Mixed Race Studies

EXCLUSIVE: Afro-Latina Slam Poet, Elizabeth Acevedo, Debuts First Novel ‘Poet X’

Latina
2018-03-05

Jenifer Calle, Politics and Culture Writer

@acevedowrites/Instagram

Elizabeth Acevedo has been empowering Afro-Latinas for years by bringing attention to the various experiences of women of color through her powerful words in poetry.

As a Latina, you might remember a certain poem or a book that changed your life, a verse so precise it gave you chills. Acevedo’s debut novel, Poet X, will do just that with its raw emotions that are universal to all young girls, wrapped up in beautiful lyrical verses.

Poet X is a Young Adult novel that follows the story of an unapologetic 15-year-old girl, Xiomara Batista, growing up in Harlem. As a Dominican-American teen stepping into adulthood she takes to her journal to deal with the emotions and frustrations she feels at home and at school. In this three-part novel, Xiomara struggles with her conservative mother, an absent father, her faith in God, her sexuality, and much more. Xiomara’s awakening through slam poetry helps her find her voice but her journey of self-discovery doesn’t come easy…

Read the entire article here.

The Olympian

Sporting News
2018-01-08

Evan Sporer

Jordan Greenway (right)

Jordan Greenway is set to become the first African-American to play for USA Hockey at an Olympic tournament. The 20-year-old, who will break a color barrier nearly a century old, shares his story.

BOSTON – With the band A Perfect Circle performing that night at Agganis Arena, the Boston University men’s hockey team had been transplanted up Commonwealth Avenue to its sister rink, Walter Brown Arena, for a Wednesday practice. After spending the beginning portions of this session on breakouts — “We stink at breakouts,” groans David Quinn — the head coach shrinks the ice by two-thirds, beginning a small-area game from the blue line down, a close-quarters, three-on-three drill.

It’s there where one can truly see the how much bigger Jordan Greenway is than anyone else. Standing 6-5, 235 pounds, Greenway isn’t just the biggest player on the ice, because that doesn’t encompass the gap between him and his teammates.

When he’s summoned to jump into the drill, Greenway skates right into the play, pushing one of his teammates off the puck like a windshield wiper to a raindrop. After winning possession, the action transitions toward the other goal. Greenway parks himself roughly 30 feet from the net and bangs his stick on the ice, calling for the puck, demanding it. In one motion, all the time he’s afforded in this fast-paced game, Greenway accepts a pass and releases the puck, firing it through traffic, off the crossbar and in…

…The town of Canton sits in the northwest corner of upstate New York. About 10 miles north, the St. Lawrence River divides the United States from Canada. But Canton very much has the feel of a small Canadian town.

“There’s like one Walmart, and that’s where you get your food or whatever the hell you need for your house,” Greenway said. “It’s cold as hell. There’s a lot of farmland, so a lot of people hunt, and everyone plays hockey. That’s how I got into it.”

The town is also predominantly white. A 2015 United States census report listed Canton’s population at 6,665 and 4.7 percent black.

Shannon Sullivan and the Greenway brothers

“We spoke about color a lot because primarily where we came from, the majority here are white people,” said Shannon Sullivan, Greenway’s mother. “I made that very known to them. We spoke about it openly in the house, about the background, and don’t have the stereotype of what people think.”

Canton is where Greenway grew up, along with brother James or “J.D.,” 434 days his junior. The boys, as Shannon refers to them, were inseparable as children. They shared a bedroom, though J.D. said most of their time was spent outside, playing one sport or another.

“Him and I just always went at it, you know?” Jordan said. “That’s probably why we’re a little bit more competitive now after growing up. Him and I always had some good battles one on one, whether it was in the rink or at the house, whatever the case was.”

House rules were set, according to Sullivan, but “they’re two boys, right?” Sullivan, much like Jordan, has a laid-back personality and was lenient when a wrestling match broke out or a hockey puck sailed over the couch…

Read the entire article here.

EXCLUSIVE: White supremacist James Jackson reveals deranged desire to kill black men to save white women in jailhouse interview

The New York Daily News
2017-03-26

Ellen Moynihan and Steven Rex Brown

The racist who fatally drove a sword through 66-year-old Timothy Caughman said Sunday he hoped the attack would stop white women from entering relationships with black men.

In an exclusive Rikers Island interview with the Daily News, James Jackson, 28, offered a window into his deranged, hate-filled psyche.

He shared details about his upbringing with “typical liberal” parents, his wishes to have shed more African-American blood, and his fear of being killed in custody now that he is being held in a jail with a largely minority inmate population and staff.

During the disturbing sitdown, Johnson was at times self-aggrandizing, boasting of his white supremacy without shame. In other moments, he appeared dejected by society’s rejection of his violent, racist message — which echoed another notorious racist killer, South Carolina church gunman Dylann Roof.

Most chillingly, Jackson said he had traveled to New York from Baltimore intending to kill numerous black men, imagining that the bloodshed would deter white women from interracial relationships. “‘Well, if that guy feels so strongly about it, maybe I shouldn’t do it,’” he said, imagining how he wanted a white woman to think…

…In 2008, Jackson said, he voted for Barack Obama for President, one of the few people of mixed race he said he could respect. “I couldn’t let Palin get in there. She’s stupid,” he said, referencing then-Republican candidate for vice president Sarah Palin…

Read the entire article here.

A Good Fellow and a Wise Guy

The New York Sun
2006-08-09

William Bryk

Book Review
A Pickpocket’s Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth-Century New York
by Timothy J. Gilfoyle

George Washington Appo, the once notorious Asian-Irish-American petty criminal who flourished during the last quarter of the 19th century as a pickpocket and swindler, had pretty much faded into obscurity at his death in 1930, aged 73. Even the street where he lived, Donovan’s Lane (better known as Murderer’s Alley) is gone, buried with the infamous Five Points slum beneath the federal courthouses in Foley Square.

Appo resurfaced in Luc Sante’s 1991 best seller, “Low Life,” which briefly presents him as a buffoon, incompetent even as a crook. If Timothy J. Gilfoyle’s “A Pickpocket’s Tale” (W.W. Norton, 460 pages,$27.95) serves any purpose, it corrects this slur on Appo’s reputation. Appo practiced pick-pocketing as others practice dentistry or law: He was a thorough professional who picked thousands, if not tens of thousands, of pockets during his career, usually making as much money in a day as the average workingman then made in a year. He was imprisoned four times for pickpocketing, all while still relatively young. He apparently accepted jail as an inevitable cost of doing business…

Read the entire review here.

MARRIED TO A NEGRO.

The New York Times
Thursday, 1885-05-14
Page 8, column 5

A few days ago passengers waiting in the New-Haven Railroad rooms at the Grand Central Station were surprised at the attention paid a young white woman by a colored man, who was dressed in the height of fashion. They were more surprised to see the couple kiss each other good-bye when the woman went to take a train. The colored man appeared yesterday in the little village of Harrison, Westchester County, attired in a handsome suit of broadcloth, with white vest,, white necktie, and buff kid gloves. He inquired for the Matthews mansion, which is one of the finest dwellings in Westchester County, and went there. He was met at the house by the woman from whom he had parted at the Grand Central Station. She was a waitress in the Matthews family, and a general favorite. Her name was Lizzie Connor. She introduced the new arrival to her mistress as her husband, Titus Poole, and said they were about to depart together. The couple walked to the railway station, about a mile distant, where they purchased tickets for Mount Vernon. At that station they took the stage to Yonkers, where they said they intended to live. The woman is about 22 years of age and her husband is 36.

Collection of demographic data regarding multiracial identification.

The New York City Council
Melissa Mark-Viverito, Speaker
2014-11-25 (Passed 2016-11-13)

Int 0551-2014, Version A (2014-11-25)

A Local Law to amend the New York city charter, in relation to the collection of demographic data regarding multiracial identification

Proposed Int. No. 551-A would require the Department of Social Services, the Administration for Children’s Services, the Department of Homeless Services, the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the Department for the Aging, the Department of Youth and Community Development, the Department of Education, and any other agencies designated by the Mayor to provide to all persons served by the agency with a demographic information survey that contains an option for multiracial ancestry or ethnic origin. The bill would also require an annual review of all forms from the designated agencies, or any other agency designated by the Mayor, that collect demographic information, are completed by persons seeking services, and are within the administering agencies’ authority to amend. The bill would require all such forms to be amended to contain an option for multiracial ancestry or ethnic origin. Proposed Int. 551-A would also require reporting on the collected data.

Passed (50-0) on 2016-11-13. Enacted (Mayor’s Desk for Signature)

For more information, click here.

Gentleman Jigger: A Novel of the Harlem Renaissance

Da Capo Press
2008-01-23 (originally written in 1928)
352 pages
5.5 x 0.8 x 8.2 inches
ISBN: 978-0786720637

Richard Bruce Nugent (1906-1987)

An important addition to the literature of the period, Gentleman Jigger is the story of two brothers. Aeon, who passes for white and becomes a famous poet, faces the conundrums of love across the color line. Stuartt, who is openly homosexual-as was the author-joins the younger intellectuals of Harlem in defying authority figures, both black and white, at the notorious “Niggeratti Manor.” After the group disperses, Stuartt moves to Greenwich Village and becomes sexually involved with a young hoodlum. Charming and audacious, Stuartt eventually seduces one of the gangster’s top bosses, Orini, before his friendships with Wayne, a young heiress, and Bebe, Orini’s “moll,” set them all spinning in a whirlwind of jazz-age glamour and celebrity…that ends in an ironic dénouement.

Justine Jane M. Bolin (First Negro woman judge in the U.S.A.)

The Crisis
Volume 49, Number 9 (September 1939)

THE COVER

Miss Jane M. Bolin became on July 22 the first colored woman Judge in the United States when Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia appointed her and swore her in as a justice of the Court of Domestic Relations of the City of New York. The appointment is for ten years and the salary is $12,000 a year.

Miss Bolin, who in private life is the wife of Ralph E. Mizelle, Washington, D.C., attorney, is a graduate of Wellesley College and Yale law school. She was born in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., the daughter of Gaius C. Bolin, an attorney who for many years was president of the Poughkeepsie branch of the N.A.A.C.P. Following her graduation from Yale law school, Miss Bolin was admitted to practice in New York in 1932. In 1937 she was named an assistant corporate counsel and assigned to the Court of Domestic Relations. The retirement of another justice who had reached the age limit created an opening which Mayor LaGuardia filled by appointing Miss Bolin.

Mayor de Blasio says his ‘exemplary’ son Dante follows the law, but fears police brutality: ‘Black Lives Matter as an idea is so important’

The New York Daily News
2016-07-15

Jennifer Fermino, City Hall Bureau Chief

Mayor de Blasio said he finds it “intolerable” when protesters lodge “vile” insults at cops, but also defended the Black Lives Matter movement as “necessary.” (KEN MURRAY/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS)

Dante de Blasio is an “exemplary” teen who never gets in trouble – but even he is scared of being a victim of police violence, Mayor de Blasio said on Friday.

The mayor, speaking about race matters on the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC, spoke openly about his son after an African-American Queens grandmother called in to complain that she was afraid “racist” cops would hurt her teenaged grandsons.

His comments immediately touched a nerve with the Police Benevolent Association, who blasted him for not vigoriously defending the NYPD against the woman’s charges…

Read the entire article here.

PHOTOS: What It Means to Celebrate Afro-Latinidad in the Time of Black Lives Matter

Remezcla
2016-07-12

Isabelia Herrera, Music Editor

Photography by: Itzel Alejandra Martinez, Photo Editor

Itzel Alejandra Martinez

When Remezcla headed to the fourth edition of New York City’s Afro-Latino Festival this weekend, surrounded by colorful dashikis and bold #BlackLivesMatter t-shirts, we were reminded that the political utility of the Afro-Latino label is more urgent than ever. Speaking with festival attendees, families, and musicians, it became clear that celebrating Afro-Latinidad in times of black trauma isn’t about diverting the focus of anti-racist movements, but about highlighting the diversity of black experiences. As the nation reels from the deaths of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, and as police violence continues to rattle black and brown communities, Afro-Latinos are uniquely positioned to combat anti-blackness in Latino communities. To that end, we spoke to a group of festival attendees about their Afro-Latinidad in the context of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Here’s what they had to say…

Red the entire photo-essay here.