Mixed Race Studies

“Race” and “post-colonialism”: should one come before the other?

Ethnic and Racial Studies
Published online 2018-01-15
19 pages
DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2018.1417617

Nasar Meer, Professor of Race, Identity and Citizenship
School of Social and Political Sciences
University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

One unsettled analytical question in race scholarship concerns the relationship between categories of race and categories of post-colonialism. These are often run together or are used interchangeably; sometimes an implicit hierarchy of one over the other is assumed without explicit discussion. In that activity, a great deal is enveloped, including a portrayal of race scholarship which can be at some variance from how race scholars conceive it. In this paper, it is argued that paying attention to a distinction between these two categories, and then trying to get them not only in the “right order”, but also on their own terms, is conceptually fruitful – however messy the outcome may be. What is advocated is an approach in which categories of race and post-colonialism are not subsumed into one another, but retain their distinctive and explanatory power.

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Gringa, Black or Afro-Latina? I’ve Been Called All Three

Latina
2017-02-09

Barbara Gonzalez

I’ve always had a very complicated relationship with the term “belonging.” Perhaps it’s because I’ve straddled so many worlds in my life, but my true “belonging” place often feels like it’s in the fringes.

My parents are completely representative of Puerto Rico’s diasporic history. My mom’s deep brown complexion and large-and-in-charge, black, kinky curls serve as the complimentary to my father’s fair, freckled skin with soft, dark brown curls. Together, they made me: medium-light skin, a bushel of tight, black corkscrew curls on my head and dark brown eyes. For as long as I can remember, my mother has called me hincha, which in our dialect of Spanish means pale or light-skinned. I don’t know why, but from a very young age the word made me feel like an outsider…

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The Conversation I’ve Been Dreading: Ijeoma Oluo Talks About Race with Her Mom

Literary Hub
2018-01-17

Ijeoma Oluo

‘At this point I’m regretting the invention of the telephone.’

From So You Want To Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo.

When my white mother gave birth to me, and later my brother, in Denton, Texas, she became the subject of a lot of racial commentary in her conservative southern community. But surprisingly, my mother and I had our first really substantive conversation about race late in my life, when I was 34 years old. I was well into my career in writing about culture and social justice and my opinions and identity around race were pretty well documented by then. But the truth is, like many families, our conversations growing up mostly revolved around homework, TV shows, and chores.

While I was growing up, my mother had given the obligatory speeches that all parents of black children must give: don’t challenge cops, don’t be surprised if you are followed at stores, some people will be mean to you because of your beautiful brown skin, no you can’t have the same hairstyle as your friends because your hair doesn’t do that. But those conversations were one-offs that ceased to be necessary once we were old enough to see the reality of race for ourselves.

Having a white mother, my siblings and I likely had even fewer conversations about race than black children raised by black parents, because there was a lot about our lives that our mother’s whiteness made it hard for her to see. My mother loved our blackness as much as was possible for any nonblack person to do, she loved our brown skin, our kinky hair, our full lips, our culture, and our history. She thought we were beauty incarnate…

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I’m White And Latina, Is That A Problem For You?

Latina
2018-01-18

Tess Garcia

Tess Garcia

My mom is white. My dad is white. I am white, and I am Latina…I think.

Argentina is largely populated by the descendants of white colonists, who came surging in during the late 19th century. According to a 2009 study, the country’s population is approximately 78.5 percent European. That explains how my dad, who was born in the Argentine city of Tunuyán, melds perfectly into the largely Caucasian community he’s spent most of his life in, the one where he raised my siblings and I.

Add a red-haired American mother to the equation, and you’ve got some very, very white kids…

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‘A Lot Is Still So Much the Same’: Misty Copeland on Decades of Racism and Ballet

TIME
2018-01-16

Olivia B. Waxman

Misty Copeland (right) and Raven Wilkinson at the Urban World Film Festival in New York, NY, on Sep. 27 2015. MediaPunch/REX/Shutterstock

In the years since she became the first black ballerina to be a principal dancer with the American Ballet Theatre, Misty Copeland has become a well-known symbol of breaking down barriers in her art. The strides she has made build on the work of one particular dancer — a mentor of Copeland’s, Raven Wilkinson, who broke new ground in similar ways during the 1950s. And, though much has changed since that era in both civil rights and on the stage, Copeland tells TIME that there is still a long way to go.

Wilkinson’s passion for ballet began at an early age and would take her around the nation with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. As the first African American ballerina to dance with a major touring troupe, she performed the coveted solo waltz in Les Sylphides.

But her story — which is told in the new picture book Trailblazer: The Story of Ballerina Raven Wilkinson, written by Leda Schubert and illustrated by Theodore Taylor III, and released Tuesday in time for Black History Month in February — didn’t always feel like a fairy tale…

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