Mixed Race Studies

G.O.P. Hopeful Finds Tribal Tie Cuts Both Ways

The New York Times
2014-05-03

Jonathan Martin, National Political Correspondent

BARTLESVILLE, Okla. — T. W. Shannon will be Oklahoma’s first black senator if he wins the Republican nomination and is elected this November, but the quiet campaign stirring here about Mr. Shannon’s racial loyalties is not aimed at the African-American branch of his family tree.

Mr. Shannon, whose first name is Tahrohon, is a member of the Chickasaw Nation, the most influential tribe in a state where Native Americans are not merely the inheritors of a poignant history but also collectively constitute the state’s largest nongovernment employer outside of Walmart.

Most of those jobs are connected to Oklahoma’s 110-and-counting casinos, which are becoming as familiar here as oil derricks. Yet the gambling revenue that has showered millions on some of the state’s Native Americans has also bred resentment over the tribes’ expanding footprint. Now, as Mr. Shannon vies to make history, he has become both the political beneficiary of the tribes’ newfound wealth and a target for complaints about Native American sovereignty and possible competing loyalties…

Read the entire article here.

To the Manner Born?

The New York Times
2014-05-01

Manohla Dargis

‘Belle’ Centers On a Biracial Aristocrat in the 18th Century

No bodices seem to have been harmed, much less ripped, during the making of “Belle,” a period film at once sweeping and intimate, about an 18th-century Englishwoman who transcends her historical moment. Even so, peekaboo bosoms tremble throughout the movie amid the rustle of luxurious gowns and the gasps of polite company as conventions are crushed underfoot. Melodramatic and grounded in history, “Belle” is enough of an old-fashioned entertainment that it could have been made in classic Hollywood. Well, except for one little thing that would have probably given old studio suits apoplexy: The movie’s prettily flouncing title character is biracial.

You meet her as a child, just as she’s being taken by her father, a navy captain, Sir John Lindsay (Matthew Goode), from some shadowy mystery hovel to a large country manor. There, in an elegantly appointed room, the kind that announces the refinement of its inhabitants and whispers their entitlement, Sir John formally claims the child as his own and promptly hands her over to his uncle, Lord Mansfield (Tom Wilkinson, very good), and Lady Mansfield (a dry, funny Emily Watson). The Lord and Lady keep their lips, necks and manners stiff, but take the girl in and raise her as their own — or almost. Soon she’s laughing in the garden, and then she’s a genteel beauty (a fine Gugu Mbatha-Raw) facing life as a black woman in a slave-trading country.

She’s based on Dido Elizabeth Belle (1761-1804), the daughter of an African woman, Maria Bell, who was probably enslaved and maybe captured off a ship by Sir John. The details of their association and Bell’s life are murky, but when Dido was young, Sir John took her to Lord Mansfield, who raised her alongside another grandniece, Elizabeth Murray (played by a strong Sarah Gadon). In one account, Thomas Hutchinson, a governor of Massachusetts, described visiting the family: “a Black came in after dinner and sat with the ladies” and later walked arm in arm with one. “She had a very high cap, and her wool was much frizzled in her neck,” Hutchinson wrote, “but not enough to answer the large curls in fashion. She is neither handsome nor genteel — pert enough.”…

Read the entire review here and watch an anatomy of a scene here.

The Hunter and the Farmer: Jean Toomer’s Depression-Era Masculinist Writings

AmeriQuests
Volume 6, Number 1 (2008)

Anastasia C. Curwood, Visiting Fellow
James Weldon Johnson Institute for Race and Difference
Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia

In 1937, after he had written the novel Cane, left the African-American culture of Harlem, studied under the mystic Georges Gurdjieff in France, lost his wife to childbirth, and married for the second time, Jean Toomer sought to publish a series of essays. The subjects varied, but the most common theme was masculinity—men’s prerogatives, natures, and responsibilities. He theorized women’s temperaments as well, but it was clearly the study of maleness that captured his attention.

Toomer’s interest was noteworthy given the fact that he became ever more concerned with sexuality and gender as he left behind his African-American identity. Toomer did not intend to “pass,” as is commonly assumed—he actually wanted to be raceless, or of the “American” race. In his adopted home in the Pennsylvania countryside, Toomer attempted to construct his life based entirely on his masculinity. In Toomer’s opinion, his entire household—his white wife, his light-skinned daughter, and various temporary occupants—was a social experiment in supporting his masculine genius and creativity.

This essay is an intellectual history of Toomer’s self-construction. Using his diaries and published and unpublished writings, I will explain how Toomer saw his own male identity and how, although he had renounced his blackness, his racial identity mediated his ideal of his gender.

Read the entire article here.

“Split At The Root”: The Reformation of The Mulatto Hero/Heroine

AmeriQuests (Online)
Vanderbilt University
Volume 6, Number 1
2008-11-18

Tia L. Gafford, Assistant Professor of English and Africana Studies
Mercer University

Frances E. W. Harper’s Iola Leroy offers a valuable insight on the development of a holistic and natural model for patriarchy in the 19th century. Harper combines normally diametrically opposed ideologies of masculinity and femininely in the characters of Dr. Frank Latimer and Iola Leroy who become cultural heros/heroines by embracing a Black consciousness. By addressing what she considers to be a more cohesive productive society, Harper contextualizes the mulatto racial and social visions against the backdrop of the post-Reconstruction South. Within this new radical mixed race, Dr. Latimer and Iola Leroy rescues this normative stereotypical version and redefines them as the pre-cursors of Alain Locke’s “New Negro.” By rejecting whiteness as a mean to emancipate themselves out of an otherwise racial bondage, Iola Leroy and Dr. Latimer embrace the “one drop” rule. By “casting themselves” into the racial “pot,” Harper sets the mulatto up to ideally “work for the people.”

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CNST 419 – The Metis People of Canada

University of Calgary
Fall 2013

An interdisciplinary study of the Metis people of Canada, with special emphasis on the social, economic, and political factors influencing their emergence and continued survival as a distinct indigenous group in Canada. (formerly Canadian Studies 401.04)

For more information, click here.

Double Take: The Art of Amalgam and stereo*type*

The Incluseum: Museums and Social Inclusion
2014-04-23

Aletheia Wittman, co-founder

In this post The Incluseum highlights the new work of some of Seattle’s industrious artist…

Two recent exhibits have disrupted the reliability of the first impression.  The artwork prompts a second, longer, deeper look.

Right now at Gallery4Culture (until Friday) you can visit Dave Kennedy’s Amalgam and experience a body of work that playfully and concisely draws attention to this process of destabilizing first impressions/assumptions. Large format photographs appear to be still lifes of immediately recognizable food items. With a closer gaze, the precise and deliberate sculpting of different types of edible organic matter to create a cohesive whole comes into focus.

The video work in Amalgam offers Kennedy’s take on the nature of his many layered and multiracial identity. A reminder that people, as well as art, can be stereotyped, labeled and generalized about – acts that are challenged by how Kennedy chooses to represent aspects of himself within his work; how he navigates through space, time and memory…

Read the entire article here.

Stunning Self-Portraits Make You Think Twice About Interracial Identity In South America

The Huffington Post
2014-04-25

Katherine Brooks, Arts & Culture Editor

Brazilian artist Adriana Varejão has been exploring themes of interracial identity through an unlikely medium—self-portraits. To confront and challenge concepts like colonialism and miscegenation in her home country, she turns her own visage into a canvas and translates the many skin colors that populate Brazil into a palette of paint. The result, “Polvo,” presents racial diversity through the face of one woman, daring the viewer to lose themselves in her nebulous color wheels.

Varejão sought inspiration from the 17th and 18th century practice of Spanish casta paintings, portraits that aimed to document the variety of skin colors in Latin America and reframe them in ways that sliced and diced mixed-race ethnicities into far more than black and white. “Mixing was the norm,” The Economist asserted in 2012, referencing the interracial mixing that occurred even during Brazil’s days of slavery. “The result is a spectrum of skin colour rather than a dichotomy.”

Defining the spectrum was a Euro-centric obsession, one that resulted in an elaborate system of castes—white Spanish at one end and those of African or indigenous descent at the other—that had social, cultural and economic implications. The lighter skinned individuals existed at the top of the socio-economic pyramid, with better jobs and higher standards of living, while their darker skinned counterparts sank to the bottom.

The legacy of this classification persists in Brazil, a country seen less as a “racial democracy” and more as a purveyor of segregation. And interracial identity remains a potent issue, particularly since black and mixed-race people officially outnumber white citizens, according to a 2010 census. “Brazil is a country where non-whites now make up a majority of the population,” NPR’s Melissa Block reiterated in a 2013 story. “It’s one of the most ethnically diverse countries in the world; home to 97 million African descendants—the largest number of blacks outside Africa…

Read the entire article here.

Communication Accommodation Strategies in Malaysian Multiracial Family Interactions

Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences
Volume 118 (2014-03-19)
pages 259–264
DOI: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.02.035

International Conference on Knowledge-Innovation-Excellence: Synergy in Language Research and Practice (2013)
Organized by School of Language Studies and Linguistics, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (National University of Malaysia)

Mahanita Mahadhir
School of Language Studies & Linguistics Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia

Nor Fariza Mohd Nor
School of Language Studies & Linguistics Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia

Hazita Azman
School of Language Studies & Linguistics Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia

In multiracial families, intergroup salience is an important parameter influencing their daily interpersonal communication dynamics; this is due to the relevance of issues related to heritage loyalty and sense of belonging. As such, there is an obvious need for multiracials to appropriately strategise and manage their communication with both paternal and maternal family members. Using the Communication Accommodation Theory, this preliminary study investigates the range of accommodation strategies employed by a multiracial individual interacting with her monoracial mother. Qualitative in nature, data was obtained from spontaneous interactions that were audio-taped over a period of eight weeks in the home setting. Out of the 12 total hours of transcribed interactions, seven episodes were deemed to contain features of intergroup context. Despite the limited number of interaction samples, findings revealed that the multiracial daughter managed her family relations by employing approximation, interpretability, discourse management and interpersonal control strategies.

Read the entire article here.

What Does the Education Dept. Know About Race?

The Chronicle of Higher Education
2014-04-28

Johnah Newman, Database Reporter

Our post last week on minority enrollment and diversity at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor sparked a lively debate in the comments section about demographic data and diversity.

“I must admit that I am scratching my head,” one reader, Candis Best, wrote in response to the post. “Minority enrollment is down, but the school isn’t less diverse?,” she asked. “Diversity isn’t about statistics. It is about relationships.”

Ms. Best is, of course, correct that diversity is more than percentages and bar charts. “Diversity” includes identities that cross genders, cultures, and other ways people define themselves. A diverse campus involves interactions among students and faculty and staff members, all trading and sharing points of view and gaining understanding as they learn from others’ backgrounds.

Nevertheless, data and statistics are able to provide some insights into the makeup of a population and the degree to which that population consists of people associated with various groups.

Before we explore some different ways of measuring diversity through data and statistics, it’s worthwhile to look first to the demographic data themselves. What do the data show? What can’t they measure? And what are some of the complications and pitfalls of using such data to measure racial and ethnic diversity?

Categorizing Race and Ethnicity

The first factor that complicates any discussion of race and ethnicity is how to categorize a person’s race in the first place. Before the 2000 Census, people were asked to check a box indicating their race. The selections were mutually exclusive. You were either white or black. Hispanic or Asian. By 2000, though, a cultural shift had caused people to think about racial categories not as distinct groups but as elements that can combine to form a person’s identity. People could now check multiple boxes…

…So a drop in the number of black students reported at a university from 2009 to 2010, as we noted at the University of Michigan, doesn’t necessarily mean that there were actually fewer black students. It could also mean that some of the students who would have been counted in the black category before 2010 were instead counted in the two-or-more-races category under the new reporting methods…

Read the entire article here.

For dark-skinned Mexicans, taint of discrimination lingers

McClatchy DC: Watching Washington and the World
2013-08-22

Tim Johnson, McClatchy Foreign Staff

MEXICO CITY — Flip through the print publications exalting the activities of Mexico’s high society and there’s one thing you rarely find: dark-skinned people.

No matter that nearly two-thirds of Mexicans consider themselves moreno, the Spanish word for dark.

Mexico has strong laws barring discrimination based on skin color or ethnicity, but the practices of public relations firms and news media lag behind, promoting the perception that light skin is desirable and dark skin unappealing.

The issue came to the fore this month when a casting call for a television spot for Mexico’s largest airline stated flatly that it wanted “no one dark,” sparking outrage on social media and, ultimately, embarrassed apologies.

“I’d never seen anything that aggressive and that clear, all in capital letters: ‘NO ONE DARK,’” said Tamara de Anda, a magazine editor. “I decided to go with it.”…

…But the distance between legalities and practice is substantial, said Mario Arriagada Cuadriello, a doctoral candidate in comparative politics at the London School of Economics. He is an editor at Nexos, a leading cultural and political magazine.

When Arriagada published an article in this month’s issue about widespread discrimination in Mexico, he received a flurry of responses.

“People wrote to say that if you are light-skinned, you get better treatment in restaurants,” he said. One person told him that in an exclusive area of the capital, residents ask that their dark-skinned domestic servants not walk in the common gardens “because it is anti-aesthetic and makes the areas ugly.”

One of Mexico’s most prominent intellectuals from the early 20th century, Jose Vasconcelos, held up the mestizo, or person of mixed Indian and European blood, as part of a superior “cosmic race” with greater spiritual values…

Read the entire article here.