Mixed Race Studies

Carina Ray fuses scholarship and teaching with personal experience

Brandeis Now
Waltham, Massachusetts
2017-12-17

Jarret Bencks
Office of Communications

Carina Ray in the classroom

Almost 25 years ago, historian Carina Ray spent her junior year abroad as an undergraduate studying in Ghana. She planned to explore her Puerto Rican family’s African roots.

Most Ghanaians she met insisted she was white, despite her longwinded explanations about her multiracial background. Eventually, she realized it would be smarter to talk less and listen more.

“I was enthralled by what Ghanaians had to say about their own perceptions of blackness and how race works there,” says Ray, associate professor of African and Afro-American studies (AAAS). The seeds of Ray’s career were planted.

By the time she returned to the University of California, Santa Cruz, to finish her bachelor’s degree, Ray knew she wanted to study what it means to be black in West Africa — from an African perspective. The history of race in Africa was rarely written about from an African perspective, and it became the focus of her PhD in African history at Cornell University…

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Carina Ray’s scholarship was sparked by her personal experiences

Brandeis Now
Brandeis University
Waltham, Massachusetts
2016-02-01

Jarret Bencks, News and Communications Specialist

Carina Ray performs research in the national archives in Ghana.

The newest AAAS professor will begin teaching courses next semester

When Carina Ray was an undergraduate at University of California at Santa Cruz in 1993, she was drawn to study abroad in Ghana because she wanted to connect with her Puerto Rican family’s African roots. The trip ended up being the beginning of a career dedicated to the study of what blackness means in West Africa.

Fast-forward to 2016, and Ray is a groundbreaking scholar of African history whose work is shedding new light on the history of race in Africa. She has been appointed as an associate professor of African and Afro-American Studies at Brandeis and will begin teaching courses in the fall of 2016.

Back in 1993, Ray was initially surprised that most Ghanaians she met saw her as white. Her longwinded explanations about being multiracial failed to persuade people otherwise.

“I realized it was more instructive to listen to Ghanaians talk about their own perceptions of blackness and how race works there.”

She found the subject was rarely written about from an African perspective, and that led her to pursue a PhD in African History at Cornell University followed by a robust teaching and publishing career devoted to a deeper understanding of race in Africa.

Out of that search for meaning came Ray’s first book, “Crossing the Color Line: Race, Sex, and the Contested Politics of Colonialism in Ghana,” which cuts to the heart of how interracial sex became a source of colonial anxiety and nationalist agitation during the first half of the twentieth century. The book has already received praise from noted scholars, including philosopher Kwame Appiah and historian Antoinette Burton…

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