Mixed Race Studies

Alien Citizen: An Earth Odyssey, the Movie

HapaLis Productions
2017

Written by: Elizabeth Liang
Directed by: Sofie Calderon

Winner: 2018 Calcutta International Cult Film Festival

Who are you when you’re from everywhere and nowhere?

ALIEN CITIZEN: An Earth Odyssey is a funny and poignant one-woman show about growing up as a dual citizen of mixed heritage in Central America, North Africa, the Middle East, and New England. Elizabeth Liang is a Global Nomad or Third Culture Kid (TCK). Third Culture Kids are the children of educators, international business people, diplomats, missionaries, the military–anyone whose family has relocated overseas, usually because of a job placement.

Liang weaves humorous stories about growing up as an Alien Citizen abroad with American commercial jingles providing her soundtrack through language confusion, first love, “racial ambiguity,” culture shock, Clark Gable, bullying, and sandstorms. Our protagonist deals with the decisions every global nomad has to make repeatedly: to adapt or to simply cope; to build a bridge or to just tolerate. From being a Guatemalan-American teen in North Africa to attending a women’s college in the USA, Alien Citizen reflects her experience that neither one was necessarily easier than the other. Where is the line between respecting others and betraying yourself? Humor is a great survival mechanism – and friends make all the difference.

The mixed-race experience: ‘There are times I feel like the odd one out’

The Guardian
2018-08-26

Alex Moshakis

‘It has given people a sense of belonging’: photographer Tenee Attoh on her photography project. Composite: Tenee Attoh

A series of portraits of mixed-race people from around the world has cast new light on how we see ourselves

Last year the photographer Tenee Attoh began taking portraits of multiracial friends and acquaintances against a mottled black background at the Bussey Building in Peckham, southeast London. Attoh is half-Dutch on her mother’s side, half-Ghanaian on her father’s, and identifies as mixed-race. Born in the UK, she spent most of the first 23 years of her life in Accra and Amsterdam, shuttling between cities and cultures, an experience she found enlightening but problematic. “On the one hand it allows you to develop a different understanding of the world,” she says of her duality. “But there’s still a lot of ignorance in society. People perceive you as either black or white, and you’re not – you’re mixed.”

Working in London, Attoh heard similar stories from other mixed-race people, and soon she began publishing her images online (at mixedracefaces.com and on Instagram) alongside small texts that allowed her subjects to share personal thoughts on identity, race and self, something they couldn’t do elsewhere. Following the death of her mother, to whom the series is dedicated, the project helped Attoh dissect her own multiracial experience – what it means to be connected to two worlds at once, and how society perceives that condition – but it has also sparked an open forum on diversity. “It’s not a topic people usually talk about,” Attoh says. “So the website has become a platform for people with mixed heritage. It’s given a lot of them a sense of belonging.”…

Read the entire article here.

“A Part, and Apart”: Passing and Belonging as a Multiracial Person

Psychology Today
2018-08-21

Tiffany McLain, LMFT
San Francisco, California

Here’s how to navigate passing and belonging as a multiracial person.

Tiffany note: For the past few months, I have been writing about the experience of white mothers of biracial children. For the next set of articles in this series, I will be sharing the stories of white fathers of biracial children. The following article is a brief interlude that invites us to consider the experience of the biracial person who has been raised by a white mother, despite being multiethnic.

The following article is written by Bay Area psychotherapist, Deva Segal, MFT. In it, she describes the experience of being a light-skinned biracial person in a society that desires a clear binary when it comes to racial identifications…

…Over the course of my life, I have identified myself in many ways: half Indian-half White; just White; Other; South Asian; Desi; multiethnic; biracial; multiracial; light-skinned Indian; light-brown-but-probably-needs-to-go-back-in-the-toaster-a-little-bit-longer. In recent years, I have identified a “publicly white person and privately a person of color” in efforts to acknowledge my privilege. Still, that doesn’t always fit. Half my story is gone. Owning my own experience as a woman of color without apology while still kinda passing for white is a delightful grab bag of identity crises…

Read the entire article here.

Black and biracial Americans wouldn’t need to code-switch if we lived in a post-racial society

The Conversation
2018-08-17

Chandra D. L. Waring, ​Assistant Professor of Sociology and Race and Ethnic Studies
University of Wisconsin, Whitewater

For black and biracial Americans, the pressures to adapt to a dominant white culture – and surrender their unique sense of self – can be suffocating. Gumenyuk Dmitriy/Shutterstock.com

Boots Riley’s new film “Sorry to Bother You” does anything but apologize.

In telling the story of Cassius, a young black man who becomes an extraordinarily successful telemarketer after he starts using his “white voice,” it showcases the magnitude of racial and class oppression.

Colloquially, Cassius’ use of a “white voice” is known as code-switching, and the film highlights something that most African-Americans could probably tell you: The ability to code-switch is often a prerequisite to becoming a successful black person in America.

As a race scholar and sociologist, I’ve studied biracial Americans who engage in code-switching. I found that the ability to deftly code-switch has some real advantages. But it also has its fair share of pitfalls.

More broadly, it has led me to wonder what the persistence of code-switching tells us about race, opportunities and making connections in America today…

Read the entire article here.

Identity Denied: Comparing American or White Identity Denial and Psychological Health Outcomes Among Bicultural and Biracial People

Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
First Published 2018-08-07
DOI: 10.1177/0146167218788553

Analia F. Albuja
Department of Psychology
Rutgers University, The State University of New Jersey

Diana T. Sanchez, Associate Professor of Psychology
Rutgers University, The State University of New Jersey

Sarah E. Gaither, Assistant Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience
Duke University, Durham, North Carolina

Because bicultural and biracial people have two identities within one social domain (culture or race), their identification is often challenged by others. Although it is established that identity denial is associated with poor psychological health, the processes through which this occurs are less understood. Across two high-powered studies, we tested identity autonomy, the perceived compatibility of identities, and social belonging as mediators of the relationship between identity denial and well-being among bicultural and biracial individuals. Bicultural and biracial participants who experienced challenges to their American or White identities felt less freedom in choosing an identity and perceived their identities as less compatible, which was ultimately associated with greater reports of depressive symptoms and stress. Study 2 replicated these results and measured social belonging, which also accounted for significant variance in well-being. The results suggest the processes were similar across populations, highlighting important implications for the generalizability to other dual-identity populations.

Read or purchase the article here.

Call for papers for the special issue of The Journal of Early Adolescence: “Biracial, Multiracial, and Multiethnic Adolescents”

Editor in Chief: Alexander T. Vazsonyi
University of Kentucky

Guest Editors: Adrienne Nishina and Melissa Witkow

Because of their ethnic/racial ambiguity, multiethnic youth (youth from more than one ethnic/racial background) are still sometimes ignored in developmental research. Yet, by the year 2060, multiethnic youth are projected to comprise almost 10% of the total youth population in the United States, rendering subsample deletion impractical.

The Journal of Early Adolescence invites papers that explicitly examine early adolescents from multiethnic/multiracial backgrounds. We are particularly interested in papers that use a variety of methods to identify these youth. As such, papers should include clear descriptions of how multiethnic/multiracial status was identified, and why a particular method was chosen.

In terms of content, papers can be methodological or descriptive in focus – for example, providing and assessing conceptual frameworks on how and when to classify multiethnic youth as their own group as opposed to a different classification. Papers can also be process-oriented (e.g., how better understanding multiethnic youth can help the field understand more basic developmental processes related to ethnicity). In this respect, papers can focus solely on multiethnic youth, or it can be comparative in nature.

All papers should include a section labeled “Practical Recommendations” in the discussion that provides recommendations for researchers moving forward, as well as the rationale on which these recommendations are based.

Authors of potential submissions can contact Adrienne Nishina (anishina@ucdavis.edu) or Melissa Witkow (mwitkow@willamette.edu) if they have questions about the suitability of their study for this special issue.

Submissions for this special issue are due December 15, 2018.

Submit your manuscript today: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/earlyadolescence

Meet the woman who’s finally getting us talking about mixed race identity

METRO.co.uk
2018-01-31

Miranda Larbi, Senior lifestyle reporter

Mixed race identity is complicated, to say the least.

You’re neither one thing or the other while simultaneously being both. Try speaking about your identity (online at least) and you inevitably met with criticism – whether it’s from ‘colour-blind’ types dismissing the need to talk about race at all, or from people accusing you of choosing a side to identify more with.

According to National Statistics, mixed race people will be the largest minority group in the UK by 2020…and while it might still be in vogue to favour racially ambiguous beauty (literally in the case of Adua Aboa), very little attention is paid to the experience behind the curly hair and tanned skin.

Being mixed race is far more than simply being half black and white. It’s an identity that covers all fractions, and all kinds of mixes.

Which is why Susan Dale has set up the Haluhalo Project…

Read the entire article here.

HaluHalo Gives Mixed Race Identities A Fresh Narrative Online & IRL

Bustle
2018-08-01

Salma Haidrani

Source: HaluHalo

A cursory glance at pop culture today and you wouldn’t be mistaken for thinking that mixed race identities have never been more visible. Take the likes of Jorja Smith, Mabel, and Raye. And less than two months ago, Meghan Markle made history as the first mixed race royal in the British monarchy. While it’s problematic enough that representations rarely deviate from the “acceptable” face of mixed race (light-skinned and complete with Eurocentric features or at the very least, “ambiguous”), the dialogue surrounding the complexities of mixed race identities remains absent from the mainstream.

It’s this that motivated London-based photographer Susan Dale to launch HaluHalo, the first photo series of its kind to explore the lesser-known intricacies of mixed race identity. “Thanks to social media, there’s a visual representation of mixed race people compared to when I was growing up but there’s still a lack of public discourse on what it means to be mixed race,” she tells me. “I was curious to find out if anyone else felt the way I did or shared my experiences.”

Dale likens HaluHalo to Humans of New York, albeit with a multi-racial lens. While initially she didn’t encounter any issues approaching complete strangers of mixed ethnicities, ages and genders to share their experiences and how they self-identify – “I started with the most basic method by sliding into their DMs on Instagram!” – she found that they would either hesitate or completely disappear when it came to answering her interview questions…

Read the entire article here.

Critical Mixed Race in Global Perspective

Journal of Intercultural Studies
Volume 38 (2018)
2018-08-01

• Introduction
  • Critical Mixed Race in Global Perspective: An Introduction / Erica Chito Childs
• Hierarchies of Mixing: Navigations and Negotiations
  • An Unwanted Weed: Children of Cross-region Unions Confront Intergenerational Stigma of Caste, Ethnicity and Religion / Reena Kukreja
  • Mixed Race Families in South Africa: Naming and Claiming a Location / Heather M. Dalmage
  • Negotiating the (Non)Negotiable: Connecting ‘Mixed-Race’ Identities to ‘Mixed-Race’ Families / Mengxi Pang
  • Linguistic Cultural Capital among Descendants of Mixed Couples in Catalonia, Spain: Realities and Inequalities / Dan Rodríguez-García, Miguel Solana-Solana, Anna Ortiz-Guitart & Joanna L. Freedman
  • ‘There is Nothing Wrong with Being a Mulatto’: Structural Discrimination and Racialised Belonging in Denmark / Mira C. Skadegård & Iben Jensen
  • Exceptionalism with Non-Validation: The Social Inconsistencies of Being Mixed Race in Australia / Stephanie B. Guy
• Mixed Matters Through a Wider Lens
  • Recognising Selves in Others: Situating Dougla Manoeuvrability as Shared Mixed-Race Ontology / Sue Ann Barratt & Aleah Ranjitsingh
  • What’s Love Got To Do With It? Emotional Authority and State Regulation of Interracial/national Couples in Ireland / Rebecca Chiyoko King-O’Riain
  • Re-viewing Race and Mixedness: Mixed Race in Asia and the Pacific / Zarine L. Rocha

Read or purchase this special issue here.

‘My Racial Identity’ explores feelings about race

Montclair Local
Montclair, New Jersey
2018-06-08

Gwen Orel, Features Editor

Charles Williams of Montclair, 19, a Parsons School of Design rising sophomore, is creating a photography portfolio of mixed race friends, “My Racial Identity, Part 1,” and intends to dive deeper in Part 2. ADAM ANIK/FOR MONTCLAIR LOCAL

Montclair artist’s photo project delves into discussion

Growing up in Montclair, Charles Williams sometimes said his dad was Cuban.

That’s not really true.

“When I was younger, I looked a little bit towards Asian, then black, Hispanic. Growing up, we really didn’t talk about race in my household, so I didn’t really feel it was an issue. Until my friends, they would ask me, what are you?” Williams said. “Your mom’s not black. You have a white name.”

His mom is black. She’s from D.C., and his father is a white man from Florida, with some Cuban in him.

“‘My dad does look Cuban,” Williams said. So saying his father was Cuban was a way of ending the questions of what are you? and where are you from? “You kind of get sick of it, so you say something to let it go.”

Today, people talk about race. Williams is exploring it in his new photography project, “My Racial Identity,” that he started during his first year at Parsons School of Design. Williams’ photography can be seen at charleswilliams.work…

Read the entire article here.