Mixed Race Studies

I’m black, British and just moved to New York. After the Eric Garner decision, I can’t breathe

The Guardian
London, United Kingdom
2014-12-06

Lanre Bakare, Commissioning Editor
Guardian US, New York, New York

Before I moved to the US, I knew their names: Rodney King. Michael Stewart. Trayvon Martin. Vonderrit Myers Jr. Kajieme Powell. I committed them to memory like Stephen Lawrence and Anthony Walker – young black men killed or violently beaten by police or vigilantes, black people killed in a system designed to hold them back, keep them down and then brazenly deny that was ever the intention.

Watching the aftermath of those deaths from the distance of the UK was one thing: as a black British man I identified with it, yet I never felt it. But being in America, it’s more infuriating, more frightening – and more personal, because now I walk these streets. It’s a reality. Not just something that happens in a country thousands of miles away. I have begun to understand what James Baldwin meant when he wrote: “To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.”

On Wednesday, when a grand jury here in New York failed to find a reason to even send to trial a white police officer who choked the life out of a black man, I finally got it. As I sat on the subway to my new home in Brooklyn, the image of Eric Garner stumbling after six cops dragged him to the ground – the sound of him wheezing “I can’t breathe” – would not leave me. I got home and watched his widow and his mother talk about the lack of humanity in the man who killed him. I thought about Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing, about Radio Raheem and how it was disgusting that a movie based on another killing – one that took place more than more than 20 years ago – could play out, almost frame for frame, in 2014…

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“So, to say Obama is progress is saying that he’s the first black person that is qualified to be president. That’s not black progress. That’s white progress. There’s been black people qualified to be president for hundreds of years. If you saw Tina Turner and Ike having a lovely breakfast over there, would you say their relationship’s improved? Some people would. But a smart person would go, “Oh, he stopped punching her in the face.” It’s not up to her. Ike and Tina Turner’s relationship has nothing to do with Tina Turner. Nothing. It just doesn’t. The question is, you know, my kids are smart, educated, beautiful, polite children. There have been smart, educated, beautiful, polite black children for hundreds of years. The advantage that my children have is that my children are encountering the nicest white people that America has ever produced. Let’s hope America keeps producing nicer white people.”

—Chris Rock

Frank Rich, “In Conversation: Chris Rock,” New York Magazine. November 30, 2014. http://www.vulture.com/2014/11/chris-rock-frank-rich-in-conversation.html.

Conference Recap

DePaul Magazine
December 2014 (2014-12-16)

For the third biennial Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference, hosted at DePaul last month, participants could be heard speaking in British, Finnish, Japanese, Australian and Canadian accents, among others. This medley of voices perfectly encapsulated the theme of this year’s conference, Global Mixed Race. Co-organizers Camilla Fojas, Vincent de Paul professor and director of Latin American and Latino Studies, LGBTQ Studies and Critical Ethnic Studies, and Laura Kina, Vincent de Paul professor of art, media and design, chose this theme in recognition of the widening scope of critical mixed race studies in its comparative, transnational and global dimensions.

The emerging field of critical mixed race studies (CMRS) focuses on the institutionalization of social, cultural and political orders based on dominant conceptions of race. CMRS theorists, who come from many different disciplines, engage with issues of systemic injustice, the mutability of race and racial boundaries, and processes of racialization and social stratification. “We are here to create an inclusive community that honors the dignity of all individuals,” said Sara Furr, director of the Center for Intercultural Programs. “This conference truly embodies DePaul’s commitment to social justice.”…

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The Obamas: How We Deal with Our Own Racist Experiences

People Magazine
2014-12-17

Sandra Sobieraj Westfall

Barack and Michelle Obama (Gillian Laub)

The Obamas open up about raising their daughters, the impact of stereotypes, and what’s on the POTUS dance party playlist.

The protective bubble that comes with the presidency – the armored limo, the Secret Service detail, the White House – shields Barack and Michelle Obama from a lot of unpleasantness. But their encounters with racial prejudice aren’t as far in the past as one might expect. And they obviously still sting.

“I think people forget that we’ve lived in the White House for six years,” the first lady told People, laughing wryly, along with her husband, at the assumption that the first family has been largely insulated from coming face-to-face with racism.

“Before that, Barack Obama was a black man that lived on the South Side of Chicago, who had his share of troubles catching cabs,” Mrs. Obama said in the Dec. 10 interview appearing in the new issue of People.

In a 30-minute conversation, the president and Mrs. Obama candidly added their stories to the national discussion of race and racial profiling that was sparked by the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York.

“There’s no black male my age, who’s a professional, who hasn’t come out of a restaurant and is waiting for their car and somebody didn’t hand them their car keys,” said the president, adding that, yes, it had happened to him…

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When White People See Themselves With Black Skin, Something Interesting Happens

The Huffington Post
2014-12-15

Anna Almendrala, Healthy Living Editor

Macrina Cooper-White, Associate Science Editor

The antidote to racism partly lies in empathy, or the willingness to “walk a mile in someone else’s shoes,” as the saying goes. But scientists from universities across Europe are taking the maxim one step further, providing people an opportunity to experience life in someone else’s skin by experimenting with virtual reality as a means of helping people shed racial stereotypes.

Researchers from London and Barcelona teamed up to discuss their recent experiments on virtual reality and race in an opinion piece for the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences, published Dec. 15. The researchers found that if people got the chance to physically experience their own body with different skin colors (or ages and sexes), their unconscious biases against other racial groups could be diminished.

This isn’t merely a question of changing mentality or perception. The experience of “living” in different skin triggers sensory signals in the brain that allow it to expand its understanding of what a body can look like. This can “cause people to change their attitudes about others,” wrote the study’s co-researcher, Professor Mel Slater, a part-time professor of virtual environments at the University College London and research professor at the University of Barcelona…

Read the entire article here.