Mixed Race Studies

A 400 Year Old History of Tri-Racial People: In Real Life

Mixed Race Radio
2013-01-16, 17:00Z (12:00 EST)

Tiffany Rae Reid, Host

Marvin T. Jones, Executive Director
Chowan Discovery Group

Marvin T. Jones is the Executive Director of the Chowan Discovery Group (CDG).  The mission of the CDG is to research, document, preserve and present the 400+ year-old history of the landowning tri-racial people of color of the Winton Triangle, an area centered in Hertford County, North Carolina. Founded in 2007, the Chowan Discovery Group (http://www.chowandiscovery.org/) co-produced in 2009 its first major presentation, a stage production, scripted by Jones, called The Winton Triangle. The book, Carolina Genesis: Beyond the Color Line, features Jones’ summary of the Triangle’s history.

In addition to writing articles, Jones has made many presentations about the Winton Triangle’s history on national and regional radio, at colleges and universities, museums and to civic groups.  In 2011, the North Carolina Office of Archives and History accepted three of his nominations for highway historical markers.

Jones is the owner of Marvin T. Jones & Associates, a professional photography company in Washington, D.C.  He has been published in well-known magazines and has worked in South America, the Caribbean and Africa.  Howard University and Roanoke-Chowan Community College hosted Jones’ exhibit on Somalia.

For more information, click here.

‘Searching for Zion’: Emily Raboteau’s Hunt for the Promised Land

The Daily Beast
2013-01-13

Mindy Farabee

A writer set out around the world to find the mythical ‘promised land’ of the African diaspora. Emily Raboteau speaks about the Jewish search for the same, African-American tourism to Ghana, and Barack Obama’s ties to this search.

Mention the notion of Zion, author Emily Raboteau notes, and most people will think almost automatically of Israel. But for citizens of the African diaspora, Zion, with its promised land of abundance and freedom from oppression, has carried profound cultural significance since the days of slavery, when the saga of Hebrew slaves fleeing Egyptian captors served as a galvanizing narrative.

In Searching for Zion: The Quest for Home in the African Diaspora, Raboteau’s self-described “strange admixture” of travelogue, cultural anthropology, and historical study, the author uses this promised land as a point of departure, lighting out for Israel, Ethiopia, Jamaica, Ghana, and the post-Katrina American South to talk to immigrants and others who have wrestled with displacement.

Her new book likewise stumbles across complications everywhere. In this edited interview below, she talks about family ghosts, the other side of heritage tourism, and the state of Zion today…

Read the entire interview here.

Catching Up With Black in America’s Soledad O’Brien

Clutch Magazine
2012-12-14

Zettler Clay

A while ago, I took my little cousins to Toys “R” Us. Three of them. 8 years old, 6 years old, 4 years old. It was going smoothly enough until we came across a row of dolls.

There were two on the end. A fully-adorned Black doll on the left. A fully-adorned white doll on the right. She picked the one on the right.

My radar immediately went off. I gently suggested the melanated doll.

No dice. I strongly suggested this doll. Nothing. We weren’t getting anywhere and I was met with the confused look of a little girl whose older cousin had a problem with what she wanted. After he said she could get what she wanted.

I was short on time. She was short on understanding. So I relented.

I haven’t been able to shake this experience. The notion of colorism — the lighter the skin, the better the “doll” — hits us early in life and never leaves. It’s endemic in our community, a point brought to the surface by CNN’s latest addition to the Black in America series, Who is Black in America?

“It’s nothing wrong with seeing color,” said CNN anchor and special correspondent Soledad O’Brien. “It becomes a problem when people limit and define you by it.”…

…Classification creates forms. Forms create separateness, which leads to competition. Colonization. And a wondering lot of people left to discover who they are because of who they’re not.

But why the focus on defining minorities? What about a White in America? It is this criticism that O’Brien hears. And agrees with…

For a few candid moments, I caught up with O’Brien about defining “blackness,” future of Black in America, white supremacy’s effects on Black women and self-identification.

Me: This is a huge subject to tackle.

Soledad O’Brien: You think! (laughs)…

Me: How much has this series helped in your self-identification?

SO: I’ve always had a very strong self-identification. I’ve never struggled with my racial classification. I was very lucky. My mom used to always tell me, “don’t let anyone tell you you’re not Black. Don’t let anybody tell you you’re not Latino.” My parents instilled a very strong sense of identity. Even in the recent doc as I was talking to the young women, I kept thinking, “this is soooo not my experience.” I found that other people had many more challenges about racial ambiguity. I find it fascinating to learn about different communities and geographic history. Black people in Atlanta vs. Black people in Minneapolis (where we’re shooting now). Black people in Philly vs. Black people in New York. Just the history of these communities. I have found it rewarding to see the differences in us and how similar we are…

Read the entire interview here.

Black Mom + Indian Dad = Search for Identity

Ebony Magazine
2012-12-17

Sharda Sekaran

Sharda Sekaran can’t deny her East Indian roots, but she can’t find them either

It was my senior year of college. I sat at the end of a long oval table in a meeting room in one of the academic buildings. Surrounding me on either side were professors from different departments. Some of them I’d taken classes from, but most I had not. They were interviewing me for a fellowship for which I’d been nominated. It was a very selective process, and only three other students from my school were up for it.

I’m generally okay speaking under pressure in front of a group, but I was absolutely terrified. The professors asked my about my identity—my understanding of who I am and where I came from. I felt paralyzed by fear, and stumbled like a desperate entertainer trying to keep the audience on her side.

I could see the crestfallen face of a religion professor whom I knew wanted to like me. She watched helplessly as I spewed out one badly composed thought after another. I knew what I was saying was complete junk. I tried to distract them with academic buzzwords: “dichotomy,” “paradox,” “equilibrium,” “organic…” Nothing. All I conveyed about my identity was that I had no clue about it.

It was my own fault. The fellowship was based on self-discovery through theme-related travel for a year. The subject was meant to be of personal significance, but maybe I’d taken it too far. My topic was the gaping hole of my family grief—a search for the missing half of my cultural ancestry.

My proposal was to examine my hybrid African-American/Indian identity by studying the impact of Bollywood on the Indian Diaspora (my personal connection being, my father’s from India and my mother is African-American). I’d go to countries with Creole Indian/African mixed populations to observe how popular cinema impacted people’s idea of what makes them “Indian.”

I thought it was a good idea for a project; so did a lot of others. Thus, I found myself at the end of that table of professors. But when the panel asked me questions about Indian culture, basic things that any person with an Indian family should know, I drew blanks.

I might have saved myself by admitting that I had no relationship with my Indian-born father. He abandoned our family when I was a toddler and left me without a dad or any ties to his family. All I inherited was an Indian name and physical features that could belong in South Asia. My family history had ambiguity, but also enough clues about my origins to constantly leave me answering questions and explaining a story that’s sensitive as a wound whenever I’m forced to recount it…

Read the entire article here.

Soledad O’Brien Is Betting on Jeff Zucker

The New York Times Magazine
2012-12-18

Andrew Goldman

Your memoir made your experience growing up in Smithtown, a largely white town on Long Island, sound like a huge drag.
It really wasn’t. It is truly not fun to be the family that sticks out in an all-white community. On the other side, I have five brothers and sisters, we all look exactly the same and we’re very, very tight. The lessons about race were not pleasant, but there are things that I loved about my childhood. In the book, I didn’t want to be the tragic mulatto.

Is “tragic mulatto” a term I should know?
Oh, yeah. Google it. At Harvard I was taking an African-American studies class, and we were reading about the tragic mulatto. Invariably the tragic mulatto can’t fit in either world and flings herself off a bridge. So I’m reading, and I’m like, Oh, my God, I think I’m in literature, but my life was never like that.

Before this, I didn’t know you had a white Australian dad and a black Cuban mom. Would you prefer to have people not think about your race at all?
It never made a difference to me if people watching knew, but I want people to understand I’m very proud of what I am. My parents have a great story. And I think your background is critical in how you approach the stories that you’re covering…

Read the entire interview here.

Soledad O’Brien and three of the interview subjects from her docu discuss the fifth installment of CNN’s Black in America series

Starting Point with Soledad O’Brien
Cable News Network (CNN)
2012-12-10

Soledad O’Brien, Host

The fifth installment of CNN’s Black in America Series focused on the question, “Who is black in America?” That single, seemingly simple question unravels the complicated, densely packed issue of racial identity in this country. To continue this important conversation, three of the interview subjects from the documentary: Fmr. Editor, Essence Magazine Michaela Angela Davis, “(1)ne Drop Project” Artistic Director and a consulting producer for the documentary Yaba Blay and poet and mentor Perry “Vision” DiVirgilio join “Starting Point” this morning…

O’BRIEN: Joining us to continue this conversation three of the subjects in the documentary, Mikaela Angela Davis is the former editor of “Essence” magazine, Perry “Vision” Divirgilio, a poet and teacher, and Professor Yaba Blay is the artistic director of the One Drop Project and she was a consulting producer on our documentary.

It’s nice to have you all with us. So why do you think this touches such a nerve? I mean, all you do is sit for a minute on my Twitter feed timeline, and realize like people were angry, freaked out, emotional about this. Why?

YABA BLAY, CONSULTING PRODUCER, “BLACK IN AMERICA”: It touches on our lived experience. I think, you know, I don’t know that I’m biased, but I think of all of the black in America iterations, that this is one that everyone can relate to, whether it’s them personally, as a mother, father, grandmother.

All of the feedback I was getting online, always included a personal testimony, how this reminds me of my grandmother, this reminds me of this, I have a story, and I think it’s one of those things that people tap into on a personal level, and it’s — there is an emotion there.

O’BRIEN: The documentary focused on two young poets in your class. You mentor both of them. How unusual were their story? They grapple with racial identity. You picked two people who were the dysfunctional ones. Is that — is that the case or do you think their quest typical?

PERRY “VISION” DIVIRGILIO, POET AND MENTOR: I don’t think it’s dysfunctional. I think what they are doing is very normal for teenagers just brave enough to throw it out there, let the world know this is who I am, how I feel. You heard these lot during workshops. You know, folks look at that’s a young black man or young black woman, were checking other, were not wanting to identify with race at all. I’m a man, woman, I’m human.

O’BRIEN: Many people actually also, I mean, on Twitter, who knows who many is. Listen, kumbaya real progress would be when we don’t have to talk about race it all. We’re just Americans.

MICHAELA ANGELA DAVIS, FORMER EDITOR, “ESSENCE MAGAZINE”: Acting like it doesn’t exist doesn’t heal and this incredibly emotional response as Yaba said. America as a family this is our taboo issue. This brings up so much — triggers a lot of black girl pain.

It triggers a lot of secrets and bias. It triggers emotional things in life. Any family — when we go into our history and say this horrible thing created this characteristics, people don’t like to look at it. This is the road to healing. The only way we’ll feel hole, we talk about where we’re fractured.

O’BRIEN: So John Berman is our token white man on the panel this morning, John Berman, in all seriousness.

BERMAN: I am white, all seriousness.

O’BRIEN: This conversation, was it one that you were ever aware of?

BERMAN: I was just thinking what makes this so interesting, the minute you put a question mark on it, you know, who is black in America or what is black in America, it makes everyone ask a question of themselves…

Read the entire article and watch the video clip here. Read the transcript here.

CNN Contributing Producer Probes Lingering Pain of the ‘One Drop’ Rule

ColorLines: News for Action
2012-12-07

Akiba Solomon, Columnist, Gender Matters
New York, New York

Keep the concept of privilege-clinging in the back of your mind as you check out the work and words of Dr. Yaba Blay, the driving force behind “Who Is Black in America?” the fifth installment of CNN’s “Black in America” series. Using Blay’s Kickstarter-funded multimedia collaboration with photographer Noelle Theard as a starting point, the show focuses on how people of African descent practice colorism, enforce identities based on appearance and the challenges of self-definition for multiracial people who aren’t recognizably black. I caught up with Blay, an assistant professor of Africana Studies at Philadelphia’s Drexel University (and, full disclosure, a Facebook-buddy-turned-friend), a few days after she co-hosted a special screening of the program on campus. Here, an edited, condensed version of our discussion.

So what’s the origin of the (1)ne Drop Project?

Oftentimes we do research that’s reflective of our lived experiences. So I’ve been personally impacted by colorism growing up as a West African, dark-skinned girl in New Orleans where you’ve got [self-described] black, white and Creole [cultures] and skin color politics are at the forefront of our social relationships there. I’ve always been very aware that I’m dark-skinned, in fact very dark-skinned. … I looked at colorism from the standard direction as far as how we look at the disadvantages of having dark skin in a racialized society. But there was always a part of me that wanted to explore the other side of this. … And actually, the first iteration of this project was called “The Other Side of Blackness,” but “(1)ne Drop” just emerged [as a] more catchy name. I’ve always known that light-skinned people were having their own experiences with skin color politics, but I wasn’t necessarily sure how to approach the question. There are black people all over the world, but the imagery connected to [blackness] has been more nebulous. If I take my students on study abroad, say in Brazil, will they be able to recognize the black people? Or are they just living with the idea that the black people are the ones who look familiar?…

Read the entire interview here.

Soledad O’Brien: Who is black in America? I am

Cable News Network (CNN)
2012-12-07

Editor’s Note: In today’s United States, is being black determined by the color of your skin, by your family, by what society says, or something else? Soledad O’Brien reports “Who Is Black in America?” on CNN at 8 p.m. ET/PT this Sunday, December 9.

Yaba Blay, Professor/Scholar

Soledad O’Brien, Host

(CNN) – Yaba Blay, Ph.D. created the (1)ne Drop Project, a multiplatform endeavor that hopes to challenge perceptions of black identity. Blay, a consulting producer for “Who Is Black in America?” spoke to hundreds of those who may not immediately be recognized as “black” based on how they look, including CNN Anchor Soledad O’Brien.  In this edited excerpt from her forthcoming book, Blay spoke to O’Brien about what makes a person black, and why the conversation is important.

Yaba Blay: How do you identify? Racially and culturally?

Soledad O’Brien: I’m black. I’m Latina. My mom is Cuban. Afro-Cuban. My dad is white and Australian. And I think because of my job, often a question like “How do you identify?” is really not about the question. It’s always “What side are you on?” “What perspective to you bring?”

Blay: I remember when “Black in America” first came out, and a lot of people being like “Who is she and why is she doing this?”…

…Blay: So what makes a person black?

O’Brien: I certainly don’t think it’s skin color. And I certainly don’t think it’s how well you speak the language. And I’m not sure I can answer that question thoroughly because my consciousness about race was really implanted in me by my parents. I would say I’m black because my parents said I’m black. I’m black because my mother’s black. I’m black because I grew up in a family of all black people. I knew I was black because I grew up in an all-white neighborhood. And my parents, as part of their protective mechanisms that they were going to give to us made it very clear what we were…

Read the entire article here.

Dr. Marcia Dawkins Discusses Her Book, Clearly Invisible

Mixed Race Radio
2012-09-21, 17:00Z (12:00 EST, 09:00 PST)

Tiffany Rae Reid, Host

Marcia Dawkins, Clinical Assistant Professor of Communications
University of Southern California, Annenberg

Marcia is an award-winning writer, speaker, educator and visiting scholar at Brown University. She is the author of Clearly Invisible: Racial Passing and the Color of Cultural Identity (Baylor UP, 2012) and Eminem: The Real Slim Shady (Praeger, 2013).

Marcia writes about racial passing, mixed race identities, media, religion, pop culture and politics for a variety of high-profile publications. Her expert opinion has been sought out by NPR, WABC-TV Boston, The New York Times and TIME Magazine. She earned her PhD in communication from USC Annenberg, her master’s degrees in humanities from USC and NYU and her bachelor’s degrees in communication arts and honors from Villanova.

Clearly Invisible (Baylor University Press, 2012), is the first to connect racial passing and classical rhetoric to issues of disability, gender-neutral parenting, human trafficking, hacktivism, identity theft, racial privacy, media typecasting and violent extremism.

By applying fresh eyes to landmark historical cases and benchmark popular culture moments in the history of passing Dawkins also rethinks the representational character and civic purpose of multiracial identities. In the process she provides powerful insights called “passwords” that help readers tackle the tough questions of who we are and how we can relate to one another and the world.

Viva Obama! – How Spain Views The US Elections

International Business Times
2012-11-06

Palash R. Ghosh

Spain, reeling from a paralyzing economic crisis that has thrown one-quarter of the workforce onto the streets and crippling budget cuts, may not have its full attention upon Tuesday’s presidential elections.

However, given the widespread approval of Barack Obama across much of western Europe, some Spaniards may indeed be cast a glance across the Atlantic.
 
The financial collapse in Spain ended the tenure of the Socialist government of former Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, supplanted by the conservative administration of Mariano Rajoy of the People’s Party.

International Business Times spoke to an expert on Spain to discuss how the beleaguered Spaniards view the U.S. Presidential election,
 
Laura Gonzalez-Alana is Assistant Professor of Finance and Business Economics at Fordham University in New York City.

IB TIMES: Do you sense a great deal of interest in the 2012 U.S. presidential election among the Spanish public? Or has it waned since 2008?

GONZALEZ-ALANA: The Spanish press has been widely covering the campaign. I could actually read summaries and opinions about the outcomes of the debates earlier in Spain than on CNN. Clearly the European press prefers Barack Obama, despite the disappointment regarding the expectations raised by his 2008 victory..
 
Spaniards, like other Europeans, are worried about how foreign policy and diplomatic relations with the United States could change if Mitt Romney becomes president. They do not trust the current moderate tones in Romney’s speeches after the very conservative stances he took during the primaries to appeal to the far-right Tea Party.

In general, the majority of Europeans believe Obama could be a more efficient negotiator with them and with the Middle East nations.

Another armed conflict [in the Mideast] would be particularly difficult to support given the economic crisis in Europe.

Also, Europeans, and Spaniards in general do not believe that open confrontation with China over trade issues would be the most effective manner to handle such abuses. And Europeans still resent having been dragged into the armed conflicts waged by George W. Bush…

…IB TIMES: Does Spanish media describe Obama as “black” or “mixed race” (given that his mother was white). Is this distinction important to Spaniards?
 
GONZALEZ-ALANA: People in Spain are aware of his being half-white and half-black, but not much is said about his racial profile, other than it makes extremist groups more nervous about him, given that in the European mind, the U.S. is still quite uncomfortable with racial diversity.
 
Europeans have some racial issues, too, but they see Obama as an “American” leader, and as a person to admire, like other famous black or half-black famous US people, like singers, actors, sports figures and so on.

If you asked Spaniards to pick a word to describe Obama, they would say “black”—in a sense, not being ‘fully white’ means ‘black.’

Now, the word ‘negro’ in Spain is not politically incorrect, but it all depends on the context and intonation…

Read the entire interview here.