Mixed Race Studies

Feature: Five Qs with Sharon H. Chang

Writing like an Asian: Thoughts on writing, composition, and issues of identity
2016-02-26

Jee Yoon Lee, Lecturer in English/Adjust Professor
Georgetown University/George Washington University, Washington, D.C.

Sharon H. Chang worked with young children and families for over a decade as a teacher, administrator, advocate and parent educator. She is currently an award-winning author, scholar and activist who focuses on racism, social justice and the Asian American diaspora with a feminist lens. Her inaugural book Raising Mixed Race: Multiracial Asian Children In a Post-Racial World was released in 2015/2016 to rave reviews. Her pieces have additionally appeared in BuzzFeed, ThinkProgress, Hyphen Magazine, ParentMap Magazine, The Seattle Globalist, AAPI Voices and International Examiner. She also serves as a consultant for Families of Color Seattle and is on the planning committee for the Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference.

(Q1) How did the project for writing the book Raising Mixed Race begin? How did you decide which stories to include?

Well the process of coming to my mixed race consciousness and passion for social justice writing is hard to milestone because it’s a human one that extends, and will continue to extend, across my lifetime. That said there have been catalyzing events and one of the most important ones was having my son in 2009. You know up until that point I always had a sense of the racialized world we live in (and most of us do) but I didn’t have a deep understanding or language to articulate anything. When you have a child however everything changes because suddenly there’s the responsibility of communicating crucial ideas, values, and concepts to a young person you love with all your heart…

…(Q4) What can you tell us about the work you have been doing as a teacher, activist, and parent educator? Are there particular works that you have found useful in facilitating discussion about what it means to be part of mixed raced community?…

…Unfortunately there aren’t a lot of useful resources for facilitating discussion about what it means to be part of mixed race communities. There is a growing body of academic work, art, think pieces, buzzy stuff, and such, a lot of which you can access on the Mixed Race Studies site curated by Steven F. Riley. But frankly, where is the mixed race community anyway? Is there one? When I get asked to do community work I’m usually asked to tailor generally to race and away from mixed race. And even in the classroom, whether primary/secondary school or higher ed, multiracial conversations are often relegated to units within a curriculum rather than being a whole focus. You can’t major (or minor?) in mixed race studies in college. This, again, despite the fact multiracial is the fastest growing identification among youth. We still have a long ways to go…

Read the entire interview here.

Lupita Nyong’o and Trevor Noah, and Their Meaningful Roles

Table for Three
The New York Times
2016-02-27

Philip Galanes

Lupita Nyong’o, an Oscar-winning actress, and Trevor Noah, the host of “The Daily Show,” at the Dutch in SoHo. Credit Malin Fezehai for The New York Times

The most intriguing stars seem to appear from out of nowhere.

Take Lupita Nyong’o, the Mexican-Kenyan actress who had not even graduated from Yale School of Drama before landing her star-making role as Patsey in “12 Years a Slave,” for which she won an Academy Award for best supporting actress in 2014.

Or Trevor Noah, the comedian from Johannesburg, who had appeared on “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central a scant three times before being named Jon Stewart’s successor last March.

Ms. Nyong’o, 32, has since appeared in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” and lent her voice to “The Jungle Book,” which will open in April. She has also acted on stage in an Off Broadway production of “Eclipsed,” about the struggles of a group of women during the Liberian Civil War. (“Eclipsed” will open on Broadway next month.) Ms. Nyong’o quickly became a fashion darling, too, as the first black face of Lancôme. She has appeared on the cover of Vogue twice…

Read the entire interview here.

New Du Bois Review Study Confirms the Obvious: U.S. Latinos Are Not ‘Becoming White’

Latino Rebels
2015-05-28

Julio Ricardo Varela

Last year, we spent a lot of time countering slippery claims and misreporting by several nationally recognized writers (specifically Jamelle Bouie and Nate Cohn) who were pushing a mainstream media narrative that more and more U.S. Latinos were becoming “White” in this country. The pieces we published from several contributors were quick to refute how writers like Bouie and Cohn lacked any real knowledge or understanding of this topic.

A new study called “LATINA/O WHITENING? Which Latina/os Self-Classify as White and Report Being Perceived as White by Other Americans?” was recently published in the Du Bois Review. Dr. Nicholas Vargas, the study’s author, is an Assistant Professor in the School of Economic, Political, and Policy Sciences at The University of Texas at Dallas. After reading Vargas’ study (you can download the full study here), our founder and publisher @julito77 sent Dr. Vargas a few questions via email. Here is what Dr. Vargas sent back to us:

What prompted you to do this study?

VARGAS: As I became more familiar with the scholarly literature on assimilation, a literature that is informed primarily by the assimilation trajectories of Eastern and Southern European groups of the early 20th century, I came across a number of arguments that Latina/os would soon be following in their footsteps. The argument is that Latina/os will come to identify as White and look back on their Latina/o identities much the same way that many Whites today look back to a detached Irish or Italian heritage. Some of these arguments suggested that Latina/o racial self-identification as White on the U.S. Census and other surveys could be a sign that the process of Latina/o Whitening is already underway. Journalists proclaimed that if Latina/os are identifying as White, then they are probably “becoming White” the same way that others have in the past…

Read the entire interview here.

‘Myth of racial democracy is part of the education of the Brazilian,” says Congolese anthropologist living in Brazil

Black Women of Brazil
2016-02-16

Thiago de Araújo

The absence of Black nominees at the 2016 Oscars. ‘Black face’ is just a costume. Cotistas (quota students) surpass (scores) of non-cotista students. A black sponge doll on the reality show Big Brother Brazil (BBB) ​​of this year. Recent cases, controversial cases. In all, the discussion of the same topic: racism inside and outside of Brazil.

Historical victims of prejudice, blacks in their majority are outraged with every report of the genre. However, today there are those who deny that there is racism in Brazil. For these people, there is nothing to justify affirmative action policies, such as quotas in education and social sectors. It’s necessary to appreciate equality, crying out in the loudest voice.

Discussions of racism are not surprising to Congolese anthropologist Kabengele Munanga. At 73, the Doctor of Social Sciences and professor at the Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences at the University of São Paulo (USP) he always stresses that Brazil has a ‘stark’ framework of discrimination. Do you think it’s an exaggeration? It’s not what the numbers show.

“The data show that, on the eve of apartheid, South Africa had more blacks with college degrees than in Brazil today,” Munanga said in a public hearing organized by the Supreme Court (STF) in 2010. The debate revolved around access to higher education policies. Opponents announced that the country was about to experience a ‘race war’. It was not what we saw.

“There were no riots, racial lynchings anywhere. No Brazilian ‘Ku Klux Klan’ appeared,” said the anthropologist. “What is sought by the policy of quotas for black and the indigenous is not to be entitled to the crumbs, but rather to gain access to the top in all sectors of responsibility and of command in national life where these two segments are not adequately represented, as the true democracy mandates.”

But what about the well-known ‘racial democracy’ born at the hands of Gilberto Freyre?…

Read the entire interview here.

Filmmakers Behind ‘Invisible Roots’ on Finding Afro-Mexicans Living in Southern California

Remezcla
2016-02-16

Walter Thompson-Hernández
Los Angeles, California

Photo: NOTIMEX/JAVIER LIRA OTERO

Almost a year before the Mexican government officially acknowledged Afro-Mexicans as a distinct racial and ethnic group, directors Tiffany Walton and Lizz Mullis first began working on their film, Invisible Roots: Afro-Mexicans of Southern California, as a film project while attending the University of Southern California (USC). For Walton, whose grandfather was Afro-Panamanian, the project was deeply connected to her family’s Afro-Latino story, while Mullis was motivated by her interests in broader societal questions about race and identity. But during the early stages of the project both struggled to find subjects for their film. After a number of failed attempts at connecting with Afro-Mexican families in the Los Angeles area, attempts they both called “extensive,” Walton and Mullis were fortuitously connected to a few Afro-Mexican families through academic and professional contacts. The film premiered at the Los Angeles Pan African Film Festival with which the directing duo hopes to shed light on the experiences of a group that continues to garner recognition both in Mexico and in the U.S…

Can you describe what inspired you to make this film?

TW: I’ve always been really interested in African-American history as well as the African diaspora. I remember first learning that my dad’s grandfather had moved from Panama to Alabama to attend college. I felt excited about having a personal connection to another place, an ancestral place, a place outside of the United States, that I could reference and say, “Hey, I have roots there.” With that, I became really curious about Black people who lived in Central America and other Latin American countries. I wanted to know how they identified culturally and racially, I wanted to know what they ate, and what things we would have in common. I was curious about learning how they navigated the world.

I first learned about Afro-Mexicans from a large poster my dad had hanging in his office. The poster was of a photograph called, “Tres Hermanas,” by Tony Gleaton. On this poster were the words, “Africa’s Legacy in Mexico.” That poster spoke volumes to me. So, the poster inspired me to make this film. It touched me in such an intangible, sublime way that made me want to take action. I wanted to know everything about those little girls. What would we have in common? Were they curious about Africa? Would they feel a connection to me? I really just wanted to know how they viewed the world and how the world viewed them and how they felt about what the world thought of them…

Read the entire interview here.

Bocafloja Confronts Anti-Blackness Across the Americas in New Documentary ‘Nana Dijo’

Remezcla
2016-02-17

Walter Thompson-Hernández
Los Angeles, California

When musicians and filmmakers Bocafloja and Cambiowashere first set out to create Nana Dijo, a gripping documentary about the African diaspora in the Americas, both wanted to stray away from traditional documentary approaches that have tended to sensationalize the Afro-descendant experience in the Americas. Nana Dijo instead provides viewers with a host of intimate accounts of people whose lives have been defined by their ability to negotiate a black racial consciousness in a series of disparate racial, social, and political contexts. But while the film’s directors sought to reconcile regional difference by not providing viewers with the names of locations throughout the film, Nana Dijo also highlights the complexity of identity as it centers blackness through a diasporic lens that moves beyond geo-politics and nationalism.

We sat down with Bocafloja to talk about the inspiration for his documentary and decolonizing our notions of race and identity…

…Your music tends to center on popular conceptions of the African Diaspora, de-colonialism, indigenous rights, and anti-black racism in the United States and throughout the Americas. Your new film Nana Dijo is doing the same thing, albeit through a visual medium. What was the inspiration for this film?

I understand this as a historical responsibility in which we reclaim our narratives from a perspective that is not subjugated to cultural hegemonies. Most of the visual work that has been done in regards to the African Diaspora in Mexico or Latin America happens to be inclusionist, politically safe and focused on a culturalist approach instead of other more transgressive elements that are inherent in the whole experience. Nowadays there is an “Afro-Latino” boom which under the liberal democracies framework becomes just the ideal experience to promote shallow forms of multi-culturalism that are not really promoting any type of process of empowerment or deep analysis about the effects on our psyche as colonial subjects today. I identify myself as a black and brown individual, so for me this project was definitively relevant in order to give voice to thousands and thousands of people that in the context of Mexico and Latin America never found an outlet to express or justify the true genesis of their identity…

Read the entire interview here.

Valentine’s Day special! On love, race and history in Ghana

Africa is a Country
2016-02-14

Dan Magaziner, Associate Professor of History
Yale University

Despite colonial administrators’ attempts to sabotage their marriage plans, Brendan (a district commissioner) and Felicia Knight wed in 1945. Fifteen years later, Felicia staged a successful one-woman-protest in front of Flagstaff House to save her husband’s job during the Africanization of government service. On the grounds that he was married to a Ghanaian and raising their five children as Ghanaians, Kwame Nkrumah retained Brendan in government employ.

A couple months ago I was fortunate to read Carina Ray’s excellent new book Crossing The Color Line: Race Sex and the Contested Politics of Colonialism in Ghana on the history on interracial intimacy on the Gold Coast. I decided to interview her for AIAC and when our conversation moved from political economy and racism to political economy, racism and love, we figured – Valentine’s Day! So here it is: an AIAC take on love, critical politics included.

Why do you think that the history of interracial intimacy in the Gold Coast / Ghana important? What drew you to study it and to these stories in particular?

Let me answer the second question first. When I started the archival work that culminated in Crossing the Color Line, my intention was to write an altogether different book about multiracial people in colonial and post-independence Ghana. Much has been written about them in the context of the precolonial period as cultural, social, political, and linguistic intermediaries—the ubiquitous “middle(wo)men” of the trans-Atlantic trade, especially as it became almost exclusively focused on the slave trade. Hardly anything, however, has been written about this group during the period of formal colonial rule in British West Africa. So I set out to do just that, but quickly discovered that while the archive had much to say about interracial sexual relations in the Gold Coast, there was relative silence about their progeny…

Read the entire interview here.

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.

An Interview with Poet and Room Poetry Coordinator Chelene Knight

Room: Literature, Art, and Feminism Since 1975
Issue 37.4: Claiming Space (2015)

Interview with Bonnie Nish

Chelene Knight was born in Vancouver and is a graduate of The Writer’s Studio at SFU. She has been published in Sassafras Literary Magazine, Room, emerge 2013 and Raven Chronicles and is the Poetry Coordinator at Room. Braided Skin, her first book (Mother Tongue Publishing, March 2015), has given birth to numerous writing projects, including a work in progress, Dear Current Occupant. Her work is deeply rooted in her experiences of mixed ethnicity. Her mother is African-American, and her father and his family were victims of the Asian expulsion in Uganda during the 70s, when President Idi Amin led a campaign of “de-Indianization,” resulting in the “ethnic cleansing” of the country’s Indian minority. Chelene is currently pursuing her BA in English at SFU.

Her first book Braided Skin is forthcoming with Mother Tongue Publishing in spring 2015. Her launch will take place Wednesday April 8th, 2015 from 7-9:30 pm as a part of Twisted Poets Literary Salon run by Pandora’s Collective.

ROOM: First of all Congratulations on your new book Braided Skin (Mother Tongue Publishing). Would you like to tell us something about your new book?

CK: Thank you! Braided Skin is a mix of many things…

Read the entire interview here.

Jay Smooth: The Ill Doctrine, Underground Railroad & Disenfranchised cheese puffs

The Katie Halper Show
2016-01-20

Katie Halper, Host

On our first episode of the Live Katie Halper Show I front of an audience we talk to Jay Smooth, founder and host of The Underground Railroad and of the Ill Doctrine video series. His videos have garnered millions of views and praise from people like Rachel Maddow who has called his work genius. Find out what Jay Smooth’s favorite drink and snack are, what he thinks of gun violence, Empire, gentrification and what his grandfather said about The Beatles in the New York Times.