Mixed Race Studies

The ‘R’ Word

Biteback Publishing
2015-11-27
224 pages
Hardback ISBN: 9781849549424
eBook ISBN: 9781785900099

Kurt Barling, Professor of Journalism
Middlesex University, London, United Kingdom

Race and racism remain an inescapable part of the lives of black people. Daily slights, often rooted in fears and misperceptions of the ‘other’, still damage lives. But does race matter as much as it used to? Many argue that the post-racial society is upon us and racism is no longer a block on opportunity – Kurt Barling doubts whether things are really that simple.

Ever since, at the age of four, he wished for ‘blue eyes and blond hair’, skin colour has featured prominently as he, like so many others, navigated through a childhood and adolescence in which ‘blackness’ de­fined and dominated so much of social discourse. But despite the progress that has been made, he argues, the ‘R’ word is stubbornly resilient.

In this powerful polemic, Barling tackles the paradoxes at the heart of anti-racism and asks whether, by adopting the language of the oppressor to liberate the oppressed, we are in fact paralysing ourselves within the false mythologies inherited from raciology, race and racism. Can society escape this socalled ‘race-thinking’ and re-imagine a Britain that is no longer ‘Black’ and ‘White’? Is it yet possible to step out of our skins and leave the colour behind?

Is it time to ditch the term ‘black, Asian and minority ethnic’ (BAME)?

The Guardian
2015-05-22

Lola Okolosie, Joseph Harker, Leah Green, and Emma Dabiri

This week, former chairman of the commission for racial equality Trevor Phillips gave a speech in which he suggested that phrases such as black and minority ethnic (BME) and black, Asian and minority ethnic (Bame) have become outdated, existing purely “to tidy away the messy jumble of real human beings who share only one characteristic – that they don’t have white skin”. He said the acronyms could be divisive, and actually served to mask the disadvantages suffered by specific ethnic and cultural groups. Instead, Phillips suggested, we could potentially adopt terms commonly used in the US, such as “visible minorities” or “people of colour”. Here, four writers discuss the issue…

…Leah Green: ‘I don’t feel multiple heritage – I feel mixed race’…

Read the entire article here.

DNA ancestry tests branded ‘meaningless’

The Telegraph
2013-03-07

Nick Collins, Science Correspondent

Customers are being charged up to £300 to learn whether they have links to famous people or societies despite the fact many of the tests are not backed up by scientific evidence, experts said.

The amount of DNA any individual inherits from relatives just a few steps up their family tree is negligible compared with the vast amount we all share from common ancestors.

It means any ancestral “history” identified by a simple genetic test is just one of dozens of possible interpretations, and to try to trace our lineage directly through our genes is “absurd”, they claimed…

… The warning was backed by a number of leading genetics experts. Steve Jones, Emeritus Professor of Human Genetics at UCL said: “On a long trudge through history – two parents, four great-grandparents, and so on – very soon everyone runs out of ancestors and has to share them.

“As a result, almost every Briton is a descendant of Viking hordes, Roman legions, African migrants, Indian Brahmins, or anyone else they fancy.”…

Read the entire article here.

An Exploration of Racial Considerations in Partnered Fathers’ Involvement in Bringing Up Their Mixed-/Multi-Race Children in Britain and New Zealand

Fathering: A Journal of Theory, Research, and Practice about Men as Fathers
Volume 13, Number 2 (2015)
26 pages

Rosalind Edwards, Professor of Sociology
University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom

Chamion Caballero, Visiting Senior Fellow
Department for Social Policy
London School of Economics

This article considers how partnered fathers’ involvement may be shaped by their understandings of the salience and impact of their children’s racial belonging where fathers do not share the same race as their (biological) children. We draw on findings from a small-scale study of fathers with a partner from a different racial background living in Britain and New Zealand, to consider their involvement with their mixed or multi-racial children. Bringing up mixed/multi-race children can involve white fathers in thinking about issues that they would not necessarily otherwise have to consider. It could, for example, mean that they supported their children’s access to minority cultural knowledge and challenge racism. Equally, bringing up mixed/multi-race children can involve fathers from racial minorities in thinking about racial considerations in different ways. Notably they may transmit racial pride and cultural history to help their children deal with prejudice from the father’s own minority ethnic group as well as racism from Whites.

Read the entire document (in Microsoft Word format) here.

Music does not discriminate | Chi Chi Nwanoku | TEDxEuston

TEDx Talks
2016-01-14

Chi Chi Nwanoku speaks at a 2015 TEDx event in London.

Chi-Chi Nwanoku MBE is the Founder, Artistic Director of Chineke!, Europe’s first classical orchestra of Black and Ethnic Minority musicians and is also the Principal Double bassist and founder of the Orchestra of the Age of Entertainment. Chi-chi is a professor of Double Bass History Studies at the Royal Academy of Music and was made a Fellow there in 1998.

Chi-chi gracefully opened the TEDxEuston 2015 stage. She declared we are all born musicians; everyone of us has a heartbeat connected to something. It was a privilege for the audience to hear her personal journey through her early introduction to music and her experiences as a black women in the classical music industry. She narrates how she is fighting the good fight to bring diversity to the classical world and encourages the audience to “Never be afraid of a challenge.”

Multiracialism in the U.K., on being a mixed-race feminist, and the interplay of African and Afro-Caribbean culture, with Nicola Codner, Ep. 52

Multiracial Family Man
2015-02-14

Alex Barnett, Host

Nicola Codner, Founder and Creator
Mixed Race Feminist Blog
Leeds, Yorkshire, United Kingdom

Ep. 52: Nicola Codner is a multiracial woman (Black Jamaican, Nigerian and White British), born and living in Leeds, Yorkshire within the UK. She is a counselor, and she feels that her background has given her a love for diversity and the ability to appreciate multiple perspectives. Prior to training as a counselor she worked in academic publishing.

She is the founder and creator of the Mixed Race Feminist Blog.

Listen as Nicola speaks with Alex about multiracialism in the UK, about being a mixed-race feminist, and about the interplay of African and Afro-Caribbean culture.

Listen to the episode (01:03:44) here. Download the episode here.

Identifying as Mixed Race vs Identifying as Black: I Choose Both

Mixed Race Feminist Blog
2016-02-10

Nicola Codner
Leeds, Yorkshire, United Kingdom

I recently watched an interview with the UK rapper, writer and academic Akala. I usually really enjoy hearing him speak and generally find him to be quite faultless in his views on racial issues. For those who don’t know of Akala he is of mixed race and identifies as both mixed and black. In the interview I am referencing he covers many topics including veganism, internalized racism and Obama’s presidency. He also briefly mentions his thoughts on people with some black heritage who identify solely as mixed race. I’d long been wondering about where he stood in terms of his thoughts on mixed race issues. Please note that for the purposes of this article when I mention ‘mixed race’ I am referring to people with both black and white heritage…

…I have to admit I was actually quite upset about Akala’s comments in the interview on those who choose to identify as mixed race. He gave the usual spiel that is frequently heard in the US, about how many of those who describe themselves as mixed are problematic and are disassociating themselves from blackness. It’s quite common, particularly in the US, for people to view identifying as mixed race when you have black heritage, as anti-black and evidence of self-loathing/ internalized racism. I was shocked in some ways to hear Akala endorsing such simplistic views given that he obviously has such a good intellect…

Read the entire article here.

Shapes & Disfigurements of Ramond Antrobus

Burning Eye Books
2013-11-03
36 pages
12.9 x 0.3 x 19.8 cm
Paperback ISBN: 978-1909136076

Raymond Antrobus

This third book in the Burning Eye pamphlet series (following Sally Jenkinson’s Sweat-borne Secrets and Mairi Campbell-Jack’s This Is A Poem…) presents Raymond Antrobus, a poet from Hackney with a talent for plucking poetry from the mouths of ordinary people. Whether a strawberry seller in Sweden, a homeless man on a London street or a taxi driver in South Africa, Raymond channels their voices through his own. This is the work of a confident young poet with an exceptional ear for language.

Artist Phoebe Boswell explores what ‘home’ is, migration, family and Kenya’s troubled past

True Africa
2015-11-05

Phoebe Boswell is one of the most exciting young artists working today. Her moving-image installation, The Matter of Memory, was exhibited at Carroll / Fletcher Gallery in London in 2014 alongside John Akomfrah and Rashaad Newsome. She is involved in Paul Goodwin’s African Diaspora Artists of the 21st Century project and is currently collaborating with Binyavanga Wainaina on a digital literary project called Since Everything Suddens in the Hurricane.

Her work mainly focuses on ‘transient middle points and passages of migration’, hardly surprising given her upbringing. She was born in Kenya, she spent most of her childhood in the Middle East before coming to London where she now lives and works. She took some time to tell us about her exhibition at the Gothenburg Biennale where she recreated her grandmother’s living room and what’s next for her.

Could you tell us about the Gothenburg Biennale and your piece?

The theme of GIBCA this year is A Story Within a Story, a title allows us as artists the opportunity to really play with the construction of storytelling. Elvira Dyangani Ose is at the curatorial helm of GIBCA and has offered us this title with the aim of contesting history, of rewriting it from new and perhaps previously silenced vantage points.

Curatorially, she has brought together works that seek to re-examine and possibly debunk predetermined histories, histories constructed in stuffy seats of power in order to control the collective memory of who we are, where we are, why we are, and how we came to be. The question she and the Biennale are asking the audience is: ‘If you could rewrite history, what would you do?’ It’s a very participatory experience. It’s a Biennale full of works which demand the audience to be active.

The Matter of Memory Courtesy of GIBCA ©Hendrik Zeitler

My piece in it is an immersive installation called The Matter of Memory. Within the Hasselblad Centre of the Gothenburg Art Museum, I have recreated my grandmother’s living room and filled the fabric of it – its wallpaper, teacups, milk pots, lamps, mantelpiece etc – with drawings, props, sculptures, sound and animated projections based on stories my Kikuyu mother and fourth generation British Kenyan father told me of their childhood memories of ‘home’…

Read the entire interview here.

Documenting the UK’s Black and Mixed Race Gingers

Vice
2105-08-24

Natasha Culzac

Francis Johnson by Michelle Marshall

How would you describe a typical redhead? Do you think of Julianne Moore: light skinned and beautiful, with rust-coloured hair and a flush of crimson through her porcelain cheeks? Or do you think of Ed Sheeran?

Either way, it’s likely the redhead in your mind is white. Red hair is mainly considered the preserve of northern Europe, a Celtic-Germanic trait. This is what resulted in London-based photographer Michelle Marshall’s quest to capture as many Afro Caribbean redheads as possible as part of her project, MC1R.

MC1R, or Melanocortin 1 receptor if you’re feeling fancy, is the gene responsible for red hair. Mutations in it can cause various degrees of pigmentation. It’ll either work “properly”, causing your hair to get darker, or it will become dysfunctional, not activate and then fail to turn red pigment to brown, causing a build up of red pigment and thus, red hair…

…Dr George Busby from the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics agrees. He says that the red hair and freckles is the likely result of the historical interactions between Europeans and Africans in the formation of the Caribbean populations – most notably with Brits, as the Spanish and Portuguese went to South America.

George states: “This might also explain why you occasionally see red hair on a black Caribbean person who has two black parents. By chance alone, it might be that they are both carrying a European mutation which has come together in their child.”

Most of Michelle’s subjects have been in the UK, though she’s had a lot of interest in the US and some in mainland Europe. “I’ve got the whole of London on this,” she laughs, when describing her army of spotters…

Read the entire article here.