Mixed Race Studies

Cultural Appropriation

Metro Morning
CBC Toronto
2015-06-16

Matt Galloway, Host

The controversial head of the Spokane, Washington branch of the N.A.A.C.P., Rachel Dolezal, has stepped down from her post. Matt Galloway spoke with Rema Tavares, she is the founder of Mixed in Canada.

Listen to the interview (00:07:21) here.

The 3 Biggest Issues Around Rachel Dolezal

Mixed in Canada
2015-06-15

Rema Tavares

Like many folks across North America, as soon as the Rachel Dolezal story broke, I was baffled. Here was yet another example of cultural appropriation of Blackness, which is quite commonplace (think Iggy Azalea, for example), but this story is a bit different. Usually the stories we hear of are people who identify as white, using Black cultural consumption for financial gain or access to what Rebecca Walker calls “Black cool”. However, this is the first story in a while where the person was outright living as Black for financial and social gain. Already on day three since the story broke, there are several excellent articles out there that outline the many ways in which Rachel’s behaviour is so problematic, so I will stick to what I think are the three biggest issues…

…Privilege

Everything that Rachel “did for Black people” she could have done as a white woman. White people who acknowledge and leverage their privilege exist. However, it is an incredible abuse of white privilege  to assume a Black identity, let alone to gain financially and socially from that decision. At any moment, Rachel could have chosen to wash off her fake tan and permed hair and live out the rest of her life as a white woman (again). On the other hand, no Black woman has that option unless she is racially ambiguous or white passing, which is a completely different situation. In that circumstance, passing for white stems from trying to access those very privileges that Rachel has had access to her entire life – including her time as a fake Black woman…

Read the entire article here.

You Can be Both! (And Not In the Way You Might be Thinking)

Mixed In Canada
2015-01-14

Rema Tavares

Dr. Maria P. Root’s “Bill of Rights for Racially Mixed People” has greatly influenced how many mixed-race folks identify today. One of the things I learned from the Bill was that I had the right to identify however I wanted to, regardless of how my family, friends, society etc thought I should identify. On top of that, I had the right to change my identity as many times as I felt necessary throughout my life. To that point, I have identified as a lot of things during my 30 years on this earth. As a young child who understood nothing about race, growing up completely surrounded by white folks, I thought I was a mutated white person (*cringe*). Once I realized that I was in fact Black at around 8 years old, I was incredibly happy and immediately began to identify that way (or as “Jamaican” again in my limited understanding of race, conflating race & nationality). Named after my grandmother whom I loved dearly, I was so happy to find out that I was Black, just like her. Despite having a white mother, for years I avoided a mixed-race identity, because for the longest time it didn’t feel right. I didn’t feel mixed. I felt Black…

Read the entire article here.

New doc on Shadeism doesn’t make the cut

Mixed In Canada
2014-12-08

Rema Tavares

Debuting November 10th, 2014 on the CBC’s free preview on their documentary channel, Hue: A Matter of Colour opens with the narrator and main subject, Vic Sarin, discussing his relationship to his mixed-race family (or if anything lack thereof). This movie, he reveals, is his way of explaining his strange and often absentee behaviour to his children. The children provide an example of said behaviour by explaining how he refuses to go on the beach with them, choosing instead to stay out of the sun, as well as staying out of family photos. He also tells us that he has a strained relationship with his first born from a previous marriage, in part because he never showed up for a family vacation in the Caribbean due to his compulsion to work. Meanwhile, the backdrop is of the children packing for a family vacation to Sarin’s favourite destination, Brazil, the place where the film opens and closes.

While it is a bit obscure at first, he eventually informs the viewer that he was born in India to a diplomat father (read privileged), raised in Australia for a while, eventually ended up in Toronto Ontario in the 60s, and now resides in Vancouver, BC with his family. Every country of residence impacts him in a different way: in India he discusses how he was scolded for playing in the sun. In Australia he very badly wants to become a citizen but is denied due to racist immigration policies which devastates him. In Toronto he was very aware that he was marginalized and isolated, being one of only a few people of colour, and having only white friends. He also rhetorically asks an insightful question regarding his choice in marrying two white women, commenting on how that was likely not a coincidence, regardless of the real or perceived lack of eligible Indian women in Canada.

As a viewer, it was pretty clear to me from the outset that this documentary was going to be centered around his and other people of colour’s internalized racism, which is very much related to and often a result of shadeism. However, the latter isn’t a necessary condition for the prior. In other words, while it is improbable that we can completely rid ourselves of our internalized racism as people of colour, I believe that it is possible to look at shadeism with a critical eye (not to be confused with the problematic & Eurocentric “objective” eye). Simply discussing internalized racism though, without even as much as naming it, is a dangerous arena in which to venture unless you come prepared with heavy critical analysis to accompany it. Unfortunately, this is not what happens, which leads to several problematic & triggering moments in the film…

Read the entire review here.

FOLKS MIXED WITH WHITE: Calling out white supremacy does not mean that you don’t love your white family. If anything, seeing our friends and family as real people with flaws, is true love. We have all been raised in this system, we are all complicit. Let us remember that the revolution starts at home.

Rema Tavares, “Mixed-Race Identity, Ferguson & Why it Matters to Us,” Mixed In Canada, November 25, 2014. https://mixedincanada.com/2015/11/30/mixed-race-identity-ferguson-why-it-matters-to-us/.

Mixed-Race Identity, Ferguson & Why it Matters to Us

Mixed In Canada
2014-11-25

Rema Tavares

By now you probably already know that Darren Wilson wasn’t indicted yesterday, November 24th, 2014 for murdering unarmed Black youth Mike Brown on August 9th, 2014. Ever since that day, folks around the world have been showing their support, as well as massive hatred, towards the Brown family. Today in Canada, there will be protests in Toronto & Vancouver as well as in Hamilton on December 1st. So what does this mean to us, mixed-race identified people? While I can’t speak on behalf of all mixed-race identified people, here are some thoughts that come to mind about how it affects us.

NON BLACK-MIXED FOLKS: Show your solidarity to your Black-mixed brothers, sisters & trans* siblings. Black and Indigenous folks (mixed-identified or not) face the most heinous forms of state-sanctioned violence around the world and here in Canada. Our struggle is your struggle, just as yours is ours, all oppression is connected. #IdleNoMore #BlackLivesMatter

FOLKS MIXED WITH WHITE: Calling out white supremacy does not mean that you don’t love your white family. If anything, seeing our friends and family as real people with flaws, is true love. We have all been raised in this system, we are all complicit. Let us remember that the revolution starts at home.

BLACK MIXED FOLKS: Make sure to take care of yourself and if you can, reach out to our brothers, sisters & trans* siblings. Take time for self care and care of the community…

Read the entire article here.

A Curious Confluence: Where Racism & Privilege Collide

(1)ne Drop Project
2012-12-20

Rema Tavares, Founder
Mixed In Canada

Rema Tavares

When two sources of water come together to form one body, it is called a confluence.  This is a place where two distinct sources of water crash and tumble over each other, churning and frothing. Here, a new river is born that cuts through the terrain as a single system. Some of these amalgamated rivers are rough and rocky, others are smooth and calm; however most consist of intermittent turbulence and serenity until they meet their final destination: a lake or an ocean. This concept stems from an analogy shared with me by a great friend and colleague, one with whom I often discuss my Mixed-race identified experience. So how does this relate to racism and privilege? And how does this fit into my story? Arguably a more pressing question for the reader: Who am “I”?

Born in the 80’s, I am the daughter of a Jamaican-Canadian immigrant father of African & Sephardic heritage and a European-Canadian mother of Irish & Italian descent. I grew up in a village of approximately 1000 people in rural Canada. This country was colonized by Europeans, not unlike the U.S., and the legacy of colonialism can still be felt by people of colour (and infinitely more so by Canada’s Aboriginal population). With respect to the African Diaspora however, Canada is often stereotyped as “the good guy” and the haven beneath the North Star. I am proud of that aspect of Canadian history; however this is by far not the whole story…

…Choice—especially around identity—is a fascinating subject in and of itself. How we choose to identify is intensely personal for many, and perhaps particularly perplexing for some Mixed-race identified people, as it inherently calls into question our notions of “race”. Having said that, I can only speak for myself, and I have chosen to identify as Black-Mixed. Although how I have identified in the past has evolved, and will most like continue to do so into the future, I have always held my Blackness as the centre of gravity – the place from which all my many other identities flow…

Read the entire article here.

Interview with Mixed In Canada’s Rema Tavares

100% Mixed Show
2012-03-12

Phil Koo

Mixed-Me founder Rema Tavares talks about her website.

“Faces In Between”: A 3MW Collective Exhibition [Review]

Jenney Donkey
2013-02-12

Jennifer McKinley

At an event, a party, a gathering or any place where I meet new people, I am invariably asked the Question: Where are you from?
 
“Toronto,” I answer. This is not the response they are looking for and I know it.
 
“No, but where is your family from?”
 
“My parents were born in Toronto and so were my grandparents. All about ten minutes away from where I currently live actually.”
 
Their frustration mounts.
 
“No, but what’s your background? This is Canada. Everybody comes from somewhere.”
 
I respond differently each time I’m asked. Sometimes I give the précis answer, sometimes I make them guess and sometimes I flat out refuse to answer.
 
When people are not satisfied when I say I’m Canadian, I find myself scrambling to answer the question in terms of what will make my observer comfortable. I cling to a mixed identity that is ancestrally correct (though incomplete due to family secrets) but doesn’t quite fit with how I see myself.
 
I identify as Canadian.
 
My background is Irish, Italian, English, Black, possibly Scottish and possibly more.
 
In many ways, it is Toronto, the city of my ancestors, that informs my history and identity rather than some distant country that a person I never met came from.
 
Yet, the question persists…

…Because I am so often questioned and analyzed, I was naturally drawn to “Faces In Between”, an art exhibition by 3MW Collective showing at Daniels Spectrum in the Artscape Lounge. 3MW Collective seeks to create a progressive discussion about mixed race identity. 3MW is comprised of three mixed-race identified artists Rema Tavares, Ilene Sova and Jordan Clarke….

Read the entire article here.

A new mixed-raced generation is transforming the city: Will Toronto be the world’s first post-racial metropolis?

Toronto Life
2013-02-12

Nicholas Hune-Brown, Author

Kourosh Keshiri, Photography

Interviews by Jasmine Budak

I used to be the only biracial kid in the room. Now, my exponentially expanding cohort promises a future where everyone is mixed.

Last fall, I was in Amsterdam with my parents and sister on a family trip, our first in more than a decade. Because travelling with your family as an adult can be taxing on everyone involved, we had agreed we would split up in galleries, culturally enrich ourselves independently, and then reconvene later to resume fighting about how to read the map. I was in a dimly lit hall looking at a painting of yet another apple-cheeked peasant when my younger sister, Julia, tugged at my sleeve. “Mixie,” she whispered, gesturing down the hall.

“Mixie” is a sibling word, a term my sister and I adopted to describe people like ourselves—those indeterminately ethnic people whom, if you have an expert eye and a particular interest in these things, you can spot from across a crowded room. We used the word because as kids we didn’t know another one. By high school, it was a badge of honour, a term we would insist on when asked the unavoidable “Where are you from?” question that every mixed-race person is subjected to the moment a conversation with a new acquaintance reaches the very minimum level of familiarity. For the record, my current answer, at 30 years old, is: “My mom’s Chinese, but born in Canada, and my dad’s a white guy from England.” If I’m peeved for some reason—if the question comes too early or with too much “I have to ask” eagerness—the answer is “Toronto” followed by a dull stare…

…For today’s mixies, growing up multiracial has meant inner debates about which parent to identify with, how to explain one’s back­ground, and coping with the urge to blend in. Rema Tavares, a half-Jamaican 30-year-old with curly hair and light brown skin, says her looks have provoked strange responses in people. “I’ve had someone say to me, ‘Don’t say you’re black because you don’t have to be. You can get away with it!’ ” She was raised in a small town outside Ottawa and gradually moved to bigger and bigger cities. “I hated being the only person of colour on the bus in my hometown,” she told me. Another mixed-race woman, Alia Ziesman, grew up in Oakville and was so ashamed of her mother, an ethnically Indian woman from Trinidad, that she refused to walk on the same side of the street as her. Ziesman and Tavares and everyone else I spoke to agree that it is a pleasure to be in a city like Toronto today—a place where you’re guaranteed not to be the only coloured face on a city bus…

…Minelle Mahtani, a U of T associate professor, is one of the pre-eminent Canadian authorities in the field, and has just written a book on multiraciality in Canada. Mahtani has long, dark hair, a toothy smile and a collection of features that are impossible to place on a map. When she was growing up in Thornhill, people would guess at her background without ever hitting on the actual mix, Iranian and Indian. “As a kid, I was one of the few minorities in my neighbourhood, and there was pressure to acclimatize to whiteness” she says. When I met her in a café near U of T in December, she had recently come back from the second Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference at DePaul University in Chicago, a four-day exploration of race and racial boundaries that also acts as a place for mixed-race academics from across North America to hang out and share nerdy in-jokes about the successful 1967 challenge to Virginia’s anti-miscegenation laws…

…The reality of being mixed is far more complicated. The Pew study didn’t reveal a world where skin colour is irrelevant: a newlywed Hispanic-white couple will earn more than the average Hispanic couple, yes, but less than the average white couple. The same is true of black-white pairings. What’s also clear is that mixing doesn’t happen evenly. The success of Asian-white couples like my parents can be attributed to a number of things, but the fact that immigration laws often hand-pick the wealthiest, most educated, most outward-looking Asians is surely part of it. It’s easy to imagine a future in which upwardly mobile Asians and whites mix more frequently, while other minorities are left out of a trendy mixed-race future. Marriage across racial lines is increasingly possible, but mixing across class has always been tricky. And class, it goes without saying, remains stubbornly tied to skin colour…

Read the entire article here. View the photo-essay here.