Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.
A ‘Marginal Man’ is a fictional archetype created in 1927 by sociologist Robert Ezra Park (1864-1944) (and further developed by Everett Stonequist (1901-1979)) as a way to describe a person descended from two “opposing” ethnic or racial groups. He stated, “The marginal man…is one whom fate has condemned to live in two societies and in two, not merely different but antagonistic cultures….his mind is the crucible in which two different and refractory cultures may be said to melt and, either wholly or in part, fuse.” The arc for ‘Marginal Man’ was similar to that of the ‘Tragic Mulatto‘ because he too, attempted to “pass” as white, however he could change course and take a hypodescendent path and if he were fortunate become a leader of his “lesser” lot.
Growing up as a black person with a disability in Dublin, Marguerite Penrose sensed her difference
On June 9th 2020, one week after thousands of young Irish people marched through the streets of Dublin calling for an end to racism and inequality, a new post appeared on the recently established Black and Irish Instagram page.
“My name is Marguerite. I was born in Dublin in 1974. I am a PROUD Irish/Zambian, living in Meath now.”
Marguerite Penrose had never spoken or written publicly about her background. She preferred not to dwell on the first three years of her life which she spent in a mother and baby home on the Navan Road, or her battles with scoliosis throughout her life. She didn’t like remembering the racist remarks outside nightclubs or disapproving stares on the bus. She preferred focusing on the positives – her incredible adopted family and her wonderful friends.
But then she decided to speak out about growing up as a black woman with a disability in Dublin…
Barack Obama may have been a hero to “black America,” but for biracial Americans like myself, the former president never quite felt like the champion we’d waited so long for.
Early on, he seemed like he might be: As the son of a white mother and Kenyan father, Obama vocally touted his unique—and uniquely multi-cultural—background throughout his education, writing and early career. Finally, it seemed, folks like me had found a role model.
Yet when it came time for Obama to shift into “candidate” mode, he clearly calculated that positioning himself as black, rather than biracial, was the wisest way to secure the presidency. Little changed once he entered to Oval Office.
Indeed, despite having as much white heritage as black, Obama formally marked himself African-American on his 2010 Census form. The timing was important: That year, for one of the first times ever, the Census Bureau included a multi-racial category. I was thrilled to check the box—and had naively hoped the President would too.
Nearly a decade later, we now have Meghan Markle, the biracial future bride of Britain’s Prince Harry. Born in California to a Caucasian father and African-American mother, Markle is vocal about her biracial parentage. “I’m half black/half white,” she wrote in a piece for British Elle last year—six simple words that honor her background in a way the former president avoided…
In The Death of Race, Brian Bantum explores the theological underpinnings of cultural understandings of race and gender.
What inspired you to write The Death of Race?
Truthfully, this wasn’t the book I had wanted to write right now. There is a tendency for theologians who write about race to become penned in. My first book, Redeeming Mulatto: A Theology of Race and Christian Hybridity, is certainly a book about race. But even more, it is a Christology. For my second book, I wanted to write something that would be read apart from the primary lens of race. But then Ferguson happened, then Baltimore, and every successive summer seemed to press the reality of race and the church. There are so many good books that have come from folks in or associated with the Black Lives Matter movement that I wasn’t sure what I could add to the conversation.
But as I taught and read and listened, I began to see how various Christian responses to police brutality—and racism and sexism more broadly—were grounded in various theological stories that shaped American Christians and how they saw the world. At the same time, I was thinking about my three sons, who were 17, 15, and 11 when I started writing. We had been talking about everything that was happening in the world, and I wondered how I could help them understand the Christian story in the midst of this. Why was the world like this, and why does Jesus matter?..
Brian Bantum, Neil F. and Ila A. Professor of Theology Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, Evanston, Illinois
For years, people have asked Gail Song Bantum and Brian Bantum to reveal the secret to their marriage as a multiracial Christian couple, each with a high-profile ministry calling. This book reveals the lessons, mistakes, and principles that have helped the Bantums navigate race, family history, and gender dynamics in their twenty-plus years of marriage, while inspiring readers to pursue mutual flourishing in their marriages and relationships.
Marriage is about more than constant bliss or unending sacrifice, say the Bantums. It’s about exploring your own story, seeing the other for who they are (even as they change), and being flexible in discovering how those differences and stories come alive in new ways when joined together. It’s the discovery of life in the gaps and the mysteries that emerge when we live in mutuality, believing that fullness is possible for each.
Choosing Us reflects the realities and demands of modern marriage and respects the callings and ambitions of both partners. It shows that marriage is about choosing the other’s flourishing on a daily basis, amid differences and even systemic obstacles, to build a relationship that thrives and reflects the kingdom of God.
Contents
Prologue: Our Why
1. The Plan
2. Learning the Other
3. Race and Belonging
4. It’s a Man’s World? Gender and Marriage from a Man’s Perspective
5. Glass Bulbs and Rubber Balls: Gender and Marriage from a Woman’s Perspective
Giancarlo Rinaldi, South Scotland Reporter BBC Scotland News Website
A small plaque commemorates the role Tom Jenkins played in education in the Borders
A small plaque marks the spot where the man believed to be Britain’s first black school teacher educated children in a Scottish village.
Now the story of Tom Jenkins‘ life is being explored as part of the area’s Alchemy Festival, and there are calls for him to receive greater recognition.
Artist Dr Jade Montserrat has been investigating the links between Hawick and both Jenkins and anti-slavery campaigner Frederick Douglass, who visited the town in 1846.
“I focused in on the significant black presence in Hawick and, more loosely, Hawick’s liberal abolitionist identity as a town,” she said…
…When he was six years old his father, a slave trading chief, handed him to Capt James Swanson.
The son of a waiter from Hawick, Capt Swanson was in command of the slave ship Prudence.
The intention was that Tom Jenkins would be educated in Britain before returning to West Africa…
Anna C. F. Lewis, Research Associate Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Adobe
Race, widely used as a variable across biomedical research and medicine, is an appropriate proxy for racism — but not for anything biological. Proposals to use genetic ancestry instead of race are at risk of perpetuating the same problems.
Dozens of algorithms widely used in clinical care contain an adjustment factor for a patient’s race. When estimating kidney function, for example, different results are returned depending on whether the patient’s race is entered as “Black” or “non-Black,” though at least for kidney function the use of race is being challenged. Some medications have been approved only for those of certain self-identified racial groups. Meanwhile in research, the race of participants is routinely considered at almost every step of the research process — from recruitment to analysis to the interpretation of findings.
Race-based health disparities have reinvigorated the debate about whether these uses of race are appropriate, and their potential connection to racism…
Sandycove (an imprint of Penguin Random House)
2022-05-12
240 pages
234mm x 18mm x 153mm
313g
Paperback ISBN: 9781844885930
eBook ISBN: 9781844885947
Marguerite Penrose
Marguerite Penrose’s is an extraordinary story of making a great life from complicated beginnings. Marguerite was born in a Dublinmother-and-baby home in 1974, the daughter of an Irish mother and a Zambian father. Severe scoliosis indicated a future of difficult medical procedures. She was a little girl who needed a break. And she got it at three when she was fostered – and later adopted – by a young couple, Mick and Noeline, and acquired a mam, dad, sister, Ciara, and loving extended family.
Growing up, Marguerite’s appearance was occasionally remarked on by strangers, but it wasn’t until her teens that she understood that her skin colour was a provocation for some. The progressive city that she knew was revealed to have an unpleasant undercurrent. So, she became an expert in shaping her life around anything that marked her out as ‘different’.
Marguerite’s story is one of facing some big questions – Who am I? How do I live in world made for people with bodies different to mine? Why does anyone care about my skin colour? – with intelligence, humour, courage and common-sense. She writes about coming to terms with the circumstances of her birth and, like so many in her position, looking for answers. About navigating the world as an active woman with a disability. About what it means to be both Irish and Black, particularly at a moment when the conversation is becoming mainstream in Ireland and she is thinking about it in new ways herself. Mostly, she writes about embracing life in a spirit of openness and positivity.
Yeah, But Where Are You Really From? is a captivating, wise and inspiring memoir by a truly remarkable woman.
The house at 1515-17 Pauger St. in New Orleans sold in 2016 for $600,000. (Photo by David Grunfeld, NOLA.com |The Times-Picayune)
The little Creole cottage at 1515-17 Pauger St. in the Marigny Triangle is a humble one. Small and tidy, there would have been little to distinguish it from the countless other homes like it in New Orleans when it was built 200 years ago.
But sometimes a house is more than a house. Sometimes, the story it has to tell adds a little flavor to what it has to offer.
That’s precisely the case with the Pauger Street house, which stands out today as a beautifully preserved example of the bricks-between-posts construction — or briquette-entre-poteaux — so common during the city’s French colonial era.
Much more than that, although, the little home represents the indomitable spirit of the lady of shade who, in opposition to all odds, constructed it — presumably as a rental property, no much less — at a time wherein being White and male had been two of an important {qualifications} for such endeavors…
The first colonizers to arrive in what is now the United States were not the pilgrims in 1620. It was the Spanish, who came to New Mexico in 1598. The oldest capital in the country, Santa Fe, was founded in 1610 by a Spaniard who was born in Mexico. This is not a point of pride but a part of our complicated story. Along with Spanish colonizers looking for riches, priests looking for souls to save, many Indigenous people came as well — some as servants, others forcibly to quench the lust of men, some as wives, and many more for endless other reasons.
After gaining its independence from Spain, Mexican authorities attempted to increase the population in its northern territory — a land that stretched all the way up the west coast of California and across to the Rocky Mountains — and so welcomed Anglo immigrants. By 1834, more than 30,000 of them lived in Texas, heavily outnumbering the Mexican population of 7,800.*
Mexico abolished African slavery in 1829, before the U.S. Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, but those Anglo immigrants had brought with them more than 5,000 enslaved people in violation of Mexican law. This is where the story needs some revision. Texas’ independence from Mexico and eventual annexation into the United States is often told as a freedom fight. But Anglo Texans wanted to be “free” in order to keep Black people enslaved. They became legends while stealing Black bodies, stealing Mexican land, and terrorizing native Tejanos. The Mexicans who stayed in Texas were treated as second-class citizens, an attitude that still pollinates along with the bluebonnets, their stories lost to white historians. The horrors that Mexicans suffered in Texas at the hands of Anglos have been buried in forgotten graves, in cemeteries that no longer exist. However, in Texas history classes, Davy Crockett, William B. Travis, and Jim Bowie die heroes at the Alamo, killed by the vicious Mexican army — a story still retold in museums and textbooks. They were visitors, undocumented immigrants even, and by proclaiming self-rule, they forced Mexico into war….
