Mixed Race Studies

Trevor Noah: The First Time I Drove a Car. (I Was 6.)

The New York Times
2016-10-25

Trevor Noah

Trevor Noah, at 3 years old, with his mother.

Trevor Noah is the host of “The Daily Show” and the author of “Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood” (Spiegel & Grau). This is an edited excerpt from the book.

When I was 5 years old, we moved to Eden Park, a neighborhood adjacent to several black townships on the outskirts of Johannesburg — half-colored and half-black, my mother figured, like us. It was me and her, alone. There was this sense of the two of us embarking on a grand adventure. We weren’t just mother and son. We were a team.

Eden Park was one of those “suburbs” that are actually out on the edge of civilization, the kind of place where property developers have said: “Hey, poor people. You can live the good life, too. Here’s a house. In the middle of nowhere. But look, you have a yard!”

It was when we moved to Eden Park that we finally got a car, the beat-up, tangerine Volkswagen Beetle my mother bought secondhand for next to nothing, which was more than it was worth. One out of five times, it wouldn’t start. There was no A-C. Any time I made the mistake of turning on the fan, the vent would fart bits of leaves and dust all over me.

Whenever it broke down, we’d catch minibuses, or sometimes we’d hitchhike. My mom would make me hide in the bushes because she knew men would stop for a woman but not a woman with a child. She’d stand by the road, the driver would pull over, she’d open the door and then whistle, and I’d come running up to the car. I would watch their faces drop as they realized they weren’t picking up an attractive single woman but an attractive single woman with a fat little kid…

Read the entire article here.

An Intimate Look at Race: Growing Up Biracial in a Racially Torn World

Wellesley Centers for Women
Book Reading \ Panel \ Conversation with Author Sil Lai Abrams
Clapp Library, Lecture Room
Wellesley College
106 Central Street
Wellesley, Massachusetts
Tuesday, 2016-10-25, 16:30-17:00 EST (Local Time)

Presenters: Author Sil Lai Abrams with Linda Charmaraman, Ph.D., Layli Maparyan, Ph.D., Linda M. Williams, Ph.D.

For more information, click here.

Mixed race and mixed reactions

Columbia Daily Spectator
2016-10-17

Laura Salgado

“But, like, what are you?”

It’s a question I’m asked pretty often, both inside and outside of Morningside Heights. You’d think that after almost two decades on this planet I’d finally be able to answer it easily, but you’d be wrong. This seemingly innocent query still manages to fill me with dread, discomfort, and anxiety every time I hear it. My heart leaps into my throat, my hands start to sweat, and my words get caught on the tip of my tongue.

I know how most people want me to answer. They expect to hear something simple and comprehensible, like “Hispanic” or “white.” They want to know which box to put me in. Their world is one of simple distinctions, one where everyone fits into only one category…

Read the entire article here.

Black, Jewish And Avoiding The Synagogue On Yom Kippur

Code Switch: Race And Identity, Remixed
National Public Radio
2016-10-12

Leah Donnella

Last time I worshipped in a synagogue was Sept. 5, 2014. And I won’t be going today.

That might surprise my friends, who put up with my bragging ad nauseam about how Jewish I am.

You got a great deal on plane tickets? Reminds me of the time I took a free Birthright trip to Israel. Going skating? I haven’t been on skates since my bat mitzvah reception, held at the roller skating rink in Villanova, Pa. You say you love the musicals of George Gershwin? Ha, that sounds just like Gershenfeld, my mother’s maiden name, which is also my middle name, which means “barley field” in Yiddish, the language my ancestors spoke in Eastern Europe.

Some of this is just me being obnoxious. But it’s also a way to claim a part of my identity that’s hidden from most people. I’m a black woman. No one ever assumes I’m Jewish. When I talk about Judaism, people look at me in a way that makes me feel like I’m breaking into my own house. Especially the people inside the house.

Read the entire article here.

In Depth with Gerald Horne

In Depth
C-SPAN
2016-10-02

Peter Slen, Host

Gerald Horne, Professor of History and African-American Studies
University of Houston

Author Gerald Horne talked about his life and career and responded to viewer comments and questions. His most recent book is Paul Robeson: The Artist as Revolutionary.

Gerald Horne is the author of numerous books, including Confronting Black Jacobins: The U.S., the Haitian Revolution, and the Origins of the Dominican Republic, Race to Revolution: The United States and Cuba During Slavery and Jim Crow, The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America, Black Revolutionary: William Patterson and the Globalization of the African-American Freedom Struggle, Negro Comrades of the Crown: African-Americans and the British Empire Fight the U.S. Before Emancipation, Fighting in Paradise: Labor Unions, Racism and Communists in the Making of Modern Hawaii, and W.E.B. Du Bois: A Biography, among others [including The Color of Fascism: Lawrence Dennis, Racial Passing, and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism in the United States].

Watch the interview (03:00:05) here.

‘I had to sneak around trying not to be seen’ – What growing up in Ireland was like for three mixed race Irish people

The Irish Post
2016-10-15

Erica Doyle Higgins, Digital Reporter

(Pictures: Tracey Anderson/Getty)

FOR the first time during Black History Month, an exhibition celebrating mixed race Irish has gone on display in the London Irish Centre.

The #IAmIrish Project celebrates diversity, while opening the dialogue on being mixed race and Irish.

As part of the Project and Black History Month, three people told The Irish Post their experiences of growing up mixed race in Ireland…

Read the entire article here.

One Drop of Love is Headed to Broadway!

Theater Row
410 West 42nd Street (between 9th and 10th Avenues)
New York, New York 10036
Thursday, 2016-10-13, 19:30 EDT (Local Time) Sold Out!
Sunday, 2016-10-16, 14:00 EDT (Local Time)

How does our belief in ‘race’ affect our most intimate relationships? One Drop of Love travels near and far, in the past and present to explore family, race, love and pain – and a path towards reconciliation. It is produced by Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon.

One Drop of Love is headed to Broadway as part of the 7th Annual United Solo Theatre Festival on Thursday, October 16th. Show starts promptly at 2:00 pm. No late seating. General admission $23.25.

When purchasing tickets from the Telecharge website, be certain you’ve chosen Sunday, October 16th at 2:00PM. See you there – bring friends!

Ticketholders are invited to a celebration and discussion with Fanshen at nearby Chez Josephine following the performance.

Purchase tickets here.

Why Self-Identifying As Multiracial Is Still New And Not Automatic For Me

Swirl Nation Blog
2016-10-12

Sarah Ratliff

I grew up in New York City during the 1960s and 70s. Although I grew up in a very racially, ethnically and culturally diverse area—which included several interracial families—it wasn’t the norm to raise kids in that time period to self-identify as more than one race.

Although nobody specifically said so, all of us multiracial / Biracial kids were living according to the one-drop rule. For many of us, my family included, this had to do with which parent’s race was more discriminated against.

In my particular case, and I know I am hardly unique, my father’s father disowned my father for marrying my mother. I never met my grandmother or my father’s father. I saw my father’s brother and his family no more than a dozen times while I was growing up. My mother was an only child whose parents died before I was born and so the tragedy is that while I had grandparents living, one of them refused to meet his grandchildren and the other was too scared to try and have a relationship with her grandchildren.

This compounded my parents’ decision to raise us to self-identify as Black…

Read the entire article here.

Tracing Your “Routes”

TEDx Talks: TEDxSBUWomen
Stony Brook University, State University of New York
2015-07-10

Zebulon Miletsky, Professor of Africana Studies
Stony Brook University, State University of New York

“He’s gonna have a hard time proving he’s a brother.”

Dr. Zebulon Miletsky discusses his journey through the multiple worlds of race and identity as he shares his experiences with researching his own family genealogy, the various “routes” this process led him to and how “tracing your routes” can lead to more than just knowledge about your background–it’s about how we treat one another along those “routes”.

Dr. Zebulon Miletsky teaches African-American History at Stony Brook University where he is an Assistant Professor of Africana Studies. He is the author of numerous articles, essays and most recently a book chapter that appeared in the anthology “Obama and the Biracial Factor: The Battle for a New American Majority” which traces the contested meanings throughout history of terminology for multiracial people and the role that this historical legacy of “naming” plays into how President Obama is read as African American, but still asserts a strategic biracial identity through the use of language, symbols, and interactions with the media. Miletsky who is half-Jewish (white) and African-American/Afro-Caribbean, has done a great deal of genealogical research for a book manuscript in progress and is in the process of researching his own family tree. He lives in Brooklyn.

What Growing Up Mixed-Race Taught Me About Food

Spoon University
2016-09-13

Susanna Mostaghim
Virginia Tech

And why we’re the ultimate foodies.

Weird things come with being mixed-race. These include, but are not limited to: no one ever guessing your heritage correctly, random stereotypes you wouldn’t expect, a fusion of your parents’ cultures, and questions of “Wait, where did your parents meet?”

Being mixed-race, I commonly get mistaken for being of Hispanic origin, which is a laugh as neither of my parents are from the same continents as any Hispanic country. It’s my favorite bar game to have people guess my heritage when they ask, “But where are you really from?” (cue my desire to act like this).

It’s kind of like that Parks and Rec[creation] scene where Leslie asks Tom where he’s from, and it ends with him saying his mom’s uterus.

But what most people don’t realize is that the best part of being mixed-race isn’t that you don’t look like any certain race or anything physical. It’s the fusion of the different food styles your parents and community bring to the table…

Read the entire article here.