{"id":49769,"date":"2016-11-04T00:56:30","date_gmt":"2016-11-04T00:56:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=49769"},"modified":"2016-11-04T01:18:52","modified_gmt":"2016-11-04T01:18:52","slug":"im-not-the-nanny-multiracial-families-and-colorism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=49769","title":{"rendered":"I\u2019m Not the Nanny: Multiracial Families and Colorism"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m Not the Nanny: Multiracial Families and Colorism<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Book Review
\nThe New York Times<\/a>
\n2016-11-03<\/p>\n

Allyson Hobbs<\/strong><\/a>, Associate Professor of History
\nStanford University<\/em><\/p>\n

SAME FAMILY, DIFFERENT COLORS: Confronting Colorism in America\u2019s Diverse Families<\/strong><\/a>
\nBy Lori L. Tharps<\/a>
\n203 pp. Beacon Press. $25.95.<\/p>\n

In Danzy Senna\u2019s<\/a> 1998 novel \u201cCaucasia<\/a>,\u201d two sisters \u2014 Cole and Birdie \u2014 share a bond so intimate that they create a language only they can understand. Engulfed in the racial chaos of Boston<\/a> in the mid-70s, the sisters nestle themselves away in the cozy world they have created in their attic bedroom. Their lives are forever changed when their mother, a liberal white New Englander, and their father, a black man with radical political leanings, decide to divorce. The sisters are divided: Birdie lives with her mother and essentially passes for white<\/a>, while Cole, who looks black, moves in with her father and his black girlfriend. In a city as racially divided and explosive as Boston in the 1970s, this separation by skin color strikes the reader as a chillingly rational decision.<\/p>\n

Forty years later, America is no longer the bipolar racial regime of black and white that set Birdie and Cole on such different paths. Not only have personal attitudes changed, but the Hart-Celler Act of 1965<\/a> \u2014 which upended American immigration policy by abolishing the quota system based on national origins \u2014 has also transformed the country\u2019s demographic character. The landmark Loving v. Virginia<\/em><\/a> case of 1967 prohibited legal restrictions on interracial marriages. Federal racial classifications now recognize mixed-race identities. But neither Cole nor Birdie would have been widely understood as mixed-race in the 1970s. As Danzy Senna, who is mixed-race, has written of her own experiences during that tumultuous decade: \u201cMixed wasn\u2019t an option. .\u2008.\u2008. No halvsies. No in between.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lori L. Tharps\u2019s<\/a> new book, \u201cSame Family, Different Colors: Confronting Colorism in America\u2019s Diverse Families<\/a>,\u201d is an urgent and honest unveiling of how generations of American families have lived with these changes. Tharps focuses on \u201ccolorism<\/a>,\u201d which she notes is not an official word, but has been defined by Alice Walker<\/a> as \u201cprejudicial or preferential treatment of same-race people based solely on their color.\u201d…<\/p>\n

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

I\u2019m Not the Nanny: Multiracial Families and Colorism Book Review The New York Times 2016-11-03 Allyson Hobbs, Associate Professor of History Stanford University SAME FAMILY, DIFFERENT COLORS: Confronting Colorism in America\u2019s Diverse Families By Lori L. Tharps 203 pp. Beacon Press. $25.95. In Danzy Senna\u2019s 1998 novel \u201cCaucasia,\u201d two sisters \u2014 Cole and Birdie \u2014 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,5,414,8,20],"tags":[9812,240,17955,17956,2640,2327],"class_list":["post-49769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-book-reviews","category-family","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-allyson-hobbs","tag-colorism","tag-lori-l-tharps","tag-lori-tharps","tag-new-york-times","tag-the-new-york-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49769","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=49769"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49769\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49775,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49769\/revisions\/49775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}