Mixed Race Studies

Painter Ellen Gallagher’s tragic sea tales: How African slaves went from human to cargo on the Atlantic

The Los Angeles Times
2017-11-17

Carolina A. Miranda

An installation view of Ellen Gallagher’s painting “Aquajujidsu” at Hauser & Wirth in Los Angeles. (Fredrik Nilsen / Hauser & Wirth)

On first glance, the painting that greets visitors to the South Gallery at Hauser & Wirth in downtown Los Angeles looks like a crab quietly resting on the bottom of an ocean floor. But look again and that crab morphs into the fragmented face of a person, its myriad pieces coming undone in a watery deep.

In her first solo show in Los Angeles, painter Ellen Gallagher broaches the history of the Middle Passage in ways that are both poetic and surprising — rendering underwater scenes that seem perfectly innocent at first glance, but that on second, third and fourth viewing, quietly evoke the terrible tragedies that occurred in the Atlantic Ocean during the roughly four centuries of the slave trade.

“These are history paintings,” she says thoughtfully, as she settles into a sleek chair in a small lounge at Hauser & Wirth. “It’s this portrait of this space in between, this space where you are dead and alive at the same time.”

Artist Ellen Gallagher. Ellen Gallagher / Hauser & Wirth

The artist, who divides her time between New York and Rotterdam, and whose work resides in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, has long explored questions of history and power in works that straddle the gray area between figurative and abstract…

Read the entire article here.

Does Race Matter in America’s Most Diverse ZIP Codes?

The New York Times
2017-11-24

John Eligon

Darryl Johnson, center, and his wife, Marissa Johnson, with their daughter Sienna at their restaurant in Vallejo, Calif. The city is one of the most racially balanced in the United States. Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times

VALLEJO, Calif. — Beyond the burgers and fries coming from the kitchen and the oldies blaring from the radio, the scene playing out daily at the Original Red Onion might appear unfamiliar to much of the country.

The restaurant’s married owners — Marissa Johnson, a Filipino-American, and Darryl Johnson, an African-American — work alongside Jahira Fragozo, who is of Miskito and Yaqui Indian descent. Ms. Johnson bonds with a customer, Hillory Robinson, who is black, over the challenges of motivating their children in the winter. “They need something to do,” Ms. Robinson says.

Ms. Johnson gushes a short time later when a regular, Dylan Habegger, who is white, decides to tackle the restaurant’s new, spicy creation with a name that describes its effect. “Uh oh,” Ms. Johnson tells him, “you’re trying the Burner today.”

The Original Red Onion sits in one of the country’s most racially diverse ZIP codes: 94591, in Vallejo, Calif. About 30 miles north of Oakland, it is the rare place in the United States where black, white, Asian and Hispanic people not only coexist in nearly equal numbers, but actually connect…

Read the entire article here.

We Are Who We Say We Are: A Black Family’s Search for Home Across the Atlantic World

Oxford University Press
2014-12-01
224 Pages
32 illustrations
5-1/2 x 8-1/4 inches
Paperback ISBN: 9780199978335

Mary Frances Berry, Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought and Professor of History
University of Pennsylvania

This colored Creole story offers a unique historical lens through which to understand the issues of migration, immigration, passing, identity, and color-forces that still shape American society today. We Are Who We Say We Are provides a detailed, nuanced account of shifting forms of racial identification within an extended familial network and constrained by law and social reality.

Author Mary Frances Berry, a well-known expert in the field, focuses on the complexity and malleability of racial meanings within the US over generations. Colored Creoles, similar to other immigrants and refugees, passed back and forth in the Atlantic world. Color was the cause and consequence for migration and identity, splitting the community between dark and light. Color could also split families. Louis Antoine Snaer, a free man of color and an officer in the Union Army who passed back and forth across the color line, had several brothers and sisters. Some chose to “pass” and some decided to remain “colored,” even though they too, could have passed. This rich global history, beginning in Europe–with episodes in Haiti, Cuba, Louisiana, and California–emphasizes the diversity of the Atlantic World experience.

Contents

• Preface
• Chapter I: Becoming Colored Creole
• Chapter II: Becoming Americans
• Chapter III: Family Troubles
• Chapter IV: Fighting for Democracy
• Chapter V: Becoming “Negroes”
• Chapter VI: Opportunity and Tragedy in Iberia Parish
• Chapter VII: Mulattoes and Colored Creoles
• Chapter VIII: Just Americans
• Chapter IX: At Home or Away: We Are Who We Say We Are
• Epilogue: Becoming “Black”
• Notes

As intermarriage spreads, fault lines are exposed

The San Francisco Chronicle
2017-05-19

Jill Tucker, K-12 Education Reporter

Jered Snyder and Jen Zhao of Oakland got married in 2015. Asian American women are among the groups that are more likely to marry outside their race. Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle

The growth of interracial marriage in the 50 years since the Supreme Court legalized it across the nation has been steady, but stark disparities remain that influence who is getting hitched and who supports the nuptials, according to a major study released Thursday.

People who are younger, urban and college-educated are more likely to cross racial or ethnic lines on their trip to the altar, and those with liberal leanings are more apt to approve of the unions — trends that are playing out in the Bay Area, where about 1 in 4 newlyweds entered into such marriages in the first half of this decade.

Among the most striking findings was that black men are twice as likely to intermarry as black women — a gender split that reversed for Asian and Pacific Islander Americans and, to researchers, underscores the grip of deeply rooted societal stereotypes…

Read the entire article here.

The Mexipino Experience: Growing Up Mexican and Filipino in San Diego

Remezcla
2017-06-27

Rudy P. Guevarra Jr., Associate Professor of Asian Pacific American Studies
Arizona State University

Author Rudy P. Guevarra Jr. Photo by Jimaya Gomez, Art by Alan López for Remezcla.

Rudy P. Guevarra Jr. is the author of Becoming Mexipino: Multiethnic Identities and Communities in San Diego

Growing up in San Diego, I remember watching my abuelito tend the guava tree he grew for my mother, while singing along to the Mexican rancheras that blared from his tiny radio in the backyard. When my mother called him in for lunch, he’d start whistling, as Linda Ronstadt’s Canciones de mi Padre echoed from the house. We both knew that we’d be eating caldo de res con arroz Mexicano. Once a month, my Filipino grandfather, or tata, would also pay us visits from San Francisco. I’d help him and my mother cook Filipino delicacies, like chicken adobo, pansit, and lumpia. He’d have us in tears, laughing at his jokes, while the smell of soy sauce and vinegar permeated the entire house.

Many of our family functions centered on moments like these – eating Filipino food while listening to Mexican music, bathing ourselves in the experiences that were for me, the essence of being a Mexipino…

Read the entire article here.

Embodying the Oppressed and the Oppressor: Critical Mixed Race Studies for Liberation and Social Justice Education

University of San Francisco
April 2017
71 pages

Gwendlyn C. Snider

A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the School of Education International and Multicultural Education Department In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in International and Multicultural Education

This study will focus on the educational and social experiences of mixed race Filipinx PEP (Pin@y Educational Partnerships) instructors in the San Francisco/Bay Area and the connection of these various, lived experiences to their teaching pedagogy and praxis in Ethnic Studies curriculum. The main purpose of this research is to create additional evidence for the need of critical mixed race studies and acknowledgement of mixed race students’ unique experiences to be valued and included in Ethnic Studies curriculum. In addition, the research will also serve as reaffirmation of not only the efficacy of Ethnic Studies curriculum but also the need for Ethnic Studies at a national and global level for every student regardless of race or cultural background. This research will also examine the ways in which knowing ourselves in connection to our personal histories, ethnicities, and traditions can not only create a stronger sense of identity but also provide the transformation needed for social justice education and activism. When an individual is able to self-actualize and evolve through education, decolonization, and identity formation, they are potentially in a space where they can utilize this knowledge through education and social justice initiatives to teach youth along with connecting and contributing to their local communities.

By conducting detailed qualitative interviews with mixed race PEP teachers, I aim to further reconcile what it means to be a mixed race Filipinx individual specifically teaching Filipinx history and culture in connection to the larger conceptualization of mixed race identity being integrated into Ethnic Studies curriculum. Through the various experiences of PEP instructors, what does it mean to be a mixed race PEP teacher, teaching Filipinx history while grappling with their own identify formation, and how does that play a role into how they teach? Because of the complex nature of mixed race individual experiences, research suggests that mixed race experiences are not yet fully captured by the existing critical theories because a majority of these theories cater to monoracial identities and realities. This study aims to disrupt and dispel stereotypical notions of race, recognize the lived experiences of mixed race individuals, and push forward Ethnic Studies curriculum for all students at all levels.

Read the entire thesis here.

A Young Latino Arab American Throws His Hat in Congressional Ring

NBC News
2017-04-20

Brian Latimer, Assistant Producer

Ammar Campa-Najjar, 28, of Latino and Palestinian descent hopes he can unseat a long-term Republican representative in California’s District 50. Courtsey of Ammar Campa-Najjar

A young, American-born man of Latino and Arab heritage decided to throw his hat in the political ring after working as a community activist and in the Obama administration.

Ammar Campa-Najjar, 28, announced his candidacy Thursday in the hopes of unseating a long-term Republican representative in California’s District 50 in 2018.

Campa-Najjar is the fifth Democrat entering a crowded battlefield that includes Josh Butner, Pierre “Pete” Beauregard, Patrick Malloy and Gloria Chadwick. He hopes his experience as a community organizer during former Pres. Barack Obama’s second presidential campaign will give him an advantage.

Campa-Najjar, whose mother is Mexican American and whose father is Palestinian American, says he spent a lot of time speaking to Hispanic voters in his district to get them to the polls. In 2012, the district voted for Obama, but four years later did not show support for Hillary Clinton…

Read the entire article here.

“Blaxicans of LA” challenges racial binaries and unpacks the complexities of intersectional identity

The Occidental Weekly
Los Angeles, California
2017-04-04

Mallory Leeper

Photograph by Walter Thompson-Hernández

Walter Thompson-Hernández, multimedia journalist and current doctoral student at UCLA, visited Occidental College Monday, March 27 to discuss his research, which aims to bridge the gap between academia and photography and popular culture. Thompson-Hernandez’s lecture explored the historical framework of brown and black relations including anti-black sentiments within the Latinx community. Thompson-Hernández sought to highlight the experiences of Angelenos facing issues of racial classification and assumed singular ethnic identity.

The Latino/a & Latin American Studies department at Occidental College and the Institute for the Study of Los Angeles (ISLA) co-sponsored the Blaxicans of LA lecture in Fowler 202. As a part of their spring speaker series, Professor Raul Villa, department chair, explained that the event is a part of an educational and promotional campaign to bring awareness about the stdy of Latinxs across the hemisphere to Occidental. According to Villa, Latinx representation is an important component in a global education.

Three years ago, Thompson-Hernández started the Instagram page Blaxicans of LA to address the complexity of intersectional experiences — especially those of “Blaxican,” a combination of African and Mexican heritage…

Read the entire article here.

Mixed Race Privilege?

KQED Radio
San Francisco, California
2017-03-09

Sierra Fang-Horvath
Oakland, California

My mom is Chinese, with black hair and tan skin. My dad is white, with light eyes and skin the color of office paper. I, on the other hand, am an awkward midway point: dark skin, but not super dark; black hair, but not super black.

It used to be that I never thought about my mixed race. But as I’ve gotten older, and now that I attend a predominantly white suburban school, race is constantly on my mind.

Recently, my classmates and I participated in a survey calculating our privilege…

Read the story here. Listen to the story (00:02:20) here.

The Missing British Columbia Paintings of Grafton Tyler Brown

2015-02-27

John Lutz, Professor of History
University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia

Grafton Tyler Brown in his Victoria studio, 1883, Image A-08775  courtesy of the Royal BC Museum, BC Archives.

Grafton Tyler Brown became the first professional artist in the province when he reinvented himself in his move to British Columbia in 1882. Two years later he headed south to Tacoma and has since become famous in the United States as the first and one of the best Black professional artists in California and the Pacific Northwest. Practically unknown now, his paintings of the Fraser, Thompson, Okanagan, and Similkameen Valleys as well as southern Vancouver Island, were celebrated in Victoria in 1883 when he opened his inaugural exhibition. But Brown, the famous American Black artist, was, surprisingly, a White artist in British Columbia!

Brown was African American by birth. His parents, Thomas and Wilhelmina, were two free Blacks who had left the slave state of Maryland for the free state of Pennsylvania in 1837. Grafton Tyler Brown born February 22, 1841, was the first of three sons and a daughter, all of whom appear as Black in the censuses of the period…

…Whether by chance or more likely by craft, when Grafton Tyler Brown, who had inherited his father’s lighter colouring, was enumerated by the San Francisco directory makers for the 1861, he was listed without the designation “coloured” applied to Blacks. The 1870 census taker called him a “Mulatto” suggesting he was thought to have only one African American parent while that same year the Dun and Bradstreet credit agency called him a “quadroon” meaning that he was thought to have a single African American grandparent. In the census of 1880 he was listed as “White”. Race, the idea that people can be rigidly separated by their looks, proved itself to be quite arbitrary and open to interpretation…

Read the entire article here.