Mixed Race Studies

Transcending Blackness: From the New Millennium Mulatta to the Exceptional Multiracial

Duke University Press
November 2012
256 pages
20 photographs
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8223-5277-8
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8223-5292-1

Ralina L. Joseph, Associate Professor of Communication
University of Washington

Representations of multiracial Americans, especially those with one black and one white parent, appear everywhere in contemporary culture, from reality shows to presidential politics. Some depict multiracial individuals as being mired in painful confusion; others equate them with progress, as the embodiment of a postracial utopia. In Transcending Blackness, Ralina L. Joseph critiques both depictions as being rooted in—and still defined by—the racist notion that Blackness is a deficit that must be overcome.

Analyzing emblematic representations of multiracial figures in popular culture—Jennifer Beals’s character in the The L Word; the protagonist in Danny Senza’s novel, Caucasia; the title character in the independent film, Mixing Nia; and contestants in a controversial episode of the reality show, America’s Next Top Model, who had to “switch ethnicities” for a photo shoot—Joseph identifies the persistance of two widespread stereotypes about mixed-race African Americans: “new millennium mulattas” and “exceptional multiracials.” The former inscribes the multiracial African American as a tragic figure whose Blackness predestines them for misfortune; the latter rewards mixed-race African Americans with success for erasing their Blackness. Addressing questions of authenticity, sexuality, and privilege, Transcending Blackness refutes that idea that in American society, race no longer matters.

Table of Contents

• Preface. From Biracial to Multiracial to Mixed-Race to Critical Mixed-Race Studies
• Introduction. Reading Mixed-Race African American Representations in the New Millennium
• Part I: The New Millennium Mulatta
  • 1. The Bad Race Girl: Jennifer Beals on The L Word, the Race Card, and the Punishment of Mixed-Race Blackness
  • 2. The Sad Race Girl: Passing and the New Millennium Mulatta in Danzy Senna’s Caucasia
• Part II: The Exceptional Multiracial
  • 3. Transitioning to the Exceptional Multiracial: Escaping Tragedy through Black Transcendence in Mixing Nia
  • 4. Recursive Racial Transformation: Selling the Exceptional Multiracial on America’s Next Top Model
• Conclusion. Racist Jokes and the Exceptional Multiracial, or Why Transcending Blackness Is a Terrible Proposition
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index

Fade to Black and White: Interracial Images in Popular Culture

Rowman & Littlefield
May 2009
250 pages
Cloth: 0-7425-6079-1 / 978-0-7425-6079-6
Paper: 0-7425-6080-5 / 978-0-7425-6080-2

Erica Chito Childs, Associate Professor of Sociology
Hunter College, City University of New York

There is no teasing apart what interracial couples think of themselves from what society shows them about themselves. Following on her earlier ground-breaking study of the social worlds of interracial couples, Erica Chito Childs considers the larger context of social messages, conveyed by the media, that inform how we think about love across the color line. Examining a range of media—from movies to music to the web—Fade to Black and White offers an informative and provocative account of how the perception of interracial sexuality as “deviant” has been transformed in the course of the 20th century and how race relations are understood today.

Table of Contents

• Introduction: Fade to Black and White
• 1. Historical Realities and Media Representations of Race and Sexuality
• 2. The Prime-Time Color-Line: Interracial Couples and Television
• 3. It’s a (White) Man’s World
• 4. When Good Girls Go Bad
• 5. Playing the Color-Blind Card: Seeing Black and White in News Media
• 6. Multiracial Utopias: Youth, Sports and Music
• Conclusion

IU Libraries Film Archive a treasure chest of educational, rare films

inside IU Bloomington
Weekly news for faculty and staff from the Indiana University Bloomington campus
2013-03-07

Lynn Schoch, Office of the Vice President for International Affairs

Many of a certain age—particularly those who were in elementary school in the ’50s and ’60s—will remember 16 mm films produced by the U.S. government, Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., McGraw-Hill or National Educational Television.

They often provided the only glimpses of other worlds that U.S. school children had the opportunity to see.

By the 1970s, videotape and documentaries with large budgets and prime-time aspirations, like Kenneth Clark’s “Civilisation,” began to replace the older formats.

From about 1940, IU’s Audio-Visual Center (then part of the Extension Division and later, Instructional Support Services) was the depository for U.S. government films. In time, it became the state’s most active lender of educational films to schools, museums, clubs, community centers, and churches in the state.

As the move to videotape made 16 mm films “obsolete,” the center became a repository for what other institutions and organizations no longer wanted.

In 2006 what was then a collection of 34,000 reels formed the core of the IU Libraries Film Archive. IU Libraries has supported the transition from lending library to historical archive with a dedicated film achivist in the Herman B. Wells Library, support for resources to digitize the collections and an off-site storage environment designed to minimize deterioration.

“We have the largest educational film collection in any university library,” said Rachael Stoeltje, film archivist with the IU Libraries Film Archive.

There are films available nowhere else in the world, and rarities such as 30 titles from the 1950s CBS series “You Are There” and the world’s most complete collection of Encyclopedia Britannica films…

…Darlene Sadlier, director of the Portuguese Program and a professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, a program within the College of Arts and Sciences, has been using educational films from the collection for many years in her classes in Latin American cinema and culture.

“One film that is helpful in a discussion of the history of race relations in Brazil, for instance, is ‘Brazil: The Vanishing Negro,'” she said. The film is a 30-minute film produced for public television in the 1960s, showing Afro-Brazilian religious ceremonies and the daily lives of Brazil’s black population.

“It was an informative resource when it was first produced, but it was also polemical because it discussed the benefits of racial mixing, or rather whitening, of the Brazilian African population, to the detriment of its heritage,” Sadlier said. “In recent years, Brazil has recognized its African heritage with affirmative action laws and a holiday dedicated to national race consciousness. With this film, we can look back and consider how far the country has moved to acknowledge its long-held myth of ‘racial democracy.’”

Sadlier has published extensively on the histories, languages and cultures of Brazil. Her latest book deals with the Good Neighbor policy adopted by the U.S. government during World War II to cultivate stronger alliances with countries in the Western Hemisphere…

Read the entire article here.

The use of popular media in multicultural education: Stressing implications for the Black/non-Black biracial North American student

Syracuse University
1999
206 pages

Wendy Cecille Thompson

Instructor usage of popular media in the classroom has spawned studies on the impact of the visual image on minority populations. These studies range from examining the effects of films as role models on the self-concepts of Black elementary school children (Dimas, 1970), to Black college women’s persistence in viewing a popular television show in which none of the cast members were Black (Strother, 1994). This study is the first to examine the effects of classroom usage of popular media on populations that are racially “in the middle”—biracial individuals. Moreover, it is believed that popular media recommended for use with Blacks may be used with these individuals to reify the notion that the world’s population can be categorized into five socially-constructed groups called race. Lastly, a thorough examination of the relevant literature reveals that no models or paradigms of multicultural education specifically address the educational needs of biracial persons.

This study, through the use of unstructured and semi-structured qualitative interviews with 15 informants, seeks to discover how parental and cultural influences aid in the formation of a racial identity. The study is also concerned with the informants’ views on whether or how multicultural education served their educational needs. This study also attempts to discover how this marginalized population has responded to the use of popular media in multicultural education.

This study concludes that, although biracial persons have their own process of racial self-definition that is unique to them, society views them as Blacks. Parents and cultural influences greatly affect the biracial process of racial identification. Such influences minimize the effects of media on the biracial formation of a self-image. Media images, however, enable others to harbor perceptions of biracial persons based on essentialized notions of race and culture.

Such essentialized notions permeate educational structures, and thwart efforts at multicultural education. These efforts further marginalize biracial people by forcing them into rigid racial categories and by providing stereotypical images of those races when using popular media to further instructional goals.

This study should provide recommendations for popular media use in diverse fields, such as education, communication, and media studies.

Log in to read the dissertation here.

The Manifestation of Race in Everyday Communication Interactions in New Zealand

Unitec New Zealand, Auckland, New Zealand
October 2012
281 pages

Elizabeth S. Revell

A thesis submitted to the Department of Communication Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of International Communication

This thesis examines the manifestation of race in everyday communication interactions in New Zealand using an unconventional, experimental methodology. Experimenting with a partial collaborative autoethnographic approach that involved reflexive diaries, interviews, and focus groups as data collection methods, the author and nine other co-participants took part in a collaborative autoethnographic exercise, that required them to focus, reflect on, and discuss together their perceptions of the way race was manifested in their day-to-day experiences, over the period of a month. Co-participants were encouraged to write evocatively of their experiences. The author used her mixed-race identity as an autoethnographic analytical tool as a measure towards resolving her ‘double consciousness’ (Du Bois, 1903). Her own voice, thoughts, and stories of her lived experiences are woven into the study, alongside more traditional analysis. In carrying out this investigation, the author sought not only to generate knowledge in the traditional academic sense, but to facilitate a disruptive, emancipative and emotionally engaging conversation on racism in New Zealand, between herself, her co-participants, and readers.

In answering the main research question about the manifestation of race in everyday communication interactions in New Zealand, the author found that in public contexts in New Zealand, race as a topic is taboo and racists are social pariahs amongst Western, educated, middle-class members of society. Consequentially, race is often manifested in a variety of subtle ways in everyday communication interactions, and is difficult to identify and challenge. The subtle way in which race is manifested in everyday settings masks an undercurrent of prejudice and hostility. Whether or not these hidden tensions will emerge problematically in the future remains to be seen, as New Zealanders negotiate and manage their biculturalism and multiculturalism.

In terms of the significance of race in New Zealand, the author concluded that New Zealand’s racial and ethnic identity is changing (browning), and that the longstanding New Zealand European (White) majority is decreasing in proportion and dominance. Some New Zealand Europeans are consciously and subconsciously trying to assert their authority, refusing to let the idea that a ‘true’ New Zealander is ‘White’ go because of a) a subconscious belief in the superiority of White skin and/or Western culture, and b) insecurity around what will happen to them and their lifestyle, if non-White ethnic and non-Western cultural groups continue to gain in proportion to White, Western groups. As a result, some non-White individuals are experiencing being subtly and overtly ‘othered’, excluded, disrespected, and negatively stereotyped. Being subjected to everyday racism has resulted in some non-White New Zealanders having a fractured sense of identity, and others having adopted the racist worldview of Whites.

In terms of resolving the dialectic of her mixed-race identity, the closure the author had hoped for was not achieved. Instead, she became more conscious of her own racist beliefs and actions, and convinced of the importance of continuing to challenge them.

Table of Contents

• ABSTRACT
• DECLARATION
• CANDIDATE’S DECLARATION
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
  • MY “DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS”: A PERSONAL NARRATIVE
    • First thing’s first: Who I am
    • But: The dreaded question
    • Fleshing out the issue
    • Defining my research topic
  • WIDER SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
  • RESEARCH PURPOSE
  • CONCEPTUAL DEFINITIONS
    • “Race”
    • “Everyday communication interaction”
  • METHODOLOGY: A PARTIAL COLLABORATIVE AUTOETHNOGRAPHIC APPROACH
  • THESIS OUTLINE
• CHAPTER 2: CONCEPTS AND CONTEXT
  • CONCEPTUAL DEFINITIONS
    • Concept 1: ‘Race’
    • Concept 2: ‘Everyday communication interaction’
  • CONTEXT
    • Multiculturalism and biculturalism in New Zealand
    • Recent signs of ethnic ‘unease’ in multicultural New Zealand
    • Use of the term ‘race’ in New Zealand
• CHAPTER 3– LITERATURE REVIEW
  • RACE IN COMMUNICATION STUDIES
    • The critical turn in communication studies
  • THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
    • Critical Theory
    • General theories of race and racism
    • Theories and concepts from sociology (on the everyday social construction of race)
    • Theories and concepts from social psychology (on contemporary racism)
  • A REVIEW OF RELEVANT RESEARCH
    • …on race and the everyday
    • …on race and the everyday in New Zealand
• CHAPTER 4: RESEARCH DESIGN
  • SITUATING AUTOETHNOGRAPHY ONTOLOGICALLY AND EPISTEMOLOGICALLY
  • METHODOLOGY
    • A qualitative approach
    • Ethnography
    • Autoethnography
    • Partial collaborative autoethnography
    • Co-participant selection
  • DATA COLLECTION METHODS
    • Solicited reflexive diaries
    • Semi-structured interviews
    • Semi-structured focus groups (briefing and debriefing sessions)
  • METHODS OF ANALYSIS
    • Thematic analysis
    • Analysis and discussion in autoethnography
    • ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS
• CHAPTER 5: FINDINGS
  • PARTICIPANT POSITIONALITIES
    • Liz:
    • Ameera:
    • Yasmin:
    • Rachel:
    • Timothy:
    • Heather:
    • Lana:
    • Luke:
    • Zane:
    • Natalie:
  • EMERGENT THEMES
    • Theme 1: Everyday living in a multicultural society
      • 1a. NZ European dominance is eroding
      • 1b. New Zealanders are managing this change well
      • 1c. New Zealanders are not managing this change well
      • Concluding notes for theme one
    • Theme 2: References to ‘racisms’ past
      • 2a. Ethnic inequality and redistribution
      • 2b. Crying race
      • 2c. Old racist attitudes
      • 2d. The declining significance of race?
      • Concluding notes for theme two
    • Theme 3: Everyday awareness and negotiation of social hierarchy
      • 3a. White superiority
      • 3b. Negotiating the social ladder
      • 3c. Legitimacy
      • Concluding notes for theme three
    • Theme 4: Conversational tact – Everyday speech conventions
      • 4a. Racialised ‘neutral’ terms
      • 4b. Racial stereotyping
      • 4c. Censoring
      • Concluding notes for theme four
    • Theme 5: Everyday emotional reactions to races
      • 5a. Anger/cumulative anger towards a race
      • 5b. Disgust
      • 5c. Instant connection
      • 5d. Comfort/discomfort
      • 5e. Fear
      • 5f. Romantic attraction/indifference/repulsion
      • Concluding notes for theme five
    • Theme 6: Reacting to everyday racism
      • 6a. Emotional reactions to everyday racism
      • 6b. Dealing with everyday racism
      • Concluding notes for theme six
    • Theme 7: “Race matters to me because I look different”
      • Concluding notes for chapter seven
  • OVERALL CONCLUSION
• CHAPTER 6 – DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS
  • THEMATIC DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS
    • Theme 1: Everyday living in a multicultural society
    • Theme 2: References to ‘racisms’ past
    • Theme 3: Social status
    • Theme 4: Conversational tact – Everyday speech conventions
    • Theme 5: Emotional reactions to races
    • Theme 6: Reacting to everyday racism
    • Theme 7: “Race matters to me because I look different”
  • HOW IS RACE MANIFESTED IN EVERYDAY COMMUNICATION INTERACTIONS IN NEW ZEALAND?
  • THE SIGNIFICANCE OF RACE IN NEW ZEALAND
• CHAPTER 7: CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
  • RESOLVING MY MIXED-RACE DIALECTIC
  • LIMITATIONS
  • RECOMMENDATIONS
  • SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
• REFERENCES
• APPENDICES
  • APPENDIX A: PARTICIPANT INFORMATION FORM
  • APPENDIX B: PARTICIPANT CONSENT FORM
  • APPENDIX C: PROCEDURAL EXPLANATIONS
  • APPENDIX D: GUIDELINE SHEET FOR DIARIES
  • APPENDIX E: EXTRACT FROM A PARTICIPANT’S REFLEXIVE RESEARCH DIARY
  • APPENDIX F: DEBRIEFING SESSION MAIN CO-PARTICIPANT SHEET
  • APPENDIX G: DEBRIEFING SESSION CO-PARTICIPANT SHEET

Read the entire thesis here.

Brazilian Telenovelas and the Myth of Racial Democracy

Lexington Books
March 2012
136 pages
Size: 6 1/2 x 9 1/2
Hardback ISBN: 978-0-7391-6964-3
eBook ISBN: 978-0-7391-6965-0

Samantha Nogueira Joyce, Assistant Professor in Communication Studies
Indiana University, South Bend

Brazilian Telenovelas and the Myth of Racial Democracy, by Samantha Nogueira Joyce, examines what happens when a telenovela directly addresses matters of race and racism in contemporary Brazil. This investigation provides a traditional textual analysis of Duas Caras (2007-2008), a watershed telenovela for two main reasons: It was the first of its kind to present audiences with an Afro-Brazilian as the main hero, openly addressing race matters through plot and dialogue. Additionally, for the first time in the history of Brazilian television, the author of Duas Caras kept a web blog where he discussed the public’s reactions to the storylines, media discussions pertaining to the characters and plot, and directly engaged with fans and critics of the program.

Joyce combines her investigation of Duas Caras with a study of related media in order to demonstrate how the program introduced novel ideas about race and also offered a forum where varying perspectives on race, class, and racial relations in Brazil could be discussed. Brazilian Telenovelas is not a reception study in the traditional sense, it is not a story of entertainment-education in the strict sense, and it is not solely a textual analysis. Instead, Joyce’s text is a study of the social milieu that the telenovela (and especially Duas Caras) navigates, one that is a component of a contemporary progressive social movement in Brazil, and one that views the text as being located in social interactions. As such, this book reveals how telenovelas contribute to social change in a way that has not been fully explored in previous scholarship.

Table of Contents

• Chapter I – Episode 1: And Let There be White
• Chapter II – Black Flows: Duas Caras / The Legacy of Whitening and Racial Democracy
• Chapter III – “My Little Whitey” / “My Big, Delicious Negro:” Telenovelas, Duas Caras, and the Representation of Race
• Chapter IV – Deu no Blogão! (“It was in the Big Blog!”): Writing a Telenovela, a Blog, and a Metadiscourse
• Chapter V – Duas Caras as a New Approach to Social Merchandising
• Chapter VI – Conclusions
• References
• About the Author
• Index

Amalgamation Schemes: Antiblackness and the Critique of Multiracialism

University of Minnesota Press
2008
328 pages
6 x 9
Paper ISBN: 978-0-8166-5105-4; ISBN-10: 0-8166-5105-1
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8166-5104-7; ISBN-10: 0-8166-5104-3

Jared Sexton, Associate Professor of African American Studies and Film & Media Studies
University of California, Irvine

Questions the ramifications of multiracialism for progressive social change.

Despite being heralded as the answer to racial conflict in the post–civil rights United States, the principal political effect of multiracialism is neither a challenge to the ideology of white supremacy nor a defiance of sexual racism. More accurately, Jared Sexton argues in Amalgamation Schemes, multiracialism displaces both by evoking long-standing tenets of antiblackness and prescriptions for normative sexuality.

In this timely and penetrating analysis, Sexton pursues a critique of contemporary multiracialism, from the splintered political initiatives of the multiracial movement to the academic field of multiracial studies, to the melodramatic media declarations about “the browning of America.” He contests the rationales of colorblindness and multiracial exceptionalism and the promotion of a repackaged family values platform in order to demonstrate that the true target of multiracialism is the singularity of blackness as a social identity, a political organizing principle, and an object of desire. From this vantage, Sexton interrogates the trivialization of sexual violence under chattel slavery and the convoluted relationship between racial and sexual politics in the new multiracial consciousness.

An original and challenging intervention, Amalgamation Schemes posits that multiracialism stems from the conservative and reactionary forces determined to undo the gains of the modern civil rights movement and dismantle radical black and feminist politics.

Table of Contents

• Introduction: On the Verge of Race
• 1. Beyond the Event Horizon: The Multiracial Project
• 2. Scales of Coercion and Consent: Sexual Violence, Antimiscegenation, and the Limits of Multiracial America
• 3. There Is No (Interracial) Sexual Relationship
• 4. The Consequence of Race Mixture
• 5. The True Names of Race: Blackness and Antiblackness in Global Contexts
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index

Interracial Intimacy: Hegemonic Construction of Asian American and Black Relationships on TV Medical Dramas

Howard Journal of Communications
Volume 23, Issue 3 (2012)
pages 253-271
DOI: 10.1080/10646175.2012.695637

Myra Washington, Assistant Professor of Communication & Journalism
University of New Mexico

This article examines the representations of Black and Asian interracial relationships on prime-time television dramas, ER and Grey’s Anatomy. Interracial relationships are still a very small percentage of relationships depicted on television, and Black and Asian couplings represent an even smaller fraction, which makes examining the discourses surrounding these relationships valuable and illuminating. Using a close textual analysis of the discursive strategies that frame the representation of the Black and Asian characters in general, and the representations of their relationships with each other in the dramas specifically, I argue that the narrative arcs and racialized tropes maintain hegemonic racial hierarchies. The representations have the potential to be progressive and/or transgressive, but the death and destruction meted out to the couples ensures no couple reaches the dominant culture’s idea for romantic relationships: marriage and a baby.

Read the entire article here.

Jessica Ennis, Mo Farah and Identity Language in the British Press: A Case Study in Monitoring and Analysing Print Media

Migration Observatory
University of Oxford
2012-12-11
10 pages

William Allen, Senior Researcher

Scott Blinder, Senior Researcher

Introduction and context

Since July 2012, the Migration Observatory has been building the framework for a Media Monitoring Project. Its aim is to improve understanding of the coverage of migration and related issues in the British press. We are gathering a comprehensive set of articles from Britain’s national newspapers beginning in 2005 and to be continuously updated to the present on a weekly basis. These articles will include all mentions of migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers in British newspapers. From this large database (or ‘corpus’ of texts), we will get a sense not only of how much attention the press devotes to migration, but also the nature of coverage. This will include the general tone of coverage and the specific ways in which migrants are portrayed. We are interested in knowing, for example, if press is currently contributing to the widespread public perception of immigrants as asylum seekers (see the Migration Observatory report – Thinking behind the Numbers). This image may stem from high levels of asylum applications in the early 2000’s, or it may be partly the product of continued media coverage even with asylum numbers declining. Of course, simply describing and monitoring press coverage does not demonstrate a connection to public perceptions, but it can help us determine whether or not such a connection is plausible.

The media project will also be designed to respond flexibly to other questions, including those raised by organisations working on migration or related issues, from a wide range of perspectives. In this document we present results from the first such effort. The Observatory was commissioned by the think-tank British Future to investigate media use of languages of identity and origins in association with Jessica Ennis and Mo Farah.

Ennis and Farah were among the most discussed and admired British gold medallists in the Games. While clearly they were discussed mainly as athletes, their racial, ethnic, and religious background and relationships to migration were sometimes a matter of public discussion as well. Ennis is the British-born child of a white British mother and father of Jamaican/Afro-Caribbean origins (thus sometimes referred to as ‘mixed race’, although this term like many racial categories is inherently difficult to define precisely and may or may not be frequently used as a self-description). Farah, meanwhile, was born in Somalia and came to Britain as a child. He is also known to be Muslim, whereas Ennis’ religion does not appear to be a matter of public discussion. In the context of the London Olympics, a period widely thought to have produced an outpouring of national pride, their backgrounds seemed to figure in some discussions of the relationships among race, ethnicity, religion, national origins and British/English national identities.

The Migration Observatory was commissioned to attempt to quantify these trends in press coverage of both athletes, to help in discerning what sorts of identity language were most frequently used in connection with each of them. In particular, in commissioning this research, British Future were interested in finding out whether Ennis was described more in terms of her local origins (i.e. the ‘girl from Sheffield’) than her racial/ethnic background, and whether Farah described more as Somali-born than in terms of his more local origins after arriving in Britain as a child. Therefore, quantifying the presence of certain kinds of words in different types of coverage could help indicate the nature of discourses surrounding identity in British public life. The results presented below come from an analysis of the frequency of a set of identity-related words in press coverage mentioning Ennis and/or Farah. Although the words chosen were specified in advance by British Future to represent their hypotheses about the public identities of these two figures, the analysis was conducted independently by the Migration Observatory.

The analysis highlighted a few basic findings. In articles mentioning Ennis, her local origins in Sheffield were mentioned more frequently than her ethnic background, whether captured in terms of her father’s origins in Jamaica or in racial/ethnic terms such Afro-Caribbean, ‘black’, or ‘mixed race’. In articles mentioning Farah, Somalia was indeed much more common than any local origin terms. Notably, explicitly racial or ethnic terms were quite rare in these sets of articles, relative to other sorts of identity terms. There was some discussion of the so-called ‘mixed race’ category in articles mentioning Ennis, while race—at least as identified by the term ‘black’—did not arise in any significant measure in describing Farah. National identity terms appeared frequently in articles mentioning either or both athletes: ‘British’ was used in numerous ways, while ‘English’ often referred to the English language rather than English national identity, in relation to Farah’s arrival in Britain with no knowledge of the English language. Even in the absence of positive net migration, the population is projected to grow significantly in the future. Assuming net migration of zero at every age, the UK population is projected to reach 66 million by 2035 an increase of 6% from the 2010 level…

Read the entire report in HTML or PDF format.

Why? CNN’s “Black in America” and NPR’s “State of the Re:Union” Offer Up a Potpourri of Tragic Mulattoes Before a National Audience

We Are Respectable Negroes
2012-12-10

Chauncey DeVega

Watching CNN, and listening to NPR on Sunday night, reminded me that Imitation of Life was not just a movie or a play; for many of us, such stories of racial identity, confusion, denial, and shame are all too real.

CNN’s special on colorism and mixed race identity went as expected. It profiled many maladjusted young black people who would fail any brown paper bag test, yet have an almost pathological obsession with wanting to be white. I was laughing at the TV screen during the show because these brown complected black folks, who desperately want to “pass,” would have been better suited for a skit on Chappelle’s Show, than discussing matters of “race” and “culture” on national television.

As an antidote to such tragic mulattoes, Soledad O’Brien’s Black in America special also profiled some well-adjusted black people who understand that race is a fiction. Despite the “race” of their not black parent, they understand that the one drop rule prevails in the United States, and these individuals gain strength and grounding from their identities as Black Americans.

By comparison, NPR’s State of the Re:Union ran a much more powerful and important show on Sunday night. All aspects of the sad and twisted American obsession with race, and how it has damaged all of us, were on clear display there.

There is a cruel and plain truth which ties CNN’s “Black in America“, and NPR’s “Pike County, Ohio: As Black as We Wish to Be“, together…

Read the entire article here.