Mixed Race Studies

HaluHalo Gives Mixed Race Identities A Fresh Narrative Online & IRL

Bustle
2018-08-01

Salma Haidrani

Source: HaluHalo

A cursory glance at pop culture today and you wouldn’t be mistaken for thinking that mixed race identities have never been more visible. Take the likes of Jorja Smith, Mabel, and Raye. And less than two months ago, Meghan Markle made history as the first mixed race royal in the British monarchy. While it’s problematic enough that representations rarely deviate from the “acceptable” face of mixed race (light-skinned and complete with Eurocentric features or at the very least, “ambiguous”), the dialogue surrounding the complexities of mixed race identities remains absent from the mainstream.

It’s this that motivated London-based photographer Susan Dale to launch HaluHalo, the first photo series of its kind to explore the lesser-known intricacies of mixed race identity. “Thanks to social media, there’s a visual representation of mixed race people compared to when I was growing up but there’s still a lack of public discourse on what it means to be mixed race,” she tells me. “I was curious to find out if anyone else felt the way I did or shared my experiences.”

Dale likens HaluHalo to Humans of New York, albeit with a multi-racial lens. While initially she didn’t encounter any issues approaching complete strangers of mixed ethnicities, ages and genders to share their experiences and how they self-identify – “I started with the most basic method by sliding into their DMs on Instagram!” – she found that they would either hesitate or completely disappear when it came to answering her interview questions…

Read the entire article here.

‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’ Having A Biracial Love Interest For Peter Is Monumental

Bustle
2017-07-07

Olivia Truffaut-Wonga

Sony Pictures Releasing

Spider-Man: Homecoming isn’t just bringing Spider-Man back into the Marvel Cinematic Universe — it’s bringing diversity with it. Not only is a huge chunk of the movie’s supporting cast not white, but Homecoming provides the MCU with the universe’s first prominent women of color, Liz (Laura Harrier) and Michelle (Zendaya). Moreover, with Liz, Spider-Man: Homecoming introduces Marvel’s first biracial love interest. Yes, for the first time in the entire MCU, the white hero is involved in an interracial relationship, and this could not be more important when it comes to the representation of women of color on-screen.

You see, Homecoming marks the first MCU film with two prominent female characters of color and two prominent biracial characters. This distinction might sound unimportant, but to the many biracial fans out there, it actually means a lot, because it expands diversity in the MCU beyond easily defined ethnic boxes. In big studio movies, biracial characters are rare, and tend to appear only when being biracial is a part of the story. For the most part, major films stick to easily defined ethnic categories — black, white, Asian, Latinx, etc. The fact that Homecoming has two biracial female supporting characters and doesn’t make their race part of their storyline is monumental, not just for Marvel, but for Hollywood overall…

Read the entire article here.

I’m A Mixed-Race Woman But Everyone Thinks I’m White — Which Hurts My Pride But Gives Me Privilege

Bustle
2017-02-07

Danielle Campoamor

Source: Courtesy of Danielle Campoamor

“We can’t help you here,” was all the receptionist would tell me. I was 20 years old, living in Plainview, Texas, and trying to see a doctor — I was a week post-op from an invasive knee surgery, and my knee was red, swollen, painful, and starting to smell. I knew I needed to see a physician soon.

“Spell your last name for me again,” the receptionist asked. “C-A-M-P-O-A-M-O-R. Campoamor. You have my medical records,” I replied.

“I’m sorry, but we just can’t accommodate you,” was all the woman could manage to say.

“Look. I have insurance.”

“Oh,” she replied. “I’m sorry. I just assumed. Well, we can see you in an hour.”

“No, thanks.”

The woman — who couldn’t see me but identified my last name as Hispanic — assumed I didn’t have insurance. I knew it, she knew it, and in light of her racist assumption, I decided I would rather go to a hospital than sit in a comfortable doctor’s office. I waited, on crutches, for two hours at a local emergency room.

That story isn’t notable because I experienced discrimination. It’s notable because that was the first time I had ever experienced discrimination. In 20 years. While I am a Puerto Rican woman, I am very white-looking. Extremely white-looking, in fact. In high school my friends (most of whom were white) would call me the “tan white girl,” or the “Tropical Mexican.” It was in jest, to be sure, but the whitewashing of my ethnicity has been a constant throughout my life…

Read the entire article here.

What Being Mixed Race in a Small Town Does to Your Sense of Beauty: Otherwise Known as Growing Up “Exotic”

Bustle
2015-01-06

Justin Robert Thomas Smith

Let me just start by saying this: Up until this point (and hopefully for at least a little while longer), I’ve led a relatively charmed life. I grew up with lots of love and emotional support from my single mother and the rest of our family; with a roof over the top bunk of the bed I rested my head on well into my teenage years; with a warm meal delivered to me almost every night from the diner my family continues to own to this day; and blessed with every new video game system as soon as it hit the market — a big deal for a family of softcore gamers. But relativity will always be a slippery slope, and a charmed life doesn’t come without a curse or two to keep the magic alive and the blessings counted. My curse? Growing up in a place where I was considered “exotic” by almost everyone. In other words: Being mixed isn’t all vanilla-chocolate-swirls or Uh-Oh Oreos.

Where I grew up, most lives were led in a similarly charmed manner. Where I grew up, most lives were also white. In Lacey Township, NJ — a small conglomerate of towns that added their populations up to hit a whopping 25,000 residents — I could count on my hands how many black families paid their taxes (an extremely low percentage of diversity that was roughly equal to that of any other minority’s presence in the area). Keeping that in mind, I was also raised solely by a white mother: My black father had been [rarely in, but for the most part] out of the picture for a long time, which gave our family’s frame an unusual shape to go with its already unusual coloring. People were surprised to see my mother alone with three dark-skinned children, but — and I believe this is especially because she was white — they felt comfortable enough to make comments to her (and eventually, as we got older, even to us) about our more “exotic-looking” features. That’s how I was first introduced to a crazy little thing called microaggression, or — you know — unintentional discrimination…

Read the entire article here.