Mixed Race Studies

ITYC Interview: Multicultural Psychologist and Author Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu

Is That Your Child? Thought in Full Color
2013-02-11

Michelle Clark-McCrary, Host

Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu
Stanford University

ITYC had the great pleasure of talking with multicultural psychologist and author Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu about his latest book When Half is Whole: Multiethnic Asian Identities. Through deeply personal, raw storytelling, When Half Is Whole explores the complex journey of identity formation in a world where social and economic realities of race affect every facet of human life both here in the United States and abroad in countries like Japan…

Listen to the interview here.

As my critical contemplative response tempered my emotional one, I saw that the antiblack bias at the core of many multiracial organizations had shaped the larger discourse of mixedness and multiracial identity. While many mixed individuals and organizations are engaged and invested in social justice, discussions about mixed identity the realm of popular culture and mass media tend to frame the presence of black ancestry as a hindrance. While I believe that there is a definite mixed experience, I think that care must be taken not to cleave that experience from the broader historical continuum of how race has been constructed and reconstructed in America and that any analysis of race/identity must begin with defining whiteness and how the construction of whiteness has directly impacted the construction of all other identities in this country. As parents of black/white mixed kids and black/nonwhite mixed kids, we have to address the ways in which we’ve all internalized messages of antiblack bias and how that affects both the identity choices we make for our children and the ones we want them to make for themselves. For those outside the realm of the black/white/black/nonwhite mix, it’s still important to consider how antiblack bias relates to your child’s particular identity construction and how the historical black/white mixed binary informs how all mixed/multiracial identities are understood in our society.

Michelle Clark-McCrary, “Coming Clean About Blackness, Mixed Race Identity and the Multiracial Movement,” Is That Your Child? Thought in Full Color, (December 11, 2012). http://www.isthatyourchild.com/2012/12/coming-clean-about-blackness-mixed-race.html.

CNN’s Who’s Black in America: Some Thoughts

Is That Your Child? Thought in Full Color
2012-12-12

Michelle Clark-McCrary

So here’s an audio journal with my reflections on last Sunday night’s CNN Who’s Black in America special. Ultimately, my view of this special and the entire series as a whole is that conversations about race cannot happen without first directly addressing, defining, and recognizing whiteness. If whiteness/white supremacy are not central to your examination of racial identity and racial identity formation, then the conversation will inevitably lay the issues and outcomes of racial inequality at the feet of nonwhite people. I think this is what happened on Sunday night and I think that’s what happened with the series as a whole. The space of commercial cable news in many ways is no friend to nuance or complexity and that the commercial motivations of these outlets somehow impact their willingness to “say white.”…

Listen to the audio journal here.

Coming Clean About Blackness, Mixed Race Identity and the Multiracial Movement

Is That Your Child? Thought in Full Color
2012-12-10

Michelle Clark-McCrary

Before I go into my reflections on CNN’s “Who’s Black in America” series, I have to come clean about the evolution of my personal perspective on blackness, mixed race identity and the “multiracial movement.” Over that last three years, I’ve been trying to develop a deeper, more nuanced understanding of race-particularly as it relates to how my marriage, motherhood, and my daughter fit within the historical continuum of our racialized society. Part of my process has to do with balancing my emotional, gut responses to race/racism with my contemplative, critical responses to race/racism. To be clear, there is room for both responses to simultaneously coexist. I’m a firm believer in trusting one’s instinctual, emotional responses, while at the same time interrogating and rounding out those responses with more rational, contemplative thought…

…As my critical contemplative response tempered my emotional one, I saw that the antiblack bias at the core of many multiracial organizations had shaped the larger discourse of mixedness and multiracial identity. While many mixed individuals and organizations are engaged and invested in social justice, discussions about mixed identity the realm of popular culture and mass media tend to frame the presence of black ancestry as a hindrance. While I believe that there is a definite mixed experience, I think that care must be taken not to cleave that experience from the broader historical continuum of how race has been constructed and reconstructed in America and that any analysis of race/identity must begin with defining whiteness and how the construction of whiteness has directly impacted the construction of all other identities in this country. As parents of black/white mixed kids and black/nonwhite mixed kids, we have to address the ways in which we’ve all internalized messages of antiblack bias and how that affects both the identity choices we make for our children and the ones we want them to make for themselves. For those outside the realm of the black/white/black/nonwhite mix, it’s still important to consider how antiblack bias relates to your child’s particular identity construction and how the historical black/white mixed binary informs how all mixed/multiracial identities are understood in our society…

Read the entire article here.

ITYC Audio Journal #2: What Are You?-Crossing Borders, Bridging Generations

Is That Your Child? Thought in Full Color
2012-10-07

Michelle McCrary, Host

Last Thursday, I attended an event at the Brooklyn Historical Society for their “Crossing Borders, Bridging Generations” series called What Are You? The panel tackled the this perpetual question often aimed at people who are perceived to be ethnically ambiguous.

Presenting their own encounters/experiences with the “what are you?” question were Angela Tucker, creator of the webseries Black Folk Don’t; Heidi Durrow, author of the New York Times Bestseller The Girl Who Fell from the Sky and co-host of Mixed Chicks Chat; Jen Chau, founder of Swirl, Inc.; Erica Chito Childs, author of Fade to Black and White: Interracial Images in Popular Culture and Ken Tanabe, founder of Loving Day.

Here, in this second installment of ITYC Audio Journal, I share details about the panel discussion and some of my personal thoughts about race, identity and “what are you?”

Download the audio here (00:40:48).

…And I think with racial issues in the country, historical memory has really played to serve the ends of White Privilege, essentially. And it has done so in any number of ways. The most basic to start with, is simply we have as a nation erased essentially from any of our larger memory the racial complexity of the country. That this has been a racially mixed country from the very beginning. That every racial group has played a really interesting role in constructing and building the country. That there has been racial mixing between groups from the beginning. That race lines have been fluid. And that history of racial mixing, racial contributions just gets lost…

Renee C. Romano, “Multiraciality Is As Old As This Country: Gender, Sexuality & Race Mixing with Professor Renee Romano,” Is That Your Child?, (February 10, 2010): 00:11:30-00:12:21.

Multiraciality Is As Old As This Country: Gender, Sexuality & Race Mixing with Professor Renee Romano

Blogtalk Radio
2012-02-10

Michelle McCrary, Host
Is That Your Child?

Renee Romano, Associate Professor of History
Oberlin College

Last Friday ITYC had an enlightening conversation with Professor Renee Romano from Oberlin College about the ways in which our country’s historical memory about race has served to advance the political interests of institutional whiteness. She noted the erasure of our country’s long history of “race mixing” in all of its complexity as one of the casualties of a national racial memory that seeks to minimize and obfuscate the contributions of people of color to the formation of the United States.

We also talked about how black/white interracial couples tackle issues of white privilege as well as her own personal story about how she negotiates issues of race in her own marriage.

Download the episode here (01:08:19).

Mixed Race Studies with Steve Riley

BlogtalkRadio: Is That Your Child?
2012-01-20, 19:30 EST/16:30 PST; [2012-01-21, 00:30Z]

Michelle McCrary, Host

ITYC welcomes creator, founder and editor of the site Mixed Race Studies.org Steve Riley to the podcast this week. In his words, Riley began Mixed Race Studies in April of 2009 “in recognition of our family members and friends who are ‘mixed-race’ and/or raising ‘mixed-race’ children, in response the growing number self-identifying ‘mixed-race’ living here in the Washington, DC area, and finally in celebration of my interracial marriage to my loving wife of 16 years.”

 We’ll talk to him about the site, what he’s learned about issues of mixed identity over the last few years, and if his work  has revealed anything about his own interracial relationship.