Mixed Race Studies

Earnest Harris Declares: NO MORE RACE

Mixed Race Radio
Blog Talk Radio
2013-07-03, 16:00Z (12:00 EDT)

Tiffany Rae Reid, Host

Earnest Harris, Producer/Director/Talent Manager/Writer
No More Race

Earnest Harris has written extensively on matters related to race relations, especially focused on moving beyond “racial” concepts and getting our society to a place where color and cultural differences might play less of  volatile role in how we work, play and deal with one another. His study and focus on this issue comes from seeing the unfortunate ways in which so many of our societal dealings, whether it be politics, dating, religion, neighborhoods and education are impacted by “racial” influencers. It has been his mission for most of those years as a journalist and writer to help bring people together and get beyond these superficial ways of living our lives.

An award-winning journalist, Earnest has written on this topic for New York Newsday, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Dallas Morning News, The Riverfront Times (St. Louis), National Review magazine, Politico, The Huffington  Post, Hispanic magazine and many others. He has also been a political columnist with the daily paper, The Austin American-Statesman, the editor-in-chief of a weekly newspaper in Washington, D.C., The American Weekly News, and the host of his own talk radio shows in Austin, Texas and St. Louis, Missouri.

Earnest has also directed and produced one feature film that was nationally distributed, “A Simple Promise,” and is currently working on several other films at the moment. Earnest also oversees Harris Management, a talent management company in Los Angeles, where he manages actors, directors and recording artists. Additionally, Harris taught communications for two sessions at the famed Lyndon Baines Johnson Graduate School for Public Affairs at The University of Texas at Austin as a Woodrow Wilson Program Instructor.

He is married and has two children.

Listen to the episode here.

Professor Dorothy Roberts — Challenging Concepts of Race

Mixed Race Radio
Blog Talk Radio
2013-06-26, 16:00Z (12:00 EDT)

Tiffany Rae Reid, Host

Dorothy E. Roberts, George A. Weiss University Professor of Law and Sociology; Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights
University of Pennsylvania

Dorothy Roberts is the fourteenth Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor, George A. Weiss University Professor, and the inaugural Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights at University of Pennsylvania, where she holds appointments in the Law School and Departments of Africana Studies and Sociology. An internationally recognized scholar, public intellectual, and social justice advocate, she has written and lectured extensively on the interplay of gender, race, and class in legal issues and has been a leader in transforming public thinking and policy on reproductive health, child welfare, and bioethics.

Professor Roberts is the author of the award-winning books Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty (Random House/Pantheon, 1997) and Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare (Basic Books/Civitas, 2002), as well as co-editor of six books on constitutional law and gender. She has also published more than eighty articles and essays in books and scholarly journals, including Harvard Law Review, Yale Law Journal, and Stanford Law Review.  Her latest book, Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century, was published by the New Press in July 2011.

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Dr. J .T. Mills: Helping Students Explore Concepts of Race

Mixed Race Radio
Blog Talk Radio
2013-06-19, 16:00Z (12:00 EDT)

Tiffany Rae Reid, Host

John T. Mills, Assistant Director of Multicultural Affairs
Rowan University, Glassboro, New Jersery

Legitimate knowledge regarding the construction of race in America is absent in today’s youth and college aged students. It is imperative to have an understanding of the fluidity of race in America and its context to the systems that perpetuate the ongoing racial divisions in communities and disparities in health care, economic prosperity, and everyday interactions, for example.

Such clarity for these issues is overshadowed by the notion of post racialism in this society that teaches us to avoid or suppress such discussions in the axiom of “political correctness.”  One only needs to look to the President of the United States who is described as the first African American/Black man to hold that office when he is in reality bi-racial. Moreover, the complexity of race in the United States can further be interrogated in his self identification because he is aware of the social, political, and global lenses that identify him as a man of color over his White ancestry.

It is in this context that Dr. Mills works to create environments and opportunities for students to explore the nuances of race and race relations in America in the hopes of creating an awareness that would bring about greater understanding among and between all people.

These discussions then must begin with analyzing why and how race came about in this country during the 17th and 18th centuries during the economic development of the United States when there was much more cross racial cooperation and even harmony at one point than our history books tell us. Blacks, Whites, and Native American Indians intermingled to create a nation and have had more historical commonalities that is being taught and that needs to be addressed to expose the modern forms of raced based oppression that exists today.

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Half-Caste as Seen Through the Eyes of James Southard

Mixed Race Radio
Blog Talk Radio
2013-06-05, 16:00Z (12:00 EDT)

Tiffany Rae Reid, Host

James Southard has always been drawn to the creation of authentic stories that are visually and emotionally compelling. His love of music and photography eventually led him to the video business as an Associate Producer working for Quincy Jones’ cable network (NUE-TV) in 2000. Since then, Mr. Southard has worked with clients such as Discovery Channel, HGTV, TV- Guide Channel, as well as several universities and non-profit organizations.

While James is proud of the time he spent as a youth working for his father in a grocery store and as a white-water rafting guide in his early 20s where spent three years working with emotionally challenged youth, James made a mark in his high school when he and his friend, Darrel Satcher started the first black students club.

On Today’s episode of Mixed Race Radio, we will discuss James’ love of Hip Hop and some of the experiences that have shaped him and his ideas of race as a social, rather than a biological, construct since he became a Hip Hop DJ in 1992. James will talk with us about some of his interesting experiences dealing with racism as a man who self-identifies as mixed and how he navigates the concept of race with his family and a community that sometimes feels he…

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“First and foremost, I would be remiss if I didn’t suggest that people go to MixedRaceStudies.org. It is one of the most comprehensive websites about all things mixed-race… This is a website created by Steve Riley. He’s a regular on Mixed Race Radio and throughout the entire academic circle.. or circuit. He has created this website. And if you are looking for history, historical articles, snapshots of individuals doing amazing things in today’s world. A very real-time account of all things mixed-race.” —Tiffany Rae Reid

Kelly Ellison, “The Joys and Challenges of Becoming a Transracial Family Through Adoption,” Your Adoption Coach with Kelly Ellison (April 20, 2013, 00:27:25-00:28:04). http://www.voiceamerica.com/episode/68557/the-joys-and-challenges-of-becoming-a-transracial-family-through-adoption.

The Joys and Challenges of Becoming a Transracial Family Through Adoption

Your Adoption Coach with Kelly Ellison
2013-04-20

Kelly Ellison, Host

If you are considering adopting a child of a different culture or race than your family, or you are already a transracial family formed through adoption, don’t miss this show. Our host this week is Amanda Grant, President of USAdopt, and an adoptive mother in a transracial family, who is joined by guest Tiffany Rae Reid, expert in a racial identity development and host of Mixed Race Radio. Contemplating the adoption of any child takes courage and honesty. The adoption of a child of a different cultural or racial heritage adds another layer of both complexity and celebrations. Learn the realities of transracial adoption, how to prepare your family for the change in its composition, what to do to support the healthy development of your child’s identity and what resources are available to support your child and your family in every aspect of living as a transracial family.

Listen to the episode here.  Download the episode here.

Betwixt & Between~Multiracial Identity=A Denial of Blackness

Mixed Race Radio
2013-02-06, 17:00Z (12:00 EST)

Tiffany Rae Reid, Host

G. Reginald Daniel, Professor of Sociology
University of California, Santa Barbara

G. Reginald Daniel, Professor of Sociology, teaches courses exploring comparative race and ethnic relations. Since 1989, he has taught “Betwixt and Between,” which is one of the first and longest-standing university courses to deal specifically with the question of multiracial identity comparing the U.S. with various parts of the world.

He has numerous publications that explore this topic including several books entitled More Than Black? Multiracial Identity and the New Racial Order (2002) and Race and Multiraciality in Brazil and the United States: Converging Paths? (2006), Machado de Assis: Multiracial Identity and the Brazilian Novelist (2012), as well as the article “Race, Multiraciality, and Barack Obama: Toward a More Perfect Union?”, which appeared in the journal Black Scholar (2009), and a book chapter with a similar title “Race, Multiraciality, and the Election of Barack Obama: Toward a More Perfect Union?,” which was published in Andrew Jolivette’s edited volume Obama and the Biracial Factor: The Battle for a New American Majority (2012).

On June 16, 2012, Daniel received the Loving Prize at the 5th Annual Mixed Roots Film and Literary Festival in Los Angeles. Established in 2008, the prize is a commemoration of the June 12, 1967 Loving v. Virginia decision that removed the last laws prohibiting racial intermarriage. It is awarded annually to outstanding artists, storytellers, and community leaders for inspirational dedication to celebrating and illuminating the mixed racial and cultural experience. More recently, Daniel was interviewed on National Public Radio’s “Talk of the Nation” where he discussed his teaching on multiraciality and the significance of the Loving Prize.

“I Got Indian in my Family”~A Discussion on Indian Identity

Mixed Race Radio
2013-01-23, 17:00Z (12:00 EST)

Tiffany Rae Reid, Host

Dwanna L. Robertson
University of Massachusetts, Amherst

On today’s episode of Mixed Race Radio we will speak with Dwanna L. Robertson and discuss issues of Identity: What does it mean to be Indian in today’s society?

Dwanna is a citizen of the Muscogee Creek Nation of Oklahoma, a public sociologist, an Indigenous rights advocate, and a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst having earned with two prior master’s degrees—an MBA and a Master of Science in Sociology.

Currently, she represents over 2600+ graduate students of color as the appointed ALANA (African-, Latin-, Asian-, and Native-American) – graduate student representative for the Faculty Senate Council Committee on the Status of Diversity for UMass-Amherst.

Dwanna writes for Indian Country Today Media Network and speaks (by invitation) at universities and other organizations and forums about the complexities of Indigenous identity in the United States.

Dwanna has authored or co-authored pieces in American Indian Culture and Research Journal, European Sociological Review, Research in the Sociology of Work, and Oxford Encyclopedia of American Business, Labor, and Economic History. Her research focuses on the reproduction of social inequality, particularly for American Indians. Her current project examines the problematic processes around American Indian identity within the structures of public policy and the media.

Dwanna will share her expertise with us while educating our listeners on the federal government’s approach to many issues, old and new.

For more information, click here.

A 400 Year Old History of Tri-Racial People: In Real Life

Mixed Race Radio
2013-01-16, 17:00Z (12:00 EST)

Tiffany Rae Reid, Host

Marvin T. Jones, Executive Director
Chowan Discovery Group

Marvin T. Jones is the Executive Director of the Chowan Discovery Group (CDG).  The mission of the CDG is to research, document, preserve and present the 400+ year-old history of the landowning tri-racial people of color of the Winton Triangle, an area centered in Hertford County, North Carolina. Founded in 2007, the Chowan Discovery Group (http://www.chowandiscovery.org/) co-produced in 2009 its first major presentation, a stage production, scripted by Jones, called The Winton Triangle. The book, Carolina Genesis: Beyond the Color Line, features Jones’ summary of the Triangle’s history.

In addition to writing articles, Jones has made many presentations about the Winton Triangle’s history on national and regional radio, at colleges and universities, museums and to civic groups.  In 2011, the North Carolina Office of Archives and History accepted three of his nominations for highway historical markers.

Jones is the owner of Marvin T. Jones & Associates, a professional photography company in Washington, D.C.  He has been published in well-known magazines and has worked in South America, the Caribbean and Africa.  Howard University and Roanoke-Chowan Community College hosted Jones’ exhibit on Somalia.

For more information, click here.

Dr. Marcia Dawkins Discusses Her Book, Clearly Invisible

Mixed Race Radio
2012-09-21, 17:00Z (12:00 EST, 09:00 PST)

Tiffany Rae Reid, Host

Marcia Dawkins, Clinical Assistant Professor of Communications
University of Southern California, Annenberg

Marcia is an award-winning writer, speaker, educator and visiting scholar at Brown University. She is the author of Clearly Invisible: Racial Passing and the Color of Cultural Identity (Baylor UP, 2012) and Eminem: The Real Slim Shady (Praeger, 2013).

Marcia writes about racial passing, mixed race identities, media, religion, pop culture and politics for a variety of high-profile publications. Her expert opinion has been sought out by NPR, WABC-TV Boston, The New York Times and TIME Magazine. She earned her PhD in communication from USC Annenberg, her master’s degrees in humanities from USC and NYU and her bachelor’s degrees in communication arts and honors from Villanova.

Clearly Invisible (Baylor University Press, 2012), is the first to connect racial passing and classical rhetoric to issues of disability, gender-neutral parenting, human trafficking, hacktivism, identity theft, racial privacy, media typecasting and violent extremism.

By applying fresh eyes to landmark historical cases and benchmark popular culture moments in the history of passing Dawkins also rethinks the representational character and civic purpose of multiracial identities. In the process she provides powerful insights called “passwords” that help readers tackle the tough questions of who we are and how we can relate to one another and the world.