family lines—black, white, and Native American—were forged.

    Epic in scope and beautifully rendered, this is a singularly inspiring story with resonance for us all.