Mixed Race Studies

Mildred and Richard’s Sacrifice is Our Obligation

The Multiracial Activist
June 13, 2017

James Landrith, Founder and Publisher

50 years ago yesterday, Mildred Loving decided that the Commonwealth of Virginia was wrong to keep her and her husband away from their home and family. She decided that it was unacceptable for Judge Leon Bazile’s racist conservative Christian defense of the law to have the last word. She wanted to live with her husband in the community where they both grew up. What she wanted was far from unreasonable, unless of course, you were a white racist cop or judge in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Then, you had a magical divine sanction to ruin other people’s lives via the abhorrent Racial Integrity Act of 1924.

In his January 22, 1965 refusal to vacate the 1959 felony conviction of Mildred and Richard, Judge Bazile wrote,:

“Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his [arrangement] there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”

Take a moment to clean up the vomit from your chin…

Read the entire article here.

TMA Founder’s Statement on Loving Day 2017

The Multiracial Activist
June 12, 2017

James Landrith, Founder and Publisher

Dear Readers,

As this is Loving Day and so much has changed in the last few years, I am reposting my 2015 statement as a reminder of what we have to lose. What I said in 2015, still stands in 2017. Those pockets of hatred and individuals I mentioned in 2015 are making their presence known loudly in 2017.

Hard-won legal victories pertaining to interracial relationship marriage rights are not in any immediate danger. However, the current iteration of the GOP has repeatedly demonstrated an utter lack of a spine with regard to dealing with the long-term effects of the party’s immoral courting of bigots and racists. The effects of their collusion and apathy are evident.

This mess isn’t going away anytime soon. The right to love and marry across lines is settled. However, racism and anti-miscegenationist thought are very much alive. Now is not the time to sleep…

Read the entire article here.

Who’s Hispanic? Who’s Filipino?

The Multiracial Activist: Covering news of interest to multiracial individuals and interracial couples since 1997.
2016-01-15

Emily Monroy

A few years ago, I wrote an essay called ‘Who’s White?’ I asked this question about several individuals, both famous (controversial shooter George Zimmerman) and not-so-famous (two boyfriends of mine). I ended the piece by discussing whether my daughter, who is part American Indian on her father’s side (he’s from Nicaragua), would be considered White or not. Conclusion: maybe, maybe not.

Since then, a few new developments have occurred. Members of a Scandinavian club whose events I occasionally attend seem to think that my daughter looks Italian – which doesn’t surprise me because both her father and I have some ancestry from Italy. I wasn’t so prepared, though, when at least two people asked me if my daughter was part-Filipino (both were Filipino themselves, incidentally). In one case, the question came after I mentioned that my daughter had a Spanish last name from her father: having been under Spain’s rule for more than 300 years, most surnames in the Philippines are Spanish. One of my daughter’s surnames is Ramos, the name of the Philippines’ 12th president. In the other instance, a man working at my daughter’s school thought she might be Filipino because of her eyes.

I’ll concede that my daughter could probably ‘pass’ as a Filipino mestiza (Spanish word used in Latin America and the Philippines for a woman of mixed racial origins). These exchanges also got me asking my own questions: How Spanish are Filipinos? Are they an Asian people who just happen to have Spanish names? Or are they, like most of the inhabitants of Spanish America, all mestizo?…

Read the entire article here.