Mixed Race Studies

What is Racial Passing?

Digital Studios: Origin of Everything
PBS Digital Studios
Public Broadcasting Service
Season 2, Episode 13 (First Aired: 2019-02-27)

Danielle Bainbridge, Host, Writer, and Postdoctoral Fellow
Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois

What motivates someone to disguise their race, gender, religion, etc.? Today Danielle explores the complicated history of passing in the United States.

France Winddance Twine | Digging Up the Past: Race & Class in Brazil

Duke Franklin Humanities Institute
Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
2019-02-11

The From Slavery to Freedom Lab welcomed France Winddance Twine on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the publication of her book, “Racism in a Racial Democracy: The Maintenance of White Supremacy in Brazil.” Dr. Twine reflected on intersectionality and racial, gender, and class politics in Brazil and the future of Brazilian Studies.

France Winddance Twine is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is an ethnographer, a feminist race theorist, and a documentary filmmaker, whose research focuses on multiple dimensions of inequality. Twine’s research provides case studies for a nuanced analysis of the intersections of race, class, sexuality and gender inequality. Twine has conducted extensive field research on both sides of the Atlantic including: Brazil, Britain, and the United States. She is the author and editor of ten books including: Racism in a Racial Democracy: The Maintenance of White Supremacy in Brazil; A White Side of Black Britain: Interracial Intimacy and Racial Literacy; Geographies of Privilege; Outsourcing the Womb: Race, Class, and Gestational Surrogacy in the Global Market; and Girls with Guns: Firearms, Feminism and Militarism.

Drawing inspiration from John Hope Franklin’s path-breaking 1947 study, the “From Slavery to Freedom” Franklin Humanities Lab seeks to examine the life and afterlives of slavery and emancipation, linking Duke University to the Global South.

The Franklin Institute Speaker Series: Does Race Exist? (9/12/18)

The Franklin Institute
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
2018-09-13

On September 12, 2018, as part of The Franklin Institute Speaker Series, University of Pennsylvania professors Sarah Tishkoff and Dorothy Roberts joined The Franklin Institute’s chief bioscientist Jayatri Das for a program titled “Does Race Exist? Exploring the Future of Genetics, Ancestry, and Medicine.”

The Problems With Raced Based Medicine

LabRoots
2019-02-18

Abbie Arce

Race is often used in medicine to evaluate symptoms, make diagnoses, and decide on a course of care. These systems of evaluation are often inaccurate representations of reality, based on stereotypes.

For example, minorities are much less likely to be prescribed pain medication based on these kinds of preconceived notions about race. This type of race-based medicine has a way of blinding doctors to other more important factors such as an individual’s family or social history, symptoms, or related illnesses…

Read the entire article here.

Artists on Artists: Genevieve Gaignard on Real Worlds: Brassaï, Arbus, Goldin

MOCA
Museum of Contemporary Art
Los Angeles, California
2019-01-24

Genevieve Gaignard’s work mixes elements of self-portraiture, collage, and sculpture to present nuanced issues surrounding race, beauty, and cultural identity. Gaignard’s staged photographs create a platform for what she calls “persona-play-performances” within these spaces. The performances enacted within her photographic works are a combination of autobiography and allegory. Responding to the photographs on view in Real Worlds: Brassaï, Arbus, Goldin, Gaignard will expand on how these three legendary practitioners have influenced her own photographic work.

Thomas Jefferson’s descendants unite over a troubled past

CBS This Morning
CBS News
2019-02-14

At the expansive Monticello Estate in Virginia, there sits a simple room with white walls, brick floors and a single silhouette that represents the life of Sally Hemings, one of Thomas Jefferson’s more than 600 slaves.

Presidential estates have long struggled with how to present the founding era exceptionalism along with the full history. The latest installation at Monticello, the Sally Hemming’s exhibit, gives the most personal look yet at a shameful chapter in American history. The exhibit takes a definitive stance on her relationship with Thomas Jefferson and the children they had together. A story once hidden now has the spotlight.

Lucian Truscott is Jefferson’s sixth-great-grandson. Shannon Lanier is also Jefferson’s sixth-great-grandson — but from Hemings’ side.

As a Jefferson descendant, Truscott said he was given run of Monticello, even jumping on his ancestor’s bed. Lanier’s story is a little different…

Watch the story here.

Naomi Osaka And The Expectations Put Upon Biracial Japanese

Kotaku East
Kotaku
2019-01-31

Brian Ashcraft
Osaka, Japanese

Screenshot: ANNnewsCH

Earlier this week, Naomi Osaka fielded a question from a Japanese reporter who wanted the tennis star to reply in Japanese. “I’m going to say it in English,” Osaka replied.

The reporter said kongurachureeshon (congratulations) instead of omedetou gozaimasu, Japanese for “congratulations,” before going into a question about the difficulty of playing the left-handed player Petra Kvitová. “First,” the reporter continued, “in Japanese, could you say something about how hard it was?”…

Read the entire article here.

Tennis Star Naomi Osaka Doesn’t Like Attention. She’s About to Get a Ton of It.

TIME
2019-01-10

Sean Gregory, Senior Writer

On a wet December morning in a South Florida weight room, the 21-year-old who stunned Serena Williams at the U.S. Open is hard at work preparing to show that the biggest moment of her life was more than a fluke. As an arrow flashes on an iPad in front of her, Naomi Osaka darts in the direction it signals, pauses, then pivots when it sends her the other way, without missing a step. Her coach, Sascha Bajin, joins the drill but leaps the wrong way and almost lands on Osaka’s ankle. Bajin feigns horror, prompting fellow pro tour player Monica Puig to suggest Osaka give her coach a hug. “She gives hugs like no other,” Bajin says, his sarcasm thicker than midsummer heat. “I only hug people I like,” Osaka parries…

Read the entire article here.

This edition: Moiya McTier, Mekita Rivas and Tanya Hernandez

Shades of U.S.
CUNY TV
The City University of New York
Original tape date: 2018-10-19
First aired: 2019-01-17

From a cabin in the woods without running water to astronomy Ph.D. candidate, Moiya McTier uses her platform to advocate for women of color in the sciences. Then, growing up Filipina and Mexican in Nebraska could be confusing, but Mekita Rivas finds her style as a fashion journalist. And last, Hell’s Kitchen-bred Tanya Hernández knows discrimination first hand, so she builds a legal career fighting it.

Guest List

• Tanya Hernández Professor of Law, Fordham University [and author of Multiracials and Civil Rights: Mixed-Race Stories of Discrimination]
• Moiya McTier PhD Candidate, Columbia University
• Mekita Rivas Freelance Writer

Watch the entire episode (00:26:46) here.

What it’s like to be Black and Argentine

BBC News
2018-12-31

Reporter: Celestina Olulode
Produced by Hannah Green and Hannah Gelbart for the BBC News at Ten.

Black people have had a huge influence on Argentina’s history, but now they make up only one percent of the population of Buenos Aires.

Afro-Argentines, whose families descended from the slave trade, often feel like they’ve been written out of history and are mistaken for foreigners in their own country.

Watch the story here.