Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

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  • Afro-Chinese marriages boom in Guangzhou: but will it be ’til death do us part’?

    Afro-Chinese marriages boom in Guangzhou: but will it be ’til death do us part’?

    South China Morning Post Magazine
    South China Morning Post
    Hong Kong, China
    2014-06-01

    Jenni Marsh, Assistant Editor


    Jennifer Tsang and Eman Okonkwo at their wedding in Guangzhou in April. Photo: Jenni Marsh

    Guangzhou is witnessing many Afro-Chinese marriages, but the mainland’s lack of citizenship rights for husbands and a crackdown on foreign visas means families live in fear of being torn apart, writes Jenni Marsh

    Eman Okonkwo’s foot-tapping at the altar is not a sign of nerves. The groom’s palms aren’t sweaty, there are no pre-wedding jitters and certainly no second thoughts. Today he is realising a dream imagined by countless African merchants in Guangzhou: he is marrying a Chinese bride.

    Seven days earlier, Jennifer Tsang’s family was oblivious to their daughter’s romance. Like many local women dating African men, the curvaceous trader from Foshan, who is in her late 20s – that dreaded “leftover woman” age – had feared her parents would be racially prejudiced.

    Today, though – having tentatively given their blessing – they snuck into the underground Royal Victory Church, in Guangzhou, looking over their shoulders for police as they entered the downtown tower block. Non-state-sanctioned religious events like this are illegal on the mainland.

    Okonkwo, 42, doesn’t have a single relative at the rambunctious Pentecostal ceremony, but is nevertheless delighted.

    “Today is so special,” beams the Nigerian, “because I have married a Chinese girl. And that makes me half-African, half-Chinese.”

    In Guangzhou, weddings like this take place every day. There are no official figures on Afro-Chinese marriages but visit any trading warehouse in the city and you will see scores of mixed-race couples running wholesale shops, their coffee-coloured, hair-braided children racing through the corridors…


    Guinean trader Cellou with his wife, Cherry, and their children. Photo: Robin Fall

    …Chinese prejudice against Africans is normally based on three aspects: traditional aesthetic values, an ignorance of African culture and society, and the language barrier.

    Furthermore, until the 1970s, foreigners were not permitted to live in the mainland, let alone marry a Chinese. When a child is born, the parents must register its ethnicity with the authorities: of the 56 boxes they can tick, “mixed-race” is not an option.

    But there are factors other than racism that might lead a family to reject a mixed marriage.

    Linessa Lin Dan, a PhD student at the Chinese University of Hong Kong researching Afro-Chinese relations in Guangzhou, says many African men who propose already have wives in their home countries – Muslims are permitted by their religion to take multiple spouses. Furthermore, Lin has heard tales of husbands returning to Nigeria on a business trip, leaving a mobile-phone number that doesn’t connect and disappearing.

    “The Chinese wife is left with their children, and shamed for marrying a hei gui [black ghost],” says Lin…

    Read the entire article here.

  • American Race and Charismatic License: Finding Martín de Porres in Obama

    American Race and Charismatic License: Finding Martín de Porres in Obama

    Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal
    Volume 97, Number 3, 2014
    pages 376-384
    DOI: 10.1353/sij.2014.0018

    Chris Garces, Assistant Professor of Anthropology
    Cornell University, Ithaca, New York

    Problematizing the saintly reputation of seventeenth-century Dominican servant Martín de Porres, this article explores a little-known, late medieval Spanish form of agency, or licencia, with which a mulato colonial monastic could influence his Spanish Creole superiors, perform miracles, and gain a widespread reputation for superhuman piety. I ask: under what specific conditions could licencia have been wielded by nonwhite Christian subjects to manipulate the shifting moral orders of early modern Spanish Creole hegemony? I also explore how the politicization of racialized charisma continues to depend on a logic of licencia. Tracking resonances between the Spanish Creole veneration of a mulato figure in seventeenth-century Peru with the recent election of a “mixed race” president in the United States, this article reads together theology and politics to demonstrate the fraught beauty, or legal “beatification,” of racialized charisma.

  • ‘The concept of race is a slippery slope’: Ullenhag

    ‘The concept of race is a slippery slope’: Ullenhag

    The Local: Sweden’s News in English
    2014-08-01

    Solveig Rundquist

    Integration Minister Erik Ullenhag tells The Local why he plans to remove the term “race” from all Swedish law, how he responds to his critics, and why Sweden must steer clear of xenophobia.

    The decision has been more than 20 years in the making, Ullenhag said, and has been discussed extensively on both parliamentary and international levels.

    “I think we should have done it before,” Ullenhag told The Local. “But at least we’re doing it now.”

    The suggestion received unanimous support from the governing alliance of Sweden. On Thursday an investigation was launched into how best to implement the decision…

    …In 1999 researchers with the Human Genome Project (HGP) determined that the idea of race has no roots in genetics.

    “The concept of race disappeared from scientific discourse more than a decade ago,” Juha Kere, Professor of Molecular Genetics at Karolinska Institute, confirmed for The Local on Friday. “It is the broadly accepted conclusion based on worldwide genetic studies that the concept is unfounded.”

    Professors across the globe have come to the same conclusion, with American anthropologist Loring Brace writing that, while there are genetic differences across the world, there is no visible line, no clear-cut categories.

    “As a rule, the boy marries the girl next door throughout the whole world, but next door goes on without stop from one region to another.”

    Kere explained that, while there are differences between populations, the genetic variation within each population is greater than the variation between different populations…

    …But while there may be scientific consensus that “race” is indeed an outdated concept, there are those who say that the term still fills a vital function.

    The National Afro-Swedish Association (Afrosvensarnas Riksförbund, ASR) has been particularly critical.

    “Race may be a social construct, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a reality,” ASR spokesman Kitwamba Sabuni told The Local. “For us, this is just trying to take away the possibility to even talk about it. It’s critical.”

    Zakarias Zouhir, chairman of the ASR, agreed.

    “This path worries me,” Zouhir told Sveriges Television on Thursday. “It’s just sweeping it under the blue and yellow rug and pretending there is no racism in society.”…

    Read the entire article here.

  • ‘Everything I Never Told You’ Exposed In Biracial Family’s Loss

    ‘Everything I Never Told You’ Exposed In Biracial Family’s Loss

    Code Switch: Frontiers of Race, Culture and Ethnicity
    National Public Radio
    2014-06-28

    Arun Rath
    All Things Considered

    It’s May, 1977, in small-town Ohio, and the Lee family is sitting down at breakfast. James is Chinese-American and Marilyn is white, and they have three children — two girls and a boy. But on this day, their middle child Lydia, who is also their favorite, is nowhere to be found.

    That’s how Celeste Ng’s new novel, Everything I Never Told You, begins.

    It’s soon discovered that Lydia has drowned in a nearby lake, in what looks like a suicide. The incident pulls the family into an emotional vortex and reveals deep cracks in their relationships with each other.

    This all takes place an era when interracial marriages are only recently legal (the Supreme Court struck down interracial marriage bans in 1967). Lydia’s death forces members of the Lee family to confront their individual insecurities and grapple with their identity as a biracial family in the Midwest.

    But would it be very different for them today? Ng answered that question for NPR’s Arun Rath, host of All Things Considered.

    Ng, who is a first-generation Asian-American Midwesterner, also spoke about her own experiences growing up and about the state of the American conversation on race…

    Read the article here. Listen to the interview here. Download the interview here.

  • Walter Tull: Descendants to honour pioneering black footballer who was also a hero of the First World War

    Walter Tull: Descendants to honour pioneering black footballer who was also a hero of the First World War

    The Daily Mirror
    2014-01-19

    Ben Glaze, Reporter
    The Sunday Mirror


    Pioneer: Walter Tull in his Tottenham kit (Getty Images)

    The orphaned grandson of slaves played for Tottenham Hotspur and then became the first black man to hold a commission in the British infantry

    Like any other officer of the First World War Walter Tull cut a fine figure in his crisp khaki uniform. But he was different.

    Second Lieutenant Tull was a black man – the first to hold a commission in the British infantry.

    And in stark contrast to most of his fellow officers – from well-off families and public school-educated – he was working class. He was also an orphan.

    But with the determination that had already seen him play football for Tottenham Hotspur, Walter won the respect and devotion of the men he led with such valour.

    This grandson of slaves was 29 when he was killed in action in 1918. He has no known grave. Perhaps through prejudice he was never awarded the gallantry medal he so richly deserved and he seemed doomed to be forgotten.

    But now, as the centenary of the start of the Great War approaches, his descendants are to make an emotional pilgrimage to the Western Front to honour his memory.

    Great-niece Rita Humphrey, who has nine grandchildren and six great-grandchildren, said: “We tell the children about Walter and I hope the rest of the family will continue to tell them when I’m gone, to let them know what a man he was.


    Proud: Rita Humphrey, the great-niece of Walter Tull (Daily Mirror)

    “I want them to know what’s possible.

    “We want to make the trip to see the battlefields ourselves. It will be a fitting tribute…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Biological race trumps cultural race…

    “Biological race trumps cultural race. Race is something we’re really invested in validating or comprehending. It’s about how we understand race as a marker of difference, something that a story about ancestry can’t resolve.” —Jenifer L. Bratter, Rice University

    Felicia R. Lee, “After the ‘White Lie’ Implodes, a Rich Narrative Unfurls,” The New York Times, August 1, 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/02/movies/little-white-lie-lacey-schwartzs-film-about-self-discovery.html.

  • Race to be scrapped from Swedish legislation

    Race to be scrapped from Swedish legislation

    The Local: Sweden’s News in English
    2014-07-31

    Solveig Rundquist

    The Swedish government announced that it plans to remove all mentions of race from Swedish legislation, saying that race is a social construct which should not be encouraged in law.

    “We know that different human races actually do not exist,” Swedish Integration Minister Erik Ullenhag told Sveriges Television (SVT).

    “We also know that the fundamental grounds of racism are based on the belief that there are different races, and that belonging to a race makes people behave in a certain way, and that some races are better than others.”

    The concept of race is included in around 20 Swedish laws, including criminal code, student financial aid laws, and credit information laws. On Thursday the Swedish government began an investigation into how to remove the concept from all legislation, as has been done in Austria and Finland.

    “Legislation should not include the word race, if we argue that there are not actually races,” Ullenhag said. “I have wanted to remove the concept of race for a long time.”

    Oscar Pripp, associate professor of ethnology at Uppsala University, welcomed the idea. He said that the concept of race is necessary to understand people’s social behaviour, but that it is not necessary in law…

    …The proposal has come under sharp criticism, however, from the National Afro-Swedish Association (Afrosvensarnas Riksförbund, ASR).

    “This scientific racism that Ullenhag is focused on, when he says that racism is based on believing in different races, is not true,” Kitimbwa Sabuni, spokesperson for the ASR, told The Local.

    “How many people in Sweden really think that way? Maybe 100. That’s not the problem. Racism existed before the concept of race biology. Scientific racism is just one chapter in the story of race and racism.”…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Everything I Never Told You: A Novel

    Everything I Never Told You: A Novel

    Penguin Press
    2014-06-26
    304 pages
    Hardcover ISBN: 9781594205712

    Celeste Ng

    Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet . . . So begins the story of this exquisite debut novel, about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee; their middle daughter, a girl who inherited her mother’s bright blue eyes and her father’s jet-black hair. Her parents are determined that Lydia will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue—in Marilyn’s case that her daughter become a doctor rather than a homemaker, in James’s case that Lydia be popular at school, a girl with a busy social life and the center of every party.

    When Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together tumbles into chaos, forcing them to confront the long-kept secrets that have been slowly pulling them apart. James, consumed by guilt, sets out on a reckless path that may destroy his marriage. Marilyn, devastated and vengeful, is determined to find a responsible party, no matter what the cost. Lydia’s older brother, Nathan, is certain that the neighborhood bad boy Jack is somehow involved. But it’s the youngest of the family—Hannah—who observes far more than anyone realizes and who may be the only one who knows the truth about what happened.

    A profoundly moving story of family, history, and the meaning of home, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, exploring the divisions between cultures and the rifts within a family, and uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another.

  • After the ‘White Lie’ Implodes, a Rich Narrative Unfurls

    After the ‘White Lie’ Implodes, a Rich Narrative Unfurls

    The New York Times
    2014-08-01

    Felicia R. Lee

    ‘Little White Lie,’ Lacey Schwartz’s Film About Self-Discovery

    Lacey Schwartz, a 37-year-old Harvard Law School graduate turned filmmaker, moves with ease in circles in which her identity as both black and Jewish seems unremarkable. What makes her biography striking is that Ms. Schwartz, a woman with light brown skin and a cascade of dark curls, grew up believing she was white.

    How and why that happened is the subject of her film, “Little White Lie,” which has its premiere on Sunday at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, its first stop on the festival circuit before being broadcast on PBS next year. With Ms. Schwartz narrating, the camera travels to a funeral, girlfriend gab sessions and even her therapy appointments. At each stop, in raw conversations with family and friends, Ms. Schwartz asks over and over, how and why did she pass as white?

    “I come from a long line of New York Jews,” she says early in the film, as photographs of her white relatives flash across the screen. “My family knew who they were, and they defined who I was.”

    Ms. Schwartz was an only child who grew up in the mostly white town of Woodstock, N.Y. Her parents, Peggy and Robert Schwartz, told her that she favored her father’s swarthy Sicilian grandfather. It was not until she went off to college that she learned the truth.

    Before starting college, “I was already questioning my whiteness because of what other people said and because I was aware that I looked different from my family,” she said in a recent interview. Then, based on the photograph accompanying her application, Georgetown University passed her name along to the black student association, which contacted her.

    The university “gave me permission” to explore a black identity, Ms. Schwartz said…

    …Bliss Broyard explored similar territory in a memoir about her father, the book critic Anatole Broyard, a black man who passed as white. She has said she was raised white but learned the truth about her father on his deathbed. But Ms. Broyard, unlike Ms. Schwartz, grew up with her biological father.

    Jenifer L. Bratter, director of the Program for the Study of Ethnicity, Race and Culture at Rice University, said the film’s twisting tale was part of “a larger story about race in America.”

    “Biological race trumps cultural race,” she added. “Race is something we’re really invested in validating or comprehending. It’s about how we understand race as a marker of difference, something that a story about ancestry can’t resolve.”..

    Read the entire review here.

  • One Drop of a Father’s Love

    One Drop of a Father’s Love

    Biracials Learning About African-American Culture (B.L.A.A.C)
    Sunday, 2014-06-15

    Zebulon Miletsky, Assistant Professor of Africana Studies
    Stony Brook University, State University of New York

    This week I had the pleasure of attending a one-woman show by Television and Film actress, Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni, called “One Drop of Love” a multimedia solo performance put on at the Brooklyn Historical Society. It was phenomenal. Not only was it brilliant in its exposition of the social and historical dimensions of race, but it alsobrought a human dimension to the oft-complicated question of mixed race in America.  The context alone was compelling.  In the next room, the critically praised exhibit on Brooklyn Abolitionists entitled “In Pursuit of Freedom”, rich with the documentation and exhibits about slavery and its abolition, much of it the raw material and subtext of the play we were about to witness. The day of the performancealso happened to be “Loving Day”, an annual celebration ofthe anniversary of the 1967 United States Supreme Court decision “Loving v. Virginia” which struck down all anti-miscegenation laws in the U.S. The decision was followed by an increase in interracial marriages, although not necessarily all “black/white” ones, and it is commemorated annually on what is now Loving Day, June the 12th…

    Read the entire review here.