Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.
...This analysis shows that the term of choice of most respondents in general population and student samples was ‘mixed race’. Based on the criterion of currency amongst the community described by the terms, ‘mixed race’ is clearly the strongest candidate for those contexts where a conceptual basis of ethnic/racial identity or group allegiance or membership is required. Terms invoking two groups – such as ‘mixed parentage’, ‘dual heritage’, and ‘biracial’ – are preferred by very few and ‘mixed origins’ and ‘mixed heritage’ fare little better, although few find them offensive. Others such as ‘multi-ethnic’ and ‘mixed cultural’ have not entered the popular lexicon. Yet concern about the disputed meaning of race – and the historical legacy of the term – make the widespread adoption of ‘mixed race’ unattractive to some sociologists and anthropologists...
Panel: Exploring the Historical Context for Contemporary Stories of the Mixed Experience
Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival
Japanese American National Musuem
National Center for Democracy, Tateuchi Democracy Forum
2010-06-13, 18:30 to 19:30Z
Ada Copeland, an African-American woman born in Georgia just months before that state seceded from the Union, moved to New York City in the mid-1880s. There, she met a man named James Todd. He was light-skinned, handsome, had a good job for an African-American man in that time — a Pullman porter.
They hit it off, and eventually married. They had five children and a house in Brooklyn. Their story would be unremarkable if not for one detail: Nothing James had told his future wife was true.
“James Todd was really not black, he was not a Pullman porter, and he was not even James Todd,” author Martha Sandweiss tells NPR’s Steve Inskeep. “He was in fact Clarence King, a very well-educated white explorer who was truly a famous man in late 19th century America.”…
…Sandweiss’ book, Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line, examines why King chose to live a double life — and how his experience reflects and represents how Americans, both past and present, have thought about race. In the aftermath of the Civil War, particularly, the U.S. had to recast some of the ways it thought about questions of race and identity…
Rutgers’ Minkah Makalani will share his views on the System of White Supremacy. Minkah Makalani is an assistant professor of history; his primary focus is black radicalism, nationalism, the African diaspora, and social movements. We’ll explore his research on “biracial identity” [non-white people with a White parent]. Professor Makalani has written two standout articles on this subject: Rejecting Blackness, Claiming Whiteness: Anti-Black Whiteness and the Creation of a Biracial Race and A Biracial Identity or a New Race? The Historical Limitations and Political Implications of a Biracial Identity. Much of Professor Makalani’s analysis reveals how non-white people with a White parent frequently make a conscious and/or unconscious effort to distance themselves from black people... in a word, they highlight their Whiteness. We’ll explore the ramifications of this in a System dominated by White Supremacy. PS—Professor Makalani has a White parent.
Interview begins at 00:01:23 and ends at 02:04:47.
Listen here or download the podcast (40.9 MB) here.
I’ll be the featured guest again on the chat. I believe I am the first repeat guest too! I will be discussing my favorite posts on the site… and why you should read them.
Listen to the episode here or download it to your computer here.
We’ll look into how Europe’s economic problems are creating political problems—we’ll check in on the state of the euro and on Greece’s ongoing debt woes. Then, Iranian artist Shirin Neshat talks about her debut feature film “Women Without Men.” Plus Heidi Durow discusses her novel The Girl Who Fell From the Sky. And Please Explain is all about art restoration!
Download the audio clip (00:13:26, 5.4MB) to your computer here.
For more information, click here.
00:05:36 Leonard Lopate: The Bellwether Prize is for works that issues of social justice. You’ve attended law schools as well. Did you write this novel as social commentary?
00:05:47 Heidi Durrow: I wanted to explore this story ’cause I don’t think we talk about it often enough… about multiracial families and biracial identity. We had this great moment during President Obama’s candidacy when we got to talk about ‘biracial’ and the fact that his grandmother was white and his mother was white. And then on Inauguration Day he became our first black African American president. And we lost that opportunity to talk about biracial identity I think.
00:06:13 LL: Well, often when someone is biracial, the decision of the rest of the world is that they’re ‘black’.
00:06:21 HD: Yes. That was my experience.
00:06:21 LL: So Tiger Woods, who saw himself as very much being Asian—we don’t what to talk about his other problems. But anyway, he was automatically ‘black’ and Barack Obama… he’s automatically ‘black’.
00:06:34 HD: And I think that’s fine. I do believe in self-identification. So that when people who are mixed-race decide to be one or the other, I’m absolutely for that. I just feel like, we lose stories when we don’t tell our whole selves.
00:06:48: LL: So what happens when someone like Rachel goes to school and is in classes where pretty much all of her classmates are black?
00:06:57 HD: They don’t understand her in the book. And it’s the same thing for me, they just didn’t understand where I fit… at all. I remember being at home speaking Danish with my mother, having Danish food and then as soon as we opened the door and went outside, I was a black a girl and it erased that whole story, that whole existence that was me…
00:10:54 LL: In addition to writing, you also write a blog with Fanshen Cox called ‘Mixed Girls Chat’.
00:11:00 HD: ‘Mixed Chicks Chat’.
00:11:01 LL: ‘Mixed Chicks’… Okay.
00:11:03 HD: Yeah, and it’s weekly podcast we do every Wednesday. And we talk about being racially and culturally mixed. So we interview people who are in blended families, parents. We had a Harvard scholar on, which is exciting.
00:11:15 LL: I would assume—from what I know—that something like at least 90 percent of all African Americans—maybe 100 percent—are of mixed race.
00:11:26 HD: I think probably we’re all mixed in some way. And that’s what I’m so excited about with this book. ‘Cause I’ve been doing some readings around. And I find that people are sharing the fact that their families are blended… suddenly.
00:11:39 LL: So this is something that would not have been discussed in the past? People would have been forced to just make a choice… say I’m ‘white’ or ‘black’?
00:11:44 HD: I think that’s right… Yeah, I mean, remember the controversy with Michelle Obama’s—I think—great-great grandfather and they discovered that he was biracial. And there was a little bit of controversy about that… I think, because people wanted to say ‘this our first African American First Lady’ and wanted to really hold on to that as opposed to actually sharing the real true story of this man in her past who was biracial as well…
Nikki Khanna, Assistant Professor of Sociology University of Vermont
Dr. Khanna’s primary areas of specialization include race/ethnic relations and social psychology. Her current research draws from both areas and she is particularly interested in studying biracial and multiracial identity. She studies how people racially identify and how identity is shaped and negotiated through social interactions with others in their day-to-day lives.
Dorothy Roberts, Kirkland & Ellis Professor of Law and Professor of African-American Studies Northwestern University
David Goldstein, Professor of Genetics and Director of the Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy Center for Human Genome Variation Duke University
[From Steven F. Riley: This is an excellent "must listen to" discussion!]
As scientists explore the human genome and medicines tailored to particular genes, a provocative question emerges about whether there is a genetic marker that could explain why some treatments work better for different racial groups. And some say the narrow focus on race misses the point of social disparities and what we now know about genetics. (00:54:12)
(Interview suspends at 00:26:40 for a short news update, then restarts at 00:30:23.)
Listen to the broadcast (00:54:12) in a separate window here.
An installment of Tell Me More’s weekly parenting segment focuses on the new book Mixed. It’s a collection of photographs of multiracial children that includes stories celebrating their heritage. Host Michel Martin is joined by the book’s author, Kip Fulbeck, as well as authors Peggy Orenstein and Heidi Durrow, who discuss their own experiences living in multiracial families.
Read the transcript of the interview here. Listen to the interview here.
Note by Steven F. Riley: The term “Hapa” is incorrectly spelled as “Hoppa” in the transcript.
Heidi W. Durrow is a graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and Yale Law School. Her debut novel is “The Girl Who Fell From The Sky.”
There are novels that are enjoyable to read and others that say something about the world. And sometimes there are novels that are both. Passing by Nella Larsen is one of those books…
Read the entire essay here.
Listen to the essay here.
