Footprints of my other

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

“Perhaps not since Ashley Montagu’s revolutionary, Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race (1942), has a more important work on the pernicious aspects of race and racialization been written. The Arc of a Bad Idea, Understanding and Transcending Race, upends and debunks our conventional thinking about race and ending racism.

Carlos Hoyt has written a timely and necessary balm for the wounds caused by centuries of the false notion of race—an idea with no empirical or scientific basis—but yet embraced worldwide. While Hoyt is by no means the first to engage in the noble crusade to convince mankind to destroy this harmful mythology, he is perhaps one of the few authors to lay out a concise and constructive vision on how we can actually become a society free of racial taxonomies.

With the United States as his main focus, Hoyt examines racialization—America’s original sin—and builds upon—with his own research on individuals who eschew racialized identities—the work of racial identity theorists like Kerry Anne Rockquemore and others to formulate a pathway to a future that can be free of race and the insidious racism that necessarily accompanies it.

Hoyt is never afraid to critique the well-intentioned yet racialist discourses of landmark court cases; census enumerations; esteemed historical scholars like W.E.B. DuBois; mid-20th century visionaries like Martin Luther King, Jr.; and contemporary scholars like Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Amy Gutmann, and others.

Hoyt, as evolutionary biologist Joseph L. Graves and racial meta—theorist Rainier Spencer before him, adds to the literature what is destined to become an invaluable resource for scholar and layman alike.” —Steven F. Riley, Creator and Founder of MixedRaceStudies.org

Carlos Hoyt, Jr., “The Arc of a Bad Idea: Understanding and Transcendng Race,” (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), ii.

Footprints of my other

Footprints of my other

2012
52 minutes

Claude Haffner

Born to a mixed race couple in the DRC, then Zaire, in the 1970s, Claude Haffner is part Congolese, part French.

From her family home in France, Claude Haffner embarks on a journey in search of her African identity. She is of mixed race, born in 1976 to a French father and a Congolese mother in Zaïre (today’s Democratic Republic of the Congo). Pierre Haffner, her father, passed away in 2000, and having become a specialist on African art and cinema, he left behind a collection of African art together with photos and taped accounts about Congo and Africa. This is the starting point of Claude’s investigation. She delves into their shared material, intellectual and psychological heritage. She interviews her mother who still lives in France about her country, her family and her history. In the search of answers to her questions she returns, alone this time, to Mbuji-Mayi, the capital of Kasaï and the centre of the diamond trade. Michou, her cousin travels with her to the heart of the diamond fields. Despite unemployment, poverty and lack of activity the inhabitants of Mbuji-Mayi remain hopeful owing to the new governor’s development policies.

Tags: Claude Haffner, Democratic Republic of the Congo, France

This entry was posted on Monday, September 15th, 2014 at 02:00Z and is filed under Africa, Europe, Identity Development/Psychology, Videos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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