Mixed Race Studies

Race Card Project Creates New Type of Conversation

The Associated Press
2012-11-30

Jesse Washington, National Writer on Race and Ethnicity

She asked for just six words.

Michele Norris, the National Public Radio host, was starting a book tour for her memoir, which explored racial secrets. Sensing a change in the atmosphere after the election of the first black president, and searching for a new way to engage and listen, Norris printed 200 postcards asking people to express their thoughts on race in six words.

The first cards that trickled into her mailbox were from Norris’ friends and acquaintances. Then they started coming from strangers, from people who had not heard Norris speak, from other continents. The tour stopped; the cards did not:

“You know my race. NOT ME!”

“Chinese or American? Does it matter.”

“Oh, she’s just another white girl.”

“Waiting for race not to matter.”

Such declarations brought the Race Card Project to life.

“I thought I knew a lot about race,” says Norris, 51, an award-winning black journalist. “I realized how little I know through this project.”

Two years later, the cards have become almost a parallel career for Norris, best known for her work on NPR’s “All Things Considered.” She and an assistant have catalogued more than 12,000 submissions on http://www.theracecardproject.com/. People now send them via Facebook and Twitter or type them directly into the website, leading to vibrant online discussions…

…Or the story of Arlene Lee, who posted: “Birthday present; you are black, sorta?”

On the night before Lee’s 50th birthday, she was going through the papers of her late mother, an immigrant from Peru. Lee found her mother’s real birth certificate, plus a fake one she had used to enter the United States in 1958. On the fake document, Lee’s mother had changed her race from black to white.

“My mother raised me to be white and I am, at least by self identification I guess,” Lee wrote on the Race Card Project website.

“It breaks my heart that we never had a chance to talk about it, that she didn’t feel she could trust her only child to understand and that she didn’t feel she could ever come out of hiding,” Lee wrote.

“And now, I have a new prism through which to see things.”…

Read the entire article here.

Multiple Voices: Racial and Ethnic Socialization Within Interracial Asian and White Families

Alliant International University, San Francisco
2012
138 pages
Publication Number: AAT 3517943
ISBN: 9781267486448

Sarah Kasuga-Jenks

Presented to the Faculty of The California School of Professional Psychology San Francisco Campus Alliant International University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Clinical Psychology

The current study focuses on racial and ethnic socialization in Asian and White interracial families. A qualitative study was conducted to examine ways in which parents communicate issues of race and ethnicity to their children. Narrative inquiry was utilized to access the lived experiences of members of interracial families. First, parents were interviewed; then, the entire family was interviewed together and finally, the entire family had the opportunity to review transcripts and results. Family stories were the main unit of analysis; family stories from the parent interview were examined in addition to family stories from the family interview. The guiding research questions included: How do individuals within interracial Asian and White families communicate with each other (e.g., do they use verbal or non-verbal styles and are they more proactive or reactive)? How do parents communicate issues of race and ethnicity (e.g., racial and ethnic identity, participation in cultural events, cultural values, discrimination, etc.) to their children?

Four themes emerged from the interviews: cultural practices, effects of interpersonal relationships, experiences of discrimination, and negotiating identity. Parents utilized a range of techniques, verbal and non-verbal, to communicate issues related to race and ethnicity. Responses varied in terms of which parent culture was emphasized and by whom. Many families did not report actively “socializing” their children about race and ethnicity, but incorporated cultural lessons into daily life as a way of communicating their cultural heritage to their children. Significant differences in terms of communication with children about race and ethnicity based on generational status of parents were not found.

Implications of this study include a better understanding of an understudied population, as well as potentially shaping the way in which socialization is understood in less traditional families (e.g., interracial families). Results from this study help to inform future research focused on interracial families, and specific recommendations for future work are made. Clinically, the results from this study provide practitioners with more information about interracial families to help guide interventions. The current study also contributes to theory on ethnic and racial socialization in interracial families as both parents and children were interviewed.

Purchase the dissertation here.

In Black and White

New York Magazine
2005-05-21

Mark Stevens

“Ellen Gallagher: DeLuxe” confronts issues of race not with hectoring but with clever, even antic, satire.

In Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison explored not only overt expressions of racism but also its more hidden, corrosive elements. African-Americans suffered from metaphysical wounds. They were “invisible,” seen not for who they were as individuals but for what they represented as a group. Blackness was a kind of impenetrable mask. Appearance was all. Historically, many African-Americans have tried to escape from this prison. Some whitened their skin or straightened their hair. Others took up the white-skirt profession of nursing. Still others made a fetish of blackness by wearing enormous Afros. Usually, however, one mask was merely being exchanged for another. The poster boy for such psychic wounds is, of course, Michael Jackson.

In a captivating small show at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Ellen Gallagher is now exhibiting a portfolio of 60 prints, called “DeLuxe,” that makes serious sport of this effort to fashion a new appearance that can pass inspection. Gallagher searched through black magazines such as Sepia and Our World, mostly from the years before the civil-rights era, looking for material on the theme. Often, she picked advertisements. Ads from old magazines are always fascinating—usually, things look simpler and more innocent, which is an appealing illusion. Here, the proffered promises are often poignant. A skin whitener is an elixir: You will be “Made for Kisses,” with “The Lighter, Smoother Skin Men Adore.” A presentation of wigs allows you to pick a ready-made identity, from “cutie” and “supreme freedom” to “semi-Afro” and “curly gypsy.”…

Read the entire article here.

Ten-Minute Talk: MoMA Conservator Scott Gerson on Ellen Gallagher’s Deluxe

Museum of Modern Art
New York, New York
2012-03-05

Sarah Kennedy, Associate Educator, Lab Programs

Janelle Grace, Adult & Academic Programs 12-month Intern

This week’s Ten-Minute Talk features Scott Gerson, Associate Conservator in MoMA’s Department of Conservation who discusses the materials and processes explored in Ellen Gallagher’s featured work Deluxe on display in the Printin’ exhibition.

As part of Print Studio, we offer a weekly series of short talks focusing on issues related to the medium of print and the sustainability of ideas within the context of modern and contemporary art. During these Ten-Minute Talks, a variety of MoMA staff—from conservators to librarians and archivists—as well as guest artists and educators, share their expertise, offering insight on a variety of topics and a special behind-the-scenes look at MoMA’s engagement with the medium of print and selected Print Studio projects.

For more information, click here.

Eurasian Hybridity in Chinese Utopian Visions: From “One World” to “A Society Based on Beauty” and Beyond

positions: east asia cultures critique
Volume 14, Number 1, Spring 2006
pages 131-163

Emma Jinhua Teng, T.T. and Wei Fong Chao Professor of Asian Civilizations; Associate Professor of Chinese Studies
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

 “Can Mixed-Blood Hybrids Really Improve the Chinese Race?” This provocative question appeared in chinesenewsweek.com in August 2001. Columnist and on-line pundit Shangguan Tianyi began his essay by contrasting the racialist thinking of the past with contemporary attitudes:

In the past, the German Nazis promoted the idea of Aryan superiority on the basis of the notion of racial purity…. Ironically, nowadays there are people who are taking an avid interest in racial intermixing and hybridity as a means of improving the Chinese race [Zhongguo renzhong], and of producing a more intelligent new generation….decades after [the Nazi era], the mixed-blood hybrid has unexpectedly become a figure of admiration…. In concrete terms, are we talking about interbreeding with Blacks, American Indians, Australian Aborigines or Pacific Islanders? The answer in each case is, no. Essentially, the scope of intermixing is limited to Whites, preferably Americans.

Shangguan then proceeded, in equally inflammatory terms, to critique what he identifies as a new interest in intermarriage as a tool for genetically reengineering the Chinese race and the fetishization of Eurasians as the breed of choice. This fascination is readily apparent in the Chinese media, particularly the entertainment industry where Eurasian models, actors, and athletes have become hot commodities, purported to be not only exceptionally beautiful and physically superior, but also more intelligent. Declaring this type of “blind faith” in Eurasian physical and mental superiority absurd, Shangguan asserts that only a geneticist in a lab could create the ideal child.

Shangguan’s (rather cantankerous) critique stands in sharp contrast to the celebratory discourses on hybridity current in both postcolonial studies and the emerging field of multiracial studies. The theoretical concept of hybridity as a metaphor for the new transcultural forms produced by the colonizer/colonized relation has become fashionable in academic circles since the late 1980s, thanks, among others, to the influential work of Homi Bhabha. Indeed, hybridity has become one of the most widely employed (and hotly disputed) concepts in postcolonial studies, and is frequently cited as a defining characteristic of “the postcolonial condition.” For example, the editors of The Post-Colonial Studies Reader write: “Hybridity and the power it releases may well be seen to be the characteristic feature and contribution of the post-colonial, allowing a means of evading the replication of the binary categories of the past and developing new anti-monolithic models of cultural exchange and growth.”

Whereas within postcolonial studies hybridity is largely conceptualized in cultural or discursive terms, multiracial studies concerns itself with hybridity in racial or bodily terms. Multiracial studies has emerged over the past decade in tandem with the growth of a multiracial movement in the United States, and related movements in Britain and elsewhere, dedicating itself to the analysis of the “multiracial experience” and “multiracial identity.” Largely due to its association with multiracial activism, multiracial studies tends to construct racial intermixing as a socially progressive and liberal phenomenon. As in postcolonial theory, hybridity is treated as a disruptive or destabilizing force, with mixed-race identity promising to break down racial boundaries and bring an end to racism, which is equated with the ideology of racial purity. As one of the leading voices of this emergent field, Maria Root, asserts: “The presence of racially mixed persons defies the social order predicated upon race, blurs racial and ethnic group boundaries, and challenges generally accepted proscriptions and prescriptions regarding intergroup relations. Furthermore, and perhaps most threatening, the existence of racially mixed persons challenges long-held notions about the biological, moral, and social meaning of race.” Hybridity, then, seemingly holds the promise of moving us beyond the old identity politics of white and black, colonizer and colonized, toward a boundaryless future where indeterminacy…

Biology, race and politics explored in upcoming Chancellor’s Lecture

Vanderbilt News
Vanderbilt University
2012-10-10

Kara Furlong

Is race a biological category written in our genes? Or are genomic scientists and biomedical researchers mistakenly using race to explain away health disparities among different population groups?
 
Dorothy Roberts, the Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, will explore this issue in an upcoming Chancellor’s Lecture at Vanderbilt University. Her talk, titled “Fatal Invention: The New Biopolitics of Race,” is scheduled from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 30, in Vanderbilt’s Sarratt Cinema…

…Roberts is the author of Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century. A book signing and reception will precede her lecture from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. in the Sarratt Cinema Lobby.
 
An acclaimed scholar of race, gender and the law, Roberts pored over scores of scientific studies and interviewed dozens of geneticists whose work claims that race is visible in our genes. As a result, biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies are tailoring medications and other patented products to treat illnesses seemingly prevalent among certain populations.
 
Roberts argues that race is and always has been a political system, that health disparities exist because of social inequalities, and to further the myth that race is a biological category does irreparable damage to social progress in the United States…

…In July 2012, Roberts became the 14th Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor at the University of Pennsylvania with joint appointments in the Department of Sociology and the Law School, where she is the inaugural Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mosell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights. From 1998 to 2012, she was a professor of law, African American studies and sociology at Northwestern University…

Read the entire article here.

Debra Yepa-Pappan: Dual(ing) Identities

Museum of Contemporary Native Arts
108 Cathedral Place
Santa Fe, New Mexico
2012-08-17 through 2012-12-31

SmDivine Spirits

This exhibition focuses on Debra Yepa-Pappan’s reflective group of works that explore her dual identities. Yepa-Pappan is of Jemez Pueblo and Korean heritage. Through this multilayered collection of work, Yepa-Pappan layers instances of history, pop culture, stereotypes, authenticity, family, her identity, and the urban environment together. Through her dual identities, she embraces change in tradition as a reflection of herself, yet she also duels with the labels placed upon her.
 
About the Artist: DEBRA YEPA-PAPPAN was born in Korea in 1971 to a Korean mother and Jemez Pueblo father. She came to the U.S. with her mother when she was 5 months old. At this time, she was enrolled as Jemez Pueblo before becoming a U.S. citizen. In her work, Yepa-Pappan shares her experiences of being a mixed-race Asian/Native American living in an urban area, while exploring the issues of identity and challenging American Indian stereotypes. Having spent the majority of her life in Chicago, she is influenced by contemporary and urban culture, along with her deep connection to Jemez Pueblo. Because of her parents and their own strong ties to their cultures, she has a strong sense of self. She says, “I know who I am and where my people come from.” Yepa-Pappan attended the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe and graduated with an Associates of Fine Arts in two- and three-dimensional art in 1992…

For more information, click here.

Design Yourself: IAMNMAI Art Jam

National Museum of the American Indian
Potomac Atrium, 1st level
Fourth Street & Independence Ave., S.W.
Washington, D.C.
2012-12-08, 19:00-22:00 EST (Local Time)

Design Yourself: IAMNMAI Art Jam” is an artistic partnership designed to explore issues of identity, community and mixed heritage through art while reminding us that everyone, in their own way, is part of the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI).

The program features Louie Gong (Nooksack/Chinese/Scottish/French), a Seattle-based educator and artist, and his newly-released customizable art toy dubbed “Mockups.” Local guest artists including Lee Newman, Chris Pappan, Lisa Schumaier and Debra Yepa-Pappan and visitors join him for an interactive evening of creativity, music, and celebration.

“Mock-ups” are available for purchase and art supplies are provided for those who wish to customize their Mockups at the museum.

Groove to local DJ Will Eastman and purchase cuisine from the museum’s Rammy award-winning Mitsitam Native Foods Cafe during the program.

A unique display of artwork, including Gong’s custom shoes and “Mockups” created by guest artists, is on view in the Potomac Atrium Dec. 4 – 13.

For more information, click here.

Consolidated Colors: Racial Passing and Figurations of the Chinese in Walter White’s Flight and Darryl Zanuck’s Old San Francisco

MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the U.S.
Volume 37, Number 4, Winter 2012
pages 93-117
DOI: 10.1353/mel.2012.0064

Amanda M. Page, Visiting Assistant Professor of English
Marywood University, Scranton, Pennsylvania

Narratives of racial passing frequently investigate how the boundaries of race can be reimagined. In these texts, the dominant black-white binary construction is often under scrutiny for its failure to accommodate the identifications of people who do not fit easily in either category. Throughout US literary history, many passing narratives have also challenged the logic of the “one-drop” rule, codified into law in the 1896 Supreme Court decision Plessy v. Ferguson. Gayle Wald explains how the “one-drop” principle shapes racial categorization in US culture:

By representing “whiteness” as the absence of the racial sign, [“one-drop”] has perpetuated the myth of white purity (a chimera that colors contemporary liberal language of the “mixed-race” offspring of “interracial” marriages). In a complementary fashion it has rendered the political and cultural presence of Asian Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans invisible (or merely selectively and marginally visible), thereby enabling the hyper-visibility of African Americans as that national “minority” group most often seen as “having” race. (13–14)

This construction presents whiteness as raceless, while the burden of racialized identity is shifted to African Americans. With this belief in white purity comes the expectation that racial impurity is something that visibly marks the black body. The passing subject, however, often challenges the expected hyper-visibility of the African American by subverting the cultural assumption that racial identity is visible. Though “one drop” is legally significant for a mulatta/o subject, the act of passing can resist the confines of legislated racial categorization by crossing the racial barriers meant to deny the full rights of citizenship to nonwhite peoples.

Just as the “invisible” passing subject often threatens the purity of white identity, so, too, does the existence of those other “invisible” peoples Wald describes. Because Native Americans, Latina/os, and Asian Americans do not fit into the black-or-white construction of race as defined in Plessy,1 these groups, like mulatta/o passing subjects, create problems of racial categorization. Authors of passing narratives frequently use characters from other binary-disrupting groups to draw parallels between the racial ambiguity of these groups and the passing subject. In one such passing narrative, Walter White’s novel Flight (1926), a Chinese figure is used to disrupt the conventional trajectory of the passing narrative and to offer an alternative vision of racial solidarity. In Flight, the heroine, Mimi Daquin, crosses the color line to gain the economic opportunity that would be denied to her if she continued to live as a black woman. Instead of permanently “crossing the line” to live as a white woman at the conclusion of the novel, however, White’s mulatta heroine returns to living as a black woman because of an encounter with a radical Chinese intellectual, Wu Hseh-Chuan. This Chinese intermediary, like the mulatta heroine, disrupts the US’s narrative of race as either black or white; White’s strategic deployment of these two characters works as a double challenge to the dominant construction. Furthermore, White draws on the connection of these characters as outsiders with subversive potential when Hseh-Chuan advocates for an international unity of people of color against global white supremacy. This encounter directly leads to Mimi’s racial reawakening, as Hseh-Chuan makes her realize the value of African American culture in its resistance to white racism.

Yet White’s move toward internationalism in his passing narrative does not indicate a trend toward greater inclusiveness in the culture, as even the passing trope—often a tool of African American activist authors trying to undermine racism—continued to serve contradictory agendas. Released only a year after White’s novel, the 1927 Warner Brothers film Old San Francisco puts a unique twist on the usual black-to-white passing narrative by depicting a Chinese American passing subject as a dangerous alien threat to (white) American identity. Written and produced by Darryl F. Zanuck and directed by Alan Crosland, Old San Francisco tells the story of a Spanish…

Appointment of a new Parliamentary Poet Laureate

Parliament of Canada
2011-12-20

December 20, 2011 (Ottawa) – The Speaker of the Senate, the Honourable Noël A. Kinsella, and the Speaker of the House of Commons, the Honourable Andrew Scheer, today announced the appointment of Fred Wah as Canada’s next Parliamentary Poet Laureate [2011-2013], effective immediately. Mr. Wah is the fifth poet to hold this office.

“As a distinguished poet, editor, and teacher Fred Wah is known across Canada for his interest in a range of subjects,” said Speaker Kinsella. “Mr. Wah brings forth a collaborative approach and unique perspective to his work inspiring younger poets, students and others both nationally and internationally with his reflections on Canadian culture.”

“Fred Wah’s poetry is grounded in Canada’s political and social landscapes,” said Speaker Scheer. “He has done much to encourage and promote the importance of literature, culture and language within Canadian society.”

Mr. Wah was selected by the Speakers upon the recommendation of the Selection Committee composed of Graham Fraser, Commissioner of Official Languages; Daniel J. Caron, Deputy Head and Librarian and Archivist of Canada; Robert Sirman, Director and CEO of the Canada Council for the Arts, and Sonia L’Heureux, Assistant Parliamentary Librarian.

Reflecting on his nomination, Fred Wah intends to share his enthusiasm for new poets and artists, and will bring to the position the passion and dedication he brings to all his work. “My work as Parliamentary Poet Laureate will continue to engage poetry as it represents our homes and migrations, our questions of history and identity. I’m grateful for the opportunity to sustain poetry’s presence in our national imaginary.”

Mr. Wah has been writing and publishing since 1965. Author of five limited-edition chapbooks and 18 books, his repertoire includes the 1986 Governor General Award-wining poetry book Waiting for Saskatchewan. Fred Wah has consistently challenged and thrilled readers and has had a major influence on multiple generations of writers…

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