Having mixed raced children will not end racism and result in a racial utopia, as questions and experiences of race cannot be bred away, but often appear with greater force when mixed bodies appear.

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2015-12-04 02:45Z by Steven

Race is deeply entrenched in our lives and communities. Whether we agree with it and accept its logic, or challenge its history, factual basis and presence in our realities, it is an organising principle of societies that determines much of our experiences of ourselves. Having mixed raced children will not end racism and result in a racial utopia, as questions and experiences of race cannot be bred away, but often appear with greater force when mixed bodies appear.

Danielle Bowler, “OPINION: Mixed raced children will not fix racism,” Eyewitness News, December 2, 2015. http://ewn.co.za/2015/12/02/OPINION-Danielle-Bowler-Mixed-raced-children-will-not-fix-racism.

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OPINION: Mixed raced children will not fix racism

Posted in Articles, Census/Demographics, Media Archive, Social Science on 2015-12-04 02:35Z by Steven

OPINION: Mixed raced children will not fix racism

Eyewitness News
Johannesburg/Cape Town, South Africa
2015-12-02

Danielle Bowler


Images courtesy of Tarryn Hatchett.

Danielle Bowler says being a visibly mixed-raced person is often to encounter yourself as a perpetual question.

Logging onto social media last week, I came across a meme that is frequently posted without interrogation of what it means or implies. ‘End Racism. Have mixed babies’. The images that appeared alongside these words are of light-skinned children, with blue eyes or masses of curls. A popular idea of what mixed raced children look like. A popular ‘type’ that is favoured, because of an appearance that is close to white, yet simultaneously ‘exotic’ and ‘other’.

The problematic idea that we can fix racism through outbreeding it, shares a similar logic with the notion that mixed babies are cuter, and the assumption that if we date, marry or befriend people across racial lines we cannot still be racist. It ignores how we can and often do make exceptions out of people who we are in intimate relationships or friendships with.

As Ella Sackville Adjei points out in her story about her ‘racist one night stand’, ‘racists don’t wear badges’ and not being racist is not as simple as being intimate with someone of another race to you. But it also ignores the fact that those mixed raced children are born into a world structured by race.

But the idea that we can fix racism through making everyone visibly mixed still has currency. Despite the existence of mixed raced people and race-homogenous societies in the world, where race still matters. Despite evidence that race’s logic runs deep. Despite reality…

Read the entire article here.

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The Terrible Tale Of My Racist One-Night Stand

Posted in Articles, Autobiography, Media Archive on 2015-12-04 02:11Z by Steven

The Terrible Tale Of My Racist One-Night Stand

BuzzFeed
2015-10-24

Ella Sackville Adjei, BuzzFeed Contributor


Tom Humberstone for BuzzFeed

This is the tale of how I accidentally slept with a racist, and the laughably horrible things he said to me while I lay in his bed.

In July I travelled around the Cyclades with two friends, reunited after spending a year apart at different universities, and re-learning who we might have become in the time away. We’d met Australian Sam and his friend in Athens and, excited at seeing a familiar face in a Mykonos club, dragged them across the dance floor. What we took for enthusiasm at mutual recognition turned out to be more prosaic; Australian Sam and co had no memory at all of our previous meeting and clearly thought their irresistible physical magnetism was what made us pluck them out of the crowd. When you’re determined to get over an ex – even if it has been the best part of a year since the breakup – and let’s be real, prove that “still got it!” attractiveness to yourself, bad things can happen…

…A classmate I spoke to, who is of mixed black and white Southeast African origin, had slept with a white South African who insisted on discussing apartheid, her “tribe”, and his exhilaration at “breaking the rules”. The rhetoric and mentality of colonialism is so often still painfully present for so many of us – and not just in our institutions and systems. And unfortunately, racists don’t tend to wear badges to identify them: It would be a lot easier to work out who to avoid on a sweaty dance floor if they did, and whose bright blue eyes to ignore…

Read the entire article here.

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Leaving to learn

Posted in Articles, Biography, Campus Life, Caribbean/Latin America, History, Media Archive, Mexico, Passing, Slavery, United States on 2015-12-03 02:37Z by Steven

Leaving to learn

Columbia Daily Spectator
2015-12-02

Claire Liebmann


Courtesy of Karl Jacoby

Several years ago while browsing newspaper clippings online, Karl Jacoby, a history professor at Columbia, came across the story of William Ellis—a Texan slave who built a million dollar fortune while posing as a Mexican millionaire in New York, essentially hacking the system of American expansionism and oppression.

Tracking Ellis as he took on different names and personas was difficult: Ellis deliberately introduced falsehoods into the historical record to ensure that his racial passing was accepted by the broader society, but Jacoby stuck with it. Years later, this chance encounter with Ellis’ story would come to drive his personal historical research. Undertaking a yearlong leave of absence, he pursued his interest in reclaiming untold narratives, working on his book The Strange Career of William Ellis: The Texas Slave Who Became a Mexican Millionaire.

Jacoby’s academic career is driven by his interest in complicating comfortable historical narratives. This process of reinvention and rediscovery depends on another kind of separation from the establishment: Jacoby’s reliance on his leave of absence as a means of promoting academic innovation…

Read the entire article here.

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Love in the face of racism: Being an interracial family

Posted in Articles, Census/Demographics, Family/Parenting, Media Archive, Social Science, United States on 2015-12-03 02:29Z by Steven

Love in the face of racism: Being an interracial family

Cable News Network (CNN)
2015-11-25

Jareen Imam, Social Discovery Producer

CNN)—When Karen Garsee picked her 5-year-old daughter up from kindergarten in September, she wasn’t prepared for what Kaylee had to say.

The kids at school wouldn’t play with me today.

Why?

Because I’m brown.

Those words struck Garsee right in the heart. Being white, she didn’t know what she could say to make her daughter feel better. At that moment, they simply embraced.

“I didn’t think kids at that age really thought about other kids being different,” Garsee says.

That wouldn’t be the last time the schoolchildren didn’t want to play with Kaylee.

“We live in the South and racism is loud and it’s still out there,” Garsee says.

A CNN/Kaiser Family Foundation Poll on race found that about half (49%) of Americans say racism is a big problem in our society. Compare that to 2011 when 28% said racism was a big problem. And in 1995, shortly after the O.J. Simpson trial and a couple of years after the race riots in Los Angeles, 41% of people said racism was a big societal problem…

Read the entire article here.

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National Affairs: Who Would Be King

Posted in Arts, Biography, Caribbean/Latin America, Media Archive, Mexico, Passing, Slavery, United States on 2015-12-02 22:39Z by Steven

National Affairs: Who Would Be King

Time
1923-10-08

Word came to the U. S. that William Henry Ellis, who preferred to style himself Guillermo Enrique Eliseo, died in Mexico City. Mr. Ellis was one of the most remarkable men who ever acted as agent for the State Department. He was known chiefly for the famous incident in which he delivered a commercial Treaty from this country to King Menelik of Abyssinia. But his unusual history began much earlier.

He was born in Victoria, Tex., in 1864 and claimed to be of Cuban parentage, on account of which he used the Spanish form of…

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Mixed-race marriages a reflection of multicultural Blacktown

Posted in Articles, Census/Demographics, Family/Parenting, Media Archive, Oceania on 2015-12-02 20:08Z by Steven

Mixed-race marriages a reflection of multicultural Blacktown

The Daily Telegraph
Surry Hills, New South Wales, Australia
2015-12-01

Nick Houghton

Joanne Vella, Editor
Blacktown Advocate

WHEN Stephen Zahra went on a four-week holiday to Vietnam in 2006, little did he know how life changing the trip would be.

His love for Vietnam inspired him to quit his job and move permanently to the southeast east Asian nation.

It was a decision which would lead him to the love of his life, his wife Dao Nguyen, and the start of his present day life back in Australia as a happily married father of daughter Hayley.

Stephen, a second generation Maltese, and Vietnamese Dao are the changing face of Australian families and the multicultural melting pot which is Blacktown.

“Our wedding day in Ho Chi Minh City was probably the biggest reminder how big the mix of cultures is between Dao and myself,” Stephen said.

“My family flew over for the wedding and despite having no ability to speak Vietnamese with Dao’s family found a way to communicate and make the day truly memorable…

Read the entire article here.

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Keep It Simple at TEDxIndianapolis

Posted in Articles, Arts, Media Archive, Passing, United States on 2015-12-02 02:10Z by Steven

Keep It Simple at TEDxIndianapolis

The Indianapolis Star
2015-10-21

Leslie Bailey

“When asked how he created his masterpiece, Michelangelo said, ‘It was easy. You just chip away that which does not look like David.’ What if our lives are our masterpiece? What if we chipped away all that was unnecessary, all the clutter and the busyness, and focused on that which really mattered — our passions and our relationships.”

This is the “big idea” Maura Malloy will share when she takes the stage at TEDxIndianapolis on Tuesday. Malloy, 36, is among approximately 20 speakers who will present their ideas at the conference with the theme of “Keep It Simple.” Other speakers include a homeless advocate, an origami artist, a musician and a handful of professors…

…In her talk, Malloy will share her journey to a minimalist lifestyle, as well as tools on how everyone can create their own “masterpiece” life. For Malloy, the spark ignited during a semester studying in India during her sophomore year at the University of Notre Dame. She was allowed one 40-pound bag of belongings for the semester. “It opened my eyes to how little you need to be joyful, especially when it comes to children,” said Malloy, who is expecting her first child in November…

…Malloy, who grew up in South Bend, moved to New York City when she was 25 to pursue a career in acting. She ultimately turned to screenwriting, which she continued doing after moving back to Indiana with her husband, Rory Collins, 2012.

She currently has two projects in development with actress Tessa Thompson attached to both films. The first, “An Illuminated Life” [See: An Illuminated Life: Bella da Costa Greene’s Journey from Prejudice to Privilege] is a biopic about Belle da Costa Greene, an African-American woman who lived as a white woman while working as J.P. Morgan’s right-hand woman at the turn of the century. The other project, “Our Rebels,” is a smaller, independent film Malloy describes as a “platonic love story.”…

Read the entire article here.

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Krotoa-Eva’s Suite: A performance by poet Toni Stuart

Posted in Africa, Arts, History, Live Events, Media Archive, South Africa, Women on 2015-12-02 01:56Z by Steven

Krotoa-Eva’s Suite: A performance by poet Toni Stuart

Goldsmiths University of London
New Cross
London, United Kingdom
Caribbean Studies Centre
Top Floor, Education Building
2015-12-03, 18:30-20:30Z

Join the Centre for Caribbean and Diaspora Studies and the Centre for Feminist Research for a performance by poet Toni Stuart and a ‘Stories are Medicine’ discussion circle.

Toni Stuart (@nomadpoet) is a poet, performer, festival organiser and educator from Cape Town, South Africa.

She’ll be performing poems from her collection in progress, Krotoa-Eva’s Suite – a cape jazz poem in three movements. This is the re-imagined story of Krotoa-Eva, a Khoi woman who played a pivotal role in South African history in the 17th Century, when the first European settlers arrived at Cape Town, as it is known today. The poems give voice to Krotoa-Eva’s “interior” life, and aim to offer a counter-narrative to the male, colonial perspectives through which her story has previously been told.

The performance will be followed by an informal discussion circle around the role of self-care and healing in our work as feminists. And, it will explore how stories and the creative arts might facilitate and support this practice.

For more information, click here.

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Intersection Episode 10: Being Melissa Harris-Perry Is a Full-Time Job

Posted in Audio, Interviews, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, United States on 2015-12-01 22:17Z by Steven

Intersection Episode 10: Being Melissa Harris-Perry Is a Full-Time Job

The New Republic
Intersection with Jamil Smith
2015-12-01

Jamil Smith, Senior Editor and Host

Professor, feminist, TV host, activist, mom, rabid hip-hop fan. Melissa Harris-Perry works seven days a week balancing all her identities, and she isn’t stopping anytime soon.

Besides hosting her eponymous MSNBC news show and teaching political science and running an institute at Wake Forest University, she is also on the front lines of an intersectional fight for racial justice and women’s rights.

This November, the Anna Julia Cooper Center, a research center directed by Dr. Harris-Perry, partnered with the White House Council on Women and Girls to co-host a major conference on expanding opportunities for women and girls of color. Her center is also part of new collaborative to advance equity for women and girls of color through research…

Listen to the interview here.

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