Mixed Race Studies

When Black Is Brown: The African Diaspora in Mexico

The Museum of African American Art
Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza
Macy’s 3rd Floor
4005 Crenshaw Boulevard
Los Angeles, California 90008
2016-06-05 through 2016-09-18
Opening Reception: 2016-06-05, 14:00-17:00 PDT (Local Time)

WHERE BLACK IS BROWN: The African Diaspora In Mexico opens Sunday, June 5, 2016, with a public reception from 2:00 to 5:00 pm at The Museum of African American Art. The opening will feature a drumming procession of African and Azteca dancers and musicians, a dramatic performance, and a talk and tour by the exhibit’s curator, Dr. Toni-Mokjaetji Humber, Professor Emeritus, Ethnic and Women’s Studies Department, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.

WHERE BLACK IS BROWN is an innovative, multidimensional project that includes photographs, artifacts, and installations that document the African presence in Mexico from the Ancient Olmecs — Mother Culture of the Americas — through the colonial enslavement period, to contemporary Mexico. In addition to the visual components, Dr. Humber has incorporated educational programs and activities to compliment the exhibit. She will conduct middle and high school tours of the exhibit with activities for students to better understand the culture and historical contributions of African Mexicans.

“Recognition of an African root in the Mexican heritage, both ancient and modern, has been rendered invisible in the ideological consciousness of what it means to be Mexican,” Dr. Humber states. “This research will present a face of Mexico that has been hidden, denied, and disparaged, yet one that is vital to Mexican history and culture.”

The exhibit is designed to further the understanding of African influence and contributions in the Americas and to foster greater understanding among African American, Chicano/Latino, and Indigenous communities about their historical connections and their intermingled sangre (blood) that has produced beautiful and dynamic peoples of the Americas.

For more information, click here.

Local Author Dmae Roberts

Another Read Through
3932 N Mississippi Avenue
Portland, Oregon 97227
2016-09-01, 19:00-20:00 PDT (Local Time)

Dmae Roberts will read from her book and give a preview of a larger conversation that will be coming soon with the Oregon Humanities Conversation Project. The Letting Go Trilogies: Stories of a Mixed-Race Family traces four decades of what it means to be a mixed-race adult who sometimes called herself “Secret Asian Woman.” With her personal essays written over a ten-year period, Dmae Roberts journeys through biracial identity, Taiwan, sci-fi, and the trials of her interracial Taiwanese and Oklahoman family amid love, loss and letting go of past regrets and grief. Roberts has been chosen by Oregon Humanities to be a Conversation Project leader with the topic: What Are You? Mixed-Race and Interracial Families in Oregon’s Past and Future. This reading and conversation will draw on her personal experiences and historical research on the mixed-race experience in Oregon.

Dmae will give a preview of her Oregon Humanities Conversation Project topic and feature a reading from her book The Letting Go Trilogies: Stories of a Mixed-Race Family with an interractive talk: “What Are You?” A Mixed-Race Reading & Conversation.”

For more information, click here.

IN THE WHITE FRAME : An interview with mixed-race dancers Angel Langley & Jasmmine Ramgotra

Multiracial Asian Families: thinking about race, families, children, and the intersection of mixed ID/Asian
2016-08-30

Sharon H. Chang

STRANGE COUPLING is an annual juried exhibition of collaborations between University of Washington (UW) student artists and local professional artists. Over a decade old, the School of Art + Art History + Design program aims to connect campus and community through teamwork and direct engagement. This year I was entirely captivated by one of twelve projects, a performance piece entitled In The White Frame by mixed-race student dancers Angel Langley and Jasmmine Ramgotra with local sound artist/composer/teacher Byron Au Yong. The piece is a stunning work of art and innovative look at the experience of multiraciality within our white dominant culture.

Performed Friday June 10 at Seattle’s King Street Station, In the White Frame is a 20-minute structured improvisation that utilizes movement, materials, sound and space. The audience — who does not sit — is invited to participate but also come and go at will. “We wanted to create something that was structured and improvisational,” said Jasmmine, “And we had an intention to do it about identity.”

Over coffee with me at Columbia City Bakery in Seattle, Angel and Jasmmine sit down to tell more about creating this beautiful piece. They recall at their first meeting with Byron months ago talking about the prevalence of racial dichotomies in society right now. “We knew we wanted to do [something] about our own experience,” reflects Jasmmine. At the same time the three artists had discussed how art is often presented in white-framed gallery spaces. That was when Angel had an epiphany. She had been reading Raising Mixed Race: Multiracial Asian Children In a Post-Racial World and learning about Joe R. Feagin’s theory of the white racial frame for the first time. “I remember giving [the book] to Jasmmine like you need to read this chapter on white framing cause this is what we’re doing,” says Angel. But also “what does that mean being our identities in a high art space, a white-framed gallery?” Jasmmine can’t hide her enthusiasm, “I was like oh my god that makes so much sense.”

To give form to their improvisation they brainstormed a wordlist with Byron. “Ideas of what mixed race peoples are,” explained Angel, “like superhuman, mixed.” Mutt was one of them says Jasmmine “because someone called me that before and I was like wow. Really?” The dancers nod to themselves about such contradictions. Mixed race identity is supposed to be fluid so fluidity was also on their wordlist. But the reality is that being multiracial is often a polarized, painful experience via other peoples perceptions. The truth of this dichotomy compelled them to add stuck to their list too. “Like more ugly or more beautiful,” Angel gives another example. “Just this idea you’re either a superhuman, or you’re a piece of shit.”…

Read the entire interview here.

The changing faces of Singapore: Mixed race families

Population.sg
2016-08-23

Karen Tee

This little red dot may be tiny, but what it lacks in size, it makes up for in diversity. As a society traditionally made up of people of different cultures and backgrounds, coexistence and intermixing is a common theme in our daily experience – be it in the food we eat, or even how we speak.

And according to the numbers, this is also a growing trend in our marriages and families. Around 20 per cent of marriages in Singapore in 2014 were inter-ethnic, in other words, between individuals of different races. This is up from 13 per cent a decade ago.

Experts say this trend is unsurprising, given Singapore’s increasingly well-travelled population and changing social norms.

“The world is a smaller place. And what would have been totally unusual two generations ago is far more acceptable in this day and age,” Anita Fam, a Families for Life council member, told TODAY.

Meet three mixed race Singaporean families, and hear their stories of when different cultures and traditions meet, and how they celebrate their diverse backgrounds….

Read the entire article here.

The Pleasures of Taxonomy: Casta Paintings, Classification, and Colonialism

The William and Mary Quarterly
Volume 73, Number 3, July 2016, 3rd series
pages 427-466

Rebecca Earle, Professor
School of Comparative American Studies
University of Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom

A new model for thinking about the socioracial categories depicted in casta paintings (remarkable eighteenth-century Spanish American images representing the outcome of “racial mixing”) takes seriously both their fluidity and their genealogical character. Approaching classification, and casta paintings, from this direction clarifies the underlying epistemologies that structured colonial society and helps connect the paintings more explicitly to the debates about human difference that captivated Enlightenment thinkers. Ultimately, however, these paintings were produced and collected in the hundreds not simply because they visualized Atlantic debates about classification and human difference but because these visualizations were interesting and pleasant to contemplate. They agreeably roused the pleasures of the imagination via their taxonomic as well as their narrative power. Linking casta paintings to the importance accorded to pleasure in both the scientific and the colonial imagination helps explain their fascination, which derived from their ability to condense the complex interconnections of classification, colonialism, and sexuality into appealing images.

Michaela Angela Davis Strips Down For The “What’s Underneath Project,” Talks Racism, Insecurities

Madame Noire
2016-08-22

Brande Victorian, Managing Editor

Michaela Angela Davis has long been everything and then some to us, and our opinion of the writer, culture critique, and activist has only skyrocketed after watching her strip down for StyleLikeU’s highly regarded “What’s Underneath Project.”…

…And we’re thankful for that. Here are the highlights from Davis’ interview:

On assumptions people make about her because of how she looks

“The first, sort of obvious assumption is that I’m mixed race– like one parent is white, one parent is Black — and it’s not so. Both of my parents are light-skinned and Black. Both of my parents are products of what I call the great horror story of America and the great love story of America. In order to survive, often families would marry other light-skinned Blacks to stay alive…

Read the entire article here.

‘Blasian Narratives’ struggles with the question: Black enough? Asian enough?

Kore Asian Media
2016-08-16

Tae Hong

“Blasian Narratives” performs inside Stanford Theatre. (Harrison Troung/Courtesy photo)

Teaching third graders in an underserved area of Brooklyn, Cenisa Gavin often looks out at her mostly black and Latino students and is reminded of the failings of her own teachers when it came to discussions about race and identity.

Gavin, 23, is black on her father’s side, and Korean Eskimo on her mother’s side. She has long, thick hair and, by her own description, slanted eyes. Growing up as a mixed-race child in Anchorage, Alaska, was one thing – she could never, for one, converse with her Korean great-grandmother because of a language barrier, and that was always the way it had been for her family – but coming across the term “Blasian” as a high schooler, and then joining a group of them to talk about her heritage as black and Asian on a theater stage at Spelman College years later, was another.

“I think my teachers did us a disservice by not discussing what it is to be colorblind, and how being colorful is greater than that,” Gavin said. When she told her students about her mixed race last year, she said, and when they saw her black father, the kids were surprised: “They said, ‘Ms. Gavin’s dad is black? You’re black?’”

This is one of the themes carried in the stories told by the seven-member group with which Gavin has now starred in a film project, “Blasian Narratives,” started by Cambodian American director Omnes “Canon” Senmos and looking toward release this fall…

Read the entire article here.

Our Diversity Isn’t Looking Very Diverse

Affinity Magazine
2016-08-20

Etienne Rodriguez
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Look alive, True Believers, if the rumors are to be believed, then Zendaya is playing the role of Mary Jane Watson in the upcoming Spider-Man movie. This is the latest in a series of black women being cast in traditionally white comic book roles. First it was Candice Patton being cast as Iris West in CW’s The Flash, then Tessa Thompson as Valkyrie in Marvel’s Thor: Ragnarok, followed by Kiersey Clemons being cast in Warner Brother’s The Flash, and now Zendaya. While they’re all great actresses and I can’t wait to see them in action, it’s hard not to notice that only a certain type of black girl is being cast.

We all want to celebrate the fact that black women are getting more roles, but we need to address the colorism in these casting. Zendaya, Kiersey, Tessa, and Candice are all lightskin black women. These aren’t coincidences; these are products of our society’s devaluing of darkskin black women, especially those that don’t meet Eurocentric beauty standards. These actresses received/continue to receive a lot of hate, doused in racism no doubt, but nothing in comparison to what Leslie Jones went through just last month.

Leslie is a darkskin black women with Afrocentric features, and the internet sure as hell wanted her to know it. Through comparison to gorillas, various racial slurs, and general bigotry, she was forced to retreat from Twitter and thus interacting with her fans. Women like her are rarely given the chance to shine and when they are, they’re met with harassment and abuse…

Read the entire article here.

Richard Pryor’s Daughter Opens Up About The Racism Her Family Faced In Beverly Hills

The Huffington Post
2016-08-18

Lisa Capretto
The Oprah Winfrey Network

“I’m a product of this thing that everyone was against.”

When Rain Pryor was born in 1969, her father, Richard Pryor, had already begun transitioning from a relatively mild joke-telling comedian to a fearless, outspoken comic whose routines doubled as raw social commentary. As Pryor’s comedy was shifting, so was the country, moving toward more progressive values. But, as his daughter Rain points out, blatant racism still affected countless families, including her own.

Speaking with “Oprah: Where Are They Now?”, the 47-year-old actress opened up about her childhood, setting the scene for what her interracial family faced during that time in their Beverly Hills community.

“My dad’s Richard Pryor. My mother, Shelley, was a poor Jewish woman,” Rain says. “Imagine, if you will, Beverly Hills in the early ‘70s. Here I am, this mixed-race child [with] my golden skin, my big poufy hair ― because Mom knew nothing about a pressing comb ― [and] my mom’s blond-haired, blue-eyed, looking like Cher, wearing dashikis.”…

Read the entire article here.

White People, Stop Saying You’re ‘Black On The Inside’

The Establishment
2016-08-15

Natasha Diaz

White and Wrong

White people are consistent; I’ll give them that. They take Black culture as the blueprint for their fashion, entertainment, music, and new hip terms to enhance their Urban Dictionary posts. They colonize neighborhoods, forcing out people who have lived there for generations, stripping the area of culture, and filling it with ridiculous storefronts that specialize in multiple varieties of a single condiment that could easily be made at home. Just when you thought they couldn’t take any more, they’ll figure out a way to snatch even the intangible away. Take #BlackLivesMatter, a slogan built to anchor a human rights movement, stolen to protect Smurfs. (Presumably that’s what “Blue Lives Matter” is about, since otherwise it makes no goddamn sense.) Usually, white people want everything Black, except to actually be Black. That is, until Friday, June 12th, 2015, when Rachel Dolezal and her circus full of weave and spray tan came marching out into the public eye.

Everyone I knew emailed to tell me about Dolezal. As a woman of mixed race that inadvertently passes as white, I clearly needed to be in the know. A few idiots even reached out to say that they “finally understood now” where I was coming from in explaining my racial background. Let’s have a moment of silence for those poor unfortunate souls, now eternally “unfriended” in all senses of the term—R.I.P. But none of my friends’ and ex-friends’ responses were as offensive as Dolezal’s spurious claim to be Black…

Read the entire article here.