Mixed Race Studies

I don’t feel like I know how to navigate the space where I can transfer to him pride for my Senegalese roots but also teach him about colorism, anti-blackness, and white privilege. My blackness has always been a big part of my identity, and I feel lost because I won’t be able to share my lived experiences with my child—although I’m happy that he most likely will be able to bypass many challenges because of his light skin. But what if my child wants to walk around in a traditional Senegalese boubou, or braid his hair in cornrows? It’s clear that mixed race people cannot appropriate their own culture, but I still find myself wondering if people will mistake him for being a Rachel Dolezal-like abomination.

Ndéla Faye, “Dealing with Everyday Racism as a Black Mom with a White-Passing Son,” Broadly., March 14, 2018. https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/59knmn/everyday-racism-black-mother-white-passing-child.

Dealing with Everyday Racism as a Black Mom with a White-Passing Son

Broadly.
2018-03-14

Ndéla Faye
London, United Kingdom

Illustration by Erin Aniker

Do they live far?” the woman asks me in the swimming pool changing rooms, nodding her head towards my son. “We live across the river, not far from here,” I reply, not quite understanding the wording of her question. On my way home I realize that her choice of pronoun referred to my son’s family—which she assumed I was not a part of. She did not think my child was mine. I bite my lip and wipe the tears from my eyes.

When white professor Robert E. Kelly’s children interrupted his live interview on the BBC last year, many thought his Korean wife, visible in the background, was the nanny. The incident sparked a much-needed debate on stereotypes and racism, but the truth is this is part and parcel of many non-white mum’s life. Having lived in London for more than a decade, where less than half the population identify as white and British, I have – perhaps naively – been lulled into the idea that people don’t judge me based on the color of my skin. But since the birth of my child, I’ve been proven wrong time and time again.

I notice a shop security guard staring at my son, examining his features and trying to answer the big red question mark blinking in his head. “Are you looking after him for someone?” he blurts out. This time I’m unable to hide my anger. “No, I pushed him out myself,” I reply curtly. I make a swift exit, accompanied by the awkward laughs and raised eyebrows of those who witnessed this unfortunate exchange. Swatting away microaggressions with an invisible bat has become part of my everyday survival.

Part of motherhood is being thrown into a whole new world, but as the mother of a “white-passing” child, I’ve been thrown head first into a place where a playgroup leader asks if I am my child’s guardian—but immediately refers to my white friend and her white baby as “mom and baby.” A place where an Irish woman corrects me on the pronunciation of my own child’s Irish name. A place where I see people flinch with surprise as I nurse my son in public, and I wonder whether they think I’m a hired wet nurse, and keep smiling even though I feel like crying…

Read the entire article here.

The Artist Painting Intimate Portraits of Interracial Love

Broadly
2017-03-10

Sheila Regan

In honor of the 50th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court case “Loving v. Virginia,” which overturned bans on miscegenation, artist Leslie Barlow wanted to explore mixed-race identity in a positive, uplifting way.

You’d think that 50 years after the landmark Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia, which determined that anti-miscegenation laws were unconstitutional in the United States, people would be free to love whomever they want. Tell that to Alissa Paris, who was harassed and called a racial slur while walking in downtown Minneapolis with her then-boyfriend a few years ago. They were both mixed race, but most people read Paris as black and her boyfriend as white.

On February 25, Paris attended an art exhibition with her current partner, Jared, who is also mixed race, at the Public Functionary gallery in Minneapolis. There, they saw a portrait of themselves, painted by artist Leslie Barlow, as part of a body of work that features mixed-race families and couples. In no time, Paris started to get choked up; it was rare to see mixed-race people portrayed in such an intentional way. “It was really emotional,” she says…

Read the entire article here.

Inside Facebook’s Totally Adorable, Kind of Racist Mixed Race Baby Community

Broadly
2016-06-21

Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff

Thousands of people have signed up to Instagram and Facebook communities to celebrate the beauty of multiracial children. But not everyone is convinced that they have the purest intentions at heart.

In a world plagued by racism and prejudice, some people have hit on what they believe to be a simple but obvious solution. “Biracial babies!” they coo. “And they’re so cute, too!”

This is tongue in cheek, of course, but speaking as someone whose father is white and whose mother is black Caribbean, there does seem to be a growing and pervasive fascination with multiracial people. And in particular, babies…

…Recent census figures show mixed-race people are the fastest growing ethnic minority both in the US and the UK. These numbers are only set to rise, as predictions suggest that white people will no longer make up the majority of the US population by 2043. In the UK, one University of Oxford professor has said white Britons are set to become a minority in 2066.

Like many children, the lives of multiracial babies are intimately documented on social media, but they are arguably fixated on to a larger extent than most. Their pictures are all over the internet, under hashtags such as #BiracialBabies, #KardashianKids, #MixedLove, and #Diversity. On Instagram, accounts like Beautiful Mixed Kids and Mixed Babies Feature amass thousands of followers, along with regular picture submissions from doting family members…

Read the entire article here.

“I wasn’t white! It’s so hard to explain this to people: I don’t feel white.” —Rachel Dolezal

Mitchell Sunderland, “In Rachel Dolezal’s Skin,” Broadly, December 7, 2015. https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/rachel-dolezal-profile-interview.

In Rachel Dolezal’s Skin

Broadly
VICE’s Women’s Interest Channel
2015-12-07

Mitchell Sunderland, Managing Editor

Photos by Amy Lombard

In an exclusive interview, Rachel Dolezal discusses growing up on a Christian homestead, painting her face different colors as a child, and why she’s naming her new baby after Langston Hughes.

On a gloomy Saturday night in Spokane, WA, roughly a dozen people gather in the penthouse suite of the Davenport Grand Hotel for Rachel Dolezal’s baby shower. Hip-hop and jazz play on a flat-screen TV, and paper yellow duckies hang on the silver walls. While Rachel’s 21-year-old adopted son Izaiah pops a bottle of champagne, Rachel’s friends—her ex-boyfriend Charles Miller and several women—eat croissant sandwiches on disposable plastic plates. The women vary in age and race (there’s nearly an equal number of black and white guests), but when I ask them how they know Rachel, most give the same answer: “She does my hair.”

Rachel does her own hair, too. Today, she wears a black weave. “In the winter I like to have [a weave] because you don’t have to wear a hat,” she explains. “In the summer I like to wear braids and dreads—that’s just me.” The women’s conversations, though, aren’t about hair and instead revolve around the baby. An hour into the party, Rachel’s friend passes out pieces of paper for a “baby pool.” She asks the partygoers to predict the baby’s “weight, birthday, and gender.” There’s not an option for race. It’s undoubtedly a sensitive topic in this room, but no less a loaded one. After all, much of Rachel’s story is hinged on the concept that, like gender, race is a social construct…

Read the entire interview here.