Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

“I’m not black,” Joyce said. “I’m multiracial.” Then she started telling me about her father, who happened to be Italian and was the sweetest man in the world; and her mother who happened to be part African and part French and part Native American and part something else. “Why should I have to choose between them?” she asked me. Her voice cracked, and I thought she was going to cry. “It’s not white people who are making me choose. Maybe it used to be that way, but now they’re willing to treat me like a person. No—it’s black people who always have to make everything racial. They’re the ones making me choose. They’re the ones who are telling me I can’t be who I am…”

“They, they, they. That was the problem with people like Joyce. They talked about the richness of their multicultural heritage and it sounded real good, until you noticed that they avoided black people. It wasn’t a matter of conscious choice, necessarily, just a matter of gravitational pull, the way integration always worked, a one-way street. The minority assimilated into the dominant culture, not the other way around. Only white culture could be neutral and objective. Only white culture could be nonracial, willing to adopt the occasion exotic into its ranks. Only white culture had individuals. And, we the half-breeds and college-degreed, take a survey of the situation and think to ourselves, Why should we get lumped in with the losers if we don’t have to? We become only so grateful to lose ourselves in the crowd, America’s happy, faceless marketplace; and we’re never so outraged as when a cabbie drives past us or the woman in the elevator clutches her purse, not so much because we’re bothered by the fact that such indignities are what less fortunate coloreds have to put up with every single day of their lives—although that’s what we tell ourselves—but because we’re wearing a Brooks Brothers suite and speak impeccable English and yet somehow have somehow been mistaken for an ordinary nigger.”

Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1995), 99-100.

Faces In Between: Art About Mixed-Race Identity

Posted in Arts, Audio, Canada, Media Archive, Women on 2013-02-03 07:25Z by Steven

Faces In Between: Art About Mixed-Race Identity

CBC
Here and Now Toronto
2013-02-01

Throughout history, artists have drawn upon their own experience to fuel their work. Tonight, a new exhibit explores mixed race identity from the point of view of three young women. Rema Tavares is one of the artists. She spoke about “Faces In Between.”

Listen to the episode (00:06:14) here.

Tags: 3MW Collective, CBC, Here and Now Toronto, Rema Tavares, Toronto

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Faces In Between

Posted in Arts, Canada, Media Archive, Women on 2013-01-16 23:58Z by Steven

Faces In Between

Daniels Spectrum
585 Dundas Street East
Toronto, Ontario
Friday, 2013-02-01, 19:00-21:00 EST (Local Time)

A 3MW Collective art Exhibit at Regent Park Arts and Cultural Centre during Black History Month exploring mixed race identity through painting and photography.

Join us to celebrate our first show as a collective!

Cash bar and amazing art!

We are three mixed-race women artists using portraiture in both painting and photography to address ideas of mixed-race identity. The subjects in our work are people who have parents, grandparents, and ancestors from different cultural backgrounds. The faces of our “models” do not conform to society’s outdated notions of human classification. These faces are loaded with issues of colonialism, racism, shadeism, as well as questions of history and identity.

In Canada, although we have a policy of multiculturalism, people are generally not comfortable talking about race. Our work aims to highlight the experiences of mixed people. These are the people whose “race” is not clear and who are often faced with questions such as, “What are you?” or “What is your ethnic background?” These persistent questions clearly reflect our society’s discomfort with an inability to classify people by racialized norms.

For more information, click here.

Tags: 3MW Collective, Ilene Sova, Jordan Clarke, Rema Tavares

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I have always held my Blackness as the centre of gravity—the place from which all my many other identities flow.

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2012-12-27 22:30Z by Steven

Choice—especially around identity—is a fascinating subject in and of itself. How we choose to identify is intensely personal for many, and perhaps particularly perplexing for some Mixed-race identified people, as it inherently calls into question our notions of “race”. Having said that, I can only speak for myself, and I have chosen to identify as Black-Mixed. Although how I have identified in the past has evolved, and will most like continue to do so into the future, I have always held my Blackness as the centre of gravity—the place from which all my many other identities flow.

Rema Tavares, “A Curious Confluence: Where Racism & Privilege Collide,” (1)ne Drop Project. (December 20, 2012). http://1nedrop.com/a-curious-confluence-where-racism-privilege-collide-by-rema-tavares/.

Tags: (1)ne Drop Project, Rema Tavares

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Mixed Race Studies

Faces In Between: Art About Mixed-Race Identity

Faces In Between

I have always held my Blackness as the centre of gravity—the place from which all my many other identities flow.

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