Mixed Race Studies

Correcting the conversation about race

OUPblog: Oxford University Press’s Academic Insights for the Thinking World
2015-11-20

Carlos Hoyt

On 6 November 2015, the New York Times featured a poignant five-minute documentary called “A Conversation About Growing Up Black,” produced by Joe Brewster and Perri Peltz. Brewster and Peltz present Rakesh, Miles, Malek, Marvin, Shaquille, Bisa, Jumoke, Maddox, and Myles. The youngest are 10 and the eldest is 25 years old. These nine individuals are very different from one another (hair, height, weight, skin color, voice, manner of speech, body language… all those things that combine to make each of us unique). As with all human beings, each of them is his own universe of individuality and each occupies several universes of other individuals known as family, friends, teammates, school mates, colleagues, and the like.

But we never learn much about the individuality of these individuals: where they live; where they go to school or work; what their worldviews might be on faith, politics, or the environment; what are their talents, their challenges; what they love, and what they dislike. Instead we are introduced to them as racialized human beings, adversely racialized nominally black males to be specific, who by dint of this social relegation are subject to suspicion, discrimination, degradation, and brutality.

We encounter them as living, breathing targets of racism.

We are graced with their eloquent and compelling meditations on racism, their narratives of being misrepresented, misunderstood and mistreated, and their heroic resolve to successfully navigate the mine-infested landscape of the racist country in which they live – for themselves and for their loving, protective, and worried parents.

It is a heartbreaking five-minutes of film.

And it will change nothing…

Read the entire article here.

When You’re Biracial, There’s No ‘Choice’ in the Matter of Your Blackness

The Root
2015-11-19

Charles D. Ellison, Contributing Editor

It’s safe to wager that when well-meaning black actor Taye Diggs took a recent dip into controversy over his biracial son’s identity, there was no less than white former Mrs. Taye Diggs putting on the pressure in the background: “Hey, I’m here. White mom. Don’t forget about me.” And who knows? Taut playpen discussions might have taken an interesting turn. Somewhat understandably, but too publicly and too clumsily, Diggs obliged, and met the ire of many African Americans head on. While Diggs gets some nod for courage, he did rip back a rather mean layer of onion in the process.

But the mistake Diggs made here is not so much the demand that his son stand firm on his biracialness. It’s that he trivializes that kind of existence as a simple mark-the-box choice. Contrary to the warped and misguided conjecture that biracial sons and daughters somehow have more control over their racial selfness than black people do, it’s really a lot more complex than that.

Don’t get me wrong: Diggs loves his son. And he should demand respect and love for the mother from the start. No surprise, even, if it was also Diggs’ conclusion that his boy’s complete embrace of the biracial construct could somehow shield him from the beastly assaults of routine racism.

It won’t…

Read the entire article here.

Taye Diggs, Embrace Blackness In Mixed Families: They’re Not Mutually Exclusive

Global Grind
2015-10-18

Jada Gomez, Managing Editor

Taye Diggs is set to release a second children’s book, Mixed Me, to teach young biracial children how to embrace their multicultural, multi-hued identities. But before it hits shelves, it needs a few edits… from a multiracial person.

In an interview with The Grio, the actor shared that he wants his son, Walker Nathaniel Diggs, to be identified as mixed and not Black. The most troubling part of the admission is that he “fears” people will see his son as Black. With the best of intentions I’m sure, his remarks were more fixated on Walker’s outer shell, and what other people will think about his son, than instilling a sense of identity at Walker’s core.

As a millennial of mixed heritage, I learned quite early that my skin color and “otherness” would raise questions about who I am, and what I should “identify” with, throughout my life. The first major hit came in preschool, when my Latino father showed up to parent-teacher night with my African-American mother. Usually, my mom would handle picking me up from school, so my classmates – and most importantly, their parents – had never met Juan Gomez before. The night was as normal as any four-year-old’s night, as we watched Sesame Street while our parents met with teachers. All in all, pretty harmless…

Read the entire article here.

“Generation Mix:” Is All This Talk of “Multiracialism” An Advance?

i MiX WHAT i LiKE
The Real News
2015-11-12

Jared A. Ball, Host/Producer and Associate Professor of Communication Studies
Morgan State University, Baltimore, Maryland

Artist, activist and creator of the multimedia comic book (H)afrocentric Juliana “Jules” Smith and Dr. Rainier Spencer, author of Reproducing Race: The Paradox of Generation Mix discuss their various critiques of popular approaches to “multiracial” identity.

Watch the entire interview (00:14:02) here.

“Evoking the Mulatto” Screening + Panel Discussion

The National Black Programming Consortium
2015-11-19

Tune in Thursday, November 19, 2015 from 6:30 PM to 8:00 PM ET for a back-to-back screening of all four episodes from “Evoking the Mulatto,” a transmedia project about 21st-century mixed black identity. A discussion will follow with Judy Pryor-Ramirez, director of Civic Engagement & Social Justice at the New School; Lise Funderburg, author of “Black, White, Other” and the 2013 National Geographic article “The Changing Face of America“; plus “Evoking the Mulatto” interviewee Giovanna Fischer and the project’s creator, Lindsay Harris.

View the entire presentation (01:35:55) here.

Mixed-race descendant of Nazi murderer tells of life

San Diego Jewish World
2015-11-18

David Strom, Professor Emeritus of Education
San Diego State University, San Diego, California

My Grandfather Would have Shot Me [Amon: Mein Großvater hätte mich erschossen], by Jennifer Teege and Nikola Sellmair. The Experiment, Pub. 2015, 221pp

SAN DIEGO — At the age of 38 Jennifer Teege was at the Hamburg central library. There she glanced at a book with a red cover and was drawn to it. From photographs in the book, Jennifer discovered that it was about people she vaguely remembered—her mother and grandmother. She took the book home and read it from cover to cover. The most amazing and shocking thing she learned was that her maternal grandfather, Amon Goeth, the butcher commandant of Plaszow concentration camp near Krakow, was not killed fighting in the war but was hanged for his crimes (The actor Ralph Fiennes played Amon Goeth in the movie Schindler’s List.)

Now she understood why no one told her or spoke about her background. Jennifer knew that her grandfather would have murdered her since she was a mixed-race black German-Nigerian. Learning the truth about her ancestry threw Jennifer in a deep depression. But it did lead to a rather tentative reconnection with her mother, Monika Hertwig, who she hadn’t seen in years…

Read the entire review here.