Mixed Race Studies

Robert De Niro gets candid about raising biracial children: It’s ‘scary’

Good Morning America
2020-06-12

Danielle Long

As people around the world continue to protest in support of black lives, parents are forced to have difficult discussions with their children about what’s happening — including Robert De Niro.

During an appearance on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” the 76-year-old actor, who has six biracial children, was asked, “Have you had the conversation about race with your kids?”

“My children are all half black and I don’t have … even me, I take certain things for granted,” he admitted.

The “Irishman” star said the topic is not one they discuss often but “they know” and shared how he can relate to other parents…

Read the story and watch the video here.

‘Big Mouth,’ ‘Central Park’ to Recast With Black Actors for Biracial Characters | THR News

The Hollywood Reporter
2020-06-24

Netflix’s animated series Big Mouth will recast the role of Missy — at the request of the actor who has voiced her thus far, Jenny Slate. Apple will also recast a biracial character, currently voiced by Kristen Bell, in its animated show Central Park.

Slate and Big Mouth’s creators said in social media posts Wednesday that they will cast a Black actor to voice the middle schooler in the future. The show has aired three seasons and is renewed through season six. The move comes as the industry continues to reckon with its record of inclusivity and representation amid nationwide anti-racist protests.

“At the start of the show, I reasoned with myself that it was permissible for me to play Missy because her mom is Jewish and White — as am I,” Slate wrote on Instagram. “But Missy is also Black, and Black characters on an animated show should be played by Black people.” (See her full statement below.)…

Read the entire article here.

City of Alexandria unveils marker to Louisiana’s first African-American governor

KALB-TV News Channel 5
Alexandria, Louisiana
2020-02-25

ALEXANDRIA, La. (City of Alexandria) – Alexandria Mayor Jeffrey W. Hall joined local historic preservation supporters Tuesday afternoon in the Alexander Fulton Mini Park downtown to unveil a historical marker in honor of P.B.S. Pinchback, Louisiana’s first African-American governor.

“It is fitting that we honor P.B.S. Pinchback, the first African-American Governor of Louisiana, during Black History Month,” Hall said. “Gov. Pinchback was a significant force in Louisiana politics during Reconstruction following the Civil War. And he traveled to Alexandria for meetings during his brief time as governor.”

Alexandria Mayor Jeffrey W. Hall (left) and local historian Michael Wynne unveil a historical marker in honor of P.B.S. Pinchback, Louisiana’s first African-American governor Tuesday afternoon. The marker, located in the Alexander Fulton Mini Park in downtown Alexandria, is the first one erected as part of the City of Alexandria’s new historical marker program designed to recognize historical events and people associated with Alexandria.

Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback was born in 1837 in Georgia to a white father, who was a planter, and a black mother who was a former slave. While he could have tried to pass for white, Pinchback embraced his African-American roots. During the Civil War and after the fall of New Orleans, Pinchback recruited the first set of African-American volunteer soldiers for the Union Army in Louisiana known as the 1st Louisiana Native Guards, and he served as its first Captain…

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This NC man was one of the most important Civil War leaders, but he was erased from history for 100 years

ABC11 (WTVD-TV)
Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina
2020-02-10

Cameron Clinard, Senior Digital Producer

Meet the most important Civil War leader you’ve never heard of

WILMINGTON, N.C. (WTVD) — One of the most important African American leaders of the late 1800s was born in North Carolina, but his accomplishments and influence vanished from history for 100 years.

Abraham Galloway was a spy, an insurgent, a statesman, a fierce advocate of the working class and a warrior against oppression and tyranny.

“When he did speaking tours in the North, he didn’t introduce Frederick Douglass as the main speaker of the night. Frederick Douglass introduced him as the main speaker of the night,” historian Dr. David Cecelski said.

Yet today, Frederick Douglass is a household name and central figure of study in American history, while Abraham Galloway is hardly known.

When Galloway died in 1870, approximately 6,000 people attended his funeral. Newspapers at the time reported that it was the largest funeral in North Carolina history.

“Everybody knew who Abraham Galloway was at that point,” Cecelski said…

Read the entire story here.

The Food of Taiwan Meet Cathy Erway-Author Interview

Miss Panda Chinese: Mandarin Chinese for Children
2015-05-16

Amanda Hsiung Blodget

The Food of Taiwan by Cathy Erway guides you to the food, the culture, and the people of Taiwan! Explore more authors in Interview with Miss Panda series.

Join this delicious Taiwanese cuisine discovery and heritage culture conversation with Cathy Erway, the author of THE FOOD OF TAIWAN: Recipes from the Beautiful Island. Cathy is also the author of The Art of Eating In, the blog Not Eating Out In New York and the host of “Eat Your Words” on Heritage Radio Network. I am delighted to share with you Cathy’s new book, The Food of Taiwan, which is among the very first to celebrate Taiwanese cooking and culture in English.

The Food of Taiwan! Watch the interview and find out how Cathy embraces her heritage culture through family and a semester of study abroad, why Taiwan is an island obsessed with food (good food!), what makes Taiwanese cooking unique, ingredients needed for making a Taiwanese dish, her hapa/mixed-race experience growing up and much more.

Read the entire article here.

Illusions: A Film by Julie Dash

Women Make Movies
1983
34 minutes
BW
16mm/DVD
Order No. 99306

Julie Dash, Director/Writer

This critically acclaimed drama from filmmaker Julie Dash (Daughers of the Dust) takes place in 1942 at a fictitious Hollywood motion picture studio.

The time is 1942, a year after Pearl Harbor; the place is National Studios, a fictitious Hollywood motion picture studio. Mignon Duprée, a Black woman studio executive who appears to be white and Ester Jeeter, an African American woman who is the singing voice for a white Hollywood star are forced to come to grips with a society that perpetuates false images as status quo. This highly-acclaimed drama by one of the leading African American women directors follows Mignon’s dilemma, Ester’s struggle and the use of cinema in wartime Hollywood: three illusions in conflict with reality.

For more information, click here.

Approaching Conceptions of “Blackness” and “Mixed-Race” in Legal Scholarship and Housing Segregation

The Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration
Yale University
2019-11-13

Zaire Dinzey-Flores, Associate Professor of Latino and Caribbean Studies at Rutgers University and Tanya Herńandez, Archibald R. Murray Professor of Law at Fordham University discuss “Approaching Conceptions of “Blackness” and “Mixed-Race” in Legal Scholarship and Housing Segregation.”

The Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration (RITM) hosted the discussion. To learn more about the Center visit ritm.yale.edu.

Hazel Carby: Where Are You From?

Duke Franklin Humanities Institute
2018-11-05

An account of how a young black girl, growing up in South London, had to learn to negotiate the racial fictions of post World War Two Britain, drawn from Dr. Carby’s forthcoming book, “Imperial Intimacies” (Verso 2019).

Hazel Carby is Charles C. & Dorothea S. Dilley Professor of African American Studies & American Studies and the Director of the Initiative on Race, Gender, and Globalization at Yale University. Born in postwar UK, trained at the University of Birmingham under Stuart Hall’s mentorship, she is a foundational scholar of US black feminist intellectual history. Her books include Reconstructing Womanhood (1987), Race Men (1998), and Cultures in Babylon (1999). She was named the 2014 recipient of the Jay B. Hubbell Medal for Lifetime Achievement in American Literary Studies.

Co-directed by Richard Powell, Jasmine Nichole Cobb, and Lamonte Aidoo, the From Slavery to Freedom Lab examines the life and afterlives of slavery and emancipation, linking Duke University to the Global South.

Watch the address here.

Love Warriors: Arming Ourselves with Radical Love | Olivia Robinson | TEDxPepperdineUniversity

TEDx Talks
2019-10-02

Olivia Robinson

What does love as a confrontation strategy look like?

Olivia Robinson, a Pepperdine University student, conveys how to weaponize love in order to fortify one’s own righteous cause and combat oppressive systems. Olivia Robinson is a junior at Pepperdine University majoring in Integrated Marketing Communications and Rhetoric and Leadership. Olivia has been heavily involved in campus events throughout her time at Pepperdine, and has spearheaded conversations related to diversity and inclusion, impactful leadership, gender-based violence, and a vast array of other topics.

She currently serves as the Co-Vice President of the university’s Black Student Association. Olivia’s passion for social justice has given her opportunities to write articles for the NAACP Washington, D.C. Branch and for the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina in Buenos Aires. As a woman committed to expanding the boundaries of community and creating platforms for the hushed to be heard, Olivia desires to invigorate others to love more.

#ArtistatCB: Genevieve Gaignard on “Black is Beautiful”

Crystal Bridges Museum of Art
Bentonville, Arkansas
2019-03-13

Genevieve Gaignard

“I photograph myself to talk about how we navigate through the world and how others see us.”

Genevieve Gaignard is a Los Angeles-based artist whose work focuses on photographic self-portraiture, sculpture, and installation to explore race, femininity, class, and their various intersections. The daughter of a black father and white mother, Gaignard’s youth was marked by a strong sense of invisibility. Was her family white enough to be white? Black enough to be black? Gaignard interrogates notions of “passing” in an effort to address these questions…

Read the entire article here.