Mixed Race Studies

[Brian] Bantum explains his understanding of race as “the structure of death, the dehumanizing and de-creating word a people sought to speak over the world, and violently succeeded. Race is what overshadows the world, conceiving our bodies and their differences as something to be perpetually overcome.” He later writes, “My body is not a race.”

La Reine-Marie Mosely, “Race and sovereignty, a story of the body,” National Catholic Reporter, May 3, 2017. https://www.ncronline.org/books/2017/08/race-and-sovereignty-story-body.

[Leo] Felton’s subterranean journey into whiteness came during a historical moment in which many Americans, particularly those of his generation, were redefining their races in a very different way from the way Felton did: identifying themselves, in growing numbers, as multiracial. Multiracial activism flourished during the 90’s, with marches in Washington, magazines dedicated to interracial couples and a successful lobbying effort to include more complicated definitions of race on the 2000 Census form. (Seven million Americans ultimately chose to identify themselves by more than one race in that census.) Felton is in many ways a historical hiccup, a throwback to a bygone racial trope: the “tragic mulatto” of books like Mark Twain’s “Pudd’nhead Wilson” and William Faulkner’s “Light in August.” Like so many terrorists, he was a man at war not just with the government but with history itself.

Paul Tough, “The Black Supremacist,” The New York Times Magazine, May 25, 2003. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/25/magazine/the-black-supremacist.html.

Based on a long series of modern studies, [James Q.] Whitman says the Nuremberg Laws were crafted so as to create citizenship laws based on racial categories. The main motive for the legislation was to prevent mixed marriages, which would lead to the birth of mixed-race children and “racial pollution.” At the center of the debate that preceded the Nuremberg Laws was the aspiration to construct a legal code that would prevent such situations. American precedents, which were meant to make African-Americans, Chinese and Filipinos second-class citizens, provided inspiration for the Nazis.

Oded Heilbronner, “Racism Comes Full Circle: America as the Harbinger of the Nazis’ Race Laws,” Haaretz, August 15, 2017. http://www.haaretz.com/us-news/1.806835.

I understand the challenge of overcoming colorism. It. Is. EVERYWHERE in our culture. From the time we are children, we are praised or tutted at simply because of our physical features. He’s light skinned, you’ll have such cute babies, or, your daughter is so pretty, but she’s so dark. I spent many a night in the shower, scrubbing myself furiously with my mother’s skin whitening soap, willing it to make me a little lighter, my eyes a little greener, my hair a little more blonde and straight.

Yesenia Padilla, “Colorism in Latinx Communities,” The Lumen Blog, July 16, 2015. http://www.lumenmag.net/blog/colorism-in-latinx-communities.

Minnie [Bradley] returned to Omaha in 1904 and made two more appearances in police court before Judge Berka. The first, in March 1904, was as witness against a man named William Warwick, who was accused of assaulting her. The two had gotten into a heated argument when he bragged to her that, due to his light complexion, he often passed as a white man during his travels out west. He also mentioned that he had been in the company of two white women the previous evening. Minnie said William should show more respect for his race and reminded him that his mother was a black woman. His response was to punch her. Judge Berka sentenced him to 30 days in jail.

Shayne Davidson, “Angry in Omaha,” Captured and Exposed: Vintage Photography & True Crime Stories, June 8, 2017. https://capturedandexposed.com/2017/06/08/angry-in-omaha/.

“So for me, I’m not so much writing about race as I am writing about America. And to me, the American story is one of race, money and class. We do live in a racialized world, and I’ve spent my whole life in this space. I find it strange when writers don’t address it. I’m almost always assumed to be white. I’ve been privy to a lot of racism and conversations in rooms where I unintentionally disappeared into whiteness. I think there were periods when it was a struggle. But I’m at a place in my life when I’m very clear on who I am, my own story and who I come from.” —Danzy Senna

Donna Owens, “NBCBLK Summer Book Club: ‘New People’ by Danzy Senna,” NBC News, July 14, 2017. http://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/blk-summer-book-club-new-people-danzy-senna-n782806.

Rachel Dolezal represents everything I ever feared people would think about me when I told them I was half Nigerian-half Austrian. She embodies the cause of the doubt I first see flash across people’s faces when I tell them that yes, my biological mother is black, my father is white and I am a product of the two. The idea that someone would ever associate the two of us makes me feel ill and yet as I read about her I wonder increasingly where this leaves me. Where my voice fits into this story and whether or not I have the right to comment.

Nina Grossfurthner, ““So If You’re From Africa, Why Are You White?”,“ FLY (Freedom. Love. You.), March 16, 2017. https://flygirlsofcambridge.com/2017/03/16/so-if-youre-from-africa-why-are-you-white-nina-grossfurthner/.

[Lia Vainer] Schucman points to what she calls “the racism of intimacy” as a unique feature of Brazilian culture arising from its history. In contrast with the segregationist racism that prevailed in South Africa or the South in the United States, what we have in Brazil is a kind of racism that presupposes interaction between ‘whites’ and ‘blacks’. This relationship may even be moderated by positive feelings of affection without ceasing to be racist. “My aim was to analyze how ‘interracial families’ experience, negotiate, construct or deconstruct racism in their intimacy,” she said.

José Tadeu Arantes, “Study investigates marks of racism in “interracial families”,” Agência FAPESP, June 14, 2017. http://agencia.fapesp.br/study_investigates_marks_of_racism_in_interracial_families/25475/.

Identities are intricate and multifaceted, and this disrupts efforts to measure them with simple, one-time questions. It may seem like a safe assumption to treat race and ethnicity as life-long characteristics, whether in understanding, analysis, or interpretation. Theories about why people identify with a certain race or ethnicity, or why they change this identification, are also faced with explaining a complex situation of mixed heritage, response churning, and patterns that differ by age, location, and group. The world, it turns out, is not black and white. Careful study of social complexities such as these reveals colorful nuances that make the social world endlessly interesting and worthy of study.

Editorial Committee, “Think race and ethnicity are permanent? Think again,” N-IUSSP: IUSSP’s online news magazine, June 26, 2017. http://www.niussp.org/article/think-race-and-ethnicity-are-permanent-think-again-surprise/.

“I’m a Brown Afro-indigenous woman. That makes people uncomfortable as it is. The folks that have a problem with me and say, ‘You still live with privilege. You not fully Black.’ I can’t win and I can’t lose, so I’ma just keep going.” She smiles. “Yes, I’m mixed-race. There’s girls who look like me and glorify being exotic. I have a responsibility to my Blackness.” —Princess Nokia (Destiny Frasqueri)

Ivie Ani, “Princess Nokia Is Ready to Reign,” The Village Voice, March 29, 2017. https://www.villagevoice.com/2017/03/29/princess-nokia-is-ready-to-reign/.