Mixed Race Studies

More than a house slave

Medium
2016-11-20

Gabrielle Pilgrim

“It’s my black girl who looks like a white girl with a tan and a bad hair day.”

I saw Birth of a Nation and I liked it, as much as one can like a movie that gruesomely shows her ancestors being tortured, raped, beaten, broken, and lynched. Today, I am not analyzing the film. I thought it was cinematically great: I left mad, but inspired. I was particularly drawn to the house slave Isaiah (played by Roger Guenveur Smith) as I am regularly fascinated with multiracial, racially ambiguous, and lightskin black folks.

I don’t know if nonblack people are aware of the “black enough” vs “not black enough” spectrum, but it is real — so real. Colorism is real. The fulfillment or lack of fulfillment of stereotypes is real. Middle to upper-middle class black folks may experience feeling like “not enough.” Childish Gambino voices his struggles with justifying his blackness: “Culture shock at barber shops cause I ain’t hood enough / We all look the same to the cops, ain’t that good enough?” Biracial/multiracial black folks may experience feeling like they are “not enough:”…

Read the entire article here.

Yom Kippur Haftorah: Black Lives Matter

Medium
2016-10-12

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

The opening chapter of a handwritten Book of Esther. source: Wikipedia

You shall love people — including Black people — with all your heart

I shared this with my synagogue during Yom Kippur 5777 Shacharit services.

To grow up Black in America is to know that your humanity is always in question.

I have a lot of memories of this from my childhood, but one stands out in particular.

When I was 15, I was thrown out of a New Year’s Eve party because Black people — or as they repeatedly shouted at me, N-words — were not welcome.

Later, when I was an 18 year old college sophomore, a white Jewish leader of Harvard Hillel yelled at me that I was an anti-Semite because I was at a peace rally organized by Arab students. She could not imagine that someone my color was an Ashkenazi Jew too.

Now at 34, every time my mother calls me, I think it’s to tell me one of my cousins is dead. Or in jail. A couple of weeks ago a phone call from a cousin was in fact about another one who was in jail, falsely accused by a white person who wanted to teach her a lesson…

Read the entire article here.

“Daddy, I wish there weren’t any Black people.”

Medium
2016-05-05

Abe Lateiner

Taking a deep breath, I respond to my daughter with a wish of my own.

I’ve begun to see that it’s not about having the “right” answers when kids ask about race. Don’t get me wrong: I think there are better and worse answers to offer. There’s also a lot to be said for having a calm, thoughtful answer in the first place, sending the important signal that it’s fine to talk about race openly.

At the end of the school day this past fall, I drove to pick up my 5 year-old daughter, Estella, from kindergarten. As we walked down the steps outside, Estella said she felt like walking instead of driving. It was a beautiful day, and so I happily agreed to take a walk around the block and then drive home.

We were at the tipping point of the New England autumn. Some of the leaves were beginning to turn yellow, and a few were already burning red. We were admiring the colors as Estella skipped along, her little hand in mine, when she said, “Daddy, I wish that we lived in a world where people couldn’t change their skin color.”

I’ve been intentional about talking race with Estella. As a White father with a multiracial daughter, I don’t have any sort of grand strategy beyond teaching her that race and skin color are only tangentially related. “Black” people don’t have skin that is the color black, “White” people don’t have skin that is the color white, many “Black” people have lighter skin than some “White” people, and so on. So when we talk about racial categories, I’ll often say, “Isn’t it silly that we use those words to describe people? They’re just made up.”

But I’m also careful to explain that even though race is made up, it gets people hurt, traumatized, and even killed. I’ve told her that the people we call “Black” are more likely to be treated unfairly by the police just because of the way that they look…

Read the entire article here.

For me, identifying as Black has nothing to do with distancing myself from my mom, her whiteness, her family, heritage, or culture. Rather, it is one way I resist racism every day. By claiming and embracing my Blackness, I push back on the messages within me and around me that would have us believing that being Black is anything I wouldn’t want to be.

Megan Madison, “Yes, I’m Black! Here’s why.” Medium, June 16, 2016. https://medium.com/embrace-race/yes-im-black-here-s-why-482640e6ed4a.

Yes, I’m Black! Here’s why.

Medium
2016-06-16

Megan Madison, Doris Duke Fellow
School for Social Policy and Management
Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts

Part of an EmbraceRace series on “mixed-race” identity.

Based on how people identify themselves, and accounting for their parents’ and grandparents’ identities, the Pew Research Center recently found that 7% of US adults are “mixed-race.” Mixed-race kids are at least double that proportion of all children.

The mixed-race population is the fastest-growing racial group in the country and, although most people who could identify as multiracial do not, they are a fast-growing political force as well.

EmbraceRace invited members of our community to talk about their experiences as mixed-race people. We provided Dr. Maria Root’s 1993 Bill of Rights for People of Mixed Heritage as a prompt, which several writers identified as crucial to their own early development as multiracial/mixed- race people. We asked them to use it in any way they wished, or not at all.

Below you’ll find “Yes, I’m Black! Here’s Why,” by Megan Madison.

It was Passover. And as an anti-bias educator, I couldn’t help using the Exodus story as an opportunity to talk about civil disobedience, to talk about the difference between just laws and unjust laws. And just as we were discussing the bravery it must have taken Moshe to stand up to Pharaoh, the GPS interrupted, instructing us to turn left onto MLK Blvd.

“Do you know who Martin Luther King Jr. was?” I asked.

“Yeah. I know already.” My white 8-year-old nephew in the backseat rolled his eyes. “The busses and everything.”

We talked for a while longer about risk, and courage, and sticking up for what we believe in. And then came the question that triggered in me a familiar warm wash of shame and panic: “You’re black?” he asked.

I glanced up at my reflection in the rearview mirror.

“Yep. I’m Black,” I replied, doing my best to convey the assuredness that I’ve learned can sometimes protect me from further interrogation. The air of confidence that might just save me from having to justify my existence one more time, spare me from having to trot out version #7,280 (5 times per week x 52 weeks per year x 28 years — rough estimate) of the speech I’ve given since childhood…

Read the entire article here.

Searching for Identity: Race, adoption and awareness in the millennial generation

Medium
2016-05-19

Dwight Smith

What happens when a black boy is adopted at birth into a white world where race and racism are ghosts of the past and racial identity is a silly thing to waste time thinking about? As a transracial adult adoptee of color, my life journey reveals some insight into this very question.

And what happens when a mostly white millennial generation is raised without an accurate understanding of race, racism or their role in a racialized society? As Slate’s chief political correspondent Jamelle Bouie puts it, our generation “think[s] if we ignore skin color, racism will somehow disappear.”

Both questions are connected because I — and many of my millennial peers — came up in similar race-erasing worlds. Both questions are important to me, because my life experiences motivate me to address the racial confusion of the millennial generation.

I lead the Impact Race initiative for a global nonprofit called Net Impact, connecting our 100,000 members with the awareness, language and resources to lead for racial equity in their communities and careers. Members represent hundreds of campuses and companies across a wide variety of industries, including the local tech industry. Aspects of my journey as a transracial adoptee, and the majority white millennial generation experience in the United States, highlight the importance of pushing the conversation toward an honest, reflective look at how to understand racism and lead for racial equity.

Ignorance is bliss, until it isn’t.

I am a mixed-race black male raised in and around whiteness. Race had about as much real significance as the color of one’s shoelaces, and racism was a wrong of years gone by. In this world, to be ‘black’ (this is how I was and am categorized) meant a list of hollow stereotypes such as the expectation of athletic skill. But mostly there was just deafening silence when it came to me being black. Of course, all of this was ‘normal’ to me, in the sense that it was all I ever knew. It was also normal to all the white kids I grew up around. This is, in part, the reason that a ‘raceless’, colorblind worldview is normal to many of my white millennial peers today…

…Simply opening one’s eyes is not enough, we must seek the context to interpret that which we now see. My faith, my current understanding of the factors that influenced my childhood experiences as a transracial adoptee, and my everyday experience as a black man in America, fuel my life’s commitment to education and advocacy…

Read the entire article here.

Before People Called Me A Spic, They Called Me A Nigger

Medium
2016-03-11

Pablo Guzmán

It was a throwaway line I used. Deliberately. Speaking to mostly Latino and African-American audiences. Back in the day.

“Before people called me a spic, they called me a nigger.”

And it hit the mark.

The hoots, applause, whistles and laughs let me know. I’d found a nerve. And I intended to probe. When I felt that arrow’s reverb, I launched it again. Aimed squarely at calling out what separates us. Latinos/African-Americans. Even what separates Latinos from ourselves. And. What also ties us together.

Drawing from all my observations. And, experiences (through the ripe old age then of 19. Worldly motherfucker)…

…THE SLAVE SHIP.

Square One. For a good many Latinos, African-Americans, and people of the Caribbean, that is our link. To music, dance, cuisine, religion, history. And, a politics to build upon. We may be different shades of black. But we be Black. African. That one drop thing has truth. Now, we are a New World Black. I mean, we ain’t African. Proud of Africa. But we gone through the looking glass. Among Latinos we’re also Spanish and Indigenous. In some Latinos, the impact of slavery is much more pronounced. Among others in the New World, the European blend could be French, or Dutch, or British or Portuguese. The Indigenous element might be Mayan, or Taino, or Incan, or Muscogee, or Carib or scores of others. But the African element. Is like no other.

My parents and I were born in New York City. My grandparents are from Puerto Rico and Cuba. Except for my paternal grandfather and maternal grandmother we are all dark-skinned. “Obviously” of African descent. But that guaguancó gene is lying within practically all Latinos with raíces in Africa. So, you might be light-skinned, and you might marry a light-skinned Latina, but hello! One of your babies might be a nappy-headed rhumbera. Took my people a while to figure out genetics. There was a lot of fighting at first about where that baby came from…

Now, yeah, I’m joshing a bit. But the truth is that in some families, the dark-skinned ones sometimes caught hell. Yeah, that racist self-hate thing permeated everywhere. But the moms and grandmoms especially, circled protectively. Bien conmigo, negrita. Ten cuidao con mi negrito. As Pedro Pietri said in his epic poem Puerto Rican Obituary

“Aqui to be called Negrito/Means to be called LOVE”…

Read the entire article here.

“Kiss me, my slave owners were Irish”

Medium
2015-03-16

Liam Hogam

As many of you already know, I have engaged with the “we were slaves too!” narrative on multiple forums and platforms for the past few months. Now I plan to explore some of the uncomfortable truths that this mythology tends to obscure. This Saint Patrick’s Day essay will briefly review Ireland’s anti-slavery history before focussing on the more representative and troubling issue of slave ownership among those of Irish descent. What could be more appropriate?

Ireland has a rich anti-slavery history.

Beginning in the fifth century, a former slave to the Irish, Patricius aka Saint Patrick, sent a now famous letter to the Romano-British warlord Coroticus. In this letter, Patricius condemned and excommunicated the soldiers of Coroticus for enslaving his new Christian converts in Ireland and for selling them to non-Christians. This document is one of the earliest anti-slavery texts in existence.

1700s

In the early-eighteenth century, the Irish philosopher Francis Hutcheson was one of the first to break with Aristotle’s theory of “natural slavery” by declaring that natural liberty was a natural right that belonged to all. This ever increasing dissemination and development of enlightenment thought, such as Hutcheson’s, helped to influence the rise of a formidable anti-slavery movement in Ireland, particularly in Dublin and Belfast…

…(i) The ‘Irish’ Slaves

Upon reviewing the various colonial laws pertaining to anti-miscegenation, it is reasonable to conclude that there were voluntary courtships between enslaved black men and free or indentured white women. But the remarkable case of Eleanor Butler illustrates why these unions were rare.

Maryland 1681

Eleanor “Irish Nell” Butler, was an Irish indentured servant who was brought to Maryland by Lord Baltimore in 1661. In 1681 (by then “well free of her indenture”) she choose to marry Charles, who was a black chattel slave. Her punishment for such an indiscretion was that she was to be a slave as long as her husband was alive and that their children were to be slaves. We find that the descendants of Eleanor and Charles were suing for their freedom 100 years later.

But why was Butler punished in this manner? The colonists in Maryland (as in all the other colonies) created racial laws to discourage marriages between white and black, and their 1664 laws stated that

“divers freeborne English women forgettfull of their free Condicon and to the disgrace of our Nation doe intermarry with Negro Slaves”

Lord Baltimore’s remarks to Nell about her fateful decision are revealing of the racism of this era. It is difficult to say if there was anger, concern or bemusement in his voice when he reportedly asked her

“how she would like to go to Bed to a Negro.”

Either way, her defiant reply would have stung..

“I would rather go to Bed to Charles than your lordship.”

Evidently Nell Butler broke the racial line and law out of love not coercion, and it is thus clear that there were rare cases of chattel slaves of Irish descent on their mother’s side.

Conversely, we find that there were many slaves, just like R.R. Madden’s relatives, who had ‘Irish blood’ on their father’s side, i.e. they were the progeny of an Irish slave-master (or his friends or relatives) and his female slave. This is a disturbing chapter that needs to be explored. The rape and sexual abuse of slaves was an infamous practice. Slaves, who were treated as livestock by their white masters and their white supremacist laws, were offered no protection by the State or polity. Slave breeding had become an important consideration for slave owners once the slave trade was banned. Coerced slave breeding between slaves and the rape of slaves by their owners was thus further motivated by the wish to increase the slave population; these slave breeders wanted to extract future capital from present chattel…

Read the entire article here.

Why I Created #ObamaAndKids

Medium
2016-02-21

Michael Skolnik

(Pete Souza/White House)

THURSDAY, February 18, 2016. The White House. Washington, DC. President Barack Obama was about to enter the room, when I noticed a young boy standing next to me, dressed in a jacket and tie, looking to get to the front of the crowd. This would be the last Black History Month celebration at The White House during the presidency of the first African-American in the history of The United States to hold the highest office in the land. When I asked the young boy if he needed help, he turned to me, and with a smile, he kept it moving, with his mother behind him, he led her around the various adults in his way, ultimately disappearing into the crowd in front.

Historical, this event would become. Not because of any major announcement the President or The First Lady would make from the podium, but because of a photo of that young boy, dressed in a jacket and tie, that would capture the attention of the world. They ultimately got to the front, standing against the rope that separated, by only a few feet, the audience from Barack and Michelle.

When the President finished his speech, he came down to the rope-line to greet the invited guests, and eventually arrived at the feet of the young boy. The President reached out to touch the boy’s face, and the remarkable White House photographer Pete Souza, did what he does best; snapped another iconic photograph of President Obama and a child who innocently knows nothing of the importance of that moment…

Read the entire article here.

Photographing Multiracial Families In Scotland: Celebrating mothers, daughters and diversity through portraits

Medium for Pixel Magazine
2015-12-17

Interview by Emily von Hoffmann and Polarr

Image courtesy of Kim Simpson.

Portrait photographer Kim Simpson began her Exottish project after her daughter, who is of mixed heritage, experienced a series of racial insults in her primary school in Scotland.

Kim says she hopes her portraits — which feature families with some “visual differences” between their members — will encourage viewers to revisit their engrained ideas of what it looks like to be Scottish.

For Polarr, Emily von Hoffmann spoke with Kim about the work and her experience as a parent in a multiracial family.

Emily von Hoffmann: “Girls and Their Mothers” is one part of the larger Exottish project. What does “Girls and Their Mothers” entail? Who are these women?

Kim Simpson: “Girls and Their Mothers” is a collection of portraits of mixed race girls, of all ages, with their mothers — 48 portraits featuring 16 different families in a mix of individual and group portraits.

Instead of questioning their ancestry or scrutinizing their appearance, I chose to photograph girls and women of mixed heritage and their mothers with an intent to question social perception. These images display their relationships, linking these girls and their mothers together while at the same time respecting their disparity…

Image courtesy of Kim Simpson.

…EvH: What sort of national dialogue, or vocabulary even, around race and appearance exists in Scotland? Is it discussed in school, for instance? I’m interested in thinking about this in comparison to the current Black Lives Matter movement in the U.S., and the greater mainstream attention to identity issues of multiracial individuals.

KS: Black Lives Matter is extremely relevant in Scotland, especially at the moment. We have had an awful tragedy that saw the senseless end of Sheku Bayoh’s life at the hands of police officers as he was suffocated during an arrest in Fife, Scotland. Justice has not been served in this instance and it echoes all the hallmarks of what has been going on across the water with concerns of interactions between police officers and members of the black community…

Read entire the interview here.