Mixed Race Studies

Betwixt and Between: Embracing the Borderlands of My Mixed Heritage

Discover Nikkei
2013-01-23

Mari L’Esperance

For weeks I resisted beginning work on this essay. Then, synchronistically, I encountered two pieces at Discover Nikkei that helped me get started. The first was Nancy Matsumoto’s excellent review (December 26, 2012) of Nikkei/Hapa psychologist Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu’s latest book When Half is Whole: Multiethnic Asian American Identities, and the second was a first-person essay (January 3, 2013) by Los Angeles-based food writer, soba maker/purveyor, and Common Grains founder Sonoko Sakai.

In her review, Matsumoto writes that Murphy-Shigematsu’s lifework explores “the complex issue of identity among mixed-race Asians… With subtleness and great empathy he guides us through what he calls ‘the borderlands’ where transnational and multiethnic identities are formed”. Eureka! The symbolism and psychology of “borderlands”—both internal and external—have been my own preoccupation for years, as a poet, writer, and woman of mixed Japanese ancestry.

I was similarly inspired by, and felt a kinship with, Sakai through her account of her experience as a woman born in New York to Japanese parents and raised in several different places in the West and Japan, including my mother’s hometown of Kamakura. Eventually Sakai settled in Los Angeles, where she leads workshops and writes about food as a source of constancy, connection, and physical and spiritual sustenance. Reading these two pieces helped me to integrate the threads of my own history and my struggle over the years to define my identity in the world…

…I am the daughter of a Japanese mother and a New Englander father of French Canadian and Abenaki Missisquoi Indian ancestry. Months after I was born in Kobe in the 1960s, my father moved us to Southern California and then on to Santa Barbara, Guam, and Tokyo. This regular uprooting, combined with my bicultural upbringing, contributed to my feelings of otherness…

Read the entire article here.

“Am I Black? Hell Yeah!”

(1)ne Drop Project
Journal
2013-01-16

Billy Calloway

“You make sure to keep a bonnet on that boy’s head. We don’t need to tip off the sales agent that a Black family is moving in.”

This was the first story I remember being told to me by my dad. My father grew up in Roanoke, Virginia during 1930’s. He was brown skinned. He graduated from high school at the age of 15 and was accepted at the University of Virginia. On the day that he was to register for class he was told the ‘porter’s quarters were down the hall.’ When he produced his acceptance letter he was ushered off the Charlottesville campus. He returned with an up and coming attorney, Thurgood Marshall, who forcible told the school officials that his client would sue if he were not admitted. UVA, instead of fighting my dad, negotiated a deal with him that they would pay for him to go to any other school, just not theirs. My dad went to all Black Fisk University, graduating first in his class at the age of 19 and then went to Meharry Medical College where he graduated second in his class at the age of 23.

My mom was born in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1936. Her mom was a ‘light skin’ girl and her father was White. She’s what you call a ‘high yaller.’ Both of her parents died when she was very young and she was sent to live with ‘Nanna’ in New York. She was discovered by a talent scout who worked for John Johnson of Ebony and Jet magazine fame.  When the Ebony Fashion Fair toured the south it would be my mom who got off the bus to get food for the rest of girls and crew. She ‘passed.’  For my mom being so fair was not an advantage. She was resented by her ‘friends’ who were darker because they thought she went around ‘passing’ as White when in fact she didn’t and by Whites who called her ‘nigger lover’ because she lived in Harlem and associated with Blacks.

Am I Black? Hell yeah! I have light green eyes, when I had hair it was curly and blonde. My complexion is café au lait…

Read the entire article here.

I’m Not Black, I’m Hispanic!

Born Bicultural USA
2009-12-29

Alberto Padron

The first time I heard that statement coming out of a family member’s mouth, I was confused. In my mind, a violation of logic had occurred. After all, the person making this statement was blacker than the black hair on their head. I mean, this person is Black. Anyone with reasonable vision would agree. So what was meant by this apparently irrational statement made by an otherwise rational person?
 
I’ve concluded it’s a confusion of color (race) and culture (ethnicity). More specifically, an attempt to distance oneself from the term ‘black’ because of deeply seeded negative connotations associated with the word. This bothers me. The reasons for these unfair connotations will be discussed in a future blog entry.
 
So let’s address the basics. ‘Black’ refers to race. Culture refers to ethnicity. These terms often get confused. The moment we start hyphenating the term ‘Black,’ a clearer cultural picture begins to emerge…

Read the entire article here.

Searching for Zion: The Quest for Home in the African Diaspora

Grove/Atlantic
January 2013
320 pages
6×9
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8021-2003-8
eBook ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-9379-7

Emily Raboteau

A decade in the making, Emily Raboteau’s Searching for Zion takes readers around the world on an unexpected adventure of faith. Both one woman’s quest for a place to call “home” and an investigation into a people’s search for the Promised Land, this landmark work of creative nonfiction is a trenchant inquiry into contemporary and historical ethnic displacement.

At twenty-three, Emily Raboteau traveled to Israel to visit her childhood best friend. While her friend appeared to have found a place to belong, Raboteau couldn’t say the same for herself. As a biracial woman from a country still divided along racial lines, she’d never felt at home in America. But as a reggae fan and the daughter of a historian of African-American religion, Raboteau knew of Zion as a place black people yearned to be. She’d heard about it on Bob Marley’s Exodus and in the speeches of Martin Luther King. She understood it as a metaphor for freedom, a spiritual realm rather than a geographical one. In Israel, the Jewish Zion, she was surprised to discover black Jews. Inspired by their exodus, Raboteau sought out other black communities that had left home in search of a Promised Land. Her question for them is the same she asks herself: have you found the home you’re looking for?

On her journey back in time and across the globe, through the Bush years and into the age of Obama, Raboteau visits Jamaica, Ethiopia, Ghana, and the American South to explore the complex and contradictory perspectives of Black Zionists. She talks to Rastafarians and African Hebrew Israelites, Evangelicals and Ethiopian Jews, and Katrina transplants from her own family—people who have risked everything in search of territory that is hard to define and harder to inhabit.

With Searching for Zion, Raboteau overturns our ideas of place and patriotism, displacement and dispossession, citizenship and country in a disarmingly honest and refreshingly brave take on the pull of the story of Exodus.

Love Against the Law: The autobiographies of Tex and Nelly Camfoo

Aboriginal Studies Press
2000
120 pages
240×170 mm
ISBN 9780855753481

Tex Camfoo

Nelly Camfoo

Edited by:

Gillian Cowlishaw

During his life, Tex Camfoo has been classified as Aboriginal, half-caste and European. As a half-caste he could not legally associate with or marry an Aboriginal woman. As an Aboriginal, he was not allowed to visit the pub with his European work mates.

Nelly Camfoo was always considered Aboriginal. From childhood she has taken part in ceremonial life. She finds white people both frustrating and foolish – ‘they can’t understand because they can’t listen’.

The stories of Tex and Nelly Camfoo intermingle to highlight the ambiguous social position of Aboriginals living in the Northern Territory during this century. They provide insight into race relations, the contradictory attitudes of missionaries and police, they reflect morality and religion as well as recent political developments.

What My Mother Gave Me

Mixed Dreams: towards a radical multiracial/ethnic movement
2012-09-27

Nicole Asong Nfonoyim

“To lose your mother was to be denied your kin, country, and identity. To lose your mother was to forget your past.”
—Dr. Saidiya Hartman

I am the spitting image of my mother.

Three years ago I learned the ‘truth’ about my origin story. The ‘truth’, however, didn’t make the myth of my early life any less real–any less a rooted marker of who I was and who I am or will become. And that, I owe to my mother.

You see, three years ago I was told that I was kinda, sorta adopted– not legally with paperwork and red tape, not brought from some far off place to an entirely different family, but taken in quietly, seamlessly, secretly by the love and determination of a woman who loved my father very much. That woman became the only mother I have ever known.

My father, who I write about in “Native Speaker,” has always been a very strong and visible part of my identity. The Cameroonian name I inherited from him, make my African identity proud and visible against a face that is sometimes hard to place. My Cameroonian family is large and spread all over the world and the blackness I share with them is rooted in a vibrant ancestral past  and a contemporary post-colonial African present.

And yet, in key ways it was my mother who gave me kin, country and identity…

Read the entire article here.

The Chalk Circle: Intercultural Prizewinning Essays

Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing
2012-05-15
220 pages
5 x 8
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-936214-71-6

Tara L. Masih, Writer & Editor

Award-winning editor Tara L. Masih put out a call in 2007 for Intercultural Essays dealing with the subjects of “culture, race, and a sense of place.” The prizewinners are gathered for the first time in a ground-breaking anthology that explores many facets of culture not previously found under one cover. The powerful, honest, thoughtful voices—Native American, African American, Asian, European, Jewish, White—speak daringly on topics not often discussed in the open, on subjects such as racism, anti-Semitism, war, self-identity, gender, societal expectations. Their words will entertain, illuminate, take you to distant lands, and spark important discussions about our humanity, our culture, and our place within society and the natural world.

• Winner of a 2012 Skipping Stones Honor Award
• A Featured NewPages.com New & Noteworthy Book, February 2012
• An Amazon Hot New Release, debuting at #2 on the essay bestseller list

Table of Contents

• Foreword by Tara L. Masih
• Introduction by David Mura
• THE CHALK CIRCLE: IDENTITY, HOME, AND BORDERLANDS
  • If Grandmother Had Married a Peasant Li Miao Lovett
  • Fragments: Finding Center Sarah J. Stoner
  • Giiwe: go home Christine Stark
• AS I AM: LETTERS OF IDENTITY
  • Bufferhood: An Autoethnography Emma Sartwell
  • Valentine and This Difficult World Tilia Klebenov Jacobs
• THE TONGUE OF WAR: A CLASH OF CULTURES
  • Reflecting on Dragons and Angels Shanti Elke Bannwart
  • Tongue-Tied Kelly Hayes-Raitt
  • Tightrope Across the Abyss Shanti Elke Bannwart
• THE TRAGEDY OF THE COLOR LINE
  • A Dash of Pepper in the Snow Samuel Autman
  • “Miss Otis Regrets” Mary Elizabeth Parker
  • Signatures Lyzette Wanzer
• EYEWITNESS: AS SEEN BY ANOTHER
  • Winter Seagull Toshi Washizu
  • Itam Jeff Fearnside
  • High Tech in Gaborone M. Garrett Bauman
  • Triptych: Paradise Gretchen Brown Wright
• THE OTHER
  • Assailing Otherness Katrina Grigg-Saito
  • Fried Locusts Kamela Jordan
  • Israel: Devour the Darling Plagues Bonnie J. Morris
• THE CULTURE OF SELF AND SPIRIT
  • Connections Betty Jo Goddard
  • Palo del Muerte Simmons B. Buntin
• QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
  • Intercultural Considerations
  • Intercultural Connections
  • Quotation Exploration
• About the Editor, Tara L. Masih
• Acknowledgments
• About the Introduction Author, David Mura
• Index of Contributors

Britain is now a better place to grow up mixed race. But don’t celebrate yet

The Guardian
2012-12-15

Lanre Bakare, The Guide’s Previews Editor

Prejudices have receded significantly in the past 20 years, but a report out this week shows racist attitudes remain

Growing up as a mixed race child, with a mother from Leeds and a father from Nigeria, my Bradford childhood certainly wasn’t trouble-free. But I had the kind of relatives to see me through any tricky moments. As well as a fantastic, loving family on my mother’s side, I was fortunate enough to be surrounded by a strong Nigerian community, focused around a friendship club my father founded, which acted as a focal point for a small but vibrant community.

With my dad and his mates I would hear Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa spoken; I’d listen to the music of Fela, Shina Peters and Ayinla Kollington, and get to taste jollof rice, eba, moinmoin and other Nigerian cuisine. This understanding and engagement with the other side of my ancestry and culture was vital to me. It gave me confidence to fall back on when people would question who I was. Both my parents instilled the idea in me that being different was a huge positive. It was something special, that should be celebrated and cherished rather than hidden or denied.

Not everyone is so lucky, of course. But this week a report released in the wake of the 2011 census threw fresh light on mixed race relationships in the UK and the public’s perception of them. And it seemed to bring good news. The census revealed there are a million people who identify as mixed race. British Future, the thinktank that produced the report (titled The Melting Pot Generation – How Britain Became More Relaxed About Race), found that 15% of the public have a problem with these relationships, compared to 50% in the 80s and 40% in the 90s.

The so-called Jessica Ennis Generation (those born in the 80s and 90s, like me) was portrayed as more tolerant of, and essentially not bothered by, mixed race families…

Read the entire article here.

Hapa: One Step at a Time [KQED Upcoming Broadcasts]

KQED: Public Media for Northern California
KQED World (Comcast 190, Digital 9.3)
2013-01-21, 07:30 and 13:30 PST (Local Time)

Race remains a powerful symbol in the US; it still is a shorthand notation for most Americans. This program speaks to how individuals of Asian and Pacific Islander descent are embracing their ethnic experiences as a symbol of change in an ever-evolving multicultural society. It is a thought-provoking exploration of what it means to be a mixed-race American today. The program is a first-person treatment of the struggles people of diverse cultural backgrounds and perspectives face. “Hapa” comes from the Hawaiian phrase hapa haole, which means half white/foreigner. Once considered a derogatory term, Hapa has come to be accepted as a way to describe a person of partial Asian ancestry. By Japanese American Midori Sperandeo, who provides a personal narrative about her evolution from a novice runner into a national class marathoner andshares the parallel path of her personal growth in searching for her racial identity.

For more information, click here.

Hapa: One Step at a Time

Center for Asian American Media
2001
26 minutes
DVD

Midori Sperandeo, Producer
KVIE-TV

According to 2000 Census statistics, nearly 7 million Americans identify themselves as multi-racial, or ‘hapa.’ This engaging first-person documentary is about marathon runner and TV producer Midori Sperandeo’s struggles to come to terms with her hapa identity. Comparing her personal path toward self-awareness as a hapa to the challenges she faces training for long-distance running, Hapa touches upon a national history of anti-miscegenation laws, increasing rates of interracial marriages and additional census data to provide a context with which to better understand this rapidly growing demographic group. Interviews with individuals from diverse backgrounds call attention to the pressure many feel to “choose” between cultural heritages; their anxieties of feeling like outsiders in their parents’ communities; and the unique ways in which the hapa community is enriching the cultural fabric of our society.