Mixed Race Studies

The experience of race in the lives of Jewish birth mothers of children from black/white interracial and inter-religious relationships: a Canadian perspective

Ethnic and Racial Studies
Published online: 2013-01-14
DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2013.752099

Channa C. Verbian, BSW, M.Ed., RSW, OASW, OCSWSSW
Toronto, Canada

In this paper, I discuss my life history study on experiences of race in the lives of Jewish-Canadian and Jewish-American birth mothers of children from black/white interracial, inter-religious relationships. Opening with a reflection on my personal experience and what compelled me to undertake this research, I then provide a short introduction to attitudes about interracial/inter-religious relationships found in the literature, followed by an introduction to my research methodology. Finally, I compare and contrast the experiences of three Jewish-American mothers, excerpted from their published narratives, and the experiences of two Jewish-Canadian mothers from two recorded interviews, with my own experience. I conclude this paper with a brief summary of the emerging themes in my research and how they add to our understanding of mothering across racialized boundaries.

Background

As a Jewish-Canadian mother of children from a black/white interracial, inter-religious relationship. I wanted to be proactive about my children’s social and psychological development. Consulting the literature on interracial children and racial-identity formation. I became increasingly curious about the experiences of white mothers and how everyday racism and racial discourses might affect their…

Read or purchase the article here.

Canada Is Still Racist: And No Think Piece Can Change That

Vice Canada: The Definitive Guide to Enlightening Information
2013-03-05

Anupa Mistry

When I was younger and more naïve and shielded by my parents, Canadian multiculturalism felt real and true. I grew up in Brampton, Ont., a restlessly expanding suburb of Toronto that teems with immigrants. In 1992, the city – or, at least, my grade two classroom – was a case study in the celebratory, preservation-minded policy of Trudeau’s multiculturalism: My pale blonde friend Zeyn was from Turkey and Afia and all her cousins were Pakistani. Ebony and Roxanne had parents from Jamaica, Seth The Pervert was a Newfie, and Natasha, whose surprise birthday party I ruined because I cannot keep those kinds of secrets, constantly had relatives visiting from Guyana.

There was never a need to question where I fit in, and that same school year when some sniveling, store brand whiteboy called me a ‘Paki’ I went home and told my parents and cried because I knew from TV that that was what I was supposed to do. In reality, while I still remember exactly how the light filled the air in that bustling elementary school hallway, I was left largely unfazed by first contact with overt racism. Even my eight-year-old mind could grasp that dude was either scared, stupid or, at the very least, outnumbered. In that multiethnic microcosm his bad attitude was undesirable, and I was the normal one. He had nothing to take. There might not be a better place to grow up brown or black than Brampton.

Then, I enrolled in a performing arts high school north of the city only to transfer after two years because it was too white. Race as it actually functions, as a tool of human insidiousness and despotism, became real beyond my imagined utopia. As a millennial citizen of the Western world I move with an according sense of privilege: whatever you got, I’ma have that too. It’s my birthright, regardless of the colour of my skin or where my grandparents are from. Until it’s not. In hindsight my problem with that school was an inability to articulate feeling exposed and significantly different and, for the first time in my life, outnumbered. I’d taken diversity for granted; my normal was not so much…

…Two recent high profile pieces by Canadian writers are willfully naïve about the psychic reality of this country’s demographics…

…Fear is kind of the subtext for “Mixie Me,” a personal essay about being mixed race by Nick Hune-Brown in Toronto Life, with the attendant claim that the city is set to be the world’s first post-racial metropolis. Mixed race people are a more common sight on the streets of Toronto now, more than ever, and there’s comfort to be taken in that kind of visibility, he writes. Anxieties about interracial unions have given way to curiosity. Sexy, ethnically ambiguous mixies are what makes Toronto desirable next to taco restaurants and condos and a trap music party every night of the week. The beige and the beautiful will blur the lines that constitute xenophobia, or at least confuse us into submission.

Glib eugenics aside, there is a lot of merit to visibility. It’s why I was able to easily dismiss that second grade bully. But I’m skeptical that birthing a Yoruba-Guinea-Indian child, though a political act, will dissolve the structures that preserve xenophobia unless, maybe, that hot multiracial baby grows up to marry a Weston…

Read the entire article here.

Interview with PhD Student Karla Lucht: Children’s Literature about Mixed-Race Asian Americans/Canadians

The Center for Children’s Books
Graduate School of Library and Information Science
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
February 2013

Tad Andracki, CCB Outreach Coordinator

“Everyone deserves to see themselves represented in a book. And a good book at that.”

GSLIS doctoral student Karla Lucht visited the School of Library, Archival, and Information Studies at the University of British Columbia as part of the iSchool Doctoral Student Exchange Program in November 2012. The CCB decided to meet with Karla to discuss her trip and her research. Lucht describes her research as looking at the representations of mixed-race Asian Americans and Canadians in youth literature with a critical race theory lens.

Why do you see your research as important to the field of youth services and children’s literature? Why is it important?

To start with, there’s a gap in this research with lots of underrepresented groups, but with mixed-race people especially. Everyone deserves to see themselves represented in a book… and a good book at that. In the past, we’ve seen some books about mixed-race people, but a lot of them weren’t good. I’m trying to fill in those gaps.

What are some challenges you see in your particular field of research? What are some opportunities?

One primary challenge is just finding titles, especially using subject headings. The Library of Congress Subject Heading that’s closest to my work is Racially Mixed People–Fiction, which isn’t very descriptive. I’ve been sifting through books with that heading. I’m also trying other keywords—adoption, immigration, multiracial, multiethnic, multicultural–and then looking at the books to see if they have the content I’m interested in.

Another problem is that, especially in the late 1980s and the 90s, a lot of the YA books on this topic are a bit problematic and poorly written. You find books that really invest in Othering a character’s Asian side and putting whiteness on a pedestal. In those books, the character vists the Asian side of the family, and it’s always a big problem–the Asianness is “too weird” or something…

Read the entire interview here.

Beyond Black and White: When Going Beyond May Take Us Out of Bounds

Journal of Black Studies
Volume 44, Number 2 (March 2013)
pages 158-181
DOI: 10.1177/0021934712471533

Katerina Deliovsky, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario

Tamari Kitossa, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario

This article examines a selection of the North American scholarly research that calls for “moving beyond” a “Black/White binary paradigm.” Some scholars suggest this paradigm limits or obscures a complex understanding of the historical record on race, racism, and racialization for Asian, Latina/o, Mexican, and Native Americans. On the face of it, the notion of a Black/White binary paradigm and the call to move beyond appears persuasive. The discourse of a Black/White binary paradigm, however, confuses, misnames, and simplifies the historical and contemporary experiences structured within what is, in fact, the racially incorporative matrix of a black/white Manicheanism. We assert this call sets up blackness and, by extension, people socially defined as “black” as impediments to multiracial coalition building. As a result, “moving beyond” is epistemologically faulty and politically harmful for African-descended people because it is based on “bad faith” toward blackness.

Read or purchase the article here.

An evening wtih Lawrence Hill

Central YMCA
20 Grosvenor Street
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Thursday, 2013-02-21, 18:30-21:00 EST (Local Time)

RSVP Deadline: 2013-02-19

Join us for an evening celebrating Black History Month with renowned Canadian author, Lawrence Hill.

Lawrence Hill has written a number of award winning books including The Book of Negroes….

For more information, click here.

“Faces In Between”: A 3MW Collective Exhibition [Review]

Jenney Donkey
2013-02-12

Jennifer McKinley

At an event, a party, a gathering or any place where I meet new people, I am invariably asked the Question: Where are you from?
 
“Toronto,” I answer. This is not the response they are looking for and I know it.
 
“No, but where is your family from?”
 
“My parents were born in Toronto and so were my grandparents. All about ten minutes away from where I currently live actually.”
 
Their frustration mounts.
 
“No, but what’s your background? This is Canada. Everybody comes from somewhere.”
 
I respond differently each time I’m asked. Sometimes I give the précis answer, sometimes I make them guess and sometimes I flat out refuse to answer.
 
When people are not satisfied when I say I’m Canadian, I find myself scrambling to answer the question in terms of what will make my observer comfortable. I cling to a mixed identity that is ancestrally correct (though incomplete due to family secrets) but doesn’t quite fit with how I see myself.
 
I identify as Canadian.
 
My background is Irish, Italian, English, Black, possibly Scottish and possibly more.
 
In many ways, it is Toronto, the city of my ancestors, that informs my history and identity rather than some distant country that a person I never met came from.
 
Yet, the question persists…

…Because I am so often questioned and analyzed, I was naturally drawn to “Faces In Between”, an art exhibition by 3MW Collective showing at Daniels Spectrum in the Artscape Lounge. 3MW Collective seeks to create a progressive discussion about mixed race identity. 3MW is comprised of three mixed-race identified artists Rema Tavares, Ilene Sova and Jordan Clarke….

Read the entire article here.

A new mixed-raced generation is transforming the city: Will Toronto be the world’s first post-racial metropolis?

Toronto Life
2013-02-12

Nicholas Hune-Brown, Author

Kourosh Keshiri, Photography

Interviews by Jasmine Budak

I used to be the only biracial kid in the room. Now, my exponentially expanding cohort promises a future where everyone is mixed.

Last fall, I was in Amsterdam with my parents and sister on a family trip, our first in more than a decade. Because travelling with your family as an adult can be taxing on everyone involved, we had agreed we would split up in galleries, culturally enrich ourselves independently, and then reconvene later to resume fighting about how to read the map. I was in a dimly lit hall looking at a painting of yet another apple-cheeked peasant when my younger sister, Julia, tugged at my sleeve. “Mixie,” she whispered, gesturing down the hall.

“Mixie” is a sibling word, a term my sister and I adopted to describe people like ourselves—those indeterminately ethnic people whom, if you have an expert eye and a particular interest in these things, you can spot from across a crowded room. We used the word because as kids we didn’t know another one. By high school, it was a badge of honour, a term we would insist on when asked the unavoidable “Where are you from?” question that every mixed-race person is subjected to the moment a conversation with a new acquaintance reaches the very minimum level of familiarity. For the record, my current answer, at 30 years old, is: “My mom’s Chinese, but born in Canada, and my dad’s a white guy from England.” If I’m peeved for some reason—if the question comes too early or with too much “I have to ask” eagerness—the answer is “Toronto” followed by a dull stare…

…For today’s mixies, growing up multiracial has meant inner debates about which parent to identify with, how to explain one’s back­ground, and coping with the urge to blend in. Rema Tavares, a half-Jamaican 30-year-old with curly hair and light brown skin, says her looks have provoked strange responses in people. “I’ve had someone say to me, ‘Don’t say you’re black because you don’t have to be. You can get away with it!’ ” She was raised in a small town outside Ottawa and gradually moved to bigger and bigger cities. “I hated being the only person of colour on the bus in my hometown,” she told me. Another mixed-race woman, Alia Ziesman, grew up in Oakville and was so ashamed of her mother, an ethnically Indian woman from Trinidad, that she refused to walk on the same side of the street as her. Ziesman and Tavares and everyone else I spoke to agree that it is a pleasure to be in a city like Toronto today—a place where you’re guaranteed not to be the only coloured face on a city bus…

…Minelle Mahtani, a U of T associate professor, is one of the pre-eminent Canadian authorities in the field, and has just written a book on multiraciality in Canada. Mahtani has long, dark hair, a toothy smile and a collection of features that are impossible to place on a map. When she was growing up in Thornhill, people would guess at her background without ever hitting on the actual mix, Iranian and Indian. “As a kid, I was one of the few minorities in my neighbourhood, and there was pressure to acclimatize to whiteness” she says. When I met her in a café near U of T in December, she had recently come back from the second Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference at DePaul University in Chicago, a four-day exploration of race and racial boundaries that also acts as a place for mixed-race academics from across North America to hang out and share nerdy in-jokes about the successful 1967 challenge to Virginia’s anti-miscegenation laws…

…The reality of being mixed is far more complicated. The Pew study didn’t reveal a world where skin colour is irrelevant: a newlywed Hispanic-white couple will earn more than the average Hispanic couple, yes, but less than the average white couple. The same is true of black-white pairings. What’s also clear is that mixing doesn’t happen evenly. The success of Asian-white couples like my parents can be attributed to a number of things, but the fact that immigration laws often hand-pick the wealthiest, most educated, most outward-looking Asians is surely part of it. It’s easy to imagine a future in which upwardly mobile Asians and whites mix more frequently, while other minorities are left out of a trendy mixed-race future. Marriage across racial lines is increasingly possible, but mixing across class has always been tricky. And class, it goes without saying, remains stubbornly tied to skin colour…

Read the entire article here. View the photo-essay here.

Faces In Between: Art About Mixed-Race Identity

CBC
Here and Now Toronto
2013-02-01

Throughout history, artists have drawn upon their own experience to fuel their work. Tonight, a new exhibit explores mixed race identity from the point of view of three young women. Rema Tavares is one of the artists. She spoke about “Faces In Between.”

Listen to the episode (00:06:14) here.

Mixed Race Blood, Bone Marrow Donors Needed To Save Gen Y Lives

The Huffington Post-Canada
2013-01-31

Andree Lau

One of Lourdess Sumners’ most vivid memories of her childhood battle with cancer was pining for real food while hooked up to a feeding tube and watching The Food Channel on TV.

“It was horrible. I hated it,” recalls the now 14-year-old from her home in Duncan, B.C. “That would make me even more hungry. And I would draw pictures of sausages and hamburgers, whatever I felt hungry for.”

For her parents, that period was highlighted by the distressing and ultimately futile search for a bone marrow donor for their middle daughter, hampered mainly because she happens to be part of the fastest growing demographic in Canada.

Sumners, whose mother is Filipino and father is Caucasian, is among the more than 340,000 Canadian children growing up in a mixed-race family.

Only about four per cent of Canada’s couples are made up of people from different ethnic backgrounds — but they’re growing five times faster than other unions, according to data from the 2006 census.

Statistics Canada said mixed couples were most common among Canadians aged 25 to 34, followed by those aged 15 to 24 — a cohort that encompasses Generation Y, which generally refers to young adults born after 1980 (also known as millennials).

What hasn’t kept up with the growing population of mixed-race children is the registry of stem cell and marrow donors from blended ethnicities — donors that Sumners needed. She required a bone marrow transplant to fight acute myeloid leukemia, an aggressive cancer of the blood and bone marrow.

“It wasn’t even a consideration in my mind that finding bone marrow would be an issue,” says Orlando Sumners, Lourdess’ father. “There’s such a desperate need for mixed-race people on the registry … [but] most mixed-race adults wouldn’t have a clue what we’re talking about.”…

Read the entire article here.

Canada’s First Nations: Time we stopped meeting like this

The Economist
2013-01-19

Protests by native peoples pose awkward questions for their leaders, and for Stephen Harper’s government

Back in the 18th century British and French settlers in what is now Canada secured peace with the indigenous inhabitants by negotiating treaties under which the locals agreed to share their land in return for promises of support from the newcomers. This practice continued after Canada became self-governing in 1867. These treaty rights were incorporated into the 1982 constitution. The Supreme Court has since said they impose on the federal government “a duty to consult” the First Nations (as the locals’ descendants prefer to be called) before making any changes that impinge on their treaty rights.

The Assembly of First Nations, which represents about 300,000 people living in 615 different reserves, reckons Stephen Harper’s Conservative government has broken the bargain. In protests over the past month they have blocked roads and railways, staged impromptu dances in shopping malls and chanted outside the office of the prime minister. Theresa Spence, a Cree chief from a troubled reserve in northern Ontario, has taken up residence in a tepee near the parliament buildings in Ottawa, and has refused solid food since December 11th…

…Mr Harper got off to a promising start with the First Nations and Canada’s other aboriginal groups, the mixed-race Métis and the Arctic Inuit, when he issued an apology in June 2008 for the treatment their children had suffered in residential schools (they were separated from their families and often abused). The prime minister promised a new relationship based on “collective reconciliation and fundamental changes”…

Read the entire article here.