Mixed Race Studies

Professor Dorothy Roberts — Challenging Concepts of Race

Mixed Race Radio
Blog Talk Radio
2013-06-26, 16:00Z (12:00 EDT)

Tiffany Rae Reid, Host

Dorothy E. Roberts, George A. Weiss University Professor of Law and Sociology; Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights
University of Pennsylvania

Dorothy Roberts is the fourteenth Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor, George A. Weiss University Professor, and the inaugural Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights at University of Pennsylvania, where she holds appointments in the Law School and Departments of Africana Studies and Sociology. An internationally recognized scholar, public intellectual, and social justice advocate, she has written and lectured extensively on the interplay of gender, race, and class in legal issues and has been a leader in transforming public thinking and policy on reproductive health, child welfare, and bioethics.

Professor Roberts is the author of the award-winning books Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty (Random House/Pantheon, 1997) and Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare (Basic Books/Civitas, 2002), as well as co-editor of six books on constitutional law and gender. She has also published more than eighty articles and essays in books and scholarly journals, including Harvard Law Review, Yale Law Journal, and Stanford Law Review.  Her latest book, Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century, was published by the New Press in July 2011.

For more information, click here.

Mixed-Race People Fastest Growing Group, Census Data Shows

KPIX 5 (CBS)
San Francisco, California
2013-06-14

Elizabeth Cook, Co-Anchor

Ryan Takeo, Reporter

The face of the nation is changing rapidly, as Census data shows mixed-race people are the fastest-growing ethnic group. Ryan Takeo reports.

Note from Steven F. Riley:

• Features San Francisco State University Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies and American Indian Studies, Andrew Jolivétte.
• Reporter Elizabeth Cook incorrectly states that 15% of all marriages are mixed. According to a 2012 Pew Research Center report, 15% of all new marriages in 2010 were mixed.  Pew reports that in 2010, 8.4% of all married couples were mixed regardless of when they married.

Whither White America?

The American Prospect
2013-06-13

Jamelle Bouie

More thoughts on the future of white people.

“Majority-minority” is an unusual term—by definition, minorities are no longer such if they’re in the majority—but it’s a convenient shorthand for what most people expect to happen in the United States over the next few decades. A growing population of nonwhites—driven by Asian and Latino immigration—will yield a country where most Americans have nonwhite heritage, thus “majority-minority.”

The most recent analysis from the Census Bureau seems to bear this out. Last year was the first year that whites were a minority of all newborns, and based on current rates of growth, they’ll become a minority of the under–five set by next year, if not the end of this one. Overall, the government projects that within five years, minorities will compromise a majority of all Americans under the age of eighteen, something to keep in mind when trying to project future political support for both parties…

…One fact stands out in all of this, however. The fastest growing group of Americans—by far—fall under the “multiracial category.” If past research is any indication, these Americans are likely the product of intermarriage between whites and Hispanics (the most common interracial pairing) or whites and Asians (the next most common one). While we identify them as nonwhite, we don’t know how they’ll identify themselves in the future.

My hunch is that—as (certain groups of) Latinos and Asians integrate themselves into American life—a good number will identify themselves as white, with Hispanic or Asian heritage, in the same way that many white Americans point to their Irish or Italian backgrounds…

Read the entire article here.

A Dreadful Deceit: The Myth of Race from the Colonial Era to Obama’s America

Basic Books
2013-12-10
384 pages
Hardback ISBN-13: 9780465036707

Jacqueline Jones, Mastin Gentry White Professor of Southern History
University of Texas, Austin

In 1656, a planter in colonial Maryland tortured and killed one of his slaves, an Angolan man named Antonio who refused to work the fields. Over three centuries later, a Detroit labor organizer named Simon Owens watched as strikebreakers wielding bats and lead pipes beat his fellow autoworkers for protesting their inhumane working conditions. Antonio and Owens had nothing in common but the color of their skin and the economic injustices they battled—yet the former is what defines them in America’s consciousness. In A Dreadful Deceit, award-winning historian Jacqueline Jones traces the lives of these two men and four other African Americans to reveal how the concept of race has obscured the factors that truly divide and unite us.

Expansive, visionary, and provocative, A Dreadful Deceit explodes the pernicious fiction that has shaped American history.

Not Quite White: Arabs, Slavs, and the Contours of Contested Whiteness

Typecast Releasing
2012
USA
English
24 minutes

Jamil Khoury, Director and Writer

Stephen Combs, Director

Inspired by Jamil Khoury’s short play WASP: White Arab Slovak Pole, Not Quite White: Arabs, Slavs, and the Contours of Contested Whiteness is a thought-provoking documentary that explores the complicated relationship of Arab and Slavic immigrants to American notions of whiteness.

The film integrates scenes from WASP alongside interviews with Arab American and Polish American academics who reflect upon contested and probationary categories of whiteness and the use of anti-Black racism as a “whitening” dye.

In Not Quite White, Jamil Khoury (Artistic Director of Chicago’s Silk Road Rising) draws upon his own Arab (Syrian) and Slavic (Polish and Slovak) heritage as the lens through which to investigate the broader issue of immigrants achieving whiteness and hence qualifying as “fully American.” The film advances society’s on-going conversations about the meaning of whiteness and efforts at redefining whiteness.

Not just for white people, and not just for Arabs and Slavs, Not Quite White proceeds from the assumption that whiteness affects all our lives and that we all need to critically engage whiteness. “Whiteness has everything to do with melanin and pigmentation and it has nothing to do with melanin and pigmentation,” Khoury observes. “Whiteness is about power and borders and authorship. And whiteness can, and does, change.”

The academics featured in Not Quite White include: Roxane Assaf, Adjunct Faculty, School of the Art Institute of Chicago; Ann Hetzel Gunkel, Director of Cultural Studies, Columbia College Chicago; John Tofik Karam, Assistant Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies, De Paul University; Dominic A. Pacyga, Professor of History, Columbia College Chicago.

DVD copies also include On Whiteness, a 16-minute video essay in which writer and co-director Jamil Khoury discusses the themes and ideas presented in his film. Khoury’s short film both/and is also available from Typecast here.

Dr. J .T. Mills: Helping Students Explore Concepts of Race

Mixed Race Radio
Blog Talk Radio
2013-06-19, 16:00Z (12:00 EDT)

Tiffany Rae Reid, Host

John T. Mills, Assistant Director of Multicultural Affairs
Rowan University, Glassboro, New Jersery

Legitimate knowledge regarding the construction of race in America is absent in today’s youth and college aged students. It is imperative to have an understanding of the fluidity of race in America and its context to the systems that perpetuate the ongoing racial divisions in communities and disparities in health care, economic prosperity, and everyday interactions, for example.

Such clarity for these issues is overshadowed by the notion of post racialism in this society that teaches us to avoid or suppress such discussions in the axiom of “political correctness.”  One only needs to look to the President of the United States who is described as the first African American/Black man to hold that office when he is in reality bi-racial. Moreover, the complexity of race in the United States can further be interrogated in his self identification because he is aware of the social, political, and global lenses that identify him as a man of color over his White ancestry.

It is in this context that Dr. Mills works to create environments and opportunities for students to explore the nuances of race and race relations in America in the hopes of creating an awareness that would bring about greater understanding among and between all people.

These discussions then must begin with analyzing why and how race came about in this country during the 17th and 18th centuries during the economic development of the United States when there was much more cross racial cooperation and even harmony at one point than our history books tell us. Blacks, Whites, and Native American Indians intermingled to create a nation and have had more historical commonalities that is being taught and that needs to be addressed to expose the modern forms of raced based oppression that exists today.

For more information, click here.

Are you a biracial/mulitraical individual?

Tufts University
Social Psychology Program at Tufts University
2013-06-18

Sarah Gaither, M.S. (E-Mail)

Are you biracial/multiracial or mixed race? We are looking for people to complete a short online study (around 10 minutes long) in exchange for a chance at $25.00 USD. The study will involve providing some ratings about a hypothetical person. We need mixed-race people in particular.

To begin the online study, click here.

Thanks so much for your interest in our study!

A Continent Divided: The U.S.-Mexico War

Center for Greater Southwestern Studies
University of Texas at Arlington
2013-06-18

The Center for Greater Southwestern Studies at the University of Texas at Arlington announces the launch of a new website, A Continent Divided: The U.S.-Mexico War. Drawn from the holdings of UT Arlington’s Special Collections, long recognized as one of the premier archives on the war, the website features a broad range of primary source materials, as well as explanatory text on the events of 1846-1848. Dedicated to presenting the war as a bi-national conflict, the website currently features more than 50 translated Mexican broadsides, dealing with such topics as the fall of the Herrera government in 1845, the Polkos Revolt, and the post-war occupation of Mexico City.
 
A Continent Divided is an ongoing, multi-year digital humanities project which, when completed, will offer one of the most comprehensive internet resources available on the U.S.-Mexico War.

For more information, click here.

Of Racism and Remembrance

Common-Place
A Common Place, an Uncommon Voice
Volume 1, Number 4, July 2001

Aaron Garrett, Associate Professor of Philosophy
Boston University

Is interest in the racism of past and hallowed philosophers and statesmen the obsession of a politically correct society gone amok? Or is it an acknowledgement of the ways in which the racist ideas of our forebears still hold sway over our present social and political concerns? Does the racism of a thinker like Thomas Jefferson irremediably infect his writings and his legacy? Must it stalk him, creeping from century to century?

These sorts of questions rage around Jefferson. Clearly the third president means a great deal to many Americans. Since his death in 1826—and even before it—the “American Sphinx” has been invoked in countless contexts and to countless purposes. And Jefferson’s slaveholding and his attitudes towards race have been debated on-and-off for nearly two hundred years. But no aspect of Jefferson’s life has been more hotly contested than his relationship with Sally Hemings, his house slave and purported mistress as well as his wife’s illegitimate half sister. As historian Winthrop Jordan has put it, “What is historically important about the Hemings-Jefferson affair is that it has seemed to many Americans to have mattered.”

Yet it’s not at all clear what Thomas Jefferson’s political legacy, his racist writings, his slaveholding, his proclamations against slavery, his fear of miscegenation, and his (apparently) active miscegenation mean to us when taken together. Why do we care about this, particularly the purported relationship with Hemings, and what is it precisely we are caring about?…

Read the entire article here.

Solo Show at 2013 Hollywood Fringe Festival Examines Notions of Racial Identity

Contact: Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni
Email: onedropoflove@gmail.com
Website: http://www.onedropoflove.com/
May 2013

(Los Angeles, Calif.) — When actress and playwright Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni married the love of her life in 2006, her father did not walk her down the aisle. In fact, he declined to attend the wedding altogether.

Seeking to understand why he chose not to participate, DiGiovanni began a trek through family history — and time and space — that ultimately led to her M.F.A. thesis project: the multimedia one-woman play, “One Drop of Love: A Daughter’s Search for Her Father’s Racial Approval.”

DiGiovanni will perform the hour-long show on Friday, June 21st at 2:30 p.m., Friday, June 28th at 4:15 p.m. and Sunday, June 30th at 6:00 p.m. at the Lounge Theatres (www.hollywoodfringe.org/venues/11). The cost of the two Friday perrformances is $12 per ticket. The Sunday show is a fundraiser for MASC – Multiracial Americans of Southern California (www.mascsite.org) – all proceeds ($15 per ticket) will go to MASC. This show is also a Los Angeles celebration of Loving Day (www.lovingday.org).

Incorporating filmed images, photographs, and animation DiGiovanni tells the story of how the notion of race came into existence in the United States, and its effects on her relationship with her father. To tell her story, DiGiovanni travels back in time to the first US census in 1790, to cities across the United States, and to West and East Africa, where both father and daughter spent time in search of their racial roots. A leading activist on issues related to mixed cultures and ethnicities, DiGiovanni is an actor, comedian, producer, and educator. She developed “One Drop of Love” as the thesis project for her Master of Fine Arts degree in film, television, and theater from California State University Los Angeles. She will use footage from her performances—the most recent was at the University of California, Santa Barbara—to produce a documentary film. DiGiovanni, who appeared in the Academy Award-winning film “Argo,” is also the co-creator, co-producer, and co-host of the award-winning weekly podcast Mixed Chicks Chat, and co-founder and co-producer of the Mixed Roots Fm & Literary Festival^®.

Read the entire press release here.