Mixed Race Studies

One man’s quest for Loving Day, a holiday for multiracial Americans

The Los Angeles Times
2016-06-10

Jaweed Kaleem

Ken Tanabe founded Loving Day in 2004, and leads celebrations and workshops across the U.S. on being multiracial. (Pearl Shavzin-Dremeaux)

Forty-nine years ago on June 12, the Supreme Court struck down laws in 16 states that banned mixed-race marriages. The decision in Loving vs. Virginia overturned the conviction of Richard and Mildred Loving, an interracial couple from Caroline County, Va., who had been arrested, jailed and banned from their home state for violating its Racial Integrity Act.

It also ushered in a new era in the American family.

Today, the Pew Research Center counts 22 million multiracial Americans, about 6.9% of the U.S. population. Nearly 10% of married couple households — more than 5 million — are interracial or inter-ethnic, according to the U.S. census.

For 12 years, Ken Tanabe, a Japanese-Belgian freelance graphic designer living in New York, has been working to educate Americans about what he sees as one of the most significant civil rights cases through Loving Day, the unofficial holiday that cities across the country are slowly adapting to celebrate the lives of the fast-growing multiracial population.

Now Tanabe, whose organization has tracked and sponsored many of the dozens of dance and music festivals, film screenings, picnics and forums taking place across the country in June to commemorate Loving vs. Virginia, has launched a campaign to get the holiday recognized by the federal government…

Read the entire article here.

Soledad O’Brien: Seek Out the Curious and the Fastidious

Corner Office
The New York Times
2016-06-10

Adam Bryant

This interview with Soledad O’Brien, chief executive of the Starfish Media Group, a production company, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant.

Q. What were your early years like?

A. I grew up on Long Island, in a small town that was somewhat rural back then. I have five brothers and sisters, and I’m No. 5, and my parents were both immigrants. My dad’s Australian and my mom is Cuban, and my mom’s black and my dad’s white. That framed a lot of my thinking about the work that I would do in my career, and also how I think about big American issues.

I did a lot of after-school activities: student council, Rotary Club, track, the badminton team. We didn’t have a lot that you could do otherwise, so if you didn’t push yourself to go do something, you just couldn’t do it. There was no sitter who schlepped you to ballet classes and then made sure that your interest in art was being nurtured.

Because we were middle class, there was not a ton of money. So if there was something I wanted, then I’d have to be able to pay for it. When I was about 13, I wanted to ride horses, and I got a job mucking stalls so I could pay for riding lessons…

Read the entire interview here.

Mugabe raps Chinese men over mixed race babies

Bulawayo24
2016-06-11

Thobekile Zhou

Chinese men who are working on various projects in Zimbabwe have come under attack for not bringing along their wives.

President Robert Mugabe claimed that this could lead them to prey on local girls…

…He said the Chinese men end up leaving a mixed race communities after bedding local women. He said such a practice should stop…

Read the entire article here.

I’m Filipino too: Filipino-ness and Multiraciality

gal-dem
2016-06-01

Amena Conopio-Ziard

When I first participated in an online Austronesian community group, a member questioned me, in Tagalog, if I was Filipino. He thought by messaging me in Tagalog he could cleverly catch me out in an autonomous space he believed I shouldn’t be in…

Read the entire article here.

‘Breaking’ Presents: Xenia Rubinos, a Powerhose Singer/Songwriter Unafraid to Learn Out Loud

Colorlines
2016-06-10

Sameer Rao, Culture Reporter/Blogger

Xenia Rubinos in concert Photo: John Felix Shaw/Anti- Records

On her funky second album, “Black Terry Cat,” the genre-bender explores identity, police violence and the hidden labor of Latino/a restaurant workers.

For our latest Breaking, we’re highlighting singer-songwriter Xenia Rubinos. The multi-instrumentalist, who hit the national scene with 2013’s “Magic Trix,” continues her personal and creative development on the funky, frenetic “Black Terry Cat.”

Hometown: Hartford, Connecticut

Based In: New York City

Sound: A chaotic mix of R&B, rock, hip-hop and jazz that underscores Rubinos’ robust mezzo-soprano. Her lyrics are sometimes wry, sometimes incorporating Spanish-language passages,

Why You Should Care: Depending on your background and worldview, Xenia Rubinos’ music sounds either like modern-day Latin pop, avant-garde R&B or a tapestry from an indie artist with too many influences to count. Either way, it sounds like nothing you’ve heard before—which, as she told us, is kind of the point.

…Juxtaposed, “Mexican Chef” and “Black Stars” speak volumes about the ongoing evolution of Rubios’ identity. While she identifies as Afro-Latina, she tells Colorlines that she does not identify as Black. “My family history is complicated, and I still don’t fully know the extent of it,” she says after describing her Black maternal great grandmother, her Puerto Rican family’s Taino heritage and her paternal grandfather’s emigration from Spain. “I started reading on the Afro-Latina diaspora two years ago, and I’m still ignorant to a lot of that, but I started seeing myself in that term. I explore the ‘Afro’ part of my cultural identity, and how I do or don’t fit into that, on ‘Black Terry Cat.'” She says that’s a big part of why hip-hop permeates this album…

Read the entire article here.

On Her Second Album, Xenia Rubinos Finds a New Language to Talk About Latinidad

Remezcla
2016-06-01

Isabelia Herrera

At a time when the political utility of the Afro-Latino label is as urgent as ever, it’s easy to forget that the journey to embrace that identity isn’t always immediate. Before recording her sophomore album Black Terry Cat (ANTI- Records), Boricua-Cuban artist Xenia Rubinos did not identify as Afro-Latina. So when she embarked on the recording process this time around, Rubinos envisioned the album as a vehicle to explore her brownness and blackness, to rediscover her place in the African diaspora.

That’s why hip-hop is Black Terry Cat’s lifeblood. “I was listening to a lot of hip-hop at the time. It was a new exploration for me, getting into Slum Village and KRS-One, as well as going back to Erykah Badu, which was starting to become my daily diet,” she explains. Rubinos lays those influences bare on Black Terry Cat; the record vibrates with clanging percussive interludes, stream-of-consciousness lyrics, and deep pocket backbeats. It’s a clattering, experimental triumph that leaps from thick funk basslines to spooky horn sections and then to broken-down hip-hop beats, like a kid playing with Legos. Above it all, Rubinos’ warm, smoky voice flutters about, revealing a vocal dexterity and a slew of alter egos the listener is constantly trying to catch up with…

Read the entire interview here.

Piers Morgan shot down after trying to justify comments about ‘racist’ Muhammad Ali during GMB

The Daily Mirror
London, England
2016-06-06

The host previously tweeted that Ali was responsible for a number of ‘inflammatory’ and ‘racist’ comments

Piers Morgan was shot down as he discussed Muhammad Ali during Good Morning Britain.

Over the weekend the outspoken host was met with a backlash when he claimed Ali was responsible for a number of ‘racist’ comments following his death on Friday.

He tweeted: “Muhammad Ali said far more inflammatory/racist things about white people than Donald Trump ever has about Muslims. #fact.”

Piers looked to be trying to justify his comments about the boxer when he presented Good Morning Britain on Monday.

Speaking to barrister Miranda Brawn, he said: “There was another side to Ali, he was incredibly controversial.”…

…But guest Miranda didn’t let Piers’ comments go uncontested as she set the record straight about Ali’s racial agenda.

She instead reminded Piers that Ali was integral in helping improve self-pride amongst black people…

Read the entire article here.

National Women’s History Museum presents Chinese American Women: A History of Resilience and Resistance

National Women’s History Museum
2016-06-08

Joseph, Emily, Mamie, Frank, and Mary Tape.

Tape v. Hurley

Mary Tape was a biracial Chinese American woman who believed that her daughter, Mamie, should have the same access to education as white children in San Francisco. In particular, Mary Tape wanted her daughter to be able to attend public school. When the local school principal, Jennie Hurley, stood in the schoolhouse door to bar Mamie’s entrance on the sole grounds that she was Chinese, Mary Tape took Jennie Hurley to court.

In 1885, almost seventy years before the famous Supreme Court Decision Brown v. Board of Education desegregated American public schools, Mary Tape sued the San Francisco School District to offer public education to all Chinese children. Tape v. Hurley was one of the most important civil rights decisions in American history. In this ground breaking case, Superior Court Judge James Maguire ruled that Chinese children must have access to public education: “To deny a child, born of Chinese parents in this state, entrance to the public schools would be a violation of the law of the state and the Constitution of the United States.”…

Read the entire article here.

“Slow Jam the News” with President Obama

The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon
NBC
2016-09-06

Jimmy Fallon and President Obama slow jam the news, discussing Obama’s legacy, accomplishments and thoughts on the 2016 election.

Searching for Identity: Race, adoption and awareness in the millennial generation

Medium
2016-05-19

Dwight Smith

What happens when a black boy is adopted at birth into a white world where race and racism are ghosts of the past and racial identity is a silly thing to waste time thinking about? As a transracial adult adoptee of color, my life journey reveals some insight into this very question.

And what happens when a mostly white millennial generation is raised without an accurate understanding of race, racism or their role in a racialized society? As Slate’s chief political correspondent Jamelle Bouie puts it, our generation “think[s] if we ignore skin color, racism will somehow disappear.”

Both questions are connected because I — and many of my millennial peers — came up in similar race-erasing worlds. Both questions are important to me, because my life experiences motivate me to address the racial confusion of the millennial generation.

I lead the Impact Race initiative for a global nonprofit called Net Impact, connecting our 100,000 members with the awareness, language and resources to lead for racial equity in their communities and careers. Members represent hundreds of campuses and companies across a wide variety of industries, including the local tech industry. Aspects of my journey as a transracial adoptee, and the majority white millennial generation experience in the United States, highlight the importance of pushing the conversation toward an honest, reflective look at how to understand racism and lead for racial equity.

Ignorance is bliss, until it isn’t.

I am a mixed-race black male raised in and around whiteness. Race had about as much real significance as the color of one’s shoelaces, and racism was a wrong of years gone by. In this world, to be ‘black’ (this is how I was and am categorized) meant a list of hollow stereotypes such as the expectation of athletic skill. But mostly there was just deafening silence when it came to me being black. Of course, all of this was ‘normal’ to me, in the sense that it was all I ever knew. It was also normal to all the white kids I grew up around. This is, in part, the reason that a ‘raceless’, colorblind worldview is normal to many of my white millennial peers today…

…Simply opening one’s eyes is not enough, we must seek the context to interpret that which we now see. My faith, my current understanding of the factors that influenced my childhood experiences as a transracial adoptee, and my everyday experience as a black man in America, fuel my life’s commitment to education and advocacy…

Read the entire article here.