Mixed Race Studies

My resolution for 2018 is to trace the family who don’t yet know I exist

The Guardian
2017-12-30

Georgina Lawton

Two years ago I discovered I was not related to my white father. Now, I intend to find out the origins of my blackness

When it comes to setting new year’s resolutions, I am not that bothered about losing weight, exercising more, or becoming more productive (although it would be good to finally get a grip on all those things). Instead, I have decided to make 2018 the year in which I make a serious, wholehearted attempt to trace a family who don’t yet know I exist, and to find out once and for all, in as much detail as I can, the origins of my blackness.

No one realises the difficult nature of this task more than me. As I have previously written, I was raised by two white parents who always assured me that I was related to them both, which led me to identify as white until I was about 15.

The nadir of my life came almost two years ago, when my dad died and a subsequent DNA test confirmed my deepest fears, which had wrapped themselves around my life like the tendrils of a poisonous plant. I was not related to my fantastic father; my mother had been unfaithful with a man she knows little about. It had never been spoken about…

Read the entire article here.

On Growing Up Mexican Italian American

the Parent Voice
2018-01-08

Gino Pellegrini

I became aware of the world around me during the Reagan era in a middle-class, conservative, predominantly white suburb of Los Angeles.

Growing up Mexican Italian American in this context was difficult and dissonant for me. If I had grown up in a different place or class, my mixed experience might have been very different, but then I would not have this story to tell…

Read the entire article here.

An Interview and a Snapshot

Neither/Both LLC: Counseling for Mixed individuals and interracial families
Minneapolis, Minnesota
2018-01-2018

Lola Osunkoya, MA, LPCC

Lola Osunkoya

Recently, I was contacted by someone out of state who wanted to interview me for a documentary they are filming for their thesis. They needed a professional or expert to discuss Mixed identity. I said no a couple of times due to time constraints as well as concerns about the project. A portion was sent to me that featured a White mother offering commentary about her Mixed children that was problematic—tone deaf comments about “good hair” and her perspective that her kids had no problems with their racial identity. After being reassured that this was exactly why they were seeking my perspective to add, I agreed to answer their questions via email.

I thought my answers turned out to be a pretty good snapshot of where I was at in December 2017 in the way I would describe my perspectives and experiences. It’s always tricky as a therapist to answer personal questions. Part of me wants to be completely transparent when talking about being Mixed, and part of me knows I need to take good care of my boundaries. It’s a flexible balance. The questions and my answers:

Read the entire article here.

Toeing The Race Line — What I Am And What I Am Not

Medium
2017-12-07

Kristie De Garis
Edinburgh, Scotland

I think often of my mum’s choice to change her name from Mohammed. How she must have felt when she accepted that she and her children would be safer without that name. What she had to give up within herself to change it. Growing up I loved to spell it out over and over again. M-O-H-A-M-M-E-D. To me it was a beautiful word that felt full and strong in my mouth. I had no idea of its power beyond that. The fact is, my life as ‘Kristie Mohammed’ would have been a very different life to the one I have lived as Kristie Kelbie and then after marrying my first husband, Kristie De Garis.

People are interested in my current name, ‘De Garis’. I get many compliments on how ‘exotic’ it is and how it’s an asset to have such an unusual name. When I tell people that my name could have been ‘Mohammed’, the most common response I get is ‘Whoa!’ and a pained facial expression. My western names mean my looks are accepted as western too because my name provides people with a false context. Throw ‘Mohammed’ into the mix and my intriguing appearance (‘Are you part Spanish or something?’) takes on a different context. A less desirable context…

Read the entire article here.

To Sweeten Bitter

Out-Spoken Press
2017-04-10
49 pages
8.5 x 0.4 x 5.5 inches
ISBN-13: 978-0993103872

Raymond Antrobus

Consider the name of Raymond Antrobus’ extraordinary collection of poems for a moment: To Sweeten Bitter. It’s a phrase of infinite possibility and tender worry, open and searching, wanting and volatile. And in this sense, it serves as a kind of secret refrain for us, a haunted current that charges after each line and image, each heart-fraught question (“you think you’re going / to go free?”) and tentative hope (“there is always enough time / in our lives to see / what we must see”). Here, a father laughs “you cannot love sugar and hate your sweetness” and a son reckons with all that might mean “in the scratched light” of history and the “turning / and the losing of myself.” Derek Walcott once reflected that “I have never separated the writing of poetry from prayer;” these poems— in all their urgent beauty—affirm that faith, embody it. —R.A. Villanueva

uncovering the “privilege” of being a white passing person of colour

i-D
VICE
2016-02-02

Niloufar Haidari

Photography Khashayar Elyassi

Why we shouldn’t let white people police who gets to be “white”.

I am a ‘white-passing’ person of colour; a white-passing British-Iranian woman of colour to be exact. I am in no way ignorant as to the privilege this gives me in a still very much racialised world in which the after-effects of colonialism and imperialism are all too evident and dark skin is seen as anything from unattractive to a reason to kill. I am aware that in a culture in which fair skin is still valued higher than those of brown people whether in the fashion industry, on the internet or just at family gatherings, I am lucky. I am white-passing, and I have white-passing privilege. In short, this means that I am not necessarily immediately recognisable as a ‘brown person’, an ‘other’. Make-up companies cater to my concealer and lipstick needs, ‘flesh-coloured’ plasters and crayons are roughly the right shade. Due to the fact that I have spent my whole life living in the UK, I suffer from Vitamin D deficiency and am therefore more likely to be mistaken for Italian/Spanish rather than Middle Eastern for 9 months of the year. I would like to make it very clear that I am in no way trying to claim I suffer the same kind of discrimination based on skin that black or dark-skinned Asian women do; I don’t even suffer the same kind of discrimination as other Iranian women who are darker than I do.

But I do suffer discrimination. I am white-passing, not white. And interestingly, it often seems to be white people rather than other people of colour who are darker than me who are quick to announce my non-eligibility for discrimination and to tell me I’m white. I have experienced a long and varied history of this from both white friends and anonymous white strangers on the internet…

Read the entire article here.

The Marriage Battle: A Family Tradition, A Memoir by Susan C. Green and Robin J. Phillips

Mill City Press
2017-12-05
222 pages
5.25″ x 8″
Softcover ISBN 13: 9781545613429
ePub ISBN 13: 9781545616307
MOBI ISBN 13: 9781545616307

Susan C. Green and Robin J. Phillips

Golddigger, nigger lover… Those are some of the insults hurled at Iris in 1961 by the military brass when they grilled her about the relationship with Sue’s father. And when her dad Ray, a Black GI stationed in England, asked his superiors for permission to marry Sue’s mum, a white single mom from Liverpool, they asked him why he wanted to marry a whore with a bastard child. But they remained steadfast and married even though their interracial union wouldn’t be fully recognized until 1967 when Richard and Mildred Loving would prevail and anti-miscegenation laws were abolished. Like the Lovings, her parents, Iris and Ray Green fought the courts and culture to stay together and raise a family.

Their story of love and perseverance became Sue’s story and provided the inspiration for this book. She is an out and proud lesbian and it is her parent’s battle to marry and have their interracial union recognized by the law that has led Sue to her own moment to take a stand for love. She too fought for the right to marry her wife Robin. And almost 50 years to the day of the Loving decision, the Defense of Marriage Act was repealed and same sex marriages were legal.

This book is a memoir and a love and a life story about Sue’s life with Robin and her parents’ life. It spans decades from the late 1950s when our country was rocked by civil unrest, to the present nearly 60 years later. It is a story of growing up biracial and dealing with racism and living as an outsider both at home and during her family’s military postings abroad. It reveals the parallel lives of Sue and her parents who experienced traumatic events that impacted their early days and and later years, yet fought for the same shared goal. Despite the hurdles, they held on to the belief that they deserved to find someone to love, and marry that person no matter what their color or gender.

And ultimately it’s about four people falling in love with someone society said you shouldn’t love, breaking the marriage laws at the time, and being willing to deal with the consequences of those decisions. It is a love story – and is as simple, yet complicated as that.

My Mother Is White. I Am Not: On Being Biracial Without Identity Issues

Very Smart Brothas
The Root
2017-12-05

Panama Jackson

Panama Jackson, 1 year old, with his dad (Panama Jackson)

Editor’s note: This piece speaks from the perspective of being biracial with black and white parents. I realize that other biracial ethnic mixes may or may not share any of these experiences.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece called “Black Folks Who, Though Invited, Probably Wouldn’t Come to the Cookout.” On this list I included the following people: Mariah Carey, Meghan Markle, Rashida Jones and Lenny Kravitz. Would they come? We many never know, but sure as shootin’ an early comment on Facebook pointed out, solely, that “Mariah Carey is biracial. I believe Megan Merkel [sic] is biracial as well …”

While I can’t speak for the commenter, my assumption is that their biracialness excludes them from the list with the lead of “Black Folks,” though I’m surprised he didn’t realize that Rashida and Lenny are also biracial in the way that Sean Fury can appreciate. Put a pin in this…

…Self-identity is defined as the recognition of one’s potential and qualities as an individual, especially in relation to social context.

Self-identity.

Here is where I point out some facts about myself. I am mixed. I’m the product of a Caucasian woman from France and a black man from Alabama. I will tell you, without hesitation, that I am biracial.

What I will also tell you, without hesitation and with pride, is that I’m black. I identify as black. I was raised that way. I was raised in a household by my black father and black stepmother and my black sisters. My upbringing was full of blackness, not even intentionally but by virtue of who my parents are. My white mother obviously had a hand in raising me—we spent summers with her in Michigan—but largely, my foundation, self-esteem, pride and identity were crafted by my black parents….

Read the entire article here.

A Way of Sharing

UMKC Today
University of Missouri, Kansas City
2015-06-08

Photo credit: Janet Rogers, Division of Strategic Marketing and Communications

Knowledge, Expertise and Experience

Women from Africa, Asia, Europe, South America and nearby states in North America attended the 2015 Women of Color Leadership Conference.

MC Mia Ramsey strolled across the stage in her black sweater, black skirt, white T and pink sneakers. An energetic lady, Ramsey was ready to inspire and encourage women through song, jokes, personal stories and rousing introductions of presenters.

The 10th annual conference, “Together We Rise: 10 Years of Paving the Way,” at the University of Missouri-Kansas City focused on improving the lives of all women of color. More women of diverse backgrounds attend each year to share their expertise and to learn from facilitators and speakers.

Shortly after keynote speaker Lacey Schwartz took to the podium, she made an emphatic statement: “Tell the truth about things that are hard to tell the truth about.” If that had been the case, her life would have been less complicated, and she would have known far sooner exactly who she was.

In the documentary “Little White Lie,” Schwartz tells her story of growing up in New York with her parents and a strong sense of her Jewish identity, only to discover she was not white, but biracial. She created the documentary to start a conversation about difficult conversations…

Read the entire article here.

National Identity, Citizenship, and Belonging: Afro-descendants in Spain and Catalonia – Agnes

The Afropean: Adventures in Afro Europe
2017-10-27

Abena Wariebi

The second excerpt from interviews taken from a Master’s thesis carried out by Abena Wariebi at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain.

Entitled “National Identity, Citizenship, and Belonging: Afro-descendants in Spain and Catalonia”, the thesis is an investigation of black identities in Barcelona, specifically exploring what it means to be black and Spanish, or black and Catalan.

These interviews represent a small part of the black community in Barcelona. This thesis is in no way conclusive or overall encompassing. It does not represent the views or opinions of all Afro-descendants in Barcelona or Spain. Nevertheless, these accounts are powerful, enriching, and demonstrate the unquestionable solidarity that exists within the diaspora.

Name: Agnes
Age: 20
Profession: Teacher and Photographer

Agnes, teacher and photographer

“I think my mum is the only person in the world who thinks I’m Spanish. Because when I go out on the street, when like a policeman comes and they see my passport or whatever they keep asking ‘oh but where are you from? This says Spain; this says you were born in Barcelona but where are you from? Where is your dad from? Where is your mum from? So, I feel like, I don’t want to be Spanish.

I really feel like I’m Cameroonian. And in a way my dad always tried to raise me to feel like I’m not Spanish, I’m Cameroonian.”…

Read the entire article here.