Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

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  • Philosophy and the Mixed Race Experience

    Philosophy and the Mixed Race Experience

    Rowman & Littlefield
    January 2016
    350 pages
    Size: 6 x 9
    Hardback ISBN: 978-1-4985-0942-8
    eBook ISBN: 978-1-4985-0943-5
    Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4985-0944-2

    Edited by:

    Tina Fernandes Botts, Visiting Professor of Philosophy
    Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio

    Philosophy and the Mixed Race Experience is a collection of essays by mixed race philosophers about the mixed race experience. Each essay is meant to represent one of three possible things: (1) what the philosopher sees as the philosopher’s best work, (2) evidence of the possible impact of the philosopher’s mixed race experience on the philosopher’s work, or (3) the philosopher’s philosophical take on the mixed race experience. The book has two goals: (1) to collect together for the first time the work of professional, academic philosophers who have had the mixed race experience, and (2) to bring these essays together for the purpose of adding to the conversation on the question of the degree to which factical identity (that is, situated, phenomenological experience) and philosophical work may be related (i.e., in terms of theme, method, assumptions, traditions, etc.).

    Table of Contents

    • Foreword, by Linda Martín Alcoff
    • Editor’s Introduction: Toward a Mixed Race Theory, by Tina Fernandes Botts
    • Part 1: Mixed Race Political Theory
      • Chapter 1: Responsible Multiracial Politics, with a new postscript, by Ronald Robles Sundstrom
      • Chapter 2: Mixed Race Identity in Britain: Finding Our Roots in the Post Racial Era, by Gabriella Beckles-Raymond
    • Part 2: Mixed Race Metaphilosophy
      • Chapter 3: Through the Looking Glass: What Philosophy Looks Like from the Inside When You’re Not Quite There, by Marina Oshana
      • Chapter 4: Being and Not Being, Knowing and Not Knowing, by Jennifer Lisa Vest
      • Chapter 5: A Mixed Race (Philosophical) Experience, by Tina Fernandes Botts
    • Part 3: Mixed Race Ontology
      • Chapter 6: The Fluid Symbol of Mixed Race, by Naomi Zack
      • Chapter 7: On Being Mixed, by Linda Martín Alcoff
      • Chapter 8: Race and Ethnic Identity, by J.L.A. Garcia
    • Part 4: Mixed Race and Major Figures
      • Chapter 9: Through a Glass, Darkly: A Mixed-Race Du Bois, by Celena Simpson
      • Chapter 10: German Chocolate: Why Philosophy is So Personal, by Timothy J. Golden
    • Part 5: Mixed Race Ethics
      • Chapter 11: Who is Afraid of Racial and Ethnic Self-Cleansing? In Defense of the Virtuous Cosmopolitan, by Jason D. Hill
    • Afterword, by Naomi Zack
    • Epilogue, by Tina Fernandes Botts

  • A Mixed Race Feminist Blog Interview with Isabel Adonis

    A Mixed Race Feminist Blog Interview with Isabel Adonis

    A Mixed Race Feminist Blog
    2016-01-15

    Nicola Codner
    Leeds, Yorkshire, United Kingdom

    About Isabel Adonis

    I’m a private tutor, artist and writer and I live in Wales. My mother was a white Welsh woman and my father was a black man from Georgetown in Guyana. He was quite a well-known writer and artist. I was born and brought up in London until I was six when my father began working in Khartoum in the Sudan. I lived and went to school there until I was nine when my parents bought a house in Wales. For the next nine years I lived and went to school in Wales and travelled to Africa in the holidays. After five years in the Sudan my father worked in different universities in Nigeria. My parents split up when I was seventeen and my father returned to the Caribbean. My mother did not remarry. In my twenties I trained as a teacher but because of an incident at the school, which I think was race related I decided I would never teach. I have four grown up children.

    Do you remember when you first came to understand that you are mixed race?

    Yes, around the time that ethnic monitoring was introduced in the UK in the early nineties. I had no notion of being mixed race prior to that. I was not brought up to call myself anything. However I do not call myself mixed race now. I leave it to others to do that kind of thing. I resist being categorised in this way, since it is problematic. Identification functions by inclusion and therefore exclusion. I’m not happy with that…

    Read the entire interview here.

  • Tío Tomás’s Cabin: Marco Rubio and White Cubanidad

    Tío Tomás’s Cabin: Marco Rubio and White Cubanidad

    Latino Rebels
    2016-01-14

    Jason Nichols, Lecturer in African American Studies
    University of Maryland

    Last semester I had a young man turn in an assignment in which students were instructed to write to a current presidential candidate. This particular student had been outspoken and one of the more socially aware and progressive students in the class. He has a leadership position in a Latino fraternity, and often attempted to find commonality between the plight of African Americans and people of Latino (Latinx) origin.

    His paper was interesting to say the least. He directed his letter toward Marco Rubio and expressed disgust that Rubio could be the one to break the glass ceiling for Latinos in this country. He went as far as to refer to Rubio as a ‘sellout.” My comments to him may seem obvious to some, but fundamentally call into question the designation of “Latino” and whether brownness conflicts with whiteness. The young man who completed the assignment is of Brazilian descent, but identifies as strongly as Latino, which is evidence that Latinos are not bound by language. In addition, Latinos are of many different racial backgrounds, and many identify as multiracial. Many Latinos are politically astute, but are far from a political monolith unlike African Americans, who tend to vote as a solid bloc…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Call For Papers: Encyclopedia of Racism in American Cinema

    Call For Papers: Encyclopedia of Racism in American Cinema

    Salvador Jimenez Murguia, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Sociology
    Akita International University, Akita City, Akita Prefecture, Japan
    2016-01-11

    The volume Encyclopedia of Racism in American Cinema, takes up the topic of racism in American Cinema from its early days of film production to the present. Covering over 400 entries that include films, producers, directors, actresses, actors, genres, and critical interpretations, the breadth and depth of this volume may generate some highly significant material for both academics, as well as general audiences. The first of its kind (indeed there are no other encyclopedias that cover this topic anywhere on the market), the Encyclopedia of Racism in American Cinema would be a timely pop cultural companion to the ever-growing field of critical race studies. Additionally, as Americans become more well versed in the complexities of race, navigating current events that conjure up a sense of importance with regard to racial formations, and the implications of racism in their daily lives, a volume such as this can only add to the understanding of how race and racism operate on screen and serve to inform, influence and reinforce notions of racial divisions off screen.

    This volume is under contract with Rowman and Littlefield to be published in late 2017. In this way, I will be requiring very quick turn-arounds.

    If you’re interested in contributing, please send me an email with the subject line “Racism in Film,” and I’ll forward the list of entries (it is not a comprehensive list and I’ll be open to further suggestions). Entries will be assigned on a first-come, first-serve basis.

    Although I’m happy to receive brief curriculum vitaes, they are not required. I would like to cast the net wide in attracting authors from a variety of disciplines and professions. Advanced undergraduates, graduate students and junior faculty are particularly welcome to contribute.

    Categories

    • African-American Studies
    • American
    • Bibliography
    • Cultural Studies
    • Ethnicity and National Identity
    • Film and Television
    • Gender Studies and Sexuality
    • Interdisciplinary
    • Popular Culture

    Salvador Jimenez Murguia, Ph.D.

  • The Other Obama Legacy

    The Other Obama Legacy

    The New York Times
    2016-01-14

    Charles M. Blow

    On Tuesday, I spoke to a room full of beaming high school and middle school boys — about 150, a vast majority of whom were black — at the St. Petersburg College Allstate Center in St. Petersburg, Fla.

    The talk was sponsored by the Cross and Anvil Human Services Center as part of the heritage lecture series that seeks to present historical, political and educational conversations that honor the legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The group targets “at-risk” boys in the community.

    I didn’t sugarcoat things for these boys. I gave them the unvarnished truth, the same way I would for my own boys. For me, it is very important to help children place themselves historically, even when that history is painful, because within that truth they can anchor themselves and from it they can aim themselves.

    When my speech was over, we had a question and answer period, and President Obama came up…

    …I thought of some of the amazing pictures that the White House has released of the president meeting with black folks in the Oval Office, like 5-year-old Jacob Philadelphia touching the president’s hair because, as he put it, “I want to know if my hair is just like yours.” I thought of all the boys being reached by the president’s “My Brother’s Keeper” program.

    These things register in a way that should never be underestimated. As a child, I couldn’t name many politicians, but I knew that P.B.S. Pinchback had been the first and only black governor of Louisiana, my home state; that Thurgood Marshall was a sitting Supreme Court Justice; and that Ed Bradley was one of the most respected journalists on television.

    Obama is the first black president — and may well be the last, who knows — and that alone has a historical weight and impact on this generation that will play out for generations to come…

    Read the entire article here.

  • The Forgotten Era of Punjabi-Mexicans

    The Forgotten Era of Punjabi-Mexicans

    OZY
    2016-01-13

    Nick Fouriezos, Reporter/Researcher

    Like a good comedian, Mary Singh Rai picked from her three identities to best suit her listener. “When I’m with Americans, I like to think of myself as one,” the native of Yuba City, California, said in a 2012 interview. But in some ways, the then-89-year-old with the light brown skin and wrinkled cheeks epitomized the American dream more than many others.

    A daughter of immigrants, Rai was the result of an unlikely coupling of a Mexican mother and Punjabi father in the Golden State — and decades later, her dual ethnicities were still reflected in her distinctly Hispanic last name and Indian maiden name.

    In the early 1900s, a generation of working men from Punjab — a region between the Indian and Pakistani border — laid down their rifles, headed West and picked up farming tools. Many had served in the British Royal Army or its police forces but decided to search for a better life a hemisphere away, in the fertile lands of Southern California’s Imperial Valley. Forming migrant-worker gangs, the Punjabi men were often called “Hindu crews,” but they were really an eclectic mix of Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims who toiled in hopes of earning enough to pay for their wives and children to join them in the land of opportunity. Instead, they found themselves stranded in a country that soon passed a wave of immigration legislation, effectively closing its borders to foreigners…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Musician Chi-chi Nwanoku discussing her life and work on Talking Africa

    Musician Chi-chi Nwanoku discussing her life and work on Talking Africa

    BlackRook Media
    2015-05-12

    Musician Chi-chi Nwanoku has been discussing her life and work on Talking Africa. Chi-Chi is a passionate advocate of music and particularly the double bass. She is a Principal Double Bass and founder member of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and Endymion Ensemble. Born in London of Nigerian and Irish parents, Chi-Chi is also a Professor at Royal Academy of Music, a broadcaster, writer and mentor.

  • Hundreds gather over Maggie Walker statue controversy

    Hundreds gather over Maggie Walker statue controversy

    WWBT, NBC 12
    Richmond, Virginia
    2016-01-12

    Ashley Monfort, Henrico Reporter

    RICHMOND, VA (WWBT) – Discussion about plans to build a statue of Maggie Walker in downtown Richmond drew a lot of opinions on both sides.

    Hundreds of residents gathered at the Richmond Public Library Tuesday to have their opinions heard.

    Plans are to build the statue at the intersection of Broad street and Adams Street. While the consensus is that everyone supports building the statue, not everyone supports the location because there is a live oak tree growing at the location…

    NBC12 – WWBT – Richmond, VA News On Your Side

    …Maggie Walker devoted her life to civil rights and education. She was also the first African-American woman in the U.S. to found a bank.

    Read the entire article and watch the story here.

  • Meet Team One Drop: Dr. Chandra Crudup

    Meet Team One Drop: Dr. Chandra Crudup

    Fanshen Cox
    2016-01-12

    Meet One Drop of Love’s Production Manager, Dr. Chandra Crudup. She makes sure all technical aspects of the show are in place and lends lots of other support to Fanshen when we travel. She also often calls the show and hosts our Q&A talkbacks. She has her PhD in Social Work and is an experienced actor, choreographer and theatre producer. She’s also on the Boards of Mixed Roots Stories and MAViN. We are so grateful to have her on the team!

    One Drop of Love is a multimedia one-woman show exploring the intersections of race, class, gender, justice and LOVE.

    For more information, click here.

  • I am Black through my own accord.

    All of these things I took into consideration before coming to my own conclusions about my own identify. I first didn’t know I was Black. I then wanted to be Black. I knew I had African ancestry throughout High School and beyond college—to the point of calling myself a mulato. I might be “mixed” in the Dominican Republic, but here, in a foreign land that I now call home, I am Black. Not because American anthropologists or society tells and treats me like so—and believe me, they have—but because I choose to. I am Black through my own accord.

    César Vargas, “César Vargas: How I Became Black,” Okayafrica. Giving you true notes since 247,000 BC, January 8, 2016. http://www.okayafrica.com/news/cesar-vargas-how-i-became-black/.