Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

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  • The accusation of colorism in the light-skinned casting choices illuminates a problem regarding whom Hollywood presents as “Latino,” and whom it excludes, according to Tanya K. Hernández, author of Multiracials and Civil Rights: Mixed-Race Stories of Discrimination.

    The accusation of colorism in the light-skinned casting choices illuminates a problem regarding whom Hollywood presents as “Latino,” and whom it excludes, according to Tanya K. Hernández, author of Multiracials and Civil Rights: Mixed-Race Stories of Discrimination. “There is often a complete erasure of Afro-Latinos, and a frozen, overly romanticized picture of indigenous peoples as only historical figures from a Mayan past,” she says. Any viewer of American TV or movies can observe that mainstream media typically highlights light-skinned Latinos, even though a 2014 Pew Research Center survey showed nearly one in four Latinos identifies as Afro-Latino.

    Andrea Marks, “How ‘In the Heights’ Casting Focused a Wider Problem of Afro-Latino Representation,” Rolling Stone, June 16, 2021. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/in-the-heights-casting-colorism-afro-latino-1184945/.

  • How ‘In the Heights’ Casting Focused a Wider Problem of Afro-Latino Representation

    How ‘In the Heights’ Casting Focused a Wider Problem of Afro-Latino Representation

    Rolling Stone
    2021-06-16

    Andrea Marks, Research Editor


    MELISSA BARRERA (center) as Vanessa in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “IN THE HEIGHTS”
    Macall Polay/Warner Bros

    A prevalence of light-skinned actors demonstrates Hollywood’s — and Latin America’s — history of colorism

    When the musical In the Heights debuted in 2008, it was considered a triumph of Latin American story-telling. Written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, who is of Puerto Rican and Mexican descent, it brought the barrio to Broadway and centered Latino immigrants building a community in New York “north of 96th street” so their children could chase the American Dream. The plot is centered around Usnavi (originally played by Miranda himself), the son of Dominican immigrants, who runs the family bodega but dreams of something bigger.

    The movie version of the Tony Award–winning show hit theaters and HBO Max last week to largely positive reviews and praise for its three-dimensional portrayals of Latin-American characters, not to mention its ambitious full-cast musical numbers. A majority-Latino cast carries the film, starring actors like Anthony Ramos, a star of Miranda’s other Broadway blockbuster, Hamilton, who is of Puerto Rican descent, playing Usnavi; Mexican TV actress Melissa Barrera; and Bronx-born bachata singer Leslie Grace, who is of Dominican descent. At the same time, many viewers have expressed disappointment at a lack of Afro-Latino representation in the cast, especially among lead characters…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Loving a Black person isn’t the same as fighting for Black lives

    Loving a Black person isn’t the same as fighting for Black lives

    Mic
    2020-06-12

    Kim Kelly

    My boyfriend and I have a game we play whenever we’re out in public. Whenever one of us spots another interracial couple passing by, we’ll give the other a little nudge and whisper, “Look, an us!” Sometimes it’s an older us; sometimes it’s a more stylish version, or a queer version, or a rebellious teen version. Every time, though, we share a smile, because it’s nice to be reminded that we aren’t alone. While interracial couples now make up more than 10 percent of all new marriages in the U.S., partnerships like ours are still uncommon enough — or taboo enough — to garner stares when we’re out in public. I’ve noticed that police tend to stare the hardest, and whenever I catch them looking, my stomach drops.

    As a white cisgender woman from a rural community, my early interactions with police barely left an impression. My boyfriend, on the other hand, vividly remembers each time he was stopped and frisked on his way home from his South Brooklyn high school, and all the times he’s been arrested just because he happened to be Black in public. They see him as a threat, and me as a potential victim. I may be safe around them, but he isn’t, and even my whiteness can only offer so much protection…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Don’t let the politics of BLM define mixed-race Americans

    Don’t let the politics of BLM define mixed-race Americans

    The New York Daily News
    2021-06-19

    Charles Byrd


    Mixed-race Americans (Shutterstock/Shutterstock)

    Prior to June 12, 1967, anti-miscegenation laws still existed in the southern United States. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned those remaining statutes of segregationist race-consciousness with its landmark “Loving v. Virginia” decision. That case did not magically eradicate racist attitudes towards interracial couples and their progeny, but it did signal yet another milestone in our country’s continuing evolution from a slaveholding society to one that extends the same civil rights and freedoms to all.

    The 2020 Census allowed multiracials to again choose multiple boxes instead of being forced to identify solely with one race, yet in the throes of the current Black Lives Matter era, there is a seeming renewed effort to compel mixed Black/white Americans to look in the mirror and acknowledge that, in the face of “relentless white supremacy” particularly on the part of law enforcement, they will always be viewed and treated as Black and nothing else. That rationale runs counter to the philosophy that how one views oneself is more important than societally imposed identities, a worldview that a growing number of mixed-race Americans embrace…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Why This Mexican Village Celebrates Juneteenth

    Why This Mexican Village Celebrates Juneteenth

    Texas Monthly
    2019-06-19

    Wes Ferguson


    Descendants of the Negro Mascogo people of northern Mexico gather to celebrate Juneteenth in the village of Nacimiento de los Negros. Photograph by Wes Ferguson

    Descendants of slaves who escaped across the southern border observe Texas’s emancipation holiday with their own unique traditions.

    The morning before Juneteenth, Corina Harrington and her sister Miriam Torralba left San Antonio shortly after sunrise and headed south to Mexico, retracing a portion of the same route their African American ancestors followed in 1850 when they escaped slavery in the United States and fled to freedom south of the border.

    The sisters arrived around midday at their father’s house in the ranching village of Nacimiento de los Negros in Coahuila, about three hours south of Eagle Pass. As afternoon drifted toward evening, the blue silhouettes of the Sierra Madres were all but obscured by clouds, as siblings, cousins, extended family members, and childhood friends kept arriving in twos, threes, or fours. They strolled over to the cool and swift Río Sabinas to swim in water as clear as any Hill Country stream. They politely tasted the dried and shredded meat of a mountain lion that one of their cousins shot on their dad’s nearby goat ranch, and they laughed and reminisced and readied for one of the most important days of the year in a village whose name literally means “Birth of the Blacks.”…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Acquanetta

    Acquanetta

    Jungle Frolics
    2009-10-15

    Richard Beland

    Acquanetta was born Mildred Davenport on July 17, 1921, and, depending on your source, was of either black or American Indian origin. A few writers have claimed she was Cheyenne Indian; possibly they’re confusing this with reports of her being from Cheyenne, Wyoming, or having been born in Ozone, near Cheyenne. However, by most accounts she was born on an Indian reservation and raised in Norristown, Pennsylvania. These conflicting reports may be due to the possibility that she had both black and Indian blood in her. (Adding to the confusion regarding her ethnic origins, some still report that she was born in Venezuela!)…

    ...The Arizona Republic for August 22, 2004, reported that Acquanetta’s brother, 85-year old Horace A. Davenport, was present at her funeral. A retired judge, Horace Davenport was, according to the Pennsylvania Bar Association, “the first African-American judge in Montgomery County.” Horace said that he’d never seen any of Acquanetta’s movies.

    Bill Feret, in his 1984 book, Lure of the Tropix, said of Acquanetta, “She has never clarified her ambiguous origins, which over the years have varied between being an Arapaho Indian from Wyoming, a Latin from Venezuela, or a black girl from Pennsylvania…” Certainly, her exotic and sultry beauty and the ambiguity of her past added to the mystique.

    Perhaps the 1940 United States Census can clear up matters: Mildred Davenport was born in 1921 in Newberry, South Carolina and was residing in Norristown, Norristown Borough, Montgomery, Pennsylvania with her parents, William and Julia, and five siblings, including Horace and Catherine (spelled “Kathryn” in a Jet article). Each member of the family is identified as “Negro” (race) and “African American” (ethnicity)…

    Read the entire article here.

  • Study of Multiracial Women Leading in Large Organizations

    Study of Multiracial Women Leading in Large Organizations

    Fielding Graduate University, Santa Barbara, California
    2021-06-19

    Michele A. Richardson (marichardson@email.fielding.edu), Doctoral Student, Human Development
    School of Leadership Studies

    This study examines how multiracial women leaders see themselves and how that self-concept might influence their approach to navigating tensions and complexity at work.

    Now Enrolling Research Participants

    Are you a woman who:

    • Identifies with two distinct racial groups, with one being a minoritized racial or ethnic group (e.g., Black/African American, Latina, Asian/Pacific Islander, Native/Indigenous, etc.), and
    • Holds a supervisory position in a company of 5,000+ employees?

    Then, consider amplifying the voices of multiracial women in the workplace by sharing the unique insights and perspectives you bring to your everyday leadership practice.

    Click here to sign-up.

    What will you be asked to do?

    As a research participant, you will be asked to sign an Informed Consent form and respond to a brief questionnaire to capture some basic information about you. Then, we’ll schedule a confidential, 45-minute Zoom meeting to explore how your multiracial identity may potentially influence how you lead through complex situations. We’ll have some light email exchanges after our meeting, so you can expect to invest up to an hour of time total. There is no monetary compensation to participate.

    About me:

    About Me: I’m Michele Richardson, a doctoral candidate pursuing a multidisciplinary human development degree at Fielding Graduate University. This research is motivated by my Black/Japanese identity and desire to see notions of diverse leadership advance beyond simplified, binary categorizations of racial identity. I currently serve as a Director, Human Resources for a global veterinary diagnostic and software company.

    For more information, click here.

  • High Yellow (1965, trailer) [Starring Cynthia Hull]

    High Yellow (1965, trailer) [Starring Cynthia Hull]

    YouTube
    Department of Afro-American Research Arts Culture
    2017-06-29

    Cynthia Wood, a light-skinned 17-year-old girl, tries to pass as white after getting hired by wealthy movie magnate Mr. Langley, who has problems with his spoiled wife and promiscuous teenage daughter and son.

    Watch the full movie (01:20:11) here.

  • NAACP to Tampa: For Juneteenth, find Robert Meacham, a slave who became senator

    NAACP to Tampa: For Juneteenth, find Robert Meacham, a slave who became senator

    Tampa Bay Times
    2021-06-12

    Paul Guzzo, Tampa Bay LIfe Reporter


    This portrait of Robert Meacham was taken around 1870. Meacham was an enslaved man who was later elected Florida senator. [Courtesy of State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory]

    He was buried in the erased College Hill Cemetery believed to be located in what is now the Italian Club Cemetery’s parking lot.

    TAMPA — Robert Meacham was an enslaved man who became a Florida state senator pushing for educational opportunities for Black children.

    “Robert Meacham is the type of man who deserves a street named for him,” said Fred Hearns, the curator of Black history at the Tampa Bay History Center. “Maybe even a statue.”

    But he doesn’t even have a marked grave.

    Meacham is among the more than 1,200 buried in Tampa’s erased College Hill Cemetery for Blacks and Cubans, believed to be located in what is now the Italian Club Cemetery’s parking lot.

    June 19 is Juneteenth, the day commemorating the anniversary of when in 1865 the enslaved in Texas were freed. It serves as the day to celebrate the end of slavery in the United States…

    …Meacham was born in Gadsden County in 1835. His mother was an enslaved woman. His father was her white owner.

    As a child, Meacham rode alongside his father in the family buggy and was educated. But, when he turned 18, Meacham was taken to Tallahassee to “fulfill the role of a house-servant for an affluent Leon County family.” When his father died, Meacham became that family’s “property.”…

    Read the entire article here.