Mixed Race Studies

There is a lesson here for us, for we who are white and care deeply about racial equity, justice and liberation, and the lesson is this: authentic antiracist white identity is what we must cultivate. We cannot shed our skin, nor our privileges like an outdated overcoat. They are not accessories to be donned or not as one pleases, but rather, persistent reminders of the society that is not yet real, which is why we must work with people of color to overturn the system that bestows those privileges. But the key word here is with people of color, not as them. We must be willing to do the difficult work of finding a different way to live in this skin.

Tim Wise, “Mimicry is Not Solidarity: Of Allies, Rachel Dolezal and the Creation of Antiracist White Identity,” Tim Wise: Antiracist Essayist, Author and Educator, June 14, 2015. http://www.timwise.org/2015/06/mimicry-is-not-solidarity-of-allies-rachel-dolezal-and-the-creation-of-antiracist-white-identity.

Mimicry is Not Solidarity: Of Allies, Rachel Dolezal and the Creation of Antiracist White Identity

Tim Wise: Antiracist Essayist, Author and Educator
2015-06-14

Tim Wise

In a country where being black increases your likelihood of being unemployed, poor, rejected for a bank loan, suspected of wrongdoing and profiled as a criminal, being arrested or even shot by police, the mind boggles at the decision of Rachel Dolezal some years ago to begin posing as an African American woman. Yes perhaps blackness helps when you’re looking for a job in an Africana Studies department, selling your own African American portraiture art, or hoping to head up the local NAACP branch—all of which appear to have been the case for Dolezal—but generally speaking, adopting blackness as one’s personal identity and as a substitute for one’s actual whiteness is not exactly the path of least resistance in America.

And so, cognizant of the rarity with which white folks have tried to pass as black over the years—and in all likelihood for the above-mentioned reasons, among others—many have chimed in as to the personal, familial and even psychological issues that may lie at the heart of her deceptions. Not possessing a background in psychology I am loathe to spend too much time there, but having said that, it strikes me that there is an important, largely overlooked, and quite likely explanation for Dolezal’s duplicity, and one the importance of which goes well beyond her and whatever deep-seated emotional baggage may have contributed to her actions. Indeed, it has real implications for white people seeking to work in solidarity with people of color, whether in the BlackLivesMatter movement, Moral Mondays in North Carolina, or any other component of the modern civil rights and antiracism struggle. It is one I hadn’t really thought much about until I read something yesterday, a comment from one of her brothers (one of the actual black ones, adopted by her parents), to the effect that while Dolezal had been a graduate student at Howard, she felt as though she “hadn’t been treated very well,” at least in part because she was never fully accepted—she the white girl from Montana who paints black life onto canvas, and quite well at that—at this venerable and unapologetically black institution.

…Most disturbing of all, there was another path, however much Dolezal showed no interest in treading it. Whether intended or not, make no mistake, by negating the history (and even the apparent possibility) of real white antiracist solidarity, Dolezal ultimately provided a slap in the face to that history by saying that it wasn’t good enough for her to join…

Read the entire article here.

Soledad O’Brien Explores Racial and Ethnic Identity in Provocative Black in America

CNN Press Room
Cable News Network (CNN)
2012-12-04

Who is Black in America? Debuts Sunday, Dec. 9 at 8:00 p.m. & 11:00p.m. ET & PT
U.S. Encore: Sunday, January 27, 2013,  20:00 p.m. ET, 23:00 p.m ET, and Monday, 02:00 ET
International Debut on CNN International: Sunday, January 13, 02:00Z and 10:00Z (Saturday, January 12, 21:00 EST and Sunday, January 13, 05:00 EST). View regional schedules here.

“I don’t really feel Black,” says 17-year-old Nayo Jones. Her mother is Black; she was raised apart from her by her White father, and she identifies herself as biracial. “I was raised up with White people, White music, White food so it’s not something I know,” she says in a new documentary that explores the sensitive concepts of race, cultural identity, and skin tone.

For the fifth installment of her groundbreaking Black in America series, CNN anchor and special correspondent Soledad O’Brien reports for Who is Black in America? The documentary debuts Sunday, December 09 at 8:00p.m. and 11:00p.m. ET & PT and replays on Saturday, December 15 at 8:00p.m. and 11:00p.m. ET & PT.

Is Jones Black? Is Blackness based upon skin color or other factors? The 2010 U.S. Census found 15 percent of new marriages are interracial, a figure that is twice what was reported in 1980. One in seven American newborns were of mixed race in 2010, representing an increase of two percent from the 2000 U.S. Census. Within this context, O’Brien examines how much regarding race and identity are personal choices vs. reflections of an external social construct.

Tim Wise, an author and anti-racism activist believes in self identification, but says, in practice, society often will remind biracial people like Jones of their Blackness, “in a million subtle ways,” he says in the documentary.

As the hour unfolds, O’Brien follows Jones, and her best friend and fellow high school student Becca Khalil, as they take part in a spoken word workshop led by the Philadelphia-based poet, Perry “Vision” DiVirgilio.
 
Vision, who is biracial, says he never felt quite White or Black enough to fit in with friends who had parents of one race.  Vision identifies as Black, and says that identity is more than skin – that identity encompasses experiences and struggles.  Through his workshop, he encourages young people to think, talk, and write about identity, as well as the concept of colorism, which he blames for his early struggles with self-esteem and identity.
 
“Colorism is a system in which light skin is more valued than dark skin,” says Drexel University’s assistant teaching professor for Africana studies, Yaba Blay.  Blay tells O’Brien that, as a young African-American woman growing up in New Orleans, she felt discriminated against – often by lighter skinned African Americans – due to her dark skin tone.
 
Blay’s work focuses on how prejudice related to skin tone can confuse and negatively impact identity and self esteem.  She aims to help others also develop positive images of cultural identity – for African Americans of all shades.
 
Often complicating concepts of identity beyond multiracial heritage is skin tone.  Khalil, who has light-colored skin and two parents who are Egyptian in origin, identifies herself as African American.  She feels contemporaries dismiss her African American identity due to her light skin tone.  She says in the documentary that she wishes she had darker skin.
 
Writer, producer, and image activist, Michaela Angela Davis says she accepts that race is a social construct, but she feels it is important for people to name and claim their own racial identity: “You are who you say that you are,” she says in the documentary…

Read the entire press release here.

Racism, White Supremacy and Biracial/Multiraciality (2011)

Tim Wise, Antiracist Essayist, Author and Educator
September 2011

Tim Wise

From my September 2011 talk at Spalding University in Louisville, KY. In this snippet, I respond to a question about how we should understand or think about biracial and multiracial folks’ experiences in a system of racism/white supremacy.

[Transcribed by Steven F. Riley]

I think it would be wise for people who are biracial and multiracial to never forget that this is a system of formal historical and institutional white supremacy. And I’m afraid sometimes, there are a lot incentives that the culture puts out there to biracial and multiracial people to forget that. Right. Because they’re not quite as Black or they’re not quite as Brown. And so there is a tendency for people to think that they really escape that system. Right. That they’re not really in that system. And look, and I think that every person ought to be able to claim whatever parts of and all parts of their identity. So if… look, if you’re Tiger Woods and you want to call yourself “Cablinasian,” which is what he did back in the early part of his career. He called himself Cablinasian because he wanted to honor Caucasian part, the Asian part, the Black part, the Native American part. Okay, here’s the deal… He was Cablinasian. He instited on that. He was not Black!

Okay. And then… when Tiger Woods did what Tiger Woods did… repeatedly, apparently, I went on the chat boards—sports chat boards, not political chat boards–sports chat boards. [Be]cause you can tell a lot about the culture based on the annonymous comments that folks post on sports boards. Forget politics, just read any post after a NBA game, after a NFL game, hell, read the comments after a storm goes through your community. Any story at all, folks will bring up race… with an “Anonymous,” just “Anonymous.” They never put their name and they have no avatar, it’s just that shadow-head and “Anonymous” and they put some nonsense. And so, I went on the chatboard after this Tiger Woods thing broke. And it was funny, everyone who had stuff to say about him, none of them said, “You know, this is just what Cablinasian men do.” [laughter] “What do you expect from a Cablinasian.” [laughter].

That’s not what they said, he was Black… as midnight, as soon as he did something that reminded the dominate group of the stereotype they had come to believe. So, multiracial, biracial folks: claim all of, claim every piece of it. Do not forget where one still sits on the trajectory of white supremacy. Because when once you forget that, there is real danger, real danger.

Listen to the clip here (00:02:14). Download the clip here (395 KB).

Bullying Pulpit: Racism, Barack Obama and the Selective Call for Personal Responsibility

Tim Wise, Antiracist Essayist, Author and Educator
2013-05-19

Tim Wise

Sometimes, white privilege isn’t about stuff. It’s not always about better opportunities, or more money, or even greater access to those things than people of color.

Sometimes, white privilege is as simple as knowing that, generally speaking, if you’re white, you’ll be perceived as competent and hard-working until proven otherwise, while people of color — even those who have proven themselves competent and hard-working — will still be subjected to presumptions that they just might not be, and that somehow, they (but not you) need to be reminded of the importance of hard-work and personal responsibility, lest they (but never you) revert to some less impressive group mean.

To wit, President Obama’s commencement address today at Morehouse College — one of the nation’s preeminent institutions of higher learning, and perhaps its most famous historically black college or university — during which, among plenty of rather standard commencement speech boilerplate, the president lectured this year’s graduates about the importance of taking personal responsibility for their lives, and not blaming racism for whatever obstacles they may face in the future.

It’s hard to know what’s more disturbing.

Either that President Obama thinks black grads at one of the nation’s best colleges really need to be lectured about such matters; or, alternately, that White America is so desirous of exculpation for the history of racial discrimination that we need him to say such things, and he knows it, thereby feeding us the moral scolding of black men we so desperately desire and love to hear.

Either way, the result is tragic…

Read the entire article here.

Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama

City Lights Books
2009-01-15
120 pages
Paperback ISBN-10 0872865002; ISBN-13 9780872865006

Tim Wise

Race is, and always has been, an explosive issue in the United States. In this timely new book, Tim Wise explores how Barack Obama’s emergence as a political force is taking the race debate to new levels. According to Wise, for many whites, Obama’s rise signifies the end of racism as a pervasive social force; they point to Obama as a validation of the American ideology that anyone can make it if they work hard, and an example of how institutional barriers against people of color have all but vanished. But is this true? And does a reinforced white belief in color-blind meritocracy potentially make it harder to address ongoing institutional racism? After all, in housing, employment, the justice system and education, the evidence is clear: white privilege and discrimination against people of color are still operative and actively thwarting opportunities, despite the success of individuals like Obama.

Is black success making it harder for whites to see the problem of racism, thereby further straining race relations, or will it challenge anti-black stereotypes to such an extent that racism will diminish and race relations improve? Will blacks in power continue to be seen as an “exception” in white eyes? Is Obama “acceptable” because he seems “different than most blacks,” who are still viewed too often as the dangerous and inferior “other?”

All of these possibilities are explored in Between Barack and a Hard Place, by Tim Wise, one of the nation’s most prominent antiracist activists and educators and author of the critically-acclaimed memoir, White Like Me.

Contents

• Preface
• Barack Obama, White Denial and the Reality of Racism
• The Audacity of Truth: A Call for White Responsibility
• Endnotes
• About the Author

Why isn’t ‘colorism’ gone?

Cable News Network (CNN)
2012-12-05

Has “colorism” disappeared? CNN’s Soledad O’Brien asks author and Activist Tim Wise.

I think it would be wise for people who are biracial and multiracial to never forget that this is a system of formal historical and institutional white supremacy. And I’m afraid sometimes, there are a lot incentives that the culture puts out there to biracial and multiracial people to forget that… …Because they’re not quite as Black, or they’re not quite as Brown. And so there is a tendency for people to think that they really escape that system… …That they’re not really in that system… …So, multiracial, biracial folks: claim all of, claim every piece of it. Do not forget where one still sits on the trajectory of white supremacy. Because when once you forget that, there is real danger, real danger.

Tim Wise, “Racism, White Supremacy and Biracial/Multiraciality (2011),” Tim Wise, Antiracist Essayist, Author and Educator, Talk at Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky, (September, 2011). http://www.timwise.org/2012/09/insights-and-outbursts-volume-2/.

Race and Ethnicity in Society: The Changing Landscape, 3rd Edition

Cengage Learning
2012
480 pages
ISBN-10: 1111519536; ISBN-13: 9781111519537

Edited by

Elizabeth Higginbotham, Professor of Sociology, Women’s Studies, and Criminology
University of Delaware

Margaret L. Andersen, Edward F. and Elizabeth Goodman Rosenberg Professor of Sociology
University of Delaware

This engaging reader is organized in four major thematic parts, subdivided into thirteen different sections. Part I (“The Social Basis of Race and Ethnicity”) establishes the analytical frameworks that are now being used to think about race in society. The section examines the social construction of race and ethnicity as concepts and experience. Part II (“Continuity and Change: How We Got Here and What It Means”) explores both the historical patterns of inclusion and exclusion that have established racial and ethnic inequality, while also explaining some of the contemporary changes that are shaping contemporary racial and ethnic relations. Part III (“Race and Social Institutions”) examines the major institutional structures in contemporary society and investigates patterns of racial inequality within these institutions. Persistent inequality in the labor market and in patterns of community, residential, and educational segregation continue to shape the life chances of different groups. Part IV (“Building a Just Society”) concludes the book by looking at both large-scale contexts of change, such as those reflected in the movement to elect the first African American president.

• Major themes include coverage showing the diversity of experiences that now constitute “race” in the United States; teaching students the significance of race as a socially constructed system of social relations; showing the connection between different racial identities and the social structure of race; understanding how racism works as a belief system rooted in societal institutions; providing a social structural analysis of racial inequality; providing a historical perspective on how the racial order has emerged and how it is maintained; examining how people have contested the dominant racial order; exploring current strategies for building a just multiracial society.
• Each section includes several pages of analysis that outline the main concepts to be covered, providing a clear initial roadmap for reading and a convenient resource students can use with assignments and while preparing for exams.
• The text’s unique organization according to overarching themes and relevant subtopics, including identity, social construction of race, why race matters, inequality, and segregation, places the articles into a broader context to promote greater understanding.
• This innovative text looks beyond a simple black/white dichotomy and focuses more broadly on an extremely wide range of ethnic groups, providing a much more realistic and useful exploration of key topics that is more relevant and compelling for today’s diverse student population.

Table of Contents

• PART I: THE SOCIAL BASIS OF RACE AND ETHINICITY
  • 1. The Social Construction of Race and Ethnicity
    • Introduction by Elizabeth Higginbotham and Margaret L. Andersen
    • 1. Howard F. Taylor, “Defining Race”
    • 2. Joseph L. Graves, Jr., “The Race Myth”
    • 3. Abby Ferber, “Planting the Seed: The Invention of Race”
    • 4. Karen Brodkin, “How Did Jews Become White Folks?”
    • 5. Michael Omi and Howard Winant, “On Racial Formation”—Student Exercises
  • 2. What Do You Think? Prejudice, Stereotyping, and Racism
    • Introduction by Elizabeth Higginbotham and Margaret L. Andersen
    • 6. Matthew Desmond and Mustafa Emirbayer, “American Racism in the Twenty-First Century”
    • 7. Charles A. Gallagher, “Color-Blind Privilege: The Social and Political Functions of Erasing the Color Line in Post Race America”
    • 8. Judith Ortiz Cofer, “The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria”
    • 9. Rainier Spencer, “Mixed Race Chic”
    • 10. Rebekah Nathan, “What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student”—Student Exercises
  • 3. Representing Race and Ethnicity: The Media and Popular Culture
    • Introduction by Elizabeth Higginbotham and Margaret L. Andersen
    • 11. Craig Watkins, “Black Youth and the Ironies of Capitalism”
    • 12. Fatimah N. Muhammed, “How to NOT Be 21st Century Venus Hottentots”
    • 13. Rosie Molinary, “María de la Barbie”
    • 14. Charles Springwood and C. Richard King, “‘Playing Indian’: Why Native American Mascots Must End”
    • 15. Jennifer C. Mueller, Danielle Dirks, and Leslie Houts Picca, “Unmasking Racism: Halloween Costuming and Engagement of the Racial Order”—Student Exercises
  • 4. Who Are You? Race and Identity
    • Introduction by Elizabeth Higginbotham and Margaret L. Andersen
    • 16. Beverly Tatum, interview with John O’Neil, “Why are the Black Kids Sitting Together?”
    • 17. Priscilla Chan, “Drawing the Boundaries”
    • 18. Michael Omi and Taeku Lee, “Barack Like Me: Our First Asian American President”
    • 19. Tim Wise, “White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son”—Student Exercises
• PART II: CONTINUITY AND CHANGE: HOW WE GOT HERE AND WHAT IT MEANS
  • 5. Who Belongs? Race, Rights, and Citizenship
    • Introduction by Elizabeth Higginbotham and Margaret L. Andersen
    • 20. Evelyn Nakano Glenn, “Citizenship and Inequality”
    • 21. C. Matthew Snipp, “The First Americans: American Indians”
    • 22. Susan M. Akram and Kevin R. Johnson, “Race, Civil Rights, and Immigration Law After September 11, 2001: The Targeting of Arabs and Muslims”
    • 23. Peggy Levitt, “Salsa and Ketchup: Transnational Migrants Saddle Two Worlds”—Student Exercises
  • 6. The Changing Face of America: Immigration
    • Introduction by Elizabeth Higginbotham and Margaret L. Andersen
    • 24. Mae M. Ngai, “Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America”
    • 25. Nancy Foner, “From Ellis Island to JFK: Education in New York’s Two Great Waves of Immigration”
    • 26. Charles Hirschman and Douglas S. Massey, “Places and Peoples: The New American Mosaic”
    • 27. Pew Research Center, “Between Two Worlds: How Young Latinos Come of Age in America”—Student Exercises
  • 7. Exploring Intersections: Race, Class, Gender and Inequality
    • Introduction by Elizabeth Higginbotham and Margaret L. Andersen
    • 28. Patricia Hill Collins, “Toward a New Vision: Race, Class and Gender as Categories of Analysis and Connection”
    • 29. Yen Le Espiritu, “Theorizing Race, Gender, and Class”
    • 30. Roberta Coles and Charles Green, “The Myth of the Missing Black Father”
    • 31. Nikki Jones, “From Good to Ghetto”
    • 32. Gladys García-Lopez and Denise A. Segura, “‘They Are Testing You All the Time’: Negotiating Dual Femininities among Chicana Attorneys”—Student Exercises
• PART III: RACE AND SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS
  • 8. Race and the Workplace
    • Introduction by Elizabeth Higginbotham and Margaret L. Andersen
    • 33. William Julius Wilson, “Toward a Framework for Understanding Forces that Contribute to or Reinforce Racial Inequality”
    • 34. Deirdre A. Royster, “Race and The Invisible Hand: How White Networks Exclude Black Men from Blue-Collar Jobs”
    • 35. Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, “Families on the Frontier”.
    • 36. Angela Stuesse, “Race, Migration and Labor Control”—Student Exercises
  • 9. Shaping Lives and Love: Race, Families, and Communities
    • Introduction by Elizabeth Higginbotham and Margaret L. Andersen
    • 37. Joe R. Feagin and Karyn D. McKinney, ”The Family and Community Costs of Racism”
    • 38. Dorothy Roberts, “Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare”
    • 39. Kumiko Nemoto, “Interracial Relationships: Discourses and Images”
    • 40. Zhenchao Qian, “Breaking the Last Taboo: Interracial Marriage in America”—Student Exercises
  • 10. How We Live and Learn: Segregation, Housing, and Education
    • Introduction by Elizabeth Higginbotham and Margaret L. Andersen
    • 41. John E. Farley and Gregory D. Squires, “Fences and Neighbors: Segregation in the 21st Century”
    • 42. Melvin L. Oliver and Thomas M. Shapiro, “Sub-Prime as a Black Catastrophe”
    • 43. Gary Orfield and Chungmei Lee, “Historic Reversals, Accelerating Resegregation and the Need for New Integration Strategies”
    • 44. Heather Beth Johnson and Thomas M. Shapiro, “Good Neighborhoods, Good Schools: Race and the ‘Good Choices’ of White Families”—Student Exercises
  • 11. Do We Care? Race, Health Care and the Environment
    • Introduction by Elizabeth Higginbotham and Margaret L. Andersen
    • 45. H. Jack Geiger, “Health Disparities: What Do We Know? What Do We Need to Know? What Should We Do?”
    • 46. Shirley A. Hill, “Cultural Images and the Health of African American Women”
    • 47. David Naguib Pellow and Robert J. Brulle, “Poisoning the Planet: The Struggle for Environmental Justice”
    • 48. Robert D. Bullard and Beverly Wright, “Race, Place and the Environment”—Student Exercises
  • 12. Criminal Injustice? Courts, Crime, and the Law
    • Introduction by Elizabeth Higginbotham and Margaret L. Andersen
    • 49. Bruce Western, “Punishment and Inequality”
    • 50. Rubén Rumbaut, Roberto Gonzales, Goinaz Kamaie, and Charlie V. Moran, “Debunking the Myth of Immigrant Criminality: Imprisonment among First and Second Generation Young Men”
    • 51. Christina Swarns, “The Uneven Scales of Capital Justice”
    • 52. Devah Pager, “The Mark of a Criminal Record”—Student Exercises
• PART IV: BUILDING A JUST SOCIETY
  • 13. Moving Forward: Analysis and Social Action
    • Introduction by Elizabeth Higginbotham and Margaret L. Andersen
    • 53. Thomas F. Pettigrew, “Post-Racism? Putting Obama’s Victory in Perspective”
    • 54. Frank Dobbins, Alexandra Kalev, and Erin Kelly, “Diversity Management in Corporate America”
    • 55. Southern Poverty Law Center, “Ways to Fight Hate”—Student Exercises