Mixed Race Studies

Academia hasn’t “radicalized” me, it’s woken me up.

Andrew Joseph Pegoda, A.B.D.
2015-11-25

Andrew Joseph Pegoda

Society regularly miss-labels academics “radicals in the ivory tower,” especially those who work in the Liberal Arts, as they tend to be very aware of everyday culture and life. This wrath from society targets people, regardless of degrees or jobs, who voice unpopular opinions or who ask hard questions. And the more a person falls outside of the White Cis-Male Heterosexual Able-bodied Fundamentalist-Protestant paradigm the more likely he/she will be criticized and placed in the “radical” box…

Read the entire article here.

bell hooks, Rethinking Everything, and Colorism – Hidden Power of Words Series, #13

Andrew Joseph Pegoda, A.B.D.
2014-11-22

Andrew Joseph Pegoda
Department of History
University of Houston, Houston, Texas

bell hooks continues to transform my thinking and understanding of all things related to critical theory and History. I have completely fallen in love with her conceptualization of the White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy.

Yesterday I was listening to this talk (which is excellent!) between hooks and Gloria Steinem, and the word “colorism” caught my attention. “Colorism” is not a word I had heard before, but it sounded intriguing. One of the things I love about learning is that you are always learning something new, and in this case, something that “makes so much sense.”

A search on Google does not reveal any substantial results, but the basic idea that colorism is discrimination based on the hue of a person’s skin (similar to but different than phenotype) was clear and is, potentially, a revolutionary concept for my thinking, writing, and teaching.

Given how much scholars in the Liberal Arts preach that race is a social construction, not a biological reality; that race does not exist but racism does exist, students frequently say, with full sincerity, how can we have racism if race does not exist. Or, they will say, “clearly we all have different skin colors, how do you “explain” that away.” For a while, I learned to frame this with the following explanation: No one is white or black, but they can be and are racialized as White or Black…

Read the entire article here.

Scholars are sometimes (inappropriately) criticized for being activist at the same time they are scholars. More and more often it is accepted and embraced they not only can we be both but that we should be both: that being passionate about what we write about makes for better scholarship. [Yaba] Blay’s work is also an excellent example of how one can be both a scholar and an activists at the same time and be successful at both.

Andrew Joseph Pegoda, “(1)ne Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race: A Review and Reflection,” Andrew Joseph Pegoda, A.B.D., (November 23, 2013). http://andrewpegoda.com/2013/11/23/1ne-drop-shifting-the-lens-on-race-a-review-and-reflection.

(1)ne Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race: A Review and Reflection

Andrew Joseph Pegoda, A.B.D.
2013-11-23

Andrew Joseph Pegoda
Department of History
University of Houston, Houston, Texas

Yaba Blay and Noelle Théard (dir. of photography), (1)ne Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race (Philadelphia: BLACKprint Press, 2013)

Yaba Blay’s (1)ne Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race (2014) is a beautiful, first-hand look at the true complexities surrounding the ways in which societies and peoples racialize one another and the ways in which these are institutionalized. Due to an ambiguous and vastly tangled web of psychological, historical, and countless other reasons, everyday life tends to be highly racialized.

The United States was built on a foundation of “White” being good and “Black” being bad. Of “White” meaning liberty and freedom and “Black” meaning enslavement. These assumptions and corresponding racism are so interwoven into every aspect of society (similar to a cake – the sugar, for example, is everywhere in the cake but not at all directly detectable) that they go largely unnoticed and unquestioned…

…These essays also show a rare sense of raw honesty, so to speak. Some of the writers, for example, discuss how they used society’s stereotypes or expectations of what White or Black meant to the exclusion of others. Essays strongly convey why and how people have a fear of Blackness, as some respond to someone saying “I’m Black” with “no, you’re not Black,” and essays also show how complicated manifestations of Whiteness and White Privilege really are. Some of the accounts explain how “race” changes according to how people fixes their hair, what country they are in, or by who they are specifically around at a given moment…

…The personal accounts answer much more than what it means to be Black. Indeed, the individuals in this book show how unsatisfactory the term Black really is. In the United States, all too often we consider in a highly subjective process anyone with skin of a certain hue to be an African American. This pattern of thinking is far too simple, and it is inaccurate…

…Scholars are sometimes (inappropriately) criticized for being activist at the same time they are scholars. More and more often it is accepted and embraced they not only can we be both but that we should be both: that being passionate about what we write about makes for better scholarship. Blay’s work is also an excellent example of how one can be both a scholar and an activists at the same time and be successful at both…

Read the entire review here.

Whiteness, History, and Comments about George Zimmerman

Andrew Joseph Pegoda, A.B.D.
2013-07-17

Andrew Joseph Pegoda
Department of History
University of Houston

Events and things in history frequently involve what I call the “realms of illogic.” It’s not gonna make sense. “Race” is one of these. This posting is an attempt to address how people are classified as white or not and why Zimmerman is actually “white.” Absolutely no offense is intended by the use of racialized terms here and the various ways I discuss, describe, and classify them. This posting discusses how these racialized terms are used in society and the consequences they have.

In the United States, in most cases with brief exceptions from around the 1860s to the 1920s, people have been socially and politically classified/racialized as either white or black – sometimes Indian, Asian, and more recently Middle Eastern and Hispanic are added in.

Generally, no one literally has white skin. Likewise, people usually do not have skin that is literally black. People, clearly, do have skin color; however, these colors very greatly.

In reference to racialized thoughts, “white” and “black,” then, clearly do not refer to colors. This makes said racialized discourses doubly odd and tricky for the human brain. On the one hand, we know that “race” does not actually exist at all on a biological level. On the other hand, the use of colors to define different races is odd in terms of the signifier, signified, and semantics, for example.

Who is “white” or not “white” is not always cut and dry. Ascribed statuses, achieved statuses, and time and place play a factor. “Whiteness” is something to recognize and something to consider. People have various degrees of whiteness, and this whiteness gives people unfounded, automatic “white privilege.”…

Read the entire article here.