Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

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  • So What Exactly Is ‘Blood Quantum’?

    So What Exactly Is ‘Blood Quantum’?

    Code Switch: Race. In Your Face.
    National Public Radio
    2018-02-09

    Kat Chow

    Blood quantum was initially a system that the federal government placed onto tribes in an effort to limit their citizenship.
    Leigh Wells/Getty Images/Ikon Images


    If you’re Native American, there’s a good chance that you’ve thought a lot about blood quantum — a highly controversial measurement of the amount of “Indian blood” you have. It can affect your identity, your relationships and whether or not you — or your children — may become a citizen of your tribe.

    Blood quantum was initially a system that the federal government placed onto tribes in an effort to limit their citizenship. Many Native nations, including the Navajo Nation and the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, still use it as part of their citizenship requirements.

    And how tribes use blood quantum varies from tribe to tribe. The Navajo Nation requires a minimum of 25 percent “Navajo blood,” and Turtle Mountain requires a minimum of 25 percent of any Indian blood, as long as its in combination with some Turtle Mountain.

    Blood quantum minimums really restrict who can be a citizen of a tribe. If you’ve got 25 percent of Navajo blood — according to that tribe’s blood quantum standards — and you have children with someone who has a lower blood quantum, those kids won’t be able to enroll.

    So why keep a system that’s decreasing your tribe’s rolls and could lead to its demise?

    “I use the term ‘Colonial Catch 22’ to say that there is no clear answer, and that one way or another, people are hurt,” says Elizabeth Rule. She’s a doctoral candidate at Brown University who specializes in Native American studies, and also a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation.

    “The systems are so complicated,” she explains, “but it’s all part of tribes deciding on their own terms, in their own ways, utilizing their own sovereignty [to decide] what approach is best for them.”

    As we explored blood quantum in this week’s episode, we thought a primer of what, exactly, this system is and how it works — or doesn’t — might be useful. Here’s my interview with Elizabeth Rule, edited and condensed for clarity…

    Read the entire story here.

  • I’m Biracial, But Rejected My Blackness For Years. Here’s Why I Stopped Passing For White.

    I’m Biracial, But Rejected My Blackness For Years. Here’s Why I Stopped Passing For White.

    The Huffington Post
    2022-03-24

    Eleanor Beaton, Guest Writer

    The author (left) with her mother. PHOTO COURTESY OF ELEANOR BEATON

    “Unknowingly, I started to reject all of the parts of myself that were Black.”

    The school bus screeched to a halt. My mother, a Black Fijian woman who proudly embraced her natural ’fro, was waiting for me at the bus stop.

    “Bye, n***a,” another kid said loudly, as I got up from my seat.

    As an adult, due to my mixed heritage, many people describe me as “white-appearing” or racially ambiguous. But in Nova Scotia in the 1980s — with my tanned skin and thick curly hair in a sea of whiteness — I was reminded on a daily basis that I was different. I was an other. No matter how hard I tried, I would never blend in.

    I asked my white father to fetch me from the bus stop going forward…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Colin Kaepernick Campaigns for N.F.L. Return With Pop-Up Workouts

    Colin Kaepernick Campaigns for N.F.L. Return With Pop-Up Workouts

    The New York Times
    2022-03-27

    Emmanuel Morgan

    Colin Kaepernick worked out for N.F.L. scouts and media in 2019 at a high school in Riverdale, Ga. Todd Kirkland/Associated Press

    As teams snatch up quarterbacks in free agency, Kaepernick has been quickly organizing workouts around the country and posting them to social media.

    LOS ANGELES — In the five years since he last played in an N.F.L. game, Colin Kaepernick, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback who ignited an international debate on athletes’ right to protest, has only sporadically surfaced in public. Accepting an award here, or rolling out a Netflix series there, Kaepernick has in those calculated appearances always affirmed that he was “staying ready” for a return to football.

    This month, he has taken a new approach, organizing pop-up workouts that are often scrapped together in less than 24 hours in cities across the country. On Friday at U.C.L.A.’s practice facility, most of the receivers who fielded his passes were still in high school or enrolled in junior colleges. Last week in a workout posted to his Instagram account, Kaepernick threw to Seattle Seahawks receiver Tyler Lockett in Arizona, after plotting to meet via Twitter.

    In workouts in Atlanta, New Orleans and three other cities, he corralled workout partners with a range of experience through previous connections and word of mouth using the sessions as a public forum to showcase his talents and potentially solicit an N.F.L. audition…

    Read the entire article here.

  • FKA twigs: ‘I don’t have secrets. I’m not ashamed of anything’

    FKA twigs: ‘I don’t have secrets. I’m not ashamed of anything’

    The Guardian
    2022-03-26

    Kadish Morris, Editor, Critic & Poet

    FKA twigs: ‘I think vulnerability is really hot.’ Photograph: Aidan Zamiri/The Guardian

    After a hellish couple of years, the pop visionary is back. She talks about beating illness, escaping abuse, and the joy of connecting with her Caribbean roots

    FKA twigs isn’t special, she says, she just rehearses a lot. “I don’t think I was born with anything more than the rest of the world,” says the 34-year-old singer-songwriter. It might be hard to believe that anybody could do the splits down a pole or wield a sword, Wushu-style, the way twigs has done without possessing some divine powers, but it’s all in the training. She can afford private lessons now, but when she started out as a fresh-faced back-up dancer, YouTube tutorials and group dance classes helped her to perfect her craft. “I practise and I practise and I practise. That’s who I am.”

    Twigs has had a spellbinding career, exploding on to the pop scene a decade ago with operatic vocal arrangements, conceptual videos and futuristic instrumentals. In 2014 the New Yorker magazine said that she “dresses like a high-fashion model from antiquity, but her songs promise the very contemporary pleasures of texture and emotional immediacy”. Since then, she’s released several acclaimed albums and is considered a trailblazer in pop, R&B and Afrofuturism…

    Read the entire interview here.

  • James Weldon Johnson’s Feminization of Biraciality

    James Weldon Johnson’s Feminization of Biraciality

    Twentieth-Century Literature
    Volume 67, Number 4, December 2021
    pages 385-406

    Rafael Walker, Assistant Professor of English
    Baruch College, City University of New York

    In considering fictions centered on characters of mixed Black-and-white parentage, critics tend to assimilate these stories into African American literary paradigms—in much the same way that, in real life, America considers biracial people as simply black. Working against this reductive reflex, this essay reads James Weldon Johnson’s 1912 novel The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man as a serious exploration of biracial identity and experience. Specifically, the article argues that Johnson draws on early twentieth-century conceptions of femininity as a vehicle for rendering mainly three facets of the lives of many biracial men: (1) hypervisibility (in a world obsessed with skin color), (2) sexuality (when identification is distorted), and (3) self-determination (where a racial hierarchy appears to eliminate agency). In its conclusion, the article suggests that the prevailing tendencies among readers of the novel to condemn the ex-colored man stems from an investment in the trope of the “tragic mulatto“—a plot device that at once sentimentalizes the fates of biracial characters and links those fates inextricably to biology rather than ideology.

    Read or purchase the article here.

  • Racism in Ireland: “I grew up feeling like I was born with some awful condition”

    Racism in Ireland: “I grew up feeling like I was born with some awful condition”

    Her
    2020

    Taryn de Vere

    From online abuse to comments in the Dáil, racism has come to the forefront of the national conversation in recent months. But who is suffering and just how prevalent is it? In a new series, Her asks women living in Ireland to tell us about their real life experiences…

    “No one should want to bleach their hair or hide their skin because they’ve been told the way they were born looks ‘ghetto’”

    Vanessa Ifediora says that growing up black in Northern Ireland was difficult. “Bullying was rife, mostly instigated by the parents who sent their kids into school with a script of what to say to me,” says the Belfast woman. “Children that young only parrot what their parents teach them.

    “When I was 16, the manager at my part-time job showed me a picture of some blonde haired baby whose mother was mixed race, and told me: ‘Keep your chin up, when you marry a white guy nobody will even know your children are black.’”

    Moving away from her home city as an adult didn’t put an end to these experiences. Vanessa was also subjected to blatant racism while living in Cork.”It was only seven years ago – I don’t know what it’s like now – but, then,  in Cork people would openly walk right up to me and insult me…

    Read the entire article here.

  • White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia

    White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia

    Sarabande Books
    2020-05-05
    112 pages
    5.3 x 0.6 x 8.4 inches
    Paperback ISBN: 978-1946448545

    Kiki Petrosino, Professor of Poetry
    University of Virginia

    • Winner of the 2021 UNT Rilke Prize
    • Hurston/Wright Foundation Legacy Award Nominee
    • Library of Virginia Literary Awards Finalist
    • Winner of the 2021 Spalding Prize for the Promotion of Peace and Justice

    In her fourth full-length book, White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia, Kiki Petrosino turns her gaze to Virginia, where she digs into her genealogical and intellectual roots, while contemplating the knotty legacies of slavery and discrimination in the Upper South. From a stunning double crown sonnet, to erasure poetry contained within DNA testing results, the poems in this collection are as wide-ranging in form as they are bountiful in wordplay and truth. In her poem “The Shop at Monticello,” she writes: “I’m a black body in this Commonwealth, which turned black bodies/ into money. Now, I have money to spend on little trinkets to remind me/ of this fact. I’m a money machine & my body constitutes the common wealth.” Speaking to history, loss, and injustice with wisdom, innovation, and a scientific determination to find the poetic truth, White Blood plants Petrosino’s name ever more firmly in the contemporary canon.

  • Jennifer A. Jones: Afro-Mexicans, Migration, and the Permutations of Race

    Jennifer A. Jones: Afro-Mexicans, Migration, and the Permutations of Race

    Dialogues in Afrolatinidad
    Season 1, Episode 3
    2021-05-31

    Michele Reid-Vazquez, Host and Associate Professor
    Department of Africana Studies
    University of Pittsburgh

    Dialogues in Afrolatinidad explores history, culture, and contemporary issues in Afro-Latin America and U.S.-Afro-Latinx communities. The podcast features interviews with scholars, writers, educators, artists, and community leaders who share their passion for Afro-Latin American and Afro-Latinx Studies, the significance of their intellectual, creative, or community engagement, and resources for learning more.

    This episode features Dr. Jennifer A. Jones, a native of Chicago and a sociologist specializing in contemporary transnational Afro-Mexican studies. She discusses the way race is made in Latin America through her experiences in both Cuba and Mexico, as well as the broader impact of space, politics, and mobility on racial constructions throughout the U.S. She also highlights her recent book, The Browning of the New South, which explores blackness and anti-blackness in Mexico, the current migration of Afro-Mexicans to North Carolina, and their reformulations of race in the U.S. South.

    Listen to the episode (00:34:06) here. Download the episode here.

  • The Obama Portraits

    The Obama Portraits

    Princeton University Press
    2020-02-11
    152 pages
    7 x 9 in.
    76 color illustrations
    Hardcover ISBN: 9780691203287

    Edited by:

    Taína Caragol, Curator of Painting and Sculpture and Latino Art and History
    National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.

    Dorothy Moss, Curator of Painting and Sculpture
    National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.

    Richard J. Powell, John Spencer Bassett Professor of Art and Art History
    Duke University, Durham, North Carolina

    Kim Sajet, Director
    National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.

    From the moment of their unveiling at the National Portrait Gallery in early 2018, the portraits of Barack and Michelle Obama have become two of the most beloved artworks of our time. Kehinde Wiley’s portrait of President Obama and Amy Sherald’s portrait of the former first lady have inspired unprecedented responses from the public, and attendance at the museum has more than doubled as visitors travel from near and far to view these larger-than-life paintings. After witnessing a woman drop to her knees in prayer before the portrait of Barack Obama, one guard said, “No other painting gets the same kind of reactions. Ever.” The Obama Portraits is the first book about the making, meaning, and significance of these remarkable artworks.

    Richly illustrated with images of the portraits, exclusive pictures of the Obamas with the artists during their sittings, and photos of the historic unveiling ceremony by former White House photographer Pete Souza, this book offers insight into what these paintings can tell us about the history of portraiture and American culture. The volume also features a transcript of the unveiling ceremony, which includes moving remarks by the Obamas and the artists. A reversible dust jacket allows readers to choose which portrait to display on the front cover.

    An inspiring history of the creation and impact of the Obama portraits, this fascinating book speaks to the power of art—especially portraiture—to bring people together and promote cultural change.

    Published in association with the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC

  • How Are We Still Debating Interracial Marriage in 2022?

    How Are We Still Debating Interracial Marriage in 2022?

    The New York Times
    2022-03-25

    Jamelle Bouie, Opinion Columnist

    Mildred and Richard Loving, who won their case against a Virginia law that banned interracial marriage. Getty Images

    “You would be OK with the Supreme Court leaving the question of interracial marriage to the states?”

    “Yes,” said Senator Mike Braun of Indiana while fielding questions from local media on Tuesday. “If you’re not wanting the Supreme Court to weigh in on issues like that, you’re not going to be able to have your cake and eat it, too,” he said. “That’s hypocritical.”

    Braun walked this back, of course, undoubtedly aware of the damage it could do if he let it stand. “Earlier during a virtual press conference, I misunderstood a line of questioning that ended up being about interracial marriage,” he said in a statement to NBC News. “Let me be clear on that issue — there is no question the Constitution prohibits discrimination of any kind based on race, that is not something that is even up for debate, and I condemn racism in any form, at all levels and by any states, entities or individuals.”

    As damage control goes, this was unpersuasive. It’s not just that the questions he originally answered were clear; it’s that Braun’s answer was consistent with what he had said throughout the news conference. His argument to reporters was that the existence of certain rights, and the particular shape they take, was best left to the states. He used abortion and marijuana legalization as examples. It was then that a reporter asked if this applied to interracial marriage…

    Read the entire article here.