Mixed Race Studies

Black Coral: A Daughter’s Apology To Her Asian Island Mother

Research at the National Archives and Beyond
BlogTalk Radio
Thursday, 2013-09-05, 21:00 EDT, (Friday, 2013-09-06, 01:00Z)

Bernice Bennett, Host

C. D. Holmes-Miller, Clergywoman, Theologian, Designer, Author

Mother with Clergywoman, Theologian, Communications Designer and author, The Rt. Reverend Dr. Cheryl D. Holmes-Miller aka Bishop Miller, M.S., MDiv.

She tells of her tumultuous, emotional teen agony of trying to accept her multiracial, multiethnic family as they struggle to fit in a “one box, one drop” racial category of being Negroes. Her coming of age story during the Civil Rights Movement leads to her back to the future 21st century revelations of her true heritage. Once taboo, her story is vogue and trending…her memoir is  a genuine catalyst for talking about race and culture, and those discussions start within the context of our families. She is the Senior Minister of The North Stamford Congregational Church in Stamford, Connecticut.

For more information, click here.

Mixed People: “Natural Bridges” to Racial Healing & Utopia?

Mixed Race Radio
Blog Talk Radio
2013-09-04, 16:00Z (12:00 EDT)

Tiffany Rae Reid, Host

Rainier Spencer, Senior Advisor to the President; Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies; Founder and Director of the Afro-American Studies Program
University of Nevada, Las Vegas

On today’s episode of Mixed Race Radio we will meet Rainier Spencer, Professor of Afro-American Studies in the Interdisciplinary Degrees Program at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). He has authored three books: 1) Reproducing Race: The Paradox of Generation Mix, Lynne Rienner, 2011; 2) Challenging Multiracial Identity, Lynne Rienner, 2006 and; 3) Spurious Issues: Race and Multiracial Identity Politics in the United States, Westview, 1999.  All this and he currently serves as Senior Advisor to the UNLV President.

Dr. Spencer is the founder and director of the Afro-American Studies Program at UNLV and is considered one of the founders of the field of critical mixed-race theory. While his research interest is in multiracial identity from the perspective of racial skepticism, including the ways that multiracial identity is implicated in the reification of biological race his interdisciplinary teaching interests include Afro-American history and popular culture as well as American slavery. In addition to writing numerous anthology chapters in this field of study, Rainier Spencer has been interviewed by and has provided commentary for the New York Times, has appeared on both American & Canadian television to discuss mixed-race identity, and is a featured speaker in the documentary film Multiracial Identity (Abacus Productions, 2010).

Using his book, Reproducing Race: The Paradox of Generation Mix as the foundation for today’s episode, we will discuss the long held view that mixed race people are somehow supposed to serve as a bridge to unite all people,

“But what of the notion that black/white persons are in themselves natural bridges for the facilitation of racial healing and reconciliation? It should come as no surprise that this is a biological argument dressed up in sociological attire.” —Rainier Spencer

For more information, click here.

The Politics of Multiracialism in an Anti-Black World

I MiX What I Like!
WPFW 89.3 FM, Washington, D.C.
2011-10-07

Jared A. Ball, Host and Associate Professor of Communication Studies
Morgan State University, Baltimore, Maryland

Jared Sexton, Associate Professor of African American Studies and Film & Media Studies
University of California, Irvine

Dr. Jared Sexton joined us this week to discuss to his work in Amalgamation Schemes and the politics of multiracial identification in an anti-Black world.  As Sexton has written, “Multiracialism cuts its teeth on the denial of this fundamental social truth: not simply that antiblackness is longstanding and ongoing but also that it is unlike other forms of racial oppression in qualitative ways—differences of kind, rather than degree, a structural singularity rather than an empirical anomaly.”   We also paid a brief tribute to professor Derrick Bell and his continuing influence.

Listen to the interview (00:59:30) here. Download the interview here.

Heidi Durrow discusses her novel “The Girl Who Fell From the Sky”

The Leonard Lopate Show
WNYC Radio (93.9 FM or 820 AM)
Friday, 2010-05-14, 12:00-14:00 EDT (16:00-18:00Z)

Leonard Lopate, Host

Heidi W. Durrow, Author

Destruction, Restoration

We’ll look into how Europe’s economic problems are creating political problems—we’ll check in on the state of the euro and on Greece’s ongoing debt woes. Then, Iranian artist Shirin Neshat talks about her debut feature film “Women Without Men.” Plus Heidi Durow discusses her novel The Girl Who Fell From the Sky. And Please Explain is all about art restoration!

Listen to the interview here. The audio stream is here. Download the audio clip (00:13:26, 5.4MB) to your computer here.

00:05:36 Leonard Lopate: The Bellwether Prize is for works that issues of social justice. You’ve attended law schools as well. Did you write this novel as social commentary?

00:05:47 Heidi Durrow: I wanted to explore this story ’cause I don’t think we talk about it often enough… about multiracial families and biracial identity. We had this great moment during President Obama’s candidacy when we got to talk about ‘biracial’ and the fact that his grandmother was white and his mother was white. And then on Inauguration Day he became our first black African American president. And we lost that opportunity to talk about biracial identity I think.

00:06:13 LL: Well, often when someone is biracial, the decision of the rest of the world is that they’re ‘black’.

00:06:21 HD: Yes. That was my experience.

00:06:21 LL: So Tiger Woods, who saw himself as very much being Asian—we don’t want to talk about his other problems.  But anyway, he was automatically ‘black’ and Barack Obama… he’s automatically ‘black’.

00:06:34 HD: And I think that’s fine. I do believe in self-identification. So that when people who are mixed-race decide to be one or the other, I’m absolutely for that. I just feel like, we lose stories when we don’t tell our whole selves.

00:06:48: LL: So what happens when someone like Rachel goes to school and is in classes where pretty much all of her classmates are black?

00:06:57 HD: They don’t understand her in the book.  And it’s the same thing for me, they just didn’t understand where I fit… at all. I remember being at home speaking Danish with my mother, having Danish food and then as soon as we opened the door and went outside, I was a black girl and it erased that whole story, that whole existence that was me…

00:10:54 LL: In addition to writing, you also write a blog with Fanshen Cox called ‘Mixed Girls Chat’.

00:11:00 HD: ‘Mixed Chicks Chat’.

00:11:01 LL: ‘Mixed Chicks’… Okay.

00:11:03 HD: Yeah, and it’s weekly podcast we do every Wednesday. And we talk about being racially and culturally mixed. So we interview people who are in blended families, parents. We had a Harvard scholar on, which is exciting.

00:11:15 LL: I would assume—from what I know—that something like at least 90 percent of all African Americans—maybe 100 percent—are of mixed race.

00:11:26 HD: I think probably we’re all mixed in some way. And that’s what I’m so excited about with this book. ‘Cause I’ve been doing some readings around.  And I find that people are sharing the fact that their families are blended… suddenly.

00:11:39 LL: So this is something that would not have been discussed in the past? People would have been forced to just make a choice… say I’m ‘white’ or ‘black’?

00:11:44 HD: I think that’s right… Yeah, I mean, remember the controversy with Michelle Obama’s—I think—great-great grandfather and they discovered that he was biracial. And there was a little bit of controversy about that… I think, because people wanted to say ‘this our first African American First Lady’ and wanted to really hold on to that as opposed to actually sharing the real true story of this man in her past who was biracial as well…

Heidi Durrow~The Girl Who Fell From the Sky Into Our Hearts

Mixed Race Radio
Blog Talk Radio
2013-08-28, 16:00Z (12:00 EDT)

Tiffany Rae Reid, Host

Heidi W. Durrow, Author

On Today’s episode of Mixed Race Radio, we will meet author, speaker, and visionary, Heidi Durrow. Heidi is the New York Times best-selling author of The Girl Who Fell From the Sky (Algonquin Books), which received writer Barbara Kingsolver’s 2008 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Literature of Social Change, and is already a book club favorite.

Ebony Magazine named Heidi as one of its Power 100 Leaders of 2010 along with writers Edwidge Danticat and Malcolm Gladwell. Heidi was nominated for a 2011 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Debut.

Originally from the Pacific Northwest, Heidi is a graduate of Stanford, Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism and Yale Law School.  She has worked as a corporate attorney at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, and as a Life Skills trainer to professional athletes of the National Football League and National Basketball Association. Most recently she has served as the co-host of the award-winning weekly podcast Mixed Chicks Chat; and as a co-founder and co-producer of the Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival which was featured in the New York Times, Ebony Magazine and National Public Radio…

For more information, click here.

Steve Riley Co-hosts a Recap of Some Important Discussions

Mixed Race Radio
Blog Talk Radio
2013-08-21, 16:00Z (12:00 EDT)

Tiffany Rae Reid, Host

Steven F. Riley, Creator
www.MixedRaceStudies.org

On today’s of episode of Mixed Race Radio, join me and our special guest co-host, Steven Riley (Mixedracestudies.org) as we discuss some of our favorite Mixed Race Radio guests and conversations.

Steve is one of my “go-to” sources for show recommendations and referrals. Today, we get to hear what he has been up to and the conferences, lectures, and conversations he is excited to be a part of in the coming months.

Who knows, Steve and I may even debut a Top 10 List of favorite books, authors, programs and artists who have left an impact on our work and perspective.

Join us today and feel free to send in your suggestions and referrals for show guests, topics and themes.

Due to a guest cancellation, Tiffany invited me for wide ranging conversation about race and mixed-race. We discussed topics ranging from General Mills’ Cheerios ad, my favorite authors, the forthcoming inaugural issue of the Journal of Critical Mixed Race Studies and Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni’s one-woman play, One Drop of Love: A Daughter’s Search for her Father’s Racial Approval.

Go to the episode here. Listen to the episode here. Download the episode here.

Notorious in the Neighborhood with Joshua Rothman, Ph.D.

Research at the National Archives and Beyond
BlogTalk Radio
Thursday, 2013-08-22, 21:00 EDT, (Friday, 2013-08-23, 01:00Z)

Bernice Bennett, Host

Joshua D. Rothman, Professor of History and African American Studies
University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa

Notorious in the Neighborhood: Sex and Families Across the Color Line in Virginia, 1787-1861

Laws and cultural norms militated against interracial sex in  Virginia before the Civil War,. Nonetheless, it was ubiquitous in urban, town, and plantation communities throughout the state. In Notorious in the Neighborhood, Joshua Rothman examines the full spectrum of interracial sexual relationships under slavery-from Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings, and the intertwined interracial families of Monticello and Charlottesville to commercial sex in Richmond, the routinized sexual exploitation of enslaved women, and adultery across the color line.

White Virginians allowed for an astonishing degree of flexibility and fluidity within a seemingly rigid system of race and interracial relations, Rothman argues, and the relationship between law and custom regarding racial intermixture was always shifting. As a consequence, even as whites never questioned their own racial supremacy, the meaning and significance of racial boundaries, racial hierarchy, and ultimately of race itself always stood on unstable ground—a reality that whites understood and about which they demonstrated increasing anxiety as the sectional crisis intensified.

Joshua Rothman is Professor of History and African American Studies at the University of Alabama, where he is also Director of the Frances S. Summersell Center for the Study of the South.

For more information, click here.

A Family Tree That Includes Slaves — And Slave Owners

Tell Me More
National Public Radio
2013-08-15

Celeste Headlee, Host

Part of our summer reading series Island Reads, highlighting authors from the Caribbean

Andrea Stuart was curious about her family’s history in Barbados. And through years of careful research, she found that her bloodline includes both slave owners and slaves. She has written about her own family, as well as a detailed history of slavery in the Caribbean, in her book Sugar in the Blood. Guest host Celeste Headlee talks with Stuart about her family history, the moral complexity of slavery and finding roots in the past.

Interview Highlights

On the founder of a mixed-race dynasty:

“When I read about George Ashby, or rather, wrote about him, I remember thinking, ‘My goodness. What bravery it must have taken to take this huge step to leave England, in his case, to go to the New World.’ I mean, in those days the journey itself was so traumatic and long, the chances of being killed by raiders or pirates — everything was so difficult about this journey, and then to kind of confront this untrampled land, where at least half of the early settlers died just because things were so difficult. It seemed to me that he was extraordinarily brave. But then his generation and the subsequent generations make this terrible mistake. They become slave owners, and therefore become part of the whole institution of slavery. So I am deeply ambivalent about him. I admire him on one hand, and I lament him on the other.”…

Listen to the story here. Download the audio here. Read the transcript here.

“War Baby/Love Child~Capturing the Artistry of Mixed Identity

Mixed Race Radio
Blog Talk Radio
2013-08-07, 16:00Z (12:00 EDT)

Tiffany Rae Reid, Host

Laura Kina, Associate Professor Art, Media and Design and Director Asian American Studies
DePaul University

Born in Riverside, California in 1973 to an Okinawan father from Hawai’i and a Spanish-Basque/Anglo mother, Laura Kina was raised in Poulsbo, WA, a small Norwegian town in the Pacific Northwest, and currently lives and works in a Jewish and South Asian neighborhood in Chicago, Illinois. She is a visual artist, curator, and author whose research is focused on Asian American and mixed race identities and history. Kina is a Vincent de Paul associate professor of Art, Media, & Design at DePaul University and the coeditor, along with Wei Ming Dariotis, of War Baby/Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art (University of Washington Press, 2013).

Laura Kina is a cofounder of the DePaul biennial Critical Mixed Race Studies conference and cofounder and co-managing editor of the Journal of Critical Mixed Race Studies. She has exhibited her artwork across the U.S. and internationally including at the Chicago Cultural Center, India Habitat Centre, Nehuru Art Centre, Okinawa Prefectural Art Museum, the Rose Art Museum, and the Spertus Museum.

Laura Kina and Wei Ming Dariotis have curated an exhibition “War Baby/Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art,” which features the work of 19 contemporary artists. It debuted at the DePaul University Art Museum in Chicago this past spring and will open up tomorrow night, April 8, 2013 at the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience in Seattle and will run through January 19, 2014.

For more information, click here.

Obama Warms To Speaking Personally About Race

Weekend Edition Saturday
National Public Radio
2013-08-13

Linda Wertheimer, Senior National Correspondent and Host

Ari Schapiro, White House Correspondent

On race, Barack Obama often says he is not president of black America, but of the United States of America. Though he has not avoided the subject during his time in office, he tends not to seek out opportunities to discuss racial issues.

“He wanted to address them in a time and a way that accomplished specific objectives,” says Joshua Dubois, who ran the White House’s faith-based initiatives during Obama’s first term.

Obama addressed race most comprehensively in a Philadelphia speech during his first presidential campaign, after incendiary sermons by the pastor Jeremiah Wright came to light. “Race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now,” he said.

A handful of other events followed in the next four years, including a White House “beer summit” between a black Harvard professor and a white police officer; and the occasional commencement address at a historically black college.

Sherrilyn Ifill, who leads the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, believes Obama’s posture is typical for African-Americans who lead racially diverse groups. “It’s not as though many of us relish wading into issues of race,” she says. “We often feel we must, or we feel compelled to, but very few of us are eager to do it, and certainly I think the president was not eager to do it.”…

…During his recent travels through Africa, Obama talked repeatedly and explicitly about the significance of his skin color. “As an African-American president, to be able to visit this site I think gives me even greater motivation in terms of defense of human rights around the world,” he said at a slave port in Senegal…

Listen to the story here.  Download the audio here. Read the entire transcript here.