{"id":46670,"date":"2016-04-21T19:39:29","date_gmt":"2016-04-21T19:39:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=46670"},"modified":"2017-05-03T17:17:18","modified_gmt":"2017-05-03T17:17:18","slug":"the-myth-of-transracial-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=46670","title":{"rendered":"The Myth of Transracial Identity"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Myth of Transracial Identity<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The Humanist<\/a>
\n2016-04-18<\/p>\n

Sincere Kirabo<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Ninety years ago, writer Carl Van Vechten<\/a> published a novel intended to be a celebration of Harlem<\/a>, which at the time was experiencing a budding literary, artistic, and intellectual movement<\/a> that sparked a new cultural identity for Black America.<\/p>\n

Van Vechten\u2019s vivid and nuanced tale granted white America a voyeur pass to \u201cthe great black walled city\u201d of Harlem. There was only one problem: Van Vechten was a white man. Worse, to further inspire exposure over this willful exploit, which he referred to as his \u201cNegro novel,\u201d Van Vechten decided to name his roman \u00e0 clef<\/a> after an expression used to describe the balcony seating of Blacks in the era of overt segregation: Nigger Heaven<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Juxtapose this unauthorized thievery of select cultural expressions of an oppressed minority group with a present-day example. Last summer, educator and NAACP<\/a> chapter president Rachel Dolezal <\/a>was exposed as a white woman portraying herself as being Black. A torrent of media coverage and interviews ensued. Seemingly for the first time, the US was obsessed with the plight of a Black woman, except that the attention centered on a white woman who donned blackface and frizzy hairpieces…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ninety years ago, writer Carl Van Vechten published a novel intended to be a celebration of Harlem, which at the time was experiencing a budding literary, artistic, and intellectual movement that sparked a new cultural identity for Black America.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,8413,8,20],"tags":[8949,20257,20241,23604,10233,23603],"class_list":["post-46670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-communications","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-carl-van-vechten","tag-rachel-a-dolezal","tag-rachel-dolezal","tag-sincere-kirabo","tag-the-humanist","tag-thehumanist-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46670","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=46670"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53765,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46670\/revisions\/53765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}