Mixed Race Studies

Race and Narrative in Italian Women’s Writing Since Unification

Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
July 2013
127 pages
ISBN: 9781611475999

Melissa Coburn, Assistant Professor of Italian and Italian Program Director
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Race and Narrative in Italian Women’s Writing Since Unification explores racist ideas and critiques of racism in four long narratives by female authors Grazia Deledda, Matilde Serao, Natalia Ginzburg, and Gabriella Ghermandi, who wrote in Italy after national unification. Starting from the premise that race is a political and sociohistorical construction, Melissa Coburn makes the argument that race is also a narrative construction. This is true in that many narratives have contributed to the historical construction of the idea of race; it is also true in that the concept of race metaphorically reflects certain formal qualities of narration. Coburn demonstrates that at least four sets of qualities are common among narratives and also central to the development of race discourse: intertextuality; the processes of characterization, plot, and tropes; the tension between the projections of individual, group, and universal identities; and the processes of identification and otherness. These four sets of qualities become the organizing principles of the four sequential chapters, paralleling a sequential focus on the four different narrative authors. The juxtaposition of these close, contextualized readings demonstrates salient continuities and discontinuities within race discourse over the period examined, revealing subtleties in the historical record overlooked by previous studies.

Walking While Black in the ‘White Gaze’

The New York Times
2013-09-01

George Yancy, Professor of Philosophy
Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

“Man, I almost blew you away!”

Those were the terrifying words of a white police officer — one of those who policed black bodies in low income areas in North Philadelphia in the late 1970s — who caught sight of me carrying the new telescope my mother had just purchased for me.

“I thought you had a weapon,” he said.

The words made me tremble and pause; I felt the sort of bodily stress and deep existential anguish that no teenager should have to endure.

This officer had already inherited those poisonous assumptions and bodily perceptual practices that make up what I call the “white gaze.” He had already come to “see” the black male body as different, deviant, ersatz. He failed to conceive, or perhaps could not conceive, that a black teenage boy living in the Richard Allen Project Homes for very low income families would own a telescope and enjoyed looking at the moons of Jupiter and the rings of Saturn.

A black boy carrying a telescope wasn’t conceivable — unless he had stolen it — given the white racist horizons within which my black body was policed as dangerous. To the officer, I was something (not someone) patently foolish, perhaps monstrous or even fictional. My telescope, for him, was a weapon.

In retrospect, I can see the headlines: “Black Boy Shot and Killed While Searching the Cosmos.”

That was more than 30 years ago. Only last week, our actual headlines were full of reflections on the 1963 March on Washington, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, and President Obama’s own speech at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to commemorate it 50 years on. As the many accounts from that long ago day will tell you, much has changed for the better. But some things — those perhaps more deeply embedded in the American psyche — haven’t. In fact, we should recall a speech given by Malcolm X in 1964 in which he said, “For the 20 million of us in America who are of African descent, it is not an American dream; it’s an American nightmare.”…

…The president’s words, perhaps consigned to a long-ago news cycle now, remain powerful: they validate experiences that blacks have undergone in their everyday lives. Obama’s voice resonates with those philosophical voices (Frantz Fanon, for example) that have long attempted to describe the lived interiority of racial experiences. He has also deployed the power of narrative autobiography, which is a significant conceptual tool used insightfully by critical race theorists to discern the clarity and existential and social gravity of what it means to experience white racism. As a black president, he has given voice to the epistemic violence that blacks often face as they are stereotyped and profiled within the context of quotidian social spaces…

Read the entire opinion piece here.

Let’s Learn From the Past: Cumberland Posey Jr.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
2013-08-29

Michele Sneddon, History Center Communications Assistant

As a standout player, manager and owner, Cumberland Willis Posey Jr. built the Homestead Grays into one of the most successful franchises in Negro League baseball history.

Born on June 20, 1890, Posey grew up in a wealthy African-American household in Homestead. His father, Cumberland “Cap” Posey Sr., was general manager for the Delta Coal Co., president of Diamond Coal and Coke, and president of the Pittsburgh Courier Publishing Co., which became one of the nation’s most influential African-American newspapers.

At Homestead High School, Posey starred as a power-hitting right fielder on the baseball diamond, a fullback on the football field and a dominant guard on the basketball court. Posey attended Penn State University and then the University of Pittsburgh before landing at the Pittsburgh Catholic College of the Holy Ghost, now Duquesne University. He played basketball there and led his team in scoring for three years as “Charles Cumbert,” a fake name used to gain eligibility as a “white” player. While Posey never graduated from college, he established a reputation as one of the region’s top athletes…

Read the entire article here.

Mixed People: “Natural Bridges” to Racial Healing & Utopia?

Mixed Race Radio
Blog Talk Radio
2013-09-04, 16:00Z (12:00 EDT)

Tiffany Rae Reid, Host

Rainier Spencer, Senior Advisor to the President; Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies; Founder and Director of the Afro-American Studies Program
University of Nevada, Las Vegas

On today’s episode of Mixed Race Radio we will meet Rainier Spencer, Professor of Afro-American Studies in the Interdisciplinary Degrees Program at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). He has authored three books: 1) Reproducing Race: The Paradox of Generation Mix, Lynne Rienner, 2011; 2) Challenging Multiracial Identity, Lynne Rienner, 2006 and; 3) Spurious Issues: Race and Multiracial Identity Politics in the United States, Westview, 1999.  All this and he currently serves as Senior Advisor to the UNLV President.

Dr. Spencer is the founder and director of the Afro-American Studies Program at UNLV and is considered one of the founders of the field of critical mixed-race theory. While his research interest is in multiracial identity from the perspective of racial skepticism, including the ways that multiracial identity is implicated in the reification of biological race his interdisciplinary teaching interests include Afro-American history and popular culture as well as American slavery. In addition to writing numerous anthology chapters in this field of study, Rainier Spencer has been interviewed by and has provided commentary for the New York Times, has appeared on both American & Canadian television to discuss mixed-race identity, and is a featured speaker in the documentary film Multiracial Identity (Abacus Productions, 2010).

Using his book, Reproducing Race: The Paradox of Generation Mix as the foundation for today’s episode, we will discuss the long held view that mixed race people are somehow supposed to serve as a bridge to unite all people,

“But what of the notion that black/white persons are in themselves natural bridges for the facilitation of racial healing and reconciliation? It should come as no surprise that this is a biological argument dressed up in sociological attire.” —Rainier Spencer

For more information, click here.

Being Mixed Race: Am I A Human Rorschach Test?

Media Diversity UK: Tackling the lack of diversity in UK media and the ubiquity of whiteness
2013-09-03

Glen Chisholm

Just last week I was standing at a bus stop when a gentleman; a complete stranger came and joined me. Nothing unusual about that, we then politely nodded at each other and a conversation started up.

Me: “Evening”

Stranger: “Evening”

Me: “it’s still quite warm isn’t it”

Stranger: “yes it is”; pause; “excuse me mate, but were do you come from?”

Me: “Ipswich”

Stranger: “no, you know, were do you originate from”

Me: “I originate from Ipswich, my mum is English and my dad is Jamaican”

Stranger, sounding surprised: “Really I wouldn’t have thought you were Black, I’d have thought you were Italian or Spanish or something”

Me, politely smiles: “yeah, I sometimes get that”

Now I wasn’t offended by this and this wasn’t the first time or probably won’t be the last time that I’ll have this conversation. I am a light skinned mixed race person with loose curly hair. I have spent most of my life with people questioning my racial identity and for a while I was left questioning it myself…

Read the entire article here.