Mixed Race Studies

Ijeoma Oluo: ‘I am drowning in whiteness’

KUOW Puget Sound Public Radio
Seattle, Washington
2017-10-01

Ijeoma Oluo

Seattle writer Ijeoma Oluo KUOW Photo/Bond Huberman

Hi, I am Ijeoma Oluo, and I am a mixed race black woman who was raised by a white mother in this very white city.

I have a Ph.D. in whiteness, and I was raised in “Seattle nice.” I was steeped in the good intentions of this city and I hate it.

I love this city. I love you guys. Also, I hate it. I really do…

Read the entire article here. Listen to the story (00:10:24) here.

‘I’m not racist. . . . My grandkids are biracial’

The Philadelphia Inquirer
2017-08-29

Helen Ubiñas, Staff Columnist

istockphoto.com Having biracial grandkids doesn’t give you a free pass to say racist things.

There was no hello. Just an angry voice on the other end of the line yelling obscenities about blacks and Latinos in North Philly. The man grew up there, he shouted, back when it used to be “a great white neighborhood.” Then “the blacks” and “the Puerto Ricans” moved in and ruined it. They’re garbage, he yelled. No, he seethed, garbage is better than them.

Oh, and before I or anyone else called him a bigot, he wanted me to know something.

He’s no racist. His grandchildren are half-Puerto Rican.

My heart sank. Poor kids…

…Family doesn’t inoculate anyone against racism.

Tanya Hernandez, professor of law at Fordham University and author of a forthcoming book, Multiracials and Civil Rights: Mixed-Race Stories of Discrimination, said it fits into a larger societal idea that having closer relationships with people of other races can make people more empathetic.

It’s a nice thought – especially after the post-racial fantasy we all fed on for the last eight years, and the ongoing myth that as the country’s demographics become more diverse, racism will be eradicated. But the reality can be much more complicated, and painfully personal…

Read the entire article here.

The Day My Daughter Rejected My Blackness

The Huffington Post
2017-05-04

Theresa Sutton, Contributor

To be a black woman in 2017 is a lot of things. And none of them are easy.

“Mommy, I don’t want to be black like you.”

It came so unexpectedly, in the bath and beauty department of Target, while I was precariously perched on one foot attempting to get the last Shea Moisture Curl Enhancing Smoothie from the shelf overhead.

Almost instantly, I could feel the eyes of strangers upon me. It was as though a spotlight had suddenly appeared overhead, and dozens of shoppers spontaneously generated behind me, all eager to see how I would screw up this moment…

Read then entire article here.

Tips To Make Mixed Kids Feel Like They Belong

Just Analise
2017-08-23

Analise Kandasammy

Being a parent is the toughest job in the world. In fact, it’s the toughest job in the world which doesn’t have a retirement age.

So I’m putting it out there. I am not a parent and it is not my intention to tell people how to be better parents. In fact, I dislike judging people’s parenting styles (although I have from time to time because I’m not perfect). But what I do know is what it is like to be a mixed race kid trying to figure out where to belong in this world and trying to figure it out with no guidance.

I know that you think that by ignoring ethnicity altogether it might be better for your kid. After all, you are teaching him/her to love and respect all people, but it also does a disservice not to educate them about society and how to navigate the judgemental comments and intrusive questions of others. When you teach them how to to do this, you are teaching them to not absorb what people think and to not focus on it. When you teach them how to do this, you are teaching them self love and how to be a leader and an educator of others…

Read the entire article here.

Why it feels strange when people admire your mixed race kids

SBS
2017-07-07

Ian Rose

Friends and strangers always comment on what a “lovely mix” his Anglo-Vietnamese children are. (Blend Images/Getty)

Ian Rose gets a bit weirded out when people coo over his Anglo-Vietnamese children. But can’t turn down free dinner.

The other night, the end of a real midwinter Melbourne Tuesday, having finally got my daughter to choose a goddam BeenyBoo to sleep with, angled her rainbow lamp to her satisfaction and said goodnight, I walked into the kitchen to overhear my partner (who’d seen our son to bed with far less effort), on the phone to a friend, uttering words that chilled my heart.

“Yes, we can do that. We’ll be there tomorrow evening at six. No problem.”

She has this fetish for doing people favours. Her generosity of spirit is the bane of my existence. (Except when I’m its beneficiary, of course.)…

Read the entire article here.

Documentary Team Covers the Mixed-Race Experience in “Mixed Up”

Westword
Denver, Colorado
2017-07-13

Laura Shunk, Food Critic

Filmmaker and librarian Rebekah Henderson will tackle mixed-race identity in her forthcoming documentary. Courtesy Rebekah Henderson

Rebekah Henderson works as a Ross-Cherry Creek librarian. Trish Tolentino makes movies and owns Stories Not Forgotten, a video production company that archives family memories. The two had never worked together before they partnered on “What Makes a Mother,” a short interview-driven documentary about the hills and valleys of motherhood, which was released this year. But they found that they collaborated well, and now they’ve regrouped to start work on a second film, “Mixed Up,” which will delve into the experience of being a mixed-race person in the United States.

After seeing another film about a mixed-race family that she says downplayed the challenges of navigating U.S. culture and systemic racism, Henderson, who is half black and half white and is married to a man who is also of mixed race, felt driven to share stories of others like herself, who may not fit any particular check-box of racial identity. She also felt compelled to share her experience with her son, who looks white. “It’s hard to say this publicly, but I was disappointed that my son turned out so white,” she says. “On one hand, I think it’s just that mom thing that you’re disappointed that he doesn’t look like you. But it brought up all these things. I’ve always identified as black, because I grew up in the ’80s: If I checked white, they would erase it and say, ‘No, you’re black.’ That was my experience growing up as mixed race. My husband is also mixed race, but he looks white, so he identifies as mixed race.”…

Read the entire article here.

Journal of Intercultural Studies: Call for Papers: Special Issue

Journal of Intercultural Studies
2016-11-04

Deadline: 2017-07-31

Studying mixed race in a global perspective is an increasingly important phenomenon. The global economy, growing rates of migration, and rapidly advancing information and communication technologies have brought diverse groups in closer contact in more areas of the globe, even those previously regarded as racially and ethnically homogenous. Intermarried couples and mixed race celebrities are often heralded in media reports as examples of a growing phenomenon where race, culture and colour are argued to no longer matter, even when that is far from the reality. Amidst these widespread claims of a post-racial or colourblind world, the Othering of certain groups and racialized discourse remains, and is often most clear in debates over the possibility or perceived threat of intimacy and sex with racialized Others. In an ever-changing globalised world, mixing across established boundaries of race, ethnicity, religion or tribe can be celebrated, yet it can also be constructed as very dangerous, and these complexities need to be studied globally. While countless academic studies and media reports have been devoted to investigating, documenting and/or explaining this phenomenon of mixed identities and relationships, many questions remain unanswered.

• What does mixed race mean across the globe?
• What are the lived experiences of mixed couples and mixed race individuals in different countries and contexts?
• What are attitudes toward ‘mixing’?
• How do the children of mixed couples identify?
• Is there a way to understand the experiences of mixed people and families in a global context, or is there too much difference – different histories, different populations and different contexts – to find common ground?

Submission Instructions

We are looking for original papers that critically address the issue of mixed race globally from new and innovative perspectives to make up this Special Issue.

Papers to be between 7,000–8,000 words in length, and submitted to https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/cjis (when submitting please label your manuscript a ‘Special Issue Paper’).

The Critical Mixed Race special issue will be published early–2018: we are accepting papers up until the 31st July 2017

Editorial information

Guest Editor: Erica Chito Childs, Hunter College and CUNY Graduate Centre

For more information, click here.

I’m The Black Mom Of A Kid Who Looks White, & Your Comments Hurt Both Of Us

Romper
2017-07-23

Sa’iyda Shabazz

Courtesy of Sa’iyda Shabazz

When my son was born, he was pretty much as pale as his white dad. We were a bit surprised, but we also knew that’s just how genetics work sometimes. What really surprised us, however, were how people responded to seeing his skin color. No one could believe that I, as a black woman, had birthed such a white baby.

These questions continued throughout his life. People have asked me countless times whether I was my son’s babysitter or nanny, and once, when I was out with a white friend, the waitress asked her questions about him, because it never even entered her mind that he could have been mine. It was heartbreaking, and also infuriating.

Many white moms of mixed kids have told me that my perceptions of how people deal with my mixed kid are wrong, and that I’m being overly sensitive. But as a Black mom with a kid who looks white, I’m seen as taking up space, and I find it incredibly frustrating. No one knows what to do with me. Strangers look at me and then at my son, trying to find enough similarities between us to make the familial connection. Some will be bold enough to ask, “Is he yours?”…

Read the entire article here.

Got something to say about race and kids?

Medium
2017-07-15

Andrew Grant-Thomas, Co-Founder
EmbraceRace

Let’s have it.

What do these pieces have in common?

“But Daddy, I’m a scientist, too!”

Why are all the white dolls sitting together on the Target shelf?

Muslim in Trump’s America…

Read the entire article here.

CFA: Special Issue of The History of the Family – Mixed Marriage, Interracial Relationships, and Binational Couples from Global and Comparative Perspectives

H-Black-Europe
2017-06-30

Call for papers to special issue in The History of the Family: An International Quarterly

Special issue theme: Mixed Marriage, Interracial Relationships and Binational Couples from Global and Comparative Perspectives

Guest-editors:

Julia Moses
University of Sheffield/University of Gottingen

Julia Woesthoff
DePaul University

Call for Article Proposals

In response to the mass globalization of the twenty-first century and associated migration, a recent boom in social-scientific research has analyzed various manifestations of binational and interracial romantic relationships in the present and recent past. This theme issue seeks to historicize this research by drawing on key case studies from across the world and across time and drawing on relevant historiography and theoretical literature. This call for proposals welcomes both quantitative and qualitative studies that shed light on individual experiences of, as well as various practices of regulating, ‘interracial’, ‘binational’ and ‘mixed marriages’. The issue aims to parse the assumptions behind these contested concepts and to trace how these categories have shifted over time and space. In doing so, it also seeks to chart how intermarriages and other forms of interracial, binational and cross-confessional relationships took shape: who participated in these relationships? How common were they, and in which circumstances were they practiced (or banned)? Contributions investigating relationships involving regions in the Americas, Africa and Asia are particularly welcome.

The papers in this issue chart these relationships over various periods of time. Some papers will focus on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This era was a flashpoint for considerations about the relationship between race, culture and family formation. It was during the contested ‘first age of globalization’ at the turn of the twentieth century that new cultural encounters took form, forged through the expansion of European empires, a spike in global economic migration facilitated by new transportation technologies and the rise of mass communication through daily newspapers and the telegraph. At the same time, the growth of anthropology and related social sciences as disciplines contributed to the problematization of race, culture and cultural difference. These encounters came to a head in the First and Second World Wars, which witnessed a new era of nationalism across the world alongside a call to return to the home and family as a safeguard against the uncertainties of a world at war and faced by severe economic fluctuations. How were the perception and practice of intermarriage and other forms of cross-cultural romantic relationships affected by these historical developments? Other papers will focus on earlier periods, including moments of religious reformation and counterreformation as well as various early experiments in trade and imperialism. How did early colonial and commercial encounters shape attitudes towards interracial relationships? How have changing religious conflicts shaped attitudes towards intermarriage across confessional lines?

Ultimately, the theme issue will build on a selection of papers from a panel organized by the co-editors that will take place at the upcoming European Social Science History Conference (Belfast, 2018). Proposals that complement the themes and regions presented in the panel are particularly welcome, and those participating in the theme issue are also very welcome to come along to the ESSHC to join in the discussions there and help shape this joint venture.

Deadline for proposing articles (max 500 word abstracts only): Friday, 29 September 2017 (by e-mail to: j.moses@sheffield.ac.uk and j.woesthoff@depaul.edu).

The acceptance of abstracts will be announced to authors in early December 2017. The proposals selected are to be submitted initially as extended abstracts or working draft papers before Friday, 23 March 2018 so they can be considered together with the papers that will be presented at the ESSHC. Complete drafts (max 10,000 words) should be submitted by Friday, 20 July 2018 to the guest editors. After internal editing and revision by the author, the papers will be sent out for external peer-review via the journal. Please note that inclusion in the theme issue is subject to final external peer review.

We warmly welcome your proposal!

For more information, click here.