Mixed Race Studies

Measuring Manhood: Race and the Science of Masculinity, 1830–1934

University of Minnesota Press
September 2015
368 pages
32 b&w photos
5 1/2 x 8 1/2
Paper ISBN 978-0-8166-7303-2
Cloth ISBN 978-0-8166-7302-5

Melissa N. Stein, Assistant Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies
University of Kentucky

From the “gay gene” to the “female brain” and African American students’ insufficient “hereditary background” for higher education, arguments about a biological basis for human difference have reemerged in the twenty-first century. Measuring Manhood shows where they got their start.

Melissa N. Stein analyzes how race became the purview of science in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America and how it was constructed as a biological phenomenon with far-reaching social, cultural, and political resonances. She tells of scientific “experts” who advised the nation on its most pressing issues and exposes their use of gender and sex differences to conceptualize or buttress their claims about racial difference. Stein examines the works of scientists and scholars from medicine, biology, ethnology, and other fields to trace how their conclusions about human difference did no less than to legitimize sociopolitical hierarchy in the United States.

Covering a wide range of historical actors from Samuel Morton, the infamous collector and measurer of skulls in the 1830s, to NAACP leader and antilynching activist Walter White in the 1930s, this book reveals the role of gender, sex, and sexuality in the scientific making⎯and unmaking⎯of race.

European Others: Queering Ethnicity in Postnational Europe

University of Minnesota Press
2011
304 pages
6 b&w photos
5 1/2 x 8 1/2
Paper ISBN 978-0-8166-7016-1
Cloth ISBN 978-0-8166-7015-4

Fatima El-Tayeb, Professor of African-American Literature and Culture
University of California, San Diego

European Others offers an interrogation into the position of racialized communities in the European Union, arguing that the tension between a growing nonwhite, non-Christian population and insistent essentialist definitions of Europeanness produces new forms of identity and activism. Moving beyond disciplinary and national limits, Fatima El-Tayeb explores structures of resistance, tracing a Europeanization from below in which migrant and minority communities challenge the ideology of racelessness that places them firmly outside the community of citizens.

Using a notable variety of sources, from drag performances to feminist Muslim activism and Euro hip-hop, El-Tayeb draws on the largely ignored archive of vernacular culture central to resistance by minority youths to the exclusionary nationalism that casts them as threatening outcasts. At the same time, she reveals the continued effect of Europe’s suppressed colonial history on the representation of Muslim minorities as the illiberal Other of progressive Europe.

Presenting a sharp analysis of the challenges facing a united Europe seen by many as a model for twenty-first-century postnational societies, El-Tayeb combines theoretical influences from both sides of the Atlantic to lay bare how Europeans of color are integral to the continent’s past, present, and, inevitably, its future.

Contents

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Theorizing Urban Minority Communities in Postnational Europe
• 1. “Stranger in My Own Country”: European Identities, Migration, and Diasporic Soundscapes
• 2. Dimensions of Diaspora: Women of Color Feminism, Black Europe, and Queer Memory Discourses
• 3. Secular Submissions: Muslim Europeans, Female Bodies, and Performative Politics
• 4. “Because It Is Our Stepfatherland”: Queering European Public Spaces
• Conclusion: “An Infinite and Undefinable Movement”
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index

My Face is a Face of Asian America

Hapa Mama: Asian Fusion Family and Food
2015-11-14

Candace Kita

“Blending in” has never been my strong suit. As a generally shy and rather bookish individual, I have always wished that I could more naturally fit seamlessly into my surroundings. However, my inability to blend into established categories–particularly in regards to race–unexpectedly led me to become the Asian American community activist that I am today.

As a hapa Japanese American growing up in the flat plains of suburban Chicago, I knew that I stood out from a very young age. I looked different from the rest of my family, and especially from my mom, who was my primary caretaker. A second-generation Swedish American, my mother embodies the Scandinavian archetype: tall, lean, blonde, and blue-eyed. I, on the other hand, was a racially ambiguous, chubby, Asian-ish child with a chocolate brown mushroom cut. Although my mother and I sometimes sported matching Hanna Andersson sweater sets (not that I had much say at age two, mind you), clothing was not enough to prevent the attention and astonishment that came from our largely mono-ethnic community. Once, on a family shopping trip to the neighborhood grocery store, a stranger oohed over my almond-shaped eyes, pointed to me and asked my mother, “Where did you get her from?” Due to my “look,” my mother’s womb was clearly not his first assumption. I was a foreigner two blocks away from my childhood home…

Read the entire article here.

The Mixed-Race in-betweeners

The Columbia Spectator
New York, New York
2015-11-12

Keenan Smith

I am Mixed-Race. I am both Black and white. I am also American and have therefore been raised in a culture that seems to be constantly divided along racial boundaries, whether they are in campus diversity and inclusion programs or identity-based organizations, with little regard for those of us who fall among the shades of gray.

Regardless of how those of us on the grayscale identify, we are often forced by society to pick a side, whether it be on college applications or social circles. We are encouraged to choose only one lineage, to look at our racial background and choose which identity we will bear.

Because I am biracial, choosing a background has meant recognizing the fact that one of my racial identities is responsible for the oppression of the other. This internal struggle has been illustrated by current events like the #BlackLivesMatter movement, the church shooting in Charleston that killed nine Black brothers and sisters, the countless murders of Black women, men (both cis and trans), and gender-nonconforming individuals at the hands of our police force, and the protests organized by brave students at Mizzou and Yale. This tension has also impacted my personal life. For example, I’ve had to explain to my mother why racial “color-blindness” is harmful and that she shouldn’t take it personally when I complain about white people…

Read the entire article here.

What Happened in Missouri Puts the Nation on Notice

Time
2015-11-10

Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., William S. Tod Professor of Religion and African-American Studies
Princeton University

Imagine what could happen at Ohio State or UCLA or any other major university. The activists already have.

What happened at the University of Missouri has sent shockwaves throughout this country: A startling coalition of students and faculty just forced the top leadership of the University to resign. The students had had enough. A swastika drawn with human feces on a residential dorm was the latest incident in a long list of ugly incidents, which made it clear that some people believed that black students did not belong at the University of Missouri. The image and the medium spoke volumes about those who composed it.

President Wolfe’s tepid response sealed his fate, but as with every other issue involving race in America, change is never given; it must always be won. And the student protests, Jonathan Butler’s hunger strike, the faculty’s threat of a walk out, and the strike among black football students announced that a new wave of campus activism has arrived, armed with the power to bring real change. The nation has been put on notice.

We have seen something like this before. In 1968 and 1969, black students organized protests across some two hundred campuses in the United States. These were among the first significant wave of black students on predominantly white campuses, and they brought with them the energy and expectation of the black freedom movement—particularly the militancy of Black Power. They pushed for the hiring of black faculty, argued for an increase in financial aid for African American students, and pressed administrators to support black living spaces. In short, they challenge the whiteness of American universities and colleges…

…What we saw in Columbia, Missouri, was something different. There was nothing nostalgic about it. The protests were decidedly of this moment. These students are shaped by the startling contrast of the nation’s first black president and the black lives matter movement. They have seen the viral videos of police brutality, and many have watched family and friends struggle to recover from the economic devastation that has left their lives in shambles. They have witnessed, some even participated in, the convulsions of Ferguson and Baltimore…

Read the entire article here.

I’m white in Barcelona but in Los Angeles I’m Hispanic?

Public Radio International
2015-10-27

Jaime Gonzalez, BBC World Service Journalist
Los Angeles, California

“You’re not white, where are you from?”

This is how I was greeted a few months ago by a young Black man I interviewed in Los Angeles for a story I was working on.

Having lived in the United States for more than six years, the question did not surprise me, as it was not the first time I had to answer it.

I was born and raised in Barcelona, ​​in northeast Spain, and although I had never given much thought to this matter, I always thought I was white. With dark Mediterranean features, but white.

How else could I define myself if someone asked me about my race?

In 2009, I moved to Miami and soon I became aware of the deep racial divide that still exists in this country.

In America, the definition of what being white means is much more limited than in Spain…

Read the entire article here. Listen to the story here. Download the story here.

Taye Diggs wants son to embrace being mixed, not choose black or white

The Grio
2015-11-13

Chris Witherspoon, Entertainment Editor

Last month, Taye Diggs released his second children’s book, Mixed Me, inspired by his biracial 6-year-old son, Walker. His mother is actress and singer Indina Menzel.

In a society in which it is sometimes hard to talk about race, Diggs decided to tackle the subject head-on through the eyes of the book’s fictional character, Mike.

“The first book I wrote, Chocolate Me, was based on my experiences growing up a little chocolate boy in a predominately white neighborhood, and how I would get made fun of, and how through my mother and father and my own recognition, I was able to develop the power of self love,” Diggs says…

Read the entire article here.

UPDATE: Mike Middleton is named interim UM System president

The Columbia Missourian
Columiba, Missouri
2015-11-12

Emma VanDelinder and Alexa Ahern

Interim UM System President Michael Middleton speaks at his introductory news conference Thursday at University Hall. Middleton was the first black professor in the MU School of Law. More recently, he served as deputy chancellor until his retirement on Aug. 31. (Justin L. Stewart)

COLUMBIA — One of Michael Middleton’s first goals as interim president of the University of Missouri System is to address the demands made by Concerned Student 1950.

“It is imperative that we hear all of our students and do everything we can to make them comfortable and safe in our community,” he said at a news conference Thursday announcing his appointment.

Middleton said he has met for weeks with members of Concerned Student 1950, who have been protesting for the past month, asking MU to increase diversity and inclusion. He said he met with some members before the group formally existed to talk about campus diversity and inclusion…

Read the entire article here.