{"id":41232,"date":"2015-05-27T01:25:01","date_gmt":"2015-05-27T01:25:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=41232"},"modified":"2015-05-27T01:25:01","modified_gmt":"2015-05-27T01:25:01","slug":"novelist-mat-johnson-explores-the-optical-illusion-of-being-biracial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=41232","title":{"rendered":"Novelist Mat Johnson Explores The &#8216;Optical Illusion&#8217; Of Being Biracial"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/codeswitch\/2015\/05\/24\/408791207\/novelist-mat-johnson-explores-the-optical-illusion-of-being-biracial\" target=\"_blank\">Novelist Mat Johnson Explores The &#8216;Optical Illusion&#8217; Of Being Biracial<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/programs\/weekend-edition-sunday\/\" target=\"_blank\">Weekend Edition Sunday<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\" target=\"_blank\">National Public Radio<\/a><br \/>\n2015-05-24<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/player\/embed\/408791207\/409210220\" width=\"100%\" height=\"290\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Growing up in <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Philadelphia\" target=\"_blank\">Philadelphia<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.matjohnson.info\/\" target=\"_blank\">Mat Johnson<\/a> lived mostly with his mother in a black neighborhood. The son of an African-American mother and an Irish-American father, his skin was so light that he might have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=5864\" target=\"_blank\">passed<\/a> for white. But being biracial meant only one thing back in the &#8217;70s: &#8220;Um, it meant: black,&#8221; Johnson says with a laugh. &#8220;There wasn&#8217;t a lot of ambiguity there. I didn&#8217;t hear the world biracial or didn&#8217;t think of myself as biracial. And when I did hear that, I reacted to it defensively. I thought it was just black people of mixed heritage who were just trying to run away from blackness.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Johnson was born three years after <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Loving_Day\" target=\"_blank\">Loving Day<\/a> \u2014 the historic <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=415\" target=\"_blank\">1967 Supreme Court decision<\/a> which made interracial marriage legal. His new novel, <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=41167\" target=\"_blank\">Loving Day<\/a><\/em>, is a funny, sometimes absurd look at what it means to be mixed race in this country.<\/p>\n<p>These days, Johnson has a more nuanced way to describe his racial identity. He says he is a mixed person of African-American descent. But he also uses another, more loaded word, to describe himself: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=451\" target=\"_blank\">mulatto<\/a>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/codeswitch\/2015\/05\/24\/408791207\/novelist-mat-johnson-explores-the-optical-illusion-of-being-biracial\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>. Download the interview <a href=\"http:\/\/pd.npr.org\/anon.npr-mp3\/npr\/wesun\/2015\/05\/20150524_wesun_novelist_mat_johnson_explores_the_optical_illusion_of_being_biracial.mp3\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>. Read the transcript <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/templates\/transcript\/transcript.php?storyId=408791207\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Novelist Mat Johnson Explores The &#8216;Optical Illusion&#8217; Of Being Biracial Weekend Edition Sunday National Public Radio 2015-05-24 Growing up in Philadelphia, Mat Johnson lived mostly with his mother in a black neighborhood. The son of an African-American mother and an Irish-American father, his skin was so light that he might have passed for white. But [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,2850,395,13743,8,20],"tags":[2355,2309,2389],"class_list":["post-41232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-audio","category-autobiography","category-interviews","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-mat-johnson","tag-national-public-radio","tag-weekend-edition-sunday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41232","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=41232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41232\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}