Mixed Race Studies

The U.S. census sees Middle Eastern and North African people as white. Many don’t

National Public Radio
2022-02-17

Hansi Lo Wang, Correspondent, National Desk

There’s a reality about race in the U.S. that has confounded many people of Middle Eastern or North African descent.

The federal government officially categorizes people with origins in Lebanon, Iran, Egypt and other countries in the MENA region as white.

But that racial identity has not matched the discrimination in housing, at work and through other parts of daily life that many say they have faced.

Younger people of MENA descent have “had a plethora of different experiences that made them feel that some of their experiences were actually closer to communities of color in the U.S.,” says Neda Maghbouleh, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Toronto, who has conducted research on the topic.

The paradox has been hard to show through data…

Read the entire article here.

Which skin color emoji should you use? The answer can be more complex than you think

National Public Radio
2022-02-09

Alejandra Marquez Janse

Asma Khalid, White House Correspondent

Patrick Jarenwattananon, Host of NPR Music’s A Blog Supreme

Heath Racela identifies as three-quarters white and one-quarter Filipino. When texting, he chooses a yellow emoji instead of a skin tone option, because he feels it doesn’t represent any specific ethnicity or color.

He doesn’t want people to view his texts in a particular way. He wants to go with what he sees as the neutral option and focus on the message.

“I present as very pale, very light skinned. And if I use the white emoji, I feel like I’m betraying the part of myself that’s Filipino,” Racela, of Littleton, Mass., said. “But if I use a darker color emoji, which maybe more closely matches what I see when I look at my whole family, it’s not what the world sees, and people tend to judge that.”

In 2015, five skin tone options became available for hand gesture emojis, in addition to the default Simpsons-like yellow. Choosing one can be a simple texting shortcut for some, but for others it opens a complex conversation about race and identity…

Read the entire story here.

Wishaw twins open up on racism and urge people to support Black Lives Matter protest

Daily Record
Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom
2020-06-10

Michael Pringle, Reporter

Aleisha and Lauryn Omeike have spoken out about the racism they endured as children and called for better education on the matter in Scottish schools, as the BLM movement gathers momentum with protests in cities across the world.

Craigneuk twins who grew up wishing they were white are urging more people to support the Black Lives Matter movement and help change racist attitudes.

Aleisha and Lauryn Omeike have spoken out about the racism they endured as children and called for better education on the matter in Scottish schools, as the BLM movement gathers momentum with protests in cities across the world.

The mixed-race 19-year-olds’ dad Steve is Nigerian and their mum Pamela is Scottish.

They have revealed they wanted to be white so they didn’t have to be different while growing up in Wishaw.

“I blew out my seventh birthday candles and wished to be white so I wouldn’t have to face constant abuse and being attacked because of the colour of my skin,” Lauryn said.

“It was just so I wouldn’t be different anymore…

Read the entire article here.

On Reading Dialect in Harper’s ‘Iola Leroy’

The Dickens Project
2021-12-08

A roundtable conversation with Brigitte Fielder (University of Wisconsin, Madison), Eric Gardner (Saginaw Valley State University), Jennifer James (George Washington University), Derrick R. Spires (Cornell University), and Richard Yarborough (University of California, Los Angeles).

We staged this conversation with expert scholars in nineteenth-century African American literary studies in order to give viewers a glimpse into the ongoing conversations about Black dialect in US literature, African American literature, and [Frances E. W.] Harper’s novel. This glimpse appears in the form of a roundtable discussion with teacher-scholars who have written about Harper, taught her work, and engaged deeply in conversations on this complex topic with students, colleagues, and the broader public.

Watch the discussion (01:06:07) here.

Poland’s multicultural music landscape: from Afro-Polish folk to Polish jazz from Peru

Notes From Poland
2022-02-17

Zula Rabikowska

Poland is often depicted as an ethnically homogeneous country, and in some senses it is. Contemporary Polish identity, however, is more complex and diverse than is often represented in the media, and the markers of Polishness are changing.

Historically, Poland was a multicultural country, with a third of its population composed of minorities. That rich legacy is still reflected in contemporary culture, from food to literature and art.

Though the death, destruction and displacement of World War Two ended that ethnic diversity, the postwar era was marked by migrations from fellow communist countries, in particular Vietnam. And in recent years, Poland has recorded one of Europe’s highest rates of immigration…

Read the entire article here.

Beyonce and Zendaya in talks to team up to remake the 1959 film Imitation Of Life – with superstar singer as producer

The Sun
London, United Kingdom
2022-02-17

Simon Boyle, Executive Showbiz Editor

THEY are two of the most in-demand people in showbiz and Beyonce and Zendaya are now in talks to team up.

I hear both have had early discussions about creating a remake of movie classic Imitation Of Life.

The groundbreaking 1934 film, remade in 1959 starring Lana Turner, grapples with questions of race, class and gender as an aspiring white actress takes in an African-American widow whose mixed-race daughter longs to pass as white…

Read the entire article here.

Kelly Curtis — The First Black US Skeleton to Compete in the Olympics — Comments on Media Attention Surrounding Her Biracial Heritage

The Independent
London, United Kingdom
2022-02-16

Meredith Clark, U.S. Lifestyle Reporter
New York, New York

Kelly Curtis is first Black athlete to represent Team USA in skeleton

Kelly Curtis — the first Black athlete to compete in skeleton at the Olympics — has commented on the media attention surrounding her biracial heritage

Curtis is making history at the 2022 Winter Olympics as the first Black athlete to represent Team USA in the sport of skeleton. The 33-year-old athlete made headlines for her trailblazing career, and now she’s opening up about the media attention surrounding her race.

“Welp, I didn’t expect my first Olympic Games to create such a buzz around my genotype,” Curtis wrote in an Instagram post. “I think it’s okay to claim this space being bi-racial, Black and White at the same time. Not half and half.”

Read the entire article here…

Moses Roper: the fugitive from slavery cast aside by British abolitionists

The Guardian
2022-02-16

Mark Brown, North of England correspondent

Historians argue Roper’s story could have helped end US slavery earlier but supporters turned on him

In his day, the 19th-century fugitive from slavery Moses Roper was a well-known public figure who toured Britain and Ireland telling gripped and shocked audiences about his horrific experiences in Florida.

Today he is largely overlooked but, two Newcastle University academics argue, the important story of this fascinating man represents a “lost opportunity” for the British abolition movement to have helped end slavery in the US earlier.

Bruce Baker, a reader in American history, said it was surprising how little attention had been paid to Roper, given he was a pioneer. “Historians haven’t really paid a lot of attention to Roper, even though he was the first fugitive slave to lecture in the cause of abolition in Britain and Ireland.”

Baker and his colleague Fionnghuala Sweeney, a reader in American and Black Atlantic Literatures, have now published a paper in an academic journal and are working on a full biography of Roper. They aim to rescue him from obscurity, painting a picture of a radical, driven man ruined by the British abolition movement that turned against him.

Roper fled enslavement in Florida in 1834 and, fearing for his safety, made his way to Britain, where he was supported by churchmen and abolitionists. They helped fund his education and in 1837 he published the first edition of his Narrative of the Adventures and Escape of Moses Roper from American Slavery…

Read the entire article here.

A Narrative of the Adventures and Escape of Moses Roper, from American Slavery

University of North Carolina Press
September 2011 (originally published in 1840)
50 pages
6 x 9, 4 illustrations
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8078-6965-9
eBook ISBN: 978-0-8078-6966-6

Moses Roper (c1815-1891)

The Narrative of the Adventures and Escape of Moses Roper can be read as an extended autobiographical meditation on the meaning of race in antebellum America. First published in England, the text documents the life of Moses Roper, beginning with his birth in North Carolina and chronicling his travels through South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. Roper was able to obtain employment on a schooner named The Fox, and in 1834 he made his way to freedom aboard the vessel. Once in Boston, he was quickly recruited as a signatory to the constitution of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS), but he sailed to England the next year. Roper’s narrative is especially interesting because although it was published after Frederick Douglass’s much-heralded 1845 Narrative, Roper actually preceded Douglass in his involvement in AASS as well as in his travel to the United Kingdom. This text is often cited by literary scholars because of its length, its extensive detail, and its unforgiving portrayal of enslaved life in the “land of the free.”

Also, available to read via Documenting the American South (DocSouth) here.

‘I am not a beggar’: Moses Roper, Black Witness and the Lost Opportunity of British Abolitionism

Slavery & Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies
Published online 2022-02-09
DOI: 10.1080/0144039X.2022.2027656

Fionnghuala Sweeney, Reader in American and Black Atlantic Literatures
Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom

Bruce E. Baker, Historian
Paxton, Scotland, United Kingdom

Scholars have long known the Narrative of North Carolina writer and activist Moses Roper, first published in London in 1837. This article uses newly discovered sources and the multiple editions of the Narrative to reconstitute the biography of this first fugitive slave abolitionist to lecture in Ireland and Britain. It explores Roper’s interactions with British abolitionists, especially prominent Baptist ministers Francis A. Cox and Thomas Price. Roper’s indisputable witness to the horrors of American slavery played a crucial role in refocusing British and Irish attention from the completed task of West Indian emancipation to the looming work yet to be done in the United States. Supporting Roper’s independence, in both his campaigning and his creation of his own British family, proved too much for the British abolitionist establishment, resulting in Roper being cast out and a major opportunity to lead on matters of transatlantic moral consequence lost. More significantly, African American voice was denied its authority and a platform from which to speak.

Read the entire article here.