Mixed Race Studies

Naming this era of racial contradictions

The Boston Globe
2015-08-01

Farah Stockman

We’re entering a new era of race relations in America — a crazy, conflicting, potentially explosive era yet to be named.

Maybe it’s an era of white insecurity about racial identity as the country moves toward a nonwhite majority. Dylann Roof, who murdered nine black people in a church, and Rachel Dolezal, who declared herself black on national television, could be two sides of that coin.

Or maybe it’s an era of increasing black confidence. What’s unprecedented about the spate of black people who’ve died in police custody is not the deaths themselves — those are sadly not new — but rather the fact that they’re being covered prominently on national news.

There’s something else notable about our conversations on race today: the disconnect between where we are in 2015 and where we thought we’d be. The half-finished project of racial equality in the United States leaves us with a parade of endless contradictions.

We overwhelmingly support the idea of integration. Yet, 75 percent of white people don’t have a single black friend, and 66 percent of black people don’t have a white one.

In a city like Boston, poor kids tend to go to poor schools, and wealthy kids to affluent schools.

We elected a black president. Yet we still incarcerate blacks at nearly six times the rate of whites. We’ve had not one but two black secretaries of state. Yet, a study shows that women with “black-sounding” names — like Lakisha and Aisha — still have a hard time getting hired as secretaries.

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‘Dear White People’ or ‘Dear Bougie Black People’?

The Boston Globe
2014-11-04

Farah Stockman

THIS WEEKEND, I saw the new satirical film “Dear White People.” I was curious what it would tell me about how young people view race today.

Each generation plays out the drama of race in the movies. Baby boomers flocked to“Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” which raised the question: Could a well-educated black man ever be good enough for a white family’s daughter? The jury was still out in 1967, the year my mom, who is black, saw that movie several times. Two years later, she married my dad, who is white.

Then came my generation. Born in the ’70s, we grew up glued to depictions of black slavery and impoverishment, with the television miniseries “Roots” and the sitcom “Good Times.” We came of age with Spike Lee’s “Jungle Fever,” released in 1991, which asked the question: Will the gulf between black and white ever be bridged? Lee’s answer seemed to be: Don’t hold your breath. In 1992, I left my predominantly white high school for a predominantly white Ivy League college.

Now we have the millennial generation, the most ethnically diverse, socially liberal cohort America has ever seen; kids who never wondered whether America could elect a black president. About 90 percent report being “fine” with a family member marrying outside the race. Yet, for much of this generation, the civil rights movement is ancient history, and systemic black poverty and incarceration take place on a separate planet. Millennials feel deeply ambivalent about acknowledging race, even for the purpose of righting wrongs: According to one poll, 70 percent feel it’s “never fair to give preferential treatment to one race over another, regardless of historical inequalities.” Nearly half of white young people today believe that discrimination against whites has become “as big a problem as discrimination against racial minority groups.” By comparison, only 27 percent of people of color share that belief…

…W. E. B. Du Bois famously defined a black man as anybody “who must ride ‘Jim Crow’ in Georgia,’ ” writes Stanford historian Allyson Hobbs in her new book, “A Chosen Exile.” That “raises the question, What would a black man be without Jim Crow in Georgia?”…

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