Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

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  • Brit Bennett’s New Novel Explores the Power and Performance of Race

    Brit Bennett’s New Novel Explores the Power and Performance of Race

    The New York Times
    2020-05-26

    Parul Sehgal, Book Critic

    Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half, A Novel (New York: Riverhead Books, 2020)

    No nation can lay lasting claim to a genre, save perhaps one. The story of racial passing is a uniquely and intensely American form. From its earliest avatars, the 19th-century novel “Clotel,” for example, to Langston Hughes’s short stories and Nella Larsen’s 1929 masterpiece, “Passing,” to the melodrama films of the 1950s, like “Pinky” and “Imitation of Life,” it is a story central to the American imagination, re-examined and retold so regularly it seems to enjoy a perpetual heyday.

    In recent years, passing narratives have shed their sentimentality and turned surreal (Boots Riley’s film “Sorry to Bother You”), comic (Spike Lee’s “BlacKkKlansman”) and playful (Mat Johnson’s novel “Loving Day”). Others have flipped the formula so that it is black identity that is coveted by characters who are racially ambiguous (in the fiction of Danzy Senna, for example) or plainly white (as in Nell Zink’s novel “Mislaid”).

    Through all the ways the genre has been rewritten, its potency has remained — its singular ability to enact the notion of race as arbitrary, as a performance, as something seen through, all the while inscribing its power as a source of kinship, pain and pride. Certainly few transgressions are punished so severely in literature. To pass is to court moral ruin; it is an elective orphanhood (in “Imitation of Life,” passing results in actual matricide), depicted as a kind of amputation or suicide.

    In her new novel, “The Vanishing Half,” Brit Bennett brings to the form a new set of provocative questions: What if passing goes unpunished? What if the character is never truly found out? What if she doesn’t die or repent? What then?…

    Read the entire book review here.

  • The Color of Race in America, 1900-1940

    The Color of Race in America, 1900-1940

    Harvard University Press
    2002-10-30
    256 pages
    6-1/8 x 9-1/4 inches
    5 halftones, 2 maps, 2 line illustrations
    Paperback ISBN: 9780674010123

    Matthew Pratt Guterl, Professor of Africana Studies & American Studies
    Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island

    With the social change brought on by the Great Migration of African Americans into the urban northeast after the Great War came the surge of a biracial sensibility that made America different from other Western nations. How white and black people thought about race and how both groups understood and attempted to define and control the demographic transformation are the subjects of this new book by a rising star in American history.

    An elegant account of the roiling environment that witnessed the shift from the multiplicity of white races to the arrival of biracialism, this book focuses on four representative spokesmen for the transforming age: Daniel Cohalan, the Irish-American nationalist, Tammany Hall man, and ruthless politician; Madison Grant, the patrician eugenicist and noisy white supremacist; W. E. B. Du Bois, the African-American social scientist and advocate of social justice; and Jean Toomer, the American pluralist and novelist of the interior life. Race, politics, and classification were their intense and troubling preoccupations in a world they did not create, would not accept, and tried to change.

    Table of Contents

    • Illustrations
    • Introduction
    • 1. Salvaging a Shipwrecked World
    • 2. Bleeding the Irish White
    • 3. Against the White Leviathan
    • 4. The Hypnotic Division of America
    • Epilogue
    • Notes
    • Acknowledgments
    • Index

  • ‘Big Mouth,’ ‘Central Park’ to Recast With Black Actors for Biracial Characters | THR News

    ‘Big Mouth,’ ‘Central Park’ to Recast With Black Actors for Biracial Characters | THR News

    The Hollywood Reporter
    2020-06-24

    Netflix’s animated series Big Mouth will recast the role of Missy — at the request of the actor who has voiced her thus far, Jenny Slate. Apple will also recast a biracial character, currently voiced by Kristen Bell, in its animated show Central Park.

    Slate and Big Mouth’s creators said in social media posts Wednesday that they will cast a Black actor to voice the middle schooler in the future. The show has aired three seasons and is renewed through season six. The move comes as the industry continues to reckon with its record of inclusivity and representation amid nationwide anti-racist protests.

    “At the start of the show, I reasoned with myself that it was permissible for me to play Missy because her mom is Jewish and White — as am I,” Slate wrote on Instagram. “But Missy is also Black, and Black characters on an animated show should be played by Black people.” (See her full statement below.)…

    Read the entire article here.

  • My grandparents were racist. Here’s how I moved on with my head held high.

    My grandparents were racist. Here’s how I moved on with my head held high.

    The Washington Post
    2020-06-23

    Carolyn Copeland


    The author, Carolyn Copeland, circa 1998, when she was about 7, with her father, Brian Copeland, her mother, Mary Copeland, and her brothers Casey, left, and Adam. (Carolyn Copeland)

    My grandparents loved to take photos, but there are no pictures of them holding me as a baby. They weren’t in attendance at my birth, my baptism or any of my birthdays. That’s because for the first few years of my life, my grandparents rejected me and my two brothers because we are black.

    I’ve hesitated over the years to share my story publicly out of fear that I would embarrass or hurt the people in my extended family, but with the demonstrations taking place around the country after the police killing of George Floyd, I feel it has never been a more important time to reveal my personal experience with racism and explain the different ways it has shown its face within my family. The age of “going along to get along” is over.

    From the moment my white mother started dating my black father in the late 1980s, her father disowned her. From that point forward, on my grandfather’s orders, my parents were disinvited from all family gatherings. My grandmother — who said from the beginning that she was against the idea — still complied. Neither attended my parents’ wedding…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Recognizing being white-passing as a privilege

    Recognizing being white-passing as a privilege

    The Queen’s Journal
    Kingston, Ontario, Canada
    2020-06-01

    Hareer Al-Qaragolie


    In her first year at Queen’s, Hareer realized her responsibility to her community. Credit: Hareer Al-Qaragolie

    Where I stand as a proudly-identifying Arab Muslim

    I was born in Baghdad to Iraqi parents who fled war to Amman, Jordan. Although I grew up as part of a marginalized Iraqi community in Jordan, I was also part of the majority of the population, adapting to the Jordanian accent and identifying as both an Arab and a Muslim.

    In Jordan, I never thought of my privilege beyond the fact that I was part of the Iraqi diaspora.

    However, through my experiences at Queen’s, I’ve had to add another definition to what privilege means to me: being white-passing…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Shilling for U.S. Empire: The Legacies of Scientific Racism in Puerto Rico

    Shilling for U.S. Empire: The Legacies of Scientific Racism in Puerto Rico

    The Abusable Past
    Radical History Review
    2020-06-22

    R. Sánchez-Rivera
    Department of Sociology
    University of Cambridge


    Pablo Delano, A Group of newly made Americans at Ponce, Porto Rico, (detail from the conceptual art installation The Museum of the Old Colony, 2016-ongoing). Source: Stereocard published by M. H. Zahner, Niagara Falls, New York, 1898. Photographer not identified.

    Recently, a published, peer-reviewed article caused a great deal of controversy when it circulated among many academic Facebook pages such as Latinx Scholars, Puerto Rican Studies Association (PRSA), and the Latin American Studies Association (LASA)-Puerto Rico Section. This article, “Economic Development in Puerto Rico after US Annexation: Anthropometric Evidence,” written by Brian Marein, a PhD student in economics at the University of Colorado, Boulder, brings together data to show that the average height of men in Puerto Rico increased by 4.2cm after the U.S. “annexation” (a euphemism for colonization). The author uses anthropometrics to argue that U.S. colonialism was actually beneficial to Puerto Ricans “in contrast to the prevailing view in the literature.” His main conclusion is that because U.S. officials brought in resources, food, and education, the life of Puerto Ricans improved (inferred by the increased height of men) as a result of colonization.

    Anthropometrics refers to the measuring of people’s bodies and skeletons to correlate their difference to “racial” and psychological traits that privileged Eurocentric ideas of beauty, intelligence, ableness, morality, among others. This stems from a long history of “race science” that surged from the polygenetic assumption that (1) “race” was a biological type and (2) “races” had distinct origins. Two major theories of human origins and heredity dominated during the nineteenth century: monogenism and polygenism. Thinkers who advocated for monogenism argued that all humans came from the same origin but were in different developmental stages (usually with Whites at the top and Black people at the bottom). However, during the second half of the nineteenth century polygenism, or the notion that the “races” had separate origins and should be considered as distinct and immutable species, became more widely accepted…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Maria Campbell on the pain and relief of re-releasing Halfbreed with uncut account of RCMP rape

    Maria Campbell on the pain and relief of re-releasing Halfbreed with uncut account of RCMP rape

    As It Happens
    CBC Radio
    2019-11-29


    Métis author and playwright Maria Campbell has re-released her seminal 1973 memoir Halfbreed with previously censored pages intact. (Sheena Goodyear/CBC )

    Métis author says the published version of her 1973 memoir ‘didn’t tell the complete story’

    Nearly five decades after Maria Campbell first published her seminal memoir Halfbreed, she says she finally feels like it’s finished.

    That’s because the first version of the book was incomplete. Two integral pages detailing her account of being raped by a Mountie when she was 14 years old had been excised.

    Those long-lost pages were discovered last year in an unpublished manuscript, and now the memoir has been re-released intact for the first time.

    “I feel like it’s finished now, because it never felt finished for me,” Campbell said. “I always felt like there was a part of it that was missing, and that it didn’t tell the complete story.”

    The Métis author, broadcaster and filmmaker joined As It Happens host Carol Off in studio to discuss Halfbreed’s legacy and continued relevance today…

    Listen to the story (00:27:32) here. Read the transcript here.

  • Kamala Harris

    Kamala Harris

    Asian Enough
    Los Angeles Times
    2020-06-23

    A conversation with Democratic U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris about the recent rise in anti-Asian hate, how government leaders should address racism in America, and growing up with Indian and Jamaican roots in Northern California.

    From the Los Angeles Times, “Asian Enough” is a podcast about being Asian American — the joys, the complications and everything else in between. In each episode, hosts Jen Yamato and Frank Shyong invite celebrity guests to share their personal stories and unpack identity on their own terms. They explore the vast diaspora across cultures, backgrounds and generations, share “Bad Asian Confessions,” and try to expand the ways in which being Asian American is defined. New episodes drop every Tuesday.

    Listen to the podcast (00:31:31) here. Download the podcast here.

  • The Power of Race in Cuba: Racial Ideology and Black Consciousness During the Revolution

    The Power of Race in Cuba: Racial Ideology and Black Consciousness During the Revolution

    Oxford University Press
    2017-07-31
    272 pages
    6-1/8 x 9-1/4 inches
    Hardcover ISBN: 9780190632298
    Paperback ISBN: 9780190632304

    Danielle Pilar Clealand, Associate Professor
    Department of Politics and International Relations
    Florida International University

    • Shows how the economic crisis that followed the Soviet Union’s collapse changed race relations in Cuba
    • Examines the official narrative of race in Cuba, contrasting that with black and mixed race Cubans’ identity and lived experience
    • Explores how discrimination creates divergent opportunities for black and white Cubans
    • Provides personal, informal perspectives from many walks of life in in Cuba, drawing a portrait of black identity through interviewees’ lives

    In The Power of Race in Cuba, Danielle Pilar Clealand analyzes racial ideologies that negate the existence of racism and their effect on racial progress and activism through the lens of Cuba. Since 1959, Fidel Castro and the Cuban government have married socialism and the ideal of racial harmony to create a formidable ideology that is an integral part of Cubans’ sense of identity and their perceptions of race and racism in their country. While the combination of socialism and a colorblind racial ideology is particular to Cuba, strategies that paint a picture of equality of opportunity and deflect the importance of race are not particular to the island’s ideology and can be found throughout the world, and in the Americas, in particular.

    By promoting an anti-discrimination ethos, diminishing class differences at the onset of the revolution, and declaring the end of racism, Castro was able to unite belief in the revolution to belief in the erasure of racism. The ideology is bolstered by rhetoric that discourages racial affirmation. The second part of the book examines public opinion on race in Cuba, particularly among black Cubans. It examines how black Cubans have indeed embraced the dominant nationalist ideology that eschews racial affirmation, but also continue to create spaces for black consciousness that challenge this ideology. The Power of Race in Cuba gives a nuanced portrait of black identity in Cuba and through survey data, interviews with formal organizers, hip hop artists, draws from the many black spaces, both formal and informal to highlight what black consciousness looks like in Cuba.

    Table of Contents

    • Table of Contents
    • Acknowledgments
    • Introduction
    • Chapter One: Todos Somos Cubanos: How Racial Democracy Works in Cuba
    • Chapter Two: De Aqui Pa’l Cielo: Black Consciousness and Racial Critique
    • Chapter Three: Marti’s Cuba: Racial Ideology and Black Consciousness Before 1959
    • Chapter Four: Institutionalizing Ideology: Race and the Cuban Revolution
    • Chapter Five: “I’m not a Racist”: Anti-Racialism and White Racial Attitudes
    • Chapter Six: The Power of a Frame: The Characterization of Racism as Prejudice
    • Chapter Seven: Todos Somos Cubanos, pero no Somos Iguales: How Racism Works in Cuba
    • Chapter Eight: Uncovering Blackness and the Underground: Black Consciousness
    • Chapter Nine: The Seeds of a Black Movement?: Racial Organizing and the Above Ground Movement
    • Conclusion

  • Brit Bennett Reimagines the Literature of Passing

    Brit Bennett Reimagines the Literature of Passing

    The New Yorker
    2020-06-15

    Sarah Resnick


    Photograph by Miranda Barnes for The New Yorker

    In her second novel, the author uses a familiar genre to explore startling visions of selfhood.

    In “The Vanishing Half,” the story of two sisters divided by the color line yields new models of identity and authenticity.

    In 1954, a pair of identical twins—creamy skin, hazel eyes, wavy hair—flee a small town in Louisiana and the narrow future it affords: nothing but more of the same. Desiree and Stella Vignes are sixteen and headed to New Orleans. They scrape by for a while, and eventually Stella applies for a position as a secretary at a fancy department store, a job only white girls get. She doesn’t mention she’s black, and no one asks. She’s apprehensive—has she done something wrong?—but her sister is adamant: why should the two of them starve “when Stella, perfectly capable of typing, became unfit as soon as anyone learned that she was colored?” Stella gets the job. Every morning, on the ride to the office, she transforms into her double, Miss Vignes—“White Stella,” as Desiree calls her—and every night she undergoes the process in reverse. It’s “a performance where there could be no audience. Only a person who knew her real identity would appreciate her acting, and nobody at work could ever know.” For a while, the twins are brought together by the joint pleasure of pulling off the performance. But gradually the gap between them widens: “Desiree could never meet Miss Vignes. Stella could only be her when Desiree was not around.” One day, Stella disappears, leaving her sister a note: “Sorry honey, but I’ve got to go my own way.”

    “The Vanishing Half” (Riverhead), the second novel by Brit Bennett, tells the story of the Vignes sisters’ diverging paths. In doing so, it belongs to a long tradition of literature about racial passing. From the antebellum period until the end of Jim Crow, countless black Americans crossed the color line to pass as white—to escape slavery or threats of racial violence, or to gain access to the social, political, and economic benefits conferred by whiteness. Narratives that dramatized this passage became a fixture of popular fiction, written by black and white, male and female authors alike. Charles W. Chesnutt, James Weldon Johnson, and Nella Larsen wrote about it, as did William Dean Howells and Kate Chopin. “Imitation of Life,” the 1933 novel by Fannie Hurst, was twice made into a movie (in 1934, by John M. Stahl, and in 1959, by Douglas Sirk). These stories repeat some version of a generic arc: the “tragic mulatto,” often a woman, chooses to leave home and pass for white; in time, anguished by the betrayal of her black identity, she returns to her family, only to be met with a harsh fate—sometimes death…

    Read the entire article here.