Color and Cultural Identity

Posted in Audio, Barack Obama, Communications/Media Studies, Interviews, Live Events, Media Archive, Passing, United States on 2012-01-12 16:50Z by Steven

Color and Cultural Identity

BlogTalkRadio
Bruce Hurwitz Presents
2012-01-12, 18:00Z (13:00 EST, 10:00 PST)

Bruce Hurwitz, Host

Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Visiting Scholar
Brown University

Ph.D. Forum introduces listeners to doctoral and post-doctoral students and their cutting-edge research in the arts, sciences, or humanities.

As part of our Ph.D. Forum, I will be joined by Marcia Dawkins.  Marcia received her doctorate from the University of Southern California, Annenberg.  We will be discussing her dissertation which focused on racial passing—pretending to be a member of a race different from the one to which you actually belong—and multi-racial identity.

Listen to the episode here.

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Dances With Aliens?

Posted in Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, Videos on 2011-10-29 19:10Z by Steven

Dances With Aliens?

Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Visiting Scholar
Brown University

Dr. Dawkins shares her thoughts on multiracialism, media and James Cameron’s blockbuster film “Avatar” at the 2011 American Studies Association Conference.

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The Film You Didn’t See – Who’s the Alien, Cowboy?

Posted in Articles, Literary/Artistic Criticism, New Media, Videos on 2011-08-26 02:10Z by Steven

The Film You Didn’t See – Who’s the Alien, Cowboy?

Cultural Weekly
2011-08-25

Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Visiting Scholar
Brown University

Ulli K. Ryder, Visiting Scholar
Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America
Brown University

Chances are you didn’t see Cowboys and Aliens. The film won’t get to $100 million box office in the US, and it is sinking fast overseas as well.  There’s even been collateral damage—in the wake of its lackluster performance, Disney has put the brakes on the even-more-expensive Lone Ranger, to have starred Johnny Depp.
 
Cowboys and Aliens didn’t get audience traction because of mixed genres and mixed reviews, but the most intriguing aspect audiences and critics alike missed is the film’s approach to mixed races and mixed species.  The movie is an overt critique of colonialism and racism.  Think we’re reaching for subtext?  Well, it’s about as obvious as a gigantic spaceship hovering over the Western sky…

Read the entire article here.

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Roundtable with Fanshen Cox, Dr. Ulli Ryder, and Dr. Marcia Dawkins

Posted in Audio, Interviews, Live Events, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2011-08-10 02:27Z by Steven

Roundtable with Fanshen Cox, Dr. Ulli Ryder, and Dr. Marcia Dawkins

Blogtalk Radio
Tuesday, 2011-08-09, 22:00Z (18:00 EDT)

Michelle McCrary, Host
Is That Your Child?

Fanshen Cox, Actress, Educator, Founder and Producer of the Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival, co-host Mixed Chicks Chat

Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Visiting Scholar
Brown University

Ulli K. Ryder, Visiting Scholar
Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America
Brown University

From the New York Times to CNN to Hollywood actresses, it seems that everyone is talking about mixed race people and interracial relationships. Amidst the celebratory tones of much of this coverage and ill-advised celebrations of a “post-racial” America,  there seems to be a slow-burning backlash. 

The mainstream’s problematic framing of mixed race identity and of the “mixed experience” seems to be stoking the fires of this discontent.  In this podcast roundtable hosted by ITYC, we hope analyze the mainstream coverage of mixedness and multiracial identity to find out where it goes off the rails and what, if anything, it gets right.  This podcast roundtable is only a small piece of the kind of meaningful exchange we hope that people will continue to have about the issue both on and offline.

Each of our panelists will share their personal experiences with the mainstream treatment of multiracial/mixed identity as well as any backlash they’ve experienced.   They’ll also offer some strategies for having more nuanced, contextual  conversations about “the mixed experience.”

To download the audio of the roundtable discussion, click here (01:01:12, 14MB).

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Mixed Messages: Barack Obama and Post-Racial Politics

Posted in Articles, Barack Obama, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, Social Science, United States on 2011-08-07 21:40Z by Steven

Mixed Messages: Barack Obama and Post-Racial Politics

Spectator (Journal of the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematics Arts)
Volume 30, Number 2 (Fall 2010)
pages 9-17

Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Visiting Scholar
Brown University

The election of President Barack Hussein Obama marks an important milestone in United States racial politics. Many cultural critics and opinion leaders argue that Obama’s popularity and position represent post-racial accomplishments for the nation.

In this article I argue that post-racial politics, the ideology that race and/or racism is dead, ignores the salient fact that we continue to live in a society deeply influenced by race, with material consequences that affect life chances. I support this argument through an examination of Obama’s racial rhetoric in the address of March 18, 2008 “A More Perfect Union.” Through Obama’s uses of mixed race identity, the speech acknowledges the actual history of racial injustice and the ideal future of racial reconciliation through frank deliberation and political intervention, and thus serves as a prologue to racial dialogue rather than a post-racial epilogue or monologue.

The 21st century has ushered in a set of paradigm shifts that are responding to changes in technology, economics, politics, cultural flows, and narratives of identification. From the advent of social media, to the Great Recession, to health care reform, to the revised racial categories on the U.S. Census, American lives are faced with increasing tensions and ambiguities. No single icon reflects these tensions and ambiguities, and the paradigm shifts they are inspiring, more cohesively than President Barack Obama.

Some critics argue that Obamas election to the Presidency and status as global “supercelebrity” are signs that we have entered a post-racial moment in which everyone and everything is mixed. “Watching Obama campaign with his African American wife, his Indonesian-Caucasian half-sister, his Chinese-Canadian brother-in-law…all of their children,” not to mention the memories of his Kenyan father and white American mother and grandparents from Kansas, is evidence of this mixed, and ultimately post-, racial moment. Census statistics support this view, revealing that the population of multiracial children in the United States has soared from approximately 500,000 in 1970 to more than 6.8 million in 2000, and that they are happier than their mono-racial counterparts.

As a result of this mixing, many now question the existence of racial prejudice and discrimination writ large. In a recent interview with CNNs John King, President Obama was asked about the role he thinks race and racism play in his political reception. The President suggested that while racism exists, it lives more so in our imaginations than our intentions. If post-racial proponents are interpreting Obamas words and images correctly, then we may be on the verge of entering an era in which discriminatory racial barriers, partisan emotions and divisiveness have been dismantled. Put bluntly, in post-racial America, racism will be dead. If post-racial proponents are incorrect, then our dream of a post-racial America is a myth that both constrains and contains an ongoing drama concerning multiracialism, identity, and Obamas ability to change national public policy. In either case Obama is, as Peggy Orenstein claims, our emblematic “mixed messenger.” In the pages that follow I will engage post-racial politics by asking and answering three questions: What does post-race mean? How does Obamas racial rhetoric address a post-race perspective? And, what are the implications of Obama’s iconic racial status for U.S. racial politics?…

…In this article I argue that post-racial politics, the ideology that race and/or racism is dead, ignores the salient fact that we continue to live in a society deeply influenced by race, with material consequences that affect life chances. I support this argument through an examination of Barack Obamas racial rhetoric in his address of March 18, 2008—”A More Perfect Union”—perhaps the most climactic moment of his first Presidential campaign…

…In addition, those of African ancestry were the subjects of pseudo-scientific racist studies concluding they were soulless beasts, a threat to civilization itself, a drain on the economy, and a generally cursed people. These sinister images became the basis for a biological theory known as “hybrid degeneracy,” which claimed that mixed race people were emotionally unstable, irrational, recalcitrant, and sterile. According to Robyn Wiegman, this theory became a biological fact in Western discourse based on pseudo-scientific observation and comparative anatomy, especially of the brain, skull, and reproductive organs. As a result of these sociological and pseudo-scientific findings, white/European Americans were instructed to dissociate from African Americans in social life in order to maintain their purity. It is therefore unsurprising that blacks and whites who dared to cross the color line in any way, whether to attend school, vote, or mix with one another romantically, were the subjects of torture and abuse. Such physical and juridical policing of the color line is why the study of mixed race identification remains important to any discussion of racial and post-racial politics. Moreover, those of mixed race who passed as either white or black demonstrated that the color line promoted suffering on both sides and in the spaces in-between, making it at the same time all too real and extremely unstable…

Read the entire article here.

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Marvel’s Mixed Race “Ultimate Spider-Man”

Posted in Articles, Arts, Latino Studies, Media Archive on 2011-08-04 01:44Z by Steven

Marvel’s Mixed Race “Ultimate Spider-Man”

The Huffington Post
2011-08-03

Marcia Dawkins, Visiting Scholar
Brown University

As a kid from Queens, NY it’s not hard to understand why Spider-Man has always been my favorite superhero. Aside from a shared geographical location Spider-Man reflected many of the qualities of urban youth. He came from a working class background. He lived with extended family. He was open-minded. Sometimes unsure of himself, he struggled to make sense of the bustling world around him and his place in it.

And now there’s a new chapter to the story. Today we meet Miles Morales, a younger multiracial and multiethnic Spidey. Morales, of mixed black and Latino descent, is described by TIME Magazine as a gangly teen “that fights crime and hurls spiderwebs, just like Peter Parker used to do.” The similarities between Morales and Parker don’t stop there. They share alliterative names and Miles was bitten by a powerful spider too. I guess that makes them both multiracial spider-men…

Read the entire article here.

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Marcia Dawkins to be Featured Guest on Mixed Chicks Chat

Posted in Audio, Communications/Media Studies, Interviews, Media Archive, United States, Women on 2011-07-27 04:28Z by Steven

Marcia Dawkins to be Featured Guest on Mixed Chicks Chat

Mixed Chicks Chat (The only live weekly show about being racially and culturally mixed. Also, founders of the Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival) Hosted by Fanshen Cox and Heidi W. Durrow
Website: TalkShoe™ (Keywords: Mixed Chicks)
Episode: #217 – Marcia Dawkins
When: Wednesday, 2011-07-27 21:00Z (17:00 EDT, 14:00 PDT)

Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Visiting Scholar
Brown University

Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Ph.D., is a blogger, professor and communication researcher in Los Angeles. Her interests are mixed race identification, politics, popular culture and new media. Her new book, Clearly Invisible:  Racial Passing and the Color of Cultural Identity, looks at racial passing as a viable form of communication. She lectures and consults on these issues at conferences worldwide.

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Interracial Relationships and Loving v. Virginia

Posted in History, Law, Media Archive, Passing, Social Science, United States, Videos on 2011-07-04 02:50Z by Steven

Interracial Relationships and Loving v. Virginia

CityLine Boston
WCVB Boston
2011-06-15

Karen Holmes Ward, Director of Public Affairs and Community Services; Host and Executive Producer of CityLine

Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Visiting Scholar
Brown University

Ken Tanabe, President and Founder
LovingDay.org

Dr. Dawkins discusses the ongoing impact of interracial romantic relationships, multiracial identities and passing in the United States with Loving Day founder Ken Tanabe and CityLine host Karen Holmes Ward.

Notes by Steven F. Riley: There are several significant inaccuracies in this video.

  1. Interracial marriage was in fact legal, not illegal, in most states 44 years ago.  Only 16 states had bans on interracial marriage at that time.
  2. Ms. Ward’s comment, “No steps were taken to change the law until one appropriately named couple fought for their rights…” is grossly inaccurate.  There was no one “law” to ban such marriages in the United States. Each state had its own anti-miscegenation statute.  Most importantly, the battle to end anti-miscegenation (anti-interracial marriage) laws in the United States was a 50 year struggle which included such landmark cases like California Supreme Court: Perez v. Sharp (1948), U.S. Supreme Court: McLaughlin v. Florida (1964) and ending of course, with Loving v. Virginia (1967).
  3. Mr. Tanabe’s comment, “After the case, for the first time, interracial marriage was legalized in the United States.” is incorrect.  Loving v. Virginia did not legalize interracial marriage in the United States.  It legalized interracial marriage only in the remaining 15 states (Maryland repealed its law during the case) that still had bans on such marriages.  In fact, there were 10 states that never enacted any bans on interracial marriage. Mr. Tanabe seems to have forgotten that Mildred and Richard Loving (the plaintiffs in the case) were legally married in Washington, D.C. in June of 1958, six months before they were arrested for violating the section of the law which prohibited interracial couples from being married out of state and then returning to Virginia.

To get a comprehensive view of anti-miscegenation laws and their impact on race relations in the United States, please read Peggy Pascoe’s multiple award winning book, What Comes Naturally, Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America. Also, please read my thoughts about the misreprentation of the Loving v. Virginia case in contemporary discourses.

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Giving Loving Day Its Due

Posted in Articles, History, Law, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2011-06-13 05:05Z by Steven

Giving Loving Day Its Due

Truthdig
2011-06-11

Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Visiting Scholar
Brown University

If you’re reading this, then you’ve probably been invited to commemorate or at least think about Loving Day this year. And with good reason. In 1958, newlyweds Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving were indicted on charges of violating Virginia’s ban on interracial marriages and were banished from their home state. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the law in 1967.

Many multiracial individuals and interracial couples celebrate the anniversary of the Loving v. Virginia decision, June 12, as Loving Day. While celebrating this important civil rights milestone, we should remember that increased visibility of interracial couples and offspring does not promise increased racial harmony. Let’s face facts. It’s very sexy to congratulate ourselves based on reports that today’s interracial families can live harmoniously in the former Confederacy. We’re entertained as we watch Khloe and Lamar’s relationship work out. It makes us feel good to think that we have overcome, that we have reached a state of racial harmony and that we are all finally equal—and becoming equally beige and beautiful.

But a desire to congratulate ourselves doesn’t erase the fact that racial mixing has been occurring in our nation and hemisphere for more than 500 years. Colonists and indigenous people married and engaged in extramarital sexual relations. White indentured servants mixed with African indentured servants and then with African slaves. And there’s a long history of black freedmen and freedwomen intermarrying with Native Americans, as well as white males (often forcibly) having sex with black females. There are the interracial children fathered by U.S. soldiers and born to foreign lovers and “comfort women” in war-torn Asian and Middle Eastern nations. Add this to centuries’ worth of Asian and Hispanic immigration and 40 years’ worth of official interracial marriage patterns and you have what many might call the recipe for a melting pot where race doesn’t matter.

Sadly, this isn’t the case…

Read the entire article here.

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Impurely Raced // Purely Erased: Toward a Rhetorical Theory of (Bi)Racial Passing

Posted in Dissertations, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, Passing, United States on 2011-05-21 02:31Z by Steven

Impurely Raced // Purely Erased: Toward a Rhetorical Theory of (Bi)Racial Passing

University of Southern California
May 2009
348 pages

Marcia Alesan Dawkins, Visiting Scholar
Brown University

Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (COMMUNICATION)

This dissertation develops a theory about the interrelations between mixed race identification and passing as they pertain to the field of rhetoric and to United States slavery and segregation settings. I introduce the concept of (bi)racial passing to argue that passing is a form of rhetoric that identifies and represents passers intersectionally via synecdoche. In Chapter One I introduce the rhetorical, cultural, and conceptual significances of passing based on a review of the literature. I introduce the central argument of the project by proposing a theory of (bi)racial passing that considers the problems and possibilities of mixed race representation and mobility as a bridge between Platonic episteme and Sophistic doxa as well as between the material and symbolic components of biracial categorization. Chapter Two considers the historical narrative of Ellen Craft at the intersection of synecdoche and irony to highlight and transgress real and imagined borders that stretch beyond a simple consideration of race. Taking up the issue of appropriation through a detailed critique of the Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson, my third chapter considers passing as an antecedent form of identity theft and as a form of resistance. In contrast to the cases examined in these chapters, my fourth chapter explores Harper’s Iola Leroy, as a fictional account of passing that ties synecdoche to eloquence, articulating the tension between the threat of passing contained in the Plessy ruling and its relation to contemporary attempts at measuring discrimination at the intersection of race, class, and gender.

My fifth chapter takes a turn by exploring the literary and cinematic versions of The Human Stain, as contemporary narratives of passing based on tragedy and synecdoche in the context of minstrel performance and Jim and Jane Crow segregation. My last chapter fleshes out the theory introduced in the first, working toward a theory of (bi)racial passing that rethinks inadequate dichotomies of episteme vs. doxa as well as white vs. black. Then, blending the critical race theory of intersectionality with rhetorical personae I explain the significances of synecdoche, metonymy, irony, appropriation, eloquence, and tragedy in the various instances of passing explored. At a theoretical level, I rethink the inadequate dichotomies of episteme vs. doxa as well as white vs. black. I conclude with a rhetorical theory of passing based on the fourth persona and six original passwords that present opportunities for future research.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

  • Epigraph
  • Acknowledgments
  • Abstract
  • Chapter One: Running Along the Color Line: Racial Passing and the Problem of Mixed Race Identity
  • Chapter One References
  • Chapter Two: The “Craft” of Passing: Rhetorical Irony, Intersectionality and the Case of Ellen Craft
  • Chapter Two References
  • Chapter Three: “Membership Has Its Privileges:” Plessy’s Passing and the Threat of Identity Theft
  • Chapter Three References
  • Chapter Four: “She Was Above All Sincere:” (Bi)racial Passing and Rhetorical Eloquence in Iola Leroy
  • Chapter Four References
  • Chapter Five: “A Crow that Doesn’t Know How to Be a Crow:” Reading The Human Stain and Racial Passing from Text to Film
  • Chapter Five References
  • Chapter Six: Things Said in Passing: Toward a Rhetorical: Theory of (Bi)Racial Passing
  • Chapter Six References
  • Bibliography

LIST OF FIGURES

  • Figure 1: Rev. Rafael Matos Sr
  • Figure 2: “The New Eve”
  • Figure 3: Dramatic Theater of Passing
  • Figure 4: Ellen Craft in Plain Clothes
  • Figure 5: Ellen Craft as Mr. Johnson
  • Figure 6: D. F. Desdunes
  • Figure 7: Homer A. Plessy
  • Figure 8: Hopkins as Elder Silk
  • Figure 9: Miller as Younger Silk
  • Figure 10: Rhetorical Intersections of Passing
  • Figure 11: Dramatic Theater of Passing as Rhetorical and Intersectional
  • Figure 12: Layers of Meaning: The Dramatic and Tropological Roots of (Bi)racial Passing
  • Figure 13: Neoclassical Elements of Passing
  • Figure 14: The Truths of (Bi)racial Passing
  • Figure 15: (Bi)racial Passing as Material and Symbolic

Read the entire dissertation here.

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