Mixed Race Studies

Scholarly perspectives on the mixed race experience.

The mulatta concubine in diaspora is everywhere. She is in representations of Thomas Jefferson’s long-term “relationship” with the enslaved Sally Hemings, begun when she was fourteen and he forty-four (see Gordon-Reed, American Controversy). She is the protagonist who emblemizes Cuban national identity in Cirilo Villaverde’s 1882 novel, Cecilia Valdes: Novela de costumbres cubanas. She is allusively present in the fantastical and garish transformation of an enslaved black woman to sexually powerful white (by virtue of makeup) mistress in the Brazilian film Xica! She is remembered as the owner of the infamous maison des esclaves (house of slaves) on Gorée Island, the former Senegalese slave entrepôt and now major slavery tour destination. She is the enslaved Joanna, “immortalized in John Gabriel Stedman’s Narrative of Five Years’ Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam (1806 [1796])” (Sharpe, Ghosts, 46). She is the commodity that drove the fancy slave trade in the antebellum United States. She is present in travelers’ descriptions of antebellum New Orleans’s free women of color. She is “that seductive mulatto woman” in colonial Saint-Domingue (Moreau de Saint-Méry, Civilization, 81-89).

Lisa Ze Winters, The Mulatta Concubine: Terror, Intimacy, Freedom, and Desire in the Black Transatlantic, (Athens: Georgia University Press, 2016), 3.

Blending shades of self

Posted in Articles, Autobiography, Campus Life, Interviews, Media Archive, United States on 2015-11-06 02:27Z by Steven

Blending shades of self

Columbia Daily Spectator
New York, New York
2015-11-05

Caroline Wallis

At a place like Columbia, where how you identify can define the spaces you occupy and the people you interact with, being of mixed race presents an extra challenge. The balancing act between multiple cultures, communities, and colors can leave one wondering where they belong. Last year, Keenan Smith, Columbia College sophomore, founded the Mixed-Race Students Society, which created a forum for multiracial students to discuss issues that directly affect those who don’t fit in one box. The students profiled in this piece aren’t all members of the Society, but they all represent an emerging community of students bringing these conversations into our discussions of race on campus…

Read the entire article here.

Tags: Breana Beaudreault, Caroline Wallis, Columbia Daily Spectator, Columbia University, Eliana Pipes, Grace Nkem, Hebah Akram Khan, Isabella Heshmatpour, Julia Muhsen, Keenan Smith, Mixed-Race Students Society of Columbia University of Columbia University, Rachel Roth

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New group looks to bring together mixed-race students

Posted in Articles, Canada, Media Archive, United States on 2015-08-13 18:57Z by Steven

New group looks to bring together mixed-race students

Columbia Daily Spectator
New York, New York
2015-04-08

Marium Dar, Spectator Staff Writer

A new student group is hoping to create a safe space for mixed-race students to discuss the challenges and struggles they face when discussing self-identity and racialization.

The Mixed-Race Students Society of Columbia University, which was founded last month, holds biweekly discussions where members take on topics including the difference between identification and racialization.

“As an organization, we have shared form and not content. The form of our experiences is the same,” board member Eliana Pipes, CC ’18, said. “Even though we all have completely different backgrounds, completely different mixes, we can identify on that common ground.”.

“The mixed-race [experience] is its own unique racial experience. If you are mixed with black, then you can never have the black experience on its own,” Pipes said. “If you are mixed with white, then you can never have the white experience on its own.”

Group founder Keenan Smith, CC ’18, who identifies as half black and half white, said he feels a tension between the two parts of his racial background…

…While a group called Hapa [Club] aimed to carry out a similar mission for students of partial Asian descent, it has been inactive since 2013. Smith said he wanted to create a community for students who felt marginalized based on their multiracial background…

Read the entire article here.

Tags: Columbia Daily Spectator, Columbia University, Eliana Pipes, Keenan Smith, Marium Dar, Mixed-Race Students Society of Columbia University, Rachel Chin

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Mixed Race Studies

Blending shades of self

New group looks to bring together mixed-race students

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