Mixed Race Studies

‘Evoking The Mulatto’ In Mixed-Race America

On Point with Tom Ashbrook
WBUR 90.9 FM
Boston, Massachusetts
2015-11-23

Tom Ashbrook, Host

Guests:

• Lindsay Catherine Harris, multimedia artist and creator of “Evoking the Mulatto.”
• Ko Smith, painter based in New York City. Featured in “Evoking the Mulatto.”
• Kaliya Warren, filmmaker based in New York City. Featured in “Evoking the Mulatto.”

(Clockwise From Top Left) Filmmaker Lindsay Catherine Harris, Ko Smith, Kailya Warren and Bryant Koger in still images from Harris’ “Evoking the Mulatto” multimedia project. (Courtesy the Filmmaker)

Mixed-race America in the time of Black Lives Matter and demographic change. We’ll talk race, identity and the film project “Evoking the Mulatto”.

Mixed race America is a fast-growing piece of the American pie. Ten percent of American births now, and growing. Until 1967, interracial marriage was illegal in many states. Today, relationships regularly cross all the old racial lines. What is it like to be that American? A new film project with the provocative title “Evoking the Mulatto” talks with lots of mixed race Americans about their everyday experience and their most intimate thoughts on love, beauty, justice, racial identity, and the American future. This hour, On Point, we’re listening to mixed race Americans.

Listen to the story (00:47:49) here. Download the story here.

Agriculture Linked to DNA Changes in Ancient Europe

The New York Times
2015-11-23

Carl Zimmer

The agricultural revolution was one of the most profound events in human history, leading to the rise of modern civilization. Now, in the first study of its kind, an international team of scientists has found that after agriculture arrived in Europe 8,500 years ago, people’s DNA underwent widespread changes, altering their height, digestion, immune system and skin color.

Researchers had found indirect clues of some of these alterations by studying the genomes of living Europeans. But the new study, they said, makes it possible to see the changes as they occurred over thousands of years.

“For decades we’ve been trying to figure out what happened in the past,” said Rasmus Nielsen, a geneticist at the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved in the new study. “And now we have a time machine.”

…Dr. Reich and his colleagues also tracked changes in the color of European skin.

The original hunter-gatherers, descendants of people who had come from Africa, had dark skin as recently as 9,000 years ago. Farmers arriving from Anatolia were lighter, and this trait spread through Europe. Later, a new gene variant emerged that lightened European skin even more.

Why? Scientists have long thought that light skin helped capture more vitamin D in sunlight at high latitudes. But early hunter-gatherers managed well with dark skin. Dr. Reich suggests that they got enough vitamin D in the meat they caught.

He hypothesizes that it was the shift to agriculture, which reduced the intake of vitamin D, that may have triggered a change in skin color…

Read the entire article here.