Mixed Race Studies

Race Delusion: Lies That Divide Us

The Huffington Post
2016-06-01

Robert J. Benz, Founder & Executive VP
Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives

David Livingstone Smith is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of New England in Biddeford, Maine. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of London, Kings College, where he worked on Freud’s philosophy of mind and psychology. His current research is focused on dehumanization, race, propaganda, and related topics. David is the author of seven books and numerous academic papers. His most recent book Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave and Exterminate Others (St. Martin’s Press, 2011) was awarded the 2012 Anisfield-Wolf award for nonfiction. He is also editor of How Biology Shapes Philosophy, which will be published by Cambridge University Press later this year, and he is working on a book entitled Making Monsters: The Uncanny Power of Dehumanization, which will be published by Harvard University Press.

David speaks widely in both academic and nonacademic settings, and his work has been featured extensively in national and international media. In 2012 he spoke at the G20 summit on dehumanization and mass violence. David strongly believes that the practice of philosophy has an important role to play helping us meet the challenges confronting humanity in the 21st century and beyond, and that philosophers should work towards making the world a better place.

Robert: David, your great book, Less Than Human, has stayed with me since I first read it a few years ago. What, if any, connections should I make between race, racism and dehumanization?

David: Racism and dehumanization are very intimately connected. To explain the connection, I need to say a little bit about what race and dehumanization are.

Let’s start with race. Races are supposed to be real, objective divisions of the human family—analogous, perhaps, to breeds of dog. To be a member of a certain race is to be a certain kind of human being. Racial identity is supposed to be innate and unalterable (you don’t have any choice about what race you belong to) and transmitted from one generation to the next…

…Most people think that it’s obvious that races are real biological categories. However, most of the scholars who study race think that races are invented categories. When one group of people sets out to oppress another, they “racialize” them—that is, they think of them as fundamentally different from and, importantly, inferior to themselves. Prior to the trans-Atlantic slave trade, sub-Saharan Africans did not consider themselves members of a single, homogeneous “black” race. Instead, they identified themselves as members of any one of a number of distinct groups—as Akan, Wolof, Mbundu, etc. The idea of “blackness” was a European invention, designed to legitimize the oppression of Africans…

Read the entire interview here.

Amrita Hepi’s New Dance Collab Explores Authenticity, Race & The Politics Of Passing

Oyster
Paddington, New South Wales, Australia
2016-05-10

Jerico Mandybur

Local hero Amrita Hepi is showcasing her new dance piece ‘Passing’ — with costumes by Honey Long and sound by Laverne of Black Vanilla — alongside Jahra Rager at Next Wave Festival this week. To celebrate, we linked her up with another one of our fave woke ladies, Jerico Mandybur, and they chatted through identity, the WOC diaspora and the politics of passing.

Get to know the story behind the stellar performance piece below (before you make the good life choice to head along to Next Wave and see it IRL).

Jerico Mandybur: Hey! So it’s called ‘Passing’, can you talk to me about what naming it that means, and basically what the concept of “passing” means in relation to the work?

Amrita Hepi: Well, we came up with the idea of naming it ‘Passing’, because the work itself kind of matched bodies under pressure. So the idea of women of colour and their intersections, and what it means to be of many world races and titles, and I guess when you’re “passing” there’s always this kind of fear of inauthenticity, which is something that’s very human that we all feel. But in relation to the work, it was just feeling like we were constantly only just passing, and there was this fear of almost like being discovered as something other than what we were. Does that make sense? [Laughs]…

Read the entire interview here.

See Logic Talk Biracial Identity, Anime Influence

Rolling Stone
2016-04-20

Brittany Spanos, Staff Writer

Rapper discusses prejudice, upcoming albums and ‘The Incredible True Story’ ahead of co-headlining tour with G-Eazy

“When it comes to being black and white, and the things that I’ve experienced, it was just a personal journey to look in the mirror and be happy with who I am,” Logic told Rolling Stone during a visit to the office. The 26-year-old biracial rapper has been hit with criticism during the course of his career given his fair complexion, but he’s using the claims of inauthenticity to speak not only to his own narrative and background but to those of many others, as well. He has two potential albums in the works, including one where he spits rhymes from varying perspectives.

“I feel the Aryan in my blood is scarier than a Blood/Been lookin’ for holy water, now I’m prayin’ for a flood/Feel like time passin’ me by slower than a slug,” he teased from a song he’s recently begun writing from the perspective of a mixed-race person like himself. “But my beautiful black brothers and sisters wanna act like I’m adopted/Go back in time when my ni**a daddy impregnated my cracker momma and stopped it.” Later, Logic says, “My skin fair, but life’s not.”…

Read the entire artcile here.

Book reading with SHARON H. CHANG: Raising Mixed Race

Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience
719 South King Street
Seattle, Washington 98104
Thursday, 2016-06-02, 18:00-20:00 PDT (Local Time)

Sharon H. Chang has worked with young children and families for over a decade. She is a scholar and activist who focuses on racism, social justice and the Asian American diaspora with a feminist lens.

She will read from her inaugural book, Raising Mixed Race: Multiracial Asian Children In a Post-Racial World.

Her writings have appeared in BuzzFeed, Hyphen Magazine, ParentMap Magazine, Seattle Globalist and more. She is also a consultant for Families of Color Seattle and is on the planning committee for the Critical Mixed Race Conference.

Sharon will be available after the book reading to sign copies of her book. Books will be available for sale in The Wing Marketplace.

This event is free and open to the public.

For more information, click here.

Dominican Anti-Blackness

bluestockings magazine
2016-05-02

Perla Montas

We were socialized from an early age to name blackness. To taunt it, to call it names. My friends and I compared skin colors as we played the “who’s blacker?” game.

“You’re blacker than me, Perla!”

“Haitiana, you lose!”

My parents groomed an identity that privileged straight hair and lighter skin, while compromising my kinks and self-esteem.

“I need 25 dollars to straighten Perla’s greña. It looks messy. She needs to look good for picture day.”

My inherited black skin and kinky hair were my parents’ greatest shame and the butt of my friends’ jokes.

La Raza Dominicana, a term that refers to Dominican people and culture as a collective, is actually used to highlight the Dominican Republic’s pluralities. The term celebrates all of the racial, ethnic, and cultural origins that have positively influenced expressions of Dominicanidad. Like Cuba and Brazil, the Dominican Republic has an extensive history of racial mixing between Indigenous peoples, enslaved Africans, and European colonizers. Yet under Spanish rule, colonizer violence and disease diminished the Indigenous population from 400,000 to 60,000 people by 1508, leaving a population of mostly miscegenated people (Howard, 31). As such, the DR has a population of primarily black people. According to current statistics, the Dominican Republic has an afro-descendant population of nearly 8 million people, the fifth largest black population outside of Africa.

While the colors and aesthetics of Dominican people are endless, it is important to keep in mind that white supremacy still operates insidiously in miscegenated societies…

Read the entire article here.

Pete Souza: photographing the real Barack Obama

The Guardian
2016-05-29

Jonathan Jones

President Barack Obama fist-bumps custodian Lawrence Lipscomb in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Photograph: Pete Souza/The White House

Over two historic terms, official White House photographer Pete Souza has chronicled the most intimate, candid and comical moments of Barack Obama’s presidency

It was a tale of two Americas. In Las Vegas the casinos were humming with a hell-yes tide that was about to sweep the manic Donald Trump to his most pumped-up victory yet. In Washington DC, civilisation still existed. In the week Trump’s xenophobic bid to be the Republican presidential candidate began to look unstoppable, the man whose Americanness he has questioned was meeting 106-year-old Virginia McLaurin. In Pete Souza’s official White House photograph of their get-together, President Barack Obama cracks a delicious smile as the first lady dances with McLaurin, who was invited to visit the White House in recognition of community work she has done for decades in the US capital. The meeting was also a celebration of Black History Month – and Souza’s picture manages to be both intimate and historic. Here are three African Americans in the White House. The room they are in – the Blue Room – is opulently decorated with gold stars, Empire-style furniture, and a portrait of some grand national father who holds a white handkerchief in his white hand…

Nov 2009 – Obama jokes with staff before the Summit of the Americas in Singapore Photograph: Pete Sousa/The White House

…What made Souza such an ideal day-to-day chronicler of Obama’s presidency? The answer is surprising. Before he recorded the White House life of America’s first black president, Souza did the same job for the first Hollywood actor to rule from the Oval Office. From 1983 to 1989, he was Ronald Reagan’s official photographer. Perhaps his most famous picture of that era shows Ronald and Nancy Reagan meeting Michael Jackson, who is wearing a spangly military-style jacket. Reagan looks understandably confused – is this the king of pop or the commander of the Star Wars defence programme?…

Read the entire article here.

Not-So-Solid South

Triton
University of California, San Diego Alumni
2016-05-05

Sherilyn Reus ’16

Historian Victoria Bynum, M.A. ’79, Ph.D. ’87, is a Civil War myth-buster.

Folklore is deeply embedded in American culture—whether told at the dinner table, around the campfire or just before bedtime, tall tales and legends about the nation’s history have the power to build a common identity and unify its people. For Victoria Bynum, M.A. ’79, Ph.D. ’87, American folklore is not just an opportunity for a great story, but a chance to look more closely at the finer threads of our heritage.

Interestingly enough for a noted historian of the 19th-century American South, Bynum was born and raised mostly in California. Her father, however, was born in Jones County, Miss., a location steeped in history and primarily known for its anti-Confederate rebellion during the Civil War. For Bynum, who gravitated toward history throughout college, the dynamics and repercussions of the uprising were captivating. “Here was a story that countered conventional images of the Civil War and ordinary white Southerners,” she says. After hearing a plethora of different sides to the story, Bynum was convinced that Jones County was begging for a deeper historical analysis…

Read the entire article here.

Understanding the Stressors and Types of Discrimination That Can Affect Multiracial Individuals: Things to Address and Avoid in Psychotherapy Practice

Psychotherapy Bulletin
Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy
Volume 50, Issue 2 (2015)
pages 56-60

Astrea Greig, PsyD

As the multiracial population is vastly growing in the United States (Humes, Jones, & Ramirez, 2011), it is important to know about the unique experiences that affect multiracial people, as these can arise in psychotherapy or during casual interactions in the clinic or office. Multiracial people are racially and culturally diverse and identify with two or more races. Multiracial clients are often young, and multiracial children are the fastest growing demographic group in the U.S. (Saulny, 2011). Moreover, interracial marriages have been at an all-time high recently (Chen, 2010). This increase is likely related to the historic racist laws in the U.S. that made interracial marriage illegal in many states, until federally overruled in 1967 with the Loving v. Virginia case. Yet, despite the fact that multiracial people are now one of the fastest growing populations in the United States, it is still one of the smallest demographic groups, comprising only 2.3% of the American population (Humes, Jones, & Ramirez, 2011). Additionally, though mental health professionals should have adequate multicultural or diversity training, the multiracial population is often not studied as extensively as other racial and ethnic groups…

Read the entire article here.

Race, Genetics, Medicine and the Museum

Museums & Social Issues: A Journal of Reflective Discourse
Volume 11, Issue 1, 2016
Special Issue: Special Issue: Museum, Health & Medicine
pages 53-62
DOI: 10.1080/15596893.2015.1131095

Monique Scott, Director of Museum Studies
Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania
Research Associate, Anthropology Department
American Museum of Natural History, New York, New York

The natural history museum has long been invested in educating the public about what it means to be human, including human identity, human ancestry and human diversity. With the recent scientific advances in human genomic research and the public fervor for individual genetic ancestry testing, the museum is now challenged both to keep pace with current scientific research and wrestle with popular scientific thinking that circulates outside the museum. This article considers several strategies that the American Museum of Natural History Museum has used to intervene in public perceptions of “race”, genetics and human health through critical interactive dialogue—the museum as a space for audiences of various ages to investigate and interrogate the science and politics of human identity that accompany this new genetic frontier.

Read or purchase the article here.

‘A Change of Heart’: Racial Politics, Scientific Metaphor and Coverage of 1968 Interracial Heart Transplants in the African American Press

Social History of Medicine
Published online: 2016-05-26
DOI: 10.1093/shm/hkw052

Maya Overby Koretzky
Johns Hopkins Institute for the History of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland

This paper explores the African American response to an interracial heart transplant in 1968 through a close reading of the black newspaper press. This methodological approach provides a window into African American perceptions of physiological difference between the races, or lack thereof, as it pertained to both personal identity and race politics. Coverage of the first interracial heart transplant, which occurred in apartheid South Africa, was multifaceted. Newspapers lauded the transplant as evidence of physiological race equality while simultaneously mobilising the language of differing ‘black’ and ‘white’ hearts to critique racist politics through the metaphor of a ‘change of heart’. While interracial transplant created the opportunity for such political commentary, its material reality—potential exploitation of black bodies for white gain—was increasingly a cause for concern, especially after a contentious heart transplant from a black to a white man in May 1968 in the American South.

Read or purchase the article here.