Mixed Race Studies

Darnell Martin Has Looked At Racial Issues From Both Sides

Orlando Sentinal
Orlando, Florida
1994-10-28

Glenn Lovell
San Jose Mercury News

Darnell Martin is talking about growing up in an interracial household in the Bronx and about a childhood that inspired her impressive debut feature, I Like It Like That.

Her take on street life is different from Spike Lee’s or John Singleton’s. It’s less fatalistic and preachy. It’s about being a little of this (white) and a little of that (black) but, in some circles, not enough of either. It’s about standing alone and saying, “This is who I am. Take it or leave it!”

“Yes, I did feel caught in a squeeze,” replies Martin, who, in her late 20s, is being hyped as “the first African-American woman to make a major studio movie.”

“My mother is white and my father black. The people next door, the Lopez family, were Puerto Rican. They were very close to our family, very much a part of our extended family. We even knocked a hole in the wall to connect our apartments.” In fact, Martin, who later attended film school at New York University and apprenticed as assistant camera operator on Lee’s Do the Right Thing, felt more Puerto Rican than white or black.

“They (Puerto Rican neighbors) never asked me what I was,” recalls Martin, with the barest hint of sarcasm. “They accepted me more than whites or blacks. I guess I looked like them. When you grow up being asked, ‘What are you?,’ it can be a very frustrating thing.”…

…She loves contradicting generalizations about race. “When somebody, not knowing I’m black, says, ‘Blacks are like this or like that,’ I can say, ‘Absolutely not! That’s not true. I am black.’ And when people say, ‘Whites are like this,’ I can do the same thing.”…

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In Ferguson, Obama missed his chance to transcend race

The Orlando Sentinal
Orlando, Florida
2015-04-29

Charles Michael Byrd, Guest Columnist

Pundits habitually wonder what happened to the post-racial America they believed Barack Obama’s election would herald. The president, however, has never indicated his willingness to lead the country out of the race-consciousness wilderness.

Many thought his multiracial inheritance would trump his proclivity to further the stale politics of racial identity — that individuals are forever tethered to the philosophy of a specific voting bloc that countenances no competition of views.

Group-think compels us to create mutually exclusive racial groups to determine how many chairs we need position at the table of government largesse. We convince ourselves that the only way to track racial discrimination is by keeping racial statistics, although using race to monitor race prevents us from ever seeing beyond race…

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Black History Month play explores interracial issues

Orlando Sentinal
2010-02-20

Rosalind Jennings, Special To The Orlando Sentinel

Leesburg, [Florida] – Dolores Sandoval’s paternal grandmother was an African slave on a plantation, and that ancestor’s father was the white plantation owner.

So she was mixed racially – an “octoroon,” which is one-eighth African.

“Her father owned the plantation,” Sandoval said. “She was freed by the Civil War.”

In celebration of Black History Month, Sandoval will perform a play that traces her ancestry on both sides as they struggle with issues of race and especially the mixing of races and ethnicities. It will take place at 6 p.m. Monday at the Leesburg Public Library. The play is part of a series of lectures on global awareness sponsored by Beacon College in Leesburg.

“My family is interracial, bi-racial, tri-racial, quad-racial…right through to today,” said Sandoval, a Canadian resident.

The one-hour play, “Coloured Pictures in Family Frames,” will include Sandoval’s ancestors as characters in short episodes that will fit together to tell her family’s story. It will have 20 characters, with Sandoval’s narration being the strongest element as she explains her ancestors’ predicaments and struggles…

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