You Can be Both! (And Not In the Way You Might be Thinking)

Posted in Articles, Autobiography, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive on 2015-01-15 21:31Z by Steven

You Can be Both! (And Not In the Way You Might be Thinking)

Mixed In Canada
2015-01-14

Rema Tavares

Dr. Maria P. Root’sBill of Rights for Racially Mixed People” has greatly influenced how many mixed-race folks identify today. One of the things I learned from the Bill was that I had the right to identify however I wanted to, regardless of how my family, friends, society etc thought I should identify. On top of that, I had the right to change my identity as many times as I felt necessary throughout my life. To that point, I have identified as a lot of things during my 30 years on this earth. As a young child who understood nothing about race, growing up completely surrounded by white folks, I thought I was a mutated white person (*cringe*). Once I realized that I was in fact Black at around 8 years old, I was incredibly happy and immediately began to identify that way (or as “Jamaican” again in my limited understanding of race, conflating race & nationality). Named after my grandmother whom I loved dearly, I was so happy to find out that I was Black, just like her. Despite having a white mother, for years I avoided a mixed-race identity, because for the longest time it didn’t feel right. I didn’t feel mixed. I felt Black…

Read the entire article here.

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“Does it take work leaving your hair like that?” – We resist! Sou negra (I am a black woman)!” – The development of black identity for a negro-mestiça

Posted in Anthropology, Articles, Autobiography, Brazil, Caribbean/Latin America, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive on 2015-01-15 18:22Z by Steven

“Does it take work leaving your hair like that?” – We resist! Sou negra (I am a black woman)!” – The development of black identity for a negro-mestiça

Black Women of Brazil
2015-01-15

We resist! Negra Soy (I am a black woman)!” (August, 2014) from Biscate Social Club

Lia Siqueira


Lia Siqueira

“Yes, it takes work. Prejudice beats us, but we resist.” That’s what I said when a lady on the bus asked: “Does it take work leave your hair like that?” I understood what she wanted to know. But what suffocated me at that moment needed to be said. I didn’t want to exchange secrets to give freshness and volume to the hair. I didn’t want to speak of aloe, bepantol (1) or the potential for a good hydration schedule. Until then, I had been giving the aesthetic responses to that type of question. Those responses were expected by those who had their curiosity aroused by my “petulant” hair. However, there comes a time that all we need to transcend the aesthetic question of resistance – to communicate the subversion of our blackness and assume responsibly, our place – to show what is most valuable was born from the roots on our heads. The intimacy of looking at our roots without relaxing, which infests them, and celebrating our heads, our ideas.

Cultivating a relationship of love with our black hair and taking from ourselves the most powerful us. I don’t mean some natural mix ups provoked by the texture of the curls. I speak of what makes it difficult for us, the looks, the ridicule, judgments, the racism…

…I am the daughter of a white woman and a black man. I was born of the mixture so hypocritically celebrated by the gringos in this our pseudo-racial democracy. I came into the world like this: mixed up in this being-not being black. With “morena” (brown/light brown) skin, in this Brazil where todas as gatas são “pardas” (all the cats are “brown”) (2), “toasted ones”, “mulatas”, “brown colored”, but not “negras”. In my home, I learned not to reject blackness or to whiten myself. I was loved with my curly hair, by my white mother – there I was me and I was secure. But socialization comes, it is inevitable. With it, we are run over by filters of prejudices. The incomprehension of classmates at school quickly became racism. As in the beginning of the poem by Victoria Eugenia Santa Cruz Gamarra, “Me gritaron negra” (they screamed negra at me), I retreated before the laughter because of my cabelo crespo (curly/kinky hair). Before the age of thirteen I was using straighteners and relaxers

Read the entire article here.

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Skin, Inc.: Identity Repair Poems

Posted in Books, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, Poetry, United States on 2015-01-14 23:38Z by Steven

Skin, Inc.: Identity Repair Poems

Graywolf Press
2010-08-31
192 pages
Trim Size: 6 x 9
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-55597-567-8
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-55597-650-7

Thomas Sayers Ellis, co-Founder
The Dark Room Collective, Cambridge, Massachusetts

The ambitious, combative, and spot-on new poetry book by Thomas Sayers Ellis, author of the award-winning The Maverick Room

Skin, Inc. is Thomas Sayers Ellis’s big, ambitious argument in sound and image for an America whose identity is in need of repair. In lyric sequences and with his own photographs, Ellis traverses the African American and American literary landscapes—along the way adding race fearlessness to past and present literary styles and themes, and perform-a-forming tributes for the Godfather of Soul, James Brown; the King of Pop, Michael Jackson; and the election of President Barack Obama. Part manifesto, part identity repair kit, part plea for poetic wholeness, this collection worries and self-defends, eulogizes and casts a vote, raises a fist and, often, an intimidating song. One sequence is written as a sonic/visual diagram of pronouns and vowels; another quotes from editors’ rejections of his own poetry included in the book; another poem, “Race Change Operation,” begins: “When I awake I will be white, the color of law.” Skin, Inc. is the latest work by one of the most audacious and provocative poets now writing.

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Caught In-between

Posted in Articles, Autobiography, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive on 2015-01-13 18:42Z by Steven

Caught In-between

Mixed Humans ~ Reflections on occupying a space of inbetweenness. Persistently grappling with identity.
2015-01-13

Brian Kamanzi
Cape Town, South Africa

Caught In-between.

So for the longest time. I had grown up thinking of myself as an “almost” Indian. A half-Indian. Half caste. Whatever the hell sort of awful approximation of an authentic identity I desired. Loathed. Loved. And pursued.

I had dealt with a lot of people who felt at complete ease telling me what it “is” that I am.

My Dad is black you see. And many attempts I’ve made to connect with my mother’s heritage sending me packing. As if somehow invoking the dominance of the influence of “the father” is going to resolve the annoyance of having to decide which “box” I’m allowed to be in. It was always a tricky thing to even communicate to my own mother, who was not a cultural woman herself and could not understand what I was looking for. She could not understand why their rejection of me mattered to me – and I couldn’t understand why it was I was being denied my authenticity…

Read the entire article here.

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Black and Blue and Blond

Posted in Articles, Autobiography, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, Philosophy on 2015-01-06 18:21Z by Steven

Black and Blue and Blond

Virginia Quarterly Review
Volume 91, Number 1 (Winter 2015)
pages 80-87

Thomas Chatterton Williams


The author and his daughter at her great-grandmother’s house in Normandy, 2014.

Where does race fit in the construction of modern identity?

In 1517, Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, feeling great pity for the Indians who grew worn and lean in the drudging infernos of the Antillean gold mines, proposed to Emperor Charles V that Negroes be brought to the isles of the Caribbean, so that they might grow worn and lean in the drudging infernos of the Antillean gold mines. To that odd variant on the species philanthropist we owe an infinitude of things…”

Jorge Luis Borges, “The Cruel Redeemer Lazarus Morell”

“But any fool can see that the white people are not really white, and that black people are not black.”

Albert Murray, The Omni-Americans

“Our white is so white you can paint a chunka coal and you’d have to crack it open with a sledge hammer to prove it wasn’t white clear through.”

Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

There is a millennia-old philosophical experiment that has perplexed minds as fine and diverse as those of Socrates, Plutarch, and John Locke. It’s called Theseus’s Paradox (or the Ship of Theseus), and the premise is this: The mythical founding-king of Athens kept a thirty-oar ship docked in the Athenian harbor. The vessel was preserved in a sea-worthy state through the continual replacement of old timber planks with new ones, piecemeal, until the question inevitably arose: After all of the original planks have been replaced by new and different planks, is it still, in fact, the same ship?

For some time now, a recurring vision has put me in mind of Theseus and those shuffling pieces of wood. Only, it’s people I see and not boats: a lineage of people distending over time. At the end of the line, there is a teenage boy with fair skin and blond hair and probably light eyes, seated at a café table somewhere in Europe. It is fifty or sixty years into the future. And this boy, gathered with his friends, is glibly remarking—in the dispassionate tone of one of my old white Catholic school classmates claiming to have Cherokee or Iroquois blood—that as improbable as it would seem to look at him, apparently he had black ancestors once upon a time in America. He says it all so matter-of-factly, with no visceral aspect to the telling. I imagine his friends’ vague surprise, perhaps a raised eyebrow or two or perhaps not even that—and if I want to torture myself, I can detect an ironic smirk or giggle. Then, to my horror, I see the conversation grow not ugly or embittered or anything like that but simply pass on, giving way to other lesser matters, plans for the weekend or questions about the menu perhaps. And then it’s over. Just like that, in one casual exchange, I see a history, a struggle, a whole vibrant and populated world collapse without a trace. I see an entirely different ship…

…I realize now that this vision of the boy from the future I’ve had in my head for the past year traces itself much further back into the past. It must necessarily stretch back at least to 1971, in San Diego, where my father, who was—having been born in 1937 in Jim Crow Texas—the grandson of a woman wed to a man born before the Emancipation Proclamation, met my mother, the native-Californian product of European immigrants from places as diverse as Austria-Hungary, Germany, England, and France. This unlikely courtship came all of four years after the Loving v. Virginia verdict repealed anti-miscegenation laws throughout the country. In ways that are perhaps still impossible for me to fully appreciate, their romance amounted to a radical political act, though now, some four decades on, it seems a lot less like any form of defiance than like what all successful marriages fundamentally must be: the obvious and undeniable joining of two people who love and understand each other enormously.

But that’s not the beginning, either. This trajectory I now find myself on no more starts in San Diego than in Paris. Not since it is extremely safe to assume that my father, with his freckles, with his mother’s Irish maiden name, and with his skin a shade of brown between polished teak and red clay, did not arrive from African shores alone. As James Baldwin, perspicacious as ever, noted of his travels around precisely the kind of segregated Southern towns my father would instantly recognize as home, the line between “whites” and “coloreds” in America has always been traversed and logically imprecise: “the prohibition … of the social mingling [revealing] the extent of the sexual amalgamation.” There were (and still are): “Girls the color of honey, men nearly the color of chalk, hair like silk, hair like cotton, hair like wire, eyes blue, gray, green, hazel, black, like the gypsy’s, brown like the Arab’s, narrow nostrils, thin, wide lips, thin lips, every conceivable variation struck along incredible gamuts…” Indeed, to be black (or white) for any significant amount of time in America is fundamentally to occupy a position on the mongrel spectrum—strict binaries have always failed spectacularly to contain this elementary truth.

And yet in spite of that, I’ve spent the past year trying to think my way through the wholly absurd question of what it means for a person to be or not to be black. It’s an existential Rubik’s Cube I thought I’d solved and put away in childhood. My parents were never less than adamant on the point that both my older brother and I are black. And the in many ways simpler New Jersey world we grew up in—him in the seventies and eighties, me in the eighties and nineties—tended to receive us that way without significant protest, especially when it came to other blacks. This is probably because, on a certain level, every black American knows what, again, Baldwin knew: “Whatever he or anyone else may wish to believe… his ancestors are both white and black.” Still, in the realm of lived experience, race is nothing if not an improvisational feat, and it would be in terribly bad faith to pretend there is not some fine, unspoken, and impossible-to-spell-out balance to all of this. And so I cannot help but wonder if indeed a threshold—the full consequences of which I may or may not even see in my own lifetime—has been crossed. (It’s not a wholly academic exercise, either, since my father was an only child and in the past year my brother married and had a daughter with a woman from West Siberia.)…

Read the entire article here.

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Mixed College Students: WHO vs. WHAT

Posted in Articles, Campus Life, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, United States on 2015-01-06 01:36Z by Steven

Mixed College Students: WHO vs. WHAT

NASPA: Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education
2014-12-24

Aaron Moore, Residence Life: Hall Director
Ohio State University

Over the past few weeks I have read Mixed: Multiracial College Students Tell Their Life Stories (2014) and was extremely pleased with the thought provoking and eye opening narratives that were shared by the many students included in this book. I decided to read this book as a means of furthering my understanding of identity and how students come to understand who they are, but specifically, for individuals who identify as multiracial. I teach a Social Justice education course and understanding the racial landscape is often tough for students when they look at understanding themselves and relating to others, but grasping that there is not a “binary” if you will as it relates to how one identifies can be a challenging topic to explore and a tough even tougher for individuals trying to answer the question of “who am I.” When reading this book and the narratives I often had moments where I shook my head and understood what was being shared, but as I worked to connect with each student sharing their story, I found myself clothed with empathy as I tried to imagine what it must be like to answer the following:

  • What are you?
  • What does it take to be noticed?
  • Is there a “better” race to identify with?
  • How do I fight for how I want to be seen?

The list went on. The experiences of students who identify as being multiracial is not one of understanding, but is often one that presents itself with more questions than answers…

Read the entire article here.

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So, What Are You?: A Multiracial Perspective On Identity

Posted in Articles, Asian Diaspora, Campus Life, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, United States on 2015-01-06 01:27Z by Steven

So, What Are You?: A Multiracial Perspective On Identity

Jossle Magazine
2014-11-18

Leilani Stacy
Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts

“So, what are you?”

In a word, “Wasian,” or more accurately, “Multiracial.” Specifically, I’m a quarter Japanese, a “mutt” of white—Scottish, Irish, Pennsylvania Dutch, French, English, German, Danish—and probably a little Native American (don’t worry, I didn’t put that down just to get into colleges) and, contrary to my name, not Hawaiian.

So when the issue of race comes up, one question often arises: Where do I fit in?

I’m sure if I ever visited Japan, people wouldn’t consider me “Japanese enough.” Meanwhile in the US, I get a little too tan to be considered “White enough.” Additionally, I’ve never felt comfortable joining a Japanese or Asian-American cultural club. And when people start talking about “cultural” traditions or life at home, forget it…

Read the entire article here.

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Getting in Touch with Our “Identity”

Posted in Campus Life, Identity Development/Psychology, Live Events, Media Archive, United States on 2015-01-05 02:23Z by Steven

Getting in Touch with Our “Identity”

Multiracial Identity Program
Portland State University
2015-01-13 through 2015-01-15

Multicultural Center
1825 SW Broadway
Smith Memorial Student Union, Suite 228
Portland, Oregon 97201
Wednesday, 2015-01-14, 12:00-13:30 PST (Local Time)

The multiple types of racial identities on campus varies. Let’s come together and discuss our identities to break barriers and create a better knitted community amongst ourselves. For more information please contact the Cultural Centers at cultures@pdx.edu or (503) 725-5342.

For more information, click here.

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Multiracial Identity Program – Panel Discussion

Posted in Campus Life, Identity Development/Psychology, Live Events, Media Archive, United States on 2015-01-05 02:22Z by Steven

Multiracial Identity Program – Panel Discussion

Multiracial Identity Program
Portland State University
2015-01-13 through 2015-01-15

Multicultural Center
1825 SW Broadway
Smith Memorial Student Union, Suite 228
Portland, Oregon 97201
Tuesday, 2015-01-13, 16:00-18:00 PST (Local Time)

Kickstarting the Multiracial Identity Program, this panel will consist of individuals who identity as multiracial and/or multiethnic. Come together for an insightful discussion of the experiences and implications of identifying along a spectrum of racial and ethnic backgrounds. For more information please contact the Cultural Centers at cultures@pdx.edu or (503) 725-5342.

For more information, click here.

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I Am a Blacktina: Reflections on Being an Afro-Cuban in the U.S.

Posted in Articles, Caribbean/Latin America, Identity Development/Psychology, Latino Studies, Media Archive, United States on 2014-12-31 00:54Z by Steven

I Am a Blacktina: Reflections on Being an Afro-Cuban in the U.S.

For Harriet
2014-12-28

Felice León

I am a Blacktina. Get it: Black [La]tina?

A friend gave me this nickname years ago, and it has stuck. My father is Afro-Cuban, and my mother Afro-American. I identify with both cultures and have tried to balance both, but I’ve found that I associate more so with my blackness, particularly while living in the United States.

Last week, President Obama announced the restoration of diplomatic ties with Cuba. There is said to be a U.S. Embassy opening in Havana. This is a big deal. It has been decades since the U.S. has had relations with Cuba, and Obama’s announcement marks a pivotal point in American history. Politically, there is both optimism and skepticism. Amongst my peers, the announcement seemed to have gone over well. Facebook was flooded with posts about Cuba: plans to travel to Cuba, requests for Cuban cigars, and other foolish insights that people tend to share on social media. I was also delighted to hear of the news. I’ve visited Cuba once, but it wasn’t enough. Still, during my trip I had a deep connection with my Black and Brown relatives. I was accepted as being Cuban, and for those few weeks there was no question about my identity…

I have found that being a Black woman of Cuban descent comes as a surprise to many in this country. In a class discussion last year I spoke of why I choose to refer to myself as Black (I didn’t mention the Blacktina nickname in this conversation): “The ship made many stops before it arrived on these shores. I feel like the term ‘Black’ more so encompasses the African Diaspora.” African slaves made significant contributions in Latin America. There is a complex racial history. African blood runs deep in the veins of many Latinos, which is why I choose to identify as Black. But for others, there is a level of denial when it comes to their African roots…

Read the entire article here.

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