Mixed-race descendant of Nazi murderer tells of life

Posted in Autobiography, Book/Video Reviews, Europe, Media Archive on 2015-11-20 02:33Z by Steven

Mixed-race descendant of Nazi murderer tells of life

San Diego Jewish World
2015-11-18

David Strom, Professor Emeritus of Education
San Diego State University, San Diego, California

My Grandfather Would have Shot Me [Amon: Mein Großvater hätte mich erschossen], by Jennifer Teege and Nikola Sellmair. The Experiment, Pub. 2015, 221pp

SAN DIEGO — At the age of 38 Jennifer Teege was at the Hamburg central library. There she glanced at a book with a red cover and was drawn to it. From photographs in the book, Jennifer discovered that it was about people she vaguely remembered—her mother and grandmother. She took the book home and read it from cover to cover. The most amazing and shocking thing she learned was that her maternal grandfather, Amon Goeth, the butcher commandant of Plaszow concentration camp near Krakow, was not killed fighting in the war but was hanged for his crimes (The actor Ralph Fiennes played Amon Goeth in the movie Schindler’s List.)

Now she understood why no one told her or spoke about her background. Jennifer knew that her grandfather would have murdered her since she was a mixed-race black German-Nigerian. Learning the truth about her ancestry threw Jennifer in a deep depression. But it did lead to a rather tentative reconnection with her mother, Monika Hertwig, who she hadn’t seen in years…

Read the entire review here.

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Brown: The Last Discovery of America

Posted in Autobiography, Books, Latino Studies, Media Archive, Monographs, United States on 2015-11-19 02:28Z by Steven

Brown: The Last Discovery of America

Penguin Books
2012
256 Pages
Paperback ISBN: 9780142000793
eBook ISBN: 9781101161500

Richard Rodriguez

In his dazzling new memoir, Richard Rodriguez reflects on the color brown and the meaning of Hispanics to the life of America today. Rodriguez argues that America has been brown since its inception-since the moment the African and the European met within the Indian eye. But more than simply a book about race, Brown is about America in the broadest sense—a look at what our country is, full of surprising observations by a writer who is a marvelous stylist as well as a trenchant observer and thinker.

Table of Contents

  • Brown – Richard Rodriguez Preface
  • One: The Triad of Alexis de Tocqueville
  • Two: In the Brown Study
  • Three: The Prince and I
  • Four: Poor Richard
  • Five: Hispanic
  • Six: The Third Man
  • Seven: Dreams of a Temperate People
  • Eight: Gone West
  • Nine: Peter’s Avocado
  • Acknowledgments
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My Face is a Face of Asian America

Posted in Articles, Asian Diaspora, Autobiography, Media Archive, United States on 2015-11-16 03:28Z by Steven

My Face is a Face of Asian America

Hapa Mama: Asian Fusion Family and Food
2015-11-14

Candace Kita

“Blending in” has never been my strong suit. As a generally shy and rather bookish individual, I have always wished that I could more naturally fit seamlessly into my surroundings. However, my inability to blend into established categories–particularly in regards to race–unexpectedly led me to become the Asian American community activist that I am today.

As a hapa Japanese American growing up in the flat plains of suburban Chicago, I knew that I stood out from a very young age. I looked different from the rest of my family, and especially from my mom, who was my primary caretaker. A second-generation Swedish American, my mother embodies the Scandinavian archetype: tall, lean, blonde, and blue-eyed. I, on the other hand, was a racially ambiguous, chubby, Asian-ish child with a chocolate brown mushroom cut. Although my mother and I sometimes sported matching Hanna Andersson sweater sets (not that I had much say at age two, mind you), clothing was not enough to prevent the attention and astonishment that came from our largely mono-ethnic community. Once, on a family shopping trip to the neighborhood grocery store, a stranger oohed over my almond-shaped eyes, pointed to me and asked my mother, “Where did you get her from?” Due to my “look,” my mother’s womb was clearly not his first assumption. I was a foreigner two blocks away from my childhood home…

Read the entire article here.

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The Mixed-Race in-betweeners

Posted in Articles, Autobiography, Campus Life, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, United States on 2015-11-16 03:14Z by Steven

The Mixed-Race in-betweeners

The Columbia Spectator
New York, New York
2015-11-12

Keenan Smith

I am Mixed-Race. I am both Black and white. I am also American and have therefore been raised in a culture that seems to be constantly divided along racial boundaries, whether they are in campus diversity and inclusion programs or identity-based organizations, with little regard for those of us who fall among the shades of gray.

Regardless of how those of us on the grayscale identify, we are often forced by society to pick a side, whether it be on college applications or social circles. We are encouraged to choose only one lineage, to look at our racial background and choose which identity we will bear.

Because I am biracial, choosing a background has meant recognizing the fact that one of my racial identities is responsible for the oppression of the other. This internal struggle has been illustrated by current events like the #BlackLivesMatter movement, the church shooting in Charleston that killed nine Black brothers and sisters, the countless murders of Black women, men (both cis and trans), and gender-nonconforming individuals at the hands of our police force, and the protests organized by brave students at Mizzou and Yale. This tension has also impacted my personal life. For example, I’ve had to explain to my mother why racial “color-blindness” is harmful and that she shouldn’t take it personally when I complain about white people…

Read the entire article here.

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Academia and the Identity of Mixed-Race Women

Posted in Articles, Autobiography, Campus Life, Identity Development/Psychology, Media Archive, United Kingdom, Women on 2015-11-12 04:21Z by Steven

Academia and the Identity of Mixed-Race Women

Ain’t I A Woman Collective
2015-11-10

Nicola Codner
Leeds, Yorkshire, United Kingdom


Image: Vox Efx

I am a 35-year old mixed race woman (Black Jamaican, Nigerian and White British), born and living in Leeds, Yorkshire the UK and I recently completed a counselling diploma. As part of the work I had to do to achieve my diploma I had to do a great deal of work around examining my racial and cultural identity. It was also part of the course requirements that I had to do 20 hours of personal counselling.

I didn’t know it when I started the diploma but I had a massive amount of work that I needed to do around exploring my identity as a mixed race woman. This emerged when I started my personal counselling. I began to realise I had a lot of unresolved feelings around past experiences of racism and the lack of understanding and acknowledgement I had met as a mixed race female. I also needed to look at issues to do with race within my family as well as ancestral baggage…

Read the entire article here.

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Discovering my blackness

Posted in Articles, Autobiography, Latino Studies, Media Archive, United States on 2015-11-10 02:35Z by Steven

Discovering my blackness

Blavity
2015-10-27

Juan Robles
Brooklyn, New York

“Oh, you’re Latino. I thought you were black.”

For most of my life, I’ve had people pose some variant of that statement to me. In our society, the prevalent idea is that a person can either be Latino or black but not both. As a child, I would identify only as Latino. I didn’t see myself as black and I didn’t understand, and therefore denied, the fact that I have African ancestors. Sadly, this is the case for many Latinos in America…

Read the entire article here.

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Killing That “Tragic Mulatto” Bullshit

Posted in Articles, Autobiography, Media Archive on 2015-11-08 21:59Z by Steven

Killing That “Tragic Mulatto” Bullshit

Ain’t I A Woman Collective
2015-10-28

Grace Barber-Plentie

Other than the photos of Lucille Bluth and J-Lo looking pissed off that I’ve carefully saved to use as reaction photos to white people doing, saying, or writing thoughtless stuff, there are about a million unfinished essays, or think pieces – whatever you want to call them – saved on my computer. All of them are about my identity as a black, or to be more specific, mixed race woman. And all of them are negative.

“Why,” I wail and moan in essay after essay, “do I not have a place in the world?”

“Why do I have to sit in-between cultures, in-between two worlds? Who am I? What does it all mean?”

(They’re actually a lot better than that, for example there’s one that, ignoring its negative tone, contains a great paragraph dedicated to Mariah Carey.)

I think there’s a reason I have never finished any of those essays, and I think that it is primarily because I am tired of feeling sorry for myself due to my mixed heritage. It’s time, after almost 21 years on this planet, to kill my tragic mulatto bullshit.”

Read the entire article here.

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Valuing Blackness vs. Claiming “Mixedness”

Posted in Articles, Autobiography, Media Archive, United States on 2015-11-06 19:41Z by Steven

Valuing Blackness vs. Claiming “Mixedness”

For Harriet
2014-10-30

Tamara Williams

I remember being in 7th grade, and writing on the back of my folder all the things I was told by an older cousin I was “mixed” with. I had a desire to claim all I thought I was, but what was more interesting is that I wanted everyone to know. I had no idea where this desire came from, but I did know the idea of being part of something other than Black intrigued me. I was unaware that the need to denounce my Blackness had already been steeped in my unconscious by mainstream media…

Read the entire article here.

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“I am a woman. I’m from the periphery. But I still have an advantage: I’m white” – The recognition of white privilege and racism

Posted in Articles, Autobiography, Brazil, Caribbean/Latin America, Media Archive on 2015-11-06 02:43Z by Steven

“I am a woman. I’m from the periphery. But I still have an advantage: I’m white” – The recognition of white privilege and racism

Black Women of Brazil: The site dedicated to Brazilian women of African descent
2015-11-05
Source: Geledés Instituto da Mulher Negra, “Sou mulher. Suburbana. Mas ainda tô na vantagem: sou branca

Camila Castanho Miranda

I am a woman. I’m from the periphery. But I still have an advantage: I’m white.

Yesterday I heard something that captivated me to write about a topic that always touches me, but I never feel able to write about it: racism. Obviously I never suffered racism. I’m white. So I decided to write from the point of view that fits me best, that of the oppressor.

The first thing I need to say is that assuming the place of the oppressor is not being a bad person or something like that. It’s simply understanding my historical position in society. The second important thing here is that, depending on the circumstance and deepening of my family tree, I cannot be white. But it’s not what my skin and my hair say to society. So when talking about racism, I’m white indeed. I could be beige, if you will. It doesn’t matter, I’m not black. I was never oppressed because of my image.

I don’t know you, but it took me a lot to me to realize that racism existed. It’s hard to notice the little racism of everyday life when you don’t suffer from it…

Read the entire article here.

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Blending shades of self

Posted in Articles, Autobiography, Campus Life, Interviews, Media Archive, United States on 2015-11-06 02:27Z by Steven

Blending shades of self

Columbia Daily Spectator
New York, New York
2015-11-05

Caroline Wallis

At a place like Columbia, where how you identify can define the spaces you occupy and the people you interact with, being of mixed race presents an extra challenge. The balancing act between multiple cultures, communities, and colors can leave one wondering where they belong. Last year, Keenan Smith, Columbia College sophomore, founded the Mixed-Race Students Society, which created a forum for multiracial students to discuss issues that directly affect those who don’t fit in one box. The students profiled in this piece aren’t all members of the Society, but they all represent an emerging community of students bringing these conversations into our discussions of race on campus…

Read the entire article here.

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