Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

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  • A summer camp where Jews of color go to ‘feel normal’

    A summer camp where Jews of color go to ‘feel normal’

    The Times of Israel
    2014-08-20

    Rebecca Spence

    With an emphasis on diverse Diaspora Judaism, Camp Be’chol Lashon has a markedly different mandate than most Jewish camps

    PETALUMA, Calif. (JTA) — On a cool Sunday evening, Jewish campers with nervous smiles took to the stage one by one to perform poems they had composed on the theme of identity.

    One girl riffed on being taunted for having “fuzzy eyebrows” and “bushy hair.” Another rhymed about being told “You don’t look Jewish” too many times to count.

    If this doesn’t sound like your typical summer camp fare, it’s because Camp Be’chol Lashon has a markedly different mandate than most Jewish camps.

    Nestled in the misty hills of Marin County, the northern California camp is the country’s only Jewish sleepaway camp geared to Jews of color.

    “Part of the goal is to make these kids feel normal in a Jewish context,” said Diane Tobin, the founder and executive director of the camp’s parent organization, the San Francisco-based nonprofit Be’chol Lashon, which promotes racial, ethnic and cultural diversity in Jewish life…

    …The camp is not just for Jews of color, as evinced by one white camper’s poem about her identity as a “nerdy Jewish girl.” It’s also very much a family affair. Tobin’s son, Jonah, is a junior counselor and her daughter, Sarah Spencer, serves as the camp’s co-director.

    “The kids all come with very different stories about who they are and where they’ve come to be,” said Spencer, 38, a marriage and family therapist who is also the mother of two biracial children. “Here they get to practice explaining who they are to one another and we help them to feel good about whatever that is.”

    Savannah Henry, a 21-year-old counselor whose father is African-American, said that before her rabbi at Congregation Shir Hadash in Los Gatos, Calif., told her about Be’chol Lashon, she had spent a miserable summer at a more mainstream Jewish camp…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Metis: Race, Recognition, and the Struggle for Indigenous Peoplehood

    Metis: Race, Recognition, and the Struggle for Indigenous Peoplehood

    University of British Columbia Press
    2014-05-12
    284 pages
    6 x 9 in.
    Hardcover ISBN: 9780774827218

    Chris Andersen, Research and Associate Professor of Native Studies
    University of Alberta

    “Métis”

    Ask any Canadian what “Métis” means, and they will likely say “mixed race” or “part Indian, part white.” Canadians consider Métis people mixed in ways that other indigenous people — First Nations and Inuit — are not, and the census and the courts have premised their recognition of the Métis on this race-based understanding.

    Chris Andersen argues that Canada got it wrong. He weaves together personal anecdotes, critical race theory, and discussions of history and law to demonstrates that our understanding of “Métis” — that our very preoccupation with mixedness — is not natural but stems from more than 150 years of sustained labour on the part of the state, scholars, and indigenous organizations. From its roots deep in the colonial past, the idea of “Métis as mixed” pervaded the Canadian consciousness through powerful sites of knowledge production such as the census and courts until it settled in the realm of common sense. In the process, “Métis” has become an ever-widening racial category rather than the identity of an indigenous people with a shared sense of history and culture centred on the fur trade.

    Andersen asks all Canadians to consider the consequences of adopting a definition of “Métis” that makes it nearly impossible for the Métis Nation to make political claims as a people.

    Table of Contents

    • Foreword / Paul Chartrand
    • Introduction
    • 1. Mixed: The History and Evolution of an Administrative Concept
    • 2. Métis-as-Mixed: The Supreme Court of Canada and the Census
    • 3. The Métis Nation: A People, a Shared History
    • 4. Métis Nation and Peoplehood: A Critical Reading of the Supreme Court of Canada and the Census
    • 5. A Case of (Mis)recognition: The NunatuKavut Community Council
    • Conclusion; Notes; Works Cited; Index

  • Whose Sperm Counts?

    Whose Sperm Counts?

    Nursing Clio: Because the Personal is Historical
    2014-08-19

    Lara Freidenfelds, Historian of Sex, Reproduction, and Women’s Health in America

    Recently, a Canadian fertility clinic made the news because it refused to allow a white client to be impregnated with sperm from a donor of color. The clinic director told the media, “I’m not sure that we should be creating rainbow families just because some single woman decides that that’s what she wants.”

    When I first read this, I felt offended. Personally. My husband and I are different races, and our kids are bi-racial. I guess I had never proclaimed us a “rainbow family,” but ok. The clinic’s decision to avoid creating bi-racial children seemed like a judgment on my family. Like, my family’s not terrible or anything, but as a society we wouldn’t want to go making extra families like mine if we can stick to normal, uni-racial families. Am I a bad mother because I ignored race when I chose my spouse? Would it have been more responsible of me to have my kids with a white father?

    The media and Canadian officials agreed with my gut feeling. Journalists have written highly critical stories. Through a spokesperson, Health Minister Rona Ambrose declared, “Our government believes that discrimination in any form is unacceptable.” Through my twitter feed came declarations of “old time racism” in Calgary.

    So, case closed? If we chastise the backward clinic director and remove the race stipulation, everyone is happy, no one is second-class, and the infertility client can have a “rainbow family” just like mine?…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Calling for Calm in Ferguson, Obama Cites Need for Improved Race Relations

    Calling for Calm in Ferguson, Obama Cites Need for Improved Race Relations

    The New York Times
    2014-08-18

    Julie Hirschfeld Davis, White House Reporter

    WASHINGTON — President Obama called for calm and healing in Ferguson, Mo., on Monday even as he acknowledged the deep racial divisions that continue to plague not only that St. Louis suburb but cities across the United States.

    “In too many communities around the country, a gulf of mistrust exists between local residents and law enforcement,” Mr. Obama said at the White House. “In too many communities, too many young men of color are left behind and seen only as objects of fear.”

    “We’ve made extraordinary progress” in race relations, he said, “but we have not made enough progress.”

    Mr. Obama’s comments were a notable moment for the first African-American president during the most racially fraught crisis of his time in office, set off by the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, by the police. Mr. Obama and his administration are working to restore peace in Ferguson and ensure an evenhanded investigation into the shooting all while responding to anger — in Missouri and elsewhere — among blacks about what they say is systemic discrimination by law enforcement officials…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Black, White, or Mixed: Identity Formation and Choice Among Black-White Biracial Individuals

    Black, White, or Mixed: Identity Formation and Choice Among Black-White Biracial Individuals

    Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama
    2014-08-02
    82 pages

    Madison Alayne Hinton

    A thesis submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Auburn University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts

    Identity is a term that is difficult to define, yet every human being has one. It is a strong indicator of how people will act and defines them in an important way and is a reflection of one’s self and self-understanding. Identity is an important aspect for all humans, but it is an especially interesting trait when describing biracial individuals due to their multiracial background. The biracial demographic is growing quickly from that of the past, so it is important that their unique situation be researched. This study explores the family influence on biracial identity choice by gathering data using both a questionnaire and a focus group. The findings concluded family does have a significant, yet indirect, impact on the racial identity choice of their biracial children by encouraging individuality and allowing the person to choose their racial category themselves.

    Read the entire thesis here.

  • I can be black, a woman and German and all three characteristics can define me equally.

    With time I learned that there is no one way to be black and a woman, and that being black and German is in no way a contradiction in terms. In fact, I have acquired the power to create a combination of the traits that is unique to me. I can be black, a woman and German and all three characteristics can define me equally.

    Ella Achola, ““No, I meant where are you really from?” on being black and German,” Media Diversified, August 15, 2014. http://mediadiversified.org/2014/08/15/no-i-meant-where-are-you-really-from-on-being-black-and-german/.

     

  • Intervening in the racial imaginary: ‘mixed race’ and resistance in contemporary Australian Literature

    Intervening in the racial imaginary: ‘mixed race’ and resistance in contemporary Australian Literature

    University of Sydney
    2014
    243 pages

    Lyn Sue Dickens

    A thesis submitted in fulfilment of requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

    This thesis examines the extent to which three contemporary Australian novels can be regarded as interventions in “the modern racial imaginary” (Mignolo 2011a, p. 277). In order to analyse the novels as interventions, this thesis looks in particular at depictions and conceptualisations of mixed race subjectivity and experience in the texts. The novels, The World Waiting to be Made by Simone Lazaroo (1994), Shanghai Dancing by Brian Castro (2003) and The Lost Dog by Michelle de Kretser (2007) all explore mixed subjectivities and experiences in the Asia-Pacific region. Throughout this thesis I examine the complexity and disruptive potential of the concept of ‘mixed race’. I argue that through the depiction of people of mixed race and their traumatic experiences of racialisation, the novels critique, resist and disrupt concepts of race and colonial worldviews.

    I further explore the ways in which the novels both promote and exemplify alternative ways of perceiving and interacting with other human beings that do not rely on racial categories or the humanitas/anthropos divide (Mignolo 2011b, p. 90). In order to do this I draw on Walter Mignolo’s concepts of border thinking/sensing and delinking, and Édouard Glissant’s work in The Poetics of Relation. I argue that critical examination of mixed race subjectivity and representation, in conjunction with transcultural concepts such as Relation and border thinking, provide a means of both challenging traditional concepts of race and essentialised cultures, and thinking beyond their boundaries. Furthermore, the novels themselves open up a transcultural space with transformative potential, which encourages the imagination of alternative, more equal worlds of Relation.

    Read the entire thesis here.

  • Who cares about mixed race? Care experiences of young people in an inner city borough

    Who cares about mixed race? Care experiences of young people in an inner city borough

    Goldsmiths, University of London
    April 2010
    280 pages

    Fiona Virginia Peters

    A thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PhD Sociology Goldsmiths, University of London

    This thesis is an engagement with the care experiences of mixed young people, to produce knowledge of how care processes, mediated though the private foster family, impact on their lives. It begins with an examination of the relationship between the mixed classification and care, and continues through a discussion of race, race mixing and the family. The study then examines methodologically how the mixed classification operates in social work through a discussion of racialisation and its impact on the care trajectory of young people. Further, it engages with long-standing debates over why young people with a mixed classification are more likely to be significantly represented in care. The empirical chapters are comprised of the narrative accounts and visual representations of the young people and their experiences in care.

    A highly participatory research methodology paid critical attention to the narratives of mixed young people in care between the ages of 12-20 years, as research participants, in order to engage and elicit rich detail about their care experiences. An innovative mixedmethod approach emerged in part from their specific circumstances and led to new ways to research with and understand young people who live in circumstances of instability often characterised by crisis.

    This thesis engages with the care experiences of the participants to reveal how the discursive repertoires of mixedness and their application through care processes impacts on lives. Each empirical chapter is presented as an individual case study that examines the experiences of a single participant in order to interrogate care practices in relation to mixedness. The themes to emerge centre around family, relationality, professional intervention, classification and identification, race and mixedness, sex, gender, class, culture and ethnicity, all within the crisis of the care system. This thesis argues that placing the care experiences of mixed young people in the centre of debates about how to conceptualise mixedness could influence care planning.

    Read the entire thesis here.

  • Steve Byrne: Irish-Korean American Writes About His Life for TV

    Steve Byrne: Irish-Korean American Writes About His Life for TV

    CAAM (Center for Asian American Media)
    2014-08-15

    Dino-Ray Ramos

    For three seasons on network TV, an Irish-Korean American comedian has been writing and starring in his own show, to little fanfare. Now, Steve Byrne of TBS’ Sullivan & Son shares how he nabbed a sitcom deal, what it’s like being mixed race in Hollywood, and writing his reality.

    Byrne got his start in the comedy club scene in the Big Apple. If there is one date that Byrne remembers, it’s the date of his first stand-up gig. After finishing school in Ohio, he moved to New York City and crashed on his parents’ couch. While looking for a job, he stumbled upon the popular comedy club, Carolines. He would watch stand-up comedians on stage and thought it looked like fun. Four months later, on September 30, 1997, he tried it out and said he just knew right away that that’s what he wanted to do for the rest of his life.

    The season finale of Sullivan & Son airs Tuesday, August 19th on TBS with special guest star Margaret Cho. I had a chance to sit down with Byrne for an extensive chat about his show and about race in Hollywood.

    Where did the idea of Sullivan & Son come from?
    Vince (Vaughn) and I used to hike all the time. He said, “You should write some for yourself because your opportunities are limited given your background.” In Hollywood, I went for Asian roles but I wasn’t Asian enough and I’d go for white roles and wasn’t white enough.

    I bought a bunch of books, I studied. About eight months later, I turned the script to Vince. He took a look at it and said it’s pretty good. We went to meet with some showrunners. I met with Rob Long and Peter Billingsley who work with Vince Vaughn. All of us have been pals for a long time. We finessed the script. Turned it from a diner into a bar, made it a thousand times funnier, and I think within a few months, we were making it…

    Read the entire interview here.

  • Re:Membering (our memories our stories)

    Re:Membering (our memories our stories)

    Hapa Happy Hour: A lively discussion and celebration of the mixed heritage experience.
    2014-08-04

    Hosts:

    Rena Heinrich
    Hiwa Bourne
    Lisa Liang

    The ladies talk about Lisa’s succesful one woman show: Alien CItizen: An Earth Odyssey! Recorded last year (July 2013).

    Download the episode here.