{"id":56607,"date":"2018-06-30T03:08:21","date_gmt":"2018-06-30T03:08:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=56607"},"modified":"2018-06-30T03:08:59","modified_gmt":"2018-06-30T03:08:59","slug":"for-anyone-who-is-doubtful-of-the-sheer-absurdity-of-racial-categorization-and-the-porousness-of-our-supposed-boundaries-the-piper-family-history-can-be-instructive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=56607","title":{"rendered":"For anyone who is doubtful of the sheer absurdity of racial categorization and the porousness of our supposed boundaries, the Piper family history can be instructive."},"content":{"rendered":"

For anyone who<\/strong> is doubtful of the sheer absurdity of racial categorization and the porousness of our supposed boundaries, the Piper family history can be instructive. Adrian Margaret Smith Piper<\/a> was born in 1948 in Washington Heights<\/a>, and raised there and on Riverside Drive<\/a>. On her paternal side, she is the product of a long line of whites and extremely light-skinned, straight-haired black property owners and, on her mother Olive\u2019s side, mixed-race, planter-class Jamaican immigrants. Her father, Daniel, received two separate and contradictory birth certificates. The first one labeled him as \u201cwhite,\u201d while the second, which his mother demanded as a corrective, put him down as \u201coctoroon<\/a>.\u201d (At MoMA<\/a>, they are hung on the wall, as part of the installation of \u201cCornered.\u201d) Piper\u2019s paternal grandfather, also Daniel, went the opposite route after the birth of his second, slightly darker son, Billy, abandoning his wife and children and moving out West<\/a> to start a new \u201cwhite\u201d family in Washington State<\/a>. Daniel Sr.\u2019s brother, Piper\u2019s great-uncle, William<\/a>, lived his life as a Caucasian man of distinction<\/a>, founding the Piper Aircraft Corporation<\/a> and making his name as \u201cthe Henry Ford<\/a> of Aviation.\u201d He ended up with his face on a postage stamp<\/a> and a fortune big enough to endow a building at his alma mater, Harvard.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thomas Chatterton Williams, \u201cAdrian Piper\u2019s Show at MoMA is the Largest Ever for a Living Artist. Why Hasn\u2019t She Seen It?<\/a>\u201d The New York Times Magazine<\/em>, June 27, 2018. https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/06\/27\/magazine\/adrian-pipers-self-imposed-exile-from-america-and-from-race-itself.html<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For anyone who is doubtful of the sheer absurdity of racial categorization and the porousness of our supposed boundaries, the Piper family history can be instructive. Adrian Margaret Smith Piper was born in 1948 in Washington Heights, and raised there and on Riverside Drive. On her paternal side, she is the product of a long […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[28806,2938,2640,8894,2327,13109,4725,28807],"class_list":["post-56607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-excerpts","tag-adrian-margaret-smith-piper","tag-adrian-piper","tag-new-york-times","tag-new-york-times-magazine","tag-the-new-york-times","tag-the-new-york-times-magazine","tag-thomas-chatterton-williams","tag-william-t-piper"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56607","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=56607"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56608,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56607\/revisions\/56608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}