Mixed Race Studies

A mixed-race son choosing his identity is a lesson for us all

The San Francisco Chronicle
2022-05-03

Kevin Fisher-Paulson

This week, Aidan decided he is Black.

He announced this at the family dinner table, as we served mashed potatoes, green beans and meat loaf. Aidan used to like my meat loaf, but everything changes.

Betty Reid Soskin shares forgotten histories as a national park ranger

The San Francisco Chronicle
2021-06-02

Brittany Bracy
Las Positas College, Livermore, California

The nation’s oldest ranger is hopeful for tomorrow: ‘I get a feeling that change is going to come’

At age 85, Betty Reid Soskin started a new career. She took a job as a park ranger at Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, sharing her story and the story of Black women’s and men’s efforts during World War II with visitors who are often familiar with the white “We Can Do It!” propaganda figure — and little else.

Soskin grew up in Oakland in the 1920s and ’30s, and well before she became the country’s oldest park ranger, she found ways to contribute to her community. She has been a record store owner, a fundraiser for the Black Panthers and a political aide during her “ordinary extraordinary” life.

Now 99, Soskin has used her platform with the National Park Service to educate the public about crucial moments in history and highlight the sacrifices of those whose names are often left out of the retellings. As she approaches her 100th birthday this year, Soskin’s wisdom and courage continues to have a positive impact on California residents and institutions.

This interview is part of Lift Every Voice, a series that connects young Black journalists with Black elders in our communities to celebrate and learn from their life experiences. The San Francisco Chronicle has joined Hearst newspapers, magazines and television stations to publish dozens of profiles as part of the project…

Read the entire interview here.

As intermarriage spreads, fault lines are exposed

The San Francisco Chronicle
2017-05-19

Jill Tucker, K-12 Education Reporter

Jered Snyder and Jen Zhao of Oakland got married in 2015. Asian American women are among the groups that are more likely to marry outside their race. Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle

The growth of interracial marriage in the 50 years since the Supreme Court legalized it across the nation has been steady, but stark disparities remain that influence who is getting hitched and who supports the nuptials, according to a major study released Thursday.

People who are younger, urban and college-educated are more likely to cross racial or ethnic lines on their trip to the altar, and those with liberal leanings are more apt to approve of the unions — trends that are playing out in the Bay Area, where about 1 in 4 newlyweds entered into such marriages in the first half of this decade.

Among the most striking findings was that black men are twice as likely to intermarry as black women — a gender split that reversed for Asian and Pacific Islander Americans and, to researchers, underscores the grip of deeply rooted societal stereotypes…

Read the entire article here.

Ranger’s voice spans East Bay history

San Francisco Chronicle
2010-01-31

Lee Hildebrand, Special to The Chronicle

Betty Reid Soskin is a “phenomenal woman,” to borrow the title of a famous poem by Maya Angelou. In her 88 years, Betty has been a shipyard worker, proprietor of a record store, housewife and mother of four, singer and composer of art songs, community activist and, for the past three years, a ranger at Rosie the Riveter National Historical Park in Richmond.

She’s the oldest active National Park Service ranger in the country and works at the park six hours a day, five days a week, doing community outreach and giving guided tours of the now dormant Kaiser Shipyards where she worked during World War II.

Born in Detroit

She was born Betty Charbonnet in Detroit in 1921 to bilingual Creole parents from New Orleans. She has traced her European ancestry to France in the 17th and 18th centuries. The earliest relative of African heritage she’s been able to identify was her great-great-grandmother, a former slave named Celestine who married her former master, Cajun plantation owner Eduouard Breaux. Their daughter, Betty’s great-grandmother Leontine Breaux, was 19 when they married.

“Marriages were relatively common between Cajun slave owners and their slaves,” Soskin explains. “Their marriage papers are dated 1865, at the time of the Emancipation Proclamation. His signature is there alongside her ‘X’. Her name is given, in French, as ‘Celestine of no last name.'”…

Read the entire article here.