Mixed Race Studies

Episode 281 – Dr. Kelly Jackson and Dr. Gina Miranda Samuels: Multiracial Attunement: Shifting Social Work Towards a Culture of Inclusivity

inSocialWork^® Podcast Series
School of Social Work
State University of New York, Buffalo
2020-02-25

Interviewer: Josal Diebold, Ph.D. Candidate

Kelly Jackson, MSW, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Social Work
Arizona State University

Gina Miranda Samuels, Ph.D., MSW, Associate Professor at the School of Social Service Administration; Faculty Affiliate of the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture
University of Chicago

In this episode, our guests Dr. Kelly Jackson and Dr. Gina Miranda Samuels discuss the topic of multiracial cultural attunement and deliberate why the issue of multiraciality lacks prominence in social work literature and research. Given the growing multiracial population, the importance of going beyond the black-white dichotomy is emphasized in order to address the disproportionate challenges and risks multiracial individuals and families face. The episode concludes with a discussion on Multiracial Cultural Attunement, a book designed to help social workers apply skills and tools to leverage the strength and resilience of multiracial individuals and families.

Listen to the interview (00:40:54) here. Download the interview here. Read the transcript here.

Whiter: Asian American Women on Skin Color and Colorism

New York University Press
March 2020
280 pages
6.00 x 9.00 in
Paperback ISBN: 9781479800292
Hardcover ISBN: 9781479881086

Edited by:

Nikki Khanna, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of Vermont

Heartfelt personal accounts from Asian American women on their experiences with skin color bias, from being labeled “too dark” to becoming empowered to challenge beauty standards

“I have a vivid memory of standing in my grandmother’s kitchen, where, by the table, she closely watched me as I played. When I finally looked up to ask why she was staring, her expression changed from that of intent observer to one of guilt and shame. . . . ‘My anak (dear child),’ she began, ‘you are so beautiful. It is a shame that you are so dark. No Filipino man will ever want to marry you.’” —“Shade of Brown,” Noelle Marie Falcis

How does skin color impact the lives of Asian American women? In Whiter, thirty Asian American women provide first-hand accounts of their experiences with colorism in this collection of powerful, accessible, and brutally honest essays, edited by Nikki Khanna.

Featuring contributors of many ages, nationalities, and professions, this compelling collection covers a wide range of topics, including light-skin privilege, aspirational whiteness, and anti-blackness. From skin-whitening creams to cosmetic surgery, Whiter amplifies the diverse voices of Asian American women who continue to bravely challenge the power of skin color in their own lives.

Archives of Conjure: Stories of the Dead in Afrolatinx Cultures

Columbia University Press
March 2020
272 pages
Paperback ISBN: 9780231194334
Hardcover ISBN: 9780231194327
E-book ISBN: 9780231550765

Solimar Otero, Professor of Folklore
Indiana University, Bloomington

In Afrolatinx religious practices such as Cuban Espiritismo, Puerto Rican Santería, and Brazilian Candomblé, the dead tell stories. Communicating with and through mediums’ bodies, they give advice, make requests, and propose future rituals, creating a living archive that is coproduced by the dead. In this book, Solimar Otero explores how Afrolatinx spirits guide collaborative spiritual-scholarly activist work through rituals and the creation of material culture. By examining spirit mediumship through a Caribbean cross-cultural poetics, she shows how divinities and ancestors serve as active agents in shaping the experiences of gender, sexuality, and race.

Otero argues that what she calls archives of conjure are produced through residual transcriptions or reverberations of the stories of the dead whose archives are stitched, beaded, smoked, and washed into official and unofficial repositories. She investigates how sites like the ocean, rivers, and institutional archives create connected contexts for unlocking the spatial activation of residual transcriptions. Drawing on over ten years of archival research and fieldwork in Cuba, Otero centers the storytelling practices of Afrolatinx women and LGBTQ spiritual practitioners alongside Caribbean literature and performance. Archives of Conjure offers vital new perspectives on ephemerality, temporality, and material culture, unraveling undertheorized questions about how spirits shape communities of practice, ethnography, literature, and history and revealing the deeply connected nature of art, scholarship, and worship.

BBC One to adapt Kit de Waal’s My Name is Leon into film

The Book Seller: At the Heart of Publishing since 1858
2020-02-25

Florence Leslie

Kit de Waal

BBC One will adapt Kit de Waal’s novel My Name is Leon (Simon & Schuster) into a film.

My Name is Leon will be adapted by Shola Amoo, writing his first screenplay for television and directed by Kibwe Tavares. It will be produced by Douglas Road Productions for BBC One.

Set in 1980s Britain, My Name is Leon tells the “uplifting and incredibly moving story of nine year old Leon, a mixed-race boy whose desire is to keep his family together, as his single-parent mother suffers a devastating breakdown” according to its synopsis.

Amoo said: “I’m very excited to be a part of this ground-breaking project for the BBC. It was a real honour and privilege to adapt Kit De Waal’s touching and thought-provoking book for the screen and I can’t wait to share it with the world.”…

Read the entire article here.

My Daughter Passes for White

The New York Times
2020-02-29

Seema Jilani, Pediatrician and Humanitarian Aid Worker
Washington, D.C.

Sally Deng

She belongs in a way I never could. I’m comforted — and worried.

I stand in the aisle of the school bus while the other seventh graders snicker and block me from sitting next to them, as they have for the entire school year. Taking my seat next to the bus driver, I look out to the road with resignation. My great-aunt, adorned in a colorful sari, waves goodbye to me while the entire school bus looks on. I want to disappear into the dingy brown vinyl bus seats. With the newfound cruelty of adolescence, I scoff and loudly tell my classmates, “That crazy lady is just my maid.”

I am still ashamed of how I treated my great-aunt. I also know it was a form of preteen self-preservation. I desperately wanted what so many other children that age do: to be as bland and vanilla as possible, just so that I could get through the day without being ostracized.

I now find myself in a mixed marriage, mother to a 3-year-old mixed-race girl who easily passes for white. Her fair skin, auburn hair and light brown eyes do not even hint at her Pakistani background. When I tell people at gatherings that I speak Urdu at home, some are very concerned about whether my daughter will be confused. Yet some are the same families clamoring for their children to get accepted into French-immersion kindergartens. Strangers have asked me whether I am her real mother or have assumed that I’m her nanny. It’s not their belief about my profession that’s disturbing — it’s their certainty that my daughter and I can’t be related because of the colors of our skin…

Read the entire article here.

American Founders: How People of African Descent Established Freedom in the New World

NewSouth Books
2019-03-15
384 pages
6.2 x 1.2 x 9.5 inches
Hardcover ISBN-13: 978-1588383310

Christina Proenza-Coles, Lecturer, American Studies
University of Virginia

How People of African Descent Established Freedom in the New World

American Founders reveals men and women of African descent as key protagonists in the story of American democracy. It chronicles how black people developed and defended New World settlements, undermined slavery, and championed freedom throughout the Americas from the 16th through the 20th century.

American Founders explores how Afro-Americans shaped every facet of American history as explorers, conquistadores, settlers, soldiers, sailors, servants, slaves, rebels, leaders, lawyers, litigants, laborers, artisans, artists, activists, translators, teachers, doctors, nurses, inventors, investors, merchants, mathematicians, scientists, scholars, engineers, entrepreneurs, generals, cowboys, pirates, professors, politicians, priests, poets, and presidents.

The multitude of events and mixed-race individuals included underscore the fact that black and white Americans share the same history, and in many cases, the same ancestry. American Founders is meant to celebrate this shared heritage and strengthen these bonds.

Soledad O’Brien Isn’t Holding Back Anymore

Rolling Stone
2020-03-03

EJ Dickson, Reporter

After leaving CNN, the veteran journalist started Soledad O’Brien Productions. Leeor Wild for Rolling Stone

After a new executive pushed her out at CNN, the veteran journalist became one of mainstream media’s most fiery critics

Soledad O’Brien likes to tell a story: Eleven years ago, a senior employee at CNN — “my boss’s boss’s boss” — called her into his office to upbraid her about a comment she had made while promoting her multipart series Black in America. At a panel, O’Brien had said she had interviewed black parents from various socioeconomic backgrounds, all of whom said they had conversations with their sons about how to navigate interactions with police. The superior, who was white, told her this experience was not specific to people of color, and that white parents had this discussion with their sons too. He requested that she stop publicly speaking about young black men and police brutality.

O’Brien was stunned. “I’d spent 18 months working on that doc,” the veteran journalist recalls in the office of her company, Soledad O’Brien Productions. “But the idea that I would come back with something that challenged his belief was just not acceptable.” Nonetheless, she wanted to keep her job, and she knew that speaking out would be career suicide. “I didn’t tell that story,” she says. “Until I was telling it on Twitter.” And once she started telling stories, she found she couldn’t stop.

Read the entire article here.

The Gospel according to Meghan

The Christian Recorder: The Official Organ of the African Methodist Episcopal Church
2020-02-28

Jennifer P. Sims, Ph.D., Columnist; Assistant Professor of Sociology
University of Alabama, Huntsville

Jennifer P. Sims, Ph.D.

A few weeks ago, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry shocked their family and the world by announcing that they would step back from their roles as senior members of the British Royal Family. Contributing to their decision was the intense media attention and its accompanying salacious criticism of their family. Meghan, who is mixed-race (Black/White) and American, has been receiving the brunt of the media abuse. From newspaper stories disdaining her every behavior, despite having lauded some of the same actions when White British Royals like Kate Middleton did them, to a reporter literally comparing her newborn son to a monkey, the British media has been unconscionable toward the Duchess of Sussex.

Social media dubbed the family’s departure from the UK “Megxit,” a word play on “Brexit” which refers to Britain’s recent exit from the European Union, and leading news sources reached out to social scientists for comments. In an interview with The Washington Post, for example, I discussed the role of anti-black racism and classism in the Sussex family’s experiences. My colleague, who is a psychologist, explained to PBS News Hour how the experiences of mixed-race Blacks such as Meghan and [Barack] Obama reiterate that a few minorities gaining positions of power does not signal the end of prejudiced thinking. A historian penned an essay that situated Megxit within the Black feminist tradition of resilience…

Read the entire article here.

City of Alexandria unveils marker to Louisiana’s first African-American governor

KALB-TV News Channel 5
Alexandria, Louisiana
2020-02-25

ALEXANDRIA, La. (City of Alexandria) – Alexandria Mayor Jeffrey W. Hall joined local historic preservation supporters Tuesday afternoon in the Alexander Fulton Mini Park downtown to unveil a historical marker in honor of P.B.S. Pinchback, Louisiana’s first African-American governor.

“It is fitting that we honor P.B.S. Pinchback, the first African-American Governor of Louisiana, during Black History Month,” Hall said. “Gov. Pinchback was a significant force in Louisiana politics during Reconstruction following the Civil War. And he traveled to Alexandria for meetings during his brief time as governor.”

Alexandria Mayor Jeffrey W. Hall (left) and local historian Michael Wynne unveil a historical marker in honor of P.B.S. Pinchback, Louisiana’s first African-American governor Tuesday afternoon. The marker, located in the Alexander Fulton Mini Park in downtown Alexandria, is the first one erected as part of the City of Alexandria’s new historical marker program designed to recognize historical events and people associated with Alexandria.

Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback was born in 1837 in Georgia to a white father, who was a planter, and a black mother who was a former slave. While he could have tried to pass for white, Pinchback embraced his African-American roots. During the Civil War and after the fall of New Orleans, Pinchback recruited the first set of African-American volunteer soldiers for the Union Army in Louisiana known as the 1st Louisiana Native Guards, and he served as its first Captain…

Read the entire story here.

The changing categories the U.S. census has used to measure race

Fact Tank: News in the Number
Pew Research Center
2020-02-25

Anna Brown, Research Associate

The varying ways in which the U.S. government has counted Americans over time offer a glimpse into the country’s past, from the days of slavery to recent waves of immigration. Racial categories, which have been included on every U.S. census since the first one in 1790, have changed from decade to decade, reflecting the politics and science of the times.

It was not until 1960 that people could select their own race. Prior to that, an individual’s race was determined by census takers, known as enumerators. And it was not until 2000 that Americans could choose more than one race to describe themselves, allowing for an estimate of the nation’s multiracial population. In 2020, for the first time, the form asks respondents who choose white or black for their race to give more information about their origins – for example, German, Lebanese, African American or Somali…

Read the entire article here.