Mixed Race Studies

It’s not your mixed race friends’ responsibility to coach you through the Black Lives Matter movement

MetroUK
2020-06-15

Miranda Larbi

It’s not our job to help you through this awakening (Picture: Ella Byworth for Metro.co.uk)

These past few weeks have been hard for everyone linked to the black community.

On top of the collective trauma that comes from the murder of yet another black man, it’s as if the whole world has suddenly woken up to the realities of racism.

This white awakening has had a real emotional impact on many ethnic minorities. After all, imagine having to deal with racism on a near-daily basis for generations only for you to be believed now. But the unexpected result of all this – for me at least – has been the almighty load put on me by my white friends.

Those of us who are black and white (and no doubt, other mixes too) seem to have become tools to enlighten, comfort and placate white angst…

Read the entire article here.

Part of a Larger Battle: A Conversation with Thomas Chatterton Williams

Los Angeles Review of Books
2020-07-16

Otis Houston
Portland, Oregon

Thomas Chatterton Williams

I FIRST INTERVIEWED Thomas Chatterton Williams for the Los Angeles Review of Books in the spring of 2019. We discussed his then-forthcoming book, Self-Portrait in Black and White: Unlearning Race, as well as the state of the discussion about race in in the United States, including the popular movements for social justice born of the increased visibility of the killings of black Americans by police.

I recently spoke with Thomas again about what has changed in the way we talk about race and identity. We also discussed the effects of the collision of social justice theories with art and institutions, and the best-selling books that are now influencing the national mood and tracing the borders of generational and ideological difference in the United States in 2020.

Thomas is a contributing editor at The New York Times and a columnist at Harper’s. He spoke to me by phone from his home in Paris, France. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

OTIS HOUSTON: At about this time last year we discussed Self-Portrait in Black and White: Unlearning Race. One of your main arguments was that, in order to transcend racism and the social hierarchies it imposes, we have to commit to rejecting the very concept of race and its centrality in determining our identities.

One year later, in a time of mass protests in response to the killing of George Floyd, it seems to me like we’re seeing the media and some of the most prominent voices in the antiracism movement moving further away from the view of race and identity you’ve been advocating for. Increasingly, they argue that effective opposition to racism requires racial identity to always be foremost in our minds, both in the way we view politics and society and in our daily interactions with one another. This ideological movement is perhaps most visible in the books How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi and White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo, which have topped best-seller lists for weeks now. How would you describe this shift in thinking?

THOMAS CHATTERTON WILLIAMS: I see that as kind of a lamentable movement, actually. The two books that have dominated the conversation — and I mean dominated — are books that brook no middle ground and occlude any nuance. Robin DiAngelo’s central thesis, for instance, is that white people function not as individuals, but as a category, as a monolith that is inherently racist. According to her, to deny that you’re racist as a white person is proof of your racism, and to admit that you’re racist as a white person is proof of your racism, and the circular logic is airtight…

Read the entire interview here.

I’m a Teen of Mixed Race: Here’s What It’s Like to Grow Up Biracial in America Today

Parents
2020-03-03

Adiah Siler

ILLUSTRATION BY YEJI KIM

In this week’s ‘Teen Talk’ column, a teen explains her experience growing up mixed and how parents can help their children navigate the complexities of being biracial with single-race friends and family.

In my eighteen years growing up as mixed race, I’ve only had one biracial friend. She was a year younger than me and endlessly realistic—the one friend everyone needs who tells it like it is.

“Being mixed isn’t some great injustice,” she said to me one morning after I brought up some of the discomforts I had about feeling “othered” by our friends. Growing up, my school district was predominantly white, and my identity had developed around that of my peers. Now, being in an art school where it’s much more diverse, I’ve had to acclimate to the many ways blackness presents itself around me. “Talent scouts, modeling agencies, casting directors … they all love racial ambiguity—it sells better,” she added.

I’d never thought of my mixed skin tone like this before. My mom is white and my dad is black. Although I don’t pass for white at all, with an Afro and dark skin, I am definitely light-skinned compared to others, which has its advantages. But my mixed look has definitely been complicated for me. I was 4 years old the first time I realized that my mother’s hair was nothing like mine and never would be. At age 12 I was referred to by the N-word for the first time and felt such rage and confusion that I didn’t know how to react. My white friend later explained to me that it wasn’t a big deal, her friends said it all the time…

Now 18, I have predominantly white friends, and a white partner. I’m finally at the age where I can recognize not only my privilege in being mixed, but my luck in finding both black and white people that I love and identify with.

Colorism, or discrimination based on skin complexion, plays a huge role in the ways that modern society operates and picks the minorities it wants to show. There is also truth to the fact that being mixed can be incredibly difficult and confusing at times. There have always been a thousand little things that make me feel disconnected from my single-race family and friends. I want parents to understand the complexities that come with raising a mixed child, so they can help their children navigate the “in-betweeness” that I have felt and that never really leaves.

Read the entire article here.

What It’s Like To Be Biracial And Arguing With Your White Family Right Now

The Huffington Post
2020-07-13

Brittany Wong

KLAUS VEDFELT VIA GETTY IMAGES When you’ve been vulnerable with your white relatives and shared your experiences with racism and they still deny it exists, it’s exhausting.

For multiracial Americans, having conversations with white relatives about the Black Lives Matter movement and racial injustice is often an uphill battle.

Rachel Elizabeth Weissler, a Ph.D. student at the University of Michigan, has the kind of close-knit relationship with her dad most people would envy. He lives in Southern California, where Weissler spent most of her childhood, but the two talk frequently. She calls him her “biggest cheerleader.”

But there’s one topic they always seem to dance around: race.

Weissler is biracial: Her dad is white and her mom is Black. Though her dad loves Black culture (“Black TV especially,” Weissler said) and clearly, Black women, he tenses up when his daughter wants to talk about what it’s like to be Black in America.

“He avoids the subject, and when he does bring it up, it’s often in an extremely superficial way,” Weissler said…

Read the entire article here.

On the Borders of Love and Power: Families and Kinship in the Intercultural American

University of California Press
July 2012
366 pages
Illustrations: 19 b/w photographs, 1 map, 1 table
Trim Size: 6 x 9
Hardcover ISBN: 9780520272385
Paperback ISBN: 9780520272392
eBook ISBN: 9780520951341

Edited by:

David Wallace Adams, Professor of History
Cleveland State University, Cleveland, Ohio

Crista DeLuzio, Associate Professor and Altshuler Distinguished Teaching Professor of History
Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas

Embracing the crossroads that made the region distinctive this book reveals how American families have always been characterized by greater diversity than idealizations of the traditional family have allowed. The essays show how family life figured prominently in relations to larger struggles for conquest and control.

Table of Contents

• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction / David Wallace Adams and Crista DeLuzio
• PART ONE. DIVERSE FAMILIES AND RACIAL HIERARCHY
  • 1. Breaking and Remaking Families: The Fostering and Adoption of Native American Children in Non-Native Families in the American West, 1880–1940 / Margaret Jacobs
  • 2. Becoming Comanches: Patterns of Captive Incorporation into Comanche Kinship Networks, 1820–1875 / Joaquín Rivaya-Martínez
  • 3. “Seeking the Incalculable Benefit of a Faithful, Patient Man and Wife”: Families in the Federal Indian Service, 1880–1925 / Cathleen D. Cahill
  • 4. Hard Choices: Mixed-Race Families and Strategies of Acculturation in the U.S. West after 1848 / Anne F. Hyde
• PART TWO. LAW, ORDER, AND THE REGULATION OF FAMILY LIFE
  • 5. Family and Kinship in the Spanish and Mexican Borderlands: A Cultural Account / Ramón A. Gutiérrez
  • 6. Love, Honor, and the Power of Law: Probating the Ávila Estate in Frontier California / Donna C. Schuele
  • 7. “Who has a greater job than a mother?” Defining Mexican Motherhood on the U.S.-Mexico Border in the Early Twentieth Century / Monica Perales
  • 8. Borderlands/La Familia: Mexicans, Homes, and Colonialism in the Early Twentieth-Century Southwest / Pablo Mitchell
• PART THREE. BORDERLAND CULTURES AND FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS
  • 9. Intimate Ties: Marriage, Families, and Kinship in Eighteenth-Century Pueblo Communities / Tracy Brown
  • 10. The Paradox of Kinship: Native-Catholic Communities in Alta California, 1769–1840s / Erika Pérez
  • 11. Territorial Bonds: Indenture and Affection in Intercultural Arizona, 1864–1894 / Katrina Jagodinsky
  • 12. Writing Kit Carson in the Cold War: “The Family,” “The West,” and Their Chroniclers / Susan Lee Johnson
• Selected Bibliography
• List of Contributors
• Index

Robert De Niro gets candid about raising biracial children: It’s ‘scary’

Good Morning America
2020-06-12

Danielle Long

As people around the world continue to protest in support of black lives, parents are forced to have difficult discussions with their children about what’s happening — including Robert De Niro.

During an appearance on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” the 76-year-old actor, who has six biracial children, was asked, “Have you had the conversation about race with your kids?”

“My children are all half black and I don’t have … even me, I take certain things for granted,” he admitted.

The “Irishman” star said the topic is not one they discuss often but “they know” and shared how he can relate to other parents…

Read the story and watch the video here.

Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes makes his voice heard. He should talk about the Tomahawk Chop

The Kansas City Star
2020-06-15

Dave Helling

Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes recently joined with other NFL players in condemning racism and demanding that the league recognize the players’ right to protest injustice.

“I am Tamir Rice,” Mahomes says in the viral Black Lives Matter video, referring to the 12-year-old African American killed by the Cleveland police.

Mahomes’ willingness to take a stand sent a potent message that resonated far beyond Kansas City. “He has been the MVP of this league. He has won a Super Bowl,” said Doug Williams, a former NFL quarterback who’s African American. “It says a lot that he wanted to be involved in pushing for … change. It was very powerful.”…

Read the entire article here.

A Hard Conversation for the Latino Community

The New York Times
2020-07-03

Jorge Ramos, Television Anchor
Univision

Ilia Calderón onstage during Univision’s Premio Lo Nuestro 2020 at Miami’s American Airlines Arena, in February. Jason Koerner/Getty Images

Racism is deeply rooted in America’s social system, putting Afro-Latinos at a constant disadvantage.

MIAMI — Every weeknight, I sit down next to my co-anchor Ilia Calderón to host the Spanish-language news program “Noticiero Univision.” Although our many viewers have come to know Ms. Calderón’s face, not many know how much she has had to overcome to sit in that chair. Her story, like that of many Latinos with African ancestry in the United States, is one of tremendous personal achievement, as well as astonishing perseverance in the face of deep-seated racism.

Ms. Calderón was born in the Chocó region of Colombia, a place she describes as “our little Black paradise.” When Ilia was 10, she left home to study in a Catholic school in Medellín, where one of the white students was so disgusted by the color of Ilia’s skin — and so proud of her own fair complexion — that she told Ilia, “You’re Black? Not even my horse is black!” That first encounter with racism in Latin America left a mark on Ilia — one she never forgot.

When she moved to Miami in 2001 to pursue a career in journalism, things weren’t much different. “I had to endure racism in Colombia,” she told me recently, “and it turns out that here I have to face the same thing. It’s how they look at you, how they behave when you are around. …It’s like you have to go through that experience twice: For being Hispanic and also for being Black.”

According to a 2014 survey by the Pew Research Center, 24 percent of the roughly 54 million Hispanics living in the United States at the time self-identified as Afro-Latino, Afro-Caribbean or as another, more specific Afro-Latino identity, such as Afro-Colombian. At the same time, 34 percent identified as “mestizo, mulatto or some other mixed race.”…

Read the entire article here.

Between Two Worlds

Toronto Life
2018-05-22

Anais Granofsky

I grew up in ​subsidized housing​ with my mom, ​and spent weekends with my wealthy grandparents at their Bridle Path mansion. If I wanted to be loved, I’d have to learn to live two lives

My mother, Jean Walker, was the 13th of 15 children, born in 1949 to a church-going black family on a farm in Ohio. The house had only two bedrooms, so her parents slept on a pull-out bed on the porch in the summer and in the living room in winter. Her seven brothers slept in one bedroom, while the eight sisters shared the other. They attended a small school where the white kids sat up front and the black students at the back, separated by a row of empty desks. When she wasn’t studying, she did chores around the farm. The girls planted the vegetable gardens with corn and green beans, churned butter, did laundry, and took care of the younger children. The boys helped with the heavy work and looked after the animals. “With 14 siblings,” my mother used to say, “you’d better get to the table quick, or you weren’t going to eat that day.” There was never enough food or money to go around, but the family didn’t feel poor. Everyone around them was in the same situation.

Jean was a sensitive girl who used to lie in the fields and watch the clouds scuttle by. Her parents were always quick with a whipping, and the casual violence wore on her soul. She found a cubbyhole in the back of a closet, where she’d hide out and devour books by the light of a bare bulb. Desperate to get away from her chaotic, rural home life, she worked tirelessly in high school to earn a scholarship to Antioch in Yellow Springs, Ohio, a liberal arts college and one of the first post-secondary schools to integrate. As a nascent feminist, she was drawn to Antioch’s progressive vibe. In 1971, she enrolled in women’s studies and journalism…

Read the entire article here.

Colin Kaepernick’s Life to Become Netflix Series From Ava DuVernay

The Hollywood Reporter
2020-06-29

Lesley Goldberg, West Coast TV Editor

‘Colin in Black & White’ will tell the story of the athlete and activist’s adolescent life.

Colin Kaepernick’s formative years are becoming a Netflix series.

The athlete and activist is teaming with Ava DuVernay for Colin in Black & White, a scripted limited drama that has been picked up straight to series at the streaming giant.

The six-episode series will examine Kaepernick’s adolescent life, focusing on his high school years and the acts and experiences that led him to become the activist he is today. Kaepernick will appear as himself as the narrator of the series, which will cast an actor to play the younger version of the star quarterback.

Kaepernick in 2016 protested racial injustice, police brutality and systematic oppression when he kneeled during the national anthem ahead of a San Francisco 49ers game. His act of protest was, at the time, considered polarizing with both NFL officials and fans, eventually drawing the ire of President Trump, who urged team owners to fire players who protest during the national anthem. Kaepernick became a free agent in 2017 and filed a lawsuit against the NFL and its owners, alleging that they colluded to keep him out of the league. He remains a free agent. More recently, in the wake of George Floyd’s killing at the hands of Minnesota police, Kaepernick has become another face of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Read the entire article here.