Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

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  • The Awesome Unordinary: Meet Marawa, The Celebrity Hula-Hooper

    The Awesome Unordinary: Meet Marawa, The Celebrity Hula-Hooper

    Chic Rebellion
    2015-09-22

    Jazzi Johnson

    As children, we’re told to go after our dreams and not to let anyone deter us from whatever it may be… Well, can you imagine being 18 years old and telling your parents that you dream of hula-hooping for a living? That’s precisely what Marawa Ibrahim did.

    Ibrahim, better known as Marawa the Amazing, is a record-breaking hula-hooper! She currently holds the Guinness world record for 160 hoops at once, and is known for roller-skating and hooping in high heels as part of her act. A natural born nomad, she was born to a Somalian father and an Australian mother. Inspired by the art of gymnasium, she took to Olga Korbut, Josephine Baker, and Delores Van Cartier to name a few.

    Destined to live a world of her own making, Marawa enrolled in NICA- the National Institute of Circus Arts Australia– and earned her Bachelor of Circus Arts. Although she specialized in swinging trapeze, she always knew that hula-hoops was where her future lie…

    Read the entire article here.

  • The Passing Paradox: Writing, identity & publishing while black

    The Passing Paradox: Writing, identity & publishing while black

    Fusion
    2015-02-13

    Stacia L. Brown

    A wife lives in constant fear that her husband will discover she’s not who she claims to be. A black aspiring architect is mistaken for an ethnicity other than his own and is offered a job he never would’ve accessed had he corrected the error. A pregnant mother prays nightly that her baby’s skin won’t betray a bit of brownness. Such are the predicaments of characters in the early 20th century “passing narratives” I’ve loved since my days as an undergraduate English major.

    To “pass,” as African American writers in the early 1900s defined it, was to choose to escape from the violence and discrimination attendant to blackness — a privilege possible only for those whose skin was light enough to pull it off. Peaking in popularity by the 1930s, passing narratives were often melodramatic and cautionary, detailing the myriad dangers of abandoning one’s black identity in order to take cover amid the white communities that systemically oppressed black citizens.

    The penalty for being caught passing could be as merciless as emotional and physical abandonment or as cruel as a violent death. In Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel Passing, for instance, one of the story’s protagonists, Clare, either falls or is pushed from the top floor of a building during a party. Unbeknownst to her, her racist white husband has discovered her blackness through her light-skinned friend, Irene, who isn’t exactly passing. When he charges toward her stumbles out to her death.

    Passing narratives not only interrogate the fluidity of racial identity and assess the stakes of racial allegiance, but also double as slow-burning thrillers: Race itself is the stalker, an implicit threat skulking in the backgrounds of seemingly contented, white identified lives…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Here’s why Equal Protection may not protect everyone equally

    Here’s why Equal Protection may not protect everyone equally

    The Washington Post
    2015-09-23

    Lauren Sudeall Lucas, Assistant Professor of Law
    Georgia State University

    Intersectionality is the acknowledgment that different forms of identity-based discrimination can combine to give rise to unique brands of injustice. For example, although women may generally face certain challenges in the workplace — unequal pay and the “motherhood penalty” are common — women of color may face different obstacles, including a bigger wage gap and the perception that they are too aggressive.

    The Equal Protection Clause is the primary constitutional tool for addressing claims of identity-based discrimination. Finding out whether an incident of discrimination is legal typically begins with identifying the identity category — such as race or gender — on which the alleged discrimination is based. Depending on the category invoked, courts will apply varying levels of analysis to the claim, making it easier or harder for those accused of discrimination to defend their policies.

    But for those who face discrimination at the intersection of multiple identity categories, it is not immediately clear how a court should respond. If someone claims that she has been denied the equal protection of the law because she is a black woman, should the alleged discrimination be examined with strict scrutiny, the most stringent standard of review in the court system, which is applied to classifications based on race? Or should it be treated with intermediate scrutiny, the lesser standard typically applied to gender classifications?…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Korla

    Korla

    Appleberry Pictures
    San Rafael, California
    April 2005

    A Film by John Turner & Eric Christensen

    Korla Pandit was a spiritual seeker, a television pioneer and the godfather of exotica music. Known for his hypnotic gaze, Korla captured the hearts of countless Los Angeles housewives in the 50s with his live television program that featured a blend of popular tunes and East Indian compositions, theatrically performed on a Hammond B3 organ. In the 90s he resurfaced as a cult figure with the tiki/lounge music aficionados, filling clubs, skating rinks and bars with retro hipsters. Often pegged as a “man of mystery,” Korla lived up to that billing when he took an amazing secret with him to his grave in 1998 – one that is revealed in Korla.

  • Priming White identity elicits stereotype boost for biracial Black-White individuals

    Priming White identity elicits stereotype boost for biracial Black-White individuals

    Group Processes Intergroup Relations
    Volume 18, Number 6 (November 2015)
    pages 778-787
    DOI: 10.1177/1368430215570504

    Sarah E. Gaither, Provost’s Career Enhancement Postdoctoral Scholar
    University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

    Jessica D. Remedios, Assistant Professor of Psychology
    Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts

    Jennifer R. Schultz
    Department of Psychology
    Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts

    Samuel R. Sommers, Associate Professor of Psychology
    Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts

    Psychological threat experienced by students of negatively stereotyped groups impairs test performance. However, stereotype boost can also occur if a positively stereotyped identity is made salient. Biracial individuals, whose racial identities may be associated with both negative and positive testing abilities, have not been examined in this context. Sixty-four biracial Black-White individuals wrote about either their Black or White identity or a neutral topic and completed a verbal Graduate Record Examination (GRE) examination described as diagnostic of their abilities. White-primed participants performed significantly better than both Black-primed and control participants. Thus, biracial Black-White individuals experience stereotype boost only when their White identity is made salient.

    Read or purchase the article here.

  • Multiracial kids will soon have a more colorful toy set for pretend play

    Multiracial kids will soon have a more colorful toy set for pretend play

    The Chicago Tribune
    2015-09-23

    Sadé Carpenter


    The MyFamilyBuilders toy set includes 48 magnetic wooden pieces that snap together. (MyFamilyBuilders)

    When Ez Karpf went shopping for a gift for his friends’ children, he thought it would be easy to find a toy set that represented their multiracial family. In the U.S. — Karpf is from Argentina — there are products for everyone, or so he thought.

    He quickly realized the store aisles were not overflowing with the toys he hoped to buy. He noticed not only a lack of racial diversity, but also the absence of toys portraying same-sex parents and single-parent households.

    “A lot of kids are not reflected in today’s toys; a lot of families are not reflected in today’s toys,” Karpf said. “It’s much easier to learn not to be biased about differences than to unlearn that.”…

    …A product developer/designer, Karpf assembled a group that included an education specialist, child psychologist, illustrator and tech entrepreneur to address the lack of diversity in toys. Together, they created MyFamilyBuilders.

    “When kids don’t see themselves reflected in toys they play with every day, basically this is like having no mirror of themselves,” Karpf said.

    The MyFamilyBuilders toy set includes 48 magnetic wooden block pieces children 3 and up can use to customize their playtime experience. It also includes 25 cards for five different games for children 5 and up. The goal is for parents to join the playing process and create teachable moments for their kids…

    Read the entire article here.

  • One slip and he would have gone from being a mirror of white America’s mania for things “exotic” to somebody white America didn’t want to face.

    To consider the life of Korla Pandit—and that’s what I will call him because that is who he became—is to consider the weight of wearing a mask for 50 years. It is to grasp the fear of exposure, of a revelation that would have killed his career. One slip and he would have gone from being a mirror of white America’s mania for things “exotic” to somebody white America didn’t want to face. He would have been revealed as a fraud, and his fans would have never forgiven him. It is to recognize how he had to cut himself off from a black community that he’d grown up in, from a culture that had shaped the musical skills, and the survival skills, that he drew on for the rest of his life.

    RJ Smith, “The Many Faces of Korla Pandit,” Los Angeles Magazine, June 2001, 76. https://books.google.com/books?id=aF8EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA73#v=onepage&q&f=false.

  • Positioning Multiraciality in Cyberspace: Treatment of Multiracial Daters in an Online Dating Website

    Positioning Multiraciality in Cyberspace: Treatment of Multiracial Daters in an Online Dating Website

    American Sociological Review
    Volume 80, Number 4 (August 2015)
    pages 764-788
    DOI: 10.1177/0003122415591268

    Celeste Vaughan Curington
    Department of Sociology
    University of Massachusetts, Amherst

    Ken-Hou Lin, Assistant Professor of Sociology
    The University of Texas, Austin

    Jennifer Hickes Lundquist, Professor of Sociology
    University of Massachusetts, Amherst

    The U.S. multiracial population has grown substantially in the past decades, yet little is known about how these individuals are positioned in the racial hierarchies of the dating market. Using data from one of the largest dating websites in the United States, we examine how monoracial daters respond to initial messages sent by multiracial daters with various White/non-White racial and ethnic makeups. We test four different theories: hypodescent, multiracial in-betweenness, White equivalence, and what we call a multiracial dividend effect. We find no evidence for the operation of hypodescent. Asian-White daters, in particular, are afforded a heightened status, and Black-White multiracials are treated as an in-between group. For a few specific multiracial gender groups, we find evidence for a dividend effect, where multiracial men and women are preferred above all other groups, including Whites.

    Read or purchase the article here.

  • Guadalupe and the Castas: The Power of a Singular Colonial Mexican Painting

    Guadalupe and the Castas: The Power of a Singular Colonial Mexican Painting

    Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos
    Volume 31, Number 2
    pages 218-247
    DOI: 10.1525/mex.2015.31.2.218

    Sarah Cline, Research Professor of History
    University of California, Santa Barbara

    A mid-eighteenth-century casta painting by Luis de Mena uniquely unites the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe and casta (mixed-race) groupings, along with scenes of everyday life in Mexico, and the natural abundance of New Spain. Reproduced multiple times, the painting has not been systematically analyzed. This article explores individual elements in their colonial context and the potential meanings of the painting in the modern era.

    Una pintura de Luis de Mena sobre las castas, de mediados del siglo xviii, reúne de manera singular la imagen de la Virgen de Guadalupe, los agrupamientos de castas y escenas de la vida cotidiana en México, junto con la abundancia natural de Nueva España. Aunque reproducida en múltiples ocasiones, la pintura no ha sido analizada sistemáticamente. Este artículo explora sus elementos individuales en el contexto colonial y los significados potenciales de la pintura en la época moderna.

    Read or purchase the article here.

  • The Many Faces of Korla Pandit

    The Many Faces of Korla Pandit

    Los Angeles Magazine
    June 2001
    pages 73-77, 146-151

    RJ Smith, Senior Editor

    He was a handsome holy man, an organ virtuoso, a star from the East. Korla Pandit mesmerized generations–while keeping a secret until his dying day

    Korla Pandit wandered the West, from big cities to hamlets, throughout his life. Wherever he went, he made the ground beneath his feet seem like the center of a vast turning wheel. However much he was on the move, he let those surrounding him feel they were the ones in motion. People—intersting, glamorous, bizarre people—came to him hoping he’d show them how to get to where he so blissfully stood. They wanted to feel his peace.

    He was in his mid seventies when I met him seven years ago. We talked at a coffee shop that no longer exists, in what was the first of many conversations. I was interviewing him about the lounge music revival, which had led to a modest boost in the old man’s career. Soon I became one more neophyte snared by his beatific smile, his mysterious eyes, his strange stories of séances with Marilyn Monroe and how Liberace had stolen his very soul. When you got near Korla Pandit, he took you to some synthetic place.

    He came, he explained, from halfway around the world. He had a privileged childhood in New Delhi, where his father, a Brahman, was a government bureaucrat and friend of Gandhi’s. His mother mas a French opera singer. Korla was playing the piano at the age of two; by five he was a prodigy. able to perform complicated pieces after hearing them only once. He studied in Europe, then came to the United States when he was 12. and later attended the University of Chicago.

    As Korla prepared to leave his family behind and begin the life of a professional musician on the stages of the West, his father gave him a warning: “Son. get your education first. Show business is a dangerous world. You’re a hero today and a bum tomorrow.” In recounting the story Korla would pause and then add, “Well, he sure knew what he was talking about.” Korla came anyway, and he conquered the West, or at least the West Coast, and especially Los Angeles. His TV show, Adventures in Music with Korla Pandit, was the first all-music show on television, and Korla was one of the first stars of the medium.

    As it happened, I attended the last performance Korla ever gave. It was in 1998 in San Francisco, at a lounge renovated to 1950s vintage called Bimbo’s. There were paintings of clowns, and the carpet, banquettes. and walls were as red as tenderloin. A mermaid swam in a large aquarium over the bar. Bimbo’s was a lot like Korla himself. an exemplar of a distant time that once embodied suave sexuality but now registered as camp…

    …There was a joke made often in the vicinity of Korla, passed along by any who spent time with him. Everybody who told it seemed to think they were the first to make the crack. The thing about Korla, we’d say, was that while he never spoke on his television show, in person he was hard put to stay quiet. Korla loved to talk, about India and his past and the meaning of life. But for all the talking he did, he kept a secret, one that he protected all his life. Korla Pandit wasn’t his real name, and he wasn’t Indian at all. He was African American…

    Read the entire article here.