Mixed Race Studies

Asked to Declare His Race, Obama Checks ‘Black’

The New York Times
2010-04-02

Sam Roberts

Peter Baker

It is official: Barack Obama is the nation’s first black president.

A White House spokesman confirmed that Mr. Obama, the son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas, checked African-American on the 2010 census questionnaire…

…Mr. Obama could have checked white, checked both black and white, or checked the last category on the form, “some other race,” which he would then have been asked to identify in writing…

Read the entire article here.

60 Ways of Looking at a Black Woman

The New York Times
2005-01-23

Edward Lewine

Ellen Gallagher dabbed a swirl of gray watercolor onto the delicate pencil drawing she had just sketched of a furry hamster. Late December sunlight radiated through the windows at Two Palms Press, the SoHo printmaking studio where she has spent the last 18 months preparing a work comprising 60 collage prints. Titled “DeLuxe,” it is the subject of its own show at the Whitney Museum, opening this week.

Weeks remained until “DeLuxe” had to be delivered, and the mood in the lower Broadway loft was intense. One artist glued toy eyeballs onto a collage; another placed wig shapes made of plasticine clay onto a different collage; while a master printer was in a darkroom reproducing pages from black magazines like Ebony, Sepia and Our World that dated from the 1930’s through the 1970’s.

Reserved in manner, with a sonorous voice and a girlish laugh, Ms. Gallagher seemed relaxed despite her looming deadline and pleased to see the first copy of “DeLuxe” nearing completion. (The set of 60 collages will be printed 20 times in a numbered edition.)

“I love this moment,” she said. “It is sort of delicious. You have come through the agonizing part, when you are trying to articulate what you want to say but can’t. You have made your ideas visible.”

Until recently, Ms. Gallagher, 39, had charted a quiet if successful course as an artist, mostly as a painter whose work plays with ideas about race. In the past year, however, her career has gained momentum. Major institutions including the Museum of Modern Art have bought paintings; and the technical virtuosity of “DeLuxe,” the subject of her first solo show in a New York museum, is generating buzz…

…Many curators praise Ms. Gallagher for her ability to discuss race without being pompous and for the way she balances ideas with technique. “She’s masterful at creating tension between form and content,” said Elizabeth Smith, the chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, which bought a Gallagher painting last year.

Not all agree. Ms. Gallagher has been faulted for what some critics see as a certain facile quality. Writing in The New York Times about Ms. Gallagher’s winter 2004 show at the Gagosian Gallery, Ken Johnson called her paintings and collages “visually catchy” but “too obvious.”

Ms. Gallagher said she draws such criticism because her material makes people uncomfortable. “Somehow in America black artists aren’t allowed to use banal images of blackness,” she said. “On the other hand, the idea of something black and inscrutable is also very disturbing.”…

…Ms. Gallagher was raised in Providence, R.I. Her mother was white, her father black. Her father, a professional boxer, was rarely around, she said, and died in 1998.

Growing up, Ms. Gallagher said, she learned to navigate the worlds of her mother’s blue-collar, Irish family, her father’s family of recent immigrants from the Cape Verde Islands and the homes of her friends, many of them African Americans…

Read the entire article here.

Crossed Paths: Chicago’s Jacksons and Obamas

The New York Times
2013-02-24

Jodi Kantor and Monica Davey

When Barack and Michelle Obama were married in Chicago two decades ago, Santita Jackson, a daughter of the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, sang at their wedding. When Mr. Obama ran for his first national office, he made sure he was not stepping on the ambitions of her brother, Jesse L. Jackson Jr., who later became a co-chairman of his 2008 presidential campaign.

Now the younger Mr. Jackson, 47, who served 17 years as a congressman representing his hometown, is most likely headed to prison for campaign fraud, trailed by a string of problems from an extramarital affair to mental illness. Although the fates of Mr. Jackson and Mr. Obama could not be more different, their stories, and those of their families, are bound together. The rise of the current leading black political family in the United States is inextricable from the unraveling of an older one, with the two tangled in shifting alliances, sudden reversals of fortune and splits.

Decades ago in Chicago, Mr. Jackson was seen as a far more promising figure than his friend Mr. Obama — one the heir to a legend, the other an outsider seeking to surpass the father he barely knew. If Mr. Jackson had decided to run for the United States Senate in 2004, Mr. Obama most likely would not be president. That year and again in 2008, Mr. Obama, seeking to bolster his credibility with African-Americans, enlisted the younger Mr. Jackson for crucial help…

…Since becoming president, Mr. Obama has had dwindling contact with the Jacksons. The son was under investigation and the father was persona non grata, absent from civil rights meetings Mr. Obama has held, according to participants, despite the role Mr. Jackson played in the movement and in helping to clear the way for a black man to become president…

Read the entire article here.

Still Too Good, Too Bad or Invisible

The New York Times
2013-02-15

Nelson George

A black slave is torn apart by dogs as a crowd of white overseers savors the sight and a black bounty hunter watches passively behind shades. A black father makes his little girl crack open a crab with her bare hands then flex her tiny muscles like a pint-size N.F.L. linebacker. A black pilot snorts a line of cocaine after a night of debauchery and, just a few minutes before liftoff, knocks back several miniature bottles of alcohol. A black woman tells President Lincoln that God will guide him as he pushes legislation that will end slavery but not dent notions of white supremacy.

The four films noted here are contenders for a slew of major Oscars: “Django Unchained,” “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” “Flight” and “Lincoln.” In the year America gave its first black president a second term, some of Hollywood’s most celebrated films, all by white directors, dealt with black-white race relations or revolved around black characters, which is rare. For the first time in recent memory race is central to several Oscar conversations. But the black characters’ humanity is hit or miss. These films raise the age-old question of whether white filmmakers are ready to grant black characters agency in their own screen lives.

Looking at these Oscar-nominated films, we should ask: Are black characters given a real back story and real-world motivations? Are they agents of their own destiny or just foils for white characters? Are they too noble to be real? Are they too ghetto to be flesh and blood? Do any of these characters point to a way forward…

…A more sophisticated standard for judging a character’s merits has emerged as the most obvious stereotypes have, for the most part, faded and as filmmakers, for better and sometimes worse, have attempted to normalize the black image. In the age of Obama, when a black man is the protagonist in our national narrative, are Hollywood’s fictional characters allowed the same agency in the stories built around them? That’s a fair question to ask of these Oscar contenders…

Read the entire article here.

Beyond Selma-to-Stonewall

The New York Times
2013-01-27

By including gay rights in the arc of the struggle for civil rights — the road “through Seneca Falls and Selma and Stonewall” — President Obama linked his presidency to ending antigay discrimination and underscored the legal wrong of denying gay people the freedom to marry.

 “Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law,” Mr. Obama famously said in his second Inaugural Address, “for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.”

Now that Mr. Obama has declared that he believes denying gay people the right to wed is not only unfair and morally wrong but also legally unsupportable, the urgent question is how he will translate his words into action. To start, he should have his solicitor general file a brief in the Proposition 8 case being argued before the Supreme Court in March, saying that California’s voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional…

…ust a day after the inauguration, Mr. Obama’s spokesman, Jay Carney, said that while Mr. Obama supports same-sex marriage as a policy matter, the president still believes it is an issue for individual states to decide. That was Mr. Obama’s formulation when he first announced his support for same-sex marriage in May, and even then it made no sense, except perhaps as political cover approaching the general election campaign.

Marriage is traditionally regulated by the states, but there are constitutional limits on what states may do. The Supreme Court’s 1967 ruling in Loving v. Virginia prevented states from forbidding marriages between interracial couples like Mr. Obama’s own parents…

Read the entire opinion piece here.

Among Blacks, Pride Is Mixed With Expectations for Obama

The New York Times
2013-01-20

Susan Saulny

The Rev. Greggory L. Brown, a 59-year-old pastor of a small Lutheran church, committed himself to ministry and a life pursuing social justice on April 4, 1968 — the day the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was slain by an assassin’s bullet.

And four years ago, like so many African-Americans around the country, he saw Barack Obama’s rise to the presidency as nothing short of a shocking validation of Dr. King’s vision of a more perfect union, where the content of character trumps the color of skin. “I was so excited when he was giving that first inauguration speech,” said Mr. Brown, of Oakland, Calif. “I could feel it in my bones.”

On Monday, when President Obama places his hand on Dr. King’s personal Bible to take a second, ceremonial oath of office, he will be symbolically linking himself to the civil rights hero. But Mr. Brown, along with other African-Americans interviewed recently, said their excitement would be laced with a new expectation, that Mr. Obama move to the forefront of his agenda the issues that Dr. King championed: civil rights and racial and economic equality.

In interviews with experts and black leaders, some, like Mr. Brown, say they have been disappointed by the slow pace of change for African-Americans, whose children, for instance, are still more likely to live in poverty than those of any other race.

“The hope for Obama’s presidency was that there would be more help for places like Oakland and other urban areas that need support, safety and jobs,” Mr. Brown said. “He made people feel like anything is possible.”

African-Americans remain overwhelmingly supportive of the president, as evidenced by their enthusiastic turnout on Election Day and for the inauguration festivities and Monday’s holiday celebrating Dr. King’s birthday. Thousands of black Americans have descended on Washington from across the nation for the many parties and observances and visits to the King memorial.

They have developed a protective stance toward Mr. Obama, acknowledging the limits of his power and the voraciousness of his critics. Many cite the power of representation, the visual message of a prosperous, cohesive black family being beamed around the country and the world, and the untold aspirations that vision inspires.

But African-Americans roundly reject the notion that Mr. Obama’s election has eased racial tensions or delivered the nation to a new post-racial reality.

“I think the great mass of black people have shown tremendous patience, discipline and understanding, recognizing the dilemma that he faces,” said Randall L. Kennedy, a professor at Harvard Law School and the author of “The Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency.”…

Read the entire article here.

Obama Takes Oath in Quiet Ceremony

The New York Times
2013-01-20

Brian Knowlton

Doug Mills/The New York Times

WASHINGTON — With only his family nearby, President Obama was sworn into office in the White House before noon on Sunday in advance of Monday’s public pomp, the private moment forced by a rare quirk of the constitutional calendar but appropriately capturing the downsized expectations for his second term.

Even the Monday festivities, with the traditional inaugural parade, balls and not least the re-enactment outside the Capitol of Mr. Obama’s swearing-in, will be less spectacular than four years ago, when the new president embodied hope and change for most Americans at a time of global economic crisis and two wars. This year fewer parties are planned, and fewer people are expected to swarm the National Mall.

The private but official swearing-in of the 44th president at 11:55 a.m. was just the seventh such event in history to be held before the public ceremony, and the first since Ronald Reagan’s second inaugural, each one occurring because the constitutionally mandated date for the inauguration fell on a Sunday. Recorded and televised minutes later, the simple scene suggested a couple marrying before a justice of the peace, with a big ceremony and party planned for later.

Only Michelle Obama, holding her family Bible, and the couple’s daughters, Malia and Sasha, stood beside Mr. Obama, in the grand Blue Room as he recited the oath specified in the Constitution and again administered to him by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.…

…The president and his family later traveled to Washington to the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church, an historic church with a long record of activism against racism — it once harbored runaway slaves — to worship and to celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The federal holiday honoring Dr. King coincides this year with Inauguration Day.

The congregation was enthusiastic, according to pool reports, and the sermon ended with a boisterous call and response of “Forward” – the president’s one-word campaign slogan.

These events took place mostly out of view of the hundreds of thousands of Americans, foreign visitors and dignitaries who have poured into Washington to be a part of the second inauguration of the nation’s first African-American president, a more restrained affair than four years ago but still a resonant marker in the nation’s history…

Read the entire article here.

Study Links Highly Segregated Counties and Lung Cancer Deaths in Blacks

The New York Times
2013-01-16

Sabrina Tavernise

African-Americans who live in highly segregated counties are considerably more likely to die from lung cancer than those in counties that are less segregated, a new study has found.

The study was the first to look at segregation as a factor in lung cancer mortality. Its authors said they could not fully explain why it worsens the odds of survival for African-Americans, but hypothesized that blacks in more segregated areas may be less likely to have health insurance or access to health care and specialty doctors. It is also possible that lower levels of education mean they are less likely to seek care early, when medical treatment could make a big difference. Racial bias in the health care system might also be a factor…

…Dr. David Chang, director of outcomes research at the University of California San Diego Department of Surgery, who wrote an accompanying editorial, said he hoped that the study would focus attention on the environmental factors involved in the stark disparities in health outcomes in the United States because they lend themselves to change through policy. Medical researchers tend to focus on factors like the genetics and the behaviors of individuals that are harder to change.

“We don’t need drugs or genetic explanations to fix a lot of the health care problems we have,” he said.

Read the entire article here.

We Need to Learn More About Our Colorful Past

The New York Times
2004-07-31

Maurice A. Barboza, Founder
Black Patriots Foundation

Gary B. Nash, Professor Emeritus of History
University of California, Los Angeles

Back in 1925, American society tended not to advise young white males about the consequences of intimacy with the black maid. Even if the 22-year-old Strom Thurmond considered himself a father, the standards of the time did not require him to give the daughter born of that intimacy any love, support or acceptance. He did, however, irretrievably give her his bloodline.

Essie Mae Washington-Williams, the offspring of Mr. Thurmond and his family’s black maid, 16-year-old Carrie Butler, recently announced that she intended to join the Daughters of the American Revolution based on her Thurmond bloodline. Reared apart from her father, Ms. Washington-Williams did not have the same privileges as Mr. Thurmond’s white children during his life, yet she is seeking the right to some of the privileges of her lineage.

She is not the first to do so. Ms. Washington-Williams said she was motivated by the battle of Lena Santos Ferguson to join a Washington chapter of the organization and by Ms. Ferguson’s quest to honor black soldiers. Ms. Ferguson’s grandmother, a black Virginia woman, had married a white man from Maine whose ancestor, Jonah Gay, was a patriot. In the 1980’s, Ms. Ferguson fought a four-year legal battle for full membership and to enter her local chapter. It wasn’t until the organization was faced with the potential loss of its tax-exempt status in Washington that she was permitted to join.

Perhaps more significantly, Ms. Ferguson demanded, and received, a settlement agreement that bars discrimination and requires the D.A.R. to identify every African-American soldier who served in the Revolutionary War. It was important to Ms. Ferguson that black women know of their ancestors’ contribution to the founding of this nation and that they embrace it…

…The settlement required the D.A.R. to do historical and genealogical research to find the names of black soldiers who fought in the Revolutionary War. Yet, while doing this research, the D.A.R. has failed to use census records and other historical documents that could help identify the races of soldiers. It has also used a narrow classification system for race, one that increases the potential for underreporting: the D.A.R. includes only men described in historical records as “black,” “Negro” or “mulatto,” on their lists of black soldiers. However, whites of the period used a far greater range of colors to describe African-Americans. They meticulously recorded color distinctions among slaves: labels like “brown,” “yellow,” and “copper” (among others) were used consistently in advertisements for the return of runaways. Excluding those “colored” patriots puts them off-limits to prospective black D.A.R. members who might otherwise make the connection.

Yielding to pressure, in 2001, the D.A.R. published “African-American and American Indian Patriots of the Revolutionary War.” The number of names grew to 2400 names from 1,656, including an additional 744 previously assumed to be “white.” But there are still many more African-American soldiers to be identified, and while it acknowledges a handful of “brown” soldiers as black, as well as many “yellow” ones, the D.A.R. still holds to a narrow definition of an African-American.

This may give a clue to the D.A.R.’s resistance: when confronted with 64 “brown” soldiers who could have sired members, the organization conceded that as many as 57 may be listed in its index of proven Revolutionary war soldiers (patriots whose descendants became D.A.R. members). Yet, for generations, descendants of “brown” patriots married “light” or “white” mates, thus increasing the chances that white society, including organizations like the D.A.R., would be a safe harbor for their offspring. When the lists are complete, many people whose families assimilated into white society and cloaked their African heritage may learn, for the first time, of their complicated ancestry…

Read the entire article here.

Hall of Fame Has Always Made Room for Infamy

The New York Times
2013-01-08

Bill Pennington

The Baseball Hall of Fame, the most august fraternity of its kind in American sports, unveils its latest induction class Wednesday. For the first time this year, balloters must weigh the fate of two eminent stars, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, who are also the most celebrated poster boys for the game’s disgraced steroid era.

Players linked to steroid use have been resoundingly rejected by Hall of Fame voters in recent years, shunned as synthetically enhanced frauds. But drawing an integrity line in the sand is a tenuous stance at a Hall of Fame with a membership that already includes multiple virulent racists, drunks, cheats, brawlers, drug users and at least one acknowledged sex addict.

In the spirit of Groucho Marx, who refused to join any club that would have him as a member, would not baseball’s 77-year-old gallery of rogues be the perfect fit for Bonds and Clemens?

Robert W. Cohen, who wrote the 2009 book “Baseball Hall of Fame — or Hall of Shame?”, readily recalled a catalog of reprehensible acts by Hall of Fame inductees.

“Baseball has always had some form of hypocrisy when it comes to its exalted heroes,” he said. “In theory, when it comes to these kinds of votes, it’s true that character should matter, but once you’ve already let in Ty Cobb, how can you exclude anyone else?”…

…“Cap Anson helped make sure baseball’s color line was established in the 1880s,” Thorn said of the Chicago Cubs first baseman and manager who was enshrined in the Hall of Fame the year it opened in Cooperstown, N.Y., in 1939. “He was relentless in that cause.”

Anson repeatedly refused to take the field if the opposing roster included black players. Anson had plenty of co-conspirators. The Chicago White Sox owner Charles Comiskey, also a member of the Hall of Fame class of 1939, “outed” the African-American infielder Charlie Grant, who was posing as a Cherokee on the preseason exhibition roster of the Baltimore Orioles team led by John McGraw (Hall of Fame class of 1937).

Overseeing baseball’s segregationist policy in three decades was Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis (Hall of Fame class of 1944). When Landis died in 1944, an initiative was begun to break the color barrier, an effort that culminated with Jackie Robinson’s Brooklyn Dodgers debut in the spring of 1947…

Read the entire article here.