Anomaly: A New Documentary Film About Mixed Race Identity

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

In many ways, Obama’s story provides a possible model for black descended multiracial people in that racial acceptance and success depends on an identity that is closely tied to blackness. In the larger sense, Obama reconciles the tensions between what G. Reginald Daniel has called “multigenerational multiracials,” that is to say, the category that most African Americans fall into as a racially mixed people, and “first-generation” multiracial people who have one parent that identifies as monoracially white and another that identifies as monoracially black. The question is: does this require an African American identification or can it simply be a multiracial identity that affirms one’s connection to the African Diaspora and the black experience? Had Obama identified more with the white side of his parental lineage, or even more strongly as a mixed race person, many Americans might not today know the name Barack Obama. The important point to take away from this memoir is that in the end, the protagonist, the hero, does not choose a mixed race identity but, rather, an African American one. To do otherwise would surely have antagonized and alienated African American support and acceptance. Anything less than full and absolute acceptance of an African American identity would have cost Obama severely.

Zebulon Vance Miletsky, “Mutt like me: Barack Obama and the Mixed Race Experience in Historical Perspective,” in Obama and the Biracial Factor: The Battle for a New American Majority, edited by Andrew J. Jolivétte (Bristol: The Policy Press, 2012), 149-150.

Anomaly: A New Documentary Film About Mixed Race Identity

Anomaly: A New Documentary Film About Mixed Race Identity

African Diaspora Film Festival

Tuesday, 2009-12-01 at 17:50 EST (Local Time) – Anthology Film Archives, 2nd St. and 2nd Ave., New York, New York
Wednesday, 2009-12-09 at 19:30 EST (Local Time) – Cowin Center, Columbia University Teachers College, 525 W. 120th St., New York, New York

Jessica Chen Drammeh
2009
47 minutes
In English

Barack Obama‘s presidency highlights the continued struggles around U.S. race issues. “Anomaly” provides a thought-provoking look at multiracial identity by combining personal narratives with the larger drama of mixed race in American culture. The characters use spoken word and music to tell their stories of navigating a complex racial landscape. Q&A with the director after the screening.

View the trailer here.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 30th, 2009 at 05:47Z and is filed under Arts, Barack Obama, Identity Development/Psychology, Live Events, New Media, Social Science, United States. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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Mixed Race Studies

Anomaly: A New Documentary Film About Mixed Race Identity

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