Mixed Race Studies

Intermarried

Kehrer Verlag Heidelberg
2013
128 pages
57 color ills.
24 x 29.5 cm
English
Hardcover ISBN 978-3-86828-418-8

Photography by: Yael Ben-Zion

Text by: Amy Chua, Maurice Berger, Yael Ben-Zion

Yael Ben-Zion uses photography and text to reflect on intermarriage.

Following her award-winning monograph 5683 miles away (Kehrer 2010), in Intermarried Yael Ben-Zion fixes her camera on another personal but politically charged theme: intermarriage. Ben-Zion initiated the project in 2009 by contacting an online parent group in Washington Heights, her Manhattan neighborhood, inviting couples who define themselves as “mixed” to participate. Her own marriage “mixed,” she was interested in the many challenges faced by couples who choose to share their lives regardless of their different origins, ethnicities, races or religions.

Through layered images and revealing texts (including excerpts from a questionnaire she asked her subjects to fill out), Intermarried weaves together fragments of reality to compose a subtle narrative that deals with the multifaceted issues posed by intermarriage.

MOsley WOtta

Oregon Art Beat
Oregon Public Broadcasting
Aired: 2013-05-30
Length: 00:08:24

MOsley WOtta is a sly play-on-words meant to remind us that we are all “mostly water.” This inclusive, hip-hop reminder helps Bend-based man-behind-the-artist Jason Graham find family wherever he goes and to share his danceable message of peace and mutual support.

Q&A with Tim Okamura: A Painter with a Purpose

SCA Close Up: News and Events From the School of Visual Arts
School of Visual Arts, New York, New York
2013-08-29

An eclectic heritage, a penchant for hip-hop, and life as an artist in New York City set Tim Okamura (MFA 1993 Illustration as Visual Essay) on a path toward social consciousness. Collected by celebrity clients (including Uma Thurman, Questlove and John Mellencamp) and exhibited in the National Portrait Gallery in London, his portraits are meant to “contribute a positive voice to the conversations going on today.” Okamura’s paintings in “The Pond, the Mirror, the Kaleidoscope” depict a trio of female boxers, suggesting women’s plight for equality and justice.

SCA: You’re known for your paintings of African American women.  You’re half-Japanese, half-Caucasian and you grew up in Canada. Many of your paintings celebrate the New York street scene. How did this juxtaposition come about?

Tim Okamura: It’s a question that comes up often—and it’s really not a short answer for me—and it’s very intriguing to me that there are people who tend to find the juxtaposition of the work, and who I am, quite “conceptual.” It’s something I hadn’t fully considered when I began making the work. The idea that there would be an intertwining assessment of both model and artist when looking at the work was vaguely in the back of my mind, but it never influenced my choices. As someone who has focused primarily on portraiture up to this point in my career, I think the biggest factor in choosing my subjects has always just been a deep interest in the “stories” of the people I paint. I consider portraiture a form of story-telling as it relates to the subject, and I really wanted to discover or reveal to my audience stories that I felt were compelling, and perhaps had not been told previously…

…I think there is an additional layer of psychological interest for me in that my vision is filtered through the lens of my personal experience as someone of mixed race growing up in Canada. I was often identified as being “different” and even persecuted for this perception. As a result, I tended to form friendships with minority kids and anyone who might have felt excluded from the “mainstream.” This has had a significant impact on my view of the world, my desire for social justice and equality, and my long-standing motivations as an artist who is interested primarily in people…

Read the entire interview here.

Professor shifts the lens on race through portraiture, new book

FIU News
Florida International University
2014-01-02

Evelyn Perez

What is blackness? What does it mean to be black? Is blackness a matter of biology or consciousness? Who and what determine who is black and who is not?

A new book by Yaba Blay, co-director of the Africana Studies Program at Drexel University, and Noelle Théard MA’10, adjunct professor in the FIU African and African Diaspora Studies Program, explores these questions and challenges society’s narrow perception of blackness and what it looks like. Titled (1)ne Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race, its name is a reference to the “one-drop rule” from the early 20th century, meaning that anyone with 1/32 of “African black blood” was black.

“Although we live in a ‘post-racial’ society with a president of mixed-race ancestry and a lot of strides have been made since the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, we still live in a society where issues of race and racial identity are salient,” Théard said. “There is a tendency for folks to not want to have conversations pertaining to issues of race…

Read the entire article here.

Surprising New Face in Arabic Music

The New York Times
2013-12-03

Linsay Crouse

Jennifer Grout Sings Umm Kulthum Hits on ‘Arabs Got Talent’

The Arab world has an unlikely new star: an American who sings — but barely speaks — Arabic. Not only that, her genre is traditional Arab music.

Plucking her oud, an Arabic version of the lute, and singing with the undulating emotion of Umm Kulthum, the Arab world’s legendary diva, the 23-year-old Jennifer Grout has become a sensation across the Middle East as a contestant on the reality show “Arabs Got Talent.”

She will appear in the finals in Beirut, Lebanon, on Saturday, competing for viewer votes against an array of Arab performers, many of whom would be at home on a Western stage: comedians, hip-hop dancers and jugglers. The only performer of classical Arab music will be an American of European stock…

… “So many times I’ve heard the comment ‘It’s “Arabs Got Talent” — go back to America,’ ” Ms. Grout said in a recent phone interview from Marrakesh, Morocco, where she lives. “It’s like I’m starting an invasion, when really I just love singing Arabic music and desperately wanted a chance to perform it for an audience that would appreciate it.”

Her flair in doing so has also incited a wave of incredulity about her ethnicity: Ms. Grout, who is from Cambridge, Mass., describes her background as English, Scottish and Native American…

Read the entire article here.

One Drop, but Many Views on Race

The New York Times
2013-12-16

Maurice Berger, Research Professor and Chief Curator
Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture
University of Maryland, Baltimore County

In the 2010 census — when respondents could check more than one racial group — President Obama, the son of a black African father and a white mother, checked a single box: “Black, African-American or Negro.” Mr. Obama himself was unequivocal about it: “I self-identify as African-American — that’s how I am treated and that’s how I am viewed. And I’m proud of it.”

Yet the president’s words are nuanced: While he opts to classify himself as black, he implies that his racial identity is also contingent on how he is seen and treated by others in a nation prone to racial absolutes, no matter how he sees himself.

Those observations are among the provocative arguments presented by Yaba Blay in “(1)ne Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race” (BLACKprint Press), which examine what it means to be black. In it, she demonstrates how racial identity is not just biological or genetic but also a matter of context and even personal choice. It is revealing that the president’s definitive answer came after years of being dogged by outside doubters who questioned not just his race, but also his very nationality.

“(1)ne Drop” explores the intricate and fraught issue of race through the observations of 60 contributors from 25 countries who self-identify, at least partly, as black, even if they are not always seen as such because of light skin, facial features or interracial ancestry. Their words are accompanied by portraits by Noelle Théard and a team of photographers directed by her. The book challenges narrow conceptions about blackness, both as an identity and as an experience, and the stereotypes and rigid boundaries of color that continue to divide us…

…The books subject’s recount how their efforts to define themselves clashed with society’s imperative to assign neat racial categories in order to “make something that is fluid and uncertain more certain,” as a contributor, Deborah Thomas, noted. Some described the bewilderment and prying questions of acquaintances, co-workers and strangers attempting to discern their race. Others pointed to the social stigma of having complexions that are frustratingly — or insultingly — viewed as too dark or too light…

Read the entire review here.

Book Review of (1)ne Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race

The Skanner
Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington
2013-12-10

Kam Williams

Yaba Blay and Noelle Théard (dir. of photography), (1)ne Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race (Philadelphia: BLACKprint Press, 2013)

Traditionally, in America, if you were just a teeny-weeny bit black, you’d always been considered black. This arbitrary color line was even codified by the Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, an 1896 case brought by an octoroon light enough to pass who sued for the right to sit in the “white only” section of a segregated train traveling through the South…

…This means that folks, who only a generation ago would’ve been forced to identify themselves simply as black, now feel much more freedom to avail themselves of an array of alternatives along the ethnic spectrum. (1)ne Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race is a collection of essays reflecting on racial identity by 60 introspective individuals who until relatively recently would’ve been labeled black in the eyes of the law.

This enlightening opus was edited by Dr. Yaba Blay, a professor of Africana Studies at Drexel University, and each contributor’s entry is accompanied by a proud portrait photographed by Noelle Théard, a professor at Florida International University. The book breaks down the contributors by three categories: “Mixed Black,” “American Black” and “Diaspora Black.”

Although “Black” Kathleen Cross has a black father and a white mother, she has resisted the invitations to join the “Multiracial Movement, which she sees as divisive. By contrast, Harlemite Jozen Cummings describes himself as “Mixed,” with parents who are Japanese, Puerto Rican and African-American…

Read the entire review here.

Lenny Kravitz’s Halfway Mark

The New York Times
2013-12-06

Amy Chozick, National Political Reporter

You grew up between the Upper East Side and Bed-Stuy. Which neighborhood did you feel more comfortable in?

Well, after I was in first grade, Monday through Friday was Upper East Side going to P.S. 6, and Friday night through Sunday night was Bed-Stuy. But I didn’t like one more than the other. I had two different lives, and in fact two different names. My name in Bed-Stuy was Eddie.

Why?

These people that lived next door to my grandmother’s were from down South, and they had very thick Southern accents — they were extremely country. I remember being about 6 years old, and they said, “What’s your name, boy?” I said, “Lenny.” They said, “Eddie?” I said, “No, Lenny.” They said, “Eddie?” I said, “Lenny,” and they said, “Oh, Eddie.” So that was it, I was Eddie…

…Do you think things have changed in terms of being biracial? 

Kids now and young adults, they don’t even know about this. Say you were 10 years old when Obama first took office; your thing is: What are you talking about? All my friends are mixed, and the music I listen to is mixed…

…I read that when you started out in the ’80s, producers were telling you your music wasn’t black enough or white enough.

They would always say, “Look, we’ll sign you, we’d love to give you a deal, but you cannot do this, you have to make this kind of music.” I always told them back off — and believe me, I needed the money. I was living in a car. I still don’t know to this day what stopped me…

Read the entire interview here.

(1)ne Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race

BLACKprint Press
2013-11-29
284 pages
75 full-page photographs
Hardback ISBN: 978-0-9896645-0-9

Yaba Blay, Ph.D., The Daniel T. Blue Endowed Chair of Political Science
North Carolina State University

Noelle Théard, Director of Photography

• Independent Publisher’s 2014 “Multicultural Non-Fiction Adult” Gold Medal Winner

What exactly is Blackness?
What does it mean to be Black?
Is Blackness a matter of biology or consciousness?
Who determines who is Black and who is not?
Who’s Black, who’s not, and who cares?

In the United States, a Black person has come to be defined as any person with any known Black ancestry. Statutorily referred to as “the rule of hypodescent,” this definition of Blackness is more popularly known as the “one-drop rule,” meaning that one solitary drop of Black blood is enough to render a person Black. Said differently, the one-drop rule holds that a person with any trace of Black ancestry, however small or (in)visible, cannot be considered White. A method of social order that began almost immediately after the arrival of enslaved Africans in America, by 1910 it was the law of the land in almost all southern U.S. states. At a time when the one-drop rule functioned to protect and preserve White racial purity, Blackness was both a matter of biology and the law. One was either Black or White. Period. One hundred years later, however, the social and political landscape has changed. Or has it?

(1)ne Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race sets out to explore the extent to which historical definitions of race continue to shape contemporary racial identities and lived experiences of racial difference, particularly among those for whom the legacy of the one-drop rule perceptibly lingers. Featuring the perspectives of 60 contributors representing 25 countries and combining candid narratives with simple yet striking portraiture, this book provides living testimony to the diversity of Blackness. Although contributors use varying terms to self-identify, they all see themselves as part of the larger racial, cultural, and social group generally referred to as Black. They all have experienced having their identity called into question simply because they do not fit neatly into the stereotypical “Black box”—dark skin, “kinky” hair, broad nose, full lips, etc. Most have been asked “What are you?” or the more politically correct “Where are you from?” numerous times throughout their lives. It is through contributors’ lived experiences with and lived imaginings of Black identity that we are able to visualize multiple possibilities for Blackness above and beyond the one-drop rule.

The inspiration behind CNN’s Black in America: “Who is Black in America?” and featured on CNN Newsroom, (1)ne Drop continues to spark much-needed dialogue about the intricacies and nuances of racial identity and the influence of skin color politics on questions of who is Black and who is not.

(1)ne Drop takes the very literal position that in order for us to see Blackness differently, we have to see Blackness differently.

Contents

• Author’s Note
• Intro
• Introspection
• Mixed Black
• American Black
• Diaspora Black
• Outro
• Notes
• Acknowledgements
• About

Carlton Mackey: Conversations beyond color

Emory Profile
Emory News Center
2013-11-22

Kimber Williams

As director of Emory’s Ethics and the Arts program — and a lifelong photographer and filmmaker — Carlton Mackey is used to exploring the questions that intrigue him through an artist’s lens. 

So as he prepared to become a father for the first time, questions of skin tone and identity, beauty and culture came to captivate him as never before: Will this child identify as biracial? Will he identify as black? What is blackness? What does skin tone mean in the search for identity?

His response was to embark upon a deeply personal exploration of the topic, which has resulted in “50 Shades of Black” (self-published, 2013), a multi-disciplinary art project funded, in part, by a grant from Emory’s Center for Creativity & Arts, that investigates the intersection of skin tone and sexuality in shaping identity through both a book, a website and traveling art exhibit…

…Emory Report caught up with Mackey to discuss the evolution of “50 Shades of Black,” which will be the focus of a public exhibition at the Center for Ethics next February. 

Where does your story as an artist begin?

My roots go back to Southern Georgia. I was born in Jesup, Georgia, and raised by a mom (Burnell Mackey) and dad (Carl Mackey) who loved me dearly. When I was 4 years old, my mom passed away after battling cancer. After that, I moved to Blackshear, Georgia, to live with my grandmother, Pearl Taylor — the single most important female figure in my life, outside of my mom, who spent my formative years rearing, shaping and molding me. 

As an adult, I have a new set of eyes for understanding how she influenced me as an artist. But it doesn’t look like painting or drawing or making films. She got as far as the sixth grade and worked hard her entire life — so no, not a lot of art in that sense. But I’ve come to understand some of the key ingredients for being a successful artist are thinking outside the box, being resourceful. Creativity can flourish more when there are limitations than when there is excess, I think. That’s what she showed me day after day. I use that as an artist…

…How did you come up with the idea for the “50 Shades of Black” project?

Before I had my son Isaiah, I’d never dated anyone who didn’t look like me. But I fell in love with my wife (Kari, who is white). When I was going to become a father, I started having these questions: What is this kid going to look like? Is he going to identify with me? Am I going to identify with him? Is he going to be black? What is blackness? 

When I saw him, all that went out the window, didn’t even matter. But the root of those questions are very real and continue to be very real, not only for parents, but for children who look like him, historically, who will go through life with people asking, “What are you? Where are you from?”…

Read the entire interview here.