Mixed Race Studies

Join the Greatest Minds Society of Georgia State University for a Discussion on Racial Identity with Playwright Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni of “One Drop of Love“

Georgia State University Speaker’s Auditorium
44 Courtland Street, SE
Atlanta, Georgia 30303
Thursday, 2014-09-18, 13:30-15:30 EDT (Local Time)

Who are you? What’s your identity? Where do you come from? What’s your story? What’s your history?

Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni, Award-Winning Actress, Producer and Educator
“One Drop of Love”

Ashley Uzamere, Undergraduate Student, EVP
Student Goverment Association

George R. Greenidge, Jr., Ph.D. Student
Department of Sociology
President, Greatest Minds Society

Lauren Sudeall Lucas, J.D., Assistant Professor of Law
Georgia State University College of Law

Kyael Moss, Undergraduate Student, Student Senator
Student Goverment Association

Laschonda Pituk, Undergraduate Student
Member, Greatest Minds Society

One Drop of a Father’s Love

Biracials Learning About African-American Culture (B.L.A.A.C)
Sunday, 2014-06-15

Zebulon Miletsky, Assistant Professor of Africana Studies
Stony Brook University, State University of New York

This week I had the pleasure of attending a one-woman show by Television and Film actress, Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni, called “One Drop of Love” a multimedia solo performance put on at the Brooklyn Historical Society. It was phenomenal. Not only was it brilliant in its exposition of the social and historical dimensions of race, but it alsobrought a human dimension to the oft-complicated question of mixed race in America.  The context alone was compelling.  In the next room, the critically praised exhibit on Brooklyn Abolitionists entitled “In Pursuit of Freedom”, rich with the documentation and exhibits about slavery and its abolition, much of it the raw material and subtext of the play we were about to witness. The day of the performancealso happened to be “Loving Day”, an annual celebration ofthe anniversary of the 1967 United States Supreme Court decision “Loving v. Virginia” which struck down all anti-miscegenation laws in the U.S. The decision was followed by an increase in interracial marriages, although not necessarily all “black/white” ones, and it is commemorated annually on what is now Loving Day, June the 12th…

Read the entire review here.

One Drop of Love – a performance by Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni at the Brooklyn Historical Society

Brooklyn Historical Society
Crossing Borders, Bridging Generations
2014-06-12, 19:00 EDT (Local Time)

Crossing Borders, Bridging Generations and the Brooklyn Historical Society is delighted to host One Drop of Love, a multimedia solo performance by Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni that incorporates performance, film, photographs, and animation to tell the story of how the notion of ‘race’ came to be in the U.S.

One Drop of Love asks audiences to consider: how does our belief in ‘race’ affect our most intimate relationships? The show travels near and far, in the past and present to explore family, race, love and pain – and a path towards reconciliation. Audiences go on a journey from the 1700s to the present, to cities all over the U.S and to West and East Africa, where both the narrator and her father spent time in search of their racial roots.

One Drop of Love is produced by Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni, Ben Affleck, Chay Carter and Matt Damon. For more information, visit: www.onedropoflove.org.

This event is co-sponsored by LovingDay.org, MixedRootStories.org and MixedRaceStudies.org.

For more information, click here.

One Drop of Love – Lounge Theater 1, Los Angeles

Plays 411
May 2014

Saturday, 2014-05-31 20:30 PDT (Local Time)
Lounge Theatre 1
6201 Santa Monica Boulevard
Los Angeles, California 90038

How does our belief in ‘race’ affect our most intimate relationships?

One Drop of Love is a multimedia solo performance exploring family, race, love, pain – and a path towards reconciliation. The show is produced by Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and the show’s writer/performer Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni.

For more information, click here.

Forget Policy—Americans Can’t Even Agree on Whether Obama Is Black

TakePart
2014-04-15

Liz Dwyer, Staff Writer

A Pew Research Center study finds that whites and Latinos identify the commander-in-chief as ‘mixed race.’

If you thought the United States had achieved the significant historic milestone of electing its first African American president, think again. According to Next America, a just-released Pew Research Center report, only a little over one-fourth of Americans believe Obama is black.

Obama self-identifies as black—he checked the “black, negro, African American” box on the 2010 U.S. Census—and has jokingly identified himself as a mutt too. But when asked if Obama is black or mixed race, 27 percent of Americans say that he’s black, and 52 percent say he’s mixed race.

When the data is broken out according to racial groups, whites and Hispanics respond similarly. Of whites, 24 percent say Obama is black, and 53 percent say he is mixed race. As for Hispanics, 23 percent say he’s black, and 61 percent say he’s mixed race. Asians weren’t asked what they thought. (What’s up with that, Pew?)

The question—Is Obama black or mixed race?—is phrased oddly. A person can be both. And where is Pew’s “Is Obama black or mixed race or white” option? But this study is simply the latest example of America’s mass confusion over Obama’s identity…

…Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni, writer and star of One Drop of Love (Ben Affleck, Chay Carter, and Matt Damon are co-producers), a multimedia show that explores how a father and a daughter develop their racial identities, says she finds it “problematic to allow anyone other than self to identify people as a ‘race.’ ”

Now we get boxes on the U.S. Census survey, but, says Cox DiGiovanni, “until 1970 the race question on the Census was answered through observation by the Census taker.” That means if you looked “black,” you were identified by the Census taker as black—or “negro,” as African Americans were called then…

Read the entire article here.

On Mixed Privilege

Mixed Roots Stories
2014-02-13

Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni, Playwright, Producer, Actress, Educator

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about whether there is such a thing as ‘mixed privilege’. Today in my ESL class one of my students said he would let his daughter marry anyone… except for a Black person. I’ve shared with my students many times and in a number of ways that I am proud of being Black (& other things too). I also often use the exploration of ‘race as a social construct’ in order to teach English at the more advanced levels (as this class was). So what made this student feel comfortable enough to say this to me? Is it that I have a privilege that makes him feel like this kind of blatantly discriminatory statement is OK to say to me?…

Read the entire essay here.

Mixed Roots Stories~ What’s Yours?

Mixed Race Radio
Blog Talk Radio
2014-02-19, 17:00Z (12:00 EDT)

Tiffany Rae Reid, Host

Join us today as we meet the visionaries behind Mixed Roots Stories: Chandra Crudup, Mark Edwards and our very own, Fanshen Cox. Mixed Roots Stories (MXRS) is a new resource for teaching and learning about the Mixed Experience and is a creative and dynamic online and physical California Not-For-Profit dedicated to promoting artists and stories of all kinds that address Mixed experiences. “We are an interactive community, so input and collaboration with others is essential to our mission of Celebrating and Strengthening Diverse Mixed Communities through the Power of Sharing Stories.”

AND THIS IS WHERE YOU COME IN:

There are a number of collaborative opportunities:

• YOU CAN Promote story ideas on the Mixed Roots Stories website
• YOU CAN Partner to plan and implement an event (for example MXRS is partnering with the Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference in bringing arts and cultural programming to the 2014 conference)
• YOU CAN Share the MXRS podcast
• YOU CAN Participate in the selection of the Mixed Roots Stories logo

PLEASE CALL IN TO SHARE YOUR MIXED ROOTS STORY.

Mixed Roots Stories’ very own: Chandra, Mark and Fanshen will join us to take your calls and tell us all about this amazing new resource.

WON’T YOU JOIN US?

“The performance was hands-down the best Choate performance I have ever seen. I’ve seen a lot of white struggle stories, and a lot of black struggle stories, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a mixed struggle story.” —Zemia Edmondson description of Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni’s one-woman performance, One Drop of Love.

Alexandra Brunjes, “Getting Race-y in the PMAC,” The News: The official student newspaper of Choate Rosemary Hall, Wallingford, Connecticut, January 25, 2014. http://thenews.choate.edu/article/getting-race-y-pmac.

Getting Race-y in the PMAC

The News: The official student newspaper of Choate Rosemary Hall
Wallingford, Connecticut
Saturday, 2014-01-25

Alexandra Brunjes ’16, News Staff Reporter

“How does our belief in ‘race’ affect our most intimate relationships?” This is the question that Ms. Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni sought to answer during her one-woman performance, One Drop of Love, last Friday night, January 17th, on the Paul Mellon Arts Center [(PMAC)] mainstage, employing her relationship with her father as the primary example.

Using a collection of images and voice recordings and the astonishing ability to seamlessly shift personas in order to represent members of her family, Ms. DiGiovanni told the story of her experience with race. 

Ms. DiGiovanni originally meant for One Drop of Love to be a documentary for her Masters of Fine Arts thesis at California State University. “I always knew I wanted to look at race,” she stated. “I wanted to figure out why race was so important in my family, and why it was getting in the way of my relationship with my dad. It took me a long time to realize that the entire reason for my show was to have that final confrontation with my dad.”

Celebrity Ben Affleck, a childhood friend, attended Ms. DiGiovanni’s first show. He then consulted with co-producers from Argo and friend Matt Damon. They ultimately decided to produce her show. She said about this development, “[The show] gained this new trajectory that I never had imagined.”

“This is the largest crowd I have ever performed for, as well as the youngest,” Ms. DiGiovanni said of her Choate performance. “At the end, the response was beautiful. I’m so glad that it can have an impact on people.”

“The performance was hands-down the best Choate performance I have ever seen. I’ve seen a lot of white struggle stories, and a lot of black struggle stories, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a mixed struggle story.” Zemia Edmondson ’16 described…

Read the entire review here.

Choate Celebrates MLK Day

Choate Rosemary Hall
333 Christian Street
Wallingford, Connecticut 06492
(203) 697-2000
Friday, 2014-01-17, 19:30 EST (Local Time)

Photo: Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni

“One Drop of Love,” a multimedia solo performance by Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni, will be presented on Friday, January 17, at 7:30 p.m. in the Arts Center. This performance tells the story of how the notion of race came to be in the U.S. and will begin our diversity conversations leading up to MLK Day. On Monday morning, January 20, the Anti-Defamation League will present, “The Truth About Hate,” in the Worthington Johnson Athletic Center.

For more information, click here.