Mixed Race Studies

On the Color of Desire, Disrespect, and Sexual Exploitation in Brazil

For Harriet
2015-07-23

Veronica Maria Brown-Comegys

The day I arrived in Rio de Janeiro a muscle-bound German stranger followed me from the reception desk into the hotel elevator. After the door closed, he began shouting in halting English, “You are American. I want to be with you tonight, why not?” “Why not?” I side-stepped to the elevator panel and wildly pounded the buttons. The door opened and I raced to my room.

White Brazilian and European male visitors gravitate to the eroticism of the woman of African descent. Yet they do not express their admiration in romantic sonnets and songs. Instead, white Brazilian men say in Portuguese, “As negras tem fogo no rabo.” The translation is, “Black women have fire in their ass,” according to my white friend, Carlos Marques, a fifty-six-year-old activist and historian. The activist, of Porto Alegre, in Rio Grande do Sul, said, “Rabo is a VERY bad expression, extremely graphic. It is machismo and racism.” Cesar Renato, 19, a black aspiring rapper, in Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, added, “They say worse things than that.”

Carlos Santos, 30, of Goias, a black decorator and house painter said, “It is true that the white man says the black woman has an appetite for sex, and is hotter than the white woman. I agree that black women are hotter. This is obvious. But, oh no, to say they have fire under their skirt, this is too much. This is hyper-sexualization of the black woman.”

The crude expression is directed at all black women. Yet it is the black woman who has tan, gold, caramel and light-to-nearly medium colored skin, who is preferred. Marques said, “Light-colored girls are a species of sexual fantasy for many men, Brazilian and foreign. They are something like a sexual fetish.”.

Dr. Norma Cavalcanti, a white psychologist, said “In Brazil a woman has only two rights; the right to be a mother, and the right to be a ‘boneca gloriosa’ (glorious doll).” Willing or not, I had all the necessary attributes to play this role: light brown skin, heavy-lidded, big brown eyes, full lips, and most importantly a five foot seven-inch body, which was far from thin and shapeless. Far from being a brown Playboy centerfold, but not to be ignored…

…During the 2014 World Cup Season male and female journalists were distained “international gringos who come to Brazil with the wrong idea.” Carol Apaloo, an African-American school teacher, whose family relocated from Los Angeles in the late 1970s said, “The Germans are the worst.” She discussed the lewd way they were dancing with the black Brazilian girls at Carnival. One journalist said that the foreigners are only part of the problem. Their behavior matched customary treatment black women receive from white Brazilian men.

Marly Ferreira, 57, a black Brazilian writer and Professor of Biology said, “The image still exists of the black woman as sexy, good in bed, to be used as an object. This image is a benefit to tourism. There are many schemes to make the color black agreeable, to be used by everybody.” More than two decades ago, white historian, sociologist and anthropologist Gilberto Freyre said, “The mulata is treated like a product. Our mulata is not different from other women, but she is being exploited as a sex symbol, and the majority are being turned into prostitutes.”…

Read the entire article here.

Misty Copeland on Why She Talks About Being a Black Ballerina

For Harriet
2016-02-24

Blackness didn’t originate with my ancestors’ feelings about how they wanted to self-identify. It was created over a period of centuries through very specific, deliberate constructions in European and white American schools of biology, phrenology, philosophy, anthropology, and political and legal systems to uphold the intrinsic superiority of whiteness and corresponding black inferiority.

Malaika Jabali, “Shaun King Is Not Rachel Dolezal: What the Media Gets Wrong About Race in America,” For Harriet, August 29, 2015. http://www.forharriet.com/2015/08/shaun-king-is-not-rachel-dolezal-what.html.

Shaun King Is Not Rachel Dolezal: What the Media Gets Wrong About Race in America

For Harriet
2015-08-29

Malaika Jabali

As they have in the past, the conservative truth spinners behind the online media outlet Breitbart News Network have initiated an attack against yet another person of color fighting for civil and human rights. The target this time is activist Shaun King, who has been vocal about the police abuse that has permeated our consciousness for over a year. In likening Shaun King to Rachel Dolezal, the network accused King of lying about being half black in order to receive a “Sons of Oprah” scholarship to attend Morehouse College, a historically Black college and university.

There are some obvious logical deficiencies we could point to as to why BNN needs to have a seat. For starters, few Black people could look at Shaun King and identify him as being a completely white man. Race construction involves a composite of man-made ideas, but phenotype is a key feature among them. Plenty of African-Americans and Black people throughout the Diaspora have light-skinned relatives who look like King. While some may have taken a double take, we accepted his identity and let him do him. Even when Rachel Dolezal’s family revealed that she was lying about her race, many Black Americans were more amused than betrayed and took to Twitter to share in a collective laugh…

…Blackness didn’t originate with my ancestors’ feelings about how they wanted to self-identify. It was created over a period of centuries through very specific, deliberate constructions in European and white American schools of biology, phrenology, philosophy, anthropology, and political and legal systems to uphold the intrinsic superiority of whiteness and corresponding black inferiority…

Read the entire article here.

Halle Berry and the Myth of the Black Man-Eating Bitch

For Harriet
2015-11-06

Kelly Davis
Brookyln, New York

I have a complicated relationship with Halle Berry. I have admired her work, mainly Losing Isaiah and Introducing Dorothy Dandridge. She inspired my haircut senior year of college, not long after she won her history-making Academy Award. She is beautiful—unbelievably beautiful, virtually keeping the same physique for over 20 years. She has stood for me, and women like me, in places we were previously forbidden—on the covers of high-fashion magazines, and the podiums of the world’s most exclusive awards. And yet, when I think of her and her body of work, I am mostly nonplussed.

I recognize that every barrier she has broken and every challenge she has surmounted as a Black woman has been facilitated by her proximity to whiteness. Her bone structure, frame, and facial features make her “good enough” to occupy spaces where other Black actresses have been historically disallowed. She is classically beautiful. She has worked hard to be where she is, but, as with all actresses, appealing to white male gaze gives to a leg up over the competition. Her inclusion has often meant the exclusion of other phenotypically Black girls who have more melanin and more talent…

…The myth of the Man-eating Bitch has a long and storied history, especially for Black and mixed-raced women. Since the days of Thomas Jefferson, brown girls like Sally Hemings have been repeatedly cast as irresistible harlots whose sexual wiles render men incapable of making sound decisions. White women can get away with this. We all found it entertaining and encouraging on Sex and the City’s Samantha Jones, but on Black women it’s filthy, tragic, pitiful, and reviled. Imagine the conversations that would commence if Being Mary Jane was on NBC instead of BET. Let’s think about the disgust that filled the blogosphere over Annalise Keating’s undesirability on How to Get Away with Murder. We all know the deal…

Read the entire artcle here.

Valuing Blackness vs. Claiming “Mixedness”

For Harriet
2014-10-30

Tamara Williams

I remember being in 7th grade, and writing on the back of my folder all the things I was told by an older cousin I was “mixed” with. I had a desire to claim all I thought I was, but what was more interesting is that I wanted everyone to know. I had no idea where this desire came from, but I did know the idea of being part of something other than Black intrigued me. I was unaware that the need to denounce my Blackness had already been steeped in my unconscious by mainstream media…

Read the entire article here.

Most of the time I see myself as mixed, but when I see black men and women brutalized or killed for breathing while black, I’m black, and proudly, viscerally so.

Shannon Luders-Manuel, “What it Means to be Mixed Race During the Fight for Black Lives,” For Harriet, August 12, 2015.
http://www.forharriet.com/2015/08/what-it-means-to-be-mixed-race-during.html.

What it Means to be Mixed Race During the Fight for Black Lives

For Harriet
2015-08-12

Shannon Luders-Manuel

When I talk about my family culture, I’m mixed. When I talk about racism, I’m black. When Trayvon Martin was shot for wearing a hoodie, I was black. When Eric Garner was choked to death for selling cigarettes on the street, I was black. When Sandra Bland was arrested for failing to turn on her blinker, I was black. When churchgoers were shot for being black, I was black.

I was raised by the white side of my family, in mostly white areas. I had white friends most of my life, not because of any type of preference, but because that’s who was around. I grew up Eastern European folk dancing in the Santa Cruz Mountains with my family. I had plum pudding at Christmas, and my first celebrity crush was Neil Patrick Harris. During both childhood and adulthood, I’ve had others try to define me the way they wanted to, which varied depending on who was doing the defining. My father said mixed isn’t whole. A black woman told me I wasn’t black. A white best friend said she didn’t see me as black. The grandmother of another white friend asked why she was hanging around with a black girl. As I’ve gotten older, the labeling hasn’t stopped, but my self-identity has gotten stronger. Most of the time I see myself as mixed, but when I see black men and women brutalized or killed for breathing while black, I’m black, and proudly, viscerally so…

Read the entire article here.

How I Learned to Stop Worshipping Whiteness While Growing Up Biracial

For Harriet
2015-04-08

Joleen Brantle

I haven’t always been very racially aware. When I was a child Pokémon cards, cartoons, and school were of vastly greater importance to me. I was raised in a very diverse city with a strong Latino presence. I had friends of every race. Why would one’s skin color matter? It certainly didn’t to me.

That naivety ended abruptly in 5th grade. Two significant factors came to a head. I began attending an all-white conservative Church, and my African-American father died; which catalyzed my process of rejecting him to appease the pain he had caused me, the effects of which I’m still working to undo.

Until I started attending this Church, I really hadn’t been in many, if any, racially segregated spheres. So it was a bit of a culture shock when I met people who referred to me as a “little colored girl” and told me interracial marriage, which I am proudly the product of, is a sin. But I loved these white people! As a child I always sought to please and generally took everything an adult said as the infallible truth (that actually began changing around this time). These people looked just like my mother and were very kind to me with the exception of the occasional offhand, casually racist, remark. What was I supposed to think?…

Read the entire article here.

A Dialogue on Institutional Colorism and Moving Toward Healing with Dr. Yaba Blay

For Harriet
2015-01-28

Kimberly Foster, Editor-in-Chief/Publisher

For Harriet is nearly five years old, and I’ve learned there are a few topics that are sure to spark contentious debate. Colorism is one of them. Discussions on colorism provoke strong feelings in Black women, in particular, and it seems that rarely do the conversation’s participants walk away with a deeper understanding of the institutional consequences of colorism or the ways we can move forward in combatting them.

What Bill Duke’s Light Girls documentary sorely missed was the voice of a Black woman colorism scholar, so I felt compelled to speak with Dr. Yaba Blay about how we can have a more effective conversation on colorism in our attempts to heal. Dr. Blay is currently co-director and assistant teaching professor of Africana Studies at Drexel University. She’s the artistic director and producer of the (1)ne Drop Project, and she was a consulting producer for CNN’s Black in America 5.

Read her phenomenal book, (1)ne Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race…

Listen to the interview and read the transcript here.