Mixed Race Studies

Longtime professor Martha Jones reflects on her time at the University

The Michigan Daily
2017-05-22

Riyah Basha, Daily News Editor

Courtesy of Martha Jones

In her 15 years at the University of Michigan, History Prof. Martha Jones has invested much of herself into the campus community — and the return has not disappointed. As a co-director of the Law School’s program in Race, Law and History, former associate chair of the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies and, most recently this winter, her work as a Presidential Bicentennial professor with the landmark Stumbling Blocks exhibit — Jones has become somewhat of a stalwart in convening campus around issues of race and social justice.

Jones arrived in Ann Arbor the day before 9/11, and — from the battle over affirmative action and Proposal 2 to Obama to Trump to the University’s contentious celebration of its 200th year — took part in molding the University in the years thereafter. This summer, though, Jones will relocate to Baltimore to join the history department at Johns Hopkins University. She joined the Daily for an exit interview of sorts, to reflect on her career at the University and the lessons she’s taken from this year, and decade, of powerful turbulence…

Read the entire interview here.

Nadia Karizat: Divided into nothing

The Michigan Daily
2016-05-18

Nadia Karizat

There are moments in my life that have burned me silently and set me up for questioning what I am. I say “what” and not “who” because I know who I am. I am someone who believes that the best moments are spontaneous, that music cures all and that the most fun thing one can do on a Saturday night is sit with friends and discuss our exquisite lives. I am also a biracial (Arab and White [Italian]) woman from Michigan who’s checked “other” on every single form she’s needed to fill out since she was 8 years old and made aware that society felt the need to force all her complexities into a single box…

Read the entire article here.

I myself identify as biracial. I have the same racial heritage as my Black president. And just like my Black president, I struggled thinking of how I wanted to identify coming into college. During that time, my identity wasn’t something that was of a massive importance to me. However, as I started to learn more about education and social justice, I started to understand the intricacies and nuances of the concept of identity — and how monotonously we view it in our society. From classes on multiculturalism and identity to TED Talks like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “Danger of a Single Story,” I learned that we all hold multiple identities that make up who we are at any given time. More importantly, I learned that it is not any of those singular identities that define us, but how they come together in each of us, uniquely.

Michael Chrzan, “Michigan in Color: Authenticity,” The Michigan Daily, February 18, 2016. https://www.michigandaily.com/section/mic/michigan-color-authenticity.

Michigan in Color: Authenticity

The Michigan Daily: The campus newspaper of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor
2016-02-18

Michael Chrzan

Courtesy of Michael Chrzan

In an article for the National Review late last year, senior editor Jonah Goldberg discussed the (now former) popularity of Ben Carson amongst the GOP. He said “ … most analysis of Carson’s popularity from pundits focuses on his likable personality and his sincere Christian faith. But it’s intriguingly rare to hear people talk about the fact that he’s black. One could argue that he’s even more authentically African-American than Barack Obama … ”

Goldberg makes this statement and then goes on to make a number of claims as to why President Obama is not “authentically African-American” enough, at least when compared to Carson.

“ … Obama’s mother was white and he was raised in part by his white grandparents. In his autobiography, Obama writes at length about how he grew up outside the traditional African-American experience — in Hawaii and Indonesia — and how he consciously chose to adopt a black identity when he was in college.”…

This isn’t a new sentiment. Many people of many different races have often brought up Obama’s racial heritage as a way to discredit his Blackness. In fact, a 2014 article by the Washington Post shows most of America doesn’t consider the president as Black, but as “mixed race.” The problem with this line of thinking stems from how we conceptualize multi-racial identities in this country — one with a history of hypodescent ideologies, like the infamous one-drop rule. The problem with this line of thinking is that all Obama needs to be “authentically” Black is to be Black, and that he most definitely is…

Read the entire article here.

Panel talks multiracial identity in academics

The Michigan Daily
2015-10-27

Alexa St John, Daily Staff Reporter

According to a 2015 Pew Research Center report, 6.9 percent of all Americans 18 and older identify as multiracial. According to the University’s Office of the Registrar, last year, just over 3 percent of students identified as two or more races.

A panel of University faculty met Monday night to discuss how multiracialism influences academic work for the first of their yearlong series dedicated to discussing the multiracial experience.

“We were really hoping to create a sense of community,” said Karen Downing, the University Library’s head of social sciences and the education liaison librarian. “This is a population that is often hidden because we don’t walk around with signs on us saying we’re multiracial. It’s hard to connect sometimes with other multiracial people.”…

Read the entire article here.

MiC Drop: Let’s talk about race

The Michigan Daily
The Campus Newspaper of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor
2014-01-20

Rima Fadlallah, Michigan in Color Editor
Jerusaliem Gebreziabher, Michigan in Color Editor
Kayla Upadhyaya, Michigan in Color Editor

MiC check 1, 2. 1, 2. Can you hear us? Because we’re here.

We are Michigan in Color, the Daily’s first opinion section designated as a space for and by students of color at the University of Michigan. Welcome! MiC is a place for people of color to voice their opinions and share experiences that are overshadowed by dominant narratives — or the history, stories and perspectives that privilege conformity and make it into the mainstream, marginalizing all other narratives in the process. We hope MiC will elevate conversations on race, identity, liberation and social justice while engaging specifically with communities of color on campus.

Race is a topic that can elicit several different emotions; from shame, pride, anger, confusion, love, discomfort, or all of the above, this space is here to explore it all. We want to unearth “taboos.” We want the topics that feel a bit too coarse to talk about in a crowded coffee shop to roll right off your tongue in this safe space. We want to challenge the historical whiteness of The Michigan Daily by creating this long-needed space that will hopefully lead to a more inclusive newsroom and a better informed campus.

To kick off this exciting new project, we will start at the roots of MiC: What exactly does “person of color” mean?…

…As the founding editors of Michigan in Color, this project means a lot to us. We’re excited; we’re ready.

I’m Jerusaliem Gebreziabher, and I’m here because as a victim of internalized racism (sometimes self-inflicted) I needed this space four years ago. As a first generation American with parents hailing from Ethiopia and heavy strains of Italian blood in my veins, I struggled to identify with anyone and was afraid of being stigmatized if I did.

Although I know myself to be more than my race (ironically I’m often mistaken for being everything but Black), I found it hard to find my place on this campus for fear of being lumped into another category. Throughout my life, I’ve felt waves of shame and pride for who I am, where I’ve come from, or the undeniable evidence my physical features reveal about my identity. MiC is a space where I hope to reconcile some of this conflict and connect to those with shared experiences.

I’m Kayla Upadhyaya, and I’m here because I can still recall the overwhelming sense of affirmation and safety I felt the first time I found myself in a room of only other people of color here at the University. With a father who immigrated from India and a white mother, racial identity is oftentimes a source of confusion for me. But over time, my mixed racial background has become as important to who I am and my writing as is my identity as a feminist, and MiC is a space where I can not only explore those parts of my identity but also connect with other PoCs and write about the issues that truly matter to me…

Read the entire article here.