Mixed Race Studies

Obama co-existed, sometimes uneasily, with substitute blackness; picked and chose among instances of surplus blackness; and, toward the end of his presidency, after being forced into it by blood and renewed protests in the streets, came to a truce with subversive blackness. But for much of his presidency he preferred, and personified, symbolic blackness: His very success—embodied in the sight of him and his gifted and beautiful black family in the nation’s most stellar public housing—was sufficient to signify black progress, many thought. He could make black folk proud by casually descending the stairs of Air Force One, or inviting black icons like Jay Z and Beyoncé to the White House. Black swag at its best. And something that white Americans who had voted Obama into office could cheer too, desperately hoping to be finally done with the tiring and unsolvable conundrum of race.

Michael Eric Dyson, “Whose President Was He?” Politico Magazine, Volume 3, Number 2 (January/February 2016). http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/barack-obama-race-relations-213493.

As Dear White People receives much deserved praise for its “diverse” representations of Black characters, the conversation on mixed race identity fails to be fully engaged with and must continue. The hypervisibility of mixed race women as video vixens, eroticized Others, or Tragic Mulattas flattens the complexities of negotiating a mixed-race identity within a Black-White binary. Rather than reinforcing this problematic binary with movies and TV shows in which characters have to “pick a side” or are placed within “colorblind” settings, we must demand that characters choose not to remain fixed within a singular identity performance. The tired tropes of mixed race women’s sexuality are not harmless entertainment, but have devastating consequences off-screen because they are translated to interpersonal relationships.

Jazlyn Andrews, “EMERGING FEMINISMS, (F)Act of Blackness: The Politics of Mixed Race Identity,” The Feminist Wire, February 25, 2016. http://www.thefeministwire.com/2016/02/30379/.

For Artur Santoro, 21, identifying as black is about being honest with himself—a process similar to coming out as gay.

“I had to come out of the closet twice—once as gay, and once as black,” Artur tells me. He says growing up with a white dad and a “light-skinned black” mom made it difficult to recognize his own blackness for most of his youth. But once Artur got involved in the LGBT community, it helped him identify other forms of discrimination in his life.

“I was suffering from situations of racism and didn’t realize it before,” he said. “If you’re black, you suffer racism—it’s not a choice; black is a consequence of what I live.”

Tim Rogers, “That moment you look in the mirror and realize you’re black,” Fusion, February 28, 2016. http://fusion.net/story/274184/that-moment-you-look-in-the-mirror-and-realize-youre-black/.

I myself identify as biracial. I have the same racial heritage as my Black president. And just like my Black president, I struggled thinking of how I wanted to identify coming into college. During that time, my identity wasn’t something that was of a massive importance to me. However, as I started to learn more about education and social justice, I started to understand the intricacies and nuances of the concept of identity — and how monotonously we view it in our society. From classes on multiculturalism and identity to TED Talks like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “Danger of a Single Story,” I learned that we all hold multiple identities that make up who we are at any given time. More importantly, I learned that it is not any of those singular identities that define us, but how they come together in each of us, uniquely.

Michael Chrzan, “Michigan in Color: Authenticity,” The Michigan Daily, February 18, 2016. https://www.michigandaily.com/section/mic/michigan-color-authenticity.

Puerto Rican schoolchildren are taught that regardless of physical appearance they all individually derive from the same aforementioned roots. Regardless of whether this is true or not hasn’t eradicated in Puerto Rico structural or personal racism. Belief in mestizaje silences conversations about white supremacy and doesn’t force those with privilege to take responsibility for it. This allows white Puerto Ricans to appropriate, steal, and taint Afro-Puerto Rican traditions and exploit afro-descendant communities with no repercussions or consequences because “we are all Puerto Rican so all parts of Puerto Rican culture belong to all of us.” Not acknowledging the fact that a racial construct exists in Puerto Rico allows white privilege, white saviourism, and finally racism to flourish.

Dorothy Bell Ferrer, “How “Mestizaje” in Puerto Rico Makes Room for Racism to Flourish,” La Respuesta: A magazine to (Re)Imagine the Boricua Diaspora, February 8, 2016. http://larespuestamedia.com/mestizaje-racism/.

The mulatta concubine in diaspora is everywhere. She is in representations of Thomas Jefferson’s long-term “relationship” with the enslaved Sally Hemings, begun when she was fourteen and he forty-four (see Gordon-Reed, American Controversy). She is the protagonist who emblemizes Cuban national identity in Cirilo Villaverde’s 1882 novel, Cecilia Valdes: Novela de costumbres cubanas. She is allusively present in the fantastical and garish transformation of an enslaved black woman to sexually powerful white (by virtue of makeup) mistress in the Brazilian film Xica! She is remembered as the owner of the infamous maison des esclaves (house of slaves) on Gorée Island, the former Senegalese slave entrepôt and now major slavery tour destination. She is the enslaved Joanna, “immortalized in John Gabriel Stedman’s Narrative of Five Years’ Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam (1806 [1796])” (Sharpe, Ghosts, 46). She is the commodity that drove the fancy slave trade in the antebellum United States. She is present in travelers’ descriptions of antebellum New Orleans’s free women of color. She is “that seductive mulatto woman” in colonial Saint-Domingue (Moreau de Saint-Méry, Civilization, 81-89).

Lisa Ze Winters, The Mulatta Concubine: Terror, Intimacy, Freedom, and Desire in the Black Transatlantic, (Athens: Georgia University Press, 2016), 3.

“I don’t know if I’m like White, if I’m African American because I am from the Dominican Republic. I was born there,” she said. “My grandmother is like Black…her skin color is Black, but my grandfather was part Chinese…So it’s just like a mixture. So I just really never know what to identify myself.” —Nanyelis Diaz, Tampa, Florida

Naomi Prioleau, “Identity A Challenge For Latinas Who Are Black,” WUSF News/WUSF Public Media, February 3, 2016. http://wusfnews.wusf.usf.edu/post/identity-challenge-latinas-who-are-black.

As a brown-skinned Dominican, the idea that I was somehow Black never crossed my mind. But what does it mean to be Black? Who is considered Black, and who is not? Am I Black? If I’m Dominican, can I be Black too? Am I Black enough? These are questions I struggled to answer as I embarked on a journey to come to terms with my European, Indigenous, and African ancestry and define my racial and cultural identity. Eventually, after deep study and reflection, I had discovered a racial and cultural fusion and finally admitted that I am the following: an Afro-Latino, or a Latino of African-descent, who identifies with their African roots; and an Afro-Dominican, which is simply a nationalized Afro-Latin@ identity. An Afro-Latin@ embraces four elements of African identity: their racial African features, like my thick, Black, curly afro; their cultural traits, which descend from African traditions such as music, food, language, and dance; their political identity, which is molded by their shared experience within a racist, anti-Black, system of white supremacy; and their social characteristics and personalities, which are African in nature. A Latin@ is simply someone mixed with African, European, and Indigenous blood.

Jonathan Bolívar Espinosa (Jay Espy), “Dominican, Black, and Afro-Latino: A Confession/Dominicano, Negro, y Afro-Latino: Una Confesión,” La Galería Magazine: Voices of the Dominican Diaspora, April 10, 2015. http://www.lagaleriamag.com/dominican-black-and-afro-latino-a-confessiondominicano-negro-y-afro-latino-una-confesion/.

“Perhaps not since Ashley Montagu’s revolutionary, Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race (1942), has a more important work on the pernicious aspects of race and racialization been written. The Arc of a Bad Idea, Understanding and Transcending Race, upends and debunks our conventional thinking about race and ending racism.

Carlos Hoyt has written a timely and necessary balm for the wounds caused by centuries of the false notion of race—an idea with no empirical or scientific basis—but yet embraced worldwide. While Hoyt is by no means the first to engage in the noble crusade to convince mankind to destroy this harmful mythology, he is perhaps one of the few authors to lay out a concise and constructive vision on how we can actually become a society free of racial taxonomies.

With the United States as his main focus, Hoyt examines racialization—America’s original sin—and builds upon—with his own research on individuals who eschew racialized identities—the work of racial identity theorists like Kerry Anne Rockquemore and others to formulate a pathway to a future that can be free of race and the insidious racism that necessarily accompanies it.

Hoyt is never afraid to critique the well-intentioned yet racialist discourses of landmark court cases; census enumerations; esteemed historical scholars like W.E.B. DuBois; mid-20th century visionaries like Martin Luther King, Jr.; and contemporary scholars like Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Amy Gutmann, and others.

Hoyt, as evolutionary biologist Joseph L. Graves and racial meta—theorist Rainier Spencer before him, adds to the literature what is destined to become an invaluable resource for scholar and layman alike.” —Steven F. Riley, Creator and Founder of MixedRaceStudies.org

Carlos Hoyt, Jr., “The Arc of a Bad Idea: Understanding and Transcendng Race,” (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), ii.

Patrick Healy’s integration into the Jesuits and his success in society writ large required him to jettison his connections to blackness. He rose, not just despite, but in opposition to his heritage. The Jesuits called him the “Spaniard” — a name meant to explain his olive complexion.

Matthew Quallen, “QUALLEN: Healy’s Inner Turmoil, Our Current Conflict,” The Hoya, November 20, 2015. http://www.thehoya.com/quallen-healys-inner-turmoil-our-current-conflict/.