Mixed Race Studies

I am much more than ‘a disgrace to black people’

The Charlotte Observer
Charlotte, North Carolina
2017-02-09

Nicolas Coleman, Special to the Observer
Duke University, Durham, North Carolina

Duke freshman Nicolas Coleman understands why others have questioned his blackness

In seventh grade I was labeled “a disgrace to black people.” I was made of aware of this second-hand from a white kid in my class whose black friend had branded me as such. I remember this striking me particularly hard. It was a catalyst in my developing understanding of race and my own place in the various communities I inhabited.

I was one of very few black students in my class at Durham Academy, a fact that defined much of my time there. Being mixed-race with a light complexion and born of affluent well-educated parents, I did not fit the idea of blackness that many of my classmates seemed to expect me to personify. At the end of summer it became a game for my more tanned white classmates to see if their skin was darker than mine and to declare with gratification, “I’m blacker than Nico!” That became a phrase and notion that they would employ for things other than just skin tone. Students more skilled at basketball or better able to recite rap lyrics would momentarily become “blacker than me.”…

Read the entire article here.

Black Semitic Girl Reader At The Airport

Medium
2017-02-07, 21:00 PST (Local Time)

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, Theoretical Astro|Physicist

Where books become bombs

Seattle International Airport—Just spent 20 minutes being physically searched at Seattle airport, body searched, and at one point being spoken to and surrounded by seven — yes seven — TSA agents while being informed my backpack had bomb making materials in it. A few thoughts:

1. My bag was flagged at the X-ray machine because I had too many books in my bag.
2. Then the chemical testing machine told them that there were bomb making materials in my bag. Remember, they were only looking because I had “too many” books
3. Then a second machine told them that my 2014 model MacBook Pro had extra bomb making materials on it.
4. They checked my hair, my breasts, and between my legs.
5. Then they told me they would have to do it again…

Read the entire article here.

The white supremacy of being asked where I’m from

PBS NewsHour
2017-01-27

What comes to mind when you hear the phrase “white supremacy”? For actor comedian Peter Kim, it’s facing the commonplace cultural assumption that white is the default race in America

ANTONIO MORA: Finally tonight, a look at the subtle ways our society often equates being white with what’s normal.

It comes from Peter Kim, who was a member of Chicago’s famed Second City comedy troupe.

It is the latest edition of IMHO, In My Humble Opinion.

PETER KIM, Comedian: When you hear the phrase white supremacy, what picture comes to your mind? Maybe it’s Adolf Hitler screaming into a microphone. Maybe it’s white-hooded figures marching around a burning cross.

For me, it’s a lot less dramatic and a lot more commonplace. So, if I may, I would like to offer an updated definition of white supremacy. It’s the idea that white is the ideal, and we are all consciously and subconsciously working to achieve whiteness…

Read the entire transcipt here.

Defined by mixed race

The Globe & Mail
2017-01-23

Mckenzie Small
Mississauga, Ontario, Canada

Differences make you stand out, Mckenzie Small writes, and it’s something to be proud of

She just keeps staring at me – as if I’m from another dimension – and then she asks the all-too-familiar question: “So what are you, exactly?”
I have to ask myself: Is she asking about my race or my species?

I’m mixed with more than one race. It has defined me a lot more than you would think. This part of my life shaped the way I grew up and I never really noticed until I got older.

Ever heard of the guessing game?

Probably not. It’s a game people play where they try to guess where you’re from, because “Canada” is never sufficient…

Read the entire article here.

Statement by Joseph Boyden

CNW: A Cision Company
2017-01-11

Joseph Boyden

TORONTO, Jan. 11, 2017 /CNW/ – A few weeks ago, I found out that my 85-year-old mom had been contacted by a journalist who prodded her with pointed and personal questions about her heritage. Specifically, he asked her to prove how Indigenous she is.

My family’s heritage is rooted in our stories. I’ve listened to them, both the European and the Indigenous ones, all my life. My older sisters told me since childhood about my white-looking father helping his Indian-looking brother hide their blood in order to survive in the early 1900’s. My mother’s family history is certainly not laid out neatly in the official records, or on ancestry.ca either. From the age of nine or ten, the woman I knew as my grandmother told me stories about my mother that, until recently, my mother preferred not to share with anyone. The details are private and painful, yet my mother has been forced to revisit aspects of her past she believed were closed away forever.

Children don’t go about consciously presenting identities; they just are who they are. And that’s how I was: a white kid from Willowdale with native roots. The Ojibwe family I grew-up with in summers on Christian Island still call me cousin or uncle.  The bad poetry I first scribbled as a troubled teen was about searching for my mother’s clan.  For the last 22 years I’ve been a member of a Moose Cree First Nation family, active in their community and doing everything we can to get youth out onto the land at Camp Onakawana on the Abitibi River. This is my life.  And I’ve always said pretty much the same thing: “a small part of me is Indigenous, but it’s a big part of who I am.”…

Read the entire new release here.

Full interview: Joseph Boyden on his heritage

CBC Radio
2017-01-11

Jesse Kinos-Goodin

Author Joseph Boyden addresses the recent controversy surrounding his Indigenous ancestral claims. (Penguin)

“A small part of me is Indigenous, but it’s a big part of who I am.”

Is Joseph Boyden really Indigenous?

It’s a question a lot of people have been asking, and one the author himself addressed in an exclusive interview Wednesday with CBC Radio’s Candy Palmater.

“Absolutely,” Boyden said. “I’m a white kid from Willowdale (Ontario) with native roots — a small part of me is Indigenous, but it’s a big part of who I am.”

It was Boyden’s first interview since the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN) released an investigation last month that called into question his Indigenous heritage and sparked a major controversy. The Giller Prize-winning author of Through Black Spruce is known for writing about Indigenous culture and communities in his novels, which also include Three Day Road and The Orenda. Boyden also has become a familiar voice when it comes to speaking on Indigenous issues in Canada…

Read the entire article here. Listen to the interview (00:32:32) here.

Soccer Led Me To Embrace Every Part Of My Multiracial Heritage

The Huffington Post
2017-01-06

Geneva Abdul, Publicist & Writer
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Born from the marrying of British and Trinidadian cultures, I defined my cultural identity through soccer when I decided to play for Trinidad and Tobago at the age of 14.

Growing up, my parents had never imposed their cultures on me — my cultural identity had always felt like a decision between Canadian, Trinidadian and British. It wasn’t until I had recently retired my soccer cleats when I’d realized I had never had to make the choice, that I could be all three.

As a woman I oscillate between essence and existence. As a woman of colour I participate in a more complex rigmarole of types. The quotidian experience of being asked “what’s your background” or being told “you’re pretty for a brown girl” and “I didn’t know brown girls were athletic” served as a set of ongoing reminders that constantly interpolated my cultural identity…

Read the entire article here.

Elizabeth Anionwu’s Memoir: Mixed Blessings From A Cambridge Union Exceeds All Superlatives

The Huffington Post
2016-12-28

Claudia Tomlinson, Author, campaigner, entrepreneur
London, England

Emeritus Professor Elizabeth Anionwu: Photograph by Barney Newman

Elizabeth Anionwu is a diminutive woman of colossal talent in everything she has turned her hand to, and to top off a high achieving career, her memoir has now outed her as a wonderful author.

She was born in 1947, from the relationship between her father, a Nigerian student, and her mother Mary, a Classics student whose family came from County Wexford and County Down, in Ireland, to settle in Liverpool.

Their romance blossomed at Cambridge University, at a time of discrimination against both black and Irish people in England.

Born into a strong Catholic family on her mother’s side, Elizabeth’s arrival, to unmarried parents, was a shock to her mother’s family threatening to bring great shame to the family…

Read the entire review here.

Fatherless and Abandoned, Vietnamese-Americans Search for Their Families

Voice of America
Learning English
2016-12-21

Hai Do
VOANews.com

Moki, Tan and Jannies were babies at the close of the American war in Vietnam in the 1970s. Their mothers were Vietnamese. Their fathers were American soldiers. In one way or another, they were all abandoned.

Now, the search for their birth families has brought them together. Here are their stories…

Read the entire article here.

BEST OF 2016: Fractionalized — Stories of Biracial Joy, Pain, Struggle and Triumph

Madison 365
Madison, Wisconsin
2016-12-26

Mia Sato
University of Wisconsin, Madison

Mixed.

Multi.

One-half-this and one-quarter-that. Biracial, mixed-race, “two or more races.” In a world obsessed with labels, the pressure to claim oneself as part of a racial group is an inescapable reality for a small but growing population. We are confronted by it with questions like, “What are you?” which we can instantly recognize as a question pointing to heritage. Census forms or surveys ask us to check a box identifying our ethnicity; on rare occasions we’re offered “Multiracial” but we frequently settle for “Other.” People identifying as mixed race may feel connected to all of their backgrounds, only one or some of them, or to none; race is complex enough as it is, but once two or more categories come into play, even more questions are raised.

What is clear is that people who carry a mixed race identity do not experience their race in the same way, even if they share the same racial mix. Location, social interaction, family attitudes about race and environments all inform how they think, feel and speak about being mixed race. Even more, an individual’s own interpretation of their multicultural background may shift and change with time; it is a process of discovery, affirmation, questioning and rejection.

Below, five individuals share their own journey of a mixed-race identity. No story is the same, but all lead to one reality that is obvious: they are hardly a fraction of a race. They are full, whole, complete, and here are their stories, in all their diverse glory…

Read the entire article here.