Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

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Tag: Leah Donnella

  • What Does It Mean To Be Latino? The ‘Light-Skinned Privilege’ Edition

    Maria Garcia and Maria Hinojosa are both Mexican American, both mestiza, and both relatively light-skinned. But Maria Hinojosa strongly identifies as a woman of color, whereas Maria Garcia has stopped doing so. So in this episode, we’re asking: How did they arrive at such different places?

  • Ask Code Switch: ‘Since You’re Black, You Must Be … ‘

    Welcome back to Ask Code Switch, a segment where we dissect your trickiest questions about race. This week, we’re tackling one version of a question that we hear all the time: What do you do when people just won’t stop making assumptions about you because of how you look?

  • Will Racism End When Old Bigots Die?

    Will Racism End When Old Bigots Die? Code Switch: Race And Identity, Remixed National Public Radio 2017-01-14 Leah Donnella Shelly Fields is a 46-year-old white woman living in Richton Park, a racially diverse Chicago suburb. She says she’s raised her four daughters, who are biracial, to see people of all races as equal, just as…

  • There’s something about feeling like an outsider in the place where you grew up that stings. Like family members who no longer recognize you.

    I was already dreading the thought of doing it again, having to face those saccharine smiles trying to understand, Why are you here? Again, I’m a black woman with a Jewish mother, and I live in the United States of America. When I say that I’m used to being in places where I don’t look…

  • Black, Jewish And Avoiding The Synagogue On Yom Kippur

    Last time I worshipped in a synagogue was Sept. 5, 2014. And I won’t be going today. That might surprise my friends, who put up with my bragging ad nauseam about how Jewish I am.

  • All Mixed Up: What Do We Call People Of Multiple Backgrounds?

    It’s the summer of 1998 and I’m at the mall with my mom and my sister Anna, who has just turned 5. I’m 7. Anna and I are cranky from being too hot, then too cold, then too bored. We keep touching things we are not supposed to touch, and by the time Mom drags…

  • Obama Gets All In His Blackness At Howard

    Obama Gets All In His Blackness At Howard Code Switch National Public Radio 2016-05-10 Leah Donnella “Be confident in your heritage. Be confident in your blackness,” President Barack Obama told graduates and their families at Howard University’s 2016 Commencement Ceremony. It was one of many moments in a speech that honored the achievements of black…

  • Did Obama Inspire A Big Debate On Identity? You Weighed In

    Did Obama Inspire A Big Debate On Identity? You Weighed In Code Switch: Frontiers of Race, Culture and Ethnicity National Public Radio 2016-02-23 Leah Donnella Laurie Avocado/Flickr Creative Commons Last week, Code Switch raised the curtain on “The Obama Effect,” our quest to understand what the nation’s first black president has to do with the…

  • Mixed Kids Aren’t Going to Save the World

    Mixed Kids Aren’t Going to Save the World Leah and Black History Month 2016-02-16 Leah Anneli I have a Black father and a white mother. I’m mixed. I’m not a unicorn. I think there are some misconceptions about who mixed race people are and what function we serve in society. Let’s unpack those. We’re not…