Mixed Race Studies

Little White Lie [Philadelphia Premiere]

Blackstar Film Festival
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
2014-31-07 through 2014-08-03

International House Philadelphia
3701 Chestnut Street
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Telephone: 215-387-5125
2014-08-02, 15:10 EDT (Local Time)

Lacey Schwartz, Producer/Director

Mehret Mandefro, Producer

Followed by Q&A with Lacey Schwartz and Mehret Mandefro moderated by:

Yaba Blay, Assistant Teaching Professor of Africana Studies
Drexel University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Co-presented by Leeway Foundation

Little White Lie tells Lacey Schwartz’s story of growing up in a typical middle-class Jewish household in Woodstock, NY, with loving parents and a strong sense of her Jewish identity—that is, until she discovers that her biological father is actually a black man with whom her mother had an affair. This personal documentary raises the questions of what defines our identity, our family of origin and the family that raises us. While exploring her parents’ stories, and her own, Schwartz discovers a legacy of family secrets, denial, and, ultimately, redemption.

For more information, click here.

Positioning of the Mixed Race Author and Mixed Race Protagonist in British Children’s Literature

Critical Pedagogies: Equality and Diversity in a Changing Institution
2014-07-23

Ludovic Foster, Ph.D. Candidate
Department Gender Studies
University of Sussex, United Kingdom

I would like to examine a few of the issues around the positioning of the mixed race child, and mixed race identified author in a literary context. Considering the mixed race child in this context is particularly important and necessary in a society where the marginalization of non- binary identities is embedded within foundational ideologies and power structures of the white supremacist heteropatriarchy in which historically binary ways of thinking have also often been used as a tool of Western colonial oppression. Such hierarchical ideologies have been driven by imperialist, global, capitalist economies for reasons such as nation building. Many of these aforementioned factors have contributed to some societies actively encouraging the perpetration and overwhelming dominance of normative mono sexual, racial and gender identities.

The mixed child as a character could be said to stand as a figure of resistance against such normative symbolism. When writing about the subject of multiracialism, I am conscious of the inherent historical global and cultural changeability and instability of language when it comes to describing mixed race people and it means to be mixed race; and the fact that the term mixed race can describe a wide range and intersections of racial, ethnic and cultural identities such multifold identities that are not dependant on whiteness for validity.

“The term ‘mixed race’ itself may not reflect the complexity of its own formation through historical entanglements and contemporary redefinitions. This may account for the gradual displacement of ‘mixed race’ by a notion of ‘multiraciality’ that points to multiplicity being the form of contemporary identity itself” (Parker, Song 2001: 8). There is a very complex and nuanced global cultural history of people defined as “mixed race,” and I am aware that even the term “mixed race” itself could be seen as upholding a system that gives credibility to the notion of a singular and “pure” mono race. Although I believe that all people are “mixed” to some degree there is a very particular political, cultural and racialized positioning inherent in being identified as first generation mixed race in certain national transnational and global social and economic contexts. I suggest that the global cultural influence of the American hierarchical racial ideology and classification system known as the “one drop rule”, a hypodescent system which is embedded in a history of white supremacy, and the economics of slavery and racial segregation, has had a particular global and cultural impact on the way we think about what it means to have a mix of African and European ancestry…

Read the entire article here.

Are Americans Really in Favor of Interracial Marriage? A Closer Look at When They Are Asked About Black-White Marriage for Their Relatives

Journal of Black Studies
Published online before print: 2014-07-10
DOI: 10.1177/0021934714541840

Yanyi K. Djamba, Director, Center for Demographic Research; Professor of Sociology
Auburn University, Montgomery, Alabama

Sitawa R. Kimuna, Associate Professor of Sociology
East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina

This study transcends general opinion reports and uses data from the General Social Survey (GSS) to examine responses on attitudinal questions about how Black and White Americans actually feel about their close relative marrying outside their own race. The results show that more than half (54%) of Black Americans are in favor of their close relative marrying a White person compared with nearly one-in-four (26%) White Americans who said they were in favor of their close relative marrying a Black person. Such results suggest that questions about how individuals feel when close relatives engage into Black-White marriage provide better measures of attitude toward racial exogamy. Logistic regression models are analyzed to determine how socio-demographic factors influence Black and White Americans’ views on interracial marriage of their close relatives.

Read or purchase article here.

The sweetness of forbidden fruit: Interracial daters are more attractive than intraracial daters

Journal of Social and Personal Relationships
Published online: 2014-07-09
DOI: 10.1177/0265407514541074

Karen Wu
Department of Psychology and Social Behavior
University of California, Irvine

Chuansheng Chen, Professor of Psychology & Social Behavior and Education
University of California, Irvine

Ellen Greenberger, Research Professor and Professor Emerita of Psychology & Social Behavior
University of California, Irvine

Past research on interracial dating has focused on demographic and adjustment factors while ignoring the traits most valued in romantic partners. We examined whether interracial and intraracial daters differ in the extent to which they possess various desirable attributes. In Study 1, undergraduates estimated their partners’ ratings of them on 27 attributes. A factor analysis yielded attractiveness (e.g., physically attractive), cerebral (e.g., intelligent), relational (e.g., compassionate), and vibrancy (e.g., confident) attributes. Compared with intraracial daters, interracial daters reported that their partners saw them more positively on attractiveness, cerebral, and relational attributes (Study 1), rated their partners more positively on attractiveness and cerebral attributes (Study 2), and were rated by independent coders as more physically attractive (Study 3). Implications are discussed.

Read or purchase the article here.

Attorney General Holder is right: Racial animus plays role in Obama opposition

Southern Poverty Law Center
2014-07-16

Morris Dees, Founder, Chief Trial Attorney

Right-wing pundits are jumping all over Attorney General Eric Holder for daring to suggest on Sunday that “racial animus” plays a role in the “level of vehemence” that’s been directed at President Obama. They’re denouncing him for “playing the race card” and “stoking racial divisions.”

Who do they think they’re fooling?…

…And, we’ve seen an explosive growth of radical-right groups, including armed militias, since Obama was elected, and repeated threats that violence is needed to “take our country back” from the “tyranny” of Obama. This is part of a backlash to the growing diversity in our country, as symbolized by the presence of a black man in the White House…

Read the entire article here.

CA+T Interview with Laura Kina

Center for Art and Thought
2014-09-07

Rachel Ishikawa, CA+T Interviewer

Laura Kina, Vincent de Paul Professor Art, Media, & Design
DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois

Rachel Ishikawa: When did art begin for you?

Laura Kina: My mom. She had been a double major in art and sociology in undergrad and worked for a time as a technical illustrator for Boeing’s aerospace division. I was born in Riverside, CA, in 1973, and when I was just two years old she turned our enclosed sun porch into an art studio for me, gave me a big paintbrush, a pile of red paint and rolls of butcher paper to go crazy on. I was painting before I could really talk or write. Making art became my initial way of processing the world around me. In 1976 my little sister Alison was born with Down’s Syndrome, so we moved to a little Norwegian town in the Pacific Northwest called Poulsbo, WA to be near my mom’s parents but also so my dad could set up a private practice as a family practitioner and OGBYN [OBGYN] [obstetrician-gynecologist]. I learned how to sew from my great grandma, Ethel “Nanny” Smiley. She was a professional seamstress. I spent a lot of time playing in the woods, building forts, drawing, and using my imagination and also doing manual chores (yard work, gardening, canning) that one has to do living in the country. I think that really influenced my inclination toward making things with my hands. This was the late 1970s, and one of my house chores was to rake our ochre yellow shag carpet into this Zen like perfection. That was probably my first contemporary artwork!…

…RI: Many of your pieces have a connection to your identity as a “hapa, yonsei, Uchinanchu.” At the same time they are historically rooted. How does the personal, political, and historical function within your work?

LK: Being multiracial (my mother is “white” –Spanish-Basque on her mother’s side and French, English, Scottish, Irish, and Dutch on her father’s side) has been a fundamental experience for me both in terms of how I’m perceived and treated but also in terms of how I understand myself and the world around me. I grew up in a predominantly White and Native American community, and there were not too many other Asians or other mixed kids around so I was hyper aware of being different. On one hand, being multiracial was celebrated as a sign of racial progress and being the “best of both worlds.” We were accepted, but then people would ask, “What are you?” or “Where are you really from?” or say things like “You look so exotic,” which would imply that maybe I didn’t belong. The fact of the matter is that I could be a member of the Daughter’s of the American Revolution. Our relatives were French mercenaries in the American Revolutionary War. I’m related to James Knox Polk, the eleventh president of the US, and to the Confederate Major General George Pickett, who lost the Battle of Gettysburg…

Read the entire interview in HTML or PDF.