When I learned more about his family, I understood a bit more not just the pressures he must have felt in passing for white, but also the strange, unsettling feeling it must have been to identify with a group of people historically known as Free People of Color, or Mulatto, or Creoles.

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

Having your core ‘Irishness’ questioned raises issues when attempting to get to grips with your own sense of self.

As a teenager, I referred to myself as white, perhaps in an attempt to fit in with my peers.

Today I define myself as half-white, half-Asian, but no less Irish.

Dean Van Nguyen, “Half-white, half-Asian, but no less Irish,” The Irish Examiner, August 15, 2015. http://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/features/half-white-half-asian-but-no-less-irish-348324.html.

When I learned more about his family, I understood a bit more not just the pressures he must have felt in passing for white, but also the strange, unsettling feeling it must have been to identify with a group of people historically known as Free People of Color, or Mulatto, or Creoles.

Michael Tisserand: When I learned more about his family, I understood a bit more not just the pressures he [George Herriman] must have felt in passing for white, but also the strange, unsettling feeling it must have been to identify with a group of people historically known as Free People of Color, or Mulatto, or Creoles… a group that constantly was seeing its very identity being changed legally and linguistically and culturally. And then for Herriman to work in a genre so deeply influenced by the masks of minstrelsy! When I read a classic Krazy Kat line such as “lenguage is that we may mis-unda-stend each udda,” it seems pretty clear that Herriman had a deep understanding of what we now consider to be modern notions of the slipperiness of language and a sort of permeability of identity…

Paul Tumey,“A “Konversation” with George Herriman’s Biographer, Michael Tisserand (Part One),” The Comics Journal, November 14, 2016. http://www.tcj.com/a-konversation-with-george-herrimans-biographer-michael-tisserand-part-one/.

Tags: Comics Journal, George Herriman, Krazy Kat, Michael Tisserand, Paul Tumey, The Comics Journal

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Mixed Race Studies

When I learned more about his family, I understood a bit more not just the pressures he must have felt in passing for white, but also the strange, unsettling feeling it must have been to identify with a group of people historically known as Free People of Color, or Mulatto, or Creoles.

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