Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

Although mixed marriages, and mixed racial identities, are also rising rapidly in the United States, they are still infrequent by British standards: around 10% of African Americans are in mixed marriages, compared to “over 25%” for black Caribbean Britons and “over 40%” for British born black Caribbeans. Traditionally, American racial identity has been defined by the “one drop” rule: those with any black heritage are seen by others—and come to see themselves—as black. Some of America’s most prominent black figures fit this pattern: both Barack Obama and Colin Powell are children of mixed relationships between a black immigrant husband and a white American wife. Both have defined themselves as black, and married black partners. This may be changing—self-identification as mixed is rising in the United States, whose Census bureau also now officially acknowledges it—but contrary to popular perceptions America lags behind Britain in rates of mixing and, arguably, in acknowledging and discussing mixed identity.

Rob Ford, “The melting pot generation: How Britain became more relaxed on race,” Brisith Future, (December 12, 2012): 6. http://www.britishfuture.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/The-melting-pot-generation.pdf.

Review: ‘Spit Back a Boy’ by Iain Haley Pollock

Posted in Articles, Book/Video Reviews, Media Archive on 2011-09-07 01:40Z by Steven

Review: ‘Spit Back a Boy’ by Iain Haley Pollock

BuzzleGoose.com
2011-09-01

Nick Defina

A student of MIT once remarked that attending that particular institution as an undergraduate was much like taking a drink of water from a firehose. The same could be said about reading Iain Haley Pollock’s collection of blistering poems, selected by Elizabeth Alexander as winner of the Cave Caanem Award, and graced with the outlandish title of Spit Back a Boy. Pollock’s main concern with his poems seems to be the sharp, undeniable close-knittedness of family and race, and the demanding, life-long connotations those two ideas carry with them.

…The closing poem (in my opinion one of the strongest in the collection) starts out bitter and distant, yet miraculously Pollock becomes grounded by the very skin he so longed to shed. After growing up in a world of black and white, with Pollock caught in his own private purgatory of mixed-race chaos, he comes to understand that people are not as short-sighted as they used to be. People, in the end, are not as self-absorbed and clueless as they seem…

Read the entire review here.

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Mixed Race Studies

Review: ‘Spit Back a Boy’ by Iain Haley Pollock

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