Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

Notwithstanding the long-held belief that Machado sought to at best to camouflage and at worst deny being a mulatto, I contend that his primary motivation was to achieve a sense of racelessness. He endeavored to go beyond the physical limitations of being a mulatto to become a “meta-mulatto,” that is, a mulatto whose writing grappled with the universal questions of duality and ambiguity in all human existence—miscegenation in a higher sense. He displayed what has been termed “mestizo consciousness,” “radical mestizaje,” and “critical hybridity” (Anzaldúa 1987, 77; Ramirez 1983, 6; Sandoval 2000, 72; Daniel 2005, 264; Lund 2006, 55) by affirming a mulatto identity grounded in a more inclusive or universal self, beyond questions of racial, cultural, or any other specificity. As a multiracial individual of African and European descent in a society that prized whiteness and stigmatized blackness, Machado viewed the challenge of achieving upward mobility and public success without also compromising his personal integrity as merely one of the myriad epiphenomena of universal duality and ambiguity.

G. Reginald Daniel, Machado de Assis: Multiracial Identity and the Brazilian Novelist, (University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012): 120-121.

Passing: A Family in Black & White

Posted in Biography, Family/Parenting, History, Live Events, Media Archive, Passing, United States, Videos on 2019-07-30 16:56Z by Steven

Passing: A Family in Black & White

Blackstar Film Festival
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Saturday, 2019-08-03, 10:00 EDT (Local Time)

United States
2019
(00:48:00)

Robin Cloud, Director

After years of hearing the story of her Nebraska cousins, who, unbeknownst to them, were passing for white, filmmaker Robin Cloud reaches out to the lost cousins in an attempt to bring them back into the family. We follow Robin as she travels through the South and Midwest.

For more information, click here.

Tags: Blackstar Film Festival, Nebraska, Robin Cloud

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Little White Lie [Philadelphia Premiere]

Posted in Identity Development/Psychology, Judaism, Live Events, Media Archive, Religion, United States, Videos on 2014-07-24 07:51Z by Steven

Little White Lie [Philadelphia Premiere]

Blackstar Film Festival
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
2014-31-07 through 2014-08-03

International House Philadelphia
3701 Chestnut Street
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Telephone: 215-387-5125
2014-08-02, 15:10 EDT (Local Time)

Lacey Schwartz, Producer/Director

Mehret Mandefro, Producer

Followed by Q&A with Lacey Schwartz and Mehret Mandefro moderated by:

Yaba Blay, Assistant Teaching Professor of Africana Studies
Drexel University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Co-presented by Leeway Foundation

Little White Lie tells Lacey Schwartz’s story of growing up in a typical middle-class Jewish household in Woodstock, NY, with loving parents and a strong sense of her Jewish identity—that is, until she discovers that her biological father is actually a black man with whom her mother had an affair. This personal documentary raises the questions of what defines our identity, our family of origin and the family that raises us. While exploring her parents’ stories, and her own, Schwartz discovers a legacy of family secrets, denial, and, ultimately, redemption.

For more information, click here.

Tags: Blackstar Film Festival, Lacey Schwartz, Mehret Mandefro, Yaba A. Blay, Yaba Amgborale Blay, Yaba Blay

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Mixed Race Studies

Passing: A Family in Black & White

Little White Lie [Philadelphia Premiere]

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