Mixed Race Studies

MLB’s Ian Desmond, in a powerful post about racism and social injustice, opts out of the 2020 season

Cable News Network (CNN)
2020-06-30

Scottie Andrew and Jillian Martin, CNN

Ian Desmond of the Colorado Rockies won’t play in the upcoming 2020 MLB season.

(CNN) Major League Baseball player Ian Desmond is opting out of the truncated 2020 season. Coronavirus concerns factored into his decision, but so did the national reckoning with racism — something Desmond says needs to happen within the league, too.

The Colorado Rockies outfielder, in a lengthy and emotional Instagram post, detailed how he made his decision and how racism impacted his life within the sport and outside of it as a biracial Black man.

Desmond, an 11-year MLB veteran, has played the past three seasons with the Rockies after signing a five-year, $70 million contract…

Read the entire article here.

After slavery, Brazil didn’t institute prohibitions of interracial relationships or draconian racial distinctions, as the United States did. The absence of a rigid racial taxonomy led to an extraordinarily mixed country, with single families composed of multiple skin tones, and far more racial fluidity.

“Every Brazilian, even the light-skinned fair-haired one carries about him on his soul, when not on soul and body alike, the shadow or at least the birthmark of the aborigine or the negro,” wrote the 20th-century Brazilian sociologist Gilberto de Mello Freyre, who examined the country’s racial mixing in the 1930s. A “paradise,” he declared Brazil, “in respect to race relations.”

Terrence McCoy, “In Brazil, the death of a poor black child in the care of rich white woman brings a racial reckoning,” June 28, 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/brazil-racism-black-lives-matter-miguel-otavio-santana/2020/06/26/236a2944-b58b-11ea-a510-55bf26485c93_story.html.

Brit Bennett on her New Novel ‘The Vanishing Half” and the History of Racial Passing

CBS This Morning
2020-06-26

Best-selling author Brit Bennett is following the success of her critically-acclaimed debut, “The Mothers,” with a “The Vanishing Half,” a novel exploring the American history of racial passing. She joins CBS News’ Errol Barnett to discuss how the story, which opens in 1968, is particularly timely today. Bennett also shares her reaction to J.K. Rowling’s controversial statements on transgender women and how the trending #PublishingPaidMe has uncovered inequities within the publishing industry.

Listen to the episode (00:26:00) here. Download the episode here.

In Brazil, the death of a poor black child in the care of rich white woman brings a racial reckoning

The Washington Post
2020-06-28

Terrence McCoy

Demonstrators in Recife, Brazil, demand justice for the death of 5-year-old Miguel Otávio Santana da Silva, the son of a black maid who fell from the ninth floor of a building while under the watch of his mother’s white employer. (Leo Malafaia/AFP/Getty Images)

RIO DE JANEIRO — In the early days of Brazil’s coronavirus outbreak, when businesses and churches went dark, anyone who could stay home did. But not Mirtes Souza. She worked as a maid, and her duties cooking and cleaning for a wealthy family were to continue.

One day this month, she left the luxury building to walk the family’s dog, leaving her 5-year-old son, Miguel, in the care of her boss. But security footage broadcast widely in Brazil showed the woman leaving him unattended inside an elevator and the door closing.

The boy rode it to the top of the building and wandered outside. When Souza returned from the walk, she found him crumpled on the pavement outside the luxury building. He’d fallen nine floors.

“I’m a domestic worker,” Souza said in an interview. “But if I was white, and he’d been white, would this have happened?”

Sarí Gaspar, Souza’s employer, has been charged with culpable homicide in the death of Miguel Otávio Santana da Silva. She has asked for Souza’s forgiveness in a public letter…

Read the entire article here.