Mixed Race Studies

‘We’re the geeks, the prostitutes’: Asian American actors on Hollywood’s barriers

The Guardian
2017-04-11

Sam Levin

Clockwise from top left: Scarlett Johansson in Ghost in the Shell; Pun Bandhu; Matt Damon in Great Wall; Atsuko Okatsuka. Composite: Alamy / Universal Pictures / Courtesy of Pun Bandhu / Courtesy of Atsuko Okatsuka

Films like Ghost in the Shell have fueled debate over whitewashing, while roles are few for Asian Americans – and when they are wanted, it’s often to play offensive stereotypes

Pun Bandhu’s training at the prestigious Yale School of Drama didn’t help much with the skill he needed for so many auditions after graduation – the “Asian accent”.

The Thai American actor – who has appeared in a wide range of TV shows and films over the last 15 years – said he was once told that an accent he used for a Thai character, modeled after his parents, was not working for an “American ear”. Instead, the director went with a Chinese accent.

While much of the recent debate around Asian representation in Hollywood has centered on whitewashing – when white actors are cast to tell Asian stories – working actors said a lack of opportunity was only one part of the problem. Asian American actors said they rarely, if ever, got auditions for leading roles, and when they did get parts, they were frequently secondary to the plot or portrayed offensive tropes…

…“We’re so desperate for opportunities,” said Kanoa Goo, a mixed-race actor who is Chinese, Hawaiian and white. “Often it’s pretty one-dimensional. It’s the tech computer analyst who doesn’t have much to say. His role is really just in service of the leads.”…

Read the entire article here.

Doctor Who’s Pearl Mackie: ‘When I was little there weren’t many people like me on TV’

The Guardian
2017-04-09

Sarah Hughes

Pearl Mackie: ‘This is by far the biggest thing I have ever done, which is amazing.’ Pearl wears top £26 urbanoutfitters.com. Make-up by Linda Johansson at One Represents using YSL Beauty. Hair by Bianca Simone Scott using Mizani. Fashion assistant Bemi Shaw. Photograph: Andrew Woffinden for the Observer

Meet Doctor Who’s new companion, Pearl Mackie. She tells Sarah Hughes why it’s so important to have diverse actors on TV, and how her friends are making sure her feet stay on the ground

The moment when Pearl Mackie understood just how big her new role as Doctor Who’s latest companion was came early in filming. “There was a scene in episode three that was so awesome – in the sense that I was awestruck by the scale of the set – that it was really humbling. I stood there looking at it, thinking, ‘Oh. Wow. This is a very big show.’ When you see it from the inside, that’s when you realise how massive it is.”

She’s not wrong — Doctor Who is, as 29-year-old Mackie puts it, “properly, globally huge”. The most successful science fiction series in television history, this tale of a history-haunted time lord and his adventures across the universe with various sidekicks has progressed far beyond its days as children’s tea-time entertainment. In 2013 the 50th anniversary special broke viewing records around the world after being aired in 94 countries simultaneously while the current Doctor, Peter Capaldi, began his stint by undertaking a rock star-style world tour with then companion Jenna Coleman, taking in Cardiff, London, Seoul, Sydney, New York, Mexico City and Rio de Janeiro. At each stop they were greeted by queues of fans, many of them in costume. There were Weeping Angels and Daleks, Cybermen and companions, and a whole host of Doctors, from every stage of this very British institution’s lengthy career…

…She spent much of her own childhood searching for a similar jolt of recognition. “When Alicia Keys came out that was a big thing for me because she was mixed race as well,” she says. “There were a lot of people I liked on screen, like Judi Dench, she’s wicked, but that’s very different to having someone where you think, ‘She looks like me, maybe I could do that.’”…

Read the entire article here.

People with mixed backgrounds can disrupt notions of purity that undergird race and synthesize vast cultural traditions. People with mixed backgrounds can also internalize and carry out racism.

Daniel José Camacho, “Diversity doesn’t make racism magically disappear,” The Guardian, April 1, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/01/diversity-doesnt-make-racism-magically-disappear.

Diversity doesn’t make racism magically disappear

The Guardian
2017-04-01

Daniel José Camacho
Duke Divinity School

‘Consider Brazil. There, white people are a minority – but are still dominant.’ Photograph: Brazil Photos/LightRocket via Getty Images

Some hope that changing demographics make us destined to be post-racial. It isn’t so simple

We can’t screw our way beyond racism. Many think mixed-race babies and browner demographics will automatically usher in a post-racial world. They interpret the projections of a “majority-minority” shift in our nation – now set to take place in 2044 – as a sign of guaranteed progress. Changing faces in the US are seen as anti-racist destiny. But don’t overestimate the power of this post-racial cocktail.

Jordan Peele’s brilliant film Get Out reminds me of the importance of questioning overly optimistic narratives of racial progress. Made by someone who has been open about being biracial and married to a white women, this film creatively uses the genre of horror to depict the persistence of racism through a story about an interracial couple. In many ways, it can be seen as a strident critique of a liberal brand of racism that has blossomed in the post-Obama era…

…If more mixed people guarantee greater tolerance, then Brazil – and most of Latin America – should be a racial paradise. Although a great degree of ‘mestizaje’ or racial mixing has taken place since the time of conquest, Indigenous and Afro-descendent people in Latin America remain disproportionately poor, discriminated against, and locked out from opportunity.

Sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, in his book Racism without Racists, has speculated whether the racial order in the US might eventually resemble that of Latin American and Caribbean nations. In this case, white supremacy and racial stratification will continue to operate in the US even as it becomes a “majority-minority” nation…

Read the entire article here.

As Get Out shows, love isn’t all you need in interracial relationships

The Guardian
2017-03-27

Iman Amrani

‘In Get Out, Peele successfully challenges the way the parents and their friends pride themselves on not being racist, while also objectifying the young man both physically and sexually.’ Photograph: Justin Lubin/Universal Pictures

Jordan Peele’s film has provoked discussion of issues about race and relationships that often remain too sensitive or uncomfortable to explore

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the 1967 US supreme court decision in the Loving v Virginia case which declared any state law banning interracial marriages as unconstitutional. Jeff Nichols’s recent film, Loving, tells the story of the interracial couple at the heart of the case, which set a precedent for the “freedom to marry”, paving the way also for the legalisation of same-sex marriage.

Loving isn’t the only recent film featuring an interracial relationship. A United Kingdom is based on the true story of an African prince who arrived in London in 1947 to train as a lawyer, then met and fell in love with a white, British woman. The film tells the tale of love overcoming adversity, but I wonder whether these films are missing something.

I can understand how, at the moment, with the backdrop of rising intolerance in Europe and the United States, it’s tempting to curl up in front of a triumphant story of love conquering all, but I grew up in an interracial household and I know that it’s not as simple as that…

Read the entire article here.

America’s “one-drop rule” historically identified any individual with a single black ancestor as black, and therefore inferior. And while most of us these days know that “racial purity” is as grounded in reality as mermaids and unicorns, the “one-drop” idea continues. Harvard University psychologists found that mixed-race individuals are still perceived as belonging to the racial group of their “lower-status” parent. Imagine the world classifying Barack Obama as a white man as a result of his white heritage? It would never happen.

Claire Hynes, “Rachel Dolezal’s pick-your-race policy works brilliantly – as long as you’re white,” The Guardian, March 27, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/27/rachel-dolezal-race-white.

Rachel Dolezal’s pick-your-race policy works brilliantly – as long as you’re white

The Guardian
2017-03-27

Claire Hynes, ‎Tutor in Literature and Creative Writing
University of East Anglia, Norwich, Norfolk, United Kingdom

‘Great for Dolezal that she got to realise her ambition to be black. But reverse the situation, and European-style hair extensions and a white parent would not facilitate the switch.’ Photograph: Colin Mulvany/AP

Dolezal’s idea that we all ‘write our own stories’ is easy for her to say. In reality, the racial fluidity she preaches is a one-way street

Rachel Dolezal, the white woman who for more than 10 years pretended she was black, promotes herself as transracial in her new memoir, published this week. How seriously are we expected to take this latest incarnation?

Dolezal, who recently changed her name to Nkechi Diallo, a mixture of Nigerian Igbo and Fula, claims that her book, In Full Color: Finding My Place in a Black and White World, was written partly “to just encourage people to be exactly who they are”. This comes two years after she was found to have deceived the people of Spokane, Washington, where she was a race activist and branch president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People…

Read the entire article here.

The idea that white identity is under attack assumes that whiteness is something fixed, something immutable. But whiteness has always been a fluid category. Whiteness isn’t a biological fact, rather it is a sort of members-only club that has rewritten its entry requirements over the years.

Arwa Mahdawi, “I’m a bit brown. But in America I’m white. Not for much longer,” The Guardian, March 21, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/21/us-census-whiteness-race-colour-middle-east-north-africa-america.

I’m a bit brown. But in America I’m white. Not for much longer

The Guardian
2017-03-21

Arwa Mahdawi

Colour coded … a large number of US citizens will have to check a new box on the census form if plans to redefine whiteness come to fruition. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

The US Census Bureau plans to redefine ‘white’ to exclude people with Middle Eastern and North African origins. It’s a reminder that the identity has always been fluid

We live in a weird time for whiteness. But, before I get into that, a small disclaimer. You may look at my name and worry that I am unqualified to speak about whiteness; I would like to set these doubts to rest and assure you that I myself am a white person. It’s true that, technically speaking, I’m a bit brown but, when it comes to my legal standing, I’m all white. Well, I’m white in America anyway. The US Census Bureau, you see, defines “white” as “a person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa”. Being half-Palestinian and half-English I fall squarely into that box.

But I may not be able to hang out in that box much longer. There are plans afoot to add a new “Middle East/North Africa” category to the US census. After 70-plus years of having to tick “white” or “other” on administrative documents, people originating from the Middle East and North Africa may soon have their own category.

Whether our very own check box is a privilege or petrifying is still to be decided. Middle Easterners aren’t exactly persona particularly grata in the US right now. Identifying ourselves more explicitly to the government might not be the smartest move – particularly considering that, during the second world war, the US government used census data to send more than 100,000 Japanese Americans to internment camps…

Read the entire article here.

Specifically, many of the problems arose out of my claims of Irishness itself. That was what really seemed to offend people’s sensibilities. Irishness is synonymous with whiteness, it seemed. Whiteness is “pure” and doesn’t extend to brown girls, even those who can trace their Irish ancestry back to the 10th century. How frequently I heard that I “wasn’t really Irish”. But I am Irish. In addition to being born there, my mother, her parents before her, and theirs before them, for generations and generations, are all Irish.

Emma Dabiri, “I’m Irish but I’m not white. Why is that still a problem as we celebrate the Easter Rising?,” The Guardian, March 29, 2016. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/29/irish-white-easter-rising-ireland-racism.