Mixed Race Studies

Shaping a child’s race identity: Black, white, or other?

Chinook Observer
Long Beach, Washington
2017-05-09

Ruth Elaine Jutila Chamberlin

Lindsay Chamberlin was photographed near the time of her adoption. FAMILY PHOTO

We sat in straight chairs, waiting to meet our daughter. Burt held Jordan, age two, and Jamie, 13 months, while I jittered solo, eager to hold the baby. “Eager” doesn’t come close. I was afire. Atingle!

Here’s what we knew (no photos available): Eight months old. African-American/Irish-American. Foster child, next county. We wanted her! But were we, a white couple, the right parents for this child? Adoption workers would watch us interact with the baby and decide, yes or no.

The caseworker came in, carrying Lindsey (we’d already named her, hoping to adopt her). I was stunned! My imaginary Lindsey was a shy, pint-sized, brown-skinned baby. The real one was big for her age, light-skinned, calm, and forceful.

Lindsey was in charge of the meeting. She shot us piercing looks. Dear child! First she lost her birthmom, her familiar voice and heart rhythms. Lindsey grieved. Another mom took her. Everything changed. Lindsey grieved more. But she was brave. She learned to roll over, sit and creep, eat solid food, looking to that mom for praise and safety. Now SHE’S gone? NOT FAIR! No one asked ME!…

Read the entire article here.

The Unbearable Whiteness Of Being

WBUR 90.9 FM
Boston, Massachusetts
2017-05-02

John Vercher

I’m raising my sons to be proud of their blackness, writes John Vercher. But they’ll benefit from their lighter skin. (Ayo Ogunseinde/Unsplash)

I used to make fun of my Pop’s Afro. Then, as now, he took meticulous care of it. I remember with such clarity the way he used to trim it in the mirror of our basement bathroom. The way he leaned over the sink to wash it, neck craned under the faucet to keep the shampoo from running in his eyes. The way he styled and shaped it to geometric perfection. That Afro was the epitome of cool.

Except to me. His natural, his turtlenecks under his leather jackets, his ankle-high leather boots, made him a walking anachronism. An outdated Richard Roundtree; Shaft in the wrong time.

I envied that hair, though I didn’t know it at the time. I still do. Not only for myself but also for my sons. I am a biracial black man, but I was not blessed with my father’s good hair. His loose curls plus my mother’s arrow-straight locks left me with a shock more Prince than Angela Davis; skin more Dwayne Johnson than Wesley Snipes. A child of the 70s, my parents let my hair grow long and wavy and so I heard that question, as early as grade school; the question that dogged me through high school, followed me to college, nipped at my heels through adulthood, until I shaved my thinning hair:

“What are you, exactly?”…

Read the entire article here.

#RedefineAtoZ: Blasian Narratives, a ‘Vulnerable’ Exploration Into Racial, Cultural Identities

NBC News
2017-05-01

Blasian Narratives is a “multi-media docu-theatre project that takes an intimate look into the lives of Black and Asian individuals to explore the constructs of racial and cultural identities, and to explore difference and marginalization in the United States and beyond.” Paulo Chun / NBC News

NAME: Jivan Atman (creator, director); active cast: Julian Booker, Marlon Booker, Cenisa Gavin, Shiranthi Goonathilaka, Janei Maynard, Chris Sanders

(Past and recent contributors: Jessica Lam, Malcolm Lizzappi, Audrey Williams, Fredrick Cloyd, Paula Reyna Williams, Whitney Francis, Charon Cummings, Sabrina Im)

AGES: Early and late 20’s, a 40-something and 60-something

HOMETOWNS: Phnom Pehn, Cambodia; Anchorage, Alaska; Honolulu, Hawaii; Atlanta, Georgia; Oakland, California; San Francisco, California; San Diego, California; Long Beach, California; London, UK; St. Paul, Minnesota; Westminster, California; Houston, Texas; Aurora, Colorado; Sarasota, Florida

TWITTER: @blasianproject / INSTAGRAM: @blasianproject / FACEBOOK: Blasian Narratives…

Read the entire article here.

Save Your Mixed Tears™ and Other Tips for Mixed Living

Psychology Today
2017-04-28

Jonathan Fisk

Source: Jonathan Fisk

I want to start by prefacing that this article is mostly written with white-POC mixed people in mind. As a white-Puerto Rican mixed person who strongly claims their Black and Taíno backgrounds, this is what I am, this is what I know, and so this is what I felt capable of writing about. Conversations about non-white mixes are definitely needed, and something being had, but not the focus of this article. That said, many themes here run true for other mixed people who might not fit this category, as well as for white-passing Latinx people.

Know that this has all been written all out of love. I’m writing this with not a hint of shade in my words, but as someone who wishes they heard these words earlier on in their exploration of identity as a mixed person.

1. Don’t feel the need to downplay your non-white identity…

Read the entire article here.

Race is more than just black and white. This new podcast explores some of that middle ground.

The Washington Post
201-04-24

Alex Laughlin

(Illustration by Chris Kindred)

There’s this literary theory called the “mulatto canary in the coal mine.”

It holds that the treatment and depictions of mixed-race people in art and culture is a reflection of the broader state of race relations in America at that moment. The theory has been applied to works throughout American history, from Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel, “Passing,” to Danzy Senna’s “Caucasia” in 1999.

These multiracial characters, their very bodies providing evidence of racial lines crossed, are marked by confusion and betrayal, jealousy and cowardice, and most frequently, a tragic ending.

Well, it’s 2017 — 50 years since the Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court decision invalidated anti-miscegenation laws across the country. It’s been legal to cross these racial lines for five decades now, almost two full generations. What does it mean to be mixed race in America today?

I suppose I should tell you a little about myself and why I’m so interested in this topic…

Read the entire article here.

Stealth sisterhood: I look white, but I’m also black. And I don’t hate Rachel Dolezal

Salon
2017-04-23

Alli Joseph

A photo of the author with her mother.

I am white, I am black, I am Native American. And I know what it’s like for people not to see all of who I am

On a hot, humid New York City morning in 1980, I stood with my mother in the checkout line of an A&P supermarket near our home. As she pushed our groceries along the cashier’s belt with me trailing behind, mom realized she had forgotten her wallet at home, but she had her checkbook. Leaving me standing alone in the line for a moment while she saw the manager to have her check approved, the clerk refused to bag our groceries and hand them to me. She was black, and I was white. “These groceries belong to that woman over there,” the woman nodded towards my mother. “They ain’t yours.” Confused, I said, “But that’s my mother. I’ll take them for her.” She looked me up and down. “No,” she said, her voice cold.

The clerk refused to believe that indeed I belonged to, and came from, my black mother, until mom returned to find me choking back tears. She gave the clerk a tongue lashing, which was not her style, and we left the market. Later, mixed Native American and black children threw stones at me near my home on the Shinnecock Indian Reservation as I rode my bike. They yelled, “Get off our land, white girl!” These painful and strange experiences gave me my first taste of racial prejudice, and they have stayed with me all these years.

I am a child of many nations. I am white, I am black, I am Native American. I am West Indian, German, Irish. Brown and light together — integrated, not inter-racial, because race means nothing when you come from everywhere…

Read the entire article here.

The paradox of the multiracial identity

Adolescent
2017-04-18

Sarah Racker, Graphic Designer
Portland, Oregon

I am a multiracial American; my mother is Okinawan, my father is German and Australian. My grandparents came from four different continents. I identify as both Asian and Caucasian, and although I am often identified on the outside as not quite white and not quite “ethnic,” I easily pass for white in a world obsessed with color and race.

Multiracial people face a perplexing paradox. We are not fully white, and yet not fully “not white” enough to be considered a person of color (POC). Growing up biracial, I identified strongly with Spock (yes, from Star Trek). Spock is half Human and half Vulcan, and is ostracized by both halves of himself for not quite belonging to either culture.

Teresa Williams-León, a professor of Asian-American studies at California State University, Northridge, uses Spock as an object lesson in her class, “Biracial and Multiracial Identity.” She sees the parallels between Spock’s inner conflict between his Vulcan and Human identity. “He had to subdue his emotional side to become more cerebral and logical,” she said. “So that’s problematic. But it’s an interesting way of looking at how biracial people have had to suppress aspects of themselves, or one part of themselves.”…

Read the entire article here.

Are You Mixed? A War Bride’s Granddaughter’s Narrative of Lives In-Between Contested Race, Gender, Class, and, Power

Information Age Publishing
2016-02-05
192 pages
Paperback ISBN: 9781681233871
Hardcover ISBN: 9781681233888
eBook ISBN: 9781681233895

Sonia E. Janis, Clinical Assistant Professor, Department of Educational Theory and Practice (Social Studies Education)
University of Georgia

In Are You Mixed?, Sonia Janis explores the spaces in-between race and place from the perspective of an educator who is multi-racial. As she reflects on her own experiences as a seventh grade student up to her eventual appointment as a school administrator, she learns of the complexity of situating oneself in predetermined demographic categories. She shares how she explores the intricacies of undefined spaces that teach her to embrace differences, contradictions, and complexities in schools, neighborhoods and communities.

Exploring the in-betweenness (Anzaldua & Keating, 2002; He, 2003, 2010) of her life as a multi-race person problematizes imbedded notions of race, gender, class, and power. The power of this memoir lies in its narrative possibilities to capture the contradictions and paradoxes of lives in-between race and place, “to honor the subtleties, fluidities, and complexities of such experience, and to cultivate understanding towards individual … experience and the multicultural/multiracial contexts that shape and are shaped by such experience” (He, 2003, p. xvii). This memoir creates new ways to think about and write about in-between experience and their relevance to multicultural and multiracial education.

Janis challenges educators, teachers, administrators, and policy makers to view the educational experience of students with multiracial, multicultural, and multilingual backgrounds by shattering predetermined categories and stereotyped classifications and looking into unknown and fluid realms of the in-betweenness of their lives. This challenge helps create equitable and just opportunities and engender culturally responsive and inspiring curricular and learning environments to bring out the best potential in all diverse schools, communities, neighborhoods, tribes and societies.

CONTENTS

• Acknowledgments
• Prologue
• CHAPTER I: One-Half Polish, One-Quarter Russian, One-Quarter Japanese
• CHAPTER II: My (Non-White or White?) Friends
• CHAPTER III: Three States and Six Schools
• CHAPTER IV: Relocating to the Segregated South
• CHAPTER V: Culturally Clueless
• CHAPTER VI: Multirace Stories as Curriculum
• Epilogue
• Reference
• About the Author

A Conflict of Race and Religion

Atlanta Jewish Times
2017-04-13

Patrice Worthy

As a Jew of color, your identity and loyalty are constantly questioned.

I remember it like it was yesterday. I was laid off from my job for poor work performance. Weeks before, I went to HR regarding a co-worker who attacked my Jewish identity by asking another co-worker, “What does she want to be Jewish?” followed by “She thinks she so cute” because I asked for the first day of Pesach off.

Her sister, who worked in the same department, questioned my Judaism in front of the entire office, and when the daily harassment was too much for my body to handle, I was hospitalized and forced to tell my diagnosis to my supervisor, who encouraged the discrimination, and the HR rep…

…Being black and Jewish, at least from my experiences in the South, is a precarious position. Especially in a socially segregated city like Atlanta, where you are forced to choose between being Jewish and being black, whatever that means…

Read the entire article here.

Jewish and Asian: Intermarriages that yield Jewish kids

Religion News Service
2016-07-08

Lauren Markoe, National Reporter

Helen Kim, Noah Leavitt, and their children Ari and Talia Kim-Leavitt, at home. Photo courtesy Kim-Leavitt family

(RNS) Noah Leavitt and Helen Kiyong Kim’s marriage is one of an increasing number of Jewish-Asian pairings in the U.S., a trend evident in many American synagogues. The two Whitman College professors have just released the first book-length study of Jewish-Asian couples and their offspring.

Though “JewAsian” is geared toward social scientists, the chapters in which they excerpt and analyze their interviews with 34 Jewish-Asian couples will interest any readers curious about intermarriage in general, and the evolving American-Jewish community in particular.

RNS asked Leavitt and Kim why Jews and Asians seem increasingly to fall for each other, why they so often opt for Judaism and how they are raising their own Jewish-Korean children…

Read the entire interview here.