Mixed Race Studies

Now is the time for a mixed-race dialogue

The Puget Sound Trail
University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, Washington
2015-03-27

Angelica Spearwoman

Conversations about race both on and off campus have been going on for a while. On campus, a new dialogue about mixed race has started. In navigating the many complexities of race, people of mixed race have the unique ability to identify with different ethnic identities. Being of mixed race is also starting to become more and more common.

The 2010 Census showed that people who reported multiple races grew by a greater percentage than those reporting a single race. According to the 2010 Census brief The Two or More Races Population: 2010, the population reporting multiple races (9.0 million) grew by 32.0 percent from 2000 to 2010, compared with those who reported a single race, which grew by 9.2 percent…

…Sophomore Mary Ferreira-Wallace commented on the topic of mixed race.

“I think the mixed-race dialogue should have happened years ago. We only have these difficult conversations when something bad happens,” Ferreira-Wallace said.

“When people ask me “what are you?”—it used to bother me and make me feel like an exotic animal. There are now more people that look like me. It’s not a bad thing to look different today—it’s more common and celebrated,” Ferreira-Wallace said…

…Sophomore Marisa Christensen also commented on the topic of mixed race and offered a very new and exciting view on the role mixed-race people can play in the coming years…

…Christensen’s view is the perfect representation of how people of mixed race can change the dialogue surrounding race in years to come. Being of mixed race gives people a unique perspective on the race dialogue because they aren’t focused on ‘othering’ a different group but instead viewing people as individuals with unique stories. People of mixed race offer a unique perspective and the conversation surrounding people of mixed race should continue…

Read the entire article here.

The Undertaker’s Daughter

University of Pittsburgh Press
October 2011
104 pages
6 x 9
ISBN: 9780822962007

Toi Derricotte, Professor of English
University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

View the Table of Contents here. Read a selection from the book here.

Yes, the new ‘Daily Show’ host is black. And he’s spent his career making fun of African Americans.

The Washington Post
2015-03-31

Wendy Todd, Social Media Coordinator
St. Louis Public Radio, St. Louis, Missouri

So much for that “fresh perspective” on race.

News that Trevor Noah would replace Jon Stewart as the new host of “The Daily Show” brought a collective round of applause for the South African comedian and his “fresh” perspective and “fresh takes on race.” Critics have long lamented the lack of color among late-night TV hosts, and now a black man has gotten one of the plum hosting gigs.

Noah might look like an enlightened choice, but his routines show he isn’t — his jokes often hinge on insulting African Americans.

Back in 2012, Noah made his first American appearance, on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.” The bulk of his routine was composed of jokes about black Americans. The United States, he said, was not “the America he was promised,” and “America has the credit of a black man.”…

Read the entire article here.

The Black Notebooks: An Interior Journey

W. W. Norton & Company
June 1999
208 pages
5.1 × 8 in
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-393-31901-9

Toi Derricotte, Professor of English
University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

The Black Notebooks is one of the most extraordinary and courageous accounts of race in this country, seen through the eyes of a light-skinned black woman and a respected American poet. It challenges all our preconceived notions of what it means to be black or white, and what it means to be human.

Captivity

University of Pittsburgh Press
November 1989
88 pages
5 1/2 x 8 1/2
ISBN: 9780822954224

Toi Derricotte, Professor of English
University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

What are the forces that cause us to strike out and harm each other? Captivity explores the way in which the individual is held hostage by society; how the forces of racism, sexism, and classism frequently express themselves as violence within the family. The book also explores a deeper captivity, like the Jews in Egypt yearning for the Promised Land, the soul trapped in exile from God.

View the table of contents here.

Racial identity is not merely a matter of appearance or genetics, but is one factor combined with social and cultural experiences that have shaped each person’s racial experience. Policing how multiracial people chose to identify neglects our right to understand the experiences that we feel best reflect ourselves.

Audrey Majors, “Redefining — by not defining — biracialism,” The Daily Illini, (March 31, 2015). http://www.dailyillini.com/opinion/columns/article_6ff729b4-d711-11e4-9575-0f53ae9eeb99.html.

Gorgeous Black-And-White Portraits Explore The Meaning Of Multiracial Identities

The Huffington Post
2015-03-30

Katherine Brooks, Senior Arts & Culture Editor

“I began this project because I recognized that I was part of a underrepresented group of people,” artist Samantha Wall explained in an email to HuffPost. “It’s difficult to talk about multiraciality with individuals who can’t understand our perspective. It’s not as simple as being part this and part that, our identities can’t be so easily divided. But art is a language that lends itself to communicating experiences too difficult to comprehend through words alone.”

For her project “Indivisible,” Wall explores the meaning of multiracial identities in Korea and the United States through a series of black-and-white portraits. The images show models staring fearlessly at the viewer, flashing a smile, a laugh and sometimes even a grimace. Wall’s charcoal and ink illustrations attempt to convey, as she notes, a feeling that words cannot. “Through this work I am exposing the plurality of emotions that sculpt human subjectivity,” she writes on her website. “The drawings of these women are portals into the human psyche, a place where emotions call out and perceived racial boundaries dissolve.”…

Read the entire article here…

New Book Explores Role of Race for First Lady Michelle Obama

Time
2015-03-30

Maya Rhodan, Reporter

Author paints the First Lady as the President’s rock, notes the impact her background would have on her future as the nation’s first black First Lady

During her senior year at Princeton University, First Lady Michelle Obama couldn’t imagine she would live to see the election of the nation’s first African American, let alone be married to him. “To say that during her Princeton years she could not envision an African American president is like saying that the sun rises and sets every day,” writes Northwestern University Professor Peter Slevin in his upcoming biography, Michelle Obama: A Life…

…Even in a short blurb about the Obamas’ budding romance, the author notes that Michelle’s mother Marian at one point worried that Barack’s biracial background would make navigating society’s prejudices difficult. In the end, though, she accepted the future President who she said “shared the values of [their] family.”…

Read the entire article here.

Redefining — by not defining — biracialism

The Daily Illini: The independent student newspaper at the University of Illinois since 1871
Tuesday, 2015-03-31

Audrey Majors, Opinions columnist

Last week controversy arose over Japan’s 2015 Miss Universe contestant, Ariana Miyamoto, because she’s biracial— something critics, many of whom are Japanese, have taken issue with. Miyamoto has an African-American father and does not look like what most people imagine a traditional Japanese woman to look like.

As several news outlets have pointed out, Miyamoto speaks Japanese, lived most of her childhood in Japan and has a Japanese mother. Much of the discussion in defense of Miyamoto has consisted of the idea that these qualities make her Japanese, despite her biracial status. While I applaud the well-intentioned support for Miyamoto’s chosen racial identity, any legitimation of her race is unneeded because each person should be the sole authority of their racial identity.

I firmly believe no one should have to defend their chosen racial identity. And it sure as hell isn’t okay for anyone to police or undermine the racial identity someone has chosen. Even though the United States is more racially diverse than Japan, this type of exclusion exists here, too. And it will continue to exist everywhere until we change the way we think about racial categories and stereotypes…

…Racial identity is not merely a matter of appearance or genetics, but is one factor combined with social and cultural experiences that have shaped each person’s racial experience. Policing how multiracial people chose to identify neglects our right to understand the experiences that we feel best reflect ourselves…

Read the entire article here.