{"id":13432,"date":"2011-04-24T04:10:09","date_gmt":"2011-04-24T04:10:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=13432"},"modified":"2013-10-08T20:55:52","modified_gmt":"2013-10-08T20:55:52","slug":"exploring-the-popularization-of-the-mixed-race-american","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=13432","title":{"rendered":"Exploring the Popularization of the Mixed Race American"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/humanexperience.stanford.edu\/mixedrace\" target=\"_blank\">Exploring the Popularization of the Mixed Race American<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/humanexperience.stanford.edu\" target=\"_blank\">The Human Experience: Inside the Humanities at Stanford University<br \/>\n<\/a>2011-04-22<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xWBBORbcpVQ?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em>Stanford Scholar Investigates the \u201cMulatto Millennium\u201d through Literature, Theatre, Art, &amp; Pop Culture<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The United States has its first mixed race president, a man with a black African father and white American mother. Actress Halle Barry, golfer Tiger Woods, rocker Lenny Kravitz and singer Alicia Keyes\u2014all people acknowledging a blended racial heritage\u2014are household names. Since the 2000 U.S Census granted the MOOM (mark one or more) racial option, mixed race advocacy groups have gained political visibility and influence. Are there proportionally more mixed race Americans today then say twenty years ago? Or has something changed about how Americans see mixed race, thereby contributing to the increased prominence of the mixed race American in our country\u2019s landscape?<\/p>\n<p>In considering those questions, Stanford University English professor <a href=\"https:\/\/english.stanford.edu\/people\/michele-elam\" target=\"_blank\">Michele Elam<\/a> analyzed why and with what effect those identified (and identifying) as mixed race in the U.S. have gained such tremendous cultural cachet in the last decade.<\/p>\n<p>Looking beyond the usual explanations for the increased visibility of mixed race people, such as immigration trends and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=415\" target=\"_blank\">the 1967 Supreme Court Loving Decision lifting bans on interracial marriage<\/a>, Elam is interested in how contemporary literature, theatre, art and popular culture are re-shaping the way we perceive and understand mixed race in the new millennium. The creative works she examines in <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=9628\" target=\"_blank\">The Souls of Mixed Folk: Race, Politics, and Aesthetics in the New Millennium<\/a><\/em>, released by Stanford University Press in March, include comic strips, novels, art exhibitions, websites, theater, and even Comedy Central late night TV&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;\u201cI started noticing more the popularization of certain kinds of images of mixed race people in media,\u201d a popularity that extended into education curricula, from children\u2019s books on how to raise a mixed race kindergartener through to college courses in \u201cmixed race studies\u201d Elam explained when discussing what inspired her to research mixed race in America. \u201cI also noticed there wasn\u2019t a lot of conversation about what impact these cultural works are having on our society, I would like to see more attention to literature, performance and art that is using the debates about mixed race to think more carefully about race\u2019s saliency in the new millennium.&#8221;&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong>&#8230;Artists and Writers Help to Define what it means to be Biracial<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>To get a sense of Elam\u2019s wide-ranging scholarship, start by looking at the cartoon displayed on the outside of her office door. It\u2019s a copy of one of <em><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Boondocks_(comic_strip)\" target=\"_blank\">The Boondocks<\/a><\/em> cartoons created by social satirist <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Aaron_McGruder\" target=\"_blank\">Aaron McGruder<\/a> containing a pointed message about the issues biracial people encounter. In the comic, mixed race pre-teen Jazmine sits alone in a grassy field, lamenting that she feels so different from everyone else, even though her parents assure her that her blended background makes her special. Then the strip\u2019s realist, Huey, appears and bluntly declares: \u201cYou\u2019re black. Get over it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Elam said the strip sparked anger among some mixed race advocacy group members who were upset because the Huey character so flatly dismissed Jazmine\u2019s desire to be biracial.\u00a0 \u201cThat\u2019s why I put it out there, somewhat as a provocation and also kind of as an illustration of the pop cultural engagements with mixed race that I think are interesting,\u201d Elam said.<\/p>\n<p>Her examination extends to other artwork, including <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mulattonation.com\/Materialism.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Baby Halfie<\/a>, the unique doll sitting on her office desk that she says no child would ever love.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=9628\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.sup.org\/html\/book_covers_large\/0804756309.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The toy\u2019s look is arresting, a mahogany-hued baby head atop a pudgy, nude, white-skinned infant body.\u00a0 The plaything was part of an exhibition by African-American assemblage artist <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mulattonation.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Lezley Saar<\/a> that is now visible on Saar\u2019s web site <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=9642\" target=\"_blank\">mulattonation.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBaby Halfie\u2019s arms are raised high as if asking to be lifted up for parental comfort and affirmation, but I suspect no parents will embrace it, let alone purchase it for their tots in hopes of inspiring proud mixed race identification or development empowerment\u2014and that is no doubt precisely the point,\u201d Elam writes in <em>The Souls of Mixed Folks<\/em>. \u201cThe doll is not an effort to capture how a person of mixed black and white descent might actually appear in the flesh. Its creative affront provides a vivid example of the alternative progressive directions for mixed race art and activism in the post-civil rights era that are at the center of this book.\u201d&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/humanexperience.stanford.edu\/mixedrace\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Exploring the Popularization of the Mixed Race American The Human Experience: Inside the Humanities at Stanford University 2011-04-22 Stanford Scholar Investigates the \u201cMulatto Millennium\u201d through Literature, Theatre, Art, &amp; Pop Culture The United States has its first mixed race president, a man with a black African father and white American mother. Actress Halle Barry, golfer [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,125,8,394,20,25],"tags":[1386,3233,6057],"class_list":["post-13432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-socialscience","category-usa","category-women","tag-michele-elam","tag-stanford-university","tag-the-human-experience-inside-the-humanities-at-stanford-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13432\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}