Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.
“I discovered I was an Asian American when I arrived in the U.S.,” says Mitski [Miyawaki]. “I didn’t identify as that before I came here. People started calling me that, and I started being treated in a specific way.”
Tom Murphy, “Mitski Doesn’t Bother With Labels. She Prefers Excellence,” Westworld, July 14, 2017. https://www.westword.com/music/mitski-miyawakis-mixed-race-identity-informs-her-music-9246091.
How Cross-Discipline Understanding and Communication Can Improve Research on Multiracial Populations
Social Sciences
Volume 11, Issue 3, 90
Published online 2022-02-22
13 pages
DOI: 10.3390/socsci11030090
Sarah E. Gaither, Assistant Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience
Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
Jennifer Patrice Sims, Assistant Professor of Sociology
University of Alabama, Huntsville
One of the strengths of Critical Mixed Race Studies is that it represents research methodologies and frameworks from multiple disciplines across the social sciences and humanities. However, if these disciplines are not in dialogue with each other, that benefit may be lost. Here, we use psychological and sociological research on Multiracial populations as examples to argue how strict disciplinarity and methodological trends may limit scientific production. We propose that reading and citing work across disciplines, expanding methodological training, and rejecting hegemonic “white logic” assumptions about what is “publishable” can enhance Multiracial research. First, the ability to cite effectively across disciplines will shorten the time it takes for new theories to be developed that focus on empirically underrepresented populations. Secondly, increasing understanding of both quantitative and qualitative methods will allow more effective reading between disciplines while also creating opportunities to engage with both causality and the richness of experiences that comprise being Multiracial. Finally, these changes would then situate scholars to be more effective reviewers, thereby enhancing the peer-reviewed publication process to one that routinely rejects color evasive racist practices that privilege work on majority populations.
21. Fredi’s Migration: Washington’s Forgotten War on Hollywood
Chapter in the anthology: Women and Migration: Responses in Art and History
Deborah Willis, Ellyn Toscano and Kalia Brooks Nelson (ed.)
(2019-09-12, Open Book Publishers)
Printed ISBN: 9781783745654
eBook ISBN: 9791036538070
Pamela Newkirk, Professor of Journalism
New York University
Nearly eight decades before #OscarsSoWhite focused attention on the dearth of roles for Blacks and other people of color in Hollywood, actress Fredi Washington became one of the most vocal critics of the industry’s racial bias. But despite her trailblazing work on stage and screen beginning in the 1920s, Washington has largely been forgotten as one of the pioneering African-American leading ladies, and for her noteworthy civil rights activism.
The eldest of five children, Washington was born in Savannah, Georgia in 1903 and relocated to Philadelphia aged eleven following the death of her mother, a former dancer. In 1919 Washington launched her own career as a chorus girl in Harlem’s Alabam Club, and, in 1926, landed a coveted role in the landmark Broadway play Shuffle Along. When the show closed she sailed to Europe to tour with her dance partner Al Moiret. Two years later she returned to the United States and starred in a string of successful films and plays including the short film Black and Tan Fantasy with Duke Ellington (1929); Black Boy starring Paul Robeson (1930); Emperor Jones with Robeson again (1933); and Drum in the Night (1933); with an equal number of plays, including Singing the Blues (1930), Sweet Chariot (1930) and Run Lil’ Chillun (1933).
Washington’s stardom was secured with her performance as Peola, the tortured bi-racial daughter who passes for white in Imitation of Life, the 1934 feature film starring Claudette Corbert and Louise Beavers. However, after achieving critical acclaim for her performance Washington was routinely passed over for lead roles. This was in part due to Hollywood’s Hays Codes, which, beginning that year, explicitly prohibited the depiction of miscegenation in film. The Hays Codes made life especially challenging for Washington, whose green eyes and pale complexion rendered her too light to be cast in films with all-Black casts. In 1937 her skin was darkened for her co-starring role in One Mile from Heaven with Bill Robinson…
Read the entire chapter here.
On Wisconsin
Wisconsin Foundation and Alumni Association (alumni and friends of the University of Wisconsin, Madison)
2021-03-01
Harvey Long MA’16, Librarian, Assistant Professor
North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, Greensboro, North Carolina
Ethelene Whitmire, Professor
Departments of Afro-American Studies; German, Nordic, and Slavic; andGender & Women’s Studies
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Librarian Louise Butler Walker ’35 took desperate measures to survive in a racist society.
During the Great Depression, Louise Butler Walker ’35 completed her bachelor’s in French and earned a library diploma from what is now UW–Madison’s Information School. Walker had been an outstanding student, graduating Phi Beta Kappa, and completed a prestigious internship at the American Library Association (ALA) headquarters in Chicago. The school’s career placement office said her assets were her “brilliant mind” and “excellent academic background.” Her limitations, they said, were “racial (she is a mulatto).”
Although Walker was not privy to the egregious behind-the-scenes machinations and handwringing about her being Black, she knew that her race was detrimental to her career, so she eventually passed as white to work as a librarian in rural Wisconsin. Her story reveals the extraordinary pressures that African Americans faced…
Read the entire article here.
Descendant of Alex Manly talks about modern impact of 1898 Massacre
WECT News 6
Wilmington, North Carolina
2021-11-10
Mara McJilton, Multimedia Journalist
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WILMINGTON, N.C. (WECT) –Alex Manly was the owner of The Daily Record newspaper in 1898 when it was burned down by white supremacists.
Now, 123 years later, descendants of Manly are still trying to piece together what happened on November 10, 1898.
“The real, real granular details, the real truth of it — it’s been an ongoing experience and process,” said Alex Manly’s great-great-grandson Kieran Haile.
Haile has had a vague understanding of the 1898 Massacre since he was a teenager, but it wasn’t until about five years ago when he was nearing his 30′s that he really started to take a deep dive into history and learn more about this horrific day…
Read and watch the entire story here.
Inventing Latinos: A New Story of American Racism
The New Press
August 2020
272 pages
5 1/2 x 8 1/2
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-59558-917-0
Laura E. Gómez, Professor of Law; Professor of Sociology; Professor of Chicana/o Studies
University of California, Los Angeles
An NPR Best Book of the Year, exploring the impact of Latinos’ new collective racial identity on the way Americans understand race, with a new afterword by the author
Latinos will comprise a third of the American population in just a matter of decades, but many Americans still struggle with two basic questions: Who are Latinos and where do they fit in America’s racial order? In this “timely and important examination of Latinx identity” (Ms.), Laura E. Gómez, a leading critical race scholar, argues that it is only recently that Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Dominicans, Central Americans, and others are seeing themselves (and being seen by others) under the banner of a cohesive racial identity. And the catalyst for this emergent identity, she argues, has been the ferocity of anti-Latino racism.
In what Booklist calls “an incisive study of history, complex interrogation of racial construction, and sophisticated legal argument,” Gómez “packs a knockout punch” (Publishers Weekly), illuminating for readers the fascinating race-making, unmaking, and re-making processes that Latinos have undergone over time, indelibly changing the way race functions in this country.
The paperback features a new afterword in which the author analyzes results of the 2020 Census, providing “much-needed insight into the true complexity of Latinx identity” (Kirkus Reviews).
The Films of Branwen Okpako: CfP for a GSA Panel Series
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:
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
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
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